Farmers can’t tell if Donald Trump is coming or going. On Monday, Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Trump’s ready to hand out more buy-off checks to the farmers he’s sandbagging with tariffs:
“We have allocated $12 billion, some such, to farm assistance. And we stand ready to do more if necessary,” White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture had previously ruled out a new round of aid for 2019. As of March, more than $8 billion was paid out as part of last year’s program. On Monday, the department said it had extended the deadline to apply to May 17 [Jeff Mason, Humeyra Pamuk, and Peter Cooney, “Trump Administration Eyes More Aid to Farmers If Necessary: White House Aide,” Reuters, 2019.04.29].
Yesterday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue came out in Iowa and said, no, not really:
“I think that there possibly could be some miscommunication. The president and I have not talked about that,” Secretary Perdue told reporters here.
Perdue added, “We were very forthcoming last year with the $12 billion in the Market Facilitation Program. We did extend the time of getting that money, so people could prove their 2018 yields. But I’m afraid the newswire report (regarding a new round of aid) is not accurate to that degree” [Mike McGinnis, “More Farm Aid Is a Miscommunication, USDA’s Perdue Says,” Agriculture.com, 2019.04.30].
To his credit, Secretary Perdue says he has told Trump “several times” that farmers “can’t pay their bills with patriotism.” It’s too bad Perdue, Kudlow, and the other fawning cowards in the White House can’t tell Il Duce that farmers can’t pay their bills with Trump’s egoism, doltism, or jerkism.
Related Reading: Tractor manufacturer lobby president Dennis Slater reminds us that Trump’s tariffs are taxes on farmers and the rest of us patriotic Americans, and they aren’t working:
However, these tariffs have not had the desired impact. Instead, they have created a global trade war, raising costs for Iowa businesses and causing workers to lose their jobs. Closer to home, the retaliatory tariffs that China has levied on almost all U.S. agricultural exports has seriously hurt Iowa’s corn and soybean farmers. As long as these harmful tariffs remain in place, they will continue to inflict hurt on Iowa and the broader U.S. economy.
Iowans have paid over $73 million in additional taxes due to the trade war so far. Across the country, Americans are paying over $1,155 a second as a result of the tariffs, and those figures do not include the additional cost to farmers, manufacturers, and businesses as a result of retaliatory tariffs on our exports [Dennis Slater, “Trump Tariffs Hurt Iowa Consumers, Farmers, and Families,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, 2019.04.23].
Taxation without representation was the cause of the revolution back in the day. Now we just wait for the check…and wait and wait…manana is good enough for us.
What exactly did farmers get from new Nafta with Canada? If memory serves, not much. Drumpf promised much more than he delivered. Isn’t it about time farmers and ranchers admit the truth they won’t get help from this pathological lying fauxknee?
Dirty Donald was overheard saying, “No more money to s**t-hole states!” Who’s he talking about?
New NAFTA is the same as the old NAFTA. Nothing changes in la la land.
US Senator Hirono speaks the truth. ” Mr. Barr, now the American people know you’re no different than Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once-decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office.”
A grifter and a liar, proven time and time again right here in South Dakota. Makes a feller proud to see a once strong and lawful nation succumb to a Russian asset.
Yes, a “free trade” agreement (NAFTA, about 1992) that ran, like 3000 pages, should have been able to be printed on a postcard; “Free Trade.”
Yes, Trump does bring up intriguing questions about problems within The System.
Now, if he could just do that without lying naked, full-length, in front of the camera while pullin is pud.
Jerry, Sen. Hirono’s little visit with pathetic Barr was brilliant! She totally shredded that tool. She is very brave and very smart. At the end Miz Lindsey stepped in and supported Demented Donny’s little boy. I never want Hirono mad at me. Wow.
His pet trade war isn’t the only way Demented Donny is blasting the farm and rural economy to pieces. The NY Times has done some research in different parts of the country to see if climate change, that Demented Donny and his fossil fuel buddies ignore, is causing any problems for people who make their living from the land.
http://flip.it/CmnCZ4
It’s not paywalled so you can see what’s happening to rural folk in every sector of the country. Ag economy is burning while Demented Donny fiddles with, well, what CIRD said.
Trump does this a lot. He says something, then comes back and changes it. Dusty just did it to Scyller. https://www.heralddemocrat.com/opinion/20170705/plausible-deniability-drug-that-president-trump-can8217t-stop-abusing
Trump: There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before, if you look, they were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. Later, Lee was a great general whether you like it or not, he said. ( not really)
Last night Charlotte NC was the target of another campus mass shooting.
[R]esearch certainly suggests that racism and racial resentment have been used to cut …. programs over the years. In that way, Trump’s racial appeals aren’t just about riling up his base, but about advancing an agenda that cuts services to the poor and taxes for the rich, brings back “tough on crime” policies, and restricts access to the voting booth. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/31/16226488/trump-identity-politics-racism
Trump lies (10,111 this term). Trump’s enablers (family and staff) are liars.
“Malignant narcissism is a combination of 4 traits, which includes narcissism, paranoia, antisocial personality disorder (the psychology of a criminal and someone who routinely lies) and sadism.
[Trump] is driven and gets intense pleasure from harming, humiliating, and degrading other people.”
“M]alignant narcissistic leaders tend to commit constant purges against their own staff. Hitler did this, Mussolini did this, as did Stalin and Saddam Hussein. We have also seen Trump do this at a faster rate than any other president in American history….As Mueller turns over more and more stones in his investigation, and Trump begins feeling more threatened, he will become more and more “dramatically destructive….there is literally nothing Trump won’t do…. He is going to try and take as many of us down as he can before he will resign.” 01.30.19
https://hillreporter.com/renowned-phycologist-like-hitler-trump-suffers-from-sadism-malignant-narcissism-paranoia-22815
Republicans were against bailouts, before they were for them
Thune is basically telling farmers that any money must be deficit neutral.
“WASHINGTON ― After going on a massive spending spree in the first two years of the Trump administration, Republicans say they’ve had enough red ink ― at least when it comes to overhauling the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and waterways.
“You want stuff? You gotta pay for it. I think that’s a conservative position,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 GOP senator, told reporters on Wednesday about discussions over a deal on new infrastructure spending.
Thune added that any package needs to be paid for via new revenue sources or offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget — a demand Republicans notably ditched in passing their $1.5 trillion tax cut into law.”
You want stuff, ya gotta pay for it. Dig deep farmers, Thune has your back.
Farmers are going to have to face that they now are the beast in the Grover Norquist strategy of “starve the beast.”
Will the farm community get pushed to the tipping point to mutiny against the GOP that counts on their loyalty — as the rust belt did to the Democrats in the ’16 election?
Since Raygun turned the US from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s largest debtor nation in 8 years, when has it been a conservative policy to pay for what you want?
Dumbass dubya has paid for nothing in his life including a taxpayer funded ball park for Texas Rangers that turned dubya’s borrowed 600k (2% ownership) into a 15 million dollar swindle that vastly out swindled HRCs 100k on beef futures that wingnuts will still investigate for the memories.