Two eager readers forward me Congressman Dusty Johnson’s latest campaign flyer disguised as a legislative update on his noble fight against Communism:
I guess we’re always going to party like it’s 1989.
It’s funny that we fret about losing a capitalist contest to Communists. Conservative California/South Dakota businessman Jeff Lassle says we aren’t losing that battle at all:
In bold print Johnson states there is a $345.2 billion trade deficit with China not considering that China has bought as much from the U.S. as a percentage of their GDP as we, the U.S., have bought from China as a percentage of our GDP; last looked it was about 2.5% of our entire GDP on an annual basis. Mr. Johnson also fails to consider the hundreds of U.S. companies in China like Tesla, 3M, Sherwin-Williams, Apple, Nike, etc. who are manufacturing in China and selling directly to the Chinese people at about $387 billion annually. If one does the math there appears to be a massive trade surplus when one adds in the trade multipliers of trillions of dollars as a result of this trade [Jeff Lassle, open letter to South Dakota Legislature and press, 2021.11.04].
It’s also funny that Dusty wants to sweat the trade deficit, after his last President promised but failed to erase that gap, so about what and whom is Dusty really complaining? It sounds like the trade deficit, just like the federal budget deficit, is just another phrase Republicans trot out to rouse voters’ fears when Democrats hold the White House, then forget about once they get a Republican President.
Karl Mundt would be proud of the congressman holding his old seat fighting the commies.
As a South Dakota farmer one thing I hope Dusty is aware of is all the trade I do with China selling them soybeans. The Trump tariffs hit us hard, four years of low prices because of the whims of a petulant child hit farmers hard. Sadly a majority of farmers happily fell for Trump’s xenophobic folly, fell in line and gladly accepted huge government bailouts. Our rugged individualism only exists in our minds. Only now, four years after the Trump market crushing tariff folly are we beginning to see good grain prices. Thank you Joe Biden.
I remember being asked to sign a loyalty oath in order to take a teaching position in a secondary school in South Dakota. I was reluctant to sign and still feel it was an imposition upon my personal rights as a US citizen. I think it was to assure state authorities that I was not, nor never had been, a member of the Communist Party. The time was around 1958-59 and Nixon was president. How many times will the Republicans use the same scare words?
Capitalism is a disease. Howdy Doody Dusty admitted it to Girl’s State in June.
Our Lady of the Arroyo and an interested party are finished binge watching Squid Game: a dystopian look at capitalism’s grip on the global workforce. “Modern society” is a product of the forbidden fruit–agriculture. Cain, the farmer, slew Abel, the hunter-gatherer and, yes, humans’ collective knowledge is pushing us home to the stars whose dust make us who we are. Reproduction is the reason, food is the fuel. Humans are merely Terran tools to go forth and find more…unless or until we kill the Earth before she kills us for taking more than our share.
The rise of companies like Amazon suggests many people are simply too afraid to go into town to shop so last year this blog called for a general strike to sink the Trump Organization. Now, the movement has morphed into what Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University, is calling The Great Resignation.
It’s not about laziness, it’s about equity or Maria shrugged, if you will. Just because we’re Democrats doesn’t make us subjects, it makes us powerful: a reverse “Who is John Galt?” Some believe it could last well into 2023.
I’d say that Dusty has a very small target audience for this ridiculous distraction. He can’t even keep his own party in order for goodness sakes. As if anyone I know cares about this when they’re happy about the Social Security raise and angry that food, fuel, and Medicare Part D, F, and G will eat that all up. We’re all feeling gouged at this point and this is all he’s concerned about. The people I work with as a caregiver can NEVER get ahead in this regressive state.
Now I look at Dusty and see an empty glass instead of the half full I mistook him for.
How about this as a way to fight the commies: don’t cut our taxation/ domestic revenue sources and drive up debt that then allows the Chinese investors to have ownership in the US?
Johnson’s living in the past. Modern republicants can only work if they first create a strawman enemy. China will soon own the world’s electric vehicle market. Chinese auto companies hired hundreds, or more, of the Japanese vehicle engineers because the Japanese auto makers boards and executives are, like Johnson, living in the past. In Europe 19% of new vehicle sales are EVs. Similar for China.
Let this Aussie tell you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wEDZORqgFw
Dusty has to find something to be resentful about, I guess. You can’t have a Republican politician who doesn’t get his panties in a bundle about something, I guess.
My daughter has spent the last 16 years in China. Some of those years have been in start-up companies. Other years have been spent researching aspects of Chinese policies and markets for businesses based in the US, Australia and Europe. Since Deng, the Chinese have been focused more on getting rich than on communist ideology. To do that, they developed a thriving private sector. They encouraged trade and collaboration with foreign business. Yes, they stole intellectual property, just as the US did as it was developing. The Chinese have a mixed economy. They do have state-owned enterprises in various sectors. Think of it as what used to be the South Dakota socialist cement plant. And they have tried to help South Dakota develop meat packing plants through the EB-5 program. Unfortunately, corruption and poor management by the Rounds administration doomed that project. Don’t blame China for that, because Rounds’ bad management screwed South Dakota and the Chinese at the same time.
Xi is changing things. I’m not a fan of Xi, but he is trying to reign in some of the corruption that got out of hand with the free market. A lot of people have gotten rich in China, and there is a thriving middle class, but there remains a lot of poverty, and there is resentment that the good life isn’t reaching everyone. Xi wants the wealth spread wider and the corruption staunched.
I think Dusty is right to focus on human rights abuses. I wonder, though, why he’s not as interested in fighting the human rights abuses here in the US. He has been pretty silent about Trump’s attempt at an overthrow of our system of government, or on states restricting voting rights of minorities.
As far as Covid, my daughter could tell Dusty that the lower level cadres of the Communist Party serve as a kind of neighborhood association that kept Covid at a manageable level in all parts of the country other than Wuhan. Too bad we didn’t see local Republican Party volunteers out there manning neighborhood vaccination sites, rather acting like spoiled children and demanding fireworks at Mt. Rushmore and human trafficking at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Now, as far as censorship, I agree with Dusty that Chinese leaders are way too finicky about criticism. But that is true of a lot of our own leaders. I’ve always been someone who is critical of leadership, even the politicians I vote for, and I appreciate our First Amendment rights. When I was a school board member in Rapid City, I appreciated any public input, even if it was emotional and critical. That people cared enough to speak out, made me think. My daughter says there is a similar feeling among Chinese leaders. They don’t want a lot of organized activity, big demonstrations and such, but they do want people individually to speak up, because then they know better how to address certain issues.
I follow the nuclear waste issue in China, as they have made the same mistakes as the US regarding developing nuclear power before figuring out how to deal with the waste. When China tried to site a dump in a community, hell broke loose. There was a lot of organizing activity. Chinese leaders don’t like that, but they did something that South Dakota leaders rarely do: they listened to the people. They stopped trying to site that nuclear dump.
Unlike in other parts of the world there are no Chinese branded cars and trucks for sale in the US. There are plenty of US branded cars (manufactured in China) for sale in China.
In regard to “ocean transport fairness”; The US remains the only major trading nation and one of a dozen or so (most of whom are land-locked) that has NOT signed on to the UN “Law of the Sea” treaty.
Well said, Interested Party.
I’ve started a new Korean series called “Dr. Brain”.
It’s worthy.
Korean movies are very well done.
“PARASITE” – “SQUID GAME” teach Americans what Korea is about.
I get a weekly AXIOS China newsletter that is very informative and as Don notes, not complimentary of the Chinese Communist Party.
But, it’s always good when Don Pay expounds on China.
He has a perspective “foreign” to most Americans.
Those commie’s can sure build infrastructure projects though. Their cash is good for buying South Dakota beef, corn, wheat and of course, soybeans. Lots and lots of soybeans. Dirty Johnson has been on the dole and thinks South Dakota farmers and ranchers should be on the subsidy dole as well. My son traveled in China a few years back and was impressed with many things there. Damn, those bullet trains are to be envied and copied (certainly didn’t get that from us). South Korea now has some of those same ideas for people movers as well as cargo. Meanwhile, here in South Dakota, our roads, bridges, water systems along with everything else that screams infrastructure rebuilding, is failing fast. Thanks to Dirty Johnson and his pals EB5 Rounds and the tall guy, we have bumpkiss, even when their guys was in.
When China takes us over, at least we will then have trains, bus lines and other people movers, along with green energy. Tell the kiddies to start working on their Mandarin.
Maybe we’ll have universal health care then Jerry.
Well the commies in China really fooled us. The conservative economists in the U S of A, Milton Friedman was a big one, predicted that China would get more “advanced” or liberal as they adapted to capitalism. Boy did he screw up. Apparently you don’t need our freedoms for capitalism to thrive. Chuck that idea out the window. The crappies and commies are fine with each other. Maybe they will screw it up, but so far, doing fine I’m really sorry that trump threw our farmers under the bus with soybeans Mr. Nemec. Even if he got what he wanted it was theoretically all BS. Its all really a tax on the U.S.
In my view, I met the best capitalists in the world in Vietnam. These were Chinese business people that were either married into Vietnamese families or had other ties. We here tend to think that we invented capitalism and business, we are way down on the totem pole, but our arrogance doesn’t disappoint. Nixon opened the door to Chinese business because we here in America could not make it work anymore. The wars cost so much that production wages by American workers would never allow anyone to purchase anything. The only way forward was to abandon American workers and factories and start building everything in China. So then, here we are. Thank China for bailing us out when we crashed our economy thanks to big banks and their complete failure of business.
No one is talking about the stock market anymore after biggest dumbass in the world wanted everyone to look at. The facts are stubborn, but we are actually doing a helluva lot better than liars like Dirty Johnson and the other two balls in the sack want you to believe. They prattle on about inflation or those pesky Chinese like they know what that is, so that makes many of us to believe that the sky is falling. News flash, it ain’t. Get smart, vote Democrat for the things you want as well as for what this country needs. Oh, and look at your 401
Looks like Brandon done got going according to the stock market. The money boys are pretty happy with Brandon… Watch what happens when the ports open for trade. Thanks to the Democrats, we may even actually Make America Great Again in spite of the dead weight losers we have sent to Washington. Booyah
Soybeans, corn, wheat, beef, pork etc. Thanks China for being such a great customer of our agriculture products.
Despite increasing cases of COVID, SAD, suicide, homelessness, brain drain and burnout Dusty is bragging about not voting for President Biden’s movement forward. How is that not red state failure on parade?
Richard, the Chinese cars are coming. They are high quality and will all be EVs. BYD is the world’s 2d largest EV manufacturer, behind Tesla. If the US tries to keep Chinese EVs out, the Chinese will nationalize US company plants in China – bankrupting those companies. Check. Mate. The Chinese will soon dominate worldwide car production. Similar to, but even larger than the Japanese exported their well made small cars and soon dominated the US vehicle market. US vehicle companies will only survive on nonsense government contracts forcing agencies to purchase sub-standard GM and Dodge junk.
Let auto exec Sandy Munro explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PocqNEJNxqo
Dusty is living in the past and playing checkers out of his league. China won’t need SD “products” by the end of 2035 when China’s precision fermentation provides their protein.
Correct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTOtAniwC18
Great link John. We decided long ago that we wanted to be a service oriented economy, selling each other stuff that is made in China. Their shift from real estate to industrial investment will show their economy moving upward like our economy is. One of the other key components to that is their unflinching work to eliminate covid 19. We could learn a whole lot from the Chinese on how to advance ourselves, but that would mean work… Like I said, we are a service oriented economy so doing any kind of lifting is for the birds.
China does not practice capitalism. And as someone who lived in that nation and in South Korea for 15 months as a study abroad honors recipient, I reserve the right to appraise macroeconomics on a geopolitical basis.
China is a planned economy with capitalist oligarchy for leaders at the top and with Soviet oppression for the general population. And Demo-Communists and UNESCO replacement population advocates espouse this precise model for America and all of Western Civilization. For impoverished, starving scriveners like Cory Heidelberger, this. might represent an improvement in station. But for those of us who’ve actually prospered under Adam Smith’s simplest market model, the prospects are grim and objectionable.
I wonder if Lutheran Social Services will pay reparations to Cory and his wife when America’s capitalist system collapses entirely in favor of demographic overwrite via Latin America.
It’s fun watching cancel culture swing Lilliputian fists at people who are worth $150-million, while Cory lambasts them as “living wage” strugglers.
You Democrats are a comedy laugh riot. Emphasis on Minneapolis riot.
Vote for Taneeza Islam. She’s clearly qualified for the present modus operandi of the Democrat insanity.
China doesn’t practice capitalism?? How did the Silk Road work then? One thing is for sure, if the United States would pay reparations to “Latin America” for all that we have stolen from them, they would be just fine. Ecuador would be a real good place to start and then go either up or down. How about our “own” Puerto Rico? That is our territory and we have ignored it except to hand out paper towels.
Shad, did or did not China bail us out for our clear misunderstanding of how macroeconomics work. Derivatives certainly were an interesting concept, no? https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/what-is-macroeconomics.htm
YAY! Another useful idiot. I did so miss John Dale
Anyone who believes capitalism is redemptive is delusional.
Collectivism is arguably the most important feature binding every surviving human culture on the Earth today yet modern purely socialistic societies have struggled with longevity. Why? Probably because US capitalists have warred against any and all efforts at pure socialism around the globe since it was defined in the modern sense even as those wars are bankrupting America today.
It’s estimated christians have slaughtered billions of Indigenous since landing in the New World. Capitalism has destroyed hope in Indian Country where throughout herstory family and community have been more important than money and consumerism for countless generations.
The reading of the Declaration of Independence by members of the reporting staff at NPR on the 4th of July gets me every time. Past on-air personalities, some now correspondents at the pearly gates, also read for this decades-old feature. The tears stream down my face right up to the line that begins:
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare…”
That’s when it hits me right between the eyes.
When those words were being written, thousands of cultures inhabited a continent that seemed to keep growing huge ripe plums just waiting for Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and the rest to pick and pick and pick and pick. Already, the Chesapeake Bay estuary had been mostly denuded of native vegetation, not to mention of its former human inhabitants.
Slaves tilled the fields and built the infrastructure, the ancestors of the Lakota and other Siouan groups that had been forced westward out of North Carolina generations earlier, traded with the Spanish and French while forging their own alliances (and marriages) with other Indigenous peoples.
In 2018 the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has passed resolutions condemning what they say are abuses of the General Mining Law of 1872 passed to pay Civil War debt leading to the Custer Expedition’s discovery of gold in the Black Hills.
Hey America: it’s time to wake up and smell the Tsingtao!
The United States Constitution is the finest instrument ever created by the human hand. The Preamble is the body, the Bill of Rights is the neck, the Amendments are the strings. It is a fluid universal execution of human and civil rights.
It’s time for all Americans to enjoy the protection of law by being part of one nation: erase the artificial borders and grant Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to all the people of North America…Mexico, Central America, Canada, even the Caribbean if they’ll have us.
I’m not a New World Order guy, don’t support the North American Union (god bless you. please, mr. roddenberry) and I believe the US Constitution is a big enough canvas in order to paint a more perfect masterpiece, a big enough score for all to sing. No violence. No more drug wars.
Let’s debate it then draft a dream referendum to be delivered by and for the people of Mexico to dissolve their constitution and petition for Statehood as our 52nd State. Quebec could be the 53rd and Cuba, the 54th.
Sí, se puede.
One thing for sure Ms. Fairbank, I don’t think I ever read John Dale’s tripe assailing Cory’s wife. Shad (the bait fish) shows what an asshat he is by demeaning her. Cory is an in depth reporter, the bait fish is a jealous news reader.
Dirty Johnson is a whiny bitching skin tag that could have done a vote for South Dakota and her need of infrastructure. Instead, he chose to send out a flyer. You can bet that Dirty Johnson and the other two do nothings will have their soiled greedy hands out like they supported the bill. Here are the 13 republicans that chose country over fascism. https://www.yahoo.com/news/13-house-republicans-defied-kevin-040103671.html
China trade deficit $340B that Dusty wrings tax-advocacy groups had identified South Dakota, where disclosure laws are particularly loose, as one of the most problematic tax havens in the world: one report had suggested that the amount of money held in trusts in South Dakota had grown from two billion dollars in 2007 to three hundred and sixty billion dollars today. “It’s excruciating work, where at first I’m just like a monkey typing in ‘South Dakota’ and ‘Sioux Falls’ to search these documents, and then going through the thousands of files that come up,” Fitzgibbon said. He noticed that many of the people hiding money in South Dakota came from Latin America—Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador. “I don’t speak Spanish; I don’t speak Portuguese,” Fitzgibbon said. “But the first Google result for two of them was quite literally ‘involved in a money laundering ring’ and ‘involved in a settlement with the U.S. government.’ ”
Fitzgibbon travelled to Sioux Falls, where he met with a whistle-blower, researched the lawyers who had pushed legislation limiting scrutiny of trusts to the state legislature, and checked out the office building that housed a group called Trident Trust. The scene in South Dakota was phenomenally mundane. Hundreds of billions of unreported dollars were being hidden in the same place that processed receipts for grain. “The problems, the inequalities, and the wrongdoing enabled by the offshore system isn’t just because there’s a few Mr. Burns-like figures sitting at their desks wrapping their fingers together,” Fitzgibbon said. “There is no evidence that there’s some evil mastermind in Sioux Falls unscrupulously soliciting foreign wealth.” He noted that, in addition to South Dakota, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Nevada have become U.S. hot spots for tax evasion. “It’s often specifically because they are small jurisdictions with part-time legislators, small populations and failing economies, and, therefore, in the eyes of trust lawyers, ripe for persuasion.” It turned out that Latin American billionaires moved their offshore wealth from the Caribbean to South Dakota, as the British Virgin Islands and others tightened some regulations in the aftermath of the Panama Papers. Fitzgibbon said, “Same wine, different bottle.” hands over is similar but less than SD’s new tax evasion industry’s present assets of $360B.
ICIJ and tax-advocacy groups “identified South Dakota, where disclosure laws are particularly loose, as one of the most problematic tax havens in the world: one report had suggested that the amount of money held in trusts in South Dakota had grown from two billion dollars in 2007 to three hundred and sixty billion dollars today. “It’s excruciating work, where at first I’m just like a monkey typing in ‘South Dakota’ and ‘Sioux Falls’ to search these documents, and then going through the thousands of files that come up,” Journalist W. Fitzgibbon said. He noticed that many of the people hiding money in South Dakota came from Latin America—Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, El Salvador. “I don’t speak Spanish; I don’t speak Portuguese,” Fitzgibbon said. “But the first Google result for two of them was quite literally ‘involved in a money laundering ring’ and ‘involved in a settlement with the U.S. government.’ ”
Fitzgibbon travelled to Sioux Falls, where he met with a whistle-blower, researched the lawyers who had pushed legislation limiting scrutiny of trusts to the state legislature, and checked out the office building that housed a group called Trident Trust. The scene in South Dakota was phenomenally mundane. Hundreds of billions of unreported dollars were being hidden in the same place that processed receipts for grain. “The problems, the inequalities, and the wrongdoing enabled by the offshore system isn’t just because there’s a few Mr. Burns-like figures sitting at their desks wrapping their fingers together,” Fitzgibbon said. “There is no evidence that there’s some evil mastermind in Sioux Falls unscrupulously soliciting foreign wealth.” He noted that, in addition to South Dakota, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Nevada have become U.S. hot spots for tax evasion.
“It’s often specifically because they are small jurisdictions with part-time legislators, small populations and failing economies, and, therefore, in the eyes of trust lawyers, ripe for persuasion.”
It turned out that Latin American billionaires moved their offshore wealth from the Caribbean to South Dakota, as the British Virgin Islands and others tightened some regulations in the aftermath of the Panama Papers. Fitzgibbon said, “Same wine, different bottle.”
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (I.C.I.J.), a network of reporters at media outlets around the world, which specializes in coördinated investigations that have brought down government leaders and led to simultaneous headlines in hundreds of outlets.
In 2013, the I.C.I.J. published findings from a database called Offshore Leaks, which revealed how plutocrats close to the governments of Russia, China, the Philippines, and many other nations hid their wealth offshore. In 2016, the I.C.I.J. organized the publication of the Panama Papers, a large cache of documents—associated with the Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca—that identifed secret offshore accounts maintained by influential figures, including the sitting heads of state of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. In 2017, the Paradise Papers documented the offshore entanglements of multinational corporations, the British monarchy, and Wilbur Ross, who was then Donald Trump’s Secretary of Commerce.
THE US SECRETARY OF COMMERCE. Dusty, concerned? Hold SD accountable for stealing world ingenuity? Economic espionage in Sioux Falls? Naw.
These leaks, and the efforts to prevent them, took place in the cloak-and-dagger milieu of a spy game, only one that has little to do with the advancement of national interests: the protagonists are journalists on one side, global oligarchs on the other. And, in this world, there is no news more dramatic than when the director of the I.C.I.J., a veteran Irish Australian journalist named Gerard Ryle, has got his hands on a new leak.
In 2016, when the Panama Papers revealed that the Prime Minister of Iceland secretly owned an offshore company with multimillion-dollar claims on the country’s failed banks, there were mass demonstrations and he almost immediately stepped down.
But, by this most recent I.C.I.J. investigation, the fourth batch of leaks, the offshoring scandal was familiar, and populist politicians have learned to blame the stories on a hostile or partisan press, or simply ignore them. “I think maybe a lot of them have become more sophisticated in the reaction,” …. At the same time, many of these politicians were more vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy, since they had often come to office decrying corruption or the global élite.
If, during the Trump years, the leaks had detailed a system of global oligarchy that seemed to form an opposing force to liberal democracy, then the Pandora Papers emphasized the oligarchy that had taken root within liberal democracies themselves.
Ben Wells NEWYORKER Nov 11, 2021
…Dusty wrings hands over. ICIJ and tax advocacy groups…
In my sarcastic brevity, jerry, I neglected to point out Sham is an irritating, icky little insect whose only claim it has to understanding capitalism is – wait for it – it spent 15 MONTHS in China and South Korea. Made me laugh.
Sham IS an asshat for its personal attack. Cory has demonstrated his consistently thoughtful insights, superb journalism, and patience too often for bugman to criticize.
Anyone who believes the US is not a planned economy simply ignores the roles slavery and broken treaties have played in the glorification of American capitalism and is either unschooled in critical race theory or has been brainwashed in the myth of white supremacy or both.
Want to end Chinese hegemony? Boycott Walmart, Target and nearly every other retailer in the US. China is eating our lunch because the US owes her over a trillion dollars and retailers like Walmart buy their plastic crap loaded in container ships now backed up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Shad Olson said: “China does not practice capitalism.”
Does the United States practice capitalism? Not really. We have a mixed economy. Our ag sector is partly free market, but with a planned aspect that assures food security. Most countries do this. Trump was big on subsidizing certain sectors, such as, for example, the ag sector and the uranium sector. His trade policies and his political needs required such policies that were anti-capitalist. That’s the way it is with authoritarians, whether of the left or the right.
China also has a mixed economy. There is a far more centralized and planned aspect to the various industrial sectors in China, of course. But there is a completely capitalist aspect to others. My daughter works in both.
In the United States more of our economy depends on private enterprise, but many of our sectors, such as meat packing, are so concentrated that there is no real free market. Farmers have been complaining about this for decades, while, of course, cashing the money from taxpayers that makes up for the problems caused by monopoly capitalism.
As usual, it’s unclear what Shad Olson is trying to say or why it is relevant to the blog post offered. The “demographic overwrite from Latin America” seems to be driven by unfettered capitalism, lots of Latin Americans who want better-paying jobs and who find willing capitalist employers here in the U.S., many of whom are more than happy not to ask for the documentation that Shad wants big government to demand… although I suspect Shad pays without complaint the same low prices for goods and services produced by that capitalist-driven immigrant labor force as the rest of us do.