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Grift, lawlessness, and corruption, please meet sacrifice [1]

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Date: 2025-05-13

Feels like the millions of us, the regular folks who are the faceless Americans and the grifter-in-chief and his lackeys and minions are at less than four months in, already living metaphorically on two different planets. How to analyze this, where to even start to do so, has had me puzzled no end today. But have to start somewhere. So here goes.

An initial take-your-breath-away price tag of 400 million bucks. For a "new" Air Force One plane, from Qatar, a benefactor of Hamas. Which gift of course blows the Emoluments Clause out of the water and is so patently unconstitutional and illegal that it should be off the table with a polite "No thanks." Further, the price tag is just the beginning:

The aircraft would have to be torn down and rebuilt to install secure presidential communication lines, self-defense technology, and electromagnetic shielding. Former Air Force acquisitions chief Andrew Hunter told Politico Trump’s ‘Free’ Plane From Qatar Will Still Cost Taxpayers a Fortune – DNyuz Grift and lawlessness. that retrofitting costs would likely fall “in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Meanwhile, Trump has been looking into the camera and gleefully telling America's kids they should be satisfied with two Barbie dolls. And five pencils. And not even knowing what a stroller is, never mind that new parents likely won't be able to find one, or if they do, it will cost double what it would have cost them a few months ago. Clothing and shoes for growing kids? School supplies? A new washer or dryer when yours just cannot be repaired again? Car parts? And on and on it will go—sacrifice; give up meeting needs; go more and more into debt.

And before anyone jumps on this and contends that the "new" China/US negotiations will not cause these consumer hardships as the parties have agreed on a 30% tariff on goods from China rather than the 145%, first of all, this is not a permanent solution. It is merely a 90-day pause. Just long enough for some folks to think maybe their 401s and other investments are safe, and then bang, something perturbs Trump and he goes off his nut, reinstating who knows how high a new tariff on China.

But there is this true and troubling fact too: On "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell,' last night he talked with Rick Mohldenberg, CEO of Learning Resources, a small educational toy company. Rick instantly stuck a big pin in the Trump balloon by providing dollar figures for how much a 30% tariff is going to cost his company. Right now, he said, we have approximately 11 million bucks in product on a cargo ship and the tariff is going to cost me almost four million bucks right at the dock before my company's order is unloaded. So then, let's do the math: if the previous delivered price had been 11 million bucks, Rick is now facing almost 15 million bucks in delivery price. So, as he says, the retail pre-30% tariff would have been a figure based on the 11 million. Now it has to be based on the 15 million. And we know that if Rick pays out all this extra money, we will wind up paying a lot more too because his company cannot run on either no or a very low profit margin and keep his employees paid. Sacrifice. Bada Bing.

Multiply Rick's company's financial difficulties due to a high tariff (and yes, 30% is according to many economists, a high tariff) by the thousands of other companies facing the same problem and what do you get? Layoffs. Cutbacks in hours. Maybe renegotiations of benefits. Maybe even having to fire people. Higher prices for consumers. Sacrifice.

And all the cuts to government services? All the people fired? All the impacts on local economies? Sacrifice. And sadly, even worse. It is only anecdotal at this point but the hard numbers should shortly follow--there are reportedly suicides among workers who have lost their jobs, their health insurance, and are on the verge of homelessness.

Further, anecdotal again as it takes time for statistics to be gathered and vetted, but there are already reports on excessive numbers of houses up for sale in areas where government workers live. Two here: I live in the DMV (District; Maryland; Virginia) and already in my particular county, we are experiencing many more homes on the market than is usual for this time of year, with the real estate pictures of listings online showing these houses to be empty. There are also now some houses being abandoned. (The housing prices here are or were very high, still are, as a result of the very high incomes. But the houses aren't selling now, so what happens next? Foreclosure of multiple houses across dozens of neighborhoods that are valued at over a million bucks each? And then the economy here suffers too. Sacrifice.) And one statistic already in? The District of Columbia is reporting a verifiable spike in homes for sale. DOGE Job Cuts Trigger Record Surge in Homes for Sale in DC

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