On today’s BradCast: As the White House implosion continues at the end of one of its most chaotic weeks to date, Trump declares a trade war! [Audio link to show is posted below.]
Well, huge tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, anyway, (those are taxes on the American people, Mr. President), which will almost certainly lead to international trade wars with friend and foes alike, raise the cost of many consumer goods and, yes, kill American jobs.
The proposed tariff scheme has already led to an internal White House war with Trump’s lead economic advisor threatening to resign if they are implemented, Congressional Republicans furious about the plan, close allies such as Canada and the EU threatening to retaliate against the U.S., the entirety of the fossil fuel industry (from oil to natural gas to coal) declaring that jobs will be lost and prices will rise, and even Trump’s own Defense Secretary advising that the measure, which President Chaos is hoping to pull off on “national security” grounds, will have a “negative impact on our key allies”. Other than that, the idea is going over very well.
At the same time, there was another school shooting by a 19-year old on Friday, this time at Central Michigan University; Texas sees huge early voting turnout in advance of Tuesday’s 2018 mid-term primary elections (even beating turnout for the 2016 Presidential primaries!); New polling finds the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and Medicaid with record high approval ratings; and the state of Georgia is finally moving away from their 14-year old 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting systems…to new, similarly unverifiable computer-printed “paper ballot” systems.
(The GA legislature is moving a measure forward to fund new “Ballot Marking Devices” or “BMDs”, which are, essentially, very expensive computerized “electronic pencils” that allow voters to use a touch-screen to print out a non-human readable barcode on a piece of paper, which is then tallied by a computer scanner. Or, the computer may print human-readable vote selections on paper which may or may not actually be verified by the voter to reflect their intent before being tallied by a computer. After an election, it’ll be impossible to know if any of those so-called ballot cards actually reflect voter intent. That’s why election integrity advocates oppose the new “bad to worse” scheme quickly moving forward in GA!)
Then, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report as Trump’s EPA chief Scott Pruitt cites the bible as his excuse for polluting the planet and killing children with fossil fuel exploitation and dangerous chemicals. (Hope Pope Francis doesn’t find out!)
And we close today with some listener mail and some very good news from the American Cancer Society that they are finally recommending electronic cigarettes and vaping devices for smoking cessation. (Hope the supposedly anti-tobacco Democrats who are helping to kill people by making it more difficult to vape don’t find out!)
CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/BradCast_BradFriedman_TariffTradeWar_ACAPopularity_TXTurnout_ACSVaping_030218.mp3]
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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Can’t say whether trumps tariffs count for anything, but America protects it’s doctors, it’s pharmacy industry, we protect the software giants,and the gun manufacturing, but somehow we can’t protect our cities and towns from being hollowed out, it’s really telling when both liberal and conservative media telling us tariffs are so bad, when before the 1980s we protected our domestic industry.