ROCKIES V BREWERS AT 12:30 So it's gonna be a quick show.
I'VE GOT OODLES ON THE TARIFFS Starting with Colorado's Rep. Jeff Hurd filing a bill to put control of tariffs BACK where the Constitution did, which is with Congress. He's running a bipartisan bill with a companion bill already in the Senate that would require Congressional review of any new tariffs. Trump says he will veto it and I don't think the GOP has the votes in the House to override that but good for him for trying to restore Constitutional balance to this situation. Congress has been very happy to punt their unpopular responsibilities to the Oval Office for many, many years now and I'd be fine with getting things back to how the Founders intended. This is probably going to make Hurd unpopular with some Republicans but in his very mixed district I think he'll be fine. One billionaire agrees with me that the tariffs are not the end, merely the means to an end, check this thread out for more on what he refers to as the $750 Billion gamble.
If you don't want to watch it he says that this is the greatest wealth redistribution BACK TO THE MIDDLE CLASS in history. It sort of goes back to what I read yesterday, which is to remind people that free trade has a cost, but it's not Wall Street that pays it. All of this points to what I told a group of friends two days ago: this entire exercise is about bringing China to heel. Now Trump is talking about $1.5 million dollar docking fees on Chinese made ships. The funny part about that is the Biden Administration had begun an investigation into whether or not China's shipbuilding industry uses unfair trade and commercial practices to gain the kind of dominance they now enjoy. A big part of this tariff situation isn't just about money, it's about restoring our ability to made the things we need here in case the crap hits the fan and we need to build lots of ships, or make medicine, or superconductors or a bunch of other things we are currently totally reliant on China for. And for everyone saying Trump is just responding to the markets by pausing tariffs for 90 days, you are missing the much, much bigger picture. Why am I so certain? This bit in that Denver Gazette story:
The president later said he'd been thinking about his tariff pause over the past few days, but he said it “came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.”
Asked why White House aides had been insisting for weeks that the tariffs were not part of a negotiation, Trump said: “A lot of times, it’s not a negotiation until it is.”
Everything he does is laying the groundwork for a negotiation. The issue is that government doesn't work this way normally, which is probably why we're 36 Trillion in debt. He's just doing what he said he was going to do according to Ari Fleischer. This column makes the case that the President understands how vulnerable the United States is when we can't make our own stuff, including ammunition, without Chinese imports. How is that going to go if we have to fight China over Taiwan? Why is Trump focused on China? Read this from Foreign Affairs:
Using this approach, if one looks narrowly at goods rather than services, China’s productive capacity is three times as large as that of the United States—a decisive advantage in military and technological competition—and exceeds that of the next nine countries combined. In the two decades after China joined the World Trade Organization, its share of global manufacturing quintupled to 30 percent while the U.S. share halved to roughly 15 percent; the United Nations has estimated that, by 2030, the imbalance will grow to 45 percent and 11 percent. China leads in many traditional industries—producing 20 times as much cement, 13 times as much steel, three times as many cars, and twice as much power as the United States—and increasingly in advanced sectors as well.
Although still catching up in fields such as biotechnology and aviation, which have been traditional U.S. strengths, China—thanks in part to ambitious industrial policy efforts such as Made in China 2025—produced almost half the world’s chemicals, half the world’s ships, more than two-thirds of electric vehicles, more than three-quarters of electric batteries, 80 percent of consumer drones, and 90 percent of solar panels and critical refined rare-earth minerals. And Beijing is taking steps to ensure its dominance continues and expands: China was responsible for half of all industrial robot installations worldwide (seven times as many as the United States), and it is a decade ahead of anyone else in commercializing fourth-generation nuclear technology, with plans to build over 100 reactors in 20 years. The last great power to so thoroughly dominate global production was the United States, from the 1870s to the 1940s.
You should read it here, it gives an interesting history of the British Empire and why it fell because there are considerable similarities to the scale that China has versus the capabilities we have here.
WHY DOESN'T THE AURARIA CAMPUS SUE THEM BACK? This is entirely predictable and I'm sure there are already settlement talks underway by the weak sauce leadership at the Auraria Campus where anti-Semites who support the murderous regime of Hamas destroyed property, disobeyed laws against camping and disrupted student learning were allowed to set up shop. Now those "protesters" have filed a civil rights lawsuit arguing that their First Amendment rights were violated. If I'm in charge I fight this to the bitter end and then ask the a judge to award me lawyers fees when I win. But see my earlier comments about how the leadership will most assuredly cave, setting themselves up for more of the same. If I were in charge I would sue them back for the damage they caused the campus, which totals around $650,000. They weren't arrested for their speech, they were arrested for breaking the law.
OUR BRIEF FAKE LOVE AFFAIR WITH EVS IS OVER As fewer people say they are interested in an electric vehicle than they were two years ago. From the Washington Post:
Americans are less interested in buying and owning electric vehicles than they were two years ago, according to polling Gallup released Tuesday.
The poll shows that the number of Americans who are open to buying an EV has dropped to 51 percent in early 2025, down from 59 percent in 2023.
EV makers face increasing pressures from sweeping Trump administration tariffs, the threat of repeal of consumer tax credits and a halt to a national build-out of EV chargers. While EV sales are still on the rise from year to year, the increase has slowed in recent months. Tesla sales in particular have plummeted as Elon Musk’s push to cut the federal workforce as head of the U.S. DOGE Service has polarized the country.
We'll see what happens as the edicts from the Biden Admin are shoved aside and subsidy money dries up.
YES, JEANETTE VIZGUERRA HAS HAD DUE PROCESS I recently spoke with former ICE Director John Fabbricatore about this very issue, which you can watch here. She's had PLENTY of due process, far more than she deserves in my mind, so this argument doesn't hold much water to me.
THE KELLY LOVING ACT CRIMINALIZES HURT FEELINGS You are not allowed to say anything to a trans person that might hurt their feelings of face legal penalties. That is what a new law actually does, as they add saying words trans people don't like to the long list of often abused civil rights violations in Colorado. Read more here, but we live in a totalitarian state now. Has there ever been a more mentally fragile group of people in our lifetimes? Why not outlaw calling black people the N word? Why not outlaw calling women the C word? That bit of invective has been hurled at me more times than I care to admit but I didn't ask for legal protections, I got over it. But we're not supposed to think that maybe mental illness has a lot to do with being trans, just that they are so fragile you have to call them made up pronouns.
HOW MUCH DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE TO TAKE HOME 100K? In Colorado it's not so bad at $139,008, which puts us at 33rd in the US. As our cost of living is 11th, it makes 100k seems like not that much in the grand scheme of things.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY OF VIOLENCE This is an inflammatory headline but is entirely appropriate. Please read this column on how the Democrat party, with assists from sympathetic media, have allowed and even ENCOURAGED violence in this country. It is spot on and if we had a real news media it would be a massive story.
STUFF TO LISTEN TO WHILE THE GAME IS ON First off, check the new side hustle here. It's really good, just saying. Then there is the Taking It For Granted podcast by our pal Grant Smith, which you can find here. Recent guests on Grant's podcast include Susie Wargin, BK (Brandon Krisztal) and Father Mike Tess! If you're looking for great health related content, check out Michelle Zellner's podcast here.
MILLENNIALS AND GEN Z ARE NOT PLAYING NICE AT THE OFFICE This is an interesting story about workplace politics and how nasty things have gotten in the short time Return to Office orders have been in place. Read this part:
Whether they’re coming from your boss or your coworker, the most prevalent workplace sabotage tactics highlighted by the report currently are:
Blaming others for one's own mistakes
Sharing negative information with leadership about a coworker
Withholding critical information that could help a colleague succeed
Deliberately setting up a person to fail
These are all things that entitled people do. Just saying. I would definitely fight back and do so with a level of viciousness that put the offender on notice that I am not to be trifled with. I don't play nasty but I sure fight back nasty.
GREAT INSIGHT ON TARIFFS FROM STEVE EISMAN He's the guy who was the central character in the real life collapse that inspired the Big Short. This is my brother's most excellent podcast, by the way.