Tomorrow, across America, many women will be on strike, to protest “The War on Women” – the anti-women’s rights agenda of the White House, and the Republican majorities in Congress and many state houses.
Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment. ___________________________________________________________
Secretary of Labor (1933-1945), first woman in a U.S. Cabinet position
First import of Russian steel arrives at new Paulsboro, New Jersey port.
The Paulsboro Marine Terminal is open for business after the first ship, Doric Warrior, docked bringing steel and economic hope for Paulsboro. (Caitlyn Stulpin | For NJ.com)
PAULSBORO — Standing in the shadow of a large ship were dozens of men and women wearing hard hats and reflective safety vests. Some had dirt on their clothes, signifying the hard work they had put in.
On Wednesday, Doric Warrior made its final leg of a long journey to Paulsboro from Russia. The ship, 230 meters long, carried the first shipment of steel to the Paulsboro Marine Terminal. Crews worked tirelessly to unload some of the steel before Senate President Steve Sweeney and Assemblyman John Burzichelli, the men who envisioned and backed the port since day one, would welcome guests to mark the occasion.
This is the steel that will MAGA! Now that it is here, is this now American steel?
On Tuesday, tRump said : American pipelines will be made w/ American steel.
On Friday: Except the Keystone Pipeline. Reuters is reporting: Keystone XL builders can use non-U.S. steel, White House says nowThe Keystone XL oil pipeline does not need to be made from U.S. steel, despite an executive order by President Donald Trump days after he took office requiring domestic steel in new pipelines, the White House said on Friday.
“It’s specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One, when asked about a report by Politico that Keystone would not need to use U.S. steel, despite Trump’s order issued on Jan. 24.
“Since this one is already currently under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it’s hard to go back. Everything moving forward would fall under that executive order,” Sanders said. The southern leg of Keystone is completed and started pumping oil in 2013. Some pipe segments that could be used for Keystone XL, which would bring oil from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska, have already been built.
The Keystone XL oil pipeline does not need to be made from U.S. steel, despite an executive order by President Donald Trump days after he took office requiring domestic steel in new pipelines, the White House said on Friday.
“It’s specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One, when asked about a report by Politico that Keystone would not need to use U.S. steel, despite Trump’s order issued on Jan. 24.
“Since this one is already currently under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it’s hard to go back. Everything moving forward would fall under that executive order,” Sanders said. The southern leg of Keystone is completed and started pumping oil in 2013. Some pipe segments that could be used for Keystone XL, which would bring oil from Alberta, Canada to Nebraska, have already been built.
On edit: The Russian steel company has ties to Putin and of course, his American Puppet:
Evraz is owned in part by Roman Abramovich, a Russian multi-billionaire credited for bringing Russian President Vladimir Putin into office in the late 1990s. DeSmog’s finding comes on the heels of Trump’s former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigning for potentially having discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with Russian diplomats before Trump took office, apparently without the knowledge of Trump or now-Vice President Mike Pence.
Palm Beach, Florida is bracing for long-term economic loss and disruption due to the presidential Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) covering President Trump’s visits to his Mar-a-Lago resort. For the three weekend in a row, the presidential TFR covering Trump’s visit has shut down busy Palm Beach Country/Lantana airport and disrupted flight training and other general aviation activities. Lantana is located six miles south of Palm Beach International Airport and about 6.5 miles from the Mar-a-Lago Club, which is on a barrier island off the Florida coast.
Here is the current TFR for Palm Beach/Lantana airport:
Under Bannon’s influence, the Trump administration is shaping up to be much more ideologically extreme than many people were expecting. “[Bannon] has spectacularly grand ambitions, to transform our country and its place in the world,” … “His is an ethno-nationalist vision in which America leads a clash of civilizations, and there’s little reason to think he’d be at all displeased if that clash engulfed the entire globe. There’s also little reason to think that Donald Trump would mind.” The implication here is that Trump is merely an empty vessel for Bannon’s far-right ideology. That’s not quite the case. Rather, the two men share several core beliefs, the only difference being that Trump’s beliefs aren’t part of some broader, coherent ideology. But that may well change.
Political ideologies, because they are linearly defined by the extremes, are still probabilistic around their centers, which like candies, are often soft and malleable, even if expectations include the nuts.
There is no “alt-center” just as the original neologism of “alt-right” is fundamentally flawed at multiple levels of understanding. And a hypothetical “alt-left” is as laughable as the phallic reference to “hard” and “soft” leftisms much like the “hard/soft” sciences.
Bannonism has given a WH home to a motley gang of rightist theories ranging from esoteric misogynist anti-Christian mysticism to fascism of a type reminiscent of an epistemological break between post-war beatniks and bikers. Tack on antisemitic white supremacy and the hope of global apartheid. Then add the teleology of a history predicated on episodic destruction at a civilization scale and you get Bannonism’s raison d’être to pound hippies because of their collectivist “anti-individualism”.
Steve Bannon has given support not only to anti-social behavior in everyday life, but to some fringe groups that have managed to pick up some sordid theories attractive to Bannon’s agenda.
Sadly, it still is about hippie-punching and new-age fascism, a neoliberal elitism at its apogee before the next imagined cycle of violence.Bannonism, if it can be constructed, is a RW melange of racist nationalisms, antisemitic ravings, digitally crowd-sourced misogyny, and neologisms like Traditionalism and Neoreaction.
Unfortunately, there’s no such generational shift in societies that try to consume their way out of disasters and blame culture as more economically causal than deregulation, because development is naturally uneven, despite selective reading of Carlyle, among others. And even idealizing a Singaporean city-state comes with the more obvious interdependency with international trade and capital that only reminds one of its fall in 1942.
Creative destruction as bastardized from Schumpeter’sschöpferische Zerstörungis an oxymoron, even for non-Austrians. And Destructive Creation might be the prevailing model for the actual dominant form of the postwar US economy.
With neoreactionaries, their mantra is to hope that they can make a deal with the autocrats to get enough wireless bandwidth for consuming media content. They are ultimately more Cypher than Neo in The Matrix.
What’s worse is their banal fetish for power and their choice of scapegoats; these neoreactionaries just don’t like pink caps because frog’s foreskin triggers soft science.
Forbes is reporting: Caterpillar Inc. is about as American as you can get, except that these days it’s not, having been partially shuffled off to Switzerland. But it still must deal with the IRS, and the IRS isn’t happy with the heavy equipment maker. In fact, the IRS is trying to add $1 billion in taxes and penalties to the company’s 2007-2009 year.
President Trump’s “love” of Caterpillar, Inc. apparently wasn’t deep enough to spare the Illinois-based manufacturer from a multi-agency federal raid linked to its overseas subsidiaries and tax practices. On Friday, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross confirmed that the raids were part of an ongoing probe against the company. Agents from the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the U.S. Department of Commerce participated in Thursday’s searches, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of Illinois. Federal officials searched three Caterpillar locations, including its headquarters in Peoria, Ill. The other two warrants were served at facilities in East Peoria and Morton.
Caterpillar D10 Wikipedia
Though details remain sketchy on what exactly the feds are after, the raids apparently are tied to Caterpillar’s overseas business practices and tax strategies.
Initially, Caterpillar only confirmed the raids had taken place. The company later acknowledged the raids were connected to its use of a parts subsidiary based in Switzerland as well as tax practices that sparked a Senate investigation and led to shareholder lawsuits and even a $1 billion penalty.
Caterpillar is currently contesting an Internal Revenue Service demand that it pay $2 billion in taxes and penalties for profits assigned to the subsidiary between 2007 and 2012.
Trump, as a candidate, repeatedly vowed to use Caterpillar and John Deere equipment to build his promised border wall.Caterpillar and Deere both have extensive international manufacturing facilities, and sell equipment globally.
New company CEO Jim Umpleby apologized to employees and pledged to continue cooperating with federal authorities after the raids. Umpleby said he was surprised by the turn of events and that management, including himself, did not have enough information to determine what the feds were after.
The Paulsboro Marine Terminal is open for business after the first ship, Doric Warrior, docked bringing steel and economic hope for Paulsboro. (Caitlyn Stulpin | For NJ.com)
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