What this guy said:
OK, here is your one-minute primer on the whole concept of “trickle down economics,” from the obituary of Fred Smith, the founder of Fedex.
I mean, if you still can’t see it, I have no hope for you.
— Jon Boeckenstedt (@jonboeckenstedt.bsky.social) June 22, 2025 at 10:40 PM
It’s relevant again because one of the main purposes of the Big Ugly Bill currently working its way through Republican-held Congress is to make these temporary regressive tax cuts permanent. Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy were unpopular during his first term — the only tax cuts that have ever been unpopular with Americans, as far as I know.
Weird how we’re often told that Trump utterly transformed the Republican Party into an organization that is unrecognizable in relation to its former self. And yet tax cut windfalls for billionaires and wars of choice in the Middle East are still a Republican thing. Same as it ever was.
***
Speaking of the current Middle Eastern war of choice, here’s an item from CNN’s live feed:
The US is tracking multiple missiles fired from Iran toward US military installations in Qatar and Iraq, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine are in the Situation Room, according to a White House official.
I don’t know a thing about JCS Chairman Caine except that he was apparently willing to accept an appointment from Donald Trump, which isn’t encouraging. The rest don’t have a thimble-full of brains between them. God help us.
***
Lastly, anyone need a pair of ducks?
Black-Bellied Whistling Ducks keeping a wary eye on the paparazzi. The one in the foreground may have the hiccups. Or maybe it was just manifesting a wish that I’d go away. (Wish eventually granted!) 🪶
— Betty Cracker of Florida (@bettycrackerfl.bsky.social) June 17, 2025 at 8:14 AM
These beauties have been visiting daily for the last couple of weeks. I hope they show up soon.
Open thread!
Baud
It’s what made Trump a working class hero.
matt
So, trickle down leads not to asset creation, but to asset inflation. Seems very logical.
chris
I read his bio…”Venture Capitalist” I guess says it all.
Scout211
World War X? (Not Roman Numeral 10)
x.com/majedalansari/status/1937196615128764606
Kristine
Stock buybacks are nothing but legalized market manipulation and should be banned.
Another thing to thank Reagan for.
Old School
But… but.. Now is the time for peace!
Leto
He’s white, male, and was unqualified for the job both via rank and experience. Perfect hire.
oldster
“Lastly, anyone need a pair of ducks?”
A pair of ducks! A pair of ducks! A most ingenious pair of ducks!
Old Man Shadow
Load up the entity you acquired with lots of debt. Loan/give/arrange payments to your shell corps from the entity to extract wealth. Sell off the valuable parts (land, post office, science divisions, patents). Drain the entity to a dried out, bankrupt husk. Cash out as the entity is forced into bankruptcy. Leave the suckers/shareholders with the bill.
Move on to the next entity and repeat the parasitic phenomena.
frosty
A couple of Black Bellied Whistling Ducks showed up in PA, about 25 miles from me. I had exact coordinates where they were (thanks eBird) and made two attempts to see them. No luck. They weren’t Lifers, just a new PA bird for me. I saw them in a stormwater pond in downtown Gainesville three years ago.
In other birding failures: White Pelicans in Baltimore, three attempts, no luck. Roseate Spoonbills just seen in Charles County, MD – 115 miles, 2 to 3 hour drive and 97 degrees once I get there? I’m gonna pass on this one. Again, not a Lifer (saw one at Cedar Key), just a new MD bird.
Steve LaBonne
@oldster: The Pair of ducks of Tolerance.
Harrison Wesley
@Old Man Shadow: It used to be called “piracy.”
Old Man Shadow
@Harrison Wesley: And I’d be okay with putting the perpetrators into the gibbets to dissuade others from taking up a life of parasitic capitalism or MAGA politics.
Belafon
@Leto: Yep, he took the job from the qualified black man.
Spanky
@frosty: My sister saw White Pelicans at Lake Ontelaunee in Berks County last week, up in Leto’s back yard.
Charles County is about a half hour from me, and fuck if I’m gonna go anywhere this afternoon. We’re at 95 degrees and still rising under a blazing sun.
Harrison Wesley
Hegseth and Caine. No doubt a cunning plan is in the works.
Suzanne
@Spanky: I just did an indoor cycling class, indoors, with my little window unit air conditioner. I was still sweating buckets. DANG this is some heat.
Spanky
@Suzanne: Gonna be worse tomorrow for us.
Eta, I see a Weather Underground station in Mount Oliver has hit 100.
NotMax
Shout out to one of the late Joe Penner catch phrases.
:)
Dangerman
@Scout211: On “escalating military actions”, Pandora’s Box has been opened.
trollhattan
When the kid had zoo camp one summer she got to help raise whistling duck chicks and just LURVED them to pieces. We don’t have them natively in Calif. and they’re a treat.
Because we’re in the remnants of the Pacific Flyway we’re apparently visited by 30 duck species. I’ve seen fewer than half, to my knowledge. Did you know there are dabbling ducks? Now you do. I don’t know what they do the rest of the time when not dabbling. “Today, I’m a chicken.” “Not me, I’m a taxi driver. Quack!”
trollhattan
Whee!
JoyceH
@Leto: Cane was certainly not the most qualified person for the position, but consider that he made it to general so he survived and thrived in the military through both Republican and Democratic administrations. So my guess is that he is at least the most qualified person of those currently in positions of authority to be running a war or what passes for war these days.
Spanky
@trollhattan: Are dabbling ducks dilettante ducks?
Spanky
@trollhattan: The Kabuki War continues.
NotMax
@Harrison Wesley
Worst vaudeville team ever?
“Oh Mr. Hegseth. Oh Mr Caine.”
/flies right over the young’uns heads (Look up Gsllagher and Shean, kids.)
trollhattan
@Spanky:
IIUC ballet a particular favorite.
tam1MI
A poll has come out asking Democrats about how they feel about their party and the results… are not good.
Scout211
Me either, so I looked.
Defense Scoop
So he was picked for his business experience and was working with DOGE but now he is running a war for TACO.
bjacques
When you mention black(-bellied) whistling ducks, I think of 1940s Daffy whistling “Year Of Jubilo”
tam1MI
I agree with the need for new leadership in the party, but the notion that we have to throw trans people under the bus to regain the trust of the rank and file… I don’t know what to say.
YY_Sima Qian
@trollhattan: It’s all performative, at least at this point. The regime is probably in self-preservation mode, so will go extreme lengths at “strategic patience”. It will husband its remaining capabilities to focus on attacking Israel. I also would not be surprised if months from now Iran turns the HEU stockpile into 10 or so nuclear bombs, & announce that fact to the world, justifying nuclearization for regime survival.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: I read something about dabbling vs diving ducks a while back that stuck with me: If startled, a dabbling duck leaps straight up into flight, whereas a diving duck has to gain momentum on the ground to catch air and make its escape.
NotMax
@Spanky
Actual dada-esque joke from yore.
“What’s the difference between a duck?”
“I don’t know.”
“One of its legs is both the same.”
Harrison Wesley
@JoyceH: Prior experience with Michael Flynn does not give me much confidence.
O. Felix Culpa
@tam1MI:
Imma guess which demographic of the purported rank and file think that’s a good idea. Because they ain’t gonna stop at trans folk.
Baud
@tam1MI:
I think it’s fantasy that any kind of change we can make won’t throw somebody we like (or the environment) under the bus.
divF
@oldster: What I want to know is, why a duck ?
BC should know the answer to this, since she lives in Cocoanut Heights.
Kristine
I recall a lot of talk about kitchen-table issues during the election and since, so I guess it depends on where the Dems who were surveyed get their news?
Old School
@tam1MI:
So they polled Democrats who watch Fox News?
Suzanne
@Spanky: I’m rethinking hot yoga this evening.
Socolofi
So we’re in, but as long as it’s an Air Force war, I don’t think most Americans care one way or the other.
US / NATO / Israeli arms forces are much, MUCH better than nearly everyone else’s armed forces. It doesn’t mean a guaranteed win, and it doesn’t help in defeating an insurgency, as that is nearly impossible unless you use Russian tactics (1), but it does let them pretty easily win any conventional engagement.
So Israel’s been plunking Iran’s Air Force, missile launchers, and other systems while also killing commanders and scientists in their homes (yes, along with families and other civilians who happen to live nearby / in the same building), while Iran’s retaliation has largely been thwarted. Where Iran has done the most damage has been civilian population areas that aren’t heavily protected, so it’s a random missile that hits an apartment building or some such vs a strike on a military base or government institution. From an Israeli point of view, their direct attack against Iran has demonstrated to Iran (and everyone else in the area) that Israel can do what it wants, and Iran and it’s 90MM people and drones and missiles and whatever just can’t defend themselves.
I’m sure this was part of how Netanyahu was easily able to convince Trump to use the bunker busters and get himself a huge victory, even though it’s unclear if it worked, and I suspect Iran has plans that went into effect when Israel started attacking to move things to even safer, secret locations so no uranium was actually lost. But hey, it’s all about TV. Which is why this happened over Saturday after Trump said “2 weeks.”
Iran’s missile strikes against nearby US bases seem to have done nothing as well, just catching up on that news. And from one of the sites, apparently they send as many missiles as bombs were dropped by the US, so it’s all symbolic show vs anything real.
My take is it means Iran doesn’t actually have the ability to seriously fight back, and thus will do more about shoring up internal support for the regime. Does mean it’s time for interesting times in Iran, as the only thing hardliners hate more than pacifist hippies in their own country are leaders who get humiliated by their enemies.
(1) Russia’s manner of defeating, or rather preventing, insurgencies is when they take over land (like Karelia in Finland, Kaliningrad, Crimea, etc.) is they kick all the locals out and replace them with Russians. Sucks for the civilians who used to live there, but works great for quickly establishing peace in a conquered land.
Old School
@Suzanne: It might be cooler at hot yoga.
Harrison Wesley
@divF: Why a duck? Why the duck not?
eclare
@Scout211:
“Entrepreneurial spirit”? Gawd.
Suzanne
@Old School: Hot yoga usually peaks at 105 degrees. But it’s dark in there, so it feels…. not so bad. LOL.
tam1MI
Or ones that follow James Carville.
eclare
Thank you for the photo WaterGirl. Helps a little during this heat wave.
Layer8Problem
@tam1MI: I’d say N-O FUCKING NO, but that’s just me.
Suzanne
Potentially of interest to Gulf Coast Florida jackals….. my last project broke ground. No renders included in that story (bummer), but will be very exciting for the community.
I cycled off that project at the end of last year, and have been on a much larger one all of 2025. So I did not go down to Naples to pose with a shovel.
J.
Read the Smith obit. In addition to getting a $1.5 billion tax break from Trump, Smith literally got away with murder.
Spanky
@Suzanne: This evening, all yoga is hot yoga
Eta, I’m gonna make with the Savasana, myself.
suzanne
Okay, here’s a link to a local news blurb that shows renders.
Belafon
@tam1MI:
1. Buying Republican framing.
2. Racism and transphobia
3. You would have hoped they would understand what’s coming, but they don’t.
Belafon
@Old School: Actually, they’re polling Democrats who watch Ghosts and other regular TV shows. Those “issues” they say Democrats are focused on are the attack ads Republicans ran during the election.
mayim
One of the less widely reported aspects of Trump’s supposedly beautiful bill? It (effectively) zeros out IMLS, the congressionally-approved federal agency for funding libraries and museum. It’s awful for so many organizations and communities around the country ~ especially in rural areas where libraries provide a wide range of services.
It’s also awful for me on a personal level. I’ve been laid off from my dream library job (that I worked very hard over a decade to be qualified for) because of IMLS funding being cut off in the middle of the fiscal year. I took someone’s suggestion when I ranted a bit yesterday and started a GoFundMe. I didn’t really want to, as my need is so much less than so many others, but desperation won out. Any bit people can send my way would be very, very gratefully received.
jonas
@Baud: As we’ve said here before, there are no working class people in America, only temporarily embarassed millionaires. Sure the tax cuts go to those fat cats *now*, but when you’re a fat cat in a few years, then ka-ching!
tam1MI
Those types of Democrats vote too, so we better figure out how to answer those attack ads.
Baud
@jonas:
We’ll all be rich once the yoke of DEI is off our necks.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: And I don’t give a flying fuck about “impatient” voters, AKA the idiots who got us here. If they want to watch this country continue to crumble because they are incapable of learning, I can’t do anything about it.
Steve LaBonne
@tam1MI: You can’t. You ignore them and hammer our issues, and the grotesque Republican failures that will be very apparent a year from now.
trollhattan
@Spanky: Kabuki checks out.
Belafon
@Steve LaBonne: If they’re lack of curiosity wasn’t hurting other people, I wouldn’t care much about them either.
Old School
@Belafon:
I can’t recall any ads about electric vehicles.
Harrison Wesley
@Steve LaBonne: You’d think that having already experienced four years of Trump they might have the concept of a clue.
Professor Bigfoot
@tam1MI: So, they only polled white dudes, eh?
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: If we can turn out the voters who actually pay attention, we win. Getting distracted by predictable GQP attacks makes a negative contribution to that goal.
Steve LaBonne
@Harrison Wesley: We’re Americans, i.e. clueless.
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: Sure sounds like it.
Barney
On Caine:
Trump has previously suggested that Caine is a political supporter. In a CPAC speech last year, Trump recalled meeting Caine in 2018 in Iraq when he was visiting troops.
“He said, ‘I’ll kill for you sir,” Trump said. “Then he puts on a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat.”
Who is Dan ‘Razin’ Caine, Trump’s pick to be the next Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman? | PBS News
Caine later denied this. At the very least, that’s the impression of Caine Trump wants people to have, and it’s quite likely Trump himself thinks it. It could even be true.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Sadly true.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Old School:
More likely the so-called ‘abundance’ bros. Good ole MattY made a point at the recent Abundance Coachella about Dems fixation on trans rights and, this is a direct quote “the greater evil of environmentalist orgs.” as major causes of our electoral woes.
BlueGuitarist
FDR, October 2, 1932:
“there are two theories of prosperity and of well-being: The first theory is that if we make the rich richer, somehow they will let a part of their prosperity trickle down to the rest of us. The second theory….if we make the average of mankind comfortable and secure, their prosperity will rise upward, just as yeast rises up, through the ranks.
Now, my friends, the philosophy of social justice that I am going to talk about this Sabbath day, the philosophy of social justice through social action, calls definitely, plainly, for the reduction of poverty. And what do we mean when we talk about the reduction of poverty? We mean the reduction of the causes of poverty. When we have an epidemic of disease in these modern days, what do we do? We turn in the first instance to find out the sources from which the disease has come; and when we have found those sources, those causes, we turn the energy of our attack upon them.”
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/campaign-address-detroit-michigan
Miss Bianca
@tam1MI: this is probably one of the only times that I could feel justified in saying, “both sides are wrong.” Democrats who think Democratic leadership should be changed because they worry more about gender than economics have their heads up.their asses. Republicans who look at their current leadership and say, “this is fine”…also have their heads up their asses.
Steve LaBonne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: And MattY is totally not fixated on trans people, nuh-uh, why would anyone even suggest that.
Steve LaBonne
@Miss Bianca: We have an epidemic of craniorectal inversion.
Chetan Murthy
Re: “tax cut windfalls for billionaires”, I’m reading a fascinating book by Melinda Cooper: _Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance_, wherein she explains all of this in excruciating detail, with the tick-tock starting in the late 60s, thru RaYgUn, Clinton, Bush, Trump. She repeatedly goes back to Trump’s career as a sort of “thru-line” in the narrative.
Basically, all this asset appreciation we see was accomplished by giving the rich massive tax cuts, and it’s how the massive tranfer of wealth we’ve seen, was accomplished.
And to BC and Boeckenstadt’s point, she notes how again and again, these massive corporate tax cuts produced stock buybacks and reduced investment. One thing that I hadn’t thought of, that she notes (almost offhand, haha) is that land (real estate) is an INPUT into manufacturing (and services) (hence, “real economic activity”). So the tax engineering that produced the real estate boom ….. was part of what drove manufacturing offshore — made it less economic to base manufacturing in the US.
catclub
@tam1MI: I think GOP propagandists have done their job well if average Democrats think that Democratic leadership ignores economic issues and focuses on electric vehicles and transgender politics.
I suspect those people most concerned about EV’s and transgender are not actually Democrats.
lowtechcyclist
@divF:
“You try to cross over there a chicken, and you’ll find out why a duck. It’s deep water, that’s why a duck.” – Groucho
“This is Cocoanut Manor, no snow, no ICE.” – Groucho, again
WTFGhost
You have a pair of ducks? As long as you don’t time travel, that’s okay. You need to be really careful about changing the past, because if you shoot your own grandfather, you’ll end up with a pair of ducks, which the time traveling scientists tell me is really bad cess!
(Akin to “viaduck” pair-o’-ducks/paradox)
JoyceH
Sharing a long Facebook post, because hey, I wrote it and you guys might as well read it.
Please bear with me, because I’m in an explaining mood. We seem to be hovering on the brink of launching a war of choice against a Muslim country on the bogus grounds of preventing the country from developing nuclear weapons, so I thought I needed to remind people about the last time we did that. Some of you might be too young to remember, and some of you were perhaps not paying attention or forgot this story, so read on.
The Bush administration badly wanted to go to war with Iraq, and the pretext they gave was WMD. Specifically, the administration claimed that Saddam had restarted his nuclear program and was trying to acquire uranium. That was not true. Saddam had shelved his nuclear program at the end of the Gulf War, and the uranium he already possessed was under guard and monitored by the IAEA, the UN organization responsible for monitoring such things. But regardless, somehow the Bush administration managed to convince enough members of Congress that Saddam was a threat and the war commenced.
After the “Shock and Awe” phase, the ground war commenced. Now, this is no criticism of the war fighters, they performed splendidly. But the war plans gave no guidance on what to do about the uranium storage that was already there in Iraq. As the invasion advanced toward Baghdad, the army passed through the site of the uranium storage, and ran off the guards who were still there guarding the uranium as they had been doing for years. And then – the army moved on. Nobody had told them otherwise or to do anything about the site.
After the army moved on, the site was left abandoned. The local population did what impoverished and oppressed people always do after warring armies cross through their land – they went to the abandoned site, broke down the fence and looted the site, looking for anything useful.
They didn’t find much that would be worth anything to a farming community, but in a warehouse they found a bunch of barrels, and barrels are always handy. So they removed the barrels, emptied their contents in the river, rinsed out the barrels and took them away to use for water storage.
Months later, when it occurred to someone to wonder what had ever happened to Saddam’s uranium store, they went to the site and discovered that the uranium had been dumped in the river and the locals were storing the families’ drinking water in old uranium barrels.
So please don’t tell me to believe a government who claims that we must go to war because they’re just so deeply deeply concerned about the proliferation of uranium throughout the world. And please remember that as incompetently as the Iraq War was conducted, the Bush administration had a much more experienced and competent war planning staff than the collection of drunks and clowns, grifters and fanatics, talk show hosts and grocery store clerks that this administration has shambolically assembled. If there is anything that you can do to discourage this current drive towards war, a war managed by the Trump administration, please do it!
WTFGhost
@tam1MI: They need a more effective defense against accusations that all they care about are transfolk. They don’t need to stop caring.
The problem is, it’s hard to show real support for transfolk without letting your enemy crap all over every show of support you make. That’s what leaves Dems scared.
tam1MI
I would not be at all surprised if that was the case.
sab
@NotMax: I just tried that joke on the spouse, and he was outraged. Which was very entertaining.
Harrison Wesley
If the birds don’t show, it’s Pair of ducks Lost?
Steve LaBonne
@WTFGhost: Also never roast two ducks seasoned with thyme to bring to a potluck, because that would also be a thyme travel pair o’ducks.
Betty
@Scout211: Don’t forget the nickname. Trump loves those manly sounding nicknames.
Uncle Cosmo
Vulture Capitalist says it better.
gene108
@Kristine:
Reissued stock buy back shares can raise capital for a business. Buy back stock when prices are low, reissue when prices rise to raise capital.
What’s being done now is market manipulation by businesses, because the C-Suite gets most of their compensation via stock options.
I forget which business school professor popularized using executive stock ownership as a “solution” to agency theory issues needs to be fired into the Sun. It’s had terrible consequences for society.
JBWoodford
@Spanky: More like Sava*sauna*, IYKWIM.
gene108
@tam1MI:
I remember seeing a few months ago a “right-track / wrong-track” survey by the University of Michigan going back to 1971. People’s view of right-track / wrong-track sentiment usually tracked with the economy. During recessions most people surveyed thought the country was on the wrong track, while most people surveyed thought it was in the right direction when the economy grew.
The late 1990’s saw the highest level of right-track sentiment with a little over 60% of people having happy thoughts about the direction things were heading. This relative optimism lasted to around 2005, when most people surveyed thought were heading on the wrong-track.
There survey has shown most people thinking we’re on the wrong track ever since. The dissatisfaction spiked to 70% in 2008, and went to 73% in 2024.
We’re a bitter pessimistic divided society, and Republicans in office, their media enablers, etc. benefit from this because it makes good governance seem impotent.
Bupalos
@tam1MI: I’d say “I wouldn’t be surprised if you actually believed that…” but actually I would.
And I don’t see cross tabs for this particular survey which is pretty new I think, but in general levels of dissatisfaction with existing politicians tend to track inversely with economic, education, and ethnic privilege. Which translates into whitey being more satisfied.
Of course these things are always radically different when you’re talking about politicians generally versus specifically.
Paul in KY
@BlueGuitarist: True today as it was 90 or 120 or 300 years ago. IMO, we haven’t had a Democratic president with the spunk and call-it-what-it-isness of FDR since Truman.
Paul in KY
@JoyceH: The people who really want this think all the stuff you catalogued above was great & Iraq ™ worked as intended.
Paul in KY
@Steve LaBonne: That’s pretty bad.
evodevo
@Scout211:
And you can bet TACO picked him because of his nickname – Razin Caine. We saw that the first time around when Trump picked “mad dog” Mattis and somebody else, I forget, because he liked the macho nicknames. Figures.
Steve LaBonne
@Paul in KY: Thank you!
artem1s
Khrushchev predicted the downfall of capitalism. Now we are here, the lowliest vassal of Soviet Russia and even our generals aspire to be mobster oligarchs whose only goal as ‘civil’ servants is to make mother Russia happy and bleed the country dry of it’s assets before declaring bankruptcy.
“it doesn’t depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don’t like us, don’t accept our invitations, and don’t invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!“
Paul in KY
@Steve LaBonne: Most welcome, sir!