The Frogs Die In Earnest
Apr. 9th, 2025 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraDig deep in your pockets & prepare to pay!
Early this morning came the news that in response to Trump's 104% tariff on Chinese goods, China is now slapping a tariff of 84% on American goods.
Of course, it's all political theater.
Still.
I am reminded once again of Bion of Borysthenes:
The boys throw stones at frogs in sport
But the frogs die in earnest
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At what point do people start jumping off buildings?
At what point does China decide to dump its approximately $759 billion in U.S. treasury notes? If and when they do, the value of the debt would plunge, yields would soar, & US government borrowing costs would escalate sharply, which will have a highly destabilizing effect. That's a really bad scenario.
Although, of course, there are so many bad scenarios at present—like apparently the biggest single deployment of stealth bombers ev-ah in U.S. history is currently massed at Iran's borders—that we should tell it to take a number, I guess.
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Meanwhile, we all have to pretend, Nothing to see here. Move along! and get on with our lives as though it's just business as usual. Which in most real senses is true.
Like the sun rose at 6:26 a.m. this morning.
And will set at 7:31 p.m.
And the robins are back from their annual migration! They have been for a few weeks now; I just didn't notice.
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In my copious—ha, ha, ha!—amounts of free time, I am moving ahead with my voter empowerment scheme (though, at this point, it's still mostly a jumble inside my brain.)
My thoughts at present are that it's kind of a five-prong process:
(A) Some kind of punchy (& brief) position paper
(B) Finding smart people to brainstorm with
(C) Searching for other initiatives & organizations that are doing similar things
(D) Compiling a list of voter repression methods that are currently being used in other states (like Arizona is weird because if you use your license as your photo ID to vote at the polls, and your address differs from what your license shows—even if what's online is correct—you need 2 other pieces of mail with your name on them as proof of residency in order to vote.)
(E) Tracking down sponsors with the Big Buck$ because I'm assuming we'd need to figure out how to set up a 501 (c) (3) plus obtaining govt documents costs & the whole point of this endeavor would be to subsidize the costs of those govt documents.
We shall see!
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Date: 2025-04-09 07:33 pm (UTC)The little group I'm involved with has decided to do mutual aid work around providing masks and covid tests (this focus is probably largely driven by having a covid long-hauler as a member). I'm not super interested in this cause, but I *am* interested in helping people do things they care about, so I used a link that one of them had to request 300 covid tests from the gov't stockpile. They're giving them away to anyone who asks, apparently (300 is the lowest number you can request). Everyone in the group will do this, and then we can supply them to the library to give to people, to the senior center, etc.
I'll keep my eye out for other stuff to do, too. I'm vaguely planning to make a large poster of support for the local USPS. I LOVE the folks at my local USPS.
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Date: 2025-04-10 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-09 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-10 12:55 pm (UTC)