I keep saying he wants to be the last president
Run the country to the ground, get him And his circle money and then bounce
Run the country to the ground, get him And his circle money and then bounce
UPDATE: Donald Trump Takes Office as the 47th US President
- Thread starter DC_Dude
- Start date
Democrats have a veto-proof house in New York and Maryland and they will never pass a law to increase the minimum wage. Never. They'll pass dope laws because its cheaper to keep you high than it is to feed you.
The only folks dying are poor people. The only people that are supposed to live are rich people. As a poor person, I want to test out the immortality of the rich.
(I know I’m late) Elon musk with a black eye
The minimum wage has gone up every year in the last five years in both states(exception this year in Maryland where it currently sits at $15 for small biz)
I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes. We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields. We also discussed Iran, and the fact that time is running out on Iran's decision pertaining to nuclear weapons, which must be made quickly! I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement. President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion. It is my opinion that Iran has been slowwalking their decision on this very important matter, and we will need a definitive answer in a very short period of time!
ninja living with that delusional mindset since his early 30s no normal brain can cope with such a record of bankruptcies/fiascoes/failures !
his retirement plan was almost perfect with reality TV (The Apprentice) he could incarnate what he's never been a successful businessman he had to run his mouth and land in the white house with his first term ending with a global health crisis fiasco !
Now in his 80s he simply said FUCK THAT SHIT !
Data: The New Infrastructure of Control
What a Palantir + DOGE unified data platform reveals about the future of power—and how we can still build something different.
Angela Benton
Jun 04, 2025
In recent months, whispers of a unified data platform being built by the U.S. government in collaboration with tech giants like Palantir and DOGE have raised alarm bells in privacy and civil liberties circles. While the public still lacks full clarity on the scope, the language being used—“unified,” “streamlined,” “national platform”—should make us pause.
Because history has shown us:
When data becomes infrastructure, power consolidates.
And when consent is treated as a courtesy rather than a prerequisite, it’s no longer civic tech—it’s surveillance.
Data as a Tool of Power: The Colonial Blueprint
Data infrastructure has never been neutral.It has always been political.
Colonial administrations were some of the first to institutionalize mass data collection—not to empower, but to categorize, control, and divide. The British Empire’s census projects in India and Africa weren’t just statistical—they were used to fix people into castes, tribes, and religious groups, solidifying identities that could be policed and governed more easily (Scott, 1998; British Online Archives, 2023; Steinmetz, 2024).
Under apartheid, South Africa’s passbook system functioned as a state-run surveillance architecture, using personal data to regulate physical movement, employment, and civil rights (Schoen, 2022; Stanford University, n.d.).
The through-line?
Data has long served as a precondition for domination—a quiet but potent infrastructure for enforcing systems of inequality (Scott, 1998).
The U.S. and the Illusion of Exception
In the United States, we tend to believe we’re insulated from this kind of systemic control. But the foundations are already being laid:- Palantir powers federal systems across ICE, the DOJ, and predictive policing pilots (NPR, 2025; The New York Times, 2025; Economic Times, 2025).
- Healthcare, welfare, criminal justice, and educational data are being increasingly linked in federal “modernization” efforts, often under the banner of “equity” and “efficiency” (The New York Times, 2025).
The question isn’t just: Will it happen here?
It’s: What values will shape the system when it does?
The Modern Panopticon Is Digital
The concept of state surveillance isn’t new. In China, the social credit system—a government-administered, data-driven framework—assigns citizens numerical scores based on financial behavior, speech, and social activity. These scores determine access to jobs, education, even transportation. It’s a fully integrated system of behavioral governance—optimized through data (Join Horizons, 2024; MS Advisory, 2025; National High School Ethics Bowl, 2025).While the U.S. hasn’t formalized such a system, the trajectory is troubling. If a unified platform connects healthcare, taxes, education, employment, housing, and welfare data—without clear opt-in consent—it effectively becomes a state-controlled social operating system.
What happens when your benefits are delayed because of a tax discrepancy?
What if future AI systems begin making eligibility decisions based on patterns you’re not even aware of?
This is the shadow side of digital efficiency.
Convenience becomes a proxy for control.
I Saw This Coming in 2020
During the height of the pandemic, when contact tracing was being rolled out rapidly and often recklessly, I published a concept called:A Framework for Ethical Data Transmission During States of Emergency (Benton, 2020).
The idea was simple but radical:
What if data shared with governments could be routed through public trusts (Ada Lovelace Institute, 2021)—transparent, ethical intermediaries—rather than directly into the state’s domain?
The architecture proposed a layered data trust model (local, state, federal) where citizens could:
- Anonymously opt-in to share specific types of data
- Governance through layered data trusts (local, state, federal)
- Set parameters around what data was shared, with whom, and for how long
- Retain control over revocation and modification
- Independent oversight bodies—not just tech contractors that centralize power
It was a blueprint for the road not taken.
Because technology doesn’t have to replicate the old power structures.
We can build something different.
What’s Happening Now—and Why It’s Dangerous
The data systems being built today do the opposite.Efforts like the Palantir-DOGE collaboration aren’t designed with people at the center—they’re designed to optimize state function, using people as input.
And when the platforms controlling that data are private defense contractors, the implications aren’t just commercial—they’re constitutional.
We are not witnessing neutral innovation.
We are witnessing the quiet militarization of civil data.
A Human-First Alternative
This is why I returned to this conversation through my work at Heirloom—a platform built around consent, provenance, and control. While the State races to centralize, we’re working to decentralize intelligently—creating systems that begin with the human first, not the government or the corporation.Where the current model demands access, Heirloom asks:
Who is this data from a real human?
Where did it come from?
Who is approved to use it?
And ultimately, who truly owns this data?
These are not just technical questions.
They are moral ones.
And the frameworks we design now—especially those used by governments—will determine whether AI and data systems amplify democratic participation or entrench digital authoritarianism.
If It’s “Unified,” Who’s At the Center?
The language of innovation often hides what’s really at stake.When we hear “unified,” we should ask: Unified for whom?
When we hear “streamlined,” we should ask: Streamlined for what purpose?
Because what’s being built now will either uphold individual sovereignty
—or dissolve it into centralized models we cannot undo.
I offer this not as a critique of progress, but as a blueprint for better alternatives.
We don’t have to accept inevitability.
We can design systems rooted in consent, equity, and collective stewardship—where public data trusts serve as the connective tissue between individual rights and civic participation.
And we can do it now—before the code is written in stone.
Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.
I have a better name "You're going to kill us all act"
Trump’s Tariff Terrorism Leads to Steel Layoffs
Steel employment is diving, not despite the tariffs, but because of the tariffs. Stay with me, and I’ll explain...
www.gregpalast.com
Trump’s Tariff Terrorism Leads to Steel Layoffs
Steel employment is diving, not despite the tariffs, but because of the tariffs. Stay with me, and I’ll explain...
www.gregpalast.com
Trump’s Tariff Terrorism Leads to Steel Layoffs
- by Greg Palast
- for The Hartmann Report
- June 3, 2025
[June 4, 2025: Chicago, IL] He did it again. Today, President Donald Trump doubled the tariff on steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%.
And it’s the steelworkers who will pay with their jobs. Stay with me, and I’ll explain these weird, weird facts:
- Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel increased the amount of steel imported. Despite Trump’s tariffs, total steel imports are up 3.6% year to date compared to 2024 according to the American Iron and Steel Institute.
- Trump’s tariffs have reduced American steel production. Adjusted year-to-date output through May 24 was 36,287,000 net tons, down 0.5 percent from the same period last year.
- Trump’s tariffs on steel have raised prices on American goods from cars to computer mainframes. NUCOR, America’s largest steelmaker, raised its prices a stunning 38.5%, from $675/ton to $935/ton in the past year to March 2025. As steel is central to US production in all industries, these hikes are a big factor in inflation, adding 1.7% to prices throughout the economy, according to a Yale University study. This will cost the average American family $2,800 if the tariffs continue through the year.
- And the biggest shocker: Trump’s tariffs are costing American steel jobs. Despite Trump’s punitive tariffs, steel employment in the USA has flatlined and massive layoffs have been announced. In March, with Trump imposing the highest tariffs in a century, Cleveland-Cliffs, one of America’s largest steel producers, announced over 1,200 steelworkers will be laid off in Michigan and Minnesota.
I’m motivated to write by Donald Trump’s sickening PR stunt at a US Steel plant in Pennsylvania last week. I’m looking at Trump’s big belly and red tie posing with steelworkers in hard hats and coils of rolled steel around them. He’s not the first president to use steelworkers as a prop, but the first to do so while economically spitting in their faces.
The United Steelworkers asked me to investigate, so…
In 1977, a United Steelworkers of America official asked me, a young economist, if his union should join the call for tariffs on Japanese steel imports.
Hey, it made perfect sense: If tariffs raised the price of imported steel, then it’s a no-brainer that US buyers would replace the foreign metal with steel made in the good old USA.
But Steelworkers aren’t idiots. They didn’t see any new jobs happening. “Oil Can” Eddie Sadlowski, the beefy leader of Steelworkers Great Lakes region, with the biggest slice of the country’s steelmaking capacity, had hunted me down at the University of Chicago Economics Department. He asked me, why, though given new tariff protection, US Steel Corporation was cutting jobs at the Southworks, Chicago, and Gary, Indiana, steelworks.
I dug in. The numbers were clear as a bell. Every time the US put trade restrictions on Japanese steel, American steel production fell and employment dropped with it.
Like, huh?
As a forensic economist (a detective with a graduate degree), I quickly found the perpetrator: US steel industry price hikes.Here’s how it works: Every time the US raises tariffs on steel, American companies, not having to face competition from lower prices from abroad, simply hike their own prices through the roof.
This year, the American Iron and Steel Institute expects manufacturers, protected by tariffs, will raise the price of hot rolled steel by a stratospheric 18.75%!
Prices rise and US production goes down. General Motors, for example, will replace steel with plastics or simply sell fewer cars.
American steel companies don’t care. The number of tons they sell may fall, but their profits take off. It’s the steelworkers, with steel shipments down, who get laid off.
Remember, steel companies are not in the business of making steel, they are in the business of making profits.
The only reason Trump’s tariffs haven’t tanked steel industry employment is, according to industry analysts, because of President Biden’s trillion-dollar infrastructure program.
So, I’m not shocked that Trump’s tariff terrorism on steel imports has cost American steel jobs…and it will get worse.
Photo Op from Hell
So, with his steel tariff madness backfiring, Trump did what every huckster politician has done for decades: create a phony photo op. You’ve seen it before. A bunch of blue-collar workers in hard-hats and high viz vests applauding some duplicitous politician standing in front of a bunch of coils of rolled steel. They’re saving jobs at this plant!Well, thanks, Donald, that Pennsylvania mill wasn’t in jeopardy until you, Donald, blocked Nippon Steel from investing in the plant so it could stay open.
Here’s the story. As soon as he got into office, Trump scuttled a deal for Nippon Steel to buy out US Steel’s owners and put $14 billion into refurbishing their ancient factories. Trump scuttled the Nippon “White Knight” bid — on which he’s now done another TACO and reversed himself. (For the uninitiated, TACO stands for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”)
Basically, Trump told the steelworkers, “Praise me! I put out the fire and captured the arsonist! True, I’m the arsonist, but be grateful that I’ve stopped him.”
(By the way, it was Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), not Trump, who squeezed the billion-dollar commitment out of Nippon. Notably, Fetterman literally lives across the street from one of the US Steel mills.)
Who profits?
Is the President crazy, or is there something else going on?I notice that two of the largest owners of US Steel are Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group and vulture capitalist Dan Loeb’s Third Point. Both are big Trump donors. Is protecting steelworkers the priority — or enriching Trump’s rich buddies?
According to a report commissioned by the US Defense Department, with the in-your-face title, “Trump’s Tariffs Enrich Steel Barons at High Cost to US Manufacturers and Households,” Trump’s 25% steel tariffs in his first term added $270,000 to steel industry profits for each steel job “saved.”
Let me remind you that 225,000 Canadians belong to the United Steelworkers of America, brothers in the US union.
Don’t be fooled — a lot of Trump’s policy-by-threat, including the latest 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, is part of his attack on union rights. If the Canadian steelworkers are forced to cut wages, Americans must follow. (I negotiated contracts for the Steelworkers, so I can tell you, that threat is real.)
And Trump added this scorpion into the soup: He was proud to have forced Nippon Steel to hire American managers and create a special board of the directors for US operations. In other words, he’s given back management to the very knuckleheads and hedge fund asset-strippers that gave us the disaster that is US Steel today.
Trump’s aluminum foil hat
Trump has also imposed 25% tariffs on aluminum imports. As John Cleese would say, “What is the POINT? What is the BLOODY POINT?”The US simply doesn’t have the aluminum capacity to replace foreign imports because the main ingredient in aluminum is not ore but electricity. Aluminum bearing bauxite ore costs just $286 per metric ton of aluminum product, but the electricity required is a breathtaking $2,400 per ton. Canada has electricity up the wazoo, a crazy amount of hydroelectric power to produce aluminum at prices that keeps US car companies in business.
There is no practical alternative to foreign aluminum. The result, Alcoa (formerly, Aluminum Company of America) is watching the wheels fall off its stock price despite new tariff “protection.”
That’s just one example of why Trump’s magical thinking about tariffs has cost America 136,000 jobs in manufacturing compared to 2023.
Tariffs 101
Tariffs suck. But sometimes they are just and justified. Years ago, I investigated Walmart for the company’s use of Chinese prison labor to make their products. Using enslaved labor and child labor was practiced by Walmart’s contractors, principally in China.See my Guardian article, What Price a Storegasm?, read here by the great, late Ed Asner.
As to China, Americans have a moral imperative to impose targeted tariffs: Can we, with any sense of ethics, brutalize a Uyghur prisoner just to get a $15 toaster? Tariffs to punish ugly abuses are the right thing to do — but there’s no pretending the toaster-making jobs will return to the US.
And we don’t want those jobs.
When Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese-assembled iPhones, China cancelled its Boeing airline orders. Trump wants to return to America jobs putting those little screws into iPhones (which pays roughly $2.88 an hour in China), and in return, we give up $25.34 per hour jobs on the Boeing shopfloor. This is the “art of the deal”? Thank the Lord that Boeing got its orders back after Trump did his Chicken Dance in record time and cut tariffs on China.
So, when the TACO truck arrives and out pops an orange blob of bloviating bigot, don’t be fooled by those most dangerous of words, “I’m Donald Trump, and I’m here to help you.”
Palast, an economist, investigated tariffs for the United Steelworkers of America.
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