This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

Fascism thrives on fear. It wilts under scrutiny. Never look away. Never stop fighting. Hold them accountable and make them pay for every cruel thing they do. It’s the only way we get through this. Support this newsletter for just $5 a month or $50 a year and we’ll get through together.

🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

For a long time, I thought Stephen Miller was the reincarnation of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s chief propagandist. I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. Miller is clearly Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS and Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, and mastermind behind the industrial mass murder we now know as the Holocaust.

Instead, the title of Minister of Propaganda appears to be settling on the distorted features of puppy-murderer Kristi Noem. When she’s not cosplaying as a soldier or a cowboy or a firefighter, Noem is busy producing reams of racist propaganda footage for the Trump regime. It appears to be her main job.

Thus, it was not surprising to find out that she wants to produce a reality show to humiliate immigrants trying to become American citizens:

The program pitch reportedly starts with 12 pre-vetted contestants arriving at Ellis Island in New York City aboard “The Citizen Ship.” The show’s host—preferably a “famous, naturalized American” like Colombian Sofia Vergara or Canadian Ryan Reynolds—will welcome them with a personalized baseball glove.

Contestants would then travel from state to state aboard a train called “The American” to learn about each region’s history and culture and compete in themed contests, ranging from balancing on logs in Hayward, Wisconsin, to building and launching a rocket in Florida’s Cape Canaveral, which houses a major NASA hub.

Officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services are reportedly being eyed to tally votes.

“We’ll join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy—hearing their backstories—as we are reminded how amazing it is to be American,” the pitch reads.

I don’t know about Sofia Vergara, but I’m pretty fucking sure Ryan Reynolds would eat shards of glass rather than be a part of this.

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The Ogre says "Fuck You, Noem!"

Let’s be super fucking clear what this is and what this isn’t. This show is not meant to “celebrate what it means to be American.” It is not meant to allow us to “have a national conversation about what it means to be American, through the eyes of the people who want it most.” These soulless fucks do not understand what it means to be American. They hate this country and everything about it, going back to its founding as a democracy instead of a monarchy.

This is about two things:

1. Ritual humiliation of immigrants coming to the United States to make a better life for themselves. The “contestants” on this show will not be white Europeans with blond hair and blue eyes. They will be Black and Brown and Asian. They will be poor and desperate, willing to do anything to become a citizen.
   
   The more desperate they are, the more cruel and humiliating the games can be. The article mentions “balancing on logs in Hayward, Wisconsin, to building and launching a rocket in Florida’s Cape Canaveral.” Sure, Jan. That bullshit will last for one season before Noem has them picking cotton in North Carolina and washing dishes in Florida. That’s what we want our immigrants to do. Not have real jobs or do stuff that REAL ‘Murikans enjoy.

2. Bread and Circuses - Who would we be humiliating these people for? The sick fucks of the MAGA base, of course. Their appetite for cruelty is endless. Remember, these are the people who saw children in cages and were sexually aroused. One of the things they were most enraged about when Trump lost in 2020 was that they were losing their supplier. Their addiction to depravity needs constant feeding and Joe Biden certainly wasn’t going to give them what they wanted.
   
   But Kristi Noem has been shooting hate and spite right into their veins and they love it. Ritualistic humiliation of the people they hate would be like crack to MAGAland. It’s who they are and they would happily ignore the fact that they live in burnt out trailer parks, eating toxic slop, and working in garment factories for slave wages if they could come home at night to watch those goddamn immigrants what ruined their country suffer on TV.

Inevitably, the hate junkies would demand more sadism and more cruelty. Why settle for ritualistic humiliation when we could go full Hunger Games and have them fight to the death for the amusement of both the elites and the starving masses? It worked for the Romans for almost a thousand years, surely we could try it for a few years, right? It’ll be patriotic! Everyone wants to be American bad enough to die for it, yeah?

And we can have spin-off shows! We can have criminals fight each other to the death! Political dissidents! College students! Woke Girl Scouts! Pretty much anyone and everyone MAGA hates can be arrested (no due process, after all) and made to fight for the amusement of the rage junkies.

Totally insane, right? Can’t happen ever, right? Except this entire regime views everything through the lens of how it looks on TV. Everything is a reality show for them because that’s all Trump knows. And with their willing accomplices in the legacy press, it’s worked so far.

It’s not a question of if this is going to happen, it’s a question of which network or streaming service is going to offer the largest bribe to produce it.

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The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 171 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.

Much of the discussion about trade and imports is based on discussions of products and sectors of the economy. But among the researchers who study international trade, a major shift has been a focus on relatively small firms that are directly involved in international trade. It turns out that many of these firms are both major importer and major exporters: indeed, they import intermediate goods in order as part of a global supply chain, to add economic value in the US economy while planning to export a finished (or more-finished) product. When you think about what US firms that are involved in international trade actually do, the arguments over tariffs take on a different flavor.

Pol Antràs provides a nice overview of thia research his FBBVA Lecture 2024: “The Uncharted Waters of International Trade,” delivered at the annual meetings of the European Economic Association, and now published in the Journal of the European Economic Association (February 2025, pp. 1-51). Researchers in international trade will be especially interested in the “uncharted waters” for future theoretical and empirical research that Antràs describes. Here, I’ll focus on looking back at the “charted waters” of key facts discovered by reseach in the previous decade or two.

(For an article from a few years back as this line of research got underway, I can recommend Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen J. Redding, and Peter K. Schott, “Firms in International Trade,” from the Summer 2007 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, where I labor as Managing Editor.)

Here’s Antràs with some facts about only a small share of US firms are involved in exporting.

First, … in the real world, only a small proportion of firms engage in exporting, with most exporting firms targeting just a few markets. … [O]nly 35% of all manufacturing firms in the United States exported in 2007. Furthermore, this is not driven by universal exporting in some sectors and zero exporting in import- competing sectors: The share of firms that export is highest among firms in “Computer and Electronic Products,”reaching 75% export participation, but this share is positive and significantly lower than 50% in most sectors.

Second, the distribution of exporters is highly skewed. Despite accounting for only 0.03% of all US manufacturing firms … the top 1% of exporters accounted for a staggering 80.9% of US manufacturing exports. The top 2%–5% and top 5%–10% accounted for an additional 12.1% and 3.3%, respectively, leaving the contribution of the bottom 90% at a mere 3.7% of total US exports. This phenomenon is not special to the United States. The top 1% of exporters accounted for 77% of exports in Hungary, 68% of exports in France, 59% of exports in Germany, 53% of exports in Norway, 51% of exports in China, 48% of exports in Belgium, 47% of exports in Denmark, 42% of exports in the United Kingdom, and 32% of exports in Italy (Mayer and Ottaviano 2008 ; Manova and Zhang 2012 ; Ciliberto and Jäkel 2021 ). Why are exporters often in the minority, even in an economy’s most competitive sectors, and why are aggregate exports so concentrated among a small number of firms?

The third stylized fact unveiled by empirical work in the late 1990s is that … exporters appear to be systematically different from non-exporters: they are larger, more productive, and operate at higher physical capital and skill intensities. … [T]hese differences are very large. US exporters are on average 1.11 log points (or 203% ) larger in terms of employment than non-exporters in the same sector, and even controlling for the number of employees, exporters feature substantially higher sales, labor productivity, total factor productivity (TFP), wages, capital intensity, and skill intensity.

A similar pattern arises for imports: that is, a relatively small share of firms account for a very large share of imports, and most of this trade involves inputs to finished goods, not the finished good themselves.

Perhaps most notably, the vast majority of world trade is not in finished products: It has been estimated that trade in intermediate inputs accounts for as much as two-thirds of world trade (Johnson and Noguera 2012 ). This implies that global firms not only export but also import. … More specifically, importers in the United States are in the minority, the distribution of US imports is as skewed as that for exports, importers are larger, more productive, and more capital and skill intensive than non- importers … Antràs, Fort, and Tintelnot ( 2017 ) further document that US importers are not only larger than non-importers, but that their relative size advantage is also increasing in the number of countries from which they source.

Indeed, in many cases imports and exports happen within a single firm: that is, the firm owns overseas suppliers and imports from them, and it owns overseas distributors and exports to them.: “Using a newly merged data on US firms’ exports and imports, and their global production locations in 2007, Antràs et al. ( 2024 ) estimate that around 80% of US exports and imports are accounted for by US firms that manufacture goods both in the US as well as in foreign countries.”

The current high-drama agenda of threatening tariffs, then backing away, then negotiating, then threatening again, all makes for lively headlines and talk shows. Yes, after a transition period of at least years and likely a decade or more, some of these firms that import-to-export could re-invent their production processes with much more reliance on domestic supply chains. But remember, these import-to-export firms evolved in this way because it was more cost-effective for them to do so–that is, there were gains from trade. These firms buy inputs in global markets either because the products aren’t available in US markets, or are available only at a substantially higher price; similarly, they export because global markets have the necessary demand to absorb the quantities that they produce.

These large US firms that import-to-export, often within the structure of the firm itself. are often among the crown jewels of the US economy. Remember, they are well above average in “sales, labor productivity, total factor productivity (TFP), wages, capital intensity, and skill intensity.” For these kinds of firms, which represent the lion’s share of US trade, the issue with tariffs isn’t about whether a family will be able to afford toys or T-shirts for their children. If these firms end up over time facing both substantially highe rtariffs on their imports of input for production and retaliatory tariffs on their exports, that policy will cut the heart out of their business model.

The post The Import-So-That-They-Can-Export Firms first appeared on Conversable Economist.

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🎤The Ogre Nation Needs YOU!🎤

Quick point of personal pride: This podcast is officially one year (and one week) old! It’s gone through a lot of changes since May 8th of 2024 but we’re still here and still raging in your ear every week!

Help us grow by spreading the word and sharing us on social media!

Now, to business!

Ogre Nation News Update!

3:35 -12:57 Republicans can’t wait to cut Medicaid and throw millions off of their health insurance so Elon Musk can get millions in tax cuts.

12:58 - 18:27 Stephen Miller is a now in charge of America and he’s ready and eager to suspend all of our civil rights.

18:28 - 24:11 The Trump regime fired the head of FEMA just weeks before hurricane season starts and they’re refusing to help anyone, even red states. A lot of loyal Republican voters are about to discover what life is really like without the federal government they’ve been trained to despise. They’re not going to enjoy it.

24:12 - 34:15 This Week In Vile Racism

34:16 - 1:04:08 Headlines For Short Attention Spans!

1:04:09 - 1:14:14 Selfcare of the Week

Things We Discuss In The Episode

CBO: 7.6 million would go uninsured under GOP Medicaid bill

House Republicans unveil Medicaid cuts including work requirement, provider tax freeze

Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must

Stephen Miller is running the DOJ, and Pam Bondi is just a figurehead, report claims: ‘She is like an actor’

Trump admin's threat to suspend core U.S. legal right sparks outcry and alarm

Trump’s firing of FEMA leader plunges disaster agency into uncertainty

Video captures road rage incident with mom, child, and driver in New York state

White House welcomes Afrikaners to the U.S., but drops protection for Afghan allies

Trump’s surgeon general pick exposes cracks in MAHA movement

Because the new pope has empathy, the right are calling him WOKE. 🙄

Gabbard fires intel officials who oversaw memo contradicting White House claims on Venezuelan gang

Trump officials ‘created confrontation’ that led to arrest of Newark mayor

'Disappointment': Head of Florida school quits as Ron DeSantis crusade gathers speed

Democrat ousts incumbent Republican in Omaha mayoral race

Download audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/163621855/3306eca071a830d58bf4465f9f1c6647.mp3

Coming to Pennsylvania schools this summer is a fine example of how creating academic standards can so easily turn into nonsense.

The state is launching Career Education and Work standards, and they are something else. But why? Well, here's the explanation:

Pennsylvania’s economic future depends on having a well-educated and skilled workforce. Career Education and Work standards reflect the increasing complexity and sophistication that students experience as they progress through school, focusing on the skills and continuous learning and innovation required for students to succeed in a rapidly changing workplace. The standards are written as grade-banded standards built around the concepts of career awareness and exploration, employability skills, growth and advancement, and personal interests and career planning. 

Blah blah blah. I guess it sounds better than simply saying "We need more meat widgets for employers." It's not that employability isn't a worthwhile outcome to shoot for, but when the discussion is framed in terms of what serves the needs of employers instead of what serves the needs of humans it's a bad sign.

But hey-- maybe these standards are actually awesome in a way that standards almost never are. Let's take a look.

Oh boy.

There are four main areas-- Career Awareness and Exploration, Employability Skills, Growth and Advancement, and Personal Interests and Career Planning. 

Now, if you want to see if a set of standards are bunk, check the K-2 band. You can get really silly standards by starting with the outcome you want at graduation, and then working backwards. So you want a high school senior to run a mile in 6 minutes. You just work backwards-- in 11th grade 7 minutes, 10th grade 8 minutes and so on until your standards say you want Kindergarten kids to run a mile in 18 minutes. This makes perfect sense to someone who is thinking about standards and not about actual human children (If you can't see it yet, just keep working backwards--20 minutes for pre-schoolers, 21 minutes for three year olds, and 25 minutes for newborns).

So what are some of the actual standards for K-2 students,

"Identify that there are different ways to prepare for careers" isn't too bad (go ahead and explain "career" to a five year old), but then we get this one:

This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

These are dark times but I will continue to tell the stories you need to hear in a clear (and usually profane) voice. If I entertain/anger/inform you, preferably all three, please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year.

🔥Burn Fascism To The Ground!🔥

Before Joe Biden had even declared that he was running for the 2020 nomination, it was screamingly obvious that he was going for it. He was making the rounds in the early primary states and getting his name out there. He was far from the only one, of course, the 2020 field was packed. But Donald Trump only felt threatened by one person: Joe Biden. Trump expended enormous effort to sabotage his campaign, going to so far as to try and extort Ukraine to fabricate a criminal investigation. Well, we know how that turned out.

The point I’m making is that Republicans are pretty good at gauging who is going to be a problem for them in coming elections and attacking them nonstop for years in advance. Hillary Clinton is a prime example of how effective this can be. Barack Obama is a prime example of what happens when they get it wrong. He came out of nowhere and the GOP was not properly prepared. Everything they did came off as screeching racism. I know, shocking.

But this is what the GOP and their proxies in the alt-left do. They target the people they see as a threat which is why I wrote about the wild hysteria surrounding Pete Buttigieg back in March of 2023:

This brings us to today while we watch an assortment of rat bastards wage war against…the Secretary of Transportation? This is usually a Cabinet position no one pays much attention to. The only reason anyone knows who Trump’s Sec. of Transportation was is that she was Mitch McConnell’s wife and Trump has been recently attacking her for being Chinese. Elaine Chao did so much crooked stuff under Trump, it’s absolutely amazing, but no one really cared because, well, she was the Secretary of Transportation.

Mysteriously, the right and the alt-left have been very concerned with Pete Buttigieg’s job performance.

No one thought Buttigieg was going to run in 2024. And yet, they were still foaming at the mouth over the Secretary of Transportation. It didn’t make any sense. Except it did because they’re scared shitless of Mayor Pete.

Buttigieg is doing what future candidates do: He’s heading out to the early primary states and getting his face out there. He’s been in low-key campaign mode for months, Yeah, it’s three years until the 2028 election but this is the annoying shitty system we have and this is how candidates have been doing it for a couple of decades now.

Right on cue, the attacks on Buttigieg have started up again. Trump wants you to know that everything wrong with American air travel is the gay guy’s fault:

President Donald Trump on Thursday claimed former Pete Buttigieg “didn’t have a clue” about air safety before mocking Joe Biden’s transportation secretary’s “loving relationship” with his husband.

…

“When they took over, Buttigieg, who has no clue,” the president said before remarking on Buttigieg’s relationship with his husband, Chasten Buttigieg.

“You know, he drives to work on his bicycle with his -- in all fairness -- with his husband on his back, which is a nice, loving relationship,” Trump said.

Let’s be honest, Trump is a rapist whose wife won’t hold his hand in public and doesn’t live in the White House with him. He’s never had a nice, loving relationship in his entire life, not even with the daughter he almost certainly raped repeatedly when she was a child.

Anyway, expect to see more attacks on Buttigieg over the next several months. Perhaps an IRS investigation. Maybe the FBI will look into him. I’ll bet money that by 2027, the regime will have started to float rumors of child abuse and how Buttigieg’s adopted children need to be taken away for their own protection. You know how the gays are…

So why, exactly, are they afraid of Mayor Pete? As I explained in 2023 and again last week when I wrote about Newark Airport becoming a death trap:

He’s young, insanely smart, can speak several languages, can eviscerate Republicans so politely they don’t even know they just had their lungs removed (but everyone watching knows), he’s a veteran, gay with a family as photogenic as he is and now that he has the experience under his belt he was lacking in 2020, he will crush any Republican he runs against.

He’s popular with The Youths. He’s popular with The Olds. Like Elizabeth Warren, he can break down complicated concepts into language anyone can understand. He’s also white with a penis so all the misogyny and racism in the world won’t help the right. Playing the Gay Card is not going to help dissuade younger voters and it remains to be seen how much it will hurt in a country that overwhelmingly accepts same sex marriage. Womp womp. The only people who don’t like him are Republicans and the alt-left.

Speaking of, here’s Nina Turner, one of the loudest voices of the alt-left, deeply concerned about Buttigieg not focusing on “the grassroots”:

Nina Turner really REALLY does not like Mayor Pete. She’s been whining about him for years.

Here she is in 2022, blaming everything on the then-Secretary of Transportation:

You know what’s interesting, though? If you check the last three or four months of Turner’s Bluesky feed (she’s been there for a while), there is not one single mention of Sean Duffy, the current Secretary of Transportation. You see, when stuff went wrong under Buttigieg, it was all his fault because he was an unqualified terrible bad person. But when that helicopter collided with that plane in DC a few months back? Well, Turner was singing a very different tune:

It’s really important to understand that since then, we’ve learned that air traffic controllers are overwhelmed and understaffed. That DOGE has been trying to push them out and increasing their stress in an already stressful job. That their equipment is failing and conditions are becoming increasingly lethal because the regime fired the technicians responsible for maintaining critical systems. All on Sean Duffy’s watch.

Has Nina Turner lashed out at him as unqualified? Nope. Not. One. Single. Post.

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Nina Turner is a lying asshole

She hasn’t mentioned any of the train derailments in the last couple of months, either. Oh? Didn’t know that was still happening? Of course it is. There are almost 1,000 derailments a year. It was only news when it could be used against Pete Buttigieg. Now? Boooooring. Who cares? Certainly not Nina Turner.

The most important thing is to undermine Buttigieg and the Democrats. Mind you, Republicans control the White House, the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court. So let’s take a look at who Nine Turner spent her time talking about in the last four months:

• Trump: 70 mentions

• Republicans/GOP: 69 mentions

• Biden: 22 mentions

• Democrats or Democratic: 162 mentions

That doesn’t seem to be focused on the people in power wreaking havoc on all of the progressive policies Turner claims to care about. For example, before the election, Turner complained ceaselessly about Biden betraying America by not canceling student debt. She did this while ignoring the fact that he tried, Republicans sued, and the Republican justices on the Supreme Court blocked him. She also ignored that he spent years canceling billions in debt in other ways while Republicans kept suing.

How many times has Turner attacked Donald Trump, by name, for not canceling student debt? Zero. Did she mention the fact that he ended all loan forgiveness programs? No. Did she mention that the Trump regime is going to garnish wages for people late on their school loans? No. Guess it’s not important anymore.

Turner does love to talk about “our government” doing bad things when it’s actually Republicans. She rarely attacks Trump directly and always ALWAYS blames “both sides” when Republicans are solely responsible.

If you’re surprised a “progressive” like Turner is attacking Pete Buttigieg instead of paying attention to the fascists trying to install a police state, you have not been paying attention to who the alt-left is. They WANT the police state. Either because they support fascism or because they think the inevitable collapse will usher in their progressive utopia and never mind the millions of lives destroyed in the process. After all, Nina Turner will be just fine as blood runs in the streets.

Do not ignore these people. Push back on them the same way you push back on the regime. They are one and the same, working towards the same goal. Nina Turner is a professional liar working to keep the fascists in power. Like the regime, she sees Pete Buttigieg and the Democrats as a threat. If AOC were to declare her candidacy tomorrow, Turner would begin to attack her as well. Did I mention she hasn’t mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the loudest progressives in the country, once in four months? Kind of weird, isn’t it? Almost like she doesn’t want to bring any attention to her massive anti-fascist rallies. But I thought Turner was all about the grassroots! I guess not…

There’s a reason the regime has been threatening to arrest AOC. It’s just a matter of time until Turner joins the attack like she has on Buttigieg. The alt-left and the GOP are two sides of the same filthy coin and it’s time to leave that bad penny where it belongs: In the pile of shit it came from.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year. Thank you for everything!

☠️This Subscription Kills Fascists☠️

Fascism hates organized protests. They fear the public. They fear US. Make fascists afraid again by joining Indivisible or 50501 and show them whose fucking country this is!

The Blue Wave has begun and the fascist fucks are scared. There are 173 days until it hits Virginia and Pennsylvania. If I were a billionaire fascist loser, I’d think REALLY hard about getting out of the way.