“Board game makers have been hit particularly hard by Trump’s tariffs, which have raised the cost of importing just about everything. Cephalofair is based in California, but like many other businesses in the industry, Johnson’s company relies on contractors in China and Vietnam to make the tokens, pawns, cards, and other physical elements of its games.
Manufacturing all those parts in the U.S. is not possible if game companies want their products to be competitively priced. With high tariffs in place, the costs compound quickly. Nathan McNair, the co-owner of Pandasaurus Games, broke down the math in a post on his company’s website. The added cost of the tariffs makes every step more complicated, from design to sales, and can even change what games a company chooses to make in the first place. “This has not just squeezed our margin; this has substantially increased our risk,” he concluded.
Trump’s tariffs have already stung Cephalofair in several ways.
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for businesses like Johnson’s, which can’t afford to risk the possibility of being hit with a massive tariff bill just because a shipment arrives at the wrong time.
Instead, those businesses will do what Johnson has done: Delay orders, slow production, and hope more stability emerges.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/31/trumps-tariff-chaos-crushes-board-game-makers-the-u-s-is-our-least-trustworthy-trading-partner/
“He’s planning to pay for these proposals with various tax hikes, including a large jump in the city’s corporate tax rate from 7.5 percent to 11.5 percent.
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Unfortunately, raising the corporate tax rate could also hinder the job market, cause corporations to relocate, and decrease long-term government revenue, potentially damaging New York’s status as the financial capital of the world.
Corporations hit with higher tax rates would seek ways to cut costs, possibly harming workers through either layoffs or lower wages.
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In the United Kingdom, for example, around one in six British companies cut hiring in the fourth quarter of 2024 in anticipation of tax hikes that took place in April 2025. If New York employees aren’t directly laid off, they could face lower wages in the long run.
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Already, the exodus of banks from Wall Street to corporate tax havens, such as Elliot Management’s relocation to Florida, has cost the city millions in managed assets. New York City simply cannot afford to watch other businesses follow.
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“”Businesses have only three options to pay for higher taxes: raise prices; reduce costs; or lower returns to investors,” as the authors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce report wrote. “In reality, they do all three.” The fourth option, one even more feasible if a tax hike only hits New York City, is that businesses will flee.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/31/zohran-mamdanis-5-billion-corporate-tax-hike-threatens-nycs-status-as-the-worlds-financial-capital/
“The Pentagon is directing every state and U.S. territory to create “quick reaction forces” within their National Guards, which will be trained to respond to civil disturbances and emergencies
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The memo instructs the National Guard Bureau to train these forces in riot control tactics, rapid deployment procedures, and the use of nonlethal weapons. The federalized forces will complement the National Guard Reaction Forces, which have existed for decades to provide emergency relief
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These units are expected to fully mobilize within 24 hours of activation, with an initial contingent of roughly 200 troops that will be pulled from the guard’s unit that specializes in chemical and nuclear disaster response, ready by New Year’s Day. By April, the new quick reaction force will reach 23,500 soldiers strong
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Critics see the move as establishing a permanent, federally coordinated crowd-control infrastructure. Janessa Goldbeck, a Marine veteran and CEO of Vet Voice Foundation, told The Guardian that the memo represents “an attempt by the president to normalize a national, militarized police force.”
It’s unclear whether the new order—or any future deployments under it—would pass legal muster. Federal law generally prohibits the use of federal troops in civilian law enforcement, while the Insurrection Act allows exceptions only under narrow circumstances.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/31/trumps-national-guard-plan-edges-the-u-s-closer-to-a-permanent-federal-police-force/
Californian lead standards are way too stringent compared to how much lead is required to start harming you according to data.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDEjrRT82nE
China is dominant in rare earth mining and refining. Catching up on how to refine efficiently may be the hardest part. The U.S. could do this not long ago, we let it slip and are now regretting it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMgmR3dl8P8
Medicare Advantage costs the government more and too often fucks patients who need care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejoi9yfLVCc
““For many Arkansans, permanent daylight savings time would mean the sun wouldn’t rise until after 8:00 or even 8:30am during the dead of winter,” Cotton continued. “The darkness of permanent savings time would be especially harmful for school children and working Americans.”
A cross-party coalition of lawmakers has been trying for years to make daylight saving time the default, which would result in more daylight in the evening hours with less in the morning, plus bring to a halt to biannual clock adjustments.”
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/28/congress/cotton-blocks-bill-to-stop-changing-clocks-00626466
“Until Oct. 10, I was the editor of Governing, a magazine and website covering state and local governments. But after facing increasing internal censorship pressures — largely to avoid critical coverage of President Donald Trump — I refused to go along, and I resigned.
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The notion that the litigious Trump would hit us with a lawsuit was not impossible, but it was unlikely. We certainly weren’t reliant on federal contracts to stay afloat. But after Trump’s second term began, the corporate anxiety about rocking the boat with our coverage became a constant.
That’s one of the saddest parts of Trump’s anti-media drive. After the government has gone after the big guys — Trump has engaged in court fights this year with CBS, ABC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, not to mention defunding NPR, my former employer — the little guys too often decide they lack the resources to stand up. Capitulation becomes the easier course.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/22/alan-greenblatt-quit-governing-censorship-00617039
“Throughout the Greek debt crisis, the overwhelming majority of Greeks wanted to stay in the Eurozone but bridled at the austerity measures required to do so. Today Greece ranks among the top five economic performers in Europe. Unlike Greece, which required international intervention to implement necessary reforms, Argentina took the task upon itself, the voters rebuking establishment parties and taking a chance on a political outsider. If Greece was worth saving, then Argentina is no less deserving of a lifeline.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/24/argentina-deserves-its-bailout-00620337
“Something is going wrong on the assembly lines of America’s arsenal of democracy, and it’s happening at a moment of crisis. The White House, Pentagon and America’s overseas allies are all demanding that defense companies ramp up production to meet the needs of a dangerous geopolitical moment. America is running short of missiles, munitions and battleships. Allies are waiting years for deliveries. Even the Pentagon has to stand in line and wait for delayed shipments of major weapons, like Hellfire missiles, Javelin rocket launchers and sophisticated air defense interceptors. America is trying to surge its military capacity to produce more munitions, missiles and ships, but to do so, it must rely almost entirely on a group of five Fortune 500 defense companies. And none of these companies seem to be on war footing.
Instead of hiring more workers and paying workers more in an effort to retain them, these companies are far more focused on meeting the demands of Wall Street, trying to entice investors and boost their stock price by cutting costs, as well as using billions of dollars in revenue to pay handsome dividends and buy back shares of stock. Last year, for example, Lockheed Martin gave $6.8 billion in buybacks and dividends directly to its shareholders, which amounted to nearly 10 percent of the company’s total revenue and was larger than the $5.3 billion it kept in profits. The same year, RTX (formerly called Raytheon) paid $3.7 billion to shareholders, General Dynamics paid $3 billion and Northrop Grumman paid $3.7 billion. The billions of dollars they send back shareholders each year means that there is less money to go toward paying, hiring or retaining their employees.
As a result, jobs in defense manufacturing are becoming less and less attractive at a time when they need to be getting far more attractive. Many workers are leaving the field or declining to enter it. A survey by the job recruiting firm Acara found that annual turnover in the defense and aerospace industry hit 13 percent in 2023, compared to an average U.S. rate of 3.8 percent. And this is happening just as the need for those skills is rising. Demand for advanced manufacturing skills in the sector is outpacing the number of trained employees, and 75 percent of defense companies are struggling to find qualified employees, the survey found.
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During the 2000s, the big defense contractors worked relentlessly to expand their profit margins, make their production lines as lean as possible and boost their annual sales. Raytheon’s stock price nearly quintupled from 2001 to 2021 while Northrop Grumman’s rose nearly 700 percent. Lockheed Martin did exceptionally well between 2001 and 2022, when the company’s stock price rose more than tenfold from $34.68 to $389.13 a share. The profitability came, in part, because Lockheed was focused on keeping labor costs low and supply lines trim.
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Masters said in 2022 that many of his employees could barely afford apartments in the Orlando area, and one of his new hires was sleeping in her car. That year, an entry-level employee at the factory earned a minimum of $15.45 an hour, which was less than some service-sector jobs in the area. In 2025, a local Buc-ee’s gas station advertised wages for “restroom crews” starting at $20 an hour and car wash employees at $21 an hour.
A lot of people joined Lockheed because they thought it would provide a good long-term career path, but Masters said they found it difficult to live off the wages as they worked their way up the ladder.
“We cannot keep people!” Masters said. “They bring them in on the low end of the pay scale. … They want cheaper wages. They want to keep the wage down. We’re up against profit over anything else.”
This system delivered plenty of profits and munitions over 20 years of the War on Terror, but it seemed to hit a breaking point after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. The following years of grinding trench warfare created a bottomless appetite for munitions that the United States was suddenly giving or selling by the thousands to its allies.
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Tensions had also already been rising with another near peer country, China, which fueled worries of future munitions shortfalls. This means that Lockheed and its peers had to focus on producing more missiles at a faster rate than it did during the War on Terror.
The companies, and the Pentagon, did not seem up to the task. Spending constraints since 2011, triggered by debate over the debt limit, have led Congress to issue budgets largely through annual continuing resolutions, which undercuts efforts to begin multi-year commitments and contracts necessary that would allow companies like Lockheed to boost missile production. The current wait time for a new Hellfire missile is between two and three years from the time it’s ordered, according to the Department of Defense. The wait for a Javelin missile is about three years.
All of this has saddled Lockheed Martin and other companies with two mandates that are in opposition: If it wanted to dramatically increase its missile output and speed up deliveries, the company would need to invest billions of dollars to boost supply chains and hire workers. But this would cut into free cash flow and could hurt its profits, making the company less attractive to investors. The company might be incentivized to boost production if the Pentagon paid all the upfront costs for expansion. But the Pentagon has not done that, nor has it resorted to using more radical measures like forcing increased production through authorities like the Defense Production Act. This has left companies like Lockheed to work with what they have, trying to satisfy both the Pentagon and its investors at the same time.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/27/lockheed-martin-strike-orlando-weapons-missiles-00514386?ceid=273413&emci=d03704a3-37b4-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4&emdi=80e8776f-b6b4-f011-8e61-6045bded8ba4