He caved on Chinese tariffs, got nothing but drama

Since my last major update on Friday I accumulated 28 browser tabs of things I want to share. I will get to only a few of them today and some I may decide to close. Mariel Padilla of The 19th, in an article posted on Daily Kos, wrote about Pope Leo’s views on a few topics. We don’t yet know how he feels about these things as pope. Padilla had to work with the most recent comments, usually years old.

In speaking to bishops in 2012, he criticized Western news media for cultivating “sympathy” at odds with gospel including “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families comprised of same-sex partners and their adopted children.”

He has not endorsed or opposed rules to bless same-sex unions within the Catholic Church. Leo seems to be aligned with Francis on migrant rights. Leo has not made clear his views on fertility issues – abortion, contraception, in vitro fertilization, or surrogacy. The church has opposed them. Francis was critical of surrogacy, voiced concerns about IVF, and otherwise avoided the topic. On climate change Leo said we needed to move from words to action. The pundit roundup for May 10, complied by Greg Dworkin for Kos, quoted EJ Dionne of the Washington Post, which essentially said that with the election Leo, there is no going back from the progressive views of Francis. A ways into the comments are a few cartoons about Leo. One by Rod Emmerson shows white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. Inside two cardinals are at the stove that produced that smoke. They’re burning a MAGA hat. One says, “If they think Leo is too woke, wait until they find out about Jesus.” From what I’ve seen the MAGA people are working really hard not to find out about Jesus. An Associated Press article posted on Kos mentioned that Louis DeStroy, postmaster since 2021 resigned in March. Yay! And why didn’t I hear about it back then? But the cheering won’t be very loud. His replacement isn’t any better. Maybe worse. Not with the nasty guy where he is. The new guy is David Steiner. He had been the CEO of the nation’s largest waste management company and is currently on the board of FedEx. Yeah, that right there is a conflict of interest and a strong indication the goal is to privatize the Postal Service (now a mostly self-funded public institution). And a likely outcome of that move is to end “universal service” in which the USPS is obligated to deliver to every address, even in costly remote areas (of course, in some remote areas the closest they get is the local post office, and some of those are in jeopardy). The postal union is, of course, protesting the appointment. Emily Singer of Kos wrote that the nasty guy caved on his tariffs with China, lowering them from 145% to 30%. China also reduced its tariffs on the US, though I don’t see that the nasty guy got anything more from the Chinese. He did it to appease the stock market. But 30% is still high and will still raise prices. Saying the high rates are paused for only 90 days doesn’t ended the dreaded economic “uncertainty” – already proposed as the economic word of the year. Since so many companies waited to ship anything while the 145% rate was in effect and wanting to get orders shipped before rates rise again in 90 days there is now be a big demand for shipping, leading to snarls in supply chains (see what happened in 2021), and increased shipping costs. And all that drama was unnecessary.