The squeeze is more important than the juice

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down. An Associated Press article posted to Daily Kos has more details. The reason for the shutdown is it was defunded by Congress. The CPB has announced its schedule for an orderly shutdown. The CPB has been funded for 58 years. Some of the money it gets from the government goes to PBS and NPR, but most of its funding directly supports more than 1,500 local public radio and television stations around the country (later the article says there are 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations, though not all public radio stations are NPR). The stations in small communities may have to close. In many of these places their local public station is their only source of news (or at least unbiased news). The closure is a direct result of the nasty guy targeting public media, which he claims has a liberal bias, views opposite of what he says the US should proclaim. Though funding for CPB had been approved and signed by the nasty guy earlier this year he demanded Congress overturn that earlier allocation. And Congress did. I’ve also mentioned a couple times that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has modified its exhibit on US presidents to remove mention of the nasty guy’s two impeachments. Lisa Needham of Kos reported the details. And yes, this is a part of the nasty guy rewriting history so that he appears to be a complete success. The museum says it removed mention of the impeachments because the whole section hadn’t been updated since 2008 and they aren’t able to update it all – except it had been updated in 2021 to add the impeachments. A couple stories about more opportunities of corruption and feeding a bloated ego. First, Kos of Kos discussed the trade deals various countries are making to avoid the nasty guy’s tariffs. The deals struck so far seem to have a common theme.

President Donald Trump is addicted to the fanfare of announcing his trade “deals,” but he doesn’t care about the details or what happens afterward. As trade policy expert William Reinsch told the Washington Monthly, “For Trump, the squeeze is more important than the juice.” That’s a powerful character flaw for other nations to exploit. Take, for instance, the European Union. Trump has been touting a new “deal” with the E.U. that’s more framework than substance. But again, he doesn’t care—it’s all about the flashy toplines. Among them: The E.U. will supposedly buy $250 billion worth of U.S. energy imports per year, for the next three years. That’s over three times what the E.U. imported last year from the U.S. However, with this deal, there’s no binding commitment, no timeline, no enforcement mechanism. It’s little more than a press-release number designed to impress. It’s not a real plan, just a fantasy dressed up as a win.

That huge amount of energy the EU has agreed to import is much larger than the EU could actually use and much larger than US producers could supply. So it won’t happen. And there is no legal requirement for it to happen. That the nasty guy got his deal is the only thing that matters. And the only ones that don’t see through the charade are the MAGA cultists. Second, Kos discussed the nasty guy’s fixation on the Nobel Peace Prize. Obama got one, he should too. And foreign leaders are using that to manipulate him. While only certain people can nominate someone for the Peace Prize the list includes government officials of any country, university professors, and members of the League for Peace. And they can nominate anyone. Which means a nomination has very little value. And from the nasty guy’s comments over the last few years he is equating being nominated with winning. So foreign leaders are buttering him up by saying they have or will nominate him for the prize he covets. Kos lists the reasons why the nasty guy won’t get the Peace Prize:

He bombed Iran. He encouraged ethnic cleansing in Gaza. He’s currently threatening nuclear war against Russia. He sanctioned International Criminal Court judges. He trashed the United Nations. He gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which will cause millions of avoidable deaths, according to a study by The Lancet. And somehow this is a man promoting “fraternity between nations”? Trump wants the world to see him as a peacemaker. But he’s never created peace—only chaos. And no amount of flattery from influence-seeking foreign leaders will change that.

Emily Singer of Kos reported that Jeffrey Epstein assistant Ghislaine Maxwell had a two-day interview with someone from the Department of Justice, likely saying a lot of things the nasty guy wants her to say (but legally useless). She is now urging the nasty guy to pardon her. Shortly after the interview she was taken from a Florida prison known for its poor conditions and placed in a comfy minimum security prison in Texas. Kos discussed the view of government held by conservative citizens. If a program personally helps them it’s good and should be kept. Otherwise, get rid of it. Kos uses the Postal Service to demonstrate a point. One mail carrier’s route in rural Nebraska is 150 miles for 334 delivery points. That route bleeds money. If the Postal Service is privatized this route would be dropped. It isn’t profitable.

But the government isn’t supposed to be profitable. It’s supposed to serve the common good, even when that good is a tiny outpost in the middle of nowhere.

Kos noted “conservatives get off on the suffering of people who aren’t like them.” Liberals believe in a basic social obligation, “especially when it costs us something.”

The social contract isn’t a vending machine for personal convenience; it’s a mutual agreement that binds a nation of people together, one that says we all pitch in so that no one—no matter where they live—falls through the cracks. It’s a recognition that the government is the tool we use to express collective values, not individual preferences. When conservatives start picking and choosing what parts of society are worth funding based solely on their own needs, they’re not just being selfish. They’re breaking the very foundation that holds this country together.

jasciu of the Kos community wrote:

Something strange is happening in Japan—not with its politics or its technology, but with its spirit. Quietly and without fanfare, the country appears to be opting out of the global race for growth. Its economy is stagnant, its birth rate declining, its appetite for innovation dulled. But more striking than the numbers is the cultural shift behind them. Young Japanese are not merely failing to strive—they are choosing not to. They are working fewer hours, skipping promotions, and living modestly. They are renting instead of buying, saving rather than investing, and increasingly uninterested in romantic or sexual relationships. To Western economists, this is deeply troubling. To politicians, it’s a puzzle. To the people living it—it may not be a problem at all. What if this isn’t economic malaise, but existential clarity?

I pause a moment to say while I am very much intrigued by what the author wrote, the article has no links to sources. Japan was a postwar dynamo. I worked in the auto industry during the 1980s (and into the 2000s) when the auto companies struggled to respond to Japan’s economic power. Then Japan’s asset bubble burst in the 1990s, leading to the “lost decades.”

Those who grew up amid collapse and uncertainty no longer believe in ambition as a path to security. Many simply do not want what their parents wanted. And if they do, they no longer believe it's attainable through hard work alone. The response has not been revolution or despair—but resignation.

And that appears to be a choice. Are we being authentic to ourselves? Are we chasing after things because we want them or because our culture tells us we’re supposed to want them? Answering that question is a moment of honesty. Perhaps we should not measure America by the Gross Domestic Product. Perhaps we should describe our success through a Gross National Happiness index as Bhutan does. Or adopt New Zealand’s Wellbeing Budget that spends towards mental health, child poverty, and sustainability. The American Dream has equated freedom with consumption. Freedom can also mean stop consuming and find dignity in simplicity. While in the auto industry I applied for a management position once and didn’t get it. I saw how my boss was treated and was glad it wasn’t me. I enjoyed my work (though got tired of the office games) and felt I had enough to live as I wanted. A low-desire society has perils. Losing a taste for risk may also mean losing the capacity to adapt. A population that declines too quickly can risk the social safety net with too few workers to support the retirees. And there is a need to distinguish low desire as enlightenment from depression and despair. Japan prompts us to ask whether we truly always want more or can we tell if we have enough? A stop in growth may mean a society is now asking different questions.