Good morning kids. First, our good friend, the estimable commentator and historian Michael Walsh and his fantastic site The Pipeline are back up and once again diving right into the fray! Welcome back to you and your great crew.
So, vile, foul revolting in the extreme Jasmine Crockett once again opened her pie hole to vomit out garbage. I hate having to inflict her on you all, but it is what it is.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) advocated for illegal immigration in the U.S. and suggested black Americans were “done picking cotton.” Crockett’s words reportedly came while “speaking at Grace Baptist Church in Connecticut,” according to commentator Collin Rugg. While speaking, Crockett claimed that she was going around the U.S. educating “people about what immigrants” do for the U.S., and claimed that nobody is “trying to go and farm right now.”
And yet, disgusting as this is, it does serve to illustrate a point that is both a condemnation of her party and why Trump and his policies going forward might have even more of a salutary effect on more than just the economy but on American culture itself. Beyond the fact that cotton, to the best of my knowledge hasn't been picked by hand for decades. Let's pick this ninny's statement apart point by point. First, the immigration issue that democrats and other open borders globalists keep yammering on about: the so-called people who we must have by the multi-millions to do the jobs that Americans supposedly won't do, i.e. pick crops. Even leftist icon Cesar Chavez referred to illegal aliens as wetbacks and was vocally and passionately in favor of mass deportations of illegals because they depressed he wages of citizens who were farm workers.
Second, and I'm only guessing, there are likely very stiff tariffs and import duties/restrictions on not only American grown cotton but of course on American grown produce and other food stuffs all over the world. Hitting back at these countries to force their markets open to our goods will have salutary effect across the board.
Of course her using the example of picking cotton and trying to make an allusion to Trump and company and his policies as somehow akin to the reimposition of slavery and or Jim Crow on blacks, which is laughable in the extreme since it was her party that fought civil war and then resisted all efforts at true integration and assimilation since the end of that war that they started.
As for jobs that Americans will or won't do, there's enough blame to go around as to why American industry decamped willingly or otherwise overseas. Cheap labor and lowered regulatory costs were and remain a major factor.
In the long term, if allowed to remain in place, Trump's tariff regime can have a salutary effect on many levels. Economic and societal. If we insist that only legal citizens can work here at home, then there is no job that Americans won't do since businesses will have no alternative but to tap the American labor market.
President Trump wants to get America’s vast army of “dropout” men back into the workforce. Attention to this problem is long overdue.
Nearly 7 million men in the prime of life — over a tenth of the 25-to-54 age group — are neither working nor looking for work these days.
But Team Trump is trying to fix the problem with the wrong tools.
They argue that trade policy — tariffs — and industrial policy — special treatment for manufacturing — will reverse the long-term flight from work by men, by creating high-paying jobs to lure them back to work.
This approach may sound sensible to some. Unfortunately, it is likely to fail — even though the White House could succeed through other pro-work policies.
Once upon a time in America, working-age men without jobs were unemployed laborers. . .
. . . But that’s ancient history: Today, for every “prime age” man who is actually unemployed — out of a job but looking — there are three who are neither working nor looking for work.
That means the overwhelming majority of jobless men nowadays are NILFs (for “not in labor force”
. And unemployed men differ fundamentally in both mindset and behavior from NILF men. . .
. . . Millions of NILF men live work-free existences financed by an array of disability programs and their associated “poverty” benefits. This disability archipelago incentivizes helplessness, and at a terrible cost in human potential. America’s disability system is so dysfunctional that no one in DC can tell you just how many people are currently getting benefits from its crazy-quilt of subcomponents (SSDI, SSI, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, state-level disability programs, worker’s comp programs — and more). Before the pandemic, however, I estimated that over half of America’s prime-age NILF men were getting benefits from one or more of these programs — and that over two-thirds lived in homes taking in at least one disability benefit. . .
. . . Yet with nearly 12 million positions open, and employers almost begging for applicants, NILF rates for prime age men barely budged. Millions of those unfilled jobs during the “Great Resignation” did not require high school diplomas, only the “skills” of showing up at work, on time and sober. But the NILF men did not come — even though close to half had at least some college.
Consider, too: Back in 2022 about 800,000 of those unfilled slots were in manufacturing. If idle dropout men did not flock to available factory jobs then, why should we expect them to be lured to future factories built under tariff threats? The miracle of the market does not cure social pathologies. All too many male workforce dropouts are detached (from society), dependent (on government benefits and pain meds), and defeated. These men will not be tempted to rejoin the workforce by good paychecks alone.We need other approaches.
That's what Crockett and her ilk are really railing against. They need men and women of all races to not pick cotton but to sit on their asses and pick their noses waiting for Uncle Sugar to hand out welfare and bennies to keep the hooked on the government. Generations of Americans, black and white indoctrinated into being enslaved to the Democrat created welfare state, from whence Democrats maintain their power.
This is what DOGE and the tariff regime is attempting to smash. It won't work by itself. Industry won't magically reappear overnight. Along with what is being done, as has been promoted for years, there must be mass incentives like tax and regulatory holidays to incentivize the building of factories and manufacturing plants here in the USA plus the de-incentivization of sloth such as it is. Certainly more trade schools as well as apprenticeship programs in all the trades, perhaps schools that would be tied to US industries, and/or even physically located on or near their premises. As well as the expansion of what I remember from my junior high and High School days as shop class.
. . . we've tried the free trade route. The promise was: send our jobs abroad, and we'll all get rich on cheaper TVs and tuna. But unless your job was as a hedge fund manager or Amazon warehouse robot, that promise came with a footnote: "Offer not valid in manufacturing towns, rural America, or Detroit."
Trump's reciprocal tariffs aren't about slapping China for fun (although it's fun, particularly after COVID). They're about reshaping incentives so that manufacturing in the US becomes attractive again.
It's already happening. Steel mills are reopening, auto plants are expanding, and companies that used to run to China at the first sign of a union now think, "Hmm, maybe Toledo isn't so bad after all."
A White House report from earlier this year backs it up: Trump's first-term tariffs led to substantial reshoring in key industries. These aren't your gig-economy gigs. These are jobs with decent wages, long-term career paths, and the kind of dignity that's been outsourced for the past 30 years.
Sure, there's a concern that tariffs could mean higher prices. But let's be honest — if paying an extra 50 cents for a pair of socks means your neighbor gets a job, that's a trade most Americans are happy to make. And with targeted tax cuts or direct consumer . . .
. . . Plus, domestic production brings efficiencies. Once we scale up, costs come down. We're not just making America competitive again — we're building a robust industrial base that can weather future storms, pandemics, and supply chain chaos.
We used to be the country that built the Hoover Dam, the Model T, and the Apollo rocket. Then we became the country that builds... PowerPoints.
Reciprocal tariffs are a brash, unapologetic way of saying we want to make things again — better, more substantial, and made by Americans earning real wages. It's not just economic policy — it's national therapy.
Let Wall Street clutch its pearls. The real action is in factories, foundries, and main streets that get a second shot at life. America isn't just open for business — it's open for building. And that's a trade war worth fighting.
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