Representativa Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), otherwise known as AOC, definitely wants to be President. Accordingly she recently made a campaign appearance in southwestern Idaho, and cut a video emphasizing unity of (non-white) ethnic groups. But don’t let her deceive you into thinking she wants to be merely President of the United States. She wants to be President of Earth, and everything she does, she has calculated to that end.

Earlier moves by AOC

On April 15, 2025 (Tax Day, by no coincidence), AOC appeared in Nampa, Idaho’s third most populous city. That city lies near the Snake River that is the Oregon-Idaho border. Social-media influencers remember her mainly for affecting an accent, in the style of former Vice-President Kamala Harris.

https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1912145673685713195

Eight days later her campaign released this video:

Do not let them trick you into thinking we are enemies.

Do not let them trick you into thinking that we can be separated into rural and urban, Black and white and Latino.

We are one.

https://x.com/TeamAOC/status/1915081171513286942

That video is more suited to a Presidential campaign than to a Congressional reelection campaign, and everyone knows this. So a reporter asked her straight-out whether she was running for President. She coyly answered, “Who? Me?”

REPORTER: Are you thinking about running for President?

AOC: Because of my Instagram post? I mean, listen, it's a video!

https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1918019156957397319

She went on to suggest that her message centered on protecting Medicare and Medicaid benefits from cuts. (No one means to cut benefits; the Trump administration is after waste, fraud and abuse.) But yesterday (May 2), AOC returned to her real issue: immigration.

Specifically, in February she held a series of webinars telling illegal aliens how to avoid detection, detention, and deportation. Many of her methods recall Judge Hannah Dugan’s language in misdirecting Immigration and Customs Enforcement operatives and enabling (as she thought) an illegal alien to escape. (He didn’t; they literally outran and caught him anyway, and furthermore, the Wisconsin Supreme Court revoked Judge Dugan’s judicial powers.) Tom Homan, ICE Director and “Border Czar,” has referred AOC to the Justice Department for criminal investigation and possible prosecution.

I sent an email today to Deputy Attorney General. At what level is that impedement? Is that impediment? I’m not an attorney. I’m not a prosecutor. Is that impediment? Is that impeding our law enforcement efforts. If so, what are we going to do about it? Is she crossing the line? I’m working with the Department of Justice and finding out where is that line that they cross.

“Come and get me!”

Now, two and a half months later, she has made a statement in open defiance of Homan. Reports from Fox, Newsweek, National Review, and The Gateway Pundit have varying details. At a rally in Jackson Heights in Queens, New York, she actually said:

Tom Homan said he was going to refer me to DOJ because I’m using my free speech rights in order to advise people of their constitutional protections. To that I say: Come for me, do I look like I care?

She went on to assert that she did nothing illegal in the webinar.

AOC might have been trying to distract from a heckler who challenged her on her support for Israel in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War. But she is far more likely to have planned to say “Come for me” far in advance of that meeting. Immigration, not Middle East policy, is her primary issue. Welfare benefits of all kinds are incidental; they are the immigration magnet. The Democratic Party, including AOC, declared a battlefront on immigration within days of President Donald Trump returning to office.

And President Trump knows the Democrats have made themselves the Immigration Party, not merely the Abortion Party. Last Monday (April 21) he festooned the White House North Lawn with 100 mugshots of deported criminal illegal aliens.

Does he also know that AOC wants to get herself arrested, as the FBI arrested Judge Dugan last week? That doesn’t matter. If she’s broken the law, which the Justice Department will have to determine, they’ll arrest her, as they must. And she’ll parlay that into her campaign for the Presidential nomination.

Why is immigration so important to Democrats?

Unrestricted entry, especially by immigrants of the quality who were crashing the border regularly in Biden’s day, has two effects. First, they represent the Democratic Party’s new voter base. The obvious criminals make no bones about what they want: opportunity to steal from people, or worse. Less obviously, they’re after handouts. That’s why the “social safety net” has become an immigration magnet.

But more than that, under current law and regulation, the Census Bureau sees fit, or deems it necessary, to count immigrants in the census. The debate on whether to count immigrants, or wait until they become naturalized, might need a Constitutional amendment to resolve. Until then, President Trump’s administration has made several showy mass deportations. They have also settled the Biden administration’s disputes with the State of Texas on border security. (Texas isn’t the only southern border State, but it’s the State with the longest stretch of the southern border.) As a result, border crossings have fallen precipitously, though not to zero.

The only way the Democrats return to power is that immigration returns to Biden-era levels, and immigrants register to vote. If these things do not happen, the Democratic Party is toast. Party leaders know it – and AOC knows it.

The AOC master plan

AOC has flogged the immigration issue for years, and especially since before the Election of 2024. Tom Homan appeared before one of the committees on which she sits. On that occasion she told him straight-out:

With all due respect, Mr. Homan, asylees are not illegal aliens.

Homan, having none of that, retorted that anyone who crosses a U.S. border at a place other than a lawful point of entry, is an illegal alien. Furthermore, “asylum” is more often economic than political. Immigrants flock to the country that will hand things out, for the same reason other countries will run up trade surpluses with the United States and content themselves with buying American Treasury paper. (Or maybe that’s not contentment, but part of a plot to repossess the United States.) America is “rich enough,” and until Trump, Presidents have forgotten where America made its wealth. And that such wealth is finite.

AOC has embraced the Great Replacement of original Americans with non-white, usually mendicant migrants. This can lead only to the destruction of America. But that’s what AOC wants – because she wants to be President, not of America alone, but of the Earth.

To that same end, she is involved in “primarying” some old Democratic Party stalwarts, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), former Speaker of the House. She got into the House by “primarying” an old lion (Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y.), so this is more of the same.

Problems

To be sure, AOC has some serious problems, beyond the obvious. Donald Trump will make sure her mendicant immigrant constituents never vote. He will make sure of that if he has to say, to paraphrase President Andrew Jackson,

John Roberts has made his decision; now let him enforce it.

Her biggest problem will be that Trump has nearly four years to remove Biden’s imported extra voters-in-waiting. Remove them he will. Beyond that, the Democrats are losing their traditional constituencies. Trump has made the melting pot respectable again, more respectable than it ever really was. Furthermore, he is offering, not handouts, but opportunities to members of these constituencies. By doing that, Trump gives the lie to every tenet of critical theory.

Speaking of which, the Alphabet Soup coalition seems about to expel the “trans” part from its ranks. To paraphrase William S. Gilbert:

I know not mercy, men in women’s sports!

Nor does AOC help herself with her apparent support for Israel. Her Squad has surely fractured on that issue, with Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) adamantly supporting HAMAS in the Fourth Arab-Israeli War.

AOC seems oblivious to these problems, or dismisses them as irrelevant. Once again, immigration is her primary focus, for that is how she will become the President of the Earth. Or so she thinks – but it is up to alert American patriots to make sure her plans never come to fruition.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/05/03/news/aoc-for-president-earth/

Video:

Fake accents and ethnic unity videos:

https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1912145673685713195

https://x.com/TeamAOC/status/1915081171513286942

https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1918019156957397319

Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/

Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

Last week, the Trump administration’s law-enforcement arms escalated the war of words – and nerves – with activist judges. When two State judges carried this activism to a new level, federal law enforcement met them on that level. To be specific, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested two judges, each of whom broke the law with their activism. The subject of their activism is, of course, illegal immigration. These judges seem to think that anyone and everyone has a basic right to remain in-country. But they went beyond rulings with questionable legal and philosophical grounds. They actually obstructed justice, and the FBI acted accordingly. In so doing, they sent an unmistakable message: the FBI will recognize ideological corruption, as well as venal corruption, and will not tolerate either.

What those judges did

Pam Bondi, United States Attorney General, gave details about the two instances of “judicial misconduct and obstruction of law enforcement.” First, on April 24, the FBI arrested New Mexico Magistrate Judge Jose Luis Cano and his wife. The FBI acted after learning that Judge and Mrs. Cano harbored an illegal alien in their home. Judge Cano had actually resigned on the strength of that harboring in March, after Homeland Security Investigations arrested the illegal alien involved. Authorities suspect the alien, Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, to be a member of Tren de Aragua, now a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Judges are responsible for upholding our country’s laws. It is beyond egregious for a former judge and his wife to engage in evidence tampering on behalf of a suspected Tren de Aragua gang member accused of illegally possessing firearms. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is committed to dismantling this foreign terrorist organization by disrupting its criminal operations in New Mexico. That starts by prosecuting those who support gang members — including judges.

U.S. Attorney Ryan Ellison for the District of New Mexico.

That case would have been shocking enough, even if Judge Cano did resign last month. But another case has almost completely overshadowed this one.

The Wisconsin case

On April 18, agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and Customs and Border Protection arrived at the courthouse for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. They intended to arrest one Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, deported ten years ago, who obviously had re-infiltrated. He was in court already on a domestic battery charge. Judge Hannah C. Dugan, upon learning that federal agents were out in the hallway, ordered them to leave the building. When they informed her that they had a lawful warrant, she said they needed a judicial warrant. Accordingly she sent them to the office of the Chief Judge for the county.

Returning to her courtroom, she canceled the hearing, though all parties were then present. Then she hid Flores-Ruiz in her jury room until the federal agents had left. After that, she let him slip away.

Flores-Ruiz didn’t get very far. The agents spotted him anyway and chased him in a foot race through the streets of Milwaukee. Naturally they made a full report – and Kash Patel, Director of the FBI, issued an order: arrest Judge Dugan. That arrest also took place April 24.

Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction — after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.

We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse, Eduardo Flores Ruiz, allowing the subject — an illegal alien — to evade arrest.

Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the Judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public. We will have more to share soon. Excellent work, FBI Milwaukee.

https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626

See also the docket page and criminal complaint against Dugan. United States v. Hannah C. Dugan, case no. 25-mj-00397 (SCD).

Reaction

Dugan is out on her own cognizance. But the Senate Democratic Conference, and the rest of the Wisconsin State bench, have erupted in fury. Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Charles M. Schumer (D-N.Y.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have all left angry posts or press releases. As Mike LaChance of The Gateway Pundit notes, all have missed the irony of their hectoring, for four years, about “no one [being] above the law” in connection with President Donald J. Trump.

Nor does the vituperation limit itself to the Senate. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) actually accused those agents of kidnapping Judge Dugan.

Worse than this, Judge Monica Isham of Sawyer County, Wisconsin, has threatened not to hold court over this incident. She sent an email to every Wisconsin State judge, and one of them forwarded a copy to Wisconsin Right Now. “Guidance requested or I refuse to hold court,” she said in her title.

The most controversial relevant excerpt:

I have no intention of allowing anyone to be taken out of my courtroom by ICE and sent to a concentration camp, especially without due process as BOTH of the constitutions we swore to protect, requires. Should I start raising bail money?

Whether Judge Isham means to raise bail money for possible illegal-alien defendants, or for herself in case she follows Judge Dugan, is not clear.

Governor Evers had advised her

What is clear is that she demanded guidance – and got it. In fact the Wisconsin judiciary has had this guidance since April 18 – from Governor Tony Evers (D-Wisc.) Gov. Evers has ordered Wisconsin employees to:

• Refuse to answer any questions, even about known individuals ICE is seeking.

• Deny agents access to paper files and computers, even if they present a warrant.

• Block agents from entering non-public areas, unless they produce a judicial warrant.

• Demand agents sit in isolated public areas and force them to wait indefinitely while contacting attorneys.

• Order agents to leave and return later if a state lawyer isn’t immediately reachable.

This makes very clear that Judge Dugan was following Gov. Evers’ advice. That in turn implicates the governor in conspiracy to obstruct immigration law.

Ideological corruption defined

All the above are the latest examples of ideological corruption. When most people speak of corruption, they forget that corruption comes in two varieties. Because they’re thinking of venal corruption – stealing public money for oneself. William Shakespeare described that best:

Let me tell you, Cassius: You yourself / are much condemn’d to have an itching palm, / to sell and mart your offices for gold / to undeservers.

Julius Caesar IV.iii.9-12

Ideological corruption has a much different motive. It involves a deliberate conspiracy to break the law, for the ultimate purpose of destroying the rule of law and establishing a tyrannical governmental order. This is much worse than stealing public money for personal use. In fact, when the theft of public money happens for the purpose of obtaining campaign funds, the corruption leaps from the venal to the ideological.

Ideological corruption is certainly in evidence in these two cases, and the reaction to them. To begin with, no illegal alien can claim “depriv[ation] of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” That’s because no one has the right to stay where he is not welcome. The only right any of those aliens have is the right to leave. If the Trump administration were interning those aliens, as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration interned the Nisei during World War II, that argument might be valid. But the sanction against those aliens is deportation – exile – not imprisonment. And those aliens that are going to prison, are going to prison because the country to which the United States is deporting them, has its own grounds for imprisoning them. Membership in Tren de Aragua or any similar group, definitely constitutes sufficient grounds.

Ideological corruption exemplified

But those who practice ideological corruption don’t care about such niceties of law or philosophy. They want criminal gangs to displace the landlords of apartment complexes and collect the rent in their stead. (As happened in Aurora, Colorado.) Then they can offer to displace the gangsters – if the landlords will surrender their properties to the government.

More to the point, they want as many unvetted people to establish residency in America as possible. While those aliens wait for their patrons to grant them a vote, those patrons will count them in the census. California would not have as many Representatives in Congress, if not for its large population of illegal aliens. And if any citizen or lawful resident complains, the most charitable rejoinder is: you must suffer that inconvenience for the sake of the communist revolution. (The least charitable rejoinder is, of course, an accusation of racism, bigotry, etc.)

Ideological corruption doesn’t care about the law. At least venally corrupt people make excuses, which we call “euphemism.” Ideological corruption always includes saying that law-abiding citizens (and lawful residents) are in the wrong, or simply easy marks. And when a government, acting on behalf of outraged citizens, takes action, ideological corruption means decrying such action as tyrannical.

The latest cases of ideological corruption

And so it is with Judges Cano, Dugan, and Isham, and Senators Markey, Schumer, Baldwin, Van Hollen, Klobuchar, Smith, and Sanders, Governor Evers, and Representative Raskin. All falsely plea that they are, respectively, the victims and their justly motivated advocates. This is how bullies everywhere behave.

Kash Patel was absolutely correct to arrest Judges Cano and Dugan. He should probably consider arresting Governor Evers, for incitement to obstruct immigration law. That same Constitution Judge Dugan cited, vests in Congress alone the authority to create a uniform immigration code. They did so, and that code is Title 8 of the United States Code. That title not only tells us who stays in this country, and who goes. It also tells us that those who conspire to let some stay who should go, are just as guilty as those overstaying their welcome – or not welcome to begin with.

It ill befits a judge to flout the law, just as it would ill befit a judge to take the law into his own hands. (Cf. The Star Chamber (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1983), dir. Peter Hyams, with Michael Douglas and Hal Holbrook.) Likewise, it ill befits a legislator to protest the arrests of judges who are flouting a law the legislature enacted. Or a governor to urge members of his administration, or his State’s judiciary, to act with such lawlessness. Again: recognize ideological corruption for what it is, and do not tolerate it.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/04/27/news/ideological-corruption-judicial/

Video:

DOJ press release about arrests of Judges Cano and Dugan:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-two-cases-involving-judicial-misconduct-and-obstruction-law

Director Patel’s statement on the arrest of Judge Dugan:

https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1915800907318468626

Docket page and criminal complaint:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69943125/united-states-v-dugan/

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wied.111629/gov.uscourts.wied.111629.1.0.pdf

Angry posts from seven Senators:

https://twitter.com/EdMarkey/status/1915804376154693858

https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1915861408228536805

https://twitter.com/SenatorBaldwin/status/1915808661642916322

https://twitter.com/ChrisVanHollen/status/1915845749285310955

https://twitter.com/amyklobuchar/status/1915823476826362143

https://twitter.com/SenTinaSmith/status/1915814735980716136

https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-statement-on-trumps-arrest-of-a-milwaukee-judge/

Jamie Raskin interview:

Judge Isham’s threat:

https://www.wisconsinrightnow.com/wisconsin-judge-monica-isham-hannah-dugan-arrest/

Governor Evers’ guidance:

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/04/lock-him-up-lawless-wisconsin-governor-issues-guidelines/

Julius Caesar – the complete play:

https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/julius-caesar/read/

Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/

Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/

President Donald J. Trump has kept tariffs in the news, with announcements that look contradictory until one understands his intentions. Trump wants to use tariffs both to replace the income tax and to prompt a rebuild of America’s manufacturing base. That’s why some of his proposed tariffs are on a ninety-day pause; the countries involved have shown willingness to negotiate. But many Americans, including many political theorists, don’t understand what tariffs are, or even what legitimate purposes they might serve. Herewith another primer on tariffs to address certain misunderstandings that decades of misapplied strategy – or unilateral economic disarmament – have facilitated.

What are tariffs?

Tariffs, or import duties, are taxes that importers pay on goods they bring into a country. True, many (if not most) importers will pass such taxes on to the buyers of the imported goods. Such buyers always have the option not to buy. Wal-Mart exercised that option recently after President Trump raised tariffs on communist China to a total of 125 percent. (In fact Wal-Mart has paid lip service for years to the idea of “buying American.”

Until the end of the nineteenth century, the United States financed its government through tariffs. Then a coalition of bankers, with William Randolph Hearst (the inventor of “yellow journalism”) as their chief agent provocateur, talked the country into the Spanish-American War. (They might have done more than talk if the destruction of USS Maine ACR-1 was due to anything other than a paint-locker fire that spread to the ship’s ammunition magazines.) The United States had not embarked on such an expensive foreign venture ever before. (All America’s wars until then took place on what are now the Contiguous States, the Lower Forty-eight, etc.) So Congress laid a telephone tax on wealthy telephone users (who then were the only ones who had telephones). Then in 1910, the “banksters” met on Jekyll Island to create and launch the Federal Reserve System.

The telephone tax is gone. But in 1913 came the income tax. And after World War II came the mis-called “free trade system.”

The great borrowing binge

Contrary to Erick-Woods Erickson’s execrably flawed analysis, trade deficits always must resolve somehow. Any two countries have between them a current account and a capital account. Current-account transactions are imports and exports. Capital-account transactions are investment in new manufacturing plant and equipment – or sales of bonds. Those bonds might be private company commercial paper, or government bonds.

Today the United States has an aggregate net-resultant current-account trade deficit of over a trillion dollars a year with the rest of the world. That cannot possibly sustain itself forever, and it doesn’t. One would expect these other countries to take all the money (American dollars, which are no longer redeemable in gold) they rake in, and invest in plant and equipment to make things in America to sell to Americans. Occasionally that is exactly what happens. But typically, foreign governments use the excess dollars to buy United States Treasury instruments. These are the short-term “bills,” ten-year “notes,” and thirty-year or “long” “bonds” The Wall Street Journal talks about. One finds this “talk” in a section called “Credit Markets and Money Rates.”

This represents continued borrowing by the United States government – and by extension, its citizens. To compound the absurdity, the U.S. government had created this “understanding” with other countries. Which is: you may “tariff” us all you want, so long as you keep buying our bills, notes and bonds.

One would expect a limit on this activity – except that Congress keeps raising the debt ceiling.

Deadbeat city

What does that make America? America has become not only a debtor nation but a spendthrift and almost a deadbeat nation. The one reason America is not a deadbeat nation is that it has not – yet – defaulted on its paper. But America is paying compound interest that itself is a significant portion of the federal budget. The one President in recent memory who presided over a budget surplus was Bill Clinton. And that was only because he couldn’t persuade a Republican Congress to spend big money on his priorities. Or perhaps he had none, because Bill Clinton was never an ideologue. (This is not an endorsement of Bill Clinton. But remember that a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.)

In any case, federal revenues exceeded expenditures for one or two years in his second term. That’s never happened since.

In the meantime, other countries have been more than content to lend Americans money so that they can keep buying – though they have no work product to buy with. American manufacturing is nearly dead – because other countries have closed their markets to American goods. The ownership of brands is no longer a reliable indicator of what is, and what is not, made in America. That in part reflects foreign companies actually building factories in America. But it also reflects American companies importing goods and slapping their own labels on them.

President Donald Trump wants to put a stop to this.

How Trump plans to use tariffs

Donald Trump has proposed two kinds of tariffs – baseline and reciprocal. The baseline tariff will be ten percent. Americans will always import many, many things they simply can’t “make in the USA.” These are mainly agricultural products, including coffee and tropical fruits. A ten-percent tariff on such staples should provide a comfortable revenue stream. (Rare earths are another story. Trump plans to acquire territories, like the island known variously as Greenland and Kalaalit Nunaat, rich in these minerals.)

Reciprocal tariffs are actually retaliatory. They send the message that no country will ever again close its markets to Americans without consequence. That’s why Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports to 125 percent, while pausing them on other countries for 90 days.

Other countries can avoid the reciprocal tariffs in one of two ways. Either they open markets to American exporters, or they build factories in America. A factory in America, whether making goods for export or domestic consumption, employs Americans. Many countries are already making both kinds of deal.

A special word about China

China deserves special mention. Their true name for themselves is The Middle Kingdom. Middle of what? Middle of the world. Every Chinese emperor since Noah (who likely founded what became China after disembarking from his Ark) has dreamed of a kingdom that sits in the middle of the world – and rules the world from that position. Whether Chiang Kai-shek thought that way before Mao Zedong drove him out and onto Taiwan is anyone’s guess. But from Mao on, every Secretary General of the Chinese Communist Party has thought in these terms also.

Of course they will continue buying American paper – so they can suddenly declare that they own America, and dictate accordingly. They also have built a system on slave labor. And now they are building a navy to rival the United States Navy – as Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) clearly understands.

Furthermore, they want Taiwan back. To leave an independent Taiwan is to lose face. Some have debated on whether China can take Taiwan, but no one doubts that they’ll try. Fortunately the head of Taiwan Semiconductor has already spoken to President Trump about building a plant in the United States. That plant might become the only off-island asset left to the Taiwanese.

The world has enemies

All of which to address a general principle that many economists, especially libertarians, routinely ignore. The human world has enemies. Libertarians always maintain that one has no enemies but what one makes. That’s not true. China is the prize example of an external enemy who will attack without provocation. To China, merely to exist apart from China is to be an enemy of China. Remember how China sees itself: The Middle Kingdom.

Those same libertarian economists despise tariffs because they do not see national borders as legitimate. Perhaps they never once imagine that anything can be an exclusive public concern. If nothing is an exclusive public concern, then no tax is necessary – because government need not exist. And because tariffs are taxes, tariffs shouldn’t be necessary either.

But that presupposes utopia. And human beings will not build utopia. Whenever they try, they inevitably make it tyrannical. Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451) recognized that. For those who don’t, consider the old Soviet Union. Or again, consider China, which governs itself with a Party named after the principle of holding all things in common.

“We can’t get there from here” – oh, yes, we can

Darrell Castle is one such libertarian – and his blind spots should surprise everyone.

Increased revenue comes at the cost of decreased production thus offsetting any gains.

Not if the revenue comes from overseas (cf. External Revenue Service) and production is to increase in-country.

Tariffs tend to slow down production wherever they are imposed. That is a concept proven time and again by history.

Since when? Tariffs slow down imports and prompt someone to build factories in the markets into which one wants to sell. (Which is what Elon Musk has done with Tesla.)

The idea then is to spur US manufacturing. That is a good thing but only if people have enough income to afford the products.

They’ll have the income in the form of factory wages.

A banana republic sells bananas to us and we sell them cars. We import twice as many bananas as that country does cars so there is a trade deficit. So we put a 100% tariff on bananas so problem solved. The difficulty is that the banana republic now can’t afford nearly as many cars so it’s self-defeating.

This is an example of a “straw man.” Ten percent is the more likely figure, as Trump has said repeatedly.

Some of the things we import in great numbers are vital to the American people. The product I’m thinking of is antibiotics which is almost exclusively made in China now.

First, having those antibiotics made here, is the idea. We have to start somewhere, and sometime, so we might as well start there, and now.

Second, such infections are avoidable, and one can combat them by strengthening the body’s defenses. Pumping someone (especially a child) full of antibiotics, is allopathic medicine. As Joseph R. Mercola D.O. aptly demonstrated, allopathic medicine is often a cop-out. Secretary Kennedy, fortunately, is already on that case.

Conclusion: tariffs can work

Hopefully this essay will clear up some misunderstandings that many have expressed about tariffs, and their proper role. Again, a baseline tariff of ten percent across the board might indeed replace the income tax. Trump intends the much higher reciprocal tariffs to change behavior. That includes restoring incentives to build things in America, for Americans and for those who produce goods America cannot produce.

Link to:

The article:

https://cnav.news/2025/04/13/news/tariffs-misunderstandings/

Video:

Various sources:

https://retailwire.com/discussion/walmarts-open-call-continues-to-support-products-made-in-the-usa/

https://cnav.news/2025/04/10/editorial/guest/tax-spanish-american-war-century/

https://ewerickson.substack.com/p/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

https://cnav.news/2025/04/12/editorial/guest/tariffs-resetting-global-order/

https://cnav.news/2025/04/13/accountability/executive/china-restoring-american-industrial-might/

https://cnav.news/2025/02/07/accountability/executive/china-taiwan-unintended-consequences/

https://cnav.news/2025/03/08/accountability/executive/china-war-plans/

Declarations of Truth:

https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:

https://declarationsoftruth.locals.com/

Conservative News and Views:

https://cnav.news/

Clixnet Media

https://clixnet.com/