Getting rid of Bob Ide should be an absolute priority for anyone who cares about: 1) Wyoming's wildlands, and 2) anyone who is not a multimillionaire. A diehard MAGA/WFC who was in Washington D.C. at the time of the January 6 insurrection (he did not take part in it), his "less government, more freedom" is an absolute joke. He's a major Natrona County landlord whose very livelihood depends on the government protecting his rental lands property rights, which only exist due to the government. He is apparently unaware of the hypocrisy.
He's been amongst the most extreme members of the WFC.
On the 250ths Anniversary of American Independence it'd do us well to recall that while the Revolution may have been lead by landed patricians, it was fought by landed yeoman.
It's a great misfortune to the country, or perhaps a timely reminder, of exactly how far we've fallen in that regard. We have, in the form of Donald J. Trump, a President, albeit an illegitimate one, who is the very symbol of what Americans rebelled against 250 years ago. This monumental palace coach should serve to remind us.
Had Donald Trump been alive in 1776, he'd have been a Loyalist.
At the end of the war he'd have been packed up to Canada to annoy the French, who at least would largely have not understood him. Not, in his dementia, that we do either.
Washington on Blueskin.
George Washington owned his own mounts. John Adams broke one of his own mounts as late as his 80s. Taft kept a cow on the White House lawn.
Donald Trump flies back and forth to his golf resort in Florida on the American taxpayers dime.1 And now, at the expense of some $400,000,000 taxpayer dollars, he's unveiled the new one, and gushes about its "luxury":
This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. history, it just can't be avoided.
The Federal Government, funded by the American taxpayers in the form of taxes, and by individuals and foreign governments in the form of loans, has taken delivery of one Boeing "VC-25B Bridge", a military conversion of a Boeing 747-8 originally built as a Boeing Business Jet. The plane was delivered in 2012 to Qatar Amiri Flight and used by the House of Thani. In June 2023, it was delivered to Global Jet Isle of Man. The Qatari government gave it as a gift. . . if we assume governments really give gifts to other governments. Poor little King Donny just wasn't happy with the existing Air Force One and given that he's in his last term he couldn't wait for new ones under construction to be completed.
After he leaves office, which given his advanced age and rapidly declining mental status is likely to be before his term expires, the airplane, which has cost the United States at least $400,000,000 in "upgrades" to make it work in its role as a royal coach for his majesty, will be transferred to his presidential library foundation. Indeed, that will happen before his unfortunate illegitimate reign is over.
This is complete bullshit.
I've posted on this story, and this airplane, here before:
Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.
Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in. If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One. But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.
RD-2
Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt. It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight. The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.
Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.
In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow. It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta. Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.
Truman's VC-118.
President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.
Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.
At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier. 707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.
747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that. They've been used ever since.
These aren't normal 747s. They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.
Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago. The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore. Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft. Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option. Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.
The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.
What the new Air Force Ones will look like.
Enter Qatar.
Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete. But here's the thing. Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft. All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.
Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things. He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well. In his case, this is inexcusable. It's a combat airplane.
Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.
Which gets to this.
The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft. The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well. It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.
But that's what Trump tends to use it for.
That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do. It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips. In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C. In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III. In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.
Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.
Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft. It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.
So why am I doing it again?
Since May, 2025 Donald Trump has used the existing Air Force One to fly back and forth to his Florida golf home/resort, effectively using the airplane as a toy, repeatedly. He's also used it for what are basically campaign trips. He's launched an illegal war against Iran for which the Department of Defense now seeks $80,000,000,000 to cover, and which killed thirteen Americans and untold numbers of Iranians. That war encouraged Israel to not only participate in it, or perhaps the other way around, but also to engage in an invasion of Lebanon. He's spent something like $13,000,000 to Rhino Line the Washington D. C. reflecting pool, he's trying to build a massive ballroom that will ultimately cost the taxpayer one way or another, and he's trying to build a triumphal arch, making the United States the first country in the world to build an arch after getting solidly defeated in a war.
He's demented, and he acts like an emperor. This airplane is part of that delusion.
Truth be known, the entire Air Force One thing hasn't made sense for years. Having some sort of aircraft available for Presidential use for Presidential work makes some limited sense. But most of what Trump uses the aircraft for could be achieved through commercial aviation. Indeed, not one single trip Trump has taken could not have been accomplished that way.
And that's how this should be done. Back when transpiration was by rail, the President didn't own a train. When Trump goes over to the G7 to insult the Italian Prime Minister with his lunacy, that could be done by commercial air, and should be done that way. And I mean commercial air, not chartered air. The government could get him a ticket on a regularly scheduled flight.
And when he goes to Mar A Lago he can pay for his own ticket.
I know that the objections will be "oh my, it isn't safe". That is, frankly, for the most part complete BS. Trump could get a ticket on Ryan Air and be just as safe as anyone else.
And if its a little less safe, that's a good thing. One of the problems with the modern presidency is that the occupant of the White House is too insulated from the people he supposedly serves. At one time the President shook the hands of all who lined up on New Years Day. Not anymore.
If the President had to travel with the great unwashed masses maybe he'd be less of a lunatic. Or maybe he'd just realize that its a real job.
Anyway you look at it, Air Force One is a titanic waste of money. The Air Force has aircraft. If he needs to go, he can load up on a C5A with the equipment going wherever its going.
And this waste of money is going to a Trump library just before Trump leaves office.
WTF?
If the US had to spend money on it, it should keep it. This is appalling. That should be addressed as soon as possible. If there's a current way to address it, it just should be silently done. Trump can leave office and his library, which frankly is a pointless thing in the first place, can buy a Revell model kit of a Boeing 747. This absurd flying castle can carry on in its existing role and join the two that are being built, or preferably at least one of those two contracts cancelled seeing as the US has this thing.
At that point, the signature on the under panel that Trump affixed yesterday can be fittingly modified, recalling World War Two nose art. A realistic Trump nude torso doodle, a la Epstein, can be installed. A fitting monument.
It's a gift form Qatar, an authoritarian, semi-constitutional hereditary emirate monarchy ruled by the House of Thani. The Emir is the absolute authority.
Just the sort of government that King Donald can related to. Apparently they could relate to him, or more likely, thought they could obtain some advantage by appealing to his pathetic vanity.
The plane will be transferred to his Presidential library before he leaves office. What books would even appear in Donald Trump's library boggles the imagination. He does not appear to be a well read man, or even really read anything. Figures from his last administration related he had a hard time reading memos they gave him as he lost interest so rapidly. He does not appear to be a smart man.2
And, current American worship of wealth aside, we shouldn't expect him to be. What I've long suspected turns out to be true. The wealthy are often stupid.
This actually doesn't surprise me at all. The question is whether wealth makes you stupid, or encourages the breeding down of intelligence. Either can be maintained.
It was Chesterton who noted that "AMONG the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it." There's something to that. But beyond that, there's plenty of evolutionary evidence of the latter point. Wild cattle are quite a bit smarter than domestic ones. Wolves are smarter than dogs. Wild turkeys are very smart birds whereas domestic ones, apparently are dumb as a post.
Cave drawing of an Aurochs. Modern cows can be dicey, but aurochs wanted to kill you.
The question would be, of course, why this is true, and selective breeding by human beings largely explains it. We'd rather not have a mean cow that seeks to break free, raising a gang of mean cows, and lay siege to the village. Hunters and herdsmen like smart dogs, but bred to be fairly compliant. If you've ever owned a standard poodle, one of the oldest hunting breeds, you'll see how much of the wolf wasn't bread out of them, they think for themselves, we've worked a lot on dogs since then.
French Poodle in the early 1900s. The coat may look weird but they're a hunting dog, and a German bred one. Even now, the Puddle Dog has opinions on everything and isn't shy about giving you them. The only other modern hunting dog that rivals them that way is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, another old breed..
It's a dangerous thing to say, and contrary to the thesis advanced by eugenicists, but there's pretty good evidence that people on average were getting smarter and smarter all along throughout human history, in very real terms, up until just recently. Evolution was forcing it. Some evolutionary biologist argue that the homo sapien sapien of our current era is demonstrably smarter than homo sapiens of, say, 100,000 years ago. . . or 50,000 years ago. . . or 10,000 years ago, or 5,000.3 And it makes some sense.
In a normal, i.e., not rich, environment a lot of things go into mate selection, oh heck let's say spouse selection other than what goes into attracting people, oh heck let's say men, to Only Fans. Love has always been an aspect of it, but its interesting to note how even when I was a teen, teenagers selected dates on character, which included intelligence, more than anything else. It's funny to think of now, but if a guy had a "pretty" girlfriend, he was just considered lucky, and a girl with brains and other positive characteristics would have a boyfriend who featured the same, irrespective of her looks. When the girl was good looking, it was just sort of like winning a bonus prize. Purely good looking girls, if that's all they had going for them, weren't really sought out.
This remained true, I'd note, throughout my entire single life. Maybe it's largely true now.
But with the wealthy, it's another matter.
Future Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith and her first husband, Billy Ray Smith. She was 17 and he was 16 when she married. He was cook. She changed her image enormously after they divorced and ended up married to an octogenarian after being a Playboy Centerfold and Guess Jeans model. Do we think that late union was a marriage for love on either side? She paid the price, of course, dying young. Her first husband is still alive, but never speaks much. He was apparently crushed by the death of their son, pictured here, when he was in his twenties. He never remarried.
Donald Trump, who gives no evidence of being an intelligent man, has been married three times, with each spouse having a certain sort of look save for one. Two have been Slavic beauties of a certain sort, which means they present a certain look that certain people regard as glamorous beauty.4. The second, Marla Maples, actually presents as pretty smart. That marriage lasted six years.5
The point here?
I'm not thinking that a lot of the super rich determine their mates the way regular people do. I don't think "is he/she a good helpmate?" or "do we have the same interests, faiths, worldview?", or to be really old school, "can this guy/gal help me around the farm?" has gone into it much. Rather, they often seem to be chosen on looser characteristics that might more resemble how oriental potentates chose concubines for the harem, i.e., looks.
When Arab raiders stole Irish women, after all, smart as those women tend to be, they weren't marketing them on "look at this ginger. . . she's really got the brains!"
Now, a person can take this too far, but we live in a rich society. The richest of us may in fact be stupider than the rest of us, or a lot of us. And we collectively, just like a placid cow in the field, may be starting to get dumber overall.
We live in a materially very wealthy culture. Even the average impoverished American is wealthier than many thought to be well off in former eras. And to add to that, the decay in morality, brought about by material wealth, which has allowed us to focus only on ourselves, has developed a self centered sexual culture that contributes to this.
Put another way, as one female observer seriously noted:
But its not making people happier. People know something is wrong.
Gallup informs us that most Americans believe in the "American Dream", whatever that is, but that a very high percentage believe its unobtainable.
The American Dream has been defined in various ways. I think it might be best defined in the film The Best Years Of Our Lives.
In that film there's a moment when discharged sergeant Fred Derry gives a loan to a discharged Navy vet who is a tenant farmer. He wants to buy his own farm. He knows he can do it.
That's the best description of the American Dream I've ever seen.
The real dream is to own your own. And at the time of the American Revolution, most did. That's what had brought them to the country.
I don't know what they teach the young now, but when I was growing up it was a lot of crap about how people came over for freedom, mostly freedom of religion.
Yeah, some did, sort of. The best example might be the Puritans on the Mayflower, who were seeking freedom to worship in their own way and to tell everyone else in the world how they were supposed to do it. If you were in a Puritan community you were worshipping with them or getting punished, severely.
Only about 1/3d of the Mayflower passengers were Puritans. The rest were likely members of the Church of England which itself was less than 100 years separated from the Catholic Church, and even less separated from the Prayer Book Rebellion.6 Point is, those passengers, who were all part of the group that put in as they were out of beer, didn't come for religious freedom.
They came for land.
Land is, and was, independent. People knew then, and they knew now, that land was independence, freedom, and a decent life worth living. If you could obtain, as Chesterton would later put it, "three acres and a cow", or more likely 40, and a mule, you had it made. You were not rich. You were not poor. You were your own family.
Land is what caused Englishmen to risk their lives in 1607 to come to a new continent, or Frenchmen to come to it in 1608, or Spanish to come to it in 1565. Here they could get it, at some cost, but a none the less obtainable one. In Europe, they could not. And if not all came as farmers, tradesmen who came, came because they could open their own shops, essentially operating on the same ideal. Those who couldn't muster up the cash for transit indentured themselves to do so which, in spite of latter day white apologist, was not slavery. It was a temporary means of getting started, in some ways like apprenticeships or joining the service operates for many today.
We cannot say that it was universally benign. That would be a lie. The land in fact already belonged to somebody else, the native inhabitants, whose claims were excused due to their rotational agricultural practices and low population density. But that doesn't change the basic fact. It was land, not "freedom" of any type that drew the immigrant.
By moving, they freed themselves from some landowning overlord and made themselves independent farmers. That dream lasted all the way up until the mid 20th Century in some fashion. While it remains alive today, the truth is that the reality it of it is as dead, yielded to the bloated interests of the rich. The largest landowner in the US today is billionaire sports and real estate mogul Stan Kroenke, who owns land in Wyoming. Mom and pop shops have yielded to the nightmare created by Sam Walton.
People who think the American dream is alive are largely fooling themselves.
Nonetheless, a dream is a dream, and revolutions are based on dreams.
The American Revolution was based on a landowning dream. It wasn't, frankly necessarily wholly admirable. The Intolerable Acts included, in a very real sense, the sense that the Crown was going to restrict the right of expanding countrymen's families to settle new lands, and they were right. The fear also was that the Crown would restrict economic activity in the Colonies for revenue purposes, and that was partially correct. Common Sense and the like aside, a real cause of the Revolution was the native sense that the free right to settle land, and engage in small free enterprise, was the only thing that separated American Colonist form the English and European masses.
They were right, if not necessarily morally right.
A large number, maybe most, revolutions since that time, and some before it, have been based on the same cause. The French Revolution was not, and it remains a global oddball. The Russian Revolution, failed as it was, is such an example, however, as was the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Chinese Revolution of 1911, and the Chinese Civil War, both failed examples, also were. The Mexican Revolution, also a failed revolution, very much was.
The Mexican Revolution provides, in fact, an excellent example. Through every phase, from 1911 onwards, the rich landed class fought back, and when defeat arrived, they stepped aside and regrouped. It kept the Revolution from really being successful. Indeed, of all the revolutions we have noted, only the American Revolution was really successful.
But the success it created is dead. Today,. we have the Donald Trumps and Elon Musks and other 1%ers that control the economy, and which some like Jonah Goldberg even feel we should celebrate (as to Musk).
Well, no.
Time for a second American revolution.
Not, we might note, one with guns. Indeed, that would inevitably be not only immoral, but outright moronic, lead by people festooned with Second Amendment tattoos while advocating outright fascism.
No, something more radical than that, a revolution at the ballot box.
It's time to end the moronic celebration of a "free market system" that isn't free in any sense. Corporate Capitalist are shoving pablum down the throats of the electorate while pocking the largess. Large-scale corporatism needs to end.
And so too does a weird millennialism appropriations of public lands by people like Deseret Mike Lee and pathetic fellow travelers like John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman.
A revolution can be had at the ballot box. It won't happen all at once, but if started now the two party system can be ended, and the creation of wealth for the wealthy can be as well. Remote land ownership, something the colonist came here to escape, can be as well.
It won't happen as long as people don't think. But they need to think now. At some point they will, and if we don't take on the yoke of this burden now, when the plow ox bulks, it'll be bad. Footnotes
1. Donald Trump is such a WASP, with the adherence to the "P", that he's converted some property in Washington D.C. to become a golf course and is putting in courses on some military bases.
Put in shooting ranges or something. Not something that fat old white guys play.
2. The fact that Trump is a Wharton graduate is really a slam at the Ivy League. Yes, they have some great schools, but the system they operate in really has graduated some failures. Pete Hegseth provides such an example.
Wharton owes the country an apology, and I say that as somebody who has a relative that graduated from there. The fact that Trump graduated is appalling. The fact that Chuck Gray is their product is as well.
3. Some theologians have speculated that there was a point with our species when God converted us from just a smart hominid into what we are in the Divine Plan, with an immortal soul. The speculation is that it was the moment language arrived, and there's some archeological and biological evidence that moment was in fact sudden and radical.
4. Frankly, Trump spouses 1 and 3 really aren't bombshells. Melania is more properly characterized as "handsome".
5. We can't really speculate on the smarts of 1 and particularly 3. Melania is hard to figure as she's never obtained a really good command of English. None the less, people who admire her, are frankly doing so willfully.
6. Recusant Catholics are estimated to be less than 5% of the English population at the time, which means that were likely to probably have actually been 10 to 15%. Today, more Catholics attend weekly services in the UK than the established church. Recently one Anglican convert in the UK described her transition as "going Full Fat Catholicism"
I'm not. I'm on Team Distributism, which is the natural form of capitalism rather than the state created system we have, which overall, in its late stage, is destructive and soul crushing.
Part of that soul crushing nature is creating people like Musk and Bill Gates, people so wealthy that they are destructive merely by having so much wealth.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, under constant attack from demented New York real estate developer Donald Trump, milled his own lumber, chiseled stone, and formed iron to hand build his own house.
Massie actually is what Republicans claim to want to be, but aren't. He's a far cry from Chuck Gray who went right to work for his daddy's radio station.
And he's sure a lot closer to Lincoln than Trump is.
Posted as a reminder that management and capital often really doesn't care that much what happens to labor and regular people.
In 1911, it was textile workers. In 2026, it's everybody. You may care, for example, about big oil and big ag, but it doesn't care about you. It doesn't care that much about you if you are working for it, and you can't be assured that it cares if your children inherit a planet with the surface temperature of the sun.
Oh, sure, there are some that might, on occasion. But don't fool yourself that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Jeff Bezos, and their pals, are pulling for you.
146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Most of the victims were Italian or Jews immigrants 14 to 23 years old. 62 of the victims jumped to their deaths.
The fabric fire in the fireproof building broke out five minutes before end of shift. The doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft
Oh, but don't worry. . . today's oligarchs have your vest interest at heart. . .
A really interesting Richard C. Miller photograph of Marilyn Monroe was taken, which we learned of due to Reddit's 80 Years Ago Sub, and which we repost here via fair use.
Miller had "discovered" Monroe, who was already modeling following her photo spread in World War Two's Yank. Miller, typical for the era, photographed her in swimsuits, including bikinis (very modest ones by today's standards), but also had a an entire series of other topics, including the subject shooting firearms. Here he depicted her in a wedding dress.
The real life model had already been married and divorced by this time, having married at age 16 and then filing for divorce while her husband was deployed in the Navy during the Second World War. This photograph is actually commonly claimed to be a wedding photo from her first marriage, which it is not, although the veil is remarkably similar to the one she actually wore in her wedding.
Actual photograph of Monroe at her first wedding, when she was 16 years old.
In the studio photograph she's holding some sort of book with a Christian cross on it, with that style of cross depiction very common for the era. This is what causes us to note this photograph in a way, as it brings up the topic addressed here:
While indelicate, this also shows the portrayal of a really beautiful woman before Playboy perverted all of that.
Monroe was, as is well known, Playboy's first, and unwilling, centerfold. But what's interesting here is that prior to Playboy arriving on the scene, this was not an uncommon depiction of a really beautiful woman. There were, of course, already some women who were focused on for being really busty, Jane Russell giving an example, but the theme did not absolutely dominate. To look at the 19 year old Monroe here, you would not have thought of her in that fashion. A decade later, you would, and even after Life intervened to push her nude photograph first as an art item. We've dealt with that before here as well, although frankly we need to modify our entry. That post is here:
Movie poster for And Quiet Flows the Don. What on earth does this have to do with anything? Well, maybe more than you might figure, as the main character is a local Cossack trying to live a local, and not always all that admirable, life but ends up getting carried away with the tied of events which destroyes all of that.
So what, he must be thinking, is the freaking problem?
Well, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the entire Trump family are the problem (and people like Jeff Epstein are as well).
In other quarters people like to debate whether or not the United States is a "Christian nation". Whatever the answer to that might be (I think the answer is yes, but that it's a Puritan country) it was definitely a small freeholder country. That is, the country was mostly made up of small yeomanry and small tradesmen early on.
Indeed, the widespread use of corporations was illegal in the 1770s and for many years thereafter. Part of the rebellion against the crown was based on what effectively were export duties, a species of tariff, on chartered businesses, i.e., team importers, that the colonist had no control over and they reacted by destroying the property. Ironically the very people who emblazon themselves with 1776 themed tattoos in 2026 would have supported King George III doing what he did, just as they support King Donny doing them through executive order. Shoot, Parliament had actually voted on the tea duties.
Nonetheless, teh country has always had some very large business interests that, when allowed to, operate against the economic interest of everyone else. They don't want to "share the wealth". They think their getting wealthy is sharing enough, and good for everyone. Up until 1865, or instance, we had the Southern planter class, a market set of agriculturalist who destroyed land and people in their endeavors, but believed in it so strongly that they'd argue for the perversion of the Christian faith to support slavery.
It wasn't just Planters, however. Coal magnates, industrialists, foreign ranch owners, the list is pretty long.
It wasn't until later that absentee merchants dominated "main street", both the actual one or the metaphorical one. The first chain store is claimed by some to be The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was founded in 1859. Woolworth's started twenty years later in 1879. Piggly Wiggly, the grocery store, showed up in 1916, and proved to be the model for "grocery stores" that would wipe out locally held grocery stores, for the most party, in the next couple of decades.
Since the mid 20th Century this trend has continued unabated and unaddressed. Every Walmart represents the destruction, probably, of a half dozen or more locally owned family supported stores. The appliance section represents the closure of local appliance stores. The entertainment section of record and video stores. You name it.
None of this had to be.
There's been a lot of ink spilled on the rise of Donald Trump and what caused it. We've done that ourselves. Others have noted the presence of small businessmen in the MAGA ranks, but it's been underreported in contrast to the blue collar Rust Belt members of the MAGA rank and file.
It shouldn't be.
When I was young, which is now a very long time ago, the Democratic Party was still regarded as the part of the working class. Unions, which have never been strong here, were still strong enough to host the annual Jefferson Jackson Day that backed the Democratic Party. But by 1973 the Democrats started to board the vessel of blood that would end up causing thousands to get off the boat. By the mid 1990s the party that had been the one hardhats joined became one in you had to be comfortable with a focus on disordered sex and infanticide. The Democrats, for the most part, forgot the working class.
At the same time, the Republican Party was widely accused of being the Country Club Party, with good reason. If you were a member of a country club or chamber of commerce, you were probably a Republican or you were weird. The thing is, however that the economic outlook of the hardhat class and the country club class was closer to each other than they thought and the same neglect hurt both of them severely.
As early as the 1960s, successive Democratic and Republican administrations were really comfortable with exporting business overseas. Nobody ever outright admitted that, but they were. And both Democratic and Republican administrations simply stopped enforcing anti trust legislation. Aggressively applied, entities like Walmart would be busted up, but it just doesn't happen. Aware of what was going on at first, and trying to struggle against it nearly everywhere, local business failed to arrest the destructive march of the giants. In part, their efforts were so local that they were like those of Russian peasantry trying to arrest the Red Army. They tried, but doing it locally just won't going to work. You can't wait until the Red Army is in sight of the village. Nobodoy lifted a finger at the national or state level to help.
The march of progress (which it wasn't) and free enterprise (which it also wasn't) and all that.
So the small business class became desperate, and in desperation they turned to the guy who offered no answers but who seemed like he might help, Trump.
What an irony, really. Trump doesn't "shop local" and he doesn't have the faintest grasp of what small business is like. He's spent his eight decades around the wealthy and is more comfortable with bullying smaller economic interest than helping them.
Even now, the bones a small business economy remain. In order to advance that interest, however, small businessmen have to do something they really aren't comfortable with.
They have to be militant about it.
Part of that involves being militant at the polls.*
And that involves asking some questions, but first it involves waking up to economic and structural realities.
The first of those realities is that the United States does not have a free market economic system, and hasn't for a long time. It has a Corporate Capitalist economic system that favors state created economic creatures given fictional personhood which favors economies of scale. The goal is to make prices cheaper, and part of that is to make wagers cheaper. The consumers are expected to adjust to this by getting new jobs at higher wages, sort of like the protagonist in Kansas City Star.
So, in essence, if you have an appliance store and are taking home, let's say, $150,000 a year, and with that you are trying to provide for all of your family's living expenses, and Walmart comes in, well, you should have become something else, and now this is your chance to go and do that.
Except you probably won't. You'll probably close the store and retire, if you are over 50, or go on to another lower paying job if you aren't.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Okay, not facing that grim reality, what you need to do is find out if politicians are more interested in their super sized huge television having a low, low price, or helping you. And helping you means leveling the playing field with legislation, not "buy local" campaigns.
And I'll note here, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is trying to defend the Wyoming Business Council, is a prime example of people who are there to hurt you.
And so we begin.
1. Where is his bread buttered?
In other words, how does he make his money.
That may or not may not be a reason to vote for or against somebody. In Wyoming, fore xample, there are small businessmen in, and opposed to, the Freedom Caucus at the legislature, and voting for the WFC is a complete no go. So the question is informative, not determinative.
Having said that, there are certain answers that, in my mind, are nearly disqualifying.
One is a near complete lack of private business experience, even as an employee. Wyoming in particular seems to get a lot of candidates who cite "I was in the military" as a reason to vote for them, based on a lifelong military career. Well, that isn't like working for a private business at all. There's never been a time in the history of the U.S. military in which a soldier wasn't going to get paid, save for the government briefly shutting down. And almost all member of the military don't worry about overhead and payroll expenses. They also don't have to worry about the country coming to them and saying, "Gee, U.S. Army, we've really liked you here, but the British Army made us a better offer so we're doing to close you down. . . "
It's not just a lifetime of sucking on the government tit that should be concerning. People who have a lot of family money are in the same category.
I"m not necessary saying don't vote for somebody who is rich. I am saying you need to weight it carefully. It's hard to get politicians right now, at least at the national level, who aren't fairly well off, due to the Citizens United case. But if a person is rich because they inherited it, a pause should be made on the voting lever.
Of course, when you ask this, you're probably going to get the answer of "yes", because it includes the word "American" and nobody wants to be against the American canything if they're a politician.
So you're going to have to ask them some questions or question which shows what they know what the American System is.
Okay, right now I'll note that this included tariffs to protect American industry, and I've been hard on those. I also don't live in the first half of the 19th Century when industry had barely achieved a foothold in the U.S. And, it might be worth noting, that Clay didn't propose tariffs as people hurt his feelings. At any rate, post 1890s tariffs have proven to be a disaster.
What I'm really getting at is the use of public funds to assist local businesses.
A good example of the American System in Wyoming has been the Wyoming Business Council.. The carpetbagging Wyoming Freedom Caucus is attacking it basically because it uses public money. If you are in Wyoming, a good question is whether or not the pol supports the Wyoming Business Council being defunded. If the answer is yes, this pol doesn't care if you evaporate and is instead mindlessly adopting twattle that the WBC is "Socialist". First of all, I don't care if it is socialist, I only care, and so should you, about whether its effective in generating local businesses.
3. What actual legislation would they support to help local business.
By this, I mean concrete examples.
Chances are, you won't get any, so you'll have to press them.
4. What is their position on taxation?
By this, I mean the whole smash. Local, state and Federal.
The local press always asks this position of our pols, and they rarely give any kind of a detailed answer. Right now, most of them note that they aren't fond of taxes, but they don't support the WFC's effort to gut state property taxes either.
That's not specific enough.
5. What do they think of the out of staters buying up all the ___________and what would they do about it?
Here, and in much ag country, this would pertain to ranch land. But I'm sure it pertains to other things as well. Shoot ,around here it also would seem to pertain to tire stores, it's just ridiculous.
Expressing "concern" doesn't mean anything at all, even if you are Lisa Murkowski.
6. What do their employees, if they have any, think of them?
For some reason, this is never asked, but it should be. If the answer is that the candidates employees hate the candidate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, that probably needs to be considered. If, on the other hand, the employees widely admire the employer/candidate, that says something else.
I'll note here that personally I had people come to me as late as the 2010s who had worked for my grandfather and wanted me to know how he had helped them out in tough times. He never ran for anything, but that says a lot about his character.
I don't think we've heard anything like that from any of Jeffrey Epstein's employees.
I'll also note that as a businessman myself, it seems some businessmen are willing to fire people the second they might have to take a little less home. That's a character defect that's disturbing, at the least.
7. Why are they in the party they're in?
Again, an honest answer.
Right now you can't be a Republican or Democrat and be 100% comfortable with either party. That would suggest that you are letting others do your thinking for you. Businessmen have a right to know what drew a candidate to the party, what ever it is.
They also have a right to know what a candidate disagrees with about the positions of their own party. If he doesn't disagree with any party position, he's an unthinking stooge.
8. What business related or policy related organizations are they in, or endorsed by?
This is often overlooked unless those organizations step out themselves, which they sometimes do.
Make Liberty Win is, in my view, a big no/go for a candidate. The Club for Growth is as well. The latter favors an economy that will screw you.
Footnotes
*They really need to be militant about it everywhere, however.
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