Smoothing out Trump and a new Soviet

Apparently, Trump has decided to no longer tempt his fate regarding contempt of court - which saves him from personal ruin with a renewed January 6 prosecution. So much for using immigration and DOGE to kick the hornet's nest.

His relationship with Putin is not so dangerous as Vlad realizes that his back is against a wall.  Indeed, his idea of pulling together the old soviet team for growing grain and doing space exploration is not bad, as long as his czarist government is not part of the equation. The nobles became the commissars who became the oligarchs, just as he can trace back through Yeltsin to Brezhnev to Stalin and their neo-czarist tyranny. The Soviet Union is not so bad without the terrorist security infrastructure.

The best thing that could happen to Russia or for a soviet confederation is for Ukraine to either win or lose, because the people of Ukraine could never be like the current Russian peasantry that is cowed by Putin's security state. They need to learn from Ukrainians what it is like to be free people - something Putin will never let them do. If either Russia or China let the democratic yeast from Ukraine or Taiwan into their system, their security tyrannies could not survive long. Or they will simply crumble from their own authoritarian stupidity (when underlings lie to keep face).

Trump needs to put together a team from some of his crew and the best on the revenue committees and work out - with the Democrats - a decent tax system. One that looks at tariff/VAT issues logically, raises enough revenue - mostly by no longer letting failure be a rewardable tax deduction - which an Asset VAT rather than capital gains or wealth/estate taxation does.

In other words, look at my stuff and pick up the phone. There is a way to get out of what looks like economic disaster - but you cannot use supply side/feed the rich/trickle down economics to get there. It has reached its limits. We can get there easy or hard. Easy takes a phone call. I'm open 24/7.