…to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse of taxpayer money.
In California at least, price gouging (more than 10%) in an emergency is illegal. However, economic emergencies are rarely (never) declared, like the income-based housing emergency intentionally created to keep inventory low and demand (prices) high. Enforcement is very selective, as are laws very selectively crafted to line pockets with money gouged from the poor.
You should know the sort of illegal behavior Harris covers up and the sort of people she defends versus holds accountable.
It is illegal to change abortion procedures to procure material for profitable gain. Those videos expose the reality that this is common place and not held accountable.
The lack of accountability is why responsibles turn a blind eye to abortionists on the level of Kermit Gosnell…until they couldn’t.
FYI. Doge has not saved any money. No fraud has been uncovered and many of the cuts have had to be reversed.
You do not have the government.
Trump supports billionares, not the poor.
He is making it harder for poor people and without a working government you canot have the price controls you are asking for.
Now - answer the question… Are you a communist?
See previous. self=other
Run away! Run Away
The remarks of Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut on the Senate floor yesterday:
“Usually, public corruption happens in secret. The politicians that do it, they know it’s wrong to accept money in exchange for favorable government treatment, and so they hide it - until they’re found out.
“A textbook example would be Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards, who in the 1990’s was quietly taking bribes from businessmen who wanted to get licenses for riverboat casinos. In the late 1990’s, Edwards was convicted for the crimes of extortion, racketeering, and money laundering. The way in which he was doing it was like out of a movie– in one instance, a businessman handed the Governor a suitcase full of $100 bills - totaling $400,000 - all in order to get a 6-0 commission ruling in favor of this casino. Eventually, as with most all corrupt officials who are taking money privately, Edwards was discovered. He was disgraced, and he went to jail.
“As we speak, our president, Donald Trump, is going to the Middle East on a public corruption tour. He’s no less corrupt than Edwin Edwards of Louisiana. In fact, he’s way more corrupt. Edwin Edwards took $400,000, while in the Middle East, Donald Trump will cement deals totaling in the billions in exchange for favorable treatment by the U.S. federal government for these Gulf countries.
“The key difference is that Donald Trump isn’t hiding it like other corrupt officials are. He’s not ashamed, he’s not doing it in secret. His corruption is wildly public, and his hope is that by doing it publicly, he can con the American people into thinking that it’s not corruption because he’s not hiding it. But what he’s doing, in reality, is no different than any other corrupt public official who does it in private, other than the fact that Trump’s corruption, his foreign policy corruption, is just so much bigger in scope and the impact that it has on the American people than anything a corrupt mayor or a corrupt governor may have done.
“Trump’s first major foreign trip–and he just landed–is to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE; not because these are our most important allies in the world; not because these are the most important countries in the world; not because he’s going there to talk about making the Middle East more safe and more secure. No, his first trip is to these three countries because these are the three countries that have agreed to pay Donald Trump money. Donald Trump is going to collect tribute, and it’s all just out in the open.
“Frankly, it’s pretty easy to see this coming. Recent former presidents – Republicans and Democrats – have always very seriously and studiously avoided even the appearance of a conflict of interest. President Bush placed his assets into a qualified blind trust, where investment decisions were made without his knowledge or input. Both Biden and Obama divested all of their assets except for cash and mutual funds. They did not enter into any new business ventures while in the White House.
“In contrast, Trump has refused to abide by these standard ethics rules. His family runs his business, but nobody honestly believes that the kids are really in charge. President Trump is still calling the shots. His interests are not in a blind trust. He’s made no pledge he won’t do new deals, even with foreign entities, while he’s in office. In fact, he is doing deals seemingly every single week. He is open for business, and every foreign government knows it.
“In fact, it appears that right now the Gulf states are trying to outdo each other to up the price of buying an American President. And because Trump is greedy and he’s insecure – he wants to fit in with the billionaire class – he is traveling to the region with his hat out for further solicitations.
“So let’s ask, what is the going rate right now for a Gulf country to buy access to Donald Trump? To get favorable treatment from the federal government?
“For Qatar, we recently found out, it’s a $400 million luxury plane. This plane has been opulently configured for royal use. It’s not a gift to the U.S. government - it’s a personal gift to the president. The terms of the arrangement apparently include a stipulation that after Trump leaves office, it will be transferred to Trump, to his presidential library – which means Trump gets the so-called ‘floating palace’ for himself.
“This is outrageous. We’ve never seen anything like this before in American history– a foreign government gifting a $400 million luxury plane to the President of the United States. This is spelled out as blatantly unconstitutional by our Founding Fathers. They wrote into the Constitution a specific clause, the emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officeholders from accepting gifts from any King, Prince, or foreign state without the consent of Congress. How much clearer could it be? It’s unconstitutional. It’s illegal. The Founding Father knew it was evil to have members of Congress or the President of the United States accepting expensive gifts from a foreign nation who in exchange want favors from the US government. Donald Trump’s acceptance of the luxury plane from a foreign monarch is basically THE corruption our Founding fathers were seeking to prevent.
“That’s not all he’s getting from Qatar. The Trump Organization recently signed a $5.5 billion golf course and real estate deal with DarGlobal and Qatari Diar, a firm established by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. $5.5 billion. While Trump’s in office.
“It would have been unthinkable for any previous president to enter into a $5.5 billion dollar business deal with anybody, nevermind a foreign government, while they were in office. And it still should be unthinkable.
“Now, Qatar is a U.S. ally It’s a very important ally. But they are a complicated country. They have their own interests, some of which do not overlap with ours. A foreign government like Qatar’s should not have a $5 billion chit hanging over the head of a sitting U.S. president, and they should not be gifting him a $400 million plane. That should kind of go without saying.
“For Saudi Arabia, the price is also in the billions. Soon after leaving the White House, in Trump’s first term, his son-in-law Jared Kushner created a private equity firm and got a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia. The board of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund questioned such a large investment in an unproven fund, but the Saudi Crown Prince overruled the board, undoubtedly seeing the political advantage of investing directly with the Trump family.
“But this was only the beginning. The Trump family has put things into overdrive during his second term. Within his first three weeks in office, Trump convened a meeting at the White House with the head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund – not to discuss matters of state, but to negotiate a deal between the PGA and the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour. You want to know why? To try to bring PGA tournaments back to Trump golf courses. Convened a meeting in the White House with the Saudis in order to enrich himself.
“In addition to the $5 billion Qatari real estate deal, the Trump Organization is also partnering with Saudi firm [Dar Global] on a $1 billion Trump-branded hotel and tower in Dubai. The property’s website–this is a Trump-financed property along with a Saudi investment fund offers free 10-year “golden visas,” to the United States, hinting at the opportunity for investors in Trump’s property to buy residency in the United States and a pathway to citizenship.
“For the UAE, the price is somewhere north of $2 billion. Last week, Eric Trump and World Liberty Financial co-founder Zach Witkoff spoke at a conference in Dubai on crypto called Token 2049.
“As an aside here, it’s just so fantastic – and bone chilling – how transparent these guys are in their use of public positions to enrich themselves. I’m going to tell the story of Trump stablecoin and the corruption with the Emiratis, but let’s just pause for a second and consider the fact that the Trump family could have partnered with anybody in the world on their new crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. But of all the people in the world to partner with on this new crypto venture, they chose the son of Trump’s Middle East envoy. Trump’s Middle East envoy, the guy who’s making all the decisions on U.S. policy in the Middle East - just to make it crystal crystal clear to the Gulf countries that when they deal with World Liberty Financial, Trump’s crypto venture, they are dealing directly with the people responsible for making U.S. policy in the Middle East. It’s just stunning. Literally the sons of the president and the sons of the Middle East envoy running a crypto venture and then going directly into the Middle East in order to find their first investment. And guess what? Miracle– they found it.
“MGX, an investment firm backed by the Emirati government at this conference, announced that they had looked at all the crypto companies in the world that they could partner with to invest $2 billion in the crypto exchange Binance and they selected, wait for it, drumroll… the company run by the sons of the President of the United States and the U.S. Middle East envoy. $2 billion. Now World Liberty’s role in this transaction is not that complicated–it’s similar to a bank: MGX, this Emitari firm, deposits $2 billion with the firm and, in return, receives the stablecoin to be used on these crypto exchanges. The firm holds on to these dollars, invests them, and keeps the profits for themselves. So the Trump-Witkoff company just gets basically a gift of capital. And if they just used that $2 billion to invest in Treasury bonds, it would profit around $85 million a year from these investments alone.
“And the money goes directly to Trump. Just directly to Trump. It’s literally not complicated. Emirates. World Liberty Financial. Donald Trump. This isn’t 1990’s Louisiana. Nobody’s hiding it. On World Liberty’s website they say, “an entity affiliated with Donald J. Trump” owns 60% of the equity in the company. And because of this deal, Trump and Witkoff can further capitalize. Because Trump’s stablecoin just became the 5th most valuable stablecoin in the world because of the Emirati investment.
“And if the plane and the real estate deals and the private equity fund investment and the stablecoin weren’t enough for you, Trump has found one last way for Gulf money to flow seamlessly into his pocket: it’s called the Trump meme coin.
“What’s the business model here? Trump gets a huge payment whenever he releases a batch of these meme coins, which by the way have no underlying value other than just the demand that people have for Trump’s coin. And then each time a Trump coin is bought or sold, a small fee is routed directly to the company owned by Trump. According to one analysis, nearly $325 million in fees have been accrued since the coin was launched in January. Just four and half months, $325 million worth of fees.
“Trump hides the buyers of the coin. In this way, the meme coin is kind of a little bit like Louisiana corruption. But we know that the majority of the buyers aren’t Americans who want to help Trump make this nation great again. The majority of the buyers of Trump coin are super-rich foreigners - princes, oligarchs, authoritarians - who are buying the coin in order to get in good with Trump or to get something in exchange.
“Now one great thing about buying the coin is that you get access to Trump and the White House. And again, they’re not hiding this. Two weeks ago, Trump announced that he would host a private dinner at the White House, with seats reserved exclusively for the top 220 Trump coin holders. In two days since the announcement, Trump’s company made $900,000 in fees, because everybody, mostly foreigners–many of them probably in the Gulf–were buying up the coin as quickly as they could in order to get one of these seats.
“If a mayor of a small town was selling meetings at city hall for a thousand bucks, he would be run out of town on a rail. But that’s exactly what Donald Trump is doing, in the Middle East and all over the world, as foreign buyers line up to buy the meme coin guaranteed [to provide] private access to Donald Trump at the White House. You cannot make this up.
“Now, the obvious question for the average American is, okay, what does this mean for me? Somebody living in New Britain, Connecticut, might think it’s kind of gross that Trump is lining his pockets as President, but they want to know, how does this actually affect me?
“Well, the most simple way to think about this is that if the guy that you elected to protect us and make our lives better is spending most of his time alternating between playing golf and cutting deals for himself, he’s not protecting you. He’s not spending any time trying to lower costs or defeat our enemies. Corruption, it can be a full-time job for Donald Trump, and that’s a pretty lousy deal for the American people.
“But more importantly, when our foreign policy is for sale, we are less safe. Let me give you an example relative to the trip that Donald Trump is on right now. These countries aren’t padding Donald Trump’s pockets because they like him. They are paying him in order to get things from the federal government, from the U.S. government, without having to make any actual policy concessions that would benefit the U.S. people.
“Before anybody could begin to process the brazen corruption of the UAE/Trump/Witkoff crypto deal, reports very quickly emerged that the Trump administration was considering changing regulations to make it easier for the country of UAE to purchase highly advanced semiconductors from U.S. manufacturers. This was a huge priority of the Emiratis, but the restrictions are on the UAE for a reason. The UAE has a very troubling and very close security relationship with China, and so the reason why we didn’t allow U.S. companies to sell semiconductors directly to the UAE is because we believed that it would very easily become a conduit to China getting their hands on these advanced semiconductors and being able to leapfrog the United States in the business of advanced AI.
“But all of a sudden, once the cash payment to Trump through the crypto venture was announced, Trump signaled that he was willing to throw our security concerns out the window and transfer this sensitive technology to the UAE, even though it’s likely that China will get their hands on this technology, allowing China to put themselves in a position to leapfrog us in the race for advanced AI. That would be a disaster for the American people. But that’s what’s happening. We might hand AI leadership to China because that’s the price of Trump getting paid, and as long as he gets paid, he doesn’t seem to care about the impact on regular Americans.
“The White House is open for business and the Trump family is proudly advertising to the world where to send the check. They aren’t trying to hide it. A $400 million luxury plane gifted to the president of the United States right as he is going over to negotiate potentially sensitive security arrangements with the Gulf countries. Every American, every Republican, every supposed ‘national security advocate’ in the Senate should be outraged by this.
“We can look the other way, or we can join together, Republicans and Democrats, to stand up for this country and do something about it. I’ve joined with Senators Schatz and Coons and Booker to introduce a resolution condemning the acceptance of the plane. It’s a blatant violation of the Emoluments Clause. We could stand together as a Senate to vote for that resolution. I’ve introduced legislation to make it illegal for presidents or members of Congress and their family members to profit off of crypto coins while they hold federal office. We could join together in that effort. I will personally seek to block any arms sale that is announced as part of this trip with a country that is personally investing in Donald Trump and his family. I will force a full Senate debate and a vote on these sales. Foreign leaders need to know there will be a price for participating in the corruption of the American presidency.
“This level of corruption is so gross that even Trump’s most hardened MAGA sycophants are turning against him. I didn’t think I’d see the day, but people like Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer, who fawn over Trump, can’t believe he is so crass as to think that it’s ok to accept planes as a gift in exchange for U.S. national security concessions.
“This isn’t America First. This is not what he promised the American people. This is Trump First. He is willing to put our nation’s security at risk, take unconstitutional bribes, just so he can fly himself and his Mar-a-Lago golf buddies around the world in gold plated luxury planes gifted to him by foreign governments. All while at the same time, he tells Americans that they should be okay buying fewer school supplies for their kids, or fewer birthday presents for their grandchildren, because he is driving prices up for non-billionaires in this country. All while at the same time he is kicking 13 million people off of their health care. Trump lines his pockets, he corrupts our foreign policy to enrich himself, while driving up prices and stealing health care from average Americans. It’s a national security disaster and it’s a moral abomination.”
To me, Senator Murphy’s observations are so self evidently true that I can’t imagine arguments against them. It is only in the context of the present moment in which greedy billionaires, and their deluded enablers have taken over the government of this country and are undermining it with flagrant disregard for the US constitution, the rule of law, decency and compassion that such high crimes and misdemeanors are possible.
HEADLINEMAY 14, 2025
Image Credit: Popular Democracy in Action
“On Capitol Hill, police arrested more than two dozen people Tuesday as they protested Republican plans to gut Medicaid and other programs for the poor and working class to help cover the cost of $4.5 trillion in tax breaks for the rich. An emerging Republican budget proposal intends to cut social spending by $880 billion largely by slashing Medicaid, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates would leave 8.6 million people without healthcare over the next decade. Protesters lined the halls outside a meeting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee Tuesday, while inside a demonstrator was led away by police after disrupting the hearing.
Protester: “You will kill me! I’m HIV-positive for 20 years. I have survived on my meds that are $10,000 a month!”
—————
The proposed house budget bill if passed as written will result in the denial of medical care to millions of the poorest Americans including those living in nursing homes in favor of tax cuts to the richest Americans. It will be a death sentence for many aged and disabled people. Conservatives have traditionally been against euthanasia, but this budget bill will in effect be euthanasia for millions.
This was an extreme example but the point is the same for all good.
To have a law to tax “Price Gougers” would mean many things the US is not capable of performing.
- Price controls for a start.
- A price watchdog
- A Department to enforce..
It might have escaped your attention but the main thrust of the last 4 months has been a folding back of government, and not a push for a more communist infrastructure.
It is an overhaul of the entire government and an efficiency upgrade.
I agree with your anti-price gouging stance overall, and I don’t see it happening without DOGE in place. No DOGE means a continuation of the bloat and crookedness and inefficiency of the institutions. And yes I know you are going to post something about Trump being “crooked” and my intent is not to derail the thread about “Trump” or something, my intentions align with your anti-price-gouging measures and I just don’t see it happening in a pre-DOGE government infrastructure
I’m curious what would your anti-price gouging measures be? Mine personally would be limiting profits to no more than double the intrinsic cost of a physical non-luxury item. Is that too steep? Luxury goods by the way would be exempt.
I feel like this is something positive coming out of the resistance. And I hope that other people in their shoes speak out after hearing them.
It’s like, oh, so we’ve overstayed our welcome? Now we’re gonna give you a reason, because we’ve been putting up with this for far too long.
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/06/nx-s1-5388935/smokey-robinson-sexual-assault-rape-charges
Price controls have generally failed because they disrupt the natural mechanisms of supply and demand, leading to shortages, reduced quality, and innovation, as well as unintended consequences like black markets. Economists widely acknowledge that price controls reduce economic efficiency and often fail to deliver the intended benefits.
in my opinion supply and demand is relevant for direct economies and not economies of scale.
Direct economies - people standing in a line, serving one person at a time type economies. Artisans building 1 product per day. Africa economics.
With economies of scale your goal is to serve as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, you place a wager on what you assume will be the highest possible price that the most amount of people are willing to pay. Digital economies represent this model, but to a certain extent mass-produced cheap factory products adhere to this model as well
Price controls can prevent businesses from charging prices that reflect their true production costs, including those associated with achieving economies of scale. If a price ceiling is set below the market clearing price businesses may be less willing to invest in larger operations as their profit margins would be too limited. So price controls can lead to shortages, reduced quality and lack of innovation in business that disincentivizes people to invest in improvements and expansion.
I’ve seen penalties on price gouging, for example, after a natural disaster like a hurricane or something like that work in specific instances for short periods of time. What happened when Nixon froze wages, and prices for 90 days? It was widely viewed as a failure contributing to the 1973 to 75 recession, stagflation in the 70s and the instability of floating currency exchange rates. I think that’s the last time the US government tried it.
rubbish.
You are just not paying attention.
DOGE is a complete fuck up.
How do you determine “intrinsic”.?
What is a luxury?
Have you ever had a business where you sold product on?
And by the way for all you fiscal conservatives and libertarians out there here’s a report from the Tax Foundation on Trump’s “big beautiful bill”:
The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to mark up the tax portion of the House budget reconciliationbill on Tuesday, May 13, addressing the expirations of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and making additional changes to US tax policy. The Ways and Means Committee released full text for the markup on May 12, which has been titled “The One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Our preliminary analysis finds the tax provisions included in the May 12 text would increase long-run GDP by 0.6 percent and reduce federal tax revenue by $4.1 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis before added interest costs. On a dynamic basis, accounting for economic growth, the revenue reduction would fall by 19 percent to $3.3 trillion over 10 years before added interest costs.
Overall, the bill would prevent tax increases on 62 percent of taxpayersthat would occur if the TCJA expired as scheduled. However, by introducing narrowly targeted new provisions and sunsetting the most pro-growth provisions, like bonus depreciation and research and development (R&D) expensing, it leaves economic growth on the table and complicates the structure of the tax code.
The House-passed budget resolution(which contains the instructions that committees must follow for the reconciliation process) would allow a $4.5 trillion increase in the deficit from tax cuts over the next decade so long as spending is cut by $1.7 trillion. But if spending is not cut by $1.7 trillion, the cap on tax cuts will be reduced dollar-for-dollar. The legislative text introduced by the Ways and Means Committee cuts taxes by less than the budget resolution instructions, implying either that spending reductions have fallen short of the target or that lawmakers are leaving room for further negotiations over certain tax items.
.
Part of ‘the resistance’?
.
..it’s not the first time such a code was used, in regard to Trump..
Calls for the former FBI Director to be prosecuted, have been made.
It was a stupid thing for Comey to post. According to USA Today, citing a book titled The History and Stories of the Best Bars of New York (2006), the use of “86” as a verb is said to originate with the celebrated pub Chumley’s in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, which stood on 86 Bedford St and was known for tossing its drunken patrons out into the street when they became disorderly – or “86-ing” them.
Some price control for pharmaceuticals and in general medical services like there is in Europe might not be such a bad idea for the US. You quoted that HIV patient saying that his monthly medical bill is $10.000… How many peoples taxes are spent on keeping that one guy alive? How can an economy to survive like that, with so many people on meds?
Easier to answer what is not a luxury? Water, bread, eggs, milk, some meat… basic housing… basic human needs. So basic healthcare, too. Maslovs first two levels.
Sextransitions would be a luxury, belonging to the upper three levels.
Right. I favor Medicare for all, in which case, the government could negotiate prices on all drugs with the pharmaceutical companies. That’s different than trying to control prices by sanction.The reason why that hasn’t happened is that Big Pharma is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington D.C. who have bought the support of too many politicians. It’s a shame.
