Current GOP messaging in primary season requires the low-information voter to be even more clueless. The shortage of infant formula is not about “pallets on the (southern) border” much like being against Ukraine funding is attracting Trump endorsements. The reality includes Trump’s NAFTA 2.0 restricting imports at the other border as well as the infant formula market being concentrated with three US firms dominating 80% of the market.
Political transactionalism is the hallmark of today’s GOP reactionary activity. It’s another example of how there’s GQP fervor over abortion but not about the care of infants. Similarly, kowtowing to trumpism is an act of candidates desperate for an endorsement that simultaneously supports Putin.
The party that cares about fetal personhood cares little about 150,000 Ukrainian children ‘kidnapped’ by Russia. The reality also favors a border war stimulating the production of ordnance and arms that will improve MIC production as well as the illicit transfer of weapons.
Just don’t talk about “the population bomb” while standing in the TSA screening line.
In early March, the Kentucky Republican was one of just three lawmakers to oppose the first piece of legislation designed to show U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against an invading Russian army, a familiar lonely spot for the libertarian-leaning lawmaker frequently at odds with his party’s leaders.
But on Monday, Massie spoke to Trump for the first time in more than two years — and received the former president’s endorsement in the May 17 Kentucky primary. And on Tuesday, 56 Republicans joined Massie in opposing the latest push to send arms to the Ukrainian forces.
Then, on April 27, 55 House Republicans opposed legislation to build secure telecommunications networks in Ukraine and neighboring nations. Finally, on Tuesday,, 57 Republicans opposed President Biden’s request for $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid, with some saying the legislation had been rushed to the floor without detailed consideration. All Democrats backed the president’s request.
Thomas Massie saw it as a defining moment.
“This is the real story. Not that there’s 57 Republicans who’ve woken up to the folly of what we’re doing in Ukraine, but that there are zero Democrats. Every single one of them is on the wrong side of this,” he said.
His views remain a minority, but his allies in this cause include some of the closest allies to Trump, who is strongly considering another run for president and has espoused his own fondness for Putin.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who frequently appears as a warm-up act for Trump rallies, has opposed 15 of the 16 measures related to Ukraine. Arizona GOP Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul A. Gosar — who supported efforts to try to block President Biden’s certification of victory in the 2020 campaign — have voted against 11 and 10 of the Ukraine-related bills, respectively.
These Republicans sum up their world view in blunt, nationalist terms. “Let me ask you,” Greene said during an interview Thursday. “Has Vladimir Putin stopped his war in Ukraine because of all these sanctions? No, not at all. It hasn’t done anything. So, you know what? I care about our country, United States of America and our people. That’s it.”
Greene, a freshman with no background in foreign policy, often uses fiery terms that do not fully grasp the geopolitical issue at hand. “Baby formula, baby formula, people cannot find baby formula, with such a shortage. But our Congress is going to send $40 billion to some other country,” she said.
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1. The ‘everything shortage’
The pandemic has created shortages for many goods, including cars, semiconductors and furniture.
The main reasons: Factories and ports are coping with virus outbreaks and worker shortages at the same time that consumer demand for physical goods has surged, because of government stimulus programs and a shift away from spending on services (like restaurant meals). As a result, much of the global supply chain is overloaded...
2. Big business
The baby formula business has something in common with many other U.S. industries: It is highly concentrated.
Three companies — Abbott, Gerber and Reckitt — make nearly all of the formula that Americans use. Abbott is the largest of the three, with roughly 40 percent of the market.
For workers and consumers, concentration is often problematic. The baby-formula shortage is the latest example. If the market had more producers, a problem at any one of them might not be such a big deal. It’s even possible the problem would not happen at all….
3. Big bureaucracy
Even as the industry seems to be under-regulated in some crucial ways, it may be overregulated in other, superficial ways.
This newsletter has covered ways that the F.D.A.’s bureaucratic inflexibility has hampered its Covid policy, and baby formula turns out to be another case study.
Many formulas sold in Europe exceed the F.D.A.’s nutritional standards, but they are banned from being sold here, often because of technicalities, like labeling, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has noted. Donald Trump exacerbated the situation with a trade policy that made it harder to import formula from Canada. These policies benefit American formula makers, at the expense of families.
The inflexibility of American regulatory and trade policy, Thompson wrote, “might be the most important part of the story.”
4. The gerontocracy
The U.S. has long put a higher priority on taking care of the elderly than taking care of young families.
Americans over 65 receive universal health insurance (Medicare), and most receive a regular government check (Social Security). Many children, by contrast, live in poverty. Relative to other affluent countries, the U.S. spends a notably small share of its budget on children; President Biden’s stalled Build Back Better plan aimed to change this, Urban Institute researchers have pointed out.
https://t.co/bWe6aetvoF
"Artificial breast milk firm that offers an environmentally-friendly alternative to baby formula gets $3.5 million from investment fund baked by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg." June 2020
Professor in International Security at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University (ANU) John Blaxland told SBS News that Mr Putin could not declare victory even though he would have liked to.
“He would have liked to have had a victory moment to match the significance of the 9th of May, but that hasn’t materialised.”
Mr Blaxland said that while Mr Putin did control the media and much of the information about the war, the sheer amount of Russian troops who weren’t coming home and the effects of economic sanctions were “impossible to hide", hence why he didn’t declare victory in his speech.
“Were he to pretend it was a victory and everything was fine, it may have undermined his credibility further. So owning the fact that there is a battle underway and seeking to rally the troops to the cause is a more effective way, in regards to the Russian mindset.
“Thankfully he hasn’t escalated and declared war, but he is doubling down on the rationale which suggests the war will go on for a long time.”
Mr Blaxland said Russia’s claim that there is a prevalence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine has been “blown out of all proportion for rhetorical, political and strategic reasons”.
Ukraine’s illicit arms market has ballooned since Russia’s initial invasion in 2014, buttressed by a surplus of loose weapons and limited controls on their use.
This uncomfortable reality for the United States and its allies comes amid urgent pleas from President Volodymyr Zelensky to provide artillery needed to counter Russian forces in the country’s east and south. The Ukrainian leader’s appeals are credited with uniting House lawmakers behind the latest funding request in a bipartisan 368-to-57 vote on Tuesday. But the unprecedented influx of arms has prompted fears that some equipment could fall into the hands of Western adversaries or reemerge in faraway conflicts — for decades to come.
“It’s just impossible to keep track of not only where they’re all going and who is using them, but how they are being used,” said Rachel Stohl, an arms-control expert and vice president at the Stimson Center.
A State Department spokesman said the United States has conducted thorough vetting of the Ukrainian units it supplies while forcing Kyiv to sign agreements that “do not allow the retransfer of equipment to third parties without prior U.S. government authorization.”
But the means of enforcing such contracts are relatively weak — and made even weaker by Washington’s own mixed history of compliance, as recently as last month.
The emergency spending bill awaiting approval in the Senate will cement Ukraine’s status as the world’s single largest recipient of U.S. security assistance, receiving more in 2022 than the United States ever provided to Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel in a single year.
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