Progressive Thinking

We’re told to live greener, drive less, and save the planet until a global crisis hits, then it’s all about oil, survival, and keeping the lights on. The war in Iran is exposing just how fragile our commitment to sustainability really is.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - Let’s be honest for a minute.

We’ve all been told to recycle, cut back, and do our part to save the planet. Fine. Most of us try.

But then a conflict involving Iran ramps up, oil supply gets shaky, and suddenly… all that green talk disappears.

Gas prices jump. Energy gets tight. And just like that, sustainability takes a back seat to survival.

Countries start scrambling for oil again. Fossil fuels are back in style. The same thing we were told to move away from becomes the thing we can’t live without.

Here’s the reality nobody likes to say out loud.

War is the opposite of sustainable.

It burns fuel, destroys infrastructure, and sets environmental progress back years. While we’re arguing about plastic straws, entire regions are being pushed backward environmentally in ways that actually matter.

And at home, it hits us where it hurts. Gas goes up. Food goes up. Everything goes up. When that happens, nobody is thinking about emissions. They’re thinking about getting by.

Meanwhile, the oil industry? They’re doing just fine.

So maybe the problem isn’t that people aren’t trying hard enough.

Maybe the problem is that the system itself isn’t built to support sustainability when it actually counts.

Because the minute there’s a crisis, we find out what really matters.

And it’s not the planet.

Read my latest Don’t Blink! blog post at LauraKiefert.blog

Trump thinks yelling “America First” while nuking the global supply chain is somehow going to bring back the golden age of American manufacturing. That age is long gone.

LAKE GENEVA, WI - Today, Donald Trump stood at a podium, flapping his gums again about how everything is going to “boom.” The markets are going to boom. The economy is going to boom. The country? Oh, that’s going to boom too. And you know what? I actually agree with him—for once. Things are going to boom. Just not in the way he wants you to think.

I’m talking about the kind of boom that leaves a smoking crater where your savings used to be. The kind of boom that knocks you off your feet and leaves your ears ringing while you try to figure out what the hell just happened. The kind of boom where, when the dust settles, we’re all stuck sweeping up the shattered pieces of our bank accounts and wondering how we got conned into this mess. That’s the “boom” we’re in for.

What kicked it off? Trump’s bright idea to slap a 10% tariff on all imports, with even higher rates on countries like China, Mexico, and our European allies. You know, the people we actually rely on for trade. The very next thing that happened? The stock market tanked. Over 1,600 points dropped from the Dow like it got pushed off a cliff. That’s not booming—it’s detonating.

Tariffs are taxes. That’s Econ 101. But Trump either doesn’t know that or just doesn’t care. He thinks yelling “America First” while nuking the global supply chain is somehow going to bring back the golden age of American manufacturing. Meanwhile, the rest of us are stuck watching prices climb on everything from groceries to gadgets.

Experts are already warning that the average American household could see prices jump by nearly $4,000 a year. And when you factor in inflation creeping back up and potential job losses in industries that rely on imported goods? Buckle up. This isn’t just an economic misstep—it’s a full-scale policy explosion.

International response? You guessed it. Countries around the world are preparing to hit us right back. Trade wars don’t just pop up overnight, but Trump’s reckless, chest-thumping bravado is lighting the fuse. And guess who’s standing closest when it goes off? Yep. We are.

This isn’t leadership. It’s sabotage dressed up as strength. And Trump, with his gold-plated ego and zero grasp of economic reality, is grinning through it all like he just made a brilliant move on a game board he doesn’t even understand.

So yes, Donald. We’re going to boom. Like a bomb in the living room. Like an engine blowing out at 80 miles per hour. Like the bad decision it is.

And we’ll be the ones left crawling out of the rubble.

Summary:
Donald Trump says the economy is going to “boom”—and for once, he’s not wrong. But this isn’t the boom of prosperity he’s promising. It’s the kind of boom that leaves everyday Americans buried under debt, inflation, and economic wreckage. In this scathing opinion piece, Laura Kiefert dismantles Trump’s reckless tariff plan, exposing the real cost of his clueless economic bravado: soaring prices, crashing markets, and a trade war we can't afford. If this is his version of winning, we’re all screwed.