September 24, 2018

I am sitting in the St. Louis Lambert International Airport waiting for my plane, which is delayed three hours, to depart. I wonder if Charles Lindbergh had a delay. I visited the Gateway Arch National Park in downtown St. Louis, which celebrates America’s push westward, and the building of the Gateway Arch itself. St. Louis is a city founded on fur trading between the Osage Indians and American settlers and pioneers. Ironically, it was built on free trade with no tariffs between the natives and the immigrants (us.) We received pelts, and they got guns, metals, and more. Everyone was a winner. Free trade made America great.

The Gateway Arch itself is a testament to American engineering and ingenuity even though it was designed by a Finnish immigrant, Eero Saarinen.

St. Louis is also the home of our 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant. I am half way through Ron Chernow’s book, but there seems to be no end in sight. Grant is a fascinating and somewhat misunderstood character. He came from a Midwest family of modest means, which often put him at odds with northeastern elites. He went to West Point, toiled in the military for years, and, eventually, after a series of stunning military victories, engineered the North’s victory over the South in the Civil War. He was a true war hero. He fought on the frontlines, accomplished much militarily, and bragged little. His men loved him. He was a quiet man with a courageous heart. He was an ardent abolitionist, and stood up for freed blacks against the Ku Klux Klan. He made sure that emancipation was not just something on a piece of paper.

He established Yellowstone as the first National Park, which is arguably the first step in the conservation movement.

In many ways, he was the classic American hero. He was brave and humble. He was loyal to a fault. He was inscrutability honest, and defended the weak. He was a dedicated family man. Why can’t we have one of those?

December 6, 2017

The Teflon Don is making Jerusalem an issue just in time to pander to the Evangelical Christians in Alabama, who may be waffling about supporting a pedophile. It is a dangerous and potentially lethal game to play. Whatever happened to Jared’s peace process?

If I were going to be snarky, I would say that the answer to peace in the region would be to build a big, beautiful wall between East and West Jerusalem. However, I am not going to say that. Here is my solution, however.

Where is the happiest place in the world? It is Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. One of Disney’s most popular and enduring theme parks is Epcot. Epcot is an international theme park that highlights cultures from all over the world. Park goers can go from Europe to South America and then to Asia. You can partake of cuisines from dozens of countries. Let’s turn over Jerusalem to Disney.

Disney could create an independent, Vatican-like “country” that would include a Christian World, a Muslim World, and a Jewish World. Pilgrims would be able to travel freely between the different worlds with a Speed Pass, and be exposed to the unique cultures, languages, foods, and religious rites. Students from all over the world could come and study at Disney University. A monorail would tie everything together. Each World would have its own rides and attractions. Security could be provided by the United Nations.

Obviously, I am being facetious, but I think my plan has about as much of a chance of becoming reality as anything the Teflon Don might put forward.

September 12, 2018

Trump has been accused of using his Tweets as shiny objects designed to distract his detractors and the media from his actual agenda. I think there is probably some truth in this although it is giving the President way too much credit for having a coherent strategy. My prediction is that former President Barack Obama will become Trump’s shiny object.

Obama is on the campaign trail advocating for Democratic candidates in the 2018 elections. He has and will invariably take, without naming names, swipes at Trump and his policies. Obama will bait him by taking credit for the economic recovery, which is true. It started in 2008. All Trump did is goose an already growing economy by increasing the deficit by $1T. I refer you to today’s CBO number showing the deficit has grown 32%. If you gave me a $1T, I could make the stock market go up. According to the Woodward book, this is the same guy who asked why we can’t just print money to fix the deficit. Trump will not be able to resist the Obama shiny object, and will take the bait.

He will make the election about himself versus Obama, giving Democratic candidates the freedom to make the election about failed policies and solutions. He will not have the time, energy, or enough Twitter characters to attack both Democratic candidates and Obama. Obama will play rope-a-dope, and Trump and his party will go down like a fake wrestler.

June 1, 2017

In response to a recent letter to the editor in the Springfield Republican, which essentially said that there is nothing there there relating to the Russian investigation, I think the writer misses the point. I do not dispute any of the facts in his well-researched letter, but he misses the point. No one disputes that communications with the Russians are a bad thing in and of themselves, or that governments use back channels to further their diplomatic agendas. However, what makes this situation unique and serious is that you have a National Security Advisor, an Attorney General, and a son-in-law lying about their Russian contacts. You have a president who will not reveal his finances for possible conflicts of interest with Russia. You have a president who fired the head of the FBI, who was running an investigation into the matter. You have a president who benefitted from Russian interference in our election. You have a president who publicly encouraged Russia to reveal hacked e-mails. This is not business as usual. This is different.

February 10, 2018

Democrats are tilting at windmills every time they hyperventilate about the latest Trump insult to our norms and customs. Saturday Night Live had it exactly right when they performed their fake game show, Does It Really Matter? The answer is it simply does not. Nothing really matters. Lying, wife beating, sexual harassment, incompetence, dysfunction, deficits, and so on mean nothing in the new normal. The Christian Coalition gave Trump a “mulligan” for paying hush money to a porn star, which insults me as a golfer. Professional golfers do not get mulligans, and nor should professional politicians.

The reason Democrats are going after the wrong issues is because of what Richard Hofstader called pseudo conservatism, a concept that goes back to the mid-50’s. He borrowed the term from the study of The Authoritarian Personality. “Although the pseudos believe themselves to be conservatives and usually employ the rhetoric of conservatism, they show signs of a serious and restless dissatisfaction with American life, traditions and institutions. They have little in common with the temperate and compromising spirit of true conservatism in the classical sense of the word. They are far from pleased with the dominant practical conservatism of the moment. Their political reactions express rather a profound if largely unconscious hatred of our society and its ways.” These are the angry and disaffected voters.

The donor class, which is also part of the pseudo conservative movement, has successfully aligned itself for years with these disaffected voters for its own personal gain, creating a formidable political force. The Kochs and the Mercers promise that the angry voters will be better off if they join them, but the joke is on the disaffecteds. The donor class gets its massive tax cuts, and the angry voters get is the psychological pleasure of sticking it to the liberal establishment. The Democratic Party needs to reclaim its roots as the party of the people by offering what the angry pseudos are looking for, which is a visible path forward and upward. Railing against the insult of the day will not be effective because the pseudos do not care about our democratic guardrails. They just care about being in power. Ironically, Democrats, which Hofstader describes as the new establishment, may have to align themselves with real conservatives to get back into power. Strange bedfellows indeed.

October 24, 2018

Like many people these days, I am suffering from fact-checking fatigue. The president lies so often that it is hard to keep up. He uses his lying as a strategy, and his base finds it amusing. They wink at the President’s prevarications. The rest of us find it extremely dangerous, and a threat to our democracy. I hate to say it, but maybe the Republican leadership has it right. They have decided to ignore the president, and do their jobs. Maybe the rest of us should do the same.

We cannot stop challenging the President, but we do not have to give him the oxygen he needs to survive. The burden of proof should not be on us and the media to fact-check everything Trump lies about. At this point, the burden of proof should be on this President to prove his assertions. The media should not have to report and fact-check every lie. They could start their headlines everyday by saying or writing, “The President made another series of unsubstantiated claims today. Once he provides tangible and verifiable proof that his claims are true, we will report on them. Now, the news.”

Claims about crowd size, illegal voting, wiretapping, Middle Eastern terrorists, drug dealers, and MS-13 gang members embedded in caravans, California mobs, 10% middle class tax cuts, protecting preexisting conditions, 400 pound hackers in New Jersey, and more would suffocate for lack of air. Mr. Trump, prove it.

October 12, 2018

The major problem Republicans and Democrats have in getting in the mud with Donald Trump is that they are tethered to reality and decency. Trump exploits this as a weakness, and too many of us give him a pass. He complains about the “angry Democratic mob” while his followers scream “lock her up.” He lies about possibly losing $110B in deals he did with Saudi Arabia if he criticizes the sheiks about a hit job on a journalist, who happens to be a US resident. The Obama administration did the deals, and he fails to mention his financial dealings with the Saudis. His rationale is that if we don’t sell the equipment to the Saudis, someone else will. When I was managing a brokerage office, I would tell my advisors that the worst reason in the world to sell an investment to a client was that, if they didn’t do it, someone else would. He publicly mocks a sexual assault victim. He allows Kanye West to drop F-bombs in the Oval Office. He lies about his “humble” beginnings. He conducts fund raisers while the Florida panhandle is being destroyed. He assails the Federal Reserve for a problem he created with his trillion dollar tax cut and subsequent debt. He wants to give Devin Nunez the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The revolving door in this administration kept spinning with the departure of the UN Ambassador. Amazingly, this is just what happened in the last week or so.

Therefore, how do you deal with someone who lives in a parallel universe? I don’t know, but you have to call him out. Something will happen to change the narrative. Maybe it will be an election. Maybe an outstanding candidate will come along. Maybe it will be the Mueller investigation. Maybe a national emergency will show that Trump has no clothes. And, when it is over, we will all be asking ourselves how did we let this happen?

December 17, 2017

A recent article in the New York Times declared Massachusetts to be the healthiest state in America. We are certainly one of the wealthiest on a per capita basis, and one of the best educated. We have a high standard of living, and this costs money. We pay taxes to the state of Massachusetts to maintain our public schools, hospitals, police forces, etc. As it turns out, we pay taxes to the federal government to maintain and subsidize the lifestyles of predominantly red states.

Red, or should I say Crimson, states like Alabama either refuse to or are unable to tax their citizens for essential services like healthcare and education, not to mention infrastructure. They only way they can make ends meet is to rely on the kindness of strangers. Based on a story in The Atlantic, “Which States are Givers and Which States are Takers,” for every dollar Alabama sends to the federal government, it gets back approximately $3.25 in return. And what do the profligate citizens of Massachusetts get back…approximately $.90 on the dollar? Can you imagine what we could with another $.10?

With the recent tax bill working its way through Congress, the greedier and needier just got greedier and needier. Now these faux fiscal conservatives are lecturing us on how we run our state. To make the point, the takers have banded together to limit the deduction for state and local taxes. They say our taxes are too high, and they could probably get a lot of agreement from many Bay Staters, but that misses the point. If you believe in states rights, I believe that our state is right. I also do not believe in double taxation. I guess they want us to live like them where people ride to the voting booth on horses. In the words of Colonel Nathan Jessup in “A Few Good Men,” “I would rather you just said “thank you,” and went on your way.”

September 5, 2018

Donald Trump’s public mantra is “Make America Great Again.” It is America first, last, and always. He has followed through on his isolationist philosophy by walking away from the Paris Accords, withdrawing from the Trans Pacific Partnership, threatening to exclude Canada from NAFTA, looking to reduce our commitment to NATO, and threatening to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. If I missed something, I apologize.

However, what is happening in plain sight is not a withdrawal from the global community. It is not neo-isolationism. Trump’s unspoken goal is not to remove America from global affairs, but, rather, to redefine the global order. Trump has aligned himself with autocrats and right-wing organizations around the world. Putin is just the most obvious example of this tilt towards authoritarianism. Trump is consciously dividing the American public to the point where his hard core followers may think they have more in common with similar, right-leaning parties across the globe than with their fellow citizens. Their unifying focus is on gun rights (NRA,) religion (Christianity,) and immigration (racial purity.) White supremacy and neo-Naziism are on the rise throughout Europe, and Donald Trump is making common cause with these groups. “There are good people on both sides.” He praises dictators, and savages duly-elected, democratic allies. He is not withdrawing from the international scene. His agenda is to reorder it. This cannot be allowed to happen.

October 31, 2018

In the early nineties, President George H. W. Bush reneged on his campaign promise of “Read my lips, no new taxes.” It arguably cost him reelection for a second term, but it also set the seeds for an economic recovery. President Clinton worked out a grand compromise with a Gingrich-led Congress, and put through a package of spending cuts and tax increases, which led to a booming economy, a roaring stock market, and budget surpluses as he left office.

President George W. Bush used the surpluses to push through a major tax cut, which ultimately led to massive budget deficits, an overheated economy, and financial collapse. President Obama rescued the economy, and set it on its current trajectory through a combination of tax cuts, stimulus, and bond buy backs. So what do the Republicans do? At exactly the point in the recovery where we should have been “removing the punch bowl,” they put through a $1T tax cut. Some people have likened it to throwing gasoline on a fire. All I can say is that if you gave me $1T, I could give the economy a boost also. It is easy when you don’t have to pay for it. Do we have any reason to believe that this story is going to end any differently. The rise in market volatility should concern everyone. It is telling you something.

Now Donald Trump and his followers are talking about a 10% middle class tax cut with no details, an impossible time table, and no thought about how to pay for it. It is obviously pure campaign rhetoric, but really? Vote for candidates who understand economics, and who are not proposing balancing the budget on the backs of people who need it the most.