January 25, 2018

Trump attacked Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., calling him “Cryin’ Chuck” and mocking him for presiding over a “humiliating defeat” in the weekend confrontation over a government shutdown. We have gotten inured to his insult comedy, but is this anyway to negotiate with either friends or foes? Why would anyone, including world leaders, have any interest in negotiating with the Insulter in Chief when they know that, whatever the outcome, he will be Tweeting about what a great deal he got, and what a loser the other side was. If it was me, or you, we wouldn’t budge from our demands. We would more likely try to find a more reasonable negotiating partner.

Imagine if you went on social media to make fun of the real estate agent you took advantage of? How about the car salesman that you embarrassed on your latest purchase? How would your financial advisor feel if you Tweeted about the great deal you got on advisory fees because he was such a weakling. I do not think you would be able to go back to these people. Yet, this is where we are.

In this environment, we are negotiating from a position of weakness. The other side give up less, knowing that anything that closely resembles reasonable compromise will be depicted as capitulation. Trump is in Davos with the world’s economic elite trying to negotiate deals for the United States after walking away from The Transpacific Partnership. The TPP countries, by the way, did their own deal without the United States. I am sure Trump will brag about all the deals he did while he was there, but there will be no word about all the deals that did not get done because he could not find a willing partner.

February 15, 2018

I know it is too soon to have this conversation about gun control and safety so let’s pretend the mass slaughter of seventeen innocent children in Florida did not happen. Here are the facts. 42% of all guns owned worldwide are owned by Americans. The death rate by guns in the United States is 3.8 per 100,000. The next closest country in what we refer to as the civilized world is about .5 per 100,000. Americans do not suffer from a higher incidence of mental health disease than any other country. Americans are not stupid or heartless because 79% of us favor reasonable and effective gun control. We simply have too many guns in too many hands so that, when disagreements do occur, we have a much greater likelihood of disastrous results. If the facts are obvious and everyone knows we need to do something, why does nothing happen?

In a recent article in The Atlantic titled, “America is not a Democracy,” the author points out the disproportionate influence that economic elites and narrow interest groups (like the NRA) have over the legislative process. He found that these groups succeeded in getting their favored policies adopted by Congress about half of the time, and succeeded in stopping legislation to which they were opposed nearly all of the time. Mass-based (not Massachusetts) interest groups, meanwhile, had little effect on public policy. As for the views of ordinary citizens, they had virtually no independent effect at all.

If you thought the system was rigged, it is. And the man who complains the most about things being rigged received $30,000,000 in campaign contributions from the NRA. It is hard to drain the swamp and make real change when the only tears you have are crocodile tears, or, in the case of Florida, alligator tears.

March 13, 2018

I am not a licensed child psychiatrist so I am not prevented by professional ethics to give my opinion on the president’s state of mind. I think it is clear that the president suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD.). What is ADD? Adults with ADD generally have greater problems paying attention or concentrating. They can’t seem to follow directions and are easily bored or frustrated with tasks. They also tend to move constantly and are impulsive, not stopping to think before they act.

The president famously doesn’t read briefings. They bore him. Advisors have to “dumb down” their reports. He Tweets impulsively and compulsively. He would put a teenager to shame. Let’s look at a few recent examples of his ADD in action.

The South Korean delegation comes to the White House with an invitation from the North Korean leader to meet. Before they were finished and without consulting his Secretary of State or other experts, he says yes. There was no pause to discuss strategy, tactics, goals, and contingencies. It was impulsive. He says, “We’ll see what happens.”

What happened is that his Secretary of State got fired.

In an apparent fit of pique, Trump unilaterally announced tariffs on steel and aluminum. There was no consultation with allies. People in his own administration were caught off guard. There was significant push back from his own party. The stock market reacted negatively. His chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, quit.

The president impulsively announced that he was going to get his arms around the NRA and gun control during a White House photo op. This lasted about a week. He was clearly acting without thinking. He was making promises he either could not keep or had no intention of keeping.

At a recent political rally in Pennsylvania, the president announced that he had no intention of acting “presidential” because that would be too boring. Acting presidential is being thoughtful, consultative, deliberate, courageous, and empathic, none of which you associate with Trump or anyone suffering from ADD. Being impulsive can be dangerous with unintended consequences. Let’s hope the Marine wins. We will need him.

It all A.D.D.’s up.

Presidential advisor, Steve Bannon, instructed all of his people to read David Halberstam’s book, “The Best and the Brightest.” I assume his intention was to make sure the present administration would learn from the past, and not repeat the same mistakes. Ironically, the following quote from the book about Chiang kai-shek and his defeat by the Chinese Communists has a whiff of familiarity. …“faced by mounting terrible pressures, he turned inward to listen to the gentle words of trusted family and sycophants. It was the sign of a dying order.”

People say that Trump is a great business man, but the president is running the country like a family business. Any good CEO of a major corporation knows that they cannot know everything and be everywhere. One of the best examples is former Exxon CEO and now Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. Exxon probably does business in at least 50 different countries, currencies, and languages around the world. In that big of an enterprise, you have to have thousands of highly-trained people you can work with and trust to get business done. Building buildings and doing deals is different than effectively running a huge bureaucracy. You cannot just rely on family and friends to get the work done. Running a country cannot be a cult of personality. Unfortunately, we will have to live with the on the job training for a president unwilling to pay attention, or read a book on Bannon’s reading list.

July 19, 2017

Echoing a famous headline from the New York Daily News, “Trump to America: Drop Dead.” In this case, however, it is literally true. Trump wants Obamacare to fail along with the health care it provides to millions of Americans. The callousness of this comment, and the off-handed way in which it was delivered is stunning. Rather than taking responsibility for healthcare and being fully-engaged in the process, his strategy is to blame everyone else. “I am not going to own this,” he says. Trump has become the Blamer-in-Chief. Blame Democrats for obstructing a process they were not a part of. Blame renegade Republicans for listening to their constituents. Blame the CBO for doing its job. Blame the process for being more difficult than anyone realized. Blame the media for reporting the facts. Blame people who choose to get sick. It is time for the president to stand up, and be the man he claims he is on his fake Time magazine cover.

February 2, 2018

I am not an airline pilot, nor even an air traffic controller. However, if the president can take credit for no airline casualties in 2017, should he not also take responsibility for recent train fatalities? Who is responsible for that? I know my assertion is ridiculous. Would the president or his followers admit the same?

If the president can take credit for the performance of the stock market, will he also take responsibility for the 666 point, massive sell off on Friday followed by another big sell off today (Monday.) Where are the Tweets? I think it is a fool’s errand for any president to take credit for stock market results because the markets go up and down, and sometimes dramatically. Often times, there is a disconnect between economic results and stock market results. As with Friday’s stock market action, good news in terms of unemployment can be bad news for interest rates and the stock market. If Warren Buffet does not know where the market is going, then how would the president know? The president is in charge of the economy, not the stock market. Take credit or shoulder the blame for things you can control.

Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways. I don’t blame you for trying to sell your nonsense, but I do blame the people who are buying this stuff.

August 8, 2017

What is the Democratic message? Hillary Clinton failed to communicate a positive coherent policy message, and lost. Democrats are still afraid to say what they really think for fear that someone might disagree. The New York Times has given the Democrats a gift in today’s article titled, “Government report finds drastic impacts of climate change on U.S.” The Democratic position should be that if you are a climate change denier, the Republican Party will welcome you with open arms. I am certain the White House will reject the research report signed off by thirteen different federal agencies. The Democratic Party should not discuss or debate whether climate change is real. It’s message should be that, if you are concerned about climate, the Democratic Party will offer you solutions that will create industries, create jobs, make America the world’s leader in climate technology, and provide transitional assistance and training to workers that are negatively impacted. Democrats, be bold. Think big. The climate depends on you.

July 12, 2018

Recently, a good friend of mine had to move out of his home in Connecticut because his foundation was crumbling. He and his wife lived in a trailer while construction crews raised his home, and replaced the cement. Like many other homes in Connecticut and Massachusetts, his home was built with faulty materials from a local quarry. It took twenty or so years for the problem to manifest itself. It was a slow and somewhat imperceptible decay.

Currently, the cement supporting our home, the United States, is our international agreements and cooperation with our allies. We depend on NATO, the WTO, NAFTA, TPP, the Paris Accords, and so on. Our allies depend on us. By insulting our allies and breaking our agreements, this president is doing unquantifiable damage that may only become obvious in many years with the benefit of hindsight. It will be a slow and insidious process. We won’t see it coming until we have to move out of our “house.” Let’s replace the “cement” now before it is too late.

January 28, 2017

“Don’t confuse me with the facts.” That was my father-in-law’s favorite saying. It could be the motto of the new administration. The fact is that more Mexicans are migrating back to their home country than are entering the US illegally. NAFTA has, in fact, helped the Mexican economy, making it more desirable for Mexicans to stay home, work, and support their families. The fact is that best deterrent we have to the flow of illegal drugs into our country, other than not buying and using drugs ourselves, is a friendly government on our border willing to work with the US. No wall can replace cooperation amongst law enforcement officials. The fact is that a border tax will start an economic war, which will strangle the Mexican economy. If we want to really worsenh the illegal migration issue, let’s build a wall, destroy border security, and squeeze the Mexican economy. Once that happens, no wall will be high enough to keep them out.

January 9, 2017

The President-elect promised to drain the swamp once he got in to office. He never said exactly what he meant by that so he left it up to his supporters’ imaginations to fill in the blanks. Now that we are on the cusp of a series of historic events involving the Senate confirmation hearings without the nominees having completed FBI background checks and being properly vetted, we can see how the new swamp is taking shape. The old swamp is being converted into water hazards on another Trump luxury golf course resort complete with infinity swimming pool. Only billionaires need apply for membership.

I would like to ask a few simple questions. What is the rush, why is this okay, and what are they possibly hiding? I would think that reasonable people on both sides of the aisle would like to get this right the first time around, and avoid any potential embarrassments. Unfortunately, the new normal was set by Trump when he elected not to release his tax returns, and the voters gave him a pass. Part of the electorate seems to be okay when Trump says “trust me.” When someone says “trust me” once, I put my hand on my wallet. When someone says “trust me” more than once, I know they have something to hide.

So, at this point, it looks like the new swamp will be filled with unknown and possibly dangerous species. Don’t go near the water hazards. They may be hazardous to your health.