Genius or Fool? - You Decide

Well, while many are calling President Trump’s latest 90 day tariff pause, which did not apply to China, a victory lap indicating a true sign of masterful deal making; after what happened last Wednesday it is anything but a victory. Quietly, and without fanfare, President Trump permanently exempted 20 product categories from the 125% tariff imposed by him on Chinese imports and the 10% baseline tariff on imports from other countries.  Included in this list were all computers, laptops, disc drives, automatic data processing equipment, semiconductor devices, memory chips, solar panels, flat panel displays, smart phones, and other consumer electronics.  Most made in China.

The U.S. electronics market serviced by these devices is estimated to be worth $510 billion, so how is the lost tariff revenue on these products, with Trump’s latest stroke of a pen, a victory?  It is in fact a complete capitulation on the very premise given for imposing the tariffs, namely, increased income for the U.S. economy, and the bringing back of manufacturing jobs to the U. S.

And true to form Fox News gave this latest tariff retreat a rather bizarre spin as they reported, “The bottom line is Donald Trump is back!” Fox Business cast the president as some sort of ingenious chess player, who was a prudent and heroic figure who had saved the world from an economic disaster; the very one he had created by his initial tariff plans. Fox also stated that, “and just when you think the hope is lost, that we’re going to go into a recession, that we’re going to have months, if not years, of down markets, something like this happens!” Again the only reason for the predicted recession and down markets was due to President Trump’s tariff plans.

So, I remain confused as to why this retaliatory tariff plan was initiated in the first place since now one of its biggest sources of income, the foreign made electronics industry tariff has been rescinded, and one of the largest manufacturing industries, again the electronics industry, no longer has any incentive to be brought back to the U.S.

I seriously question this being a plan by some master genius who fully understands how the world economy works.  But then again if one looks at some of President Trump’s other business failures, namely, Trump casinos, Trump resorts, Trump’s failed university, his failed airline, failed mortgage company, failed Trump steaks, failed Trump vodka, failed Trump magazine, etc., maybe one can get a better understanding of the present situation.  And ironically, Forbes Magazine predicts that Trump would be over $400 billion richer today without all his past failures. Now I understand what happened.

Governor Landry Has Little Respect for Voters

I hope all the Republican voters in our state caught the insult regarding their voting intelligence that Governor Landry recently subtly attributed to them.  With all four of the proposed amendments being soundly rejected by over 60% of the voters, our esteemed governor blamed the defeats on outsiders and state liberals.  He claimed this was particularly true for the defeat of Amendment #2.  However, the facts of the matter refute both claims for apparently many Republicans voted against these measures.

I guess Governor Landry feels that only he knows what is best for our state and that Republican voters in our state should just be little minions and follow his directives.  He also apparently thinks they possess no intellectual abilities to objectively judge the merits of legislative proposals which might directly impact them, nor does he feel they should have the right to make such judgments.  He seems to confuse the citizens in Louisiana with his sycophants in our state legislature.

Additionally, did you catch the insult the Governor paid to our state as a whole; the one he governs?  He stated, “We realize how hard positive change can be to implement in a state that is conditioned to failure.”   He just characterized our entire state as promoting “failure.”  That’s the kind of lashing out one might expect from some spoiled brat child when they don't get their way, but certainly not from the governor of our state.   Maybe he is just too immersed in the “white horse syndrome,” where the hero swoops in on a magnificent white stallion and saves the day; in his mind, from our state’s “conditioned to failure.”  And apparently he feels only he can do this, so everyone in the state must religiously follow his orders without question.  Sound familiar?

Sadly, our governor and legislators need to come to accept the realization that their present slew of proposed legislative amendments didn’t align with the wishes of their constituents, and they need to lose the defensiveness and get on board.  Party affiliation had little to do with these defeats, for without bipartisan support this would not have occurred.

Is Democracy at a Turning Point?

During our most recent presidential election Democrats chose to label the Republican candidate as “a threat to democracy.”  I, like many others, considered that to be rather an over the top and ridiculous statement to make for our country is a solid democracy.  It involves free elections whereby we elect representatives to govern us.  However, our democracy involves more than the just right of free elections. A major part of it also involves the three established branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial branch, all of which operate within a system of checks and balances.

The legislative branch (Congress) proposes laws and funds various aspects of our government and is held in check by the executive branch (President) which has the final say in such legislation by the power of approval, signing it into law, or veto, refusing to sign it into law.   However, a built in democratic over-ride procedure afforded to the legislative branch can over turn the executive branch’s veto and still put the laws into effect.  The same holds true for funding allocations for various parts of the government.  Additionally the approved laws can be brought before the judicial branch (Supreme Court) to determine, if in fact, they are legal according to the laws of the land. This branch of government has the power to remove laws put in place by the other two branches.  And these laws can also be challenged in a lower courts system in the U.S. before they reach the Supreme Court. So as you can see the founding fathers put in place a finely honed democratic system allowing each branch to operate in a power-balanced fashion.

However, what I have suddenly realized is if one of the branches decides to not abide by the established rules of this democratic process, there really isn’t any immediate power the other branches of government have to constrain this aberrant behavior.  The recent actions by the executive branch involving the mass deportation of Venezuelans have made this flaw in the democratic process design quite evident. 

For example, if an average citizen disobeys a judge’s order they can be found in contempt of court and immediately jailed. However, this doesn’t hold true for the executive branch (President) of our country.  Standing presidents cannot have charges brought against them by courts of law while in office.  And as has been recently demonstrated by President Donald Trump, he and his administration can ignore federal judges' court rulings and there are NO consequences.   And by extension, this also applies to rulings by the judicial branch (Supreme Court) of the federal government.   Even the highest court in the nation has no real power to make the executive branch conform to its rulings. 

Please remember that the previously established accepted and followed democratic procedure for disagreeing with any judge’s ruling is filing an appeal in court to get the ruling over turned.  But obviously, as recently demonstrated by the present administration,  that no longer applies to the executive branch of the federal government.   Their approach, the President can just ignore it.

In fact, the response by the present governing administration is that federal judges shouldn’t have the power of the courts to overrule the orders of the President, and such judges should be impeached for they “seek to impede the power of the President.”

So far, by over 120 presidential executive orders in as many days, the democratic funding powers of the legislative branch of the U.S. government have been ignored by the president with no consequences, and now the democratic judicial powers are also being ignored.  Are we already witnessing a preemptive threat to democracy?    Should the executive branch (President) of U.S. government be able to ignore the orders of the courts, one of the major foundations of the democratic process , when you can’t?  Please pause, take a moment, and think about it.

Where's My Day One Money?

I was anxiously awaiting President Trump’s State of the Union speech since I am retired and on a fixed income, and desperately need some out of pocket spending relief.  After his address I was still anxious about finding such relief because surprisingly, there was little mention of actual plans for solutions to the cost of health care, prescription drugs, gasoline, food prices at the supermarket, housing affordability, or the out of control auto and home owners’ insurance costs.

Instead, he referenced annexing I Greenland three times, five mentions of how the U.S. needs to own the Panama Canal, and discussed the “Gulf of America” twice.   In all fairness, he did talk about his actions regarding the roundup of illegal immigrants, the stepped up enforcement of illegal border crossings and the implementation of tariffs as a solution to bringing jobs back to America and limiting drug trafficking.

However, Trump still seems to be obsessed with the election he lost to Joe Biden for he mentioned him 13 times in rhetoric that resembled more of a campaign speech rather than a State of the Union speech that looks to the future.  Joe Biden is gone, time to move on.

President Trump’s speech also dedicated 7 minutes to Elon Musk and his newly created DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), and its success in going after government’s waste of taxpayers’ money.  Ironically, according to Musk’s DOGE budget page on the social media platform X, he initially saved on some items approximately $620 billion, which upon fact checking was actually only $620 million.  In fact, many of his purported billions in savings upon further review have been deleted or reduced on the X budget page due to such gross errors.

Sadly, even when President Trump pointed out his own example of government waste by giving the example of the U.S. government spending, and I quote, “$8 million for making mice transgender. This is real,” he got it all wrong.  The reality of this spending was to create TRANSGENIC mice which are lab altered to make them more similar to humans in their response to diseases. These mice are used in medical research for treating and preventing diseases such as cancer, diabetes, etc., and such research would not exist without them.  It has nothing to do with transgender folks except for containing the word “trans.”

I guess for some folks the speech was uplifting if you weren’t that concerned about the depletion of your hard earned cash. But for me I am still in the dark about how implementing tariffs, the rounding up of immigrants, the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, annexing Canada, owning Greenland and the Panama Canal, cutting off aid to Ukraine, and the plethora of executive orders (more than 70 in 100 days) are impacting my wallet immediately even though he promised to deal with that “on day one.”  

Prices are continuing to rise.  Where and what is the plan? Maybe I just need more patience; a quality I am not very good at.

The Big Lie About Tariffs

 If you believe all the hoop-la about how the policies of tariffs are going to force American companies to move their total production of goods back to the good old USA, you might need a reality check. Big companies are NOT going to let even President Trump interfere with their profit margins.

President Trump has set March 1^st as the time line when a 25% tariff will be assessed on goods coming from Canada and Mexico. In addition, he is assessing another 10% on Chinese imports on top of already imposed tariffs which could elevate the total to as much as 60%. If you are worried about how much your pocketbook depletes now in today’s economy, you ain’t seen nothing yet since I don’t know of one non-food item that doesn’t contain a Chinese part, including many of our life saving medicines.

However, while consumer prices will rise, the big corporation profits will also rise due to some slick maneuvers.  Some U.S. Companies’ fearful of a Trump re-election, with his propensity for tariffs as the all-encompassing solution for the American economy, devised a corporate plan. They had begun shifting away from China, Canada and Mexico, to India, already home to the call centers for many U.S. companies.

As recently reported by Trading Economics exports to the U.S. from India, increased to over $91 billion in 2024, up from approximately $54 billion in 2020.  Companies like Apple, Fed Ex, Foxconn, Walmart, Micron Technology, Boeing, Siemens, GE, and Samsung Electronics have already committed to the India cheaper labor plan. And the list continues to grow daily.

Those companies that didn’t plan for the Trump agenda will be forced to raise their prices. The automobile industry is a good example. GM has one of their Buick models made totally in China, and those tariff prices will be passed on to consumers. As will all the other auto manufacturers who import vehicles and parts from Canada and Mexico.

However, what I fear even more is that companies that have out-slicked President Trump, by moving their production operations to India, will raise their prices to match those that didn’t and who are now impacted by the tariffs. These companies will reap even bigger profits at the consumers’ expense.

Now how all this present government economic plan to bring production back to the U.S.A. will work remains a mystery to me. Maybe our country will just keep imposing tariffs on more and more countries. But I am sure of one thing; more money is going to be drained from my pocketbook with this present plan.

Louisiana cowards are alive and well in D.C.

One has to wonder why Louisiana‘s Republican members of Congress are so fearful of President Trump that they refuse to correct some of the misinformation that he espouses to the American people.   The absurdity of this fear was on full display in a new survey conducted by the media outlet, The Atlantic.

In a recent news conference President Trump accused Ukraine of starting the Ukraine/ Russia war, and also refused to label Vladimir Putin a dictator when directly asked by the press.

The Atlantic decided to set the record straight with input from the Republican members of Congress as to both falsehoods espoused by the President. They asked all 271 Republican Congressional members two questions; Did Russia start the war with Ukraine and Is Putin a dictator?  Simple enough, just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.

But shockingly, only 12 of the Republican members directly responded to the questions with a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

However, the Louisiana delegation really shined in the spotlight.  Senators Bill Cassidy, and John Kennedy provided no answers.  Representatives Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, and Julia Letlow also provided no response to the questions.  Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, had a spokesperson send over the recent comments he made during last week’s GOP leadership press conference about Trump’s deal making skills and his desire for peace in Ukraine, but DID NOT answer either question directly.  Additionally, 247 other Republican Congressional members chose to provide no answers.

Interestingly, both questions are supported by many factual references and are an easy ‘yes.’

With all the years of rhetoric about “Fake News” why would the party who adopted that as their battle cry be so reluctant to correct the President’s misinformation and set the record straight?  Especially the refusal to do so by our Louisiana Congressional members, who two of which, namely, Johnson and Scalise, who presently hold the highest ranking positions in the House of Representatives.

Just how far our esteemed Louisiana Republican members of Congress’ code of silence will extend will indeed be interesting to follow for the next four years.   Where will they draw the line? Perhaps they never will out of political fear.  Just look at what our senator, Bill Cassidy, has already done by his endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for Secretary of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pathetic beyond belief.

Real Government Waste

 

With all this rhetoric about cutting waste at the Federal level, I say we cut to the chase and get rid of one of the biggest wastes of federal tax dollars, namely, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, commonly referred to as Congress.

According to the U.S. Government website, “To ensure a separation of powers, the U.S. Federal Government is made up of three branches: legislative, executive and judicial. To ensure the government is effective and citizens’ rights are protected, each branch has its own powers and responsibilities, including working with the other branches. The legislative branch is made up of the House and Senate, known collectively as the Congress. Among other powers, the legislative branch makes all laws, declares war, regulates interstate and foreign commerce and controls taxing and spending policies. The Constitution puts Congress in charge of the budget, granting it the power to collect taxes, borrow money, and approve spending.”  In other words, it has “the power of the purse”

With President Trump’s establishment of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) headed by billionaire, Elon Musk, it is obvious that “the power of the purse” no longer resides with Congress. Now by a series of executive orders Congress spending mandates are being altered, and in some cases completely cancelled.

I am sure the authors of the U.S Constitution are turning over in their graves with this present Executive Branch (President) grasp of power, for they probably never imagined that such an action would, or could occur.  But, now thanks to a legislative gimmick known collectively as ‘executive orders,’ Congress’ control of spending allocations has evaporated. DOGE now has “the power of the purse” and makes the decisions about what agencies and departments of the U.S. government get funded and how much monies they receive.

Again, something never imagined by our Constitution authors. And, apparently our esteemed Republican government leaders in control of Congress have no problems with abdicating this power; quite possibly due to the lack of a spine to resist.

However, as a work colleague once told me when I was promoted to a supervisory position, once you give away power, you can never get it back.  So the future repercussions of this spineless action are yet to be known.

I rest my case. Let’s just send every member of Congress the same letter as other Federal employees are receiving which begins with, “The Agency finds, based on your performance, that you have not demonstrated that your further employment at the Agency would be in the public interest.” 

 

Elimination by Executive Order

 

With the stroke of a pen President Donald Trump has apparently attempted to wipe out the existence of an entire subculture in U.S. society, LGBTQ + folks.  His latest executive orders have banned any such reference or discussion of these individuals in all federal documents and online government websites. Last Friday, if one tried to view certain online government general information sites, they were greeted with the message “temporarily unavailable” across their respective screens.

These orders are consistent with Trump's election campaign, in which he pledged to "protect children” from, and I quote, “the left wing gender insanity.” 

He has further declared that there are only two sexes, males and females. Anything else no longer exists.

President Trump has also targeted the doctor/patient relationship regarding the health care for transgender youth by an executive order that any clinician who provides what he terms ‘trans heath care’ to these youth will be struck from the Medicare and Medicaid benefits system.

Trump also proposes enacting an executive order that would cut federal funding for any school which he deems as “pushing” any content for children which references gay or transgender individuals.

As is usually the case with our esteemed leader, these executive orders are legally vague and contain subjective terminology, which most likely will result in drawn out legal battles.

However, while all this wiping out of a subculture may be applauded and seem long overdue to many of his supporters, the facts of the matter are, according to the latest Gallup Poll, there are approximately 8 percent of these ‘banned’ folks in the U.S. population. They function in all walks of life in our society, from health care workers to auto mechanics, and the population continues to thrive and grow successfully.

So those of you, who want to facilitate the adoption of wearing horse blinders and pretend that by executive orders these folks have suddenly been exterminated from our society, need to get a grip because they ain’t going nowheres, in spite of your denial.  They deserve to be respected and loved.

Dubbed by Louisiana Legislators

Well folks I hope you don’t pass out when you get your next cable bill or video streaming service bill.

Apparently, Louisiana residents have been hooked winked by our Governor and legislators. The problem is I can’t figure out if it was deliberate or the result of 'mass confusion.'  During the last special legislative session our esteemed legislators, in an effort to fund Governor Landry’s so called ‘Louisiana Tax Overhaul,’ voted not only to keep the about to expire state 4.75% tax rate in place, but to increase it to 5% along with increasing the number of entities eligible for this taxation. 

Included in the increased taxation mix were video cable services like Cox, Spectrum, AT&T, etc., and streaming services like HBO Max, Disney, Netflix, Peacock, Paramount +, Amazon Prime, etc.

Something happen during the final passage of the legislation that resulted in specifying that these services be taxed at an additional 5%.  So instead of taxing these services at 5% as specified in the initial tax plan that included just more eligible items, the video services ended up being slapped with an additional 5% resulting in double taxation at a 10% rate.

The extent of this confusion was clearly on display when I called the Louisiana Department of Revenue and asked what the tax rate was on these services.  The initial reply by employees was 5%, the same figure as initially specified in the bill increasing the state sales tax from 4.75% to %5.

However, after I hung up the phone, I received an apologetic email saying that they misspoke because “upon further investigation” it was, in fact 10%.

I contacted, for obvious reasons, a nameless legislator’s office and was emphatically told the tax for the services in question was 5%. I then contacted my local rep, who was also surprised that streaming customers were paying a 10% sales tax rate

So, did Governor Landry cleverly plan this ‘bait and switch’ and hooked winked everyone in Baton Rouge, or were our esteem leaders simply ‘remiss’ for not knowing what was included in the Tax Reform legislative packages they were passing?

Guess it doesn’t really matter because their constituents have all been greatly harmed by their actions, resulting in double taxation on TV streaming services.  Good luck with

Ten Commandments

With all this push by Governor Landry, State Attorney General, Liz Murrill, and our state legislators on the importance of displaying the Ten Commandments in every public classroom; it is apparent by this action that these folks feel that Louisiana parents/guardians are not doing their job teaching religious values to their children.  Who gave them the right to make such a judgement?  And, why stop with just the display? 

Perhaps, these esteemed leaders should also require that each child be mandated to bring a note to school from a religious institution of their parents’ choosing attesting to the fact that they have been in attendance that week. After all then all these folks could be assured that the kids are receiving the ‘proper’ religious guidance to truly live by the message of the Ten Commandments.

Personally, I find this entire fiasco not only highly insulting, but also contrary to one of the Republican Party’s main mantras, “government mandated over-site infringing on an individual’s rights.”

How one desires to instill the moral and ethical values in their children to act responsibly in our society is none of Landry’s, Murrill’s, or our legislators’ business, and they all need to stop trying to hide the fact that they are quite blatantly mandating it.

Do you really think these same folks would accept a mandate that all governing officials swear allegiance to abide by the Ten Commandments and failure to do so could result in their removal from office?

Guess we wouldn’t have too many governing officials left; starting with the President of the U.S. on down. 

And God only knows who would be left in our beloved state!