A Legal System in Peril

 

Donald J Trump has had his fill of legal problems. He hates judges (except those who side with him) and his wrath knows no bounds. Look at the following quote, “I expect the…, legal profession to understand that the nation is not here for them, but they are here for the nation . . . . From now on, I shall intervene in these cases and remove from office those judges who evidently do not understand the demand of the hour.”

It would be easy to look at that quote and picture Donald Trump standing at a lectern speaking to an excited MAGA crowd. You would be close, but that quote was from Adolph Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag on April 26,1942. At that moment the German Fuhrer dissolved the last remnants of judicial independence in Germany.

Hitler had loyal judges, and their rulings supported the oppression, discrimination, and eventual genocide that Hitler deemed necessary. They regularly suppressed the law and allowed tyranny to supplant justice.

Currently, we have a Supreme Court which regularly is divided along political rather than legal lines. If a verdict supports conservative views, the law can be twisted like a pretzel to support an outcome already determined before any judicial analysis. We regularly see this regime use venue shopping to steer lower court cases to sympathetic jurisdictions.

We have already seen the Trump regime use and abuse the legal system. He ignores court rulings with which he disagrees knowing that he will get his way long before matters can be decided through proper judicial channels. By the time legal decisions can be reached, it can be too late.

We have seen Trump use the power of his office to even attack private law firms that have aggrieved him in the past. We have seen ICE officials use court proceedings to round up immigrants who have been charged but not convicted of crimes. A judge allegedly allowed an immigrant to use a side exit to avoid capture and the FBI came in and arrested the judge.

Watch Hitler Speak at this link.

In Hitler’s case, he asserted that the communist threat required such emergency measures, and he branded them terrorists. Trump has branded all immigrants as terrorists, regardless of status, who fit his rather vague profile of various gangs. With that justification, he has invoked wartime powers to suspend habeas corpus for anyone with the wrong tattoo or who wears the wrong clothing.

While we haven’t yet reached the complete breakdown of the legal system as was the case 83 years ago, we are not far from having a similar form of authoritarian government.

Watch Hitler Speak at this link.

Grifter In Chief

While you are distracted by immigrant gangs living in sanctuary cities and elsewhere, the economy is headed for the toilet. Trump is inexperienced in economic matters and his incompetence is taking the booming economy that he was handed on January 20, 2025, and it has been eviscerated in less than 100 days. He has lost trillions of our dollars.

His tariff “solution” is destabilizing the economy and making investment decisions near impossible. He keeps blundering and making mistakes then reversing his position. He has been firing and rehiring when reminded of the consequences of his actions. Blunder after blunder. He is a bull in a "China" shop and he is not making us “Great Again,” he is breaking things that may never be fixed. He is Trump the Destroyer not Trump the Builder of Greatness.

The man is the laughing stock of the world. He is in it for financial gain. While promoting nationalism and isolation, he has blatantly offered to sell an audience with him at a dinner to those who send him the most money. He has generated over $350 million in fees for his failing crypto $Trump business. Investors, both foreign and domestic, can now send him cash in hopes of “winning” an invitation.

The $TRUMP meme coin rose more than 60% on Wednesday after the post announced "the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world," promising the top 220 buyers a private gala dinner with the president on May 22 at Trump National Golf Club in Washington, D.C.

Additionally, the top 25 holders would get "an ultra exclusive private VIP reception with the President" as well as a "Special Tour," the announcement said.

This is called influence peddling and presidential grifting. Those “lucky” enough to have bought in at $74.59 when it started in January, watched the value of their investment reach $7.14 by April 7. After posting his ad that the top 220 buyers of his $Trump would win a dinner with him, those early investors who jumped first may be disappointed because, in a classic bait and switch, his site now states: "President Trump may not be able to attend" but that winners would receive a limited edition TRUMP NFT "in lieu thereof."

He will forever be our Grifter in Chief.

The New Pandemic

 

Protests have broken out across the country after a maniacal authoritarian masquerading as the president of a democracy trampled on the rights we had long taken for granted. When did this start? How did it happen? By that I don’t mean to blame only Donald J. Trump who I view as merely the symptom of the actual disease. That disease has become our new pandemic with similar devastating results.

The disease in question is apathy among our elected leaders compounded by a disillusioned public. That apathy has nurtured a leadership disconnect with the priorities of the electorate. As a result, we now see a sociopathic television entertainer has been able to convince just over half of the nation that even he, with all his personal baggage, would be better at running things. It was easy for a larger-than-life personality to get elected. We had become a nation enamored by celebrity and influencers, the new gods of a listless society. Once in charge, his attempts to keep some of his wild promises would involve an attack on the fundamental rights and freedoms that we hold dear.

His actions had nothing to do with solving problems, they had to do with a consolidation of power that could then be wielded for financial gain. His transactional nature sees all “deals” need to benefit him in some way. He gets money, power, adoration, or something else he craves in exchange for anything he gives. Whomever else may benefit as a result is circumstantial. The universe revolves around him. Where he sees a collection of star systems others with better vision see a black hole.

We have for too long been complacent and tolerant of a gradual erosion of our rights and freedoms as a cadre of stealthy and nefarious individuals sought personal gain through a corruption of “the system”. If there is a common denominator in all this, I would have to say that it is money. In that, I equate money and power as two sides of the same coin. Perhaps I should say two sides of the same bitcoin as nobody uses regular coins anymore.

The Trump Regime, as virtually all political criminal empires had done before, used familiar tactics. They corrupted the legal system and delegitimized elections. They then attacked free speech, education, racial minorities, sexual minorities, religious minorities, and bullied any group weak enough to not be able to fight back. They did these things in a way that would provide their rank and file with an identity. That group found it easy to become members of a large organization that gave their lives meaning. They now had a sense of belonging.

Once they were part of the regime, it was like a religion. In fact, those who already had deeply held religious beliefs were a known quantity who would be susceptible to groupthink. They were used to parroting the scripture that they had been taught to never question. That same scripture could be interpreted and reinterpreted in as many ways as necessary to explain past actions or future direction. These political evangelicals became true believers in “the cause”.

Some of the ideology was easy to accept because the words used to describe the various concepts would be hard to dispute. Who doesn’t want lower taxes, lower prices, better paying jobs, etc.? Everyone wants these things but, during political campaigns, nobody ever discusses the cost. The loss of personal freedom was never part of the discussion.

We now see that rhetoric was used to disguise the more hidden objectives. A power grab that would take away your right to vote for or against things you liked or didn’t like. You could have some education but only if that education taught a specific lesson. Books and other forms of messaging could now be banned along with free speech if any of the messages included were not approved by some higher authority.

One of our freedoms has no specific name, that is the freedom to exist as a free person. You could now be imprisoned without trial at the whim of someone more powerful than you. This basic personal freedom would first be lost by a minority group, namely anyone in this country without documentation. That group would then be expanded to include those here legally but who had in some way made some utterance with which someone in authority disagreed. Suggestions have already been made to further expand this to all citizens who don’t provide the new regime with the respect they demand.

This would then become a police state where the old government of “we the people,” becomes “I the ruler.” We are truly headed for such a dark place. It is time to challenge the loss of our freedoms. No drop in egg or gasoline prices will be worth the loss of everything outlined in our Bill of Rights and guaranteed in our Constitution. Apathy has no place here. We can no longer afford to be complacent. We need to let our voices be heard loud and clear. Let no politician feel that they don’t work for us.

People like Elon Musk have used their cash megaphones to buy political power but, as even he has seen, there is a price to pay. His Tesla brand has seen a loss of $873 billion in first 3 months of 2025. Where possible, others need to feel that pain. When politicians start losing their cushy jobs and the wealthy see their lifestyles threatened, perhaps things will change for the better.

Trump’s continuing series of whoops and do-overs showcase his ineptitude. His never-ending executive orders have cost this country trillions of dollars and ruined thousands of lives. Many of those orders were “issued by mistake,” and then when the reality of what he had just done was realized, there was no apology. There was just another order. Our future was as clear as pea soup. Any planned future investment was halted as too risky amidst the chaos. A stable economy does not fare well in times of uncertainty.

Trump has been his own worst enemy and, with luck, he will self-destruct. His approval ratings are in freefall. His first hundred days have shown that he is no better at running a country than he was running a casino.

Ron DeSantis Sleight of Hand

It seems like Florida’s favorite magician has turned government money (read your money) into a donation that benefited the DeSantis family. A portion of a 2022 fraud settlement agreement involving Centene, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor who overbilled taxpayers $67M, got diverted to the Hope Foundation. This “charity” is overseen by Casey DeSantis. The amount of this “diverted donation” was ten million dollars. The entirety of the $67M settlement was supposed to have been returned to the taxpayers.

The Old Shell Game
"The cherry on top..."

Muddying up the waters is the fact that Hope Florida created a second nonprofit called Hope Florida Foundation. State mandated documents and IRS tax form requirements were also lacking. When reporters tried to talk about these entities with the Florida Department of Children and Families, they were turned away. It seems that they couldn’t discuss either of these non-profits because they didn’t yet exist. When pressured, Joshua Hay, the president of Hope Florida Foundation said he was “in the process of creating” the necessary documents.

Hay is also the CEO of a consulting firm and other officers have ties to Walgreens, Koch Industries, and CDR Health Care. By way of explanation, Gov. DeSantis claimed that the $10M was not part of the original settlement. He now wants to call that diverted money “kind of like a cherry on top.” It now seems like that “cherry” got split into two $5M bundles that were then given to other organizations. Those organizations then donated millions to a political action committee.

If you have followed this so far, you can see that they didn’t want you to be able to do that easily. The “old shell game” had the mark trying to keep track of a pea under several walnut shells. Here, the pea has been replaced by a cherry, but the result is the same, the mark got fleeced.

The Pendulum Cuts

 

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Pit and the Pendulum, describes the anguish and terror of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. An element of his torture is a pendulum swinging above his bound torso that descends slowly and is destined to eventually cut him in two.

Pendulums are often used to describe movement of a repetitive nature swinging to the extremes before returning to a more central position. As humans we are prone to crave movement and shun the status quo. In world events we seem never to be satisfied with things that are not moving in one direction or another.

We have gone from periods of isolation to global involvement and back again. We are now headed toward isolation under the banner of nationalism. In former periods of isolation, we sought to avoid conflict with the happenings in Europe and elsewhere as a matter of policy. In the 1930s the perils of WWI were fresh, and isolation was an easy sell. Today, other forces are at work.

In this 21st century edition, economic forces up to now, have worked to favor a global economy rather than an isolationist or nationalistic viewpoint. There was both good and bad in this as commodities got cheaper, some American jobs headed overseas. With open supply lines this movement was accommodated. On the downside, we lost jobs in manufacturing and this globalization saw us spending beyond our means.

This so-called trade imbalance was scapegoated as the culprit by nationalists and the problems were exacerbated by the Covid pandemic when supply chains were disrupted. It became evident that certain supply disruptions threatened national security and our ability to manufacture our weapons of war. America always has to have the biggest slingshot, and we are willing to outspend our nearest rivals several fold. We will do this even if this means adding to the national debt. Congress has been kicking that debt can down the road so many times it has become a national pastime.

Now we have an amateur economist whose expertise lies in real estate and entertainment, and who sees all things as transactional with winners and losers. He can never see the mutual benefit of free trade as that doesn’t fit his sense of dominating all such activities where he wins and everyone else loses. His myopic Mr. Magoo viewpoint sees a series of individual “deals” rather than the complex interrelationships of a global economy. Shifting to his nationalistic economy, if it were possible at all, would take decades to achieve. In the meantime, all but the very wealthy would suffer immeasurable hardships.

Even in this world of transactional winners and losers, he has lost as many times as he has won. His historical business past is littered with failures. His main claim to wealth came from being a showman on television. Now he has discovered the wealth that is available in politics where he can control and avoid lawsuits and taxes and get people to give him cash for his favored treatment.

In his economic la la land, he is crafting an environment where he can shift more of the tax burden toward the lower classes and make himself and others within his realm, more exempt from this perceived waste of personal capital. There is certainly one person guaranteed to be a winner when the economy takes on water and sinks. The captain of our economic ship can reap personal financial rewards in the present while ignoring that iceberg dead ahead. He already has his lifeboat ready and will sell the rest to the highest bidder.

In his effort to consolidate the power which will enable him to reap even larger financial rewards from well-heeled donors, he has embarked on a haphazard tariff roller coaster. Those close enough to the presidential roller coaster car, can see the track ahead and make investments in a timely manner.

As the pendulum swings away from globalization, we will be forced to avoid the cheaper labor of international markets. This will result in inflation. Inflation hurts the little guy much harder than the more affluent. Tariffs also hurt the little guy more than those with enough capital to pay for an exemption from the tariff master. As the pendulum blade drops ever lower, the less affluent have been positioned to feel the first cut.

Trump’s nationalistic songbook resonated with the manosphere where populism, violence, power, primal urges, and patriotism are often blended into a toxic cocktail that can feed a level of euphoria. Like most mind-altering drugs, the high may be pleasant but the hangover can be intense. This group is generally ill equipped to see beyond their influencers to realize their own predicament. That pendulum will eventually swing in the other direction, and as it lowers, we are all more at risk of being cleaved in two.

Our National Parks

 

I am grateful to have visited a great many of our nation’s parks in my travels. I have seen all the great ones and several of the more obscure. I’m sure when people marked their ballots for Donald J. Trump, they didn’t foresee his promised “Great America” as one with a decimated National Parks System and where visiting our beautiful parks would now be a challenge.

Last year over 332 million people visited our national parks setting a new record. Our parks are beautiful, educational, and a source of pride for most Americans. Even with chronic shortages of staff and funding, the herculean efforts of parks personnel have made visits memorable and fun.

Now, with the meataxe butchering of the federal government and the random and thoughtless firings of park personnel, park visitors can expect longer entry waits, closed trails, uncleaned toilets, and uncollected trash. The money that used to fund our parks will now be made available to provide tax breaks for the very wealthy.

Given the surge in popularity during the summer season, many parks rely on recruiting seasonal workers to assist in the daunting workload. This year however, issues like a lack of affordable housing and funding will mean that places like Acadia NP that normally has 22 summer workers, will have fewer than 4.

The Grand Canyon has recently seen entrance wait times of 90 minutes or longer will now have warnings to avoid the South Entrance (the most popular) between the hours of 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. With canyon floor temperatures regularly over 100 degrees, take plenty of water because, if you run into a medical issue, help may be a long way off.

Olympic NP in Washington has two very popular destinations, Hurricane Ridge and the Hoh Rain Forest. Luckily, I have already seen both of these destinations because access roads will be severely limited and delays up to three hours can be expected. Without staff with radios providing access information, expect this year’s delays to be even longer.

Yosemite NP in Northern California has been understaffed for years before the latest cuts and access now will not be guaranteed without implementing a timed-reservation system. With just weeks to go before the peak season starts, that system has been placed on hold by the Interior Department. Without some means of controlling the crowds, traffic and parking overflows can damage the delicate ecosystem as well as diminish the experience for visitors.

Yes, I can say I have been to Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Teton, Grand Canyon, Carlsbad, Bryce, Zion, Badlands, Capital Reef, Olympic, Arches, Death Valley, Hawaii Volcanoes, Glacier Bay, Crater Lake, Sequoia, Petrified Forest, Redwood, Mt. Ranier, Joshua Tree, Everglades, North Cascades, Saguaro, Denali, and Great Smokies along with National Preserves, Monuments , Historic Sites, and National Seashores. I saw them at a time when they were magnificent and a stroll down a quiet trail was actually quiet except for the sounds of nature.

I am thankful that I was able to both see and enjoy them before they were further ruined by a conscious shift in national priorities away from protecting our nation’s natural beauty and toward a chaotic trampling of that landscape to provide tax cuts for the wealthy. I guess a drastic increase in entry fees could solve the problem. The current entry fee for Yosemite is $35 per vehicle. If that were raised to $350 per vehicle I’m sure people getting those new tax cuts could afford to enjoy the beauty of our National Parks.

SCOTUS Dissent: Alito-Thomas

 

In the published dissent regarding the injunction to stop the deportation of prisoners held in Texas, the dissenters Alito and Thomas use the term “putative class of detainees.” This is legal double-speak for we don’t know who they are. Therein lies the rub, they don’t know. By that logic, you can capture and torture people even if you don’t know who they are.

From Page One of Alito Thomas Dissent

They go on to question the injunction as the term “[t]he Government” is not specific enough even though the title mentions Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, Et Al. I guess the reference to the president and others is a bit vague for people to know it is about our government.

The dissenting duo goes on to say they think the court lacks jurisdiction because the “All Writs Act of 1789” didn’t specify the courts had power beyond merely aiding the president in his endeavors. What they fail to mention in this is the fact that the president quite probably didn’t have the power to make his decision in the first place as most of that power resides with Congress under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and only in times of declared war.

Furthermore, this act was intended as an emergency measure in the event of an invasion in the time of war. It has never been used outside wartime. For Trump to declare that a gang of thugs from a foreign country, many of whom had been here for years, amounted to a wartime invasion is a stretch of the imagination, even a sociopath’s imagination. Trump is throwing around terms like declaring war as if there wasn’t a process for doing this. Ronald Reagan declared a “War on Drugs,” but nobody assumed this was an invasion by a foreign power that warranted that we alert the Pentagon.

It seems like someone is trying to desperately find justification for a desired action and not anything close to the intention of the law as enacted 236 years ago. It is doubtful that 18th century leaders envisioned a group of foreign thugs being thought of in terms of a wartime invasion by a foreign power.

Actually, the Alien Enemies Act was part of a series of acts enacted when we feared an impending war with France. Of those laws, this is the only one not expired or repealed. It gives the president certain powers during a “declared war” when the U.S. faces an “invasion or predatory incursion” by another country or foreign government.

Trump is claiming some divine authority to brand anyone an “enemy” who may be subject to his wrath. In a sworn statement by an ICE official before a U.S. district court, “the lack of specific information about each specific individual is used to highlight the risk they pose.”

Even the most conservative and faithful SCOTUS supporters of Donald Trump gagged on this one. All except the two who have been paid so handsomely that they will rubber stamp anything he does. Alito and Thomas are owned by billionaires. Alito gets his money and gifts from Paul Singer. When Singer has matters of business before the Supreme Court, Justice Alito has never recused himself. Justice Thomas has never restricted himself to a single benefactor but Harlan Crow, David Sokol, Wayne Huizenga, and Paul “Tony” Novelly have all been very good to him.

I leave you with a Justice Thomas quote:

“The job is not worth doing for what they pay, but it is worth doing for the principle.” I think the quote is proper, but the word principle is misspelled. It should be “principal” where it refers to a sum of money invested.

The Big IF

 

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen," George Orwell’s 1984.

If the battered and tattered U.S. Constitution survives this most recent onslaught, the future retelling of these current events warrants a Hollywood documentary. The “If” in that statement has never been more tenuous and the odds of our Constitution’s survival, barring some unforeseen major event, are not good. I say documentary because this story needs no embellishment or deviation from actual events to be a harrowing tale of a near catastrophe. If that future movie is not in the category of horror, you will know that the worst case scenario played out and that our Constitution did not survive.

We have seen political fiction put in a movie format before and found it entertaining and often disturbing. After viewing such movies, we could return to the safe reality that was our previous existence. That luxury is no longer. Never again will we feel safe knowing that our founding document and its laws, will protect us from the evil that exists in the hearts of some of our fellow countrymen.

Some previous movie fiction offerings predicted dire circumstances but were seen as whimsical fantasies of some dystopian future from which we were somehow protected. I have often seen the book/movie 1984 used in current references. George Orwell has another book/movie that would have valid elements of reference for today’s events, Animal Farm. Its’ main character Napolean utters his famous line, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

These movie references provide a common level of understanding to simplify more complex events. We all know the most famous stories and can relate by a mere mention of their names. Catch-22 provides a wealth of common threads. Lines like, “The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” Or, how about, “[They] agreed that it was neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never questioned anything.” Wow, Heller nailed it.

In another Heller Catch-22 reference that I found applicable to the machinations of our diabolical deceiver, “The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” Our vindictive vitriolic ruler has that "no character" part in spades. It's his "trump" card.

Of course, one of the scariest political fiction book/movies is The Manchurian Candidate. In that story, a plot is woven to place a Joseph R. McCarthy-like vice-presidential candidate in the line of succession and then to assassinate the presidential candidate at their national convention. The killing would be blamed on the Communists (Russia) so that this new president could assume dictatorial powers. While there is no direct corollary in current events aside from the creation of a scenario that would elevate a president to a dictator, it should be known that The Manchurian Candidate plagiarized parts of another book/movie written in 1934, called I, Claudius. In the historical novel about the Roman Emperor Claudius, he is administered an "Olympian Mixture" that enables others to manipulate him for their own benefit. In his drugged state Claudius is so bizarre that he is worshipped as a god. Once Claudius is relieved of his drugged state, he decides to continue as a mad monarch rather than reign as a benevolent one.

Yes, we have a rich well of political fiction with which to draw comparisons, but the real events will need to be told with little deviation from the truth. This of course assumes that “truth” still exists as an idea with any meaning. For that to happen the current status quo will need a major disruption. Congress, SCOTUS, and others will need to take a stand. This current group needs to stop saying, “Donald Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.” This is a quote paraphrased from The Manchurian Candidate, that was repeated by the brainwashed group to praise the leader of their captured infantry platoon.

To the extent that Donald Trump can be manipulated through such praise that would bring normal individuals to gag with convulsive fits, we will be governed by our own mad monarch along a path dictated by “others” and their diabolical Project 2025. Like the Catch-22 directive, Project 2025 isn’t explicitly a directive so much as it is a rule of bureaucratic absurdity providing a procedural framework for destructive chaos. The fact that this current administration and its avid collection of misfits, has seen cause to have Catch-22 banned and challenged in school districts and libraries, is telling.

Without that “unforeseen major event” we will need to continue to try to survive the chaos. There is a phrase from a Chinese short-story collection from 1627, that states, "it's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period." This is possibly the source of the more recent, “May you live in interesting times,” that is presented as a Chinese curse to be used in periods of turmoil and upheaval. Curse or simple fact, the jury is still out. I, for one, would appreciate a return to some semblance of normality than be ruled by a madman willing to risk our future for his own amusement. Only the mad would use chaos as a drug.

I’ll leave you with another reference to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22:

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

"That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed.

"It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed.”

Donald the Magnificent

The theater is packed to capacity. A hush comes over the crowd as quiet strains of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance begin to build from the orchestra. Then the rear doors of the giant hall burst open as a giant spotlight shines upon the featured act of the evening. Donald the Magnificent (DTM) enters and struts his way forward to thunderous applause. He doffs his floor-length fur cape and takes his place center stage and waits for the applause to die down. He asks for a volunteer from the audience. A man is selected and walks up on the stage. DTM asks the man for some money from his wallet. The man hands over several bills that are then held up for all to see. Then the showman utters the magic words, Abbra Ka-tariff and the money disappears in a puff of smoke. The crowd applauds.

At that moment, The Magnificent Donald, a name by which he is also known, announces that they haven’t seen anything yet. He asks for the audience to stand. The audience rises to their feet. He then asks the audience to check their own wallets. It is only then that everyone realizes that all their money is gone too. Now the crowd is angry. Donald the Magnificent holds up his hands then tells them not to worry about their missing money. He promises their money is secure and will be managed by him and his wealthy associates. The crowd is then told that before leaving the theater they will each be given some magic beans and that they are to take those beans home, plant them, water them, and that sometime in the future they will be rewarded for their faith in him.

This is like those Fractured Fairy Tales segments on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle that presented classic fairy tales with altered storylines. For many Americans, approximately 62%, who are invested in the stock market through direct ownership or through retirement accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs, the above story is more like something from The Rocky Horror Picture Show than it is from “moose and squirrel.” With the stroke of a pen upon a new executive order, or with the utterance of a few words within earshot of a reporter, or with an errant midnight tweet, Donald the Magnificent has made approximately $11 trillion of investment value disappear as if by magic.

Ah, but the remaining 38% of Americans who have no retirement accounts or direct involvement with the stock market, they are not forgotten. They may join the rest of the class to see the Wrath of Don. People like Kentucky soybean farmer and president of the American Soybean Association, Caleb Ragland, who is now feeling the pain. While he supported Trump, he now feels betrayed as the high-roller president gambles with his livelihood and that of 500,000 soybean farmers whose sole income is from soybeans. In 2024 they sold China over 22 million metric tons. Now China is shopping elsewhere as Brazil is looking to cut down 70 million acres of rainforest to satisfy the Chinese market.

Trump's first term tariffs led to over $23 billion in subsidy payments to farmers through a Depression-era agency. That unfunded revenue came in by borrowing from the U.S. Treasury. Farm bankruptcies still soared to 20% in Trump’s last year of his first term. Trump's first-term tariffs pale by comparison with those under his retribution-term, aka Trump 2.0. How GREAT is that?

In the time-honored tradition of solving movie mysteries, the adage, “follow the money,” is often heard. How does Donald Trump benefit and what’s in it for his wealthy cronies. Here is where it gets slightly more complex and where the sleight-of-hand may be used to bewilder the uninformed.

First there is the distraction. The pretty girl assistant, the flash of light, the puff of smoke that diverts attention away from the real trick. In this case it is the promise of future employment when those great manufacturing jobs return to America. Of course, that will be five or ten years down the road, or never. This doesn’t matter to Donald the Magnificent. In the cartoon strip Popeye, the heavy-set Wimpy character is quoted as saying, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.” Likewise, Trump will gladly take your money today with a promise of you getting a job at some indeterminate date in the future.

The distraction is to cover the fact that tariffs are a tax revenue source that may be used to lower the income taxes of the uber-wealthy. Additionally, tariffs provide Trump with a bargaining chip. He now has leverage that allows him to demand both countries and very large businesses “contribute” money to benefit him. This may be through Trump’s Political Action Committees (PACs), faux charities, or they can do “favors” that allow him to make more money elsewhere. He openly brags that people and countries are lining up to “kiss my ass.”

Send him enough money or do a large enough favor where Trump may benefit, and you could get one of his very valuable “exemptions” from a costly tariff. He can grant these with the stroke of a pen and your other elected representatives have no say in the matter. While such ways around the tariffs may be available for the well-heeled jet set, small businesses will need to pay the tariffs until they are forced into the abyss.

The other more blatant but risky method is for those with enough ready cash to know in advance when such deals will be made so they can make the correct investment decisions that can earn bundles of cash. Stocks, bonds, gold, crypto can all benefit from insider information. On April 9, 2025, at 9:37 a.m., Trump tweeted on Truth Social, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” Four hours later he announced a 90-day pause in nearly all tariffs. The S&P 500 alone gained $4 trillion, but only for those in a position to take advantage of such situations. Average investors don’t “short stocks” or buy and sell to take advantage of the fluctuations.

Yes, “there’s gold in them thar tweets.” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump favorite, bought into 19 different companies the day before the tariff pause. She had also previously dumped between $50,000 and $100,000 in Treasury bills the day before. Ms. Greene is the chairwoman of the DOGE subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee so what possible information could she have had that helps her in the market.

So, while Americans everywhere are struggling with bills at the super market, others are making a quick buck riding the whipsaw decisions of the White House magician. It is he who is using his powerful pen to make money disappear here and wind up over there. For those who voted for this illusionist, I hope you are enjoying the show and if you plant your magic beans just hope they aren’t soybeans.

Logic and The MAGA Faithful

A recent post from a MAGA/Trump devotee that had been cut and pasted to his feed read, “Just a friendly reminder that these are the tariffs Canada applied to agricultural products before we entered a trade wars.” It went on to list things like “Chicken: 263%, Turkey:179%, etc.,… 25% doesn’t seem so excessive now, does it”

I explained to my friend that his post was misleading as it was using figures that only would be used when U.S. exports exceeded set quotas to prevent any dumping that might hurt domestic Canadian products. I also provided him a link to the Canadian government website where this was all explained. He ignored it all. His reply, “Oh well. It is probably close. Your site told me nothing.”

I again explained his mistake in greater detail and mentioned the key two elements, ‘Tariff Rate Quotas’ (TRQs) and ‘Over-Quota Tariffs. I told him that TRQs indicate an amount of product that can enter the country at low tariff rates (or, in the case of US dairy products to Canada, generally zero tariffs).

His reply was classic Evangelical Maga, “I really don't care about the Details. It's the trying to make America a Great Country again that I like. It it's 1,000,000 to 1, so what. Trying is what counts.”

This just shows you what we are up against. Logic is useless. Facts and details are meaningless. It’s like trying to argue with an expensive wall that didn’t work and Mexico never paid for. I think Grace Slick had the right idea.

When logic and proportion

Have fallen sloppy dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen's off with her head

Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head

Feed your head

Time for coffee.

He Clapped A 90

In one of my many careers, I worked as a road surveyor. In the 60s I helped build sections of I-95, 836, and Alligator Alley in south Florida. I also did real estate surveying, laying out new housing and verifying existing properties for sales or disputes. We had a method to guess the location of an existing spot that was approximately 90 degrees off a baseline. We called it, “clapping a 90."

We would stand with arms spread along the baseline and bring our hands together in front of us. You could then sight down the two joined hands to send someone in the right direction. That person could pace off roughly five feet with every other footfall along that line to measure an approximate distance. When you stopped at that estimated point, you could then dig for a previously established property corner.

The property corner once found, would then be verified by accurate measurement of the platted distance and a transit would be used to turn a more accurate angle from the known baseline. These points would be further verified from established points and benchmarks before signing off on the work.

When it came to tariffs, it appears that Donald Trump clapped a 90. He then broke out a sand wedge, took a wild swing, sent the ball flying, and made his decision for the direction of the entire nation. Now he calls this process his “intuition.” Given the ensuing global meltdown and chaos in the marketplace, not to mention the fact that his financial money pit sources just got taken to the proverbial cleaners, he has had to rethink his intuition.

He states that people were getting “a little yippy” and “afraid.” He has a revised plan that is a revision of the last revision to the last revised plan. He will now back off tariffs on most nations. Pundits have said he may have gotten this new direction from the kid Elon Musk carried on his shoulders in that Oval Office press conference. Where that kid got his information is unknown, but he was observed picking his nose.

Trump also defended his initial push for sweeping tariffs, saying the trade environment was “not sustainable” and that “somebody had to pull the trigger. I was willing to pull the trigger. It is a tribute to Trump’s true greatness that he can fire a canon that destroys trillions of dollars of investment value and then claim the moral high ground when he puts an end to it. What a mensch.

He was asked how he might determine exemptions for companies hard hit by the tariffs he said you couldn’t use technical criteria and that you needed to do it, “Just instinctively.” “It’s really more of an instinct.” This statement followed his announcement of a 90-day pause of tariffs. Ergo, he “clapped a 90.”

Who Ordered the Shit on a Shingle?

 

Anyone who has ever spent time in a military chow line knows that, when the menu says Shit On a Shingle (SOS), you can expect a delicious meal of creamed chipped beef on toast. Imagine the surprise of the MAGA faithful who heard chef Donald say he was serving Shit On a Shingle, and they actually got a scoop of excrement on a thin tapered piece of roofing cedar.

Yes, within his first 100 days, President Donald John Trump has force fed all of America a steady diet of what he promised with a few surprises thrown in. The MAGA faithful used their selective hearing to foresee prices going down and a newly revitalized economy with more jobs that would be the envy of the world.

Those of us who knew him, never expected a better economy, but none of us foresaw the Spanish Inquisition. It came in the form of a wholesale dismantling of federal departments that included, mass arbitrary firings for “poor performance,” a formerly healthy stock market headed quickly toward recession in under two months, investment portfolios decimated, Social Security threatened, and the suspension of habeas corpus using the pretext of an undeclared war and an 18th century law.

Even the MAGA faithful are feeling some pangs of buyer’s remorse, but only a few are willing to risk the blasphemy of criticism. Any who had retirement plans that relied on investments in the stock market, have seen those dreams threatened. That next car or truck purchase may now have to be postponed. That will mean you will need to hang on to that aging Ford F150 truck just a while longer.

If that pickup breaks down, you may be in for a surprise. If your F150 truck has the 3.5-litre EcoBoost engine that one comes from Mexico. Springs marked with NHK come from Shiga-ken, Japan as do the truck's suspension stabilizer linkages. If you have the 10-speed automatic transmission in your F150, or the 5-litre V8, or 3.3-litre V6, or the 2.7-litre EcoBoost, those come from Canada. With higher prices hitting the parts market, you can be thankful for the fact that you aren’t relying on a government paycheck. Remember, the difference between a recession and a depression; a recession is when your neighbor loses their job, a depression is when you lose yours.

With retirement plans in jeopardy, perhaps you should work a bit longer. That will allow your 401K time to recover while you build up a bit more in Social Security. Whoops, the political sacred cow known as Social Security is now in the cross hairs of the Trump billionaire coalition. Billionaires don’t need Social Security, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or food assistance, or help from FEMA in a disaster. You may also have to work longer if your parents are still alive. If you were counting on your children to support you in your reclining years, those manufacturing jobs and agriculture field hand opportunities may not be enough to support them without your help.

At least the fruit and vegetable-picking job market is opening up. With fewer immigrants available more Americans will need to pick up the slack in this physically demanding labor market. If not, crops will be left unharvested and allowed to rot in the fields. This will result in higher prices for consumers. The dairy industry likewise relied heavily on immigrant labor so milk and dairy prices will soon be on the rise. If domestic production faulters we will need to import more. Whoops again, we forgot about those pesky tariffs.

How many times must the MAGA fanatics get burned touching the Trump stove before they realize it is too hot for any of us to survive? A Wisconsin Trump voter, Bradley Bartell, says he doesn’t regret his vote for Trump. His Peruvian wife was recently snatched up by ICE and detained. They were returning from their Puerto Rican honeymoon when Camila was placed in custody. Bradley doesn’t blame Trump; he blames the system where ICE doesn’t have enough information. He says the system is very inefficient, but Trump didn’t cause it.

Camila’s “crime” was that she overstayed her student visa 5 years ago when the Covid pandemic forced the cancellation of her return flight to Peru. For her honeymoon, she was held in a Louisiana detention center for 49 days before being released on $3,000 bond. If her hearing doesn’t go well, the Bartell family will consider moving to Peru. It won't hurt for Bradley to continue to blow kisses in Trump's direction and hope that his Messiah will perform another in a long line of miricles.

Now, that’s a faithful Trumper. He claims the system is broken somehow and that is “the system’s fault.” Mr. Bartell forgot that Trump ran that system for four years and didn’t fix it. Now that he is back in office, instead of fixing it this time, he is haphazardly destroying people’s lives on his immigration rampage. Could Trump have fixed the broken system before he started his purge that is making predictable mistakes? Sure, but why bother. His wife is safe, unless she pisses him off.

Mr. Bradley seems like a nice guy, and I wish he and his new wife well. He says he feels sorry for the other people still in detention where his wife had been. He just wonders about the logic of it all. One might ask him, who he thinks is currently responsible for this “logic” or the failed system.

Well, Mr. Bradley’s honeymoon certainly got off to a bad start. Likewise, Mr. Trump’s honeymoon period has been more like two self-driving Tesla’s crashing into one another and catching fire than the promised well-oiled machine. Who could have seen that one coming? Last November, 42% of us knew. Today that figure is certainly a bit higher even if some hard core MAGA-fanatics won’t admit what they see right in front of their lying eyes. To them I say, enjoy your “creamed chipped beef on toast,” and try to ignore the smell.