March Madness

            It’s March Madness. We associate the term at this time of year with the NCAA basketball tournament, but we could just as easily use it to describe the tone of mainstream media’s reporting on White House personnel matters. Turbulence, shake-up, wholesale overhaul, chaos. Words like these appear to be mandatory in every media report. Trump-hating commentators and talking heads are practically giddy over the President’s seeming inability to retain the people he appointed to key positions. Gone are Tillerson, Hicks, Porter, McEntee, and Cohn, and these are just the ones out the door in recent weeks. According to the Washington Post, Shulkin, Sessions, Carson, McMaster, DeVos, Pruitt, and Zinke are already forming a line by the exit. Even Chief of Staff John Kelly is rumored to be on the list of targets likely to hear Trump’s “You’re fired!”

            Of course, there will be replacements; there is never a dearth of candidates willing to submit to a Donald Trump loyalty test for a chance to work 18-hour days in his administration. Look for familiar names like John Bolton, Pete Hegseth, and Keith Kellogg to get an engraved invitation to sit in the boiling cauldron. If filling their posts requires Senate confirmation, the invitees may want to reconsider after witnessing Mike Pompeo’s and Gina Haspel’s upcoming torture on the rack of the Democrat Inquisition before assuming their jobs as Secretary of State and head of the CIA.

            President Trump is defiant, of course. “I think you want to see change,” he says. “I want also to see different ideas.” That is not likely to reassure a staff described by the Post as gripped by fear and uncertainty. “Everybody fears the perp walk,” says a senior White House official.

            It’s not only the White House that is afflicted by March Madness. Many FBI and DOJ operatives like Peter Strzok, Andrew McCabe, and Bruce Ohr deserve to be fired, even prosecuted. And when coupled with the rash of resignations under the Capitol Dome for illegal and immoral behavior, we have a picture of Washington that resembles a Jackson Pollock painting.

            Will the last one out the door please turn off the lights.

To Honor or Not to Honor

            Perquimans County will celebrate its 350^th anniversary on April 27-28 with Riverbash, a festival that promises to be the biggest and best party we’ve ever had in Hertford. Anyone familiar with the history of Perquimans County knows there is much to celebrate.

            Many of the older residents of the area can remember a period when Hertford was a lot livelier than it is now. I’m referring to the war years when sailors from Harvey Point would come to town to enjoy free time away from the base. I can imagine many of them at a Saturday night dance or holding hands with a local girl at the movie house behind Erie Haste’s hardware store.

            Harvey Point wasn’t the only military installation in the area. A much larger one was the Elizabeth City Coast Guard base where American pilots joined others from Great Britain and the Soviet Union to train for Project Zebra, a secret mission to bomb German submarines. A year ago, the Elizabeth City town council voted unanimously to honor these airmen with a statue of an American, a Brit, and a Russian standing together as a symbol of the cooperation between war allies. The bronze memorial costing a million dollars would be paid for by Russia. Not a bad idea, it seemed at the time. But now, in a 5-3 decision, the council has nixed the project.

            One councilman doesn’t want it because none of the figures are black or female. A second doesn’t want a statue that would block the view of the water. A third said it would remind him of Stalin and might be a Trojan horse with equipment to hack computers. Forgotten is the primary reason for the statue: honoring our veterans and our allies in a war against evil. Myopia, it would seem, is a common affliction among local officials from Charlottesville to Elizabeth City.

            As for me, I’m looking forward to Riverbash and the celebration of Perquimans County’s long history. As we party with food, song, and dance, I hope we will not forget to salute the men and women who have served and continue to serve our country both in war and peace. That’s a part of our history we should always remember. And honor.

Trump Worries Me

            President Trump’s decisions are becoming increasingly worrisome. His supporters have been willing to put up with his impulsive and often nasty tweets, not to mention revelations about his past sexual escapades. That’s because he was making sound decisions in appointing conservative justices, reversing Obama’s suffocating regulatory excesses, and leading the way on energy, defense, and tax reform. Unfortunately, his over-sized ego and delusional belief in his deal-making ability, coupled with his dreadful personnel management and shallow understanding of economics, are threatening to alienate even his most die-hard supporters.

            Last week the President lost his Communications Director Hope Hicks, policy advisor Reed Cordish, and press aide Josh Raffel. That’s after staff secretary Rob Porter was forced to resign the week before. And let’s not forget the departures of Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, Dina Powell, Michael Flynn, and Tom Price, all key players in Trump’s administration. Most notably, one figure who has not left is Attorney General Jeff Sessions, despite being repeatedly berated and publicly insulted by the President. This doesn’t speak well for Trump’s ability to retain good people and manage the few loyal supporters he has left.

            Last week the President also held meetings to discuss school security after the horrendous massacre in Parkland, Florida. He called the meetings ostensibly to listen, but they ended up a platform for Trump’s questionable ideas on gun control that alienated Republican congressmen and the NRA. Worse, his proposal to seize guns was absolutely contrary to the Second Amendment and repugnant to every law-abiding gun owner in the country.

            Finally, the President said he would impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum, proving once again that he hasn’t a clue when it comes to the benefits of free trade. If he goes through with this harebrained idea, it will invite retaliation from other countries, cause the value of the dollar to plunge, increase the price of imports, and boost inflation. Trump doesn’t even seem to be aware that these higher tariffs will likely result in job loss in every American industry that relies on imported metals. The reaction from Congress and business leaders to Trump’s announcement was instantaneous and uniformly negative. The stock market plunged, settling at a loss of 420 points by the end of trading, down more than a 10% since its all-time high on January 26, barely a month ago.

            So much for Donald Trump’s recent rise in popularity polls.

It's Time to Cut

            What is the greatest threat facing our nation? It’s not Russia or China. It’s not North Korea or Iran, either. The threat is internal and of our own making. It is the national debt.

            As much as the thoroughly immoral and corrupt Bill Clinton disgusts me, I have to give him credit as the only president in the last 20 years to balance the budget. His successors have all presided over a national economy that piled on the debt, none more so than Barack Obama who doubled it.

            We Americans are like riders on a rickety bus that is careening down a mountainside road without guardrails. The latest man at the wheel refusing to apply the brakes is President Trump who has signed into law a two-year spending bill that is projected to add another trillion to the debt in 10 years.

            Conservatives pleaded for fiscal sanity. But Republicans who wanted more money for defense sided with Democrats demanding increased spending on infrastructure and social programs. Forecasts now project a national debt of $30 trillion by the year 2030, with fully a third of GDP going to pay interest on the debt. As long as the economy is booming, Americans on the runaway bus clamor for more goodies. But a crash is surely coming.

            There is only one solution: we must cut spending and cut it drastically. Discretionary spending represents only a third of the budget, so the big target has to be entitlements. But which ones? The only answer that makes sense to me is one whose time has come. It’s not new; it has been proposed by noted economists and brought back in one form or another for decades. The idea is called Guaranteed Income.

            The basic idea in every Guaranteed Income proposal is quite simple: give everyone the same monthly government subsidy, say $1,000 a month to every person 21 years of age and above. To pay for that, eliminate all entitlements, except perhaps Social Security (because it has been earned by those who paid into it). I won’t go into any more detail than that, leaving it up to the reader to imagine how such a program would affect Americans in all walks of life. I rejected such a drastic approach when I first read about it, but I’ve gradually come to think it might just work. It certainly deserves a national discussion.

Spending

            Democrats and Republicans on both sides of the aisle agree that the ballooning national debt is unsustainable, and that adding to it is     unconscionable. But instead of cutting spending, they pass a two-year spending bill that will add trillions to that debt. 

           

            I have three favorite quotes that I keep nearby and reread when I get frustrated with our dysfunctional legislators in Washington:

·         Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. __P. J. O’Rourke

·         A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have. ­­__Thomas Jefferson

·         The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. __Ronald Reagan

People who are serious about balancing the budget and are open to radical ideas should read the cover story in the February 12 issue of The Weekly Standard. Entitled “The Case for Free Money,” the article by Tony Mecia discusses the various plans that have been offered under the general heading of a universal basic income. Among those who have taken a crack at this idea are such luminaries as Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Charles Murray, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Martin Luther King. I thought the idea was nonsense—until I read the article.

The Week That Was

            Some of us may remember a TV political satire in the early 60s called “That Was the Week That Was.” That title would fit last week perfectly, as it certainly was a week to remember.

            The big news was the murder of 17 people in a Florida school shooting, followed by finger-pointing at the FBI for not acting on clear warnings that the massacre was about to happen. FBI Director Christopher Wray admitted his agency’s failings amid calls for his head. Adding to his obtuseness, Wray testified on another matter before Congress that there was no bias in the FBI, when anti-Trump bias was evident in the agency’s use of a discredited dossier in obtaining a FISA court’s warrant for spying on Trump during and after his presidential campaign—even as FBI agents connected to the scandal were being fired, demoted, or forced to retire.

            In other news, the President was accused of yet another infidelity, this one with a Playboy model, not long after his marriage to Melania. His Veteran’s Affairs chief stepped down after getting caught falsifying an email to cover up using taxpayer funds to take his wife on a European jaunt. All this while Trump claimed vindication when Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein announced that the Special Counsel’s probe into Trump collusion with Russia (which he ordered!) produced indictments of 13 Russians but no connection with Trump or anyone in his entourage.

            Meanwhile, Congress spent countless hours trying to resolve the DACA issue, resulting in four Senate plans and one from the House, every one of which was defeated by a large margin, proving once again that it is nearly impossible for an ideologically divided Congress to agree on anything.

            Except on spending taxpayer money, that is. Let’s not forget that Congress just passed, and the President signed into law, a two-year spending bill that will add trillions to a national debt that is already out of control. Our representatives could very well have been overheard saying, “Here’s a nice pile of cash for you, and a nice pile of cash for us—to hell with the national debt.”

            Where is the TWTWTW political satire when we need it?

What Swamp?

            Can anyone keep up with the craziness going on in The Swamp these days? Memos from congressional committees pointing to corruption at the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice—a counter memo from the Democratic minority accusing Republicans of lies and distortions—a Trump dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign that was used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on a Trump associate—an FBI informant testifying on the Clinton involvement in the Uranium One giveaway—six employees of the FBI and the DOJ fired, demoted, or forced to retire—calls for a grand jury or another special counsel to investigate and prosecute wrong-doers— the Right screaming SCANDAL and the Left IMPEACH. On and on it goes, with new revelations and accusations every day.

            One of the strangest situations involves Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Here’s how weird this is: 1. Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller special counsel to investigate collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. 2. Having failed to find any evidence of collusion, Mueller is now looking into Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey for evidence of obstruction of justice. 3. But Rosenstein is the one who wrote a memo to Trump justifying the firing, so that we now have Rosenstein supervising Mueller who is investigating an action that Rosenstein himself recommended. 4. Comey and Rosenstein both used the salacious and unverified Trump dossier in applying for the FISA court warrant, without telling the judge that the dossier had been paid for by the Clinton campaign. 5. Comey and Rosenstein are now in the same boat facing possible charges of perjury and abuse of power.

            And we haven’t yet seen what promises to be a blockbuster report from the Inspector General on Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and her exoneration by the FBI. Did I hear somebody say Drain the Swamp?