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Is He Just Joshing Us?  

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“Joshing,” as in “teasing,” or “joking with” others.

Senator Josh Hawley recently proposed the federal government issue $600 tariff rebate checks per person—a family of four getting $2,400.

Such a deal he has for us!

What makes no sense is that in true Trumpian fashion, he is blaming President Biden for the perceived necessity for the checks. “Americans deserve a tax rebate after four years of Biden policies that have devastated families’ savings and livelihoods,” Hawley said as he announced his plan, and suggested, “My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country.”

Now, hold on a minute. He’s spouting totally misleading statements that rely on public ignorance of how tariffs work.

We are going to un-ignorance any of you who think other countries are paying the United States big taxes, the tariffs of which President Trump is so proud. They are not.  WE are the ones taking it in the billfold. Britannica.com makes it easy to understand:

Let’s review how tariffs work.  First, neither a foreign company nor its home country pays any additional tax when it brings products here. United States companies buying the products are the ones paying a tax (the tariff) to Customs and Border Protection at the port of entry. They pay the foreign manufacturer the price of the goods and then they pay an additional amount to CBP before the products are released to them.

And how do those companies recover that extra fee, including the tariffs President Trump seems to arbitrarily set?  As the illustration shows, they make you and me pay more for our Korean refrigerator, our Canadian steel, our Chinese fireworks, Indonesian shirts, etc. We already are seeing some stores post signs telling customers how much more items cost because of the President’s tariffs. He’s intimidates some companies into not doing that. But he can’t scare all of them.

Therefore, Hawley’s proposal would have the federal government give us a rebate check to offset some of the extra money that we are paying for foreign-made products because of the Trump tariffs and we will use that money to buy more products with inflated costs because of the tariffs.

This is an economic program based on the Menard’s rebate system.

So, when Hawley says, ““My legislation would allow hard-working Americans to benefit from the wealth that Trump’s tariffs are returning to this country,” he is indulging in nothing short of verbal sleight of hand. There is no money “returning to this country.” It is here already and WE will pay it. In effect, he proposes putting some money in our right-hand pocket after the Trump tariffs take money out of our left-hand pocket.

Six hundred dollars might not come close to reimbursing us for our tariff-increased out-of-pocket expenses in the purchase of a new car, or the accumulated costs of less costly things we buy throughout the year.

And how much will this gracious gesture cost our debt-ridden federal government? How much of the tariff-raised money that could go toward reducing the Trumpian increase in our national debt will instead be sent back to us as a fake bonus?

A few days ago the census bureau put our national population at 342,201,496.

In our calculations, we probably are over-simplifying the math and the subtleties of who would be eligible for a rebate. We don’t know, for example how many of those 342.2 million people are criminals, mental patients, gang members, and drug-sellers from south of the border who wouldn’t be eligible to receive anything and, if the administration has its way, won’t be here to collect a check anyway. But just by multiplying the population number by 600, we could up with a total expenditure of $205,320,897,600. That’s $205.3 BILLION of our own money that will be returned to us.

Missourians (our population of 6,282,690) would receive $3,769,614,000 of their own money back.  The best thing that can be said for the deal is that it’s better than the Menard’s rebates that you only get if you buy something else later.

HOWEVER all of us might not get one of these checks if Congress falls for this scheme—your vigilant observer for example.

Hawley has told listeners to Steve Bannon’s podcast that  Trump’s tariffs are “on track to raise over $150 billion this calendar year alone,” well short of the calculated total above. But that shortfall can be adjusted because Hawley says it won’t go to those who supported Trump’s favorite punching bag, Joe Biden. “You’d give it to our people,” he said. “The rich people don’t need it…All those Democrat donors of Wall Street, all these fund guys, who all hate the tariffs…We ought to give a portion back to our working class blue-collar voters who powered the Trump revolution, who got this president into office multiple times, and who are the backbone of this nation.” Multiple times meaning “two.”

Get out the hip boots, folks. It’s awfully deep in here.

I’m not saying I supported Joe Biden in 2024, thus becoming disqualified under this  Hawley/Trump frequent flyer program. It’s just that you will never find my lip prints on the presidential ring.

Pro-Trump blue collar folks will be rewarded for their loyalty but anti-Trump blue collar workers won’t be rewarded? We suppose he knows how to separate a red blue-collar worker from a blue blue-collar worker.  Perhaps he’ll use the people from ICE who are widely respected for their skills of discerning who gets hauled off to God knows where, largely based on physical appearance, to determine awardees.

This pinpointing of disloyal blue collar workers and keeping the Washington bureaucracy (what’s left of it, anyway) from sending checks to undeserving garbage men, grave diggers, and gas station operators should keep the total outlay below the amount we just computed.

And remember, this scheme just gives us back our own money that otherwise would be used for such things as building more wall in the Southwest where we are still waiting for the first check from Mexico that Trump promised would pay those costs, reimbursing this country for all those miles of fence.

This country is more than $30 TRILLION in debt. Where will it find the money for Hawley’s warm and fuzzy give-back plan? You and I will provide it by paying for Trump’s tariffs, as we have provided the money for the wall Mexico will pay for.

So far he hasn’t tied tariffs on Mexican products to the recovery of fence costs.

While thousands of his constituents have to deal with cutbacks in the food stamp program, the school meal programs, safety net reductions, cuts in disaster aid, attacks on disease prevention and control, and friends and relatives hauled away by masked hooligans in ICE outfits, he’s going to load up on a souvenir airplane, build a ballroom where even more of his friends can pay a lot of money to be in the same room with him, and gather as many other shiny tchotchkes that catch his eye. And he and Hawley hope to take our minds off of his meat-cleavering of programs that serve the people at large by giving us back a few hundred of the bucks it’s costing us to buy any of the myriad of things made somewhere else that they are making us pay more to buy.

Blaming President Biden for all of the broken promises or created problems of this administration as well as giant increases in the federal debt has become a misleading Republican whine that is beyond tiresome. Liars might figure, but figures don’t lie. And the figures show Trump stands balding head and shoulders above Biden and Obama when it comes to running up the national debt.

A study by consumeraffairs.com shows the Biden administration increased the national debt by $6.17 trillion while the first Trump administration drove it up by $8.18 trillion. (The Obama administration, ran it up by $8.34 trillion, but it took him eight years.) The calculations show Biden increased the national debt by 21.7 percent. Trump hiked it by 40.43% and some analysts say his Big Ugly Bill will add $2.5-3.8 trillion more.

Last we heard, Hawley hadn’t attracted any supporters, particularly others in his party, many of whom think the tariff revenues should be used to reduce the national debt or at least to retard its growth.

Next thing you know, Trump will be demanding the Nobel Prize for Economics—as he also wants it for Peace achieved through international bombing and national cruelty.

Let’s wait and see how Hawley figures out a way to get this dead bird to fly. Just remember, it’s our money that you and I might someday get back, not dollars paid by any foreign government or foreign manufacturer.

Six hundred dollars that we can use to pay tariff-inflated prices on other goods..

Maybe it’s not so different from Menard’s rebate system after all.

Sports: Trades but no immediate gains; Stadiums suit; History on the track

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Neither of our major league teams found any blocks to bust in the late-season trading period. But both got a little help and some possible future performers.

(ROYALS TRADES)—Backup Kansas City Royals catcher Freddy Fermin has been traded to San Diego for a couple of pitching prospects. The Royals get pitchers Ryan Bergert and Stephen Kolek, both of who started games last week. Kolek has made fourteen starts this year and comes over with a 4.18 ERA. Bergert is a reliever who has a 2.78  ERA and is averaging almost one strikeout per inning this year.

Fermin had been the backup to Salvador Perez behind the plate. No replacement for Fermin has been announced by the team as we go to press.

Kansas City got a last-minute deal done to strengthen its outfield defense by getting Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, a 34-year old veteran hitting .231 this year. He’s the son of Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski, he great Boston Red Sox outfielder. The Giants get minor league pitcher Yunior Marte from the Royals.

That deal paid off quickly for KC on Friday night when Yastrzemski homered in his first game in Royal Blue helping the Royals win for the seventh time in their last ten games and reach the .500 mark for the first time in a month.

Saturday, KC moved some of its player chess pieces around, adding Bergert and pitcher Baily Falter to the active roster, optioning Jonathan Bowlan to Omaha, and designating pitcher Thomas Hatch for assignment.

They had gotten Falter in their trade with the Pirates that gave Pittsburgh first baseman prospect Callan Moss and reliever Evan Sisk. .

Hatch had been cut loose by the Pirates after the 2023 season and spent the last couple of years playing in Japan. He signed a minor league deal with KC after the Hiroshima Toyo Carp announced he wouldn’t be retained this  year.  He was added to the Royals roster on June 5th and DFA’d the next day. Nobody else wanted him so he was sent down to Omaha before returning July 29. He pitched one inning and gave up two runs before his latest demotion.

The Royals started this week back at .500 for the first time since June 30

(DOWNHILL)—It didn’t take long for the Royals to decide a 45-year old journeyman pitcher couldn’t cut it with his 14th major league team.  Rich Hill was designated for assignment last week after two starts, both of which were no-decisions and the last of which was worth only four innings and led to some of the pitching staff’s 14 walks in a game.  In his two starts, he pitched nine innings, gave up five earned runs (seven overall) on nine hits.

Hill has asked to become a free agent instead of going back to Omaha.

Hatch took his place on the roster, but only briefly.

The Royals pitching staff is pretty lean now with Bubic out, probably for the year with a rotator cuff injury, and Cole Ragans (also with a rotator cuff strain) and Michael Lorenzen on the IL with a left oblique strain.

(CARDINALS)—-The Cardinals were not as active as some expected as the trading deadline rushed toward them, making some potential upside trades by unloading some expiring contract players. Some position players considered possible trades remain with the club, leaving St. Louis with some attractive bait for off-season and free agent acquisitions. Nolan Arenado and his no-trade clause remain in St. Louis.

Just a year after Ryan Helsley set a Cardinals record with 49 saves, he has been sent to the Mets with St. Louis getting three minor leaguers that are considered guys with solid futures: shortstop Jesus Baez and right-handed pitchers Nate Dohm and Frank Elissalt.

Although he’s been a closer for St. Louis, he’s expected to be the setup man for Edward Diaz in New York. He worked his first game as a Met on Friday night, pitched one inning, allowed to hits but struck out the side in his 37th appearance of the year. His ERA dropped to 2.92.

Helsley’s departure leaves the Cardinals with JoJo Romero as their best closer option. But he’s also the only left-handed reliever, so Manager Oil Marmol has indicated the Redbirds will use the committee approach to close out games the rest of the way this year.

The key player for the Cardinals in this trade is Baez, a shortstop who is the Mets’ number five prospect and ranked 92nd in all of major league baseball. He’s hitting .242 after 75 games in the minors this year. He’s played other infield positions, too.

The Cardinals also got rid of reliever Steven Matz, shipping him to Boston for one of the top prospects in the Red Sox farm system,

Blaze Jordan, who is 22, a five-year minor leaguer with a career average of .291 with 55 homers and 303 RBI. This year he has hit .308 in double and triple-A, with a dozen home runs and 62 RBI. The Cardinals also like the fact that he strikes out only ten percent of the time.

He first attracted public attention when he was a kid. When he was 11, he hit a homer that went 395 feet. At thirteen, he hit one that came down 500 feet away from the batter’s box.

Shortly before the trade deadline, the Cardinals sent reliever Phil Maton to the Texas Rangers. Maton was having the best year of his career, with 40 calls from the pen, 48 Ks in 38.1 innings and a 2.35 ERA. In return, the Cardinals get some promising minor leaguers; pitchers Mason Molina, a starter, and reliver Skylar Hayes. Molina is in High-A and Hayes is in  Triple-A.

After the wheeling and dealing was finished, the Cardinals lost for the eighth time in their last eleven games Sunday to drop below .500 at the start of this week.

(FEDDE)—It took just 4 2/3 innings for the Atlanta Braves to learn why the St. Louis Cardinals dumped Erik Fedde.  Pitching against the Royals last week, Fedde gave up four earned runs on five hits (one being a home run). He struck out three in his first appearance.

(FOOTBALL POLITICS)—Whether the Chiefs and the Royals stay in Missouri has been thrown into some additional uncertainty by the filing of a lawsuit that challenges recent legislative action providing state funding to keep them from moving to Kansas.

Two state senators, Mike Moon and Bryant Wolfin have been joined by property rights activist Ron Calzone in filing suit saying legislation providing financial help is unconstitutional. Their suit challenges the proposed state funding as a “direct gift or bribe to the owners of the  Chiefs and the Royals.”

The legislation commits the state to issue bonds to pay for as much as one-half of the costs of renovating Arrowhead Stadium and building a new stadium for the Royals. Tax revenue generated by the teams would help pay off the bonds.

Kansas is promising to issue bonds paying up to 70% for new stadiums if the teams move across the state line.

Negotiations involving the two states and the two teams are continuing. The legislature meets in September to consider overriding any of Governor Kehoe’s vetoes of bills from the regular session that ended in May. Kehoe could convene a concurrent special session to pass a bill answering the court challenges but it is too early to make that decision.

The Chiefs play their first pre-season game next Saturday.

(UFL)—The United Football League is going to look different next spring but the changes do not directly affect the St. Louis Battlehawks.

The new man in charge of league business operations, Mike Repole, has announced at least two teams and maybe all four of the USFL franchises will be moved—the Memphis Showboats, Hosuton Roughnecks, Birmingham Stallions, and the Michigan Panthers. The Michigan Panthers won their division this year but lost the DC Defenders in the championship game, which was played in the St. Louis dome in March. The only new market confirmed so far is Columbus, Ohio although the league has trademarked four team names from the original UFL: Oakland Invaders, Philadelphia Stars, New Jersey Generals, and Tampa Bay Bandits.

Repole candidly admits attendance is one reason new markets are being sought. Last year, the Battlehawks drew about 30,000 fans per game but the rest averaged five-to-twelve thousand.

The XFL franchises, which include St. Louis, have not been mentioned for any changes. The Battlehawks’ division includes teams from Houston, San Antonio, and Arlington, Texas and the Defenders.

Repole says the league does not expect to expand for 2026 but he sees 10-12 teams within the next five years and 16 within the next decade.

Off to the Races:

(INDYCAR)—A major change in IndyCar and its premier event, the Indianapolis 500—Roger Penske has sold one-third interest in the racing series to FOX Sports for a reported $130 million.  The move is described as “a strategic investment and partnership designed to launch new growth for IndyCar.”  The deal includes an extension of the broadcast rights that FOX now holds as its first season of broadcasting IndyCar races begins to wind down.

Observers consider the arrangement to be part of Penske’s succession plan.  He’s 88 now and still heavily involved in the operations of his sprawling business empire that fields teams in four top-level motor sports series, his trucking company, and a number of car dealerships as well as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar series.  The speedway and the series are the only Penske operations that are now partly owned by FOX.

Penske bought the Speedway and the IndyCar series in 2019 and has poured millions of dollars into that ownership. Some voices, however, who admire him as a businessman don’t see the kind of promoter that they believe IndyCar needs. They think Penske Entertainment, the division that manages the racing partners, has taken a major step to be more entertaining and thus expand the open-wheel racing audience.

Although IndyCar does not run any races in Missouri, it has several within driving distances of various areas of our state with races just across the river in Illinois, in southern Iowa, Nashville, and (for a little longer drive) at the Circuit of the Americas near Austin, Texas.  And, of course, Indianapolis twice in May.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR was on the track in Iowa this weekend with William Byron stretching his fuel just far enough to win with three closes competitors also trying to reach the finish on their available fuel.

Most teams expected to get about 110 laps on the .875 mile track but Byron and his closest competitors got about 130, thanks in part to some caution flags that slowed the field and increased fuel mileage. A dozen cautions that covered 72 of the race’s 350 laps—21 of the last 100–helped drivers squeeze the last drop from their tanks.

It’s Byron’s second win of the year. He also won the season opening Daytona 500.

Chase Briscoe, who started on pole for the fifth time this year and the second race in a row, was about 1.2 seconds back, just ahead of Brad Keselowski, Ryan Blaney, and Ryan Preece.

Only three races are left in the regular season. Thirteen drivers have locked in positions for the 16 positions for the championship run-off.  Three non-winners are in the field on points: Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, and Chris Buescher. The three closest to them, Kyle Busch, Ty Gibbs, and A. J. Allmendinger are among those far enough below the cutline that they need a win to claim a spot in the championship round.

(Photo credits: Yastrzemski—Facebook; Jordan—Baseball Prospect Journal; Baez—Redbird Rants; Penske—Bob Priddy); Byron–NASCAR)

Liars Figure

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—especially when they don’t like the truth that figures tell.

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported job growth figures well under those our president had been bragging about or boasting did not, in fact, materialize, he killed the messenger, another indication that he cannot tolerate people who tell the truth.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported only 73,000 jobs had been created nationally in July, a third month that the numbers came up short of what had been promoted or predicted.  The department, as it has done at times in the past, adjusted previously-announced figures for May and June substantially lower than originally reported. And our President—with no evidence the bureau was not being accurate with the adjustment—fired the director.

Trump hasn’t liked Director Erika McEntarfer anyway and has accused her of faking employment numbers last year to make Kamala Harris look good. He claims the July job figures are the latest thing “rigged in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.”  He says he will hire someone “much more competent and qualified” to take McEntarfer’s place.

We wonder which “more competent and qualified” FOX news anchor he will pick to replace McEntarfer, who has a doctorate in economics from Virginia Tech and was an economist in the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies during Trump’s first term. Before that, she worked in the Treasury Department Office of Tax Policy. During the Biden presidency she was with the Council of Economic Advisors as a senior economist. The Republican-controlled Senate showed its confidence in her with a confirmation vote of 86-8 for  directorship in early 2024.

What seemed to pull Trump’s cork was that  revision downward of numbers from May and June and a paltry 73,000 new jobs reported in July. The original report for May calculated only 19,000 new jobs were created. The original report for June calculated 144,000 new jobs but was revised downward by ninety percent to only 14,000.  The new three-month total is 106,000, well below the original report just for June.

The outlook for much improvement is gloomy.  Coresight Research forecasts 15,000 stores will close this year. That’s added to the 7,325 closed last year.

From various sources we have put together a list of store chains shutting down big parts of their holdings:

Walgreens 500 this year, 1200 by end of 2027.

Advanced auto Parts 727 by mid-year.

Macy’s 150 stores through 2026.

Family Dollar  370 this year (600 last year)

CVS  300 stores already closed.

Big Lots  500-700

Joann Fabrics  all stores

Forever 21 all locations

Rite Aid  200 in fourteen states

Denny’s Restaurants 100 this year; 50 last year

Red Robin  70

Foot Locker  More than 400 by 2026

Dollar Tree  30

7-11  440 (out of more than 13,000 locations)

And none of those figures look at the jobs that are lost because workers are shipped off to some mysterious location and there hasn’t been time for Medicaid recipients to replace them in the face of threats to take away their benefits if they don’t work.

Political cowards do not accept bad news and often have a tendency to look for scapegoats rather than flaws in their own policies.  Leaders look for ways to turn bad news around. Cowards kill messengers. Leaders do not fear truth to power; they welcome its challenges to be better.

Trump claims the national economy is booming because of his policies. The numbers say otherwise. His solution is to fire someone who looks at the numbers and tells us truths he doesn’t want us to hear—.

—as is the case with Federal Reserve Chief Jerome Powell, who won’t embrace the rosy picture Trump paints of the economy. He lies awake at night—-maybe we should put some punctuation in there so it more accurately reads, “He lies, awake at night”—because he lives in his own world where truth is kept under mental lock and key, and he cooks up new insults and threats to throw at those who have the courage to stand up to him.

When will this country, particularly those who have so easily shrunk from their responsibilities to the people at large, reach a tipping point with him?

 

Sports: MLB teams muddle along as trading deadline nears: and a special win in NASCAR)

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals post all-star game drive to the playoff has been an unsteady one with a terrible turn in Colorado, where the worst team in major league baseball this year took two out of three—and wrapped up the series by holding the Redbirds scoreless, 6-0.  It’s the first time in 220 games that Denver has shut out an opponent. The win left Denver 26-76.

The Cardinals, thus, helped set a major league record by ending the Rockies record run of no shutouts.  The shutout is only the third time St. Louis has been shut out in the 32-year history of the Rockies. It was the second straight series loss since the break and dropped them to just one game over .500 after losing five of their first six games on the road trip and being outscored 20-1 in the first three innings.

The only win in those first six games was the middle game in the Denver series when Michael McGreevy, just up from Memphis picked up the victory.  His performance was solid enough that the team decided it’s time for one of its younger pitchers to become a starter. But that meant that a veteran had to go. In this case, it was Erick  Fedde, who has been a bust for St. Louis this year. He’s 3-10 with a 5.22 ERA. In his last 17 2/3 innings he gave up 26 earned runs. He’s 33-52 in eight major league seasons. The Braves have decided to pick him up. They’ll give the Cardinals some cash or a player later.  Fedde will be a free agent at the end of the season.

We start the week still waiting for the Cardinals to make the blockbuster trade that various sorts experts have been predicting.

(ROYALS)—The Royals  have continued to muddle along but they have gone to the free agent market to pick up former Cardinals outfielder Randall Grichuk from the Diamondbacks in exchange for pitcher Andrew Hoffman.  Grichuk, who is expected to immediately improve the outfield offensively and defensively, went one-for-four in his first game with the new team.  For now, he takes the roster place of rookie outfielder Jac Caglianone, who has gone on the 10-day DL with a strained left hamstring. Caglianone has struggled at the plate in his first season.  Grichuk was hitting .240 with 175 AB this year. He’s a lifetime .252 hitter  with five teams in a 12-year career.

Also going on the DL is starting pitcher Kris Bubic, our for 15 days with a rotator cuff strain.

The Royals did make a major commitment to the pitching staff, signing Seth Lugo to a two-year, $46 million guaranteed contract extension.

Last night, the Royals lost 10-7 to the Braves.  The game is memorable because Royals pitchers tied a club record with fourteen walks.  Six of those walks were dealt by Rich Hill, the 45-year old journeyman pitcher making his second start with his record-tying 14th team. He also gave up four runs and gave up two homers.

Now, the story of a man named Darrell and his record-setting day

(NASCAR)—

This is William Darrell Wallce, who goes by his middle name and more often is known as Bubba.  He’s a NASCAR driver who had gone three years, 100 races, since his last victory. When he broke that string this past weekend, he made significant auto racing history.

Bubba Wallace became the first Black driver to win a major race in the 116 year history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He and Wendell Scott are the only black drivers to win a NASCAR race. Scott won one race in 1963. Wallace now has three NASCAR Cup winner’s trophies.

He only the third black driver to compete in one of the major races at the Speedway and the first since George Mack in 2002. The first was Willy T. Ribbs in 1991 and 1993

Wallace took the lead with less than twenty laps to go and held a three second lead over defending race champion Kyle Larson when a crash brought out the caution flag and bunched up the field for a restart. But he got the jump—twice—on Larson on two overtime restarts and took the checkered flag two tenths of a second ahead of Larson.

The win makes him the thirteenth entrant in the 16-driver playoff field with four races to go before that field is set.  Three non-winners are in the top ten in points and could be eliminated from the championship run if three other drivers win one of those four races.

Two other drives merit special attention:

Denny Hamlin, who was on a pole-setting run, wrecked on his second qualifying lap and started dead last, 39th. He and his pit crew got him to fifth for the last restart (that’s his 11 in the picture) and he picked up two more positions third place at the end.

And the only woman racing in NASCAR, Kathryn Legge (she pronounces the first three letters of her last name) drew praise for finishing 17th, far better than her average finish this year. She was on the leader’s lap on the last restart and held her position during the wild two-lap green-white-checker flag scramble to the end.

 

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou puts more points distance between himself and challenger Pato O’Ward with a win at Laguna Seca, near Monterey, California. It’s his eighth win of the year. It has been eighteen years since anybody won eight races on the INDYCAR schedule.

Sebastian Bourdais did it in 2007.

The record for most wins in a season has been set and equaled at 10. A. J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser Senion in 1970 are the only ones to hit that mark.

Now he has eight of those. The record is 10 by A.J. Foyt in 1964 and Al Unser in 1970.

Two wins in the last three races of the year would let Palou tie the record.

(Photo credits: Wallace speaking and winning, restart and Legge—Bob Priddy; Wallace car—Rick Gevers)

Two-faced

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Our Missouri Republican delegates in Washington, House members and Senators, have supported the Trump administration’s major legislative effort to control the information Americans—and, in particular, their constituents—can receive.

In the case of Congressman Mark Alford, whose district stretches from Kansas City and the western border to Columbia and almost to Springfield, his support of the crippling recission of funds from public broadcasting might not be as hypocritical as you can get but it’s close.

On March 20, Alford and two other members of the House formed the Broadcasters Caucus. He said THEN, “As a longtime TV news reporter, including anchoring Kansas City’s top morning news show for nearly twenty-five years, I’m proud to help lead the Broadcaster’s Caucus this Congress. Our time in the media gave us a front row seat to the stories that impact our constituents’ lives, as well as insight into how misguided public policy can harm the local radio and TV stations Missourians rely on. I look forward to working with Co-chairs Flood, Soto, and Boyle to educate our colleagues, bridge the partisan divide, and solve the issues that matter to the broadcasting community.”

“Broadcast journalism is the cornerstone of how Middle America receives its news,” said Congressman Flood (NE-01). “The significance of local radio and television stations cannot be overstated—they help connect communities to the news that shapes our way of life. As someone who grew up in the broadcasting world before coming to Congress, I know firsthand how critical this kind of advocacy is for broadcasters. I’m pleased to be joined by Congressmen Alford, Boyle, and Soto as co-chairs as we continue the caucus’ mission in the 119th Congress.”

“I helped start the Broadcasters Caucus five years ago to support the important work of our local radio and television stations, and I’m excited to continue the Caucus’ bipartisan mission in the 119th Congress. Both as a student broadcaster and as the Representative for the people of Pennsylvania’s 2nd district, I have seen firsthand how many Americans rely on our local broadcasters for the news they need about our communities and the world. I look forward to working alongside Congressmen Alford, Flood, and Soto to support the vital work of our local broadcasters,” said Congressman Brendan Boyle (PA-02).

Congressman Darren Soto chimed in, “Helping lead the Broadcaster’s Caucus this Congress has been a privilege, especially as we work to amplify the voices of Central Florida. Our region’s diverse communities and dynamic growth demand that we stand together to ensure fair representation, and I’m proud to be part of this effort to strengthen the future of broadcasting for all.”

(I added the bold face emphasis)

Noble words then. The National Association of Broadcasters was thrilled. Association CEO Curtis LeGeyt commended this  bunch for recognizing “the vital role local TV and radio stations play in every community across the country.”  He pledged the NAB would help these four “advance bipartisan policies that allow local stations to continue serving their audiences with the trusted news, sports, weather and emergency updates they depend on every day.”

But a few days ago, Alford was singing the Trump song about the media that seems to be strikingly different from what he said in March: “NPR and PBS have gotten funding from the taxpayers and they’ve gone way too far to the Left. The taxpayer dollar should not be funding propaganda.”

No, it’s best to only circulate Trump propaganda. And it’s easy to throw around a vague accusation without showing that TV shows on quilting and painting and teaching kids how to respect each other and their elders are somehow dangerously socialistic or woke.

Columbia television station KMIZ (Columbia has two publicly supported radio stations including NPR affiliate KBIA that operates satellite transmitters in Mexico and Kirksville) got a statement from Alford praising the cuts.

Alford continued, “With the proliferation of free, high-quality education content across the internet, NPR and PBS have outlived their usefulness. In addition, these outlets — especially at the national level — routinely show a clear left-wing bias, which should not be subsidized by taxpayers. For more than 25 years as a television news anchor, I competed against these taxpayer-subsidized entities. NPR and PBS should compete in the marketplace for advertising dollars just like ABC 17. It’s time for Big Bird to leave the nest.”

The Big Bird nest thing has been around for a long time. Surely he could have found a more original way to demonstrate he really didn’t mean all the good things he was saying about broadcasters, no exceptions, in March.

In truth, Alford probably didn’t compete much against PBS and NPR because PBS and NPR focus on national and international news and he was more locally-focused.  Plus, it’s hard to believe that the underwriters of public broadcasting would be significant sponsors on his commercial station.

And just where does he think Big Bird will find a home in today’s commercial TV world—because that is what the cut off in public funding will force the welcome world of commercial-free information, entertainment, and creative educational programming to go. And if public broadcasting has to start doing the kinds of advertising we hear on commercial stations, wont that increase competition for the already-limited advertising dollars that support traditional commercial media?

Big Bird is a big problem to the Trumpers.  Sesame Street has been teaching children about tolerance and respect for others as well as counting and learning the alphabet for decades. Big Bird never cultivates fear or disrespect of other creatures, all of which are concepts Trump and his toadies love to promote on commercial stations.

KBIA’s general manager told KMIZ, “As publicly funded organizations, NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service are legally required to follow principles of fairness, balance and objectivity in their programming, according to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. The use of these guidelines by public and private news media has come under question during both Trump terms with the President coining the phrase ‘fake news.’”

I’ve got news, real news, for these members of Congress and their presidential bed partner. Alford’s comment that, “With the proliferation of free, high-quality education content across the internet, NPR and PBS have outlived their usefulness,” is a pretty blatant reversal from his comments about broadcasters in March.

Listenership and viewership of NPR and PBS programming give lie to his claim that the internet has made both of them no longer useful. If they are no longer useful, then his commercial broadcasters are just passengers in the other end of the boat. His real problem, and Trump’s real problem, is that the PBS Newshour is not the evening news on the One America Network and that NPR’s Morning Edition is not Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.”

Big corporations own commercial radio stations these days and few of them want to invest in much local programming, if any at all. Spending money on people reporting on city councils, school boards, county commissions, local weather (they don’t even have their own announcer giving weather forecasts) doesn’t help dividends to stockholders. In the Jefferson City/Fulton/Columbia market, it’s hard to find a radio news person who actually covers local news in person or a station that sets aside time for reporting it.  A search of their webpages for “local news” turn up nothing or next to nothing—except KBIA.

Radio might be a dying medium and if it is, it is a self-inflicted wound because corporations give listeners no reason to listen and Alford and his companions, despite their March words, are doing nothing to change that system.Without local voices talking about local issues, why should people listen, especially if the program schedule is more focused on influencing public opinion rather than informing it and the same programs or kinds of programs can be found all up and down the dial.

The story is similar throughout the United States including a tragic development in Missouri.  Recently, the stations founded by radio pioneer Jerrell Shepherd of Moberly in the late 40s and early 50s have been sold to a company that told staff members showing up for work one day earlier this year that were fired at the end of their shifts.  And these were stations widely known for “owning” their markets because of their local news coverage.

The decline in local news coverage is infecting some television markets, too. One major TV conglomerate owner has replaced most local reporting with its own reporters in Washington and other places. Some time is allotted to local weather and local sports (very little to sports) but viewers don’t get much local or regional information anymore.

And newspapers. The internet has sucked huge amounts of revenue from newspapers. Look at the classified ad pages of today’s newspapers and recall when there used to be several. Look for grocery advertisers or car dealer ads; you won’t find them.  Real estate sections are long gone.

Too many small-market weekly newspapers have been cornered by a limited number of larger companies that see them only as a profit center, not part of a community. One person with a camera and a computer is the editor/reporter and the newspaper is filled with material from other towns under the same company ownership. It’s happening in a lot of larger markets, too.

If newspapers and commercial radio stations struggle to find revenues to continue fulfilling their vitally important traditional roles in our communities, then we—as responsible citizens—need NPR and PBS.  And if we have a country that believes in an educated, intelligent citizenry, then our country owes it to all of us to make sure public radio and television can flourish independent of government dictation or censorship, an independence President Trump and his loyalists do not want to exist.

At a time when it is critical to have more eyes on government, the number is shrinking badly. Local news deserts are increasing all across the country thanks to corporations that find it cheaper to bring in talk shows from outside, forget about offering anything that actually serves local audiences with information about local agencies and organizations are doing. Automate everything and dump news staffs.

Public radio stations not only are, in too many places, the only places on the dial where you will hear local voices, where you will hear local news AND where you will hear a variety of programs that are well above politics.  Intelligent discussions of issues are running counter to the desire of some elements to have only one view on the air.

I have watched and listened to public broadcasting for decades. Our household has memberships at KBIA and at the PBS Station in Warrensburg, KMOS-TV.  We are enriched because we get a variety of information programs that apparently are objectionable because they do not advocate the line of the party in power, particularly the leader of such a party who wants to control the narrative American people are allowed to hear. If it’s not some lie from his mouth, it’s fake news.

To that point (and I’ve said this before): I have never indulged in reporting fake news but I have done news about fakes.  If I were still an active reporter and on the national level, I would be swimming in the latter pool.

And I’d be asking some pretty severe questions about those such as Alford who mouthed about support of a caucus that provides insight into how misguided public policy can harm the local radio and TV stations Missourians rely on but who then turn around and get in bed with a president who prefers nobody offer any such insight, and who is quick to punish those who question his statements, his policies, and his morals.

This entry has gone on long enough. I dare not get into the CBS sellout except this note:

I dearly hope that Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal do not wilt in the face of a big revenge lawsuit filed by President Trump against them for reporting on a cartoon he reportedly sent to his close buddy, Jeffrey Epstein. He has put himself in the crosshairs of a more comprehensive investigation by filing this suit. Who knows what will crawl out from under the rocks that are lifted in the discovery process.

All the Wall Street Journal has to do is put that drawing on the internet and the heat will greatly increase under the cooking goose.

The Disaster 

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We pause today to pay tribute to the humble and often-maligned FEMA trailer, the refuge for those who have watched all that they have wash away, be blown away, burned away in a natural disaster.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given hundreds of thousand of victims of fires, floods, earthquakes, and windstorms places to live while they begin to reassemble their lives.

FEMA Trailers often are criticized for their condition or their environmental problems. But they also are symbols of a nation that believes all of us must help some of us in times of disaster.

That concept is strange to the people in charge in Washington, led by a person who has never known and has no sympathy for those socially and mentally beneath him.  And that is why the trailers and the federal agency that provides these crucial shelters are endangered.

The administration in Washington is reacting poorly to reports that the emergency management system locally and federally was broken when more than 150 people lost their lives in the July 6 Texas flash flood.

The New York Times has described some of the dimensions of the disaster that the administration has inflicted on the nation’s disaster agency:

“On July 5, as floodwaters were starting to recede, FEMA received 3,027 calls from disaster survivors and answered 3,018, or roughly 99.7 percent, the documents show. Contractors with four call center companies answered the vast majority of the calls.

“The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls and answered 846, or roughly 35.8 percent, according to the documents. And on Monday, July 7, the agency fielded 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, or around 15.9 percent, the documents show.”

Unbelievably, a statement from FEMA claimed, “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

And what one person appears to be behind that totally untrue statement, delivered to the newspaper through an unsigned email?

On that very day, July 5, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem failed to renew or extend the agreements with the contract operators of those call centers leading to layoffs of thousands of employees. She has to approve any expenses of more than $100,000 and she didn’t do it for five days.

Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee also say Noem did not authorize deployment of search and rescue teams until three days after the flooding began.

Earlier this year, President Trump called for elimination of the entire agency and in June, FEMA stopped going door to door in disaster areas to find those needing help.

The Times identified the acting administrator of FEMA as David Richardson, “who has no background in emergency management.” He took the position May 8 and a week later, according to The Wall Street Journal, admitted privately that he did not have a plan for the spring Atlantic hurricane season. Reuters reported on June 2 that he had told the staff he didn’t know there was such a thing—a comment the agency claimed later was a joke. CNN has reported he went to Kerrville, Texas on July 12 but refused to answer any questions from reporters.

The President has said often he wants to transfer much of the responsibility for disaster response to the states that already are facing struggles because of large cuts in federal funds going to them for various programs.

If you are old enough to recall the great 103-day1993 flood, you are likely to remember the thousands of FEMA trailers brought to Missouri from numerous other states to be temporary homes for our people.  Imagine the state having to find—and pay for—those trailers while also dealing with the costs of fixing destroyed roads, bridges, and public buildings and paying for the massive extra personnel costs of first responders, National Guard sandbaggers, and healthcare givers among thousands of other expenses.  The Weather Service estimated the damages totaled twelve to sixteen billion 1993 dollars.

Or more recently:

Sure, the state of Missouri can handle something like this. Easily. The amateurs and idealogues in Washington know it can. Without doing any research.

These things are permanent parts of our lives. There were 27 disasters causing at least one billion dollars damage reported last year alone.

The Times has reported FEMA grants totaling $3.6 billion dollars already have been revoked. The money was earmarked for protection of communities from wildfires, hurricanes, and other disasters.  One in five agency staff members are likely to be gone by the end of the year.

Trump wants to shut down ten NOAA laboratories in the next fiscal year that research changes in weather patterns. The studies are based on global warming, something the President doesn’t believe in. One of the targeted labs is the one that sends hurricane hunter airplanes into storms to collect important forecasting data and other information.

Another cut that’s important to us in Missouri would cut programs that use river gauges to forecast floods. Those gauges check river levels every fifteen seconds and are used to issue flood alerts.  They showed the sudden rise of the river in Texas July 5th.  They measured the weeks of Missouri and Mississippi River floodwaters in 1993. Trum wants to eliminate more than twenty percent of the budget of that program.

Times reporters say the Weather service did issue appropriate warnings for the area flooded in Texas but staff cutbacks had left the San Antonio office without a warning coordination meteorologist.  That’s the person that works with local emergency managers to warn people of floods and helps them get to safe ground.

From gutting the national weather service to hamstringing the call centers and other response entities and reducing abilities to forecast hurricanes and floods and to crippling disaster responses, the administration is once again acknowledging that the word “humane” is not in its dictionary.

The real disaster is not wind, fire, and water.

(Photo credits: Trailers–Magnolia Reporter; Joplin Tornado–National Standards for Technology; Flood–USGS)

Sports: Lows and highs at Mizzou; Chiefs Lock In Two, Third Escapes Lockup;  Bad Baseball, And More.

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MIZBB)—It might be the dawn of Tiger football season but the big Mizzou sports story of the week is with the roundballers. And it is a really big deal.

Guard Jason Crowe Junior also had been courted by UCLA, USC, and Kentucky. It’s a verbal commitment. Signing day isn’t until November so he could bolt.

247 sports ranks him as the sixth best player in the class of 2026. He’s from Inglewood, Califoornia, 6-3 with arms of a player two inches taller. He’s considered so good that some see him going to the NBA after one season at Missouri.

He’s the second-best recruit in Tiger basketball history. Number one is Michael Porter Jr., whose career didn’t turn out too well because of injuries.

(MIZFB1)—When former Tiger wide receiver Luther Burden I11 unexpectedly dropped off the list of first round NFL draft picks, he said, “That’s staying with me forever. Everybody who passed up on me gotta pay.”

But first, the team that took him as the 39th overall pick is GOING to pay.  The Chicago Bears have signed Burden to a guaranteed eleven million dollar contract. He is the first 39th pick in the NFL draft to sign a guaranteed deal.

(MIZFB2)—Once again, the Southeastern Conference media have picked Missouri to be in the lower tier of the football standings this year.

Twelfth, to be exact.

The Tigers play eight conference games, five against teams ranked higher: Alabama is third; South Carolina is ranked fifth. Texas A&M ranks number 8 with Oklahoma tenth. Auburn is forecast to finish one slot above Missouri. Below Missouri are Vanderbilt (13th), Arkansas (14), and Mississippi State, picked for last, at 16th.

The sportswriters think left guard Cayden Green is a first-team all-conference player. Wide receiver Kevin Coleman has been picked for the third team.

Here’s how the fulltime sports writers think the conference will look at the end (first place votes in parenthesis:

  1. Texas (96)
  2. Georgia (44)
  3. Alabama (29)
  4. LSU (20)
  5. South Carolina (5)
  6. Florida (2)
  7. Ole Miss (1)
  8. Texas A&M
  9. Tennessee (1)
  10. Oklahoma (3)
  11.  Auburn (1)
  12. Missouri
  13. Vanderbilt (2)
  14. Arkansas
  15. Kentucky
  16. Mississippi State

Vanderbilt got TWO first-place votes???

Missouri starts its fall practices one week from today.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs start their pre-season camp today in St. Joseph. They’ll have wide receiver Rashee Rice on hand but they don’t yet know how much of the season he will miss. Rice has avoided a serious prison sentence with a plea bargain growing out of his big traffic crash in Dallas in 2024 that will put him on probation for five years and let him serve thirty days in jail at his convenience. He also has paid the medical bills of those he hurt, about $115,000 worth.

The NFL has not yet announced what IT plans to do about him, but a multi-game suspension appears to be looming—the Chiefs think he’ll be gone for two to five games. The Chiefs, however, are not totally without speedy wide receivers. This year’s fourth-round pick, Jalen Royals is on the depth chart behind Rice,  Xavier Worthy, and Marquise Brown.

A few days ago the Chiefs made sure two key players on the line would be around for several more years—offensive lineman Trey Smith and defensive end George Karlaftis.

Smith, originally a sixth-round draft pick, is the highest-paid player in his position in the whole NFL—$94 million for four years, with $70 million guaranteed.

 

 

 

George Karlaftis, a number one draft pick in 2022 and an immediate impact player at defensive end also is locked up for four more years. He gets $92 million with $62 million guaranteed.

 

 

(BASEBALL)—This wasn’t the post-All Star Game start that either of our MLB teams wanted. They went 1-5, the Cardinals being swept by the Diamondbacks and the Royals salvaging a win in the third game against the Marlins.

The Royals, behind a couple of Salvador Perez home runs, clubbed the cubs last night 12-4. Joe Caglianone and John Rave also joined the power show.

The Royals have the oldest player in the major leagues on the mound tonight—Rich Hill, who is 45, has been called up from Omaha. He was drafted by the Cubs in 1999 and made his major league debut in 2005. The Royals will be his fourteenth major league team. That ties him with Edwin Jackson as the player who has been part of the most major league teams in their careers. Jackson did it by the time he was 35, a decade younger than Hill.

Hill has made nine starts for Omaha this year and has lasted 42 innings. He has struck out 61 batters but has an ERA of 5.36. He’s 90-74 in his big league career.

The Cardinals opened a series last night against the Rockies who are headed for the worst season in modern MLB history. They’s won only 24 of their first 100 games after losing to the Cardinals 6-2.  The Cardinals racked Colorado pitching for fifteen hits, to get back to three games over .500 at 52-49.  Michael McGreevy went seven solid innings in his latest callup from Memphis.

If the Rockies can improve to win eighteen of their next 44 games, they will avoid breaking last year’s modern baseball loss record, 121 games, set by the White Sox.

The Cardinals have a chance to pour it on tonight as they face Colorado’s Bradley Blalock who has lost both of his decisions this year and has a 9.97 ERA. But that means the disappointing Erick Fedde will have to avoid losing his tenth game of the year (he has three wins) and should lower his 4.83 ERA.

Now, the More:

(INDYCAR)—It’s starting to develop into the Palou and Pato show in Indycar with Pato O’Ward’s win at Toronto

Monterey, CA – during the Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey in Monterey, California. (Photo by Joe Skibinski | IMS Photo)

O’Ward’s win cuts  Alex Palou’s championship points lead by thirty. It’s his second win in eight days; he and Palou split visits to victory lane in the to races at Iowa the weekend before.

The Toronto race course winds its way for 1.786 curvy (11 curves) miles through downtown Toronto.  The race produced the most on-track passes (226) since the 2014 event and the most passes for position (201) for position since the 2019 race.

Palou finished twelfth at Toronto. O’Ward was joined on the podium by two guys not familiar with the ceremony—Rinus Veekay, who hasn’t had a top-three finish since 2022, and Kyffin Simpson, who’s never been there in his two years in the series.

Palou still leads by 99 points, though, a  challenging figure for O’Ward to overcome in the four races remaining on the INDYCAR schedule.

The miserable season of INDYCAR’s most prestigious team added another chapter at Toronto. Scott McLaughlin went into the wall when a left rear lug nut came off  on the second turn after a pit stop. He finished 26th. Josef Newgarden was caught up in a crash that found the car of Jacob Abel on top of his, relegating him to 23rd.  Once again, the best finish for the Penske team was by Will Power, who finished 11th after brushing a wall.

Santino Ferrucci finished 27th, and last, although he did not start the race. He crashed in practice, damaging his car and injuring his right hand.

INDYCAR heads west to race at Laguna Seca next weekend.

(NASCAR)—THIS, I have to see to believe:

Your reporter is off to Indianapolis this coming weekend for the Brickyard 400, an annual trek we make.  He’s gone to a lot of automobile races in his long life, but this one……

Last weekend, in a more normal setting, the CUP series was at Dover, where Denny Hamlin edged teammate Chase Briscoe for the win in a two-lap overtime shootout.  The win is his fourth of the  year, the best of all drivers in the series. It’s his 58th career Cup win. Only Kyle Busch, with 63, has more victories among full-time drivers in the series. He needs two more to tie Kevin Harvick for tenth on the all-time winners list.

Hamlin was in charge late in the race until a rainstorm stopped the race with fewer than twenty laps to go. He got good jumps on the first two restarts after the track was dried, and got ahead of Brisco for the green-white-checker laps.

Chase Elliott, who led 238 of the 407 laps, couldn’t match Hamlin’s late run and dropped back to sixth at the end. But that was good enough to take the regular season points lead away from teammate William Byron.

The fight for the sixteenth playoff spot remains tight. Bubba Wallace is sixteen points ahead of Ryan Preece and 39 up on Kyle Busch with five races to go before the sixteen driver playoff field is set.

(Photo credits: Smith and Karlaftis—KC Chiefs; O’Ward—Indianapolis Motor Speedway; Hamlin—Rick Gevers; Cookie Monster—NASCAR)

Inspiration

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We need a break from the heavy and depressing things we have been addressing lately. We need some inspiration.  Unconventional inspiration.

Journalists sometimes seem to have a warped sense of humor. It’s a contrariness that good reporters have to have because we must deal with so much righteousness, often self-righteousness (especially when we deal with politics).  We also have to deal with some things that are so incredibly serious that, as Abraham Lincoln once remarked, “Gentlemen, why do you not laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me day and night, if I did not laugh, I should die.”

None of us often has a “fearful strain” upon us, although our times present great opportunities for it.  But all of us at some time have broken a dark scenario with a joke.

Think of the last memorial service or celebration of life you attended. The ones I have attended have been more light-hearted than mournful.

Your faithful correspondent has never been impressed by companies that post beautiful pictures on walls or in offices, the pictures accompanied by some drivel that is supposed to be uplifting.  That is why he had a series of counter-uplifting posters at his desk that did a different kind of uplifting.

This one is from a company called Despair Incorporated. Its website informs visitors:

“No industry has inflicted more suffering than the Motivational Industry. Motivational books, speakers and posters have made billions of dollars selling shortcuts to success and tools for unleashing our unlimited potential. At Despair, we know such products only raise hopes to dash them. That’s why our products go straight to the dashing.”

For many years, I secretly harbored but never carried out the ambition to steal into my company headquarters under the cover of darkness and replace motivational posters with Demotivational posters from the folks at Despair—such as this one which goes to the very heart of the issue:

One of the founders of this company is E. L Kirsten, who has a Ph.D., (which might stand for perverse humor director) and once was a professor of organizational communication. He got his degree from Southern Cal,

He has a book:

The book, like the company products, satirizes the motivational poster industry. A promotion for it says:

Motivation. The Futile Quest.

Motivation has become a multi-billion dollar industry, courtesy of the patronage of corporations and the noble intentions of Executives who lead them. At the heart of this colossal confederation of inspirational speakers, platitudinous posters, parable-filled management books, and increasingly complicated incentive programs lies an alluring promise: that with enough encouragement, empowerment, and esteem, employees will become productive and loyal, to the benefit of both their employers and themselves.

Yet, in spite of the staggering expenditures on packaged esteem, polls show that worker morale has reached critical lows, with a majority of employees even claiming to hate their jobs. How is this possible? And more importantly, what can Executives do about this crisis of employee dissatisfaction?

In this revolutionary new management book, Despair, Inc.® founder Dr. E. L. Kersten plumbs the depths of employee discontent to find its root cause. Though most live lackluster lives filled with wasted opportunities and trivial accomplishments, employees grow ever more certain of their enormous worth and glorious destinies. Why is this so? Because most are the products of a narcissistic age, the spiritual casualties of a grand social experiment gone terribly awry.

Ironically, managers attempting to motivate employees by increasing their self-esteem only compound the very problem they seek to solve. Reinforcing employee delusions of grandeur only increases their irrational sense of entitlement to the wealth, stature and privilege that justice dictates be reserved for the truly accomplished and inarguably worthy: namely, Executives.

With The Art of Demotivation former professor and current executive Kersten offers not only a comprehensive analysis of the problem but a prescriptive solution; one grounded not in the fantasies of infinite human potential so often advanced by the motivation industry, but in the grim realities of a broken world. Managers who seek a productive, loyal workforce must first liberate employees from the prison cells of their narcissism by forcing them to confront that which they expend enormous energy to avoid:
their true selves.

There are three editions of the book. One, the Chairman edition, goes for almost $1200—actually at the bargain price of $1,195, a price fully in keeping with the company, uh, philosophy.

We mention all of this NOT to be giving this company a lot of free advertising. We’re just doing it to keep from being hit with a copyright violation.

But we do think these posters perform a valuable service to some places that take themselves far too seriously. These are some of those days when, as a friend of mine once observed, “The people in Washington have it backwards.  They take themselves seriously but not their jobs.” These posters would make great billboards there.

It’s sold out.  Why are we not surprised?

And for those who like the Disney theme song—-the first three notes of which are a big part of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind:”

I love these things.

Let’s wrap this up with a couple of others that I don’t recall seeing among the Despair products. There are other internet sites that have their own offerings. They lack the sophistication of Despair but that doesn’t mean they can’t provoke a smile or a snort or even a laugh.

I think we have arrived there today.

The Pious Silence

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“With gratitude and humility, we pray for President Trump. You assigned him, you appointed him, you anointed him for such a time as this. We ask You to cover him with the blood of Jesus, empowering him to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love.

Protect him from all evil as he undergirds our nation with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system. Fulfill Your purpose in his life.”

—Prayer given in the oval office, March 23, 2025, by Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, one of several evangelical pastors who laid hands on President Trump, a repeat of a ceremony at the start of his first term. The President appeared to be earnestly participating.

Shortly after, podcaster Todd Starnes attacked those who question Trump’s Christianity and the motives of those who regard him as a national savior: “The ‘Christians’ complaining about Christians praying over President Trump in the Oval Office are not Christians.”

Last year, just before the Iowa caucuses, a television add proclaimed: “And on 14 June 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump,

“God said I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight at a meeting of the heads of state. So God made Trump,”

When the similar group of Christian Nationalist preachers held a laying-on of hands ceremony in 2017, the Reverend Robert Jeffress, a Texas Southern Baptist preacher, told Trump, “Mr. President, we’re going to be your most loyal friends.”

Among all the voices protesting Medicaid Cuts, using government agencies to punish opponents, indiscriminate roundups of immigrants, the dismantling of government agencies and programs helping the poor with food and medicines, and—most recently—the burning of hundreds of thousands of pounds of food that could have kept thousands of African children alive, where are these preachers?

The silence of these pious ministers is thunderous.

Is THIS a President whose words and actions show he wants “to advance an agenda of righteousness and justice, truth and love?”

Is this President—who has jerked everybody around on the Epstein matter, who has deported people to nations far away from their own, who reportedly is jamming people into Florida cages, and who has cut Medicaid payments—undergirding the nation “with the firewall of our Judeo-Christian value system?”

Is he fulfilling God’s purpose?

Let’s hear it, preachers.  Tell us, God, that what we are seeing and getting—of which we have only scratched the surface in the lists above—fulfilling your purpose?

Tell us, most loyal friends, why you aren’t saying anything about all of this?  Do you believe a loving God is rooting for Trump to do all of the mean, cruel, unfeeling, un-loving things to others?

Can you watch what has happened since you prayed for him and still believe God “assigned him…appointed him (and) anointed him for such a time as this?”

Do you really believe his acts and statements truly represent our Judeo-Christian value system? Was Jesus a lying bully?

Is not Donald Trump exposing the falseness of the proclamations of pious faith leaders such as yourselves?

And what is it you have faith in?

Who’s not a Christian, Mr. Starnes—those who seek to serve others or those who seek power to serve themselves?

A lot of us are praying these days but not for Trump; for our country.

I lost a good friend this week, a gentle man who celebrated sixty years in the ministry just a few weeks ago with what became his last sermon. The Reverend John Bennett dedicated his life to social justice and told an interviewer a few years ago, “My guideposts as I move forward in my life and ministry are Micah, Chapter 6, verse 8.  ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God,’ which is to walk in solidarity with all who hurt.”

And how did he hope others would remember him?

“He was a gentle and passionate man, on fire for social justice, rooted in his deep faith.”

I will take one John Bennett for 500 of those who would lay hands on Donald Trump.

(photo credit–Facebook)

A Follow-up on “They’re Disappearing…”

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We recently condemned, without using the word, the actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons who hauled four people out of the nearby town of Holts Summit and took them somewhere for some reason, apparently without warrants and taking special care not to identify themselves, somehow scaring the county sheriff enough that he didn’t want to know anything about what they were doing with these people.

We got some pretty strong positive feedback (thank you) and some negative feedback that basically boiled down to, “But they were criminals when they came across the border to begin with.”

There’s no disagreement that they broke the law by crossing illegally.  But that hardly justifies what Trump’s goons are doing to large swaths of people.  And there are numbers that prove that our president has turned this agency into a bunch of thugs.

An example of that attitude came to light during the weekend, a story about a youth baseball coach who confronted ICE agents armed with guns and tasers who approached some high school kids at a youth baseball camp practice in New York City and started asking them about their nation of origin and other issues. Coach Houman Wilder, who has a master’s degree in law and who has coached the Harlem Baseball Academy for years, stepped in, told his players to go to a nearby batting cage, and told the agents their actions were inappropriate. He told a The West Side Rag, an online news site covering the Upper West Side of Manhattan, “They started to talk about cuffing me, and that if the kids were here legally, what do they have to lose by answering. I told them that they still have their fifth and fourth amendment rights, and that they don’t have to speak to you or help with any investigation.”

He told MSNBC an agent told him, “I don’t care what the law says,” and called him a “YouTube lawyer” before leaving.

Wilder says the ball players are all American-born although their parents are from Africa, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic and many don’t come to practice now because their parents are scared.

You can watch the interview at Bing Videos

Associated Press reporter Melissa Goldin’s recent story reiterated Trump’s pledge to deport “the worst of the worst”—rapists, murderers, and child predators. (As we recall, he referred to them during his campaign as “animals.”)

He promised the largest deportation program in history. He’s determined to be remembered for that. And he will be. We believe he would not like how he will be remembered, but he won’t be around to write inflammatory overnight internet ravings of protest.

He says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens from these terrible people.

The problem is that most of these people ARE law-abiding, other than with the way they came here.

In kind of a strange way, perhaps, we should be complimented that people would be so desperate to seek opportunities and freedoms they don’t have elsewhere that they will break our laws by coming to this country illegally.  Most of us cannot fathom what we have meant to so many people from throughout the world.

The growing question of concern is who is going to protect us from Trump’s protectors.

Reporter Goldin has seen “nonpublic data” collected by one of the world’s leading libertarian think tanks, The Cato Institute, that shows almost two-thirds of the people picked up by ICE in the first eight months of this fiscal year had NO CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS. Of those with convictions, fewer than seven percent did violent crimes.

A little more than half, 53%, had immigration, traffic, or vice crimes.

(One of the founders of the Cato Institute, by the way, was Charles Koch, one of the Koch brothers who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars, at least, into Republican campaigns. Charles Koch remains as Chairman of the Board of Koch Industries. His brother, David, died six years ago. The Kochs have been strong supporters of conservative Republicans but they want nothing to do with Donald Trump.)

In the first five months of the fiscal year, ICE was arresting about 650 people a day. Then, at the end of the May, the power behind the throne—Stephen Miller—demanded 3,000 arrests a day. And the agents appear to be doing their best to do his bidding.

The AP story quotes the Transactional Records Clearinghouse as calculating ICE arrests jumped by thirty percent in May, compared to April, and another 28 percent in June and that that Cato Institute figures for the fourth months from February to May, show that ICE fed 421-454 “non criminals” a day into the system. But in the last two weeks of May and the first half of June, the numbers were 678 for the first two weeks and 927 for the second two weeks.

The AP also reported the Bureau of Economic Review put out a working paper two years ago showing that for the last century and a half, the incarceration rate for immigrants has been lower than for people born in this country and the gap has widened in the last six decades with immigrants SIXTY PERCENT LESS LIKELY to be incarcerated than American-born people.

Trump and his crowd like to dehumanize all immigrants by citing specific killings or rapes done by illegal immigrants, never mentioning how much greater, by far, are incidents of lifelong legal citizens committing those same crimes.

So let’s be clear about our view from this quiet hill:  Demagogues and dictators rise to power and try to stay in power by turning a segment of a nation’s population into dangers to society. They achieve dominance by making us afraid of our neighbors and the strangers we pass on the streets, or those who live in lesser neighborhoods or ethnic communities.

We always have to hate somebody, to fear somebody when the people we most must fear are those who paint others with the broad brush of dehumanization.

Should we turn a blind eye to those who are here illegally?  No.

Should we not care about immigrants who do deal drugs and who do commit terrible personal crimes?  No. We should arrest them and hold them as we would hold regular Americans. But our government does not round up the few who are dangerous. It is rounding up thousands of us in random raids and carting people off to undisclosed locations.

Just as we were posting this entry, a truly unnecessary tragedy was reported that is off-topic but is not surprising for this heartless administration. We must include it because it cries out for the telling of a story that is our conclusion.

The Atlantic reported that today (Wednesday), the Trump administration is going to incinerate 500 tons of USAID food for children living in war and disaster zones. It is part of the destruction of the agency that for years has carried a message of American kindness around the world. The magazine says that’s enough food to feed 1.5 million children a week and that it’s enough to feed every starving child in Gaza. It’s part of the sixty-thousand tons of food originally targeted for Sudan, which is battling a famine.  But The Atlantic reports that food cannot be delivered because the USAID has been gutted and its logistics experts have been fired.

These are not immigrants we are told we must fear and hate. These are children who will die because of one man.

Let’s look back to the 1950s when we were supposed to be fearful that our federal government was filled with Communists.

On a day in early June, seventy-one years ago, Senator Joseph McCarthy in one of his sensational hearings accused young Boston lawyer Frederick G. Fisher of being a member of a group he considered “a legal arm of the Communist Party.” Fisher worked with Joseph Welch’s firm, Hale and Dore. Welch was the lawyer for the Army in those hearings and had recognized that Fisher’s association with a left-leaning student group while in law school could be a problem. So he replaced him during the hearings.

But that didn’t keep McCarthy from attacking him.

McCarthy’s reckless accusation was stunning. For some reason, I was watching those events on our 13-inch Admiral black and white television set that day. I had no understanding of what the hearings was all about but what happened in a few minutes created in me a strong memory as I watched as a seething Joseph Welch, his voice shaking with emotion, barely controlling his composure, look McCarthy in the eye and say:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us.… Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale and Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale and Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentle man but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.”

When McCarthy appeared to pay no attention to Welch’s remarks and began another rambling insinuation, Welch cut him off:

“Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers Guild.… Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency??”

There they are.  Three words for our time.

Reckless.  Cruel.

Children will starve because this administration has eliminated the people who could deliver it and the solution is to burn it.

Joseph Welch’s third word echoes from his  last sentence. It must be repeated and repeated and repeated today.

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Decency is a word I have not heard lately, to our country’s shame. Nor, it seems, is it a word that is in any way familiar to our chief executive. He will shed no tears but all of us should.

(If you want to watch that dramatic moment that many believe turned the Senate against McCarthy, here it is from PBS:  Bing Videos)