Category Archives: Politics

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?

 

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.

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)

6:30 a.m., Longmont, Colorado, July 5, 2025

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It was a beautiful, clear morning in this city of 120,000 just a half hour from Rocky Mountain National Park when I took my morning walk.

Sixty degrees headed for the mid-eighties, the morning after Nancy and I watched our granddaughters celebrate Independence Day with fireworks in the driveway and in the Cul de sac of the subdivision where our son and his family live.

I started the day reflecting on July 4 in Longmont deeply worried about the nation into which those girls will grow up. I was out and about quite a bit on Independence Day in this city where one in four people is Latino, beginning the long walk through his and the adjoining neighborhood, much of it along a shady sidewalk on a street called Mountain View.

Later I did a brief prowl in the business district, checked on a bookstore I like, visited a big strip mall, got a hot dog at Sam’s Club and lunched on a bowl of chili at Wendy’s.

Not once did any of the Latino people I mingled with, did business with, or bought food from offer to sell me any Fentanyl.  I saw no tattoos signifying gang membership. None of them appeared to be former mental patients, killers, rapists or other criminals supposedly released from jails so they could “invade” our country and practice their hobbies on us.

All I saw were ordinary people, and I wondered how they feel in today’s American political climate that indiscriminately lumps them in with the few criminals who cross the border. Could I have been mistaken?  Shouldn’t I realize that people such as them are lesser people in the eyes of the country’s leader who is advocating a form of ethnic cleansing?

I started wondering about those who subscribe to the idea that citizenship is arbitrary and can be taken away at the whim of a leader who acknowledges no limits on his authority, typified by obsessively targeting one man jailed and tortured in a strange land by mistake—his tortures described in contemporary news accounts—who, having finally been returned to this country is targeted again on suspicious charges that only now will involve due process denied him earlier and still denied to many others caught up in a cruel system.

It has become a country where its leader speaks with pride of a detention camp called “Alligator Alcatraz,” where five thousand people of Latin origin can be imprisoned without due process.

He thinks it is funny to say, “We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, OK? If they escape prison, how to run away. Don’t run in a straight line…And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%.”

His press secretary amplified the tragic absurdity of the whole idea, saying,  “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.” Neither of them wants to address how they know all of these people are “illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals.”  (Illegal murderers?)

The Republican Party in Florida adds an additional flair to “appalling” by selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise.  Imagine seeing a baby in an Alligator Alcatraz onesie. The Florida GOP will sell you one. They come in several colors and only cost twenty-five dollars.

Hilarious.

The President has caused some serious whiplash by calling for expulsion of migrant farm workers (without indicating how his zealous ICE agents will differentiate the legal ones from the illegal ones when they swoop down on agriculture facilities) then saying he’ll give them a pass, then his Secretary of Agriculture say there will “no amnesty” for those workers—-

—-and then Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins brushed aside industry concerns that mass deportations would have severe consequences on American farming by making the completely bonkers suggestion that 34-million able-bodied people on Medicaid could replace those migrant workers “quickly” because of the work requirements for Medicaid recipients in the Big Ugly Bill.

He also recently said he’s looking into taking over Washington, D. C. and New York. And his obsession with punishing Harvard University because it has resisted his intimidating demand to shape education in his image further confirms his limited toleration of “freedom.”

The idea that Trump would want to “take a look” at denaturalizing Elon Musk because Musk dared criticize his proposed big policy legislation, or that he would consider denaturalizing the legally-elected Democratic candidate for Mayor of New York on specious, if not spurious, reasons is an indication that this president is even more dangerous to all of us in one way or another.

Today’s children and grandchildren are going to inherit from this generation that which it refuses to reject. It will not be a good legacy that we give them.

I felt pretty good when I started that walk.  By the end of the day, after watching innocent youngsters celebrate the founding of this now deeply-troubled country, I feared for them.

And I remembered that on that morning stroll, that I walked past a young brown girl sitting on a shady curb and talking to a friend, in Spanish, on her cell phone. A block later, I passed a house with a July 4th yard decoration.

God, Guns, and Trump.

A lady saw me take the picture and shouted out her window, “Happy July 4th.”  I wished her the same as I continued the walk.  And I wondered if she would have said the same thing to the brown girl I had seen a block away if she walked past that sign.

Independence Day isn’t as much fun as it should be anymore.

(photo credits:  onesie—markayshop.com; Lake and Mountains—shutterstock; Mountain View and the yard decoration: Bob Priddy.)

Here We Go Again

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We’ve seen this scenario played out before. Republicans cut some taxes and the economy goes into the toilet soon after with the state having reduced its ability to fund programs that people rely on during economic downturns, especially lower-income Missourians.

The national economy isn’t in the toilet (yet, perhaps), but Congress has approved President Trump’s budget that will harm thousands of Missourians.  At the same time, Governor Kehoe is thinking about signing the bill eliminating some taxes that will produce revenues.

He already has vetoed hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget approved by the legislature, citing concerns about state finances in the fiscal year that is  newly underway.

We must be missing something. This doesn’t seem to add up to us. On one hand, there is concern that the state can afford the things the legislature approved and on the other hand there’s—

Wait a minute.

Aren’t we on the same hand?

Finger one: Cut the budget because of uncertainty of state finances, much of it caused by federal cuts in some important programs.

Finger two: Cut Missouri taxes to reduce total revenues even more?

One estimate is that the tax cuts reduce program funding by about a half-billion dollars at a time when not-so-beautiful bill in Washington eliminates a lot of federal money coming here.

To be sure, there are some good things in the bill he plans to sign.  A capital gains tax reduction will be welcomed by many who have capital gains but that’s one reason the liberal-leaning Missouri Budget Project isn’t a fan of the bill.   The MBP says five percent of Missouri taxpayers will get eighty percent of the benefits.

But it’s not all for the high-rollers. The Circuit Breaker property tax program will increase the income levels of people eligible for it, a change that will affect almost 200,000 households. The state sales tax is being lifted for diapers and women’s hygiene products. And there are some other things the MBP admits are badly-needed.

The conventional Republican wisdom is that if you reduce taxes, the infusion of those moneys into the general economy will generate more revenues to offset the taxes. We can’t say that we have noticed significant improvements in the economy when the legislature reduces Missourians’ taxes.

We are in sympathy with the stated reasons for lowering these taxes but we wonder if freezes are more protective of the overall well-being of state services than cuts at this time.

For more than fifty years we have listened to all kinds of people complain about the lack of money for schools, health and mental health, prisons, law enforcement, housing, nutrition and a host of other issues.  This scenario is kind of like the old saying, “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it” except the talk about taxes also includes doing something about them.

Sometimes though, it is best to heed the phrase-altered advice, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

To be honest, we admit having no grasp of the subtlety of economics that one probably needs to understand the rationale for these cuts.  We only took one economics course in college. Everything else we know about the economy is reflected in our utility bills and grocery prices. And in our taxes.

Jim Mathewson, who served in the legislature from Sedalia and was the President Pro Tem of the Senate for eight years, a record that will never be broken in this unfortunate era of term limits, said several times, “People don’t remember that you cut their taxes. But they sure remember when you raise them.”

It’s a nice bill today but the people who remember it are the ones who won’t benefit, especially those hit with the federal cuts.  One thing we’ll watch is to see whether there’s a political fallout in state politics that will be anywhere the fallout being predicted at the national level.

 

American Values

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A Trumpist friend who I think quaffs from the carafe of Trump Kool-Aid more than a reasonable person should nonetheless seems to retain a bit of a sense of humor, which is more than his president has.  A few days ago, he sent me this, knowing that I would be amused. Sometimes truth IS really funny.  Truth Social never is, which is one of the virtues of this observation.

Let’s call this Social Truth.

We don’t know who put this poster together but it could be suitable for framing.

I was amused.  Trump wouldn’t be. Polls, however, indicate a growing number Americans also would agree with this;

Well, There Goes the Nobel Peace Prize 

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Hours after President Trump proclaimed on Truth Social that he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize several times, he guaranteed he will never get it.

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee never has and never will give the prize to someone who bombs another country.  Or rounds up thousands of people he stereotypes with his lies and ships them off to prisons in strange places to face indefinite futures.  Or refuses to support a small country that has fought off the aggression by a supposedly overpowering enemy.

Trump claims he deserves it because of his administration’s work in getting a cease fire between Pakistan and India.

He also claims to have brought about a cease fire between Iran and Israel.

Cease fires are not peace treaties. And they have a bad habit of not lasting.  In fact, Israel and Iran have already have accused each other of firing missiles after the cease fire.

Who invited him and his B-2s to the Iran-Israel party anyway?  It’s one thing to work out a cease fire with diplomacy. It’s something else to unilaterally send in the bombers.

Trump’s claim that the attacks obliterated Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons has been disputed by the New York Times, citing a preliminary U.S. damage assessment report saying the bombs only collapsed a few tunnels but not the main underground production rooms. The newspaper says the truth is that production could resume in a matter of months or just weeks. Perhaps Trump was exaggerating which is not uncommon. Regardless, his attacks did not end the nuclear threat from Iran. Instead the attacks seem to have guaranteed that Iran WILL HAVE nuclear weapons if it wants them.

Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev wasted no time making that point. He posted on social media, “What have the Americans accomplished with their nighttime strikes on three nuclear sites in Iran? The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue. A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.”

While Trump might want the bombings to lead to regime change in Iran, Medvedev says the regime might have survived “even stronger.”

One of the countries with nukes that says it will supply Iran with nuclear warheads, if it wants them, is Pakistan, which called the attacks “deeply disturbing and an “unprecedented escalation of tension and violence, owing to ongoing aggression against Iran.”

China said it “stands ready to work with the international community to pool efforts together and uphold justice, and work for restoring peace and stability in the Middle East.”

That’s the kind of language the United States used to use.  Iran has asked for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to condemn the United States.  That’s the kind of thing the United States used to seek in times such as this.

People win the Nobel Peace Prize for doing good without thinking they deserve honor.

Then there’s Trump, who says he should have received the prize “four or five times.”  However, he complains,  “No, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that’s all that matters to me!”

No. That’s not all that matters to him. He wants a prize he cannot buy, cannot bully anyone into giving him, and cannot primary.

The prize for Russia/Ukraine?

The prize for giving his good friend Putin an excuse to ship ready-made atomic weapons to Iran?

Adolph Hitler didn’t win the prize for pacifying Poland and Czechoslovakia and rounding up stereotyped undesirables and shipping them off to uncertain and certainly undesirable futures.  Mussolini didn’t win the prize for bombing and gassing Ethiopia into submission.  Stalin didn’t win the prize for establishing gulags where he sent undesirables by the tens of thousands and creating persecutions and killings behind the Iron Curtain.

At least they didn’t complain about not winning the prize.

 

Thy Liberty in Law 

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One of the things we should do on July 4, other than to read the Declaration of Independence in a way that is more than a thoughtless flow of words, is to ponder a song written many years later for the occasion, and reflect on whether the current administration gives a damn about any of it.

Let’s go back to a Wellesley College English professor who took a train trip to Colorado Springs. The year was 1893 and the things she experienced during her trip were more than sights she had seen. They became impressions.  The white buildings of the World’s Fair in Chicago, the World’s Columbian Exposition that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in this hemisphere, the horizon-reaching wheat fields under the wide sky as the train crossed Kansas, and at the end the breathtaking view from the top of Pike’s Peak.

Professor Katherine Lee Bates started to think of a poem as she stood on top of that mountain and when she went back to her hotel she started to write. Two years later The Congregationalist published her poem, “Pikes Peak,” to commemorate July 4.  Through the years, the poem has been revised, with the version that we know best done in 1911.  The last line is especially meaningful in our times when thousands of people are not granted due process.

O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, whose stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

Several composers found the poem would make a good song. There were at least 75 different melodies attached to it by 1900. One of them was the treatment of the poem as a hymn by the organist and choir director at Grace Church in Newark, NJ. Samuel A. Ward, who was inspired during a ferryboat ride back home to New York from Coney Island to adapt the words to a hymn he had composed in 1882, “O Mother Dear, Jerusalem.”  Her words and music were first published together in 1910, seven years after his death.  By the time Bates died in 1929, the hymn was in the hymn books of many denominations.

From time to time, someone suggests it should replace “The Star Spangled Banner” as our national anthem or be considered the national hymn.

What started as a poem called “Pikes Peak” is now “America the Beautiful.”

This July 4th in a good time to ask ourselves if America is still “America the beautiful.”

It seems to become harder by the day to see it.

POLITICO last year published fifty instances in which President Trump used the word “beautiful” to describe, among other things, beautiful Christians, his beautiful phones, a beautiful note from President Xi, a beautiful (and perfect) phone call with Vladymir Zelenskyy, the Supreme court that he once described as “a beautiful thing to watch,” and—of course—himself: “If I took this shirt off, you’d see a beautiful, beautiful person.”

There was a time when he out “beautifuled” himself and actually lavished the word on somebody else—Taylor Swift.  “I think she’s beautiful — very beautiful! I find her very beautiful. I think she’s liberal. She probably doesn’t like Trump. I hear she’s very talented. I think she’s very beautiful, actually — unusually beautiful!” |

Trump’s ‘Beautiful’ World – POLITICO

But Trump’s America is no longer beautiful. The ugliness of the ICE deportation teams, the ugliness of unfeeling meat-axe budget cuts, the ugliness of constant name calling when intelligent conversation is beyond capability, the ugliness of……

The list is endless.

But let’s focus on two things today. Actually, four.

On his birthday, Trump celebrated the creation of the U.S. Army with a $45 million parade for himself after his DOGE cut thousands of people from the Veterans Affairs Department a move that, among other things, ended a program that is helping about 80,000 veterans make their house payments. Other cutbacks threaten services at Veterans’ Hospitals.

O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved and mercy more than life!

Trump undoubtedly never pondered that thought from that great hymn.

Then there’s the holiday business.

A few months ago, Trump proudly told Americans that he wans Christopher Columbus to have a “major comeback,” and have Columbus Day be a major holiday. He issued one of his executive orders “reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations as it has hand for all the many decades before!” as he put it on his internet page. Many government workers get the day off each year now and he sees no problem with that.

What we suspect really gets his goat about that day is that it’s also Indigenous People’s Day, celebrated by those whose culture is not Trump’s.

We suspect that because of his reaction to Juneteenth.  On his social media page he complained, “ Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all these businesses closed. The workers don’t want it either…It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

The Associated Press has found several instances in which Trump praised the African-American contribution to “enrich every facet of American Life.”

But he sees a holiday marking the freeing of American slaves as less important than honoring an explorer who never reached the American mainland who offered to provide Ferdinand and Isabella with “slaves as many they shall order to be shipped” if the royal couple gave him resources for a second trip to the New World.

God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea!

Recognizing “brotherhood from sea to shining sea” is what will make America great again, not budget cuts that damage our veterans or saying Juneteenth is one holiday too many, or ICE raids that trash

But don’t expect Donald Trump to ever think deeply enough, or even think at all, of Making America Beautiful Again. Don’t ever expect him to understand that ugliness and greatness will never go hand-in-hand.

America! America! God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!
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Notes from a Quiet Hill 

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—-stuff we can’t resist commenting on but don’t want to spend time writing more about.

As we were about to file this piece last night, the New York Times reported that this country’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists, had overwhelmingly voted to try to get the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling approving same-sex marriage.

I am a Protestant. And as is the case with the Southern Baptists, I consider myself a Christian. But I struggle to understand how those who also call themselves Christians can then dictate who other people can love, how they can love, and whether some are not permitted to love at all.

After all, love is at the core of Christianity.

Protestants and Catholics alike like to quote First Corinthians 13:13: “Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” (New Living Translation,)

We are free to practice our religion however we wish in this country, even if it seems inconsistent with the great Love chapter of the Inspired Word. I think my faith (which is different from religion) is more in line with Paul’s letter to the Christians at Corinth.

Okay—-now that the heavy stuff is out of the way:

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If I was a reporter covering the White House, there are two words that I would say almost all the time when I’m talking to today’s President or other politicians, but especially the President whose statements are from here to Mars away from the truth:

“Prove It.”

He wouldn’t. But he’d call me “nasty” for suggesting something he has no interest in doing.

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Wonder what’s going to happen to the Tesla that President Trump bought from Elon Musk while they were still best buds.

Tell ya what I’m gonna do.  If there are any who view these entries who has the fevered ear of our president, tell him that I’ll give him $2,500 for it. I’ll even fly to Washington on my own dime and drive it back to Missouri, stopping for a relaxing recharge every 375 miles or so. I would like for him to sign it somewhere that won’t get lost in a rainstorm and to have it fully charged when I pick it up.

That’s my top offer. I could lower  the price it if the President thinks my offer is too high for showing his new disdain for Elon.  And I won’t object if he’d just give it to me.

If any of you have any connections that can accomplish this deal, let them know of this kind offer.

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We like Andy Borowitz, a satiric columnist and a serious observer of things.  He recently reported, tongue in cheek, that the President of Mexico—exercising the beyond-boundaries prerogatives our President thinks the world should honor—has exercised her own beyond-boundaries prerogative. She has renamed our Liberty Bell.

TACO Bell.

As in, “Trump Always Chickens Out” after his big tariff announcements.

Mr. Trump is real touchy on a lot of things and this one really is sand in his underwear. All the more reason to say it.  But I won’t remind him of that when I pick up the Tesla

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Missouri has an artists and athletes tax that requires the state income tax be deducted from payments made for concerts and professional sports event participants..  When the Cubs play in St. Louis, the players’ daily pay during the series is subject to the income tax.

I suggested to the House Ways and Means Committee earlier this year that we need to similarly tax highly-paid college athletes for their Name, Image, and Likeness incomes. They’re not amateurs anymore, nor are they student-athletes. We have athlete-students with the emphasis on the first word. You can’t have million-dollar amateurs.

Plus, the experience would be a good introduction to the real world of income taxes for these players.