2017 Jan 17^th

The latest Trump tweets have him claiming credit for Walmart’s plan to add 10 thousand US jobs. Of course that was in the works long before Trump descended the magic escalator to the hired cheers of those waiting below him. The addition of these jobs will add .006 percent to the 1.5 million employees Walmart already has in this country, and about matches the number of employees Walmart has added every year over the last few years.

In same tweet Trump takes credit for a new GM plant that was in the works for years, but GM was smart enough to push that announcement out there so Trump could grab credit for it as a nice inauguration present. That gets GM off Trump’s hit list. GM spokeswoman Joanne Krell said the automaker planned to add 7,000 new U.S. jobs over the next two to three years. Krell said the decisions being announced "had been in the works for some time" but she added "the timing was good for us to share what we are doing." Can GM pander or what!

It’s also becoming obvious that Trump does have a hit list. All of the never-Trumpers seem to be on it. I’d always thought that old movie line, “You’ll never work in this town again,” was just a clichéd script line; it isn’t now.

Trump insists that all ambassadorial appointees come home immediately after he is inaugurated. These are private citizens and while Trump can lift their credentials as ambassadors, he cannot command then to come home. Some of these people might have children in school and be reluctant to pull them out before the end of the term. Trump should be sympathetic to that problem. Baron Trump, his son, will remain in New York with his mother until the end of his school year before they move to the White House. You would suppose Trump would extend the same courtesy to our ambassadors, but then maybe you wouldn’t suppose that at all. The other parents at Columbia Grammar and Preparatory school, a 45k/year prep school are not happy about the increased traffic, security, yada, yada, yada. They’ll have to get used to it.

There is some unexpected fall out from “the wall.” As you might guess, not all the land on this side of the Rio Grande, where this wall will have to be constructed, is owned by the government. That’s not a problem because the government can just take whatever land they want by a process called eminent domain, as long as they pay fair market value for the land. It seems that if you were savvy enough to get an attorney your land along the Rio Grande is worth a great deal more than if you didn’t have an attorney.

An Associated Press analysis of nearly 300 Texas land cases found that most of the settlement money went to a small group of owners, all of whom had attorneys. The legal help appeared to pay off: Of nearly $15 million that has been paid out, 85 percent has been awarded to just a third of the property holders. What value would you put on looking out of you window to see a large river a couple of hundred yards away instead of a ten foot fence shutting off the view of anything except that ten foot fence.

Thank you Donald Trump.