2017 Mar 31^st

April Fool’s Day is not today, it’s tomorrow! Even so, today we have Trump’s former National Security Advisor, General Mike Flynn, agreeing to testify to whatever you like in exchange from prosecution for whatever he’s done.  Poor Flynn, not that long ago, when speaking about Hillary Clinton’s supporters who also wanted immunity from prosecution, he claimed that only the guilty would make such a request. The tape of Flynn saying that is now on a continuous loop.

Prosecutors can go after Flynn whenever they want to. It is illegal for retired military officers to go to work for a foreign power and Flynn did just that; his firm accepted 530 thousand dollars to lobby for Turkey, even pushing this country to extradite a resident Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whom the Turks accuse of fomenting revolution in Turkey. When Flynn began to push the extradition of Gulen, the Turkish press was delighted with the fine bargain their government had made.

Flynn is no longer employed as an advisor to Trump. He is said to have been fired because he misinformed Vice President Pence about his Russian contacts….more horse hockey. Pence was head honcho of Trump’s transition team. This team was notified by two congressmen and by a Justice Department attorney of Flynn’s Turkish and Russian ties and, unless Pence refused to read his mail, he should have known about Flynn, The White House knew that thirteen days before they took action to fire Flynn. They didn’t give a ****about Pence until Flynn’s lies were outed by the naughty media.

Trump agrees that Flynn should ask for a pass from prosecution if he testifies. Trump claims all this Russian stuff is just a “witch hunt.”  The Russians heartily agree with him. Now if the Donald is feeling abused and disrespected he can just drop down the hall a few doors to daughter Ivanka’s brand new office to get some “there, there daddy dear” commiserations. It does seem clear that Ivanka Trump, unlike other White House employees, will have total job security.

The White House is busy trying to do some damage control of Chairman Nunes performance a few days ago. Nunes got a phone call to come to the White House to view some very secret documents that the White House National Security people had obtained. Nunes, who had been a member of the Trump transition team went immediately to the White house to see what they had. He didn’t tell any of his committee members but he did arrange for a press conference…he wasn’t that rushed. He decided that what he found must be reported to the president immediately and so that’s what he did.

Eventually he decided that he owed his committee members an apology so he apologized for ignoring them. He did not believe that they needed any explanation of why he ignored them so he didn’t offer any. What happened and why is still a mystery: There were three White House appointed National Security people who invited Nunes to the White House to view these papers. Nunes claimed that he had to inform Trump about what he’d seen but these same NSC people could have informed Trump without bothering to consult Nunes. Trump could have seen these papers, or whatever, any time he wished. Why all the theater?

2017 Mar 30^th

Today we have Patrick Buchanan writing a column the burden of which is the position that the defeat of the Ryan/Trump care bill was in fact no defeat at all but a victory. Buchanan even titles this column, “The Ryancare rout: Winning by losing.” The logic of Buchanan’s position is that with the failure  of the “American Health Care Act,” the ACA (Obamacare) was left firmly in place as the law of the land. Buchanan has bought into the notion that the ACA will certainly fail, so now that it has been resurrected we can wait for it to expire of its own inadequacies.

Buchanan makes some curious comments: He says about the ACA, “And the Democrats now own it again, as not one Democrat was there to help reform it.” So Buchanan would have us believe that the Republicans were willing to reform the ACA but the nasty old Democrats just refused to help. Buchanan has a long history of believing myths but the notion that the Republicans wanted to reform Obamacare but the Democrats wouldn’t help them is one of his best.

Next to building the wall, “that big beautiful wall” repeal and replace Obamacare has been Trump’s mantra ever since he first appeared on the political horizon. Before Trump appeared, repeal and replace had been the Republican rallying cry ever since the ACA was passed…and it was passed without a single Republican vote. (One might add here that over thirty Democrats voted against the bill.)

The point here is that for about seven years the Republicans have complained about the ACA and said they would replace it, presumably with something better, but when they had the chance to replace it they blew it. The replacement they put forward was approved by just 17 percent of the population and it was opposed by every nearly every professional health organization.

The problem was that the Republicans were unanimous about the repeal part but severely divided about the replace part. About 36 House members are part of the very conservative Freedom Caucus. These people would rather not see any social programs at all and certainly not something like the ACA. So what does the Speaker of the House do to win over members of this group to vote for the replacement bill? Speaker Ryan removes the healthcare essentials insisted on by the Democrats. Obamacare mandates that all health insurance plans must cover “ten areas of “essential health benefits”: Doctor’s visits, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, prescription drugs, lab tests, pediatrics, rehabilitation, and preventative services.

Once these “essentials” have been removed, what’s left? Damned little, so this emasculated health care bill lost the votes of moderate Republicans, failed to pick up the votes of the Freedom Caucus members and poor Ryan had to go to Trump and tell him his initial legislative effort would fail if it was pursued. The only recourse was to pull the bill so officially it would not go in the record as a legislative lost.

Buchanan says this loss is really winning?

2017 Mar 29^th

The “big news” this morning is that the White House sycophants have decided to side with their boss and boycott the White House Correspondents’ Association annual dinner. Nixon and Carter also skipped this event and so did Reagan, but Reagan had a good excuse, he had recently been shot. (He did phone in however.)Trump declared some time ago that he would not be attending.

 I doubt that this will have much effect on the overall dinner attendance. Most of the attendees will be looking forward to seeing Alec Baldwin do his brilliantly funny Trump imitation. You may remember last year when President Obama did a takedown of Trump while Trump sat a captive in the audience. The President went on at some length about the release of his Hawaii long form birth certificate. Trump had, for years, asked many questions about Obama’s birth certificate, his school records and, in general, questions about his legitimacy as president. The 2016 dinner was payback time and the payback was done with accrued interest.

I’m not surprised that Trump is bowing out of this WHCA gig. The president is expected to make some funny remarks, usually self-deprecating funny remarks. Has anyone ever heard Donald Trump intentionally say anything funny? Has anyone ever heard him crack a joke, make a pun or tell a funny story? I don’t hang on Trump’s every word but I’ve never heard even Fox News repeat a funny remark made by Donald Trump. As for Donald J. Trump making a self-deprecating remark, any writer employed to write funny stuff for The Donald knows better than to even attempt that if he/she expects to remain employed. April 29^th is the dinner’s date; it should be fun.

On to things of lesser importance: We have the mystery of congressman Nunes, chair of the house intelligence committee, charged with investigating events surrounding Russian intrusion into our election. Nunes made some curious visits to the White House; he claims they were to receive some intelligence that he then returned to the White House to share with its principal occupant. But, his congressional committee is supposed to be investigating this very person’s Russian connections.

There were several press conferences held by Nunes during his White House adventures. Unfortunately, Nunes could only say that he couldn’t really say anything because he had been briefed by a high level intelligence source and of course he couldn’t reveal this source, nor could he reveal the information the source provided. Unfortunately, none of the assembled press bothered to ask Nunes why he was holding a press conference if all he could say was that he had shared some information he couldn’t reveal from a source he couldn’t reveal with the president. In many circumstance at least one member of the press would be impertinent enough to ask this question…but not now.

Nunes apologized to his committee members for not consulting them first but offered no explanation about why he did what he did. Then he cancelled all the committee meetings without rescheduling them. One of the people scheduled to testify at the cancelled meetings was Sally Yates, the fired deputy attorney general who sent information to the president about General Flynn, and she also refused to enforce the illegal immigration order. Naturally Trump fired her, although now she was about to testify…but alas Nunes had cancelled the meeting at which this might have occurred.

Calls for Nunes to step down have fallen on Speaker Ryan’s deaf ears; he claims he still has confidence in Nunes to do his job so there he will stay. Maybe the Senate committee will do better…they can do no worse.

2017 Mar 28^th

The leader of the free world, or our national embarrassment, take your pick, has decided to deflect all the criticism about Russia by also accusing the Clintons of improprieties with the Russians…so there! Will the man never advance beyond the nine-year-old level of discourse? Probably not, so don’t wait around.

Having flubbed on healthcare, although Trump blamed some of the bill’s failure on the refusal of the Democrats to ride to its rescue, there was also the obstinate refusal of the Republican “Freedom Caucus” to support it. Their refusal was in spite of Ryan stripping the bill of many humane provisions such as emergency room visits, maternity care, doctor visits, etc., provisions that had been required for insurance company coverage. Ryan removed these hoping to bring on board the far right of his party but in doing so, he lost the party’s moderate wing. Why Trump thought Democrats might support this disaster is more evidence of his dwelling in fantasyland. Once again, Trump, the “deal maker” blames his failure on someone else.

No problem, he’ll forget about healthcare for a little while and move on to cutting taxes; doesn’t everyone want their taxes reduced? Sure they do. But ask the question a different way: What services do you want to lose? Trump has insisted that for every new regulation, two current regulations must be eliminated. How about requiring his administration to specify which services will be eliminated for each tax cut he proposes?

Trump claims that the economy will just grow and grow because of these tax cuts, if that’s true why must we raise the debt ceiling? Trump’s tax cuts, mostly targeted at the wealthy, will mean an increase in the national debt. Add to his tax cuts, Trump’s increase in military spending, the billions for his “beautiful” border wall and his spending on the infrastructure and you have a nicely climbing national debt and with it a nicely climbing inflation rate.

The inflation rate is also helped along by his scaring the “whatevers” out of farm workers who cross the border to harvest our fruits and vegetables. Ads in the local paper solicit applications for these jobs that pay tops of about 11 dollars an hour. Many workers from out of the country normally want these jobs; scare them away and we’ll be paying 15 dollars an hour for the same labor. Think about what that will do to the price of food.

The Tea Party people stopped him on his health care bill; these people are not fans of raising the debt ceiling. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised we might find the country defaulting on the interest rates we pay on the money we’ve already borrowed. What do you suppose that will do to the interest rates the government will have to pay to borrow money after the default? I’m sure we’ll all feel better after he sends a few calming tweets.

2017 Mar 27^th

In this morning’s paper, Patrick Buchanan writes about “The Obama plot to sabotage Trump.” You talk about “sending coals to Newcastle,” why would President Obama bother to sabotage Trump’s presidency, which is already deconstructing itself very nicely. Keep in mind that many of the administration’s problems were caused by some of the lower-level Trump flunkies. Steven Miller, a Trump advisor, was the author of that pathetic initial effort to ban Muslims from seven countries, an effort struck down by the courts almost immediately. But then, isn’t Trump responsible for the glitches produced by his incompetent appointments?

Buchanan is on a desperate search for a conspiracy so he’ll find one…or he’ll create one if that’s what it takes. Buchanan writes, “The US intelligence community, during surveillance of legitimate targets, picked up the names of Trump officials… “unmasked “ their identity and spread their names around virtually assuring they would be leaked.” He then says that Comey admits that there is no evidence to back up Trump’s tweet (about Obama wiretapping him) but would not comment on …electronic surveillance of Trump and his campaign.

The names of these Trump officials were always on the other end of calls to Russians. Buchanan doesn’t mention that, or find it the least peculiar that they are not on the other end of calls to India, Norway or Mexico. These Trump officials do seem to have an immoderate affinity for talking to Russians…all of it quite innocent of course.

Then there are the leaks of information about Clinton’s campaign traced to Russian hackers. They had hacked both campaign organizations but leaked only the stuff damaging to Clinton. Some of that hacked information had Russian language notes accompanying it. Didn’t the great Trump himself invite Russian hackers to get those 30 thousand emails lost by the Clinton campaign?

Russia also seems to be a fine money pump for the Trump people. Many Trump associates have been paid handsomely for speaking to assorted Russian groups, some, like General Flynn, were photographed seated right next to Putin himself. Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, billionaire Wilbur Ross, is the majority owner of the Bank of Cyprus. So, how is that connected to Russia? This bank is the primary launderer of Russian oligarch’s money; it is the way they get their cash out of the country. Who cares if a smidgen of that cash falls into other hands?

It was a Russian oligarch who paid Trump a handsome profit of close to 60 million dollars on a house Trump had owned for only about four years…and then the new Russian owner tore down the house. This looks like a way to hand Donald Trump a cool 50 + million dollars. You can see why Trump and company have a great affinity for Russians…I doubt that Norwegians would throw money around like that, so of course Trump’s people like to talk to Russians. Our spy catchers are checking this out and they are finding Trump types on the other end of these Russian phone calls. Buchanan naturally sees a conspiracy here and writes, “If true (about the poorly redacted names of Trump people chatting with Russians) this has the look and smell of a conspiracy to sabotage the Trump presidency before it began.”

There is more of course and all of it as silly as the previous stuff. Buchanan says that, “… Comey had no evidence to back up the Trump (surveillance) tweet. But when it came to electronic surveillance of Trump and his campaign, Comey, somehow, could not comment about that.” That was, obviously, because the investigation of Trump’s peccadilloes is a work in progress and Comey cannot comment about ongoing investigations.

Then Buchanan moves to support poor abused General Flynn. Has he anything to say about Flynn working as a Turkish agent while he is Trump’s National Security advisor? Of course not; why would he bring that up and spoil his poor abused General Flynn story.

OK, Buchanan has more paranoia to peddle but this blog is already long enough.

2017 Mar 26^th

So the great deal maker got dealt with! The health care defeat is no surprise, this substitute bill had a 17 percent approval rating. The AMA, the American Hospital Association, the American Association of Retired Persons and several other outfits whose shtick is health care, opposed it. Apparently, our national embarrassment assumed he had no need to talk to these groups, or to the “we hate government all to pieces” right wing caucus of his own party to push this legislation through. He was probably right; he couldn’t have done anything to save this. OK, now it’s on to his next fiasco which will be the tax issue.

As it stands now the surtax on high income people stands. Trump’s tax plan will cut the capital gains tax, eliminate the estate tax that affects a tiny percent of the highest net worth people and cut the awful, awful corporate tax. Very few corporations pay this 35 percent federal corporate tax anyway. The average corporate tax paid is about 17 percent, which is the corporate tax rate in most other countries, You can be sure that once the legal rate drops to perhaps fifteen percent, tax attorneys will again figure a way to eliminate it altogether for their clients.

Trump and company have far more troublesome problems: General Flynn was being paid by Turkey to represent their interests here in the US. Congress gave this information to the Trump transition team headed by Vice President Pence. Pence claimed he knew nothing about it. (I’m reminded of the dimwitted Sergeant Schultz in “Hogan’s Heroes” whose line was always “I know nothing; I know nothing.”) Pence is not supposed to be a clone of a dimwitted German sergeant in a “B” comedy, still, maybe he is.

Turkey wants the US to extradite a Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Turkey claims this resident of Pennsylvania is somehow responsible for the recent revolt by some members of the Turkish military. Gulen is no friend of Premier Erdogan and he would much prefer a more democratic Turkey but it seems unlikely that he could influence events in Turkey half a world away. General Flynn’s lobbying group is employed by Turkey, which pays them many hundreds of thousand dollars for their efforts on behalf of the Turkish government. As a result, General Flynn has lobbied the US government to extradite Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey. One of the principles here, Bijan Kian, claims that Gulen is “leading a cultural invasion of the United States.” Kian is a very right-leaning monetary official who has also presented the curious statistic, favored by the right , that 93 million Americans are out of the labor force. (As I’ve said before, this ignores retirees. college students and stay at home mothers. Kian, like many right wingers, is only interested in misleading, not in informing.)

So we have the interesting case of General Flynn, Trump’s National Security Advisor, a position requiring no  senate conformation, working for the Turkish government while he is privy to the very secret intelligence briefings accorded to the President of the United States. To paraphrase one of our president’s earlier utterances, “What the hell is going on?”

(Those of you who follow this blog may have noticed that nothing was posted yesterday. I was busy celebrating my 90^th birthday with a number of friends. In another ten years I might take another day off.)

2017 Mar 24^th

It is early afternoon and there is no vote yet on the Republican’s replacement for the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We know that many sweeteners have been poured into this bill to attract those Tea Party folks, who with Steve Bannon, want to “deconstruct the administrative state” that is to say, strangle it.

A large number of health benefits have been removed, benefits that had been there in the ACA. No more mammograms, and one rather dense Republican legislator said that he couldn’t understand why men should have to pay for women’s mammograms. Someone must have reminded him that some of his constituents were women so he retracted his objection and apologized. Would that Donald Trump could have the grace to admit his stupidities.

Trumpcare will gain some far right support as Ryan and his people make it more Spartan and more palatable to the far right, but as they do this, they will lose the votes of moderates. This might be a “zero-sum game.” If it is it will not be a zero sum for Trump but a dead loss. He cannot afford to lose his very first effort to promote legislation. Whatever will he do? He has already done it; he is distancing himself from the bill. This is not Trumpcare, oh no indeed, this is Ryancare, this is whatever you want to call it except Trump’s name is not to be attached to it. He will lose far more face when this bill loses than he could possibly gain from its passage.

This razzmatazz only concerns the house bill; even if it does slip past the opposition in the house, it will then go to the senate and there it will certainly be shredded and sent back where it came from for a do-over and this game will be played all over again. Hey folks, these shenanigans are your tax dollars at work, enjoy.

Ryan has just gone to the White House presumably to deliver the bad news to Trump that the bill will not pass the house. So, will Trump pull the bill and save himself from the defeat by withdrawing from the contest, or will he forge ahead and then blame the defeat on Ryan and the house Republicans? If the bill should miraculously pass he’ll take credit; if it doesn’t pass he’ll blame Ryan and the Republicans. He can’t lose unless he pulls the bill.

Chairman Nunes, a former member of the Trump transition team, has been complimented by President Trump. Nunes immediately ran to the White House with information that perhaps Trump’s white House had been incidentally surveilled when they were not the target of the surveillance at all. Nunes has nevertheless apologized to his committee for ignoring them about the issue. He admits that this was a mistake. Still, he is making a considerable issue of the fact that he can discern the identity of the redacted names of people incidentally communicating with those being followed by the FBI.

The truly amazing thing here is this intelligence committee chair seems uninterested in investigating any connections between Russia and any member of the administration….or maybe that’s not so amazing at all.

2017 Mar 23^rd

Much of the human brain is given over to inhibition. The ability to inhibit a tendency to club to death anyone offering us a slight is critical for the development of civilization. When someone suffers from brain damage, they are more likely to be surly, pugnacious and more obnoxious than they were before their stroke or accident. Even for folks with intact brains there are wide individual differences in their ability to inhibit when inhibition is called for. There are wide individual differences among people on this characteristic just are there are wide individual differences in sociability or intelligence. Another name for this ability to inhibit is impulse control. Impulse control can be learned but only if there are negative consequences for its absence.

President Trump is an interesting case in this regard: Recall his infamous tape made on the bus with Billy Bush. He claimed (or is it bragged) about his irresistible impulse to kiss any pretty girl he saw to the extent that he always carried breath mints with him. We’ve had several women airline passengers who claimed they had to change seats because Trump insisted on fondling them.

You couple this lack of impulse control with an inability to admit error, add substantial wealth and the result is enormous volatility. Remember that Trump took out full-page ads in four New York dailies demanding the death penalty for a rapist gang who confessed to assaulting and raping a central park jogger. The gang members were convicted but subsequently the conviction was vacated because hard evidence proved their innocence. Trump continued, in interviews and other media, to insist on their guilt. Trump could not admit he was wrong. His attorney for a time was Roy Cohn, the same Cohn who supported the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy. Cohn’s advice to Trump was never back down and never apologize. Trump took the advice very seriously.

Trump tweets describe a fantasy world that has now become described as alt-facts.  He has declared that Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the twin towers fell. He insisted his inauguration crowds were larger that Obama’s, that his electoral college majority was the largest since…and on and on. Now he claims that former President Obama has wire tapped his phones and he says that Obama’s behavior is “sick.”

When the news organizations question his assertions he declares them “the enemy” and deliberately excludes his least favorites from his press conferences. He has not filed many second tier appointments to his administration and blames the absence of these people on Democrat’s unwillingness to confirm people he has never put forward as his choices for the positions.

As a result of this man’s obsession with himself and his lack of impulse control his approval rating at this time in his presidency is the lowest on record. Many even  question his sanity and odds-makers believe his chances of finishing his term of office is at best about even.

2017 Mar 22^nd

I’m sure you remember the hilarious “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” Ferris skips school hoodwinking school officials so he can also spring his girlfriend, he takes his buddies’ dad’s sports car, and the buddy, and the three of them go on a delightful toot. Taking the day off was of considerable benefit to Ferris.

President Trump could benefit from using Ferris as a model. He might also take a day off, although I think more than a day might be required for the country to recover from Trump’s continually shooting himself in the foot. His most recent self-mutilization occurred during Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation hearing. Gorsuch was asked about remarks critical of the judiciary, particularly those claiming that some federal judge’s rulings were politically biased. (Who would say such a thing?) Gorsuch said he found such criticisms by anyone both “demoralizing and disheartening.” He was then asked, specifically, if that referred to criticisms by President Trump. His response was unequivocal, “Anyone is anyone.” Poor Trump; his flack, Spicer, was asked about that and Spicer claimed that Gorsuch had not mentioned the president. He didn’t mention the president because he didn’t need to mention the president.

Congressional intelligence committee’s chairman Nunes held a news conference insisting that he just had to immediately brief the president that some Trump associates might have been identified when they were just part of incidental surveillance by the FBI. Keep in mind that Nunes is a devoted Trump fan who was part of Trump’s transition team. This incidental collection means that if you call the Russian ambassador your name will be part of the data collected by the FBI. They will certainly be surveilling that phone. However, whether or not you are part of the investigation, you should not be publically identified. But there will be leaks, and stopping these leaks for Chairman Nunes is more important than whether or not Trump, or any of his favorites were helping the Russians. Hey, the man has his priorities.

His dash to inform Trump about this information has a downside. He did this without consulting any other members of his committee. Adam Schiff, the ranking member knew nothing about this before they saw Nunes holding his press conference outside the White House. This committee is supposed to be investigating whether there were any inappropriate ties between the Trump’s people and the Russians. Chairman Nunes has just made it clear that he is Trump’s agent and thus has rendered his committee impotent in any such investigation. These investigations are supposed to be politically neutral.

There is no doubt that Nunes did not intend this result, but the result of his rush to tell the White House while cutting the rest of his committee completely out of the loop has insured that an independent committee will have to be appointed.  I’m sure that’s not what Nunes or Trump wanted. Who would pay any attention to the findings of a committee chaired by Nunes?

2017 Mar 21^st

Sean Spicer, the president’s contact with the press,says to the press what Trump wants him to say to the press and he must “say it with feeling.” That means he must say it as if he believes it; that surely requires a person with supreme acting ability because  Spicer’s recent comments about the role of Manafort and Flynn in Trump’s presidential campaigns were alt-facts.

Consider what Spicer said at his press conference: It was that Manafort, during the campaign, “played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

Manafort, of course, ran Trump’s campaign for several months last year after original campaign manager Corey Lewandowski resigned amid controversy over his manhandling of a female Breitbart reporter. Manafort later resigned in August, while he was facing scrutiny for his ties to pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. Spicer goes on to try to pooh-pooh any questions about  Manafort and General Flynn who, he assures everyone, were mere irrelevant hangers on in the Trump campaign.

“So to start to look at some individual who was there for a short period of time, or separately individuals who really didn’t play a role in the campaign, and to suggest that those are the basis for anything is a bit ridiculous,” Spicer chided reporters Monday.

Spicer even went on to describe Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, forced to resign after it was revealed that he spoke with the Russian ambassador about lifting sanctions during the transition, as a “volunteer of the campaign.” Never mind that General Flynn was Trump’s National Security Adviser and that he accompanied Trump everywhere he went.

How much money do you suppose Spicer was paid to ditch his credibility?

Are the wheels beginning to come off the Trumpmobile? Not yet but the lug nuts are getting loose and if things don’t get fixed it won’t be long. Symptoms are easy to find; we can begin with the stock market; it took a powder today with the Dow dropping over 230 points. OK, so a correction was overdue; this market had been on a tear because Trump had promised all kinds of economic goodies. Maybe there has been some recent reevaluation of Trump’s ability to deal with economic issues and stop tweeting about committee leaks.

The fact that the President is being investigated by the FBI to see if he collaborated with Russia during his election campaign might make any sane investor more than a bit nervous. There is a market “nervousness indicator.” You can buy a form of market insurance to protect your profits. These are called put options and they give you the right to sell your stock at a particular price for a particular time period. You own IBM selling at about 173 dollars a share. You can buy puts on that stock at 170 that will give you the right to sell your IBM at 170 a share no matter how low the market price of the stock goes. The purchaser will be the person from whom you bought the puts. He is required to have the money available if you want to sell him your stock. There are traders who keep track of the total volume of put options sold, the more puts sold, the more nervous are stockholders. Right now, the volume of put options traded is very, very high, so traders are very, very nervous

Another indicator of nervousness is the price of gold and that too has shot up. Whatever can it mean? It means look out below.

2017 Mar 20^th

Mona Charen, who leans as far right as any columnist, comments on the American Health Care Act. This is the substitute plan the right wing hopes will replace the Affordable Care Act. Charen is no Trump fan; she calls his promise that the ACA’s replacement will cover everyone and will cover them more cheaply than the ACA is “cotton candy.” For a change Charen is right about something.

But then she boots it by writing, “Congress further distorted the marketplace in 1986 by requiring hospital emergency rooms to treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay.” Well, shame on congress for that. How un-conservative of them to “distort the marketplace” by insisting hospital emergency rooms treat all comers.  I mean, why not just let the impoverished accident victim bleed to death in the hospital entryway?

She does recognize that there are problems but tells us that there is some movement in the “right direction.” She means the repeal of the surtax on the very rich to help pay for the ACA; she is comforted by the move to health savings accounts. Health savings accounts are another example of the cotton candy she called Trump’s promises. If you are unemployed, married and have two kids where does “a health savings account” come from? The conservatives would like to give you a 3,000-dollar subsidy to buy insurance from your favorite provider.

That’s not very much help. There is an outfit called the Milliman Medical Index that tracks the cost of medical care. These people have estimated that the total medical cost for a family of four for the year 2016 was 25,826 dollars. This included everything, dental and eye care as well as immunizations. The Milliman report can be found in “Forbes,” not a notoriously left leaning publication. The Milliman estimate comes to just under 500 dollars a week.

It is well known that we pay more for healthcare here than is paid for better health care in other countries. What’s going on?  Why are drugs so much more expensive here than in Canada? Why are physicians paid so much more here than they’re paid in other countries?

Orthopedic surgeons in Canada make less than half the $440,000 average net income of colleagues in the States while doing more procedures, two U.S. health-policy professors concluded in one of the most detailed looks yet at the differences in doctor compensation between nations. An American internist earns about 185,000 dollars after expenses. That declines in other countries with the Australian internist earning just about 95,000 dollars.

How have physicians managed to become America’s royalty?

2017 Mar 19^th

Mick Mulvaney is on a mission: He is desperately trying to justify the cuts to social service programs in the Trump budget. His talking points are well rehearsed and are used again and again when he is interviewed. He begins by plaintively asking how we can ask a single mom with two kids to support a school lunch program that isn’t working anyway. He says he has no problem requesting her financial support for, say a wall on our southern border, or generous retirement pay for retired flag officers like Lt. General Flynn. This tree-star retiree violated the law against retired military officers working for foreign governments. Flynn’s lobbying group got over 530 thousand dollars from Turkey for representing them while he was Trump’s National Security Advisor. Will Mulvaney explain to this hypothetical mom why her tax dollars should support this guy? I doubt it.

As to the school lunch program, aside from the obvious (apparently to all except Mulvaney) value of feeding hungry kids, Mulvaney hasn’t looked very carefully at the program’s effectiveness. If you’ve already decided to defund a program why would you try to find anything of value the program does? Mulvaney, the typical politician, is true to form.

A 2014 Center for Disease Control report on health and academic achievement, for example, found that students' dietary behavior has a direct effect on school success, and that when students receive breakfast at school through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) School Breakfast Program, they see "increased academic grades and standardized test scores, reduced absenteeism, and improved cognitive performance." On the other hand, researchers have found that skipping breakfast (or not having access to breakfast in the first place) has been linked to "decreased cognitive performance (e.g., alertness, attention, memory, processing of complex visual display, problem solving) among students." And students who come to school hungry are also more likely to receive lower grades overall, be absent from school more often, are more likely to fail or repeat a grade, and have greater trouble focusing. Well if Mick Mulvaney refuses to look, Mick Mulvaney will never find.

How about the “Meals on Wheels”? Mulvaney insisted that this was not a federal program at all, that the state’s administer the program and its continuation was up to them. Well, not exactly: The funding comes through the Administration for Community Living, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services that serves the elderly and disabled. That agency has a $227 million line item for "home-delivered nutrition services."

Those programs are authorized though the Older Americans Act, a law so popular that its renewal passed Congress last year without any recorded opposition. And while Trump didn't single out that specific program, Health and Human Services will receive a 16% across-the-board cut.

If meals on wheels is eliminated what happens to the people who depend on it? Without this service, many of them will no longer be able to live in their own homes and they will have to move into nursing homes costing at least several thousand dollars a month. The cost will soon exhaust their savings, then what? Then the government will pick up a much greater tab than they would have had meals on wheels been left in place. This is the thinking of s shrewd businessman?

2017 Mar 18^th

And now, once again, we have our national embarrassment embarrassing us; how does he do this? This event had to do with St. Patrick’s Day. President Trump was schmoozing at a luncheon for Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenney when he remarked that he particularly liked one Irish proverb, in fact it had been a favorite of his for years. It was:

'Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue. But never forget to remember those that have stuck by you.'

Sounds like the sort of thing President Trump would adore; it lauds unfettered loyalty and bashes those who have strayed from the fold.

Unfortunately, for Trump that bit of doggerel/rime is not Irish. Its composer was Albasheer Adam Alhassan, a Nigerian Muslim.--- Whoops! His staff really blew that one. The odds are that Trump had never seen this couplet before his meeting with the Irish prime minister. It was probably found by someone on his staff especially for the St. Patrick’s Day occasion. His comment that it had been “his favorite for years” is simply another Trump lie…sorry I believe according to Kellyanne Conway that is an alt-fact.

Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief counsellor, has claimed that his goal is, “The deconstruction of the administrative state.”  His official title is “chief strategist.” He is always at Trump’s side and he goes where President Trump goes. Bannon would seem to be Trump’s custodian. If you wanted to “deconstruct the administrative state” wouldn’t it be lovely to make the American head of state look like an idiot and to do that as often as possible.

There is no doubt that looking like an idiot comes naturally to this man although sometimes his lies take some time to catch up with him. A case in point is his claim that President Obama arranged wiretapping of Trump’s communications at Trump Tower.  Neither the FBI, the NSA, nor the CIA have any evidence for this and they would know if it happened.

A Fox News commentator, Andrew Napolitano, claimed that Trump tower might be under surveillance by a British security service. You see that explains why our FBI, CIA, NSA, all know nothing about any of this. Or, perhaps Napolitano will suggest that Obama arranged the surveillance be done by extra-terrestrials and that’s why we have no trace of it. (E.T.s do not reflect light between 400 and 800 Angstroms so they can’t be seen by the human eye. That information will surface soon so I thought you should have a heads up about it. Stay tuned to Fox News.)

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2017 Mar 17^th

Michael Barone, a “senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner and a resident Fellow of the American Enterprise Institute” presents the case for Trump’s policy’s working even if they won’t work and never will work. How is that possible? Barone says it all depends on perception. The idea Barone advances is that if you believe there will be financial advantages to Trump’s promised programs you act as if those programs will happen.  

The fact that Trump is a congenital liar puts several question marks after everything he says. We had millions of illegal aliens voting and that’s why he lost the popular vote. We had thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey when the towers fell; thousands of illegal voters were bussed into New Hampshire and that’s why he lost New Hampshire. His Electoral College majority was the largest ever, his inaugural crowds were larger than Obama’s, the rain stopped and the sun came out and shown on his inauguration. Astute businesspersons will believe what he now proposes? Sure they will.

In his fourth paragraph, Barone presents his readers with an outright lie. He claims that, “… with the Obama stimulus program the bulk of new jobs came in the public sector…” Here are the data from previous administrations;

Term	Public Sector Jobs Added (000s)
Carter	1,304
Reagan 1	-24
Reagan 2	1,438
GHW Bush	1,127
Clinton 1	692
Clinton 2	1,242
GW Bush 1	900
GW Bush 2	844
Obama 1	-708
Obama 2	2051
140 months into 2nd term, 246 pace

Term	Private Sector Jobs Added (000s)
Carter	9,041
Reagan 1	5,360
Reagan 2	9,357
GHW Bush	1,510
Clinton 1	10,884
Clinton 2	10,082
GW Bush 1	-811
GW Bush 2	415
Obama 1	1,921
Obama 2	8,3851
140 months into 2nd term: 10,062 pace.

It is obvious that when Obama took over from Bush the economy was a mess; he turned it right side up. Now comes Trump who says he wants to remove regulations he thinks suppress a full economic push.

We know that the economy is growing even if it is not growing as fast as some would like. The Federal Reserve recognizes that interest rates must increase, even if just a bit. Unemployment is under five percent, there are ads in our local paper for good paying jobs, and they have been there since well before Trump won the election. Much if not all of this surge in economic activity was begun long before Trump was in the picture. Indeed most economists are reluctant to credit—or blame—the president for the nation’s economy during his tenure; there are just too many other variables, most of which a president cannot control.

2017 Mar 16^th

President Donald Trump went to Tennessee to get some pats on the head for a job well done in spite of the obvious fact that his job so far has been far from well done. His approval rating has fallen five points since the poll was last conducted. Just today, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s head, Senator Richard Burr, and his Democratic counterpart, Senator Mark Warner, have agreed that there is no evidence that Trump Tower was “wiretapped,” or even wiretapped. Is it possible that Trump’s uncontrolled mouth could finally bring some bi-partisan unity on something? At this point, the Spicer afternoon press conference is considerably delayed, perhaps so the administration can “figure out what the hell is going on.”

His welcome in Tennessee was as enthusiastic as he expected it would be. He carried Tennessee by a huuuge majority in the election. He claims a great affinity for President Andrew Jackson who was, as Trump claimed, a man of the people. There are differences: Jackson was considered a man of the people because he was the first president not part of the southern slaveholding nobility or the northern aristocracy. Jackson did not inherit a fortune; Trump did. Jackson was a successful general; Trump was a draft dodger. Jackson had been a governor and a former senator; Trump never held any elective office; he was apparently uninterested in serving the people unless he could start at the top. Now that he’s at the top, guess who he’s serving.

We have Trump’s proposed new budget. There are big winners and big losers. The winners are the military with a bump of almost ten percent, followed by homeland security. The spending plan shrinks numerous other federal programs. The package would lead to mass layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency, eliminating more than 50 programs there as part of a steep 31 percent cut. The Department of Labor is slashed by 21 percent and the overall budget of the Department of Health and Human Services is cut by nearly 18 percent. The reductions to the National Institutes of Health are even deeper.

Trump is a self-described negotiator so this might be just a trial balloon. If it is there will be some pushback. I would expect some static from at least some of his new cabinet appointees who are seeing their fiefdoms reduced as they stand by and watch. A big loser here is the Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who gave up a major slot as chief of Exxon-Mobil for a now shrinking position as Trump’s secretary of state.

In some cases the department head wanted to scuttle the department they were invited to head even before their appointment. The gutting of the EPA’s programs are surely just fine with Secretary Scott Pruitt. The budget to protect the Great Lakes from invasive species such as sea lamprey and Asian Carp has been cut 97 percent. Trout and salmon fishers in the Great Lakes tributaries will just have to adjust to catching Asian Carp. Perhaps if they’re canned the bones will dissolve and they’ll be quite tasty. The Chinese are said to enjoy eating them.

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2017 Mar 15^th

Here it is, the Ides of March, and no seer has told us that Trump could be in trouble, but Trump is in trouble. (Seers just aren’t what they used to be.) Rachel Madow, liberal muckraker-in-chief has revealed two pages of Trump’s tax returns from 2005, a dozen years ago. They were sent unrequested to David Kay Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter. (Fox News had to point out that five years ago Johnson published an article falsely accusing Fox’s parent company of paying lower taxes than they should have paid. Johnson quickly withdrew that article and apologized to Murdoch. So what?) Trump junior went on a rant about the “stolen” tax returns and the use of criminal means to boost ratings; all of which were lies. Many pundits believe this two-page, carefully selected return, was deliberately leaked by Trump himself.

First, why leak a portion of a return from 2005? That was a year when he made money and paid taxes. In fact, the “Alternative Minimum Tax” (AMT) which keeps the super-rich from running up enough deductions to insure a very low tax rate caught him and he paid over 38 million in taxes. He wants to do away with the AMT; without AMT Trump would have paid just 5.3 million on his over 150 million of income. Most of Trump’s tax policies have Trump, his family and his wealthy supporters as the major beneficiaries.

Second, Trump’s accusation of Obama’s ‘wiretapping’ his phones in Trump Tower is getting ever closer to requiring some proof. Both Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer have explained that President Trump put the word wiretapped in quotes and that meant that he really didn’t mean wiretapped. Perhaps this is another alt-fact, or maybe one of those occasions where Trump is not to be taken literally just so long as we know what is in his heart. One right wing propagandist jumps up to claim that we shouldn’t take Trump literally as long as we take him seriously. This utterly asinine apologia for Trump’s erratic remarks needs no comment. Will two pages from a 12 year old tax return call off those who believe Trump has lied about President Obama? Don’t bet on it.

There are other issues that just surfaced today and couldn’t have influenced the sudden appearance of two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns. We have the feds catching the Russian spies who hired hackers who broke into the Yahoo accounts stealing thousands of records. The government has their names and one of them, in Canada, has already been arrested. The thieves were being funded by the Russian FSB, a security service. This makes the Trump-Putin connection still more delicate and perhaps not recoverable. Even Trump’s closest buddies will soon decide his Russian friends will be dangerous to their re-election chances.

The most recent Trump trouble came just tonight when it was announced that his brand new revised and improved travel ban has been delayed of implementation by a Hawaiian judge.  The rationale is still based on the ban’s discrimination against Muslims. This will probably be reversed by SCOTUS but in the meantime poor old Donald is surely taking a beating.

When do you suppose it will dawn on him that he could be spending his twilight years playing golf and admiring his trophies.

2017 Mar 14^th

Our Health and Human Services Secretary, Dr. Tom Price, is a most unhappy camper. Dr. Price was so enthusiastic about the splendid replacement for that awful Obamacare program, but that was then. The Obamacare replacement Price was pushing would have meant scuttling those onerous tax increases that helped to pay some of the freight for low income Obamacare beneficiaries. Those tax increases were taking an additional 4.7 percent from the incomes of folks making just a few million a year. All good conservatives should be happy to see the end of those surtaxes.

 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has evaluated this new health insurance program. Remember that the CBO is supposed to be a politically neutral evaluator of whatever they are asked to evaluate. Speaker Ryan and his buddies were already dissing the CBO even before they came out with their evaluation. They pointed out that the CBO missed a prediction about an aspect of Obamacare; they failed to mention that the CBO was closer than any other group making the same prediction.

The Price/Ryan/Trump folks who had, before the fact, dissed the CBO as not being credible, was not prepared for the catastrophic analysis the CBO gave their Obamacare replacement. CBOs analysis predicted that within ten years 24 million people would lose their health coverage. Even for Republicans, this looked like a non-starter. As you can imagine this CBO prediction created quite a kerfuffle. Naturally, there was a pushback by Tom Price. Dr. Price claimed that the CBO did not take into consideration any number of special circumstances that would have modified their prediction.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price criticized the CBO’s numbers as “just not believable” on Monday while admitting that he hadn’t even read the CBO report. “The fact of the matter is, if you look at that, it’s virtually impossible to have that number occur. We are not certain – again, we haven’t been able to read the report.” We haven’t read the report but we know it isn’t believable. This is a Trump appointee. What did you expect?

As it happens, Tom Price was an enthusiastic supporter of the new CBO head. Keith Hall.  He said, “Keith Hall will bring an impressive level of economic expertise and experience to the Congressional Budget Office. Throughout his career, he has served in both the public and private sector, under presidents of both parties, and in roles that make him well-suited to lead the CBO. In particular, during his time at the U.S. International Trade Commission, Dr. Hall has worked on providing Congress with non-partisan economic analyses – a role similar to the responsibilities he will now assume as CBO director. His vast understanding of economic and labor market policy will be invaluable to the work of CBO and the important roll it will continue to play as Congress seeks to enact policies that support a healthy and growing economy.”

And then look what Dr. Hall did to Price’s program. You just can’t trust some economists.

2017 Mar 13th

A few months ago when the unemployment rate had dropped from its enormous high of about 10 percent to just over 7 percent Donald Trump wasn’t buying it. He rejected the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) number. He insisted that unemployment was more like 17 percent, maybe even over 40 percent. Now that Trump has been president for a while his tune has changed; the recent BLS unemployment numbers, below 5 percent, are a credit to his leadership and the expectations economic leaders have for his programs. The current low unemployment rate is just a continuation of the rates dropping over the last year but Trump wants some credit here.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked about this contradiction at a news briefing after the report’s release. His response: “I talked to the president prior to this and he said to quote him very clearly. They may have been phony in the past, but it’s very real now.” OK, stop laughing; the man was serious.

The same weaseling is happening with “Trumpcare;” he begins by getting testimony about the awfulness of Obamacare from less than a dozen people, never mind that even more have testified that Obamacare saved their lives. The notion that a nationwide program of any sort should be evaluated by testimonials is so hopelessly naïve as to defy logic.

Sean Spicer spent the beginning remarks of his press conference today condemning Obamacare, but also taking care to denigrate the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office, a politically neutral group charged with estimating costs and expected to be unkind to Trumpcare.

Spicer was also asked about the abrupt firing of the U.S. attorneys appointed by the Obama administration. He said this was no different than actions of previous administrations which also dismissed previous appointees. It was different of course. Previous administrations allowed a reasonable time period for the “old timers” to depart; this time the dismissed attorneys were to pack up their rolodexes and leave the building that day. These U.S. attorneys were treated as if the Trump administration expected them to steal their office chairs. Why should we expect curtesy from an administration headed by a man who brags about his ability to sexually assault women.

The Trumpcare program being pushed by Paul Ryan has some very juicy benefits for the wealthy who will surely support it. We’ll list a few of them here but listing them all would run a little long: When Obamacare was being considered so were tax increases on the wealthy to help pay for it. There were an increase in capital gains taxes and an increase in Medicare taxes. The tax increase on capital gains boosted that tax from 20.0 percent to 23.8 percent. The Medicare tax increase was bumped up by just 0.9 percent. Someone who makes 10 million a year suddenly gets a 4.7 percent increase in income because the 4.7 percent tax surcharge has been eliminated. That amounts to about 460 thousand extra dollars if you earn ten million dollars a year. Thank you very much Speaker Ryan. I’ll bet some of the beneficiaries of Speaker Ryan’s health care plan will make a nice contribution to the Republican party; they can certainly afford it.

 P.S. I have discovered that the White House has a website where people are invited to share their stories of disastrous experiences with Obamacare.

2017 Mar 12^th

The Sunday paper usually holds considerable interest; it typically has the funnies and some right wing political columnists at which to tilt. Today there were several other curiosities: There was a “Northern Living “section with a color picture above the fold of a man who has (gasp) given up his smartphone and gone back to his simple flip phone. His rationale was that his smartphone was becoming a distraction, that he was becoming a slave to the device and was constantly being interrupted by its demands. 

Well, I understand that and that is why I was never interested in owning a smartphone in the first place. So, do I and all the other smartphone “rejecters” get our pictures in the paper? Not a chance. The reason is obvious: Luke 15:7 tells us that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over 99 of the righteous. Once again, as the comic said, “I just get no respect.”

The next page finds an article about alternative medicine: This person is pushing “energy healing” which, its proponent claims, can improve physical and mental health. The article states that, “She has studied the law of attraction which states that what people think about is what they will get.” I know that we live in a time of alt-facts so perhaps this is an example. The law of gravitational attraction is very simple. It is the product of the two masses divided by the square of the distance between them. This equation dates back to Newton. What other law of attraction this person is talking about is not likely to be found in any scientific journal.

The idea that what people think about is what they will get has some background in a movie. Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour appeared in “Somewhere in Time,” a movie in which Reeve falls in love with the image of a long dead Seymour and tried, with limited success, to wish himself back into her era. That movie was fiction, indeed, it was fantasy, but not for folks who believe that thinking about what you want will get it for you.

The notion that we can dispense with western medicine can be lethal: A former student went on to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology from Wayne State University. Bob was bright, highly motivated but laid back. After he earned his clinical doctorate and had completed his internship he married an attorney and I guess was prepared to live happily ever after. But Bob firmly believed that any physical problem, say a disease, could be remedied by reading, or listening to the reading, of the appropriate Bible verses.

This was certainly a belief in non-traditional medicine. Shortly after the acquisition of his professional credentials Bob developed a pain in his lower abdomen and two weeks later he was dead from septicemia produced by his burst appendix. He had refused to see a physician or have surgery and I guess hearing the Bible verses and thinking about getting well didn’t work.

2017 Mar 11^th

If you would like to spend your summer working on a beautiful island in northern Lake Michigan, the Grand Hotel is looking for help. The pay isn’t great; some jobs will give you a take home of about 300 dollars a week after taxes.

For a guest, staying at the hotel for a weekend in the summer is an expensive proposition. Their mid-grade room for two for a two-night weekend will set you back about 1,500 dollars. That does include meals and sumptuous meals they are, too; dinners are five course. For some reason, not made clear on their website, the room charge listed does not include an extra 19.5 percent surcharge, and then of course there are taxes and so, all told, the two night stay for two will run just under 2,000 dollars. Did I say that the 2,000 dollars includes your meals?

Is it possible that the Grand Hotel can only afford to offer such a bargain for a summer weekend by keeping the pay rate for some of its employees under 10 dollars an hour? Just asking.

Livius (Livy) was a Roman historian writing about Rome from its earliest beginnings to his own time, about the beginning of the Common Era. One of his more noteworthy aphorisms was, “Men are only clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to the shoulders of others.” That was a rather timeless political comment; another was his observation that political leaders tend to select as assistants people much like themselves. Heaven help us; but it seems to be true.

We know about Donald Trump’s peculiar allergic reaction to the truth. Perhaps it’s contagious because now Mike Pence seems to have caught it. The issue of General Flynn’s loyalties remains under consideration and it will for some time. When Trump asked for Flynn’s resignation for lying to Vice President Pence about talking to the Russians it was with genuine regret. Trump and Flynn had spent many hours together. Perhaps only when Trump was asleep was Flynn not at his side and now Trump had no choice but to dump him, so he dumped him, but the wails he made about it were loud and clear. Curiously, Trump and others in his clique knew about Flynn’s lie to Pence and Trump chose to do nothing about it until the news was out and his hand was forced. That took about ten days.

As it happens Flynn’s 530 thousand dollar lobbying gig for Turkey was also information that Trump had and that Pence must have had as well. Pence was the head of the transition team and the team had been briefed on Flynn’s Turkish connection, so Pence knew about Flynn but on an interview program just after Flynn acknowledged his connection, Pence lied to the interviewer insisting he knew nothing about it until it appeared in the news. I guess Livy was right about leaders attracting similar followers.