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.