Category: Uncategorized

Hearts and Minds

Chuck Colson was a political advisor to President Richard Nixon.  Colson was a former Green Beret, and part of the “take no prisoners” attitude of the Nixon Presidency that led to the excesses of Watergate, and the downfall of the Administration.  Nixon is the only President to resign from office.   Colson served time in Federal prison for his actions during that time.

 Hanging on his office wall in the Nixon years was a sign, “If you have then by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow”.  It was a “demonstration” and a warning about Colson’s determination.

Starvation

That’s a phrase that Prime Minister Netanyahu is putting into practice in the Middle East, with a genocidal turn.  While Colson used the phrase to show how “tough a conservative” he was, Netanyahu is actually doing it in Gaza, with a slight difference.  His sign would say, “If you got them by the stomach, their hearts and minds will follow.”  

It’s simple:  Israel is starving the Palestinians in Gaza.  Here’s the “stats”:  there are 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza.  The United Nations, responsible for getting food aid into the area, states they are delivering 250,000 meals a day.  The math is simple, one meal a day for about a tenth of the population.

What little other food is available costs extraordinary prices and is in questionable condition.  But for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza, starvation is real, and it’s now.   And Israel is responsible for it.

Governance

This is the “final solution” to the “Hamas Problem” for Israel.  Hamas is the terrorist group that was the governing authority in Gaza for over a decade.  They were terrorists, but they also were the police, ran the hospitals, and controlled all of the supply to the population.  And Hamas launched the October 7^th attack on Israel, killing 1200 mostly civilians, many tortured and abused.   Israel, justifiably, responded with an all-out attack on Hamas.  But caught in the middle of this ongoing battle are the Palestinian civilians trapped in Gaza, the most densely populated area in the world. 

Israel refuses to take control of the “governing” duties in Gaza.  Instead, they continue their military operations designed to unearth the last vestiges of Hamas.  In order to strangle supplies to those “vestiges”, Israel has decided to allow the starvation of the entire population.   The United Nations, and many individual nations in the world, protest, but nothing is really being done.  The nation that has the greatest influence over Israel is the United States.  But Israel virtually ignored the Biden Administration attempts to curb their brutality.  Israel bet on the 2024 election to change American leadership.  Their bet paid off.

The Trump Administration seems fully committed to Trump’s close friend “Bebe” Netanyahu (the godfather of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner).  So the manmade food crisis in Gaza grows even worse. And here in the United States, the impact of ICE intimidation is that there are few protests against Israeli actions.  The risk of being abducted off of the streets and whisked away to a facility in Louisiana keeps students at bay.  And the extortion of US universities, with Federal funding threatened each time there’s a protest, adds to the blanket of silence.  

Irony

The irony, of course, is that the Nation founded in response to the Holocaust, to the genocide of the Jewish people by Hitler during World War II, is now doing the same to the Palestinian people.  The Israeli slogan of “Never Again” must only apply to actions against Jews, but not Israeli actions against others.  

And, there’s a clear political reason for Netanyahu to extend the Gaza military operations.  He faces judicial action in Israel, only staved off by the “wartime conditions”.  As for the few hostages that remain alive after the October 7^th attack:  they seem to be more of an impediment to Netanyahu’s ultimate plan, rather than a goal to return them to freedom. 

Israel has the Palestinians by the stomach.  They don’t particularly care about their “hearts and minds”, they simply want to punish everyone in Gaza for the actions of Hamas.  The human suffering is unacceptable, the irony unbelievable, and the rest of the world’s passive acceptance of genocide revolting.  And the one other nation that could do something about it, the United States, just becomes more complicit in the what in other times we would call “ethnic cleansing”. 

But don’t hold your breath.  Reminiscent of Chuck Colson and the Nixon era, the folks around Donald Trump like Stephen Miller, are determined to prove their “conservative ideological toughness”.  You hear it in almost every statement they make.

And besides, there’s money to be made from the Israelis, and newly “cleared” land in Gaza.  Why, there’s a beautiful beaches just right for a new “Trump Hotel”.   Ask Jared.

Constitution of the United States – Article I, Section 9

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

Gifts

When the high officers of the United States travel abroad, of course they receive gifts.  Swords, hats, chess sets; items that represent the traditions of the country they are visiting, all are part of diplomacy.  But all of these gifts are NOT considered personal.  They are gifts to the representative of the United States, and therefore, are property of the United States, not the individual.  So when the Prime Minister of India gives the US President an exquisitely hand carved chess set, it’s not the President’s set.  It is a gift to the people of the United States.  

Gifts are carefully cataloged and identified.  While some gifts might remain at the White House or the State Department, many are stored in the National Archives.   For example, the desk now used by President Trump, the Resolute Desk, was a gift from the Queen Victoria of Great Britain to American President Rutherford B. Hayes.  It is made from the timbers of the British warship, HMS Resolute.  It did not “belong” to Hayes, nor any of the other Presidents that use it, now in the Oval Office.  It is the property of the United States.  Some Presidents chose not to use it (most recently, George HW Bush) and then it is stored for the next President.

Bribery

The reason is obvious.  It would be easy to persuade an American “officer” to give favor to a particular country.  We use words like “influence” or “leverage”, but Section 9 is really about bribery.  A foreign state, Prince or King might try to “bribe” an American officer:  by paying them (profit), gifts (presents), items or currency of high value (emolument), or granting them titles (Lord, Duke, Count, etc.).   Americans have been Knighted or “raised up” by the Queen, but only those Americans who are NOT in public office: Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, Jamie-Lee Curtis (for examples).

The first Trump Administration violated the Emoluments clause at will.  Donald Trump owned a hotel in the “Old Post Office Building” just down the street from the White House.  Many countries, notably Saudi Arabia, spent millions of dollars on rooms in the Trump Hotel, often not even occupying them.  It was a way to “pass onto the President” their financial gratitude.  In addition, Trump was indebted to Russia for covering large loans through the German institution, Deutsche Bank.  So he was already compromised, to Russia, and to Saudi, and to other countries that realized that doing “business” with the Trumps was good for their foreign policy.

Cookies

Congress talked a lot about emoluments, but never brought impeachment charges on that particular issue. There were plenty of more pressing matters.  The Supreme Court never weighed in on what, exactly, an Article I, Section 9 violation might be.  And like most of Trump’s actions, if there is no pushback, he simply takes it farther.  As the children’s story goes:  “If you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk”.  That’s by Laura Joffe Numeroff, as quoted in the movie Air Force One.  

Speaking of Air Force One, the Royal Family (“King, Prince”) of Qatar (“Foreign State”) wants to give one to President Trump, as a “present”.  It’s a Boeing 747-8 Jumbo, nicknamed “the Flying Palace”. 

And while Trump claims the “Palace” is a gift to the US Air Force, the “deal” is that the “Palace”, would be donated to the “Trump Presidential Library” at the end of his term in office (hopefully 2029).  But don’t think of it like the old Air Force One parked at the Reagan Library. The flying “Palace” would be in use for the former President for the remainder of his travel life.

Get Off My Plane

So there’s the Article I, Section 9 issues.  But there are also the security issues involving the President of the United States. The Air Force has already ordered two new Air Force One’s from Boeing, but they are mired in cost overruns.  The problem is that the plane to transport the President has to fill so many roles.  It’s a transport aircraft for hundreds of people.  It’s a mobile command post, capable of running the US Defense establishment while in flight.  And it’s a warplane, with detection and evasion capabilities in case of attack.  

It’s not an “average” plane, not even an “average Flying Palace”.  So even if the Air Force accepted the “gift” from Qatar, it would have to be revamped into the military communication and defense aircraft required for the transport of the President of the United States.  Right now, there are two 747-B’s, vintage aircraft at twenty-five years, that serve as Air Force One when the President is travelling.  (Though not as vintage as the B-52 bomber fleet of the US Air Force.  The last one of those came off of the production line in 1962.  76 still remain in active service). 

Flying Palace

So what does it say that the President of the United States wants to be in a “Flying Palace”, designed for the Royal Family of Qatar?  Beyond all of the security issues, and the expenses of re-purposing the aircraft for Presidential use; what does the proposed Air Force One deal mean?

It means that Donald Trump would be indebted to Qatar, and so would the United States of America.  It meets the very definition of why the Founding Fathers authored Article I, Section 9.  And for Qatar, it would be the gift that kept on giving.  

Next he’ll want a title to go with it.  

King Donald the First of America, the Gulf of Mexico and Canada;  that fits.

• First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Communist.
  Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Socialist.
  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a trade unionist.
  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
  Because I was not a Jew. 
• Then they came for me,
  And there was no one left to speak out for me.  
• – Confession of Martin Niemoller – 1946

No Guardrails

Yesterday, they came for Ras Baraka, the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey and candidate for Governor of the state.   They came for him because they could.  All of the “curbs” that control Federal government behavior are set aside.  They came for a man standing outside their gate, demanding justice, a clear exercise of free speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  But they came anyway, because he dared to oppose the Department of Homeland Security.  They came because he called out the Black Shirted Thugs of ICE.

The guardrails are intentionally gone.  We can talk about all of the incidentals:  Baraka is a Black man who is outspoken in his opposition to ICE actions in his city.  The Acting US Attorney for Northern New Jersey is Alina Habba, the losing attorney for Trump in the E Jean Carroll civil trial where the former President was fined $83 million.  She has something to prove to her “boss”.  Baraka was a great target.  

Lying Eyes

And if you’re “from the other side” (“…I can see by your ‘hat’, my friend, you’re from the other side…” If you know, you know – thanks, Stephen Stills) your sources of information say that Baraka and two US Congressmen “stormed” the door of a newly opened private prison in Newark.  You need to believe you own eyes and watch the videos.  Baraka was standing on the sidewalk, in “free, public” space, when twenty or more Black Shirted Thugs of ICE (and the more mysterious HIS) surrounded him, physically shoved the Congressmen aside, and took the Mayor into custody.  They manhandled him into handcuffs and an unmarked car, and whisked him off to another location.  It doesn’t get any more “thuggish” than that. 

“Godwin’s Law” states that in an argument, the more heated the discussion, the more likely one side will compare the other to Hitler.  The corollary to the law is that the side that mentions Hitler first is the “loser”, as using Nazi comparisons are beyond inflammatory, similar to calling the other side profanities.  But it’s difficult to avoid referencing the dreaded Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, when referring to the current actions of the United States government.  There’s another old saying (not a “law”).  “If it walks likes a duck, and quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck – it’s a duck.”  

Terror is the Point

Sure, Baraka was only held in custody for a few hours. But keeping him an imprisoned martyr wasn’t the reason for the arrest anyway.  The exercise in brute force, the terror and intimidation, that was the point.  It’s the same “point” that ICE has been making since Trump took office. They burst into Columbia University housing without a warrant to imprison Mahmoud Khalil in a Louisiana detention facility. And they arrested a sitting Wisconsin state judge in her courtroom.  It’s not the “legal” outcome; it’s the action itself that tells Americans:  don’t oppose us.  We will find you and take you away.

Tom Hohman, the brutish “Czar of Immigration” is boldly clear about the subject.  “If you stand in ‘our’ way, we will arrest you”.  And Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, (boy, the Godwin’s Law reference fits him to a tee) goes even farther. He suggests “they” might suspend the writ of habeas corpus. That’s the Constitutionally enshrined right to know why the government is holding you.  

Our America?

It’s the same terror tactic that was used to send “gang members” to a hell-hole prison in El Salvador.  Even if they were gang members, (and we don’t know, because that was never adjudicated in Court, that Habeas Corpus thing) we should be talking about cruel and unusual punishments, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.   But for a fortunate Court order, another set of migrants were to go to a Libyan jail last week.  Homan’s been “prospecting” for prisons in the worst situations in the world, from Sudan to Uganda to Rwanda.  It’s all about fear.  Ain’t that America? 

It’s not.  Instead, it’s an image of America that relishes the historic mistakes in our past.  The “Red Scare” of the early 1920’s, when “Palmer Raids”, named after the then US Attorney General, rounded up supposed Communists and deported them.  Or “McCarthyism” of the 1950’s, when a politician’s lies of rumor and innuendo were used to “blacklist” thousands from government and private industry.  Or, the worst, the internment camps of World War II, where born American citizens, among others, were placed in confinement because they were of Japanese ancestry.  

They came for a judge last week.  They came from the Mayor of a US city yesterday.  

If we don’t speak out… 

Balance of Power

We all know the “traditional” balances of power from our “Schoolhouse Rock” days in 8^th grade history. There’s the Legislature that “writes the laws”, the Executive that “executes those laws”, and the Courts that determines whether “the laws” are allowed under the Constitution or not.  But there are less obvious areas of “balance” that Congress, the President and the Courts have agreed to, usually about issues they think are “too important” to politicize.  

Money is the obvious example.  America doesn’t want the value of its money to become a political football.  And since the “value” of our money (measured in how much that money can purchase) is no longer linked to a precious metal, like gold or silver (since 1933), the main factor that “controls” the value of the dollar is the amount of dollars in supply.  

Gold Standard

How much money is worth (can purchase) has been a major issue since the founding of the Nation.  One of the great debates of the 1880’s and 90’s was that the money, tied directly to gold in the US Treasury, was is in too short a supply.  This forced prices down (a good thing) but it also made it difficult to actually have money.  It didn’t matter how low prices were; poor Americans couldn’t get any.  The average worker wage in 1885 was $589…a year.  That’s less than $50 a month, $12 a week, or $.20 an hour.  Even if goods were cheap, the average American just didn’t have much money to use.

The debate at the time was about silver.  If silver was added to the gold standard regulating American cash supply, then the money supply could be greater.  Sure, prices would go up, but average Americans would have access to more cash, to increase their purchasing power.  William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for President in 1896, gave his most famous speech on this subject, advocating for adding silver.  It was called the “Cross of Gold” Speech. 

So why bring up Bryan, other than to quote his stirring final paragraph:

If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

It seems that most of President Trump’s economic strategy comes right out of the high tariff and no business regulation days of the 1880’s.  So it might give us insight into his thinking to look back.   But there is no “gold standard” no “cross of gold”, these days.  The value of US money isn’t actually regulated by precious metals, it’s “controlled”.  The Federal Reserve Board, a part of the government but supposedly independent of the President (or the Congress) tries to control our money supply by determining how much it costs banks to borrow money from the Federal Reserve Bank (kind of bank for banks). 

Reserve Rates

If the “Fed” raises interest rates (the cost for banks to borrow money), it limits the amount of money in supply, and keeps prices down.  If it lowers interest rates, it puts more money in supply (reduces the value) and prices will trend up.  For example, during the Covid crisis, the stock market went down by more than a third and millions of Americans were out of work.  The supply of money went way down, and the “value” of the dollar was up.  Sure, prices for some things, like gas, went down.  But there were shortages of products (like toilet paper) and those prices went up.

The Fed responded by lowering their interest rates virtually to zero.  If you had money, the summer of 2021 was a great time to buy a house, with a 30 year mortgage of 2.8%.  But the problem was, like in the 1880’s, many Americans didn’t have the opportunity, because unemployment was up.  Americans were worried about paying monthly bills, not buying houses.

The Biden Administration poured money in to “jump-start” the post-Covid economy.  That increased the supply, and reduced the value.  the country got going again.  But prices and wages went up, and Americans experienced major inflation for the first time since the 1980’s.  The Fed moved to slow inflation.  In October of 2023, a 30 year mortgage was 7.7%.  

Stag-Flation

Trump’s 1880’s style tariff policy jolted the US economy once again.  Since tariffs are taxes on imported goods, and since the vast majority of consumer goods in the US are imported, prices are likely to go up.  And combined with the Trump draconian immigration program raising the costs of labor as well, America may well be looking at a near future of less development, less expansion, and higher prices, called “stagflation”.  It’s the economic recipe that afflicted the 1970’s Carter Administration, and helped elect Ronald Reagan.  

So Trump wants the “Fed” to lower interest rates, even though it would cause prices to go up, something his tariff policy is already going to do.  And, not surprisingly, the Fed, led by Chairman Jerome Powell, is saying “no”.  It’s an “open” legal question whether the President can fire the Federal Reserve.  It’s one of those “other” checks and balances on the government, outside of the “Schoolhouse Rock” version.  But if Trump did fire Powell, the stock market would plummet, wiping out large “supplies” of US money.  That’s something, at the moment, the President seems unwilling to do.

Donald Trump wants all of the economic “levers of power” in his own hands, from tariffs to employment to Federal Reserve rates.  Jay Powell is holding firm, no change in Federal rates yesterday.  He’s giving his subtle version of Bryan’s speech:  “You shall not crucify the United States on a cross of tariffs”.  We’ll see how long he lasts.  And, by the way, that “cross of tariffs” better not be made of Canadian lumber.  The tariff on that is scheduled to more than double from 14% to 34%.  

It might as well be made of gold.

Track Coach

I am a high school track official.  There’s a basic principle for that job:  know the rules.  And I do, sprint exchanges to shotput weights, cross country flags to high jump markings, pole weight labeling to hurdle infractions.  It’s the job.   And I’ve been an official for over thirty years.  

I became one, because I was a track coach.  I thought that I needed to know the rules as a coach, and the best way was to become an official, pass the test, and participate in all of the rules meetings where, like Hassidic scholars, we pick apart each rule and apply it to varying scenarios.  When I had a question as a coach, I had the advantage of “knowing the book”.  When a serving official made a questionable call, I didn’t “get crazy”.  I simply said, show me in “the book” where it says that you can do that.  I usually won the argument.

Shocked, I Say

There’s very little that President Trump can say or do that shocks me anymore.  After more than a decade of Trump’s ascendance, I’m used to the lying and creative reasoning, the “everybody says” and “no one knows” to back up his odd positions.  But I was surprised with a statement Trump made over and over on his Sunday interview with Kristin Welker of NBC News.

When she asked him what the Constitution says about his proposed actions, his answer was:  “Well, I don’t know.  I’m not a lawyer, but I have really good lawyers to advise me”.  

The Presidential Oath is the only one prescribed by the US Constitution.  The wording is plain, even though it was written almost two-hundred and forty years ago:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

There’s a phrase from the movie Ocean’s Eleven that’s currently in vogue:  “You had one job to do”.  The President of the United States, according to the oath, really has one job:  preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.  Wouldn’t someone seeking the highest office have, at least, read the “rule book”?

Pope of America 

(including Canada and Greenland)

I know, I know; some think that Trump is being disingenuous.  They think that Trump knows full well what the Constitution says about things like “two terms”, or “due process”, or “legislative powers”.   But I’m willing to take him at his words, and his actions.  He doesn’t seem to know the US Constitution, nor does he care.  The Constitution clearly defines the process of establishing a “law”, including the detailing of the powers of the Congress in the process.  But Trump is using executive orders like he was the “Pope” of America (which his own White House has proffered).  Trump issues “edicts”, as if from God’s word, without reference to Congressional oversight or powers.  

He doesn’t understand what due process is. He equates it with his own experience; the millions of dollars of legal fees he spent to stall out the justice system until he could run for office again.  The President thinks that giving due process to migrants, means giving each one a “trial”, like the one he sat (and slept and farted) through in New York City last year. (He was convicted on 34 felony counts, our first “Felon President”). 

 For our own edification, due process in the immigration area may just be a judge hearing from the migrant and from the United States, and making an immediate decision.  For example, Mr. Garcia, sent to a beyond-maximum security prison in El Salvador with no notice or process, was in the United States under the order of a Federal judge.  He was given due process, and granted “temporary protected status”.  The violation was not by Mr. Garcia, it was by the Department of Homeland Security.

Scary Concept

And the President doesn’t seem to know that the 22^nd Amendment is explicitly clear.  

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

Instead, he seems to think he can make some “choice” in the matter of running for a third term.

He either hasn’t read the rule book, the Constitution, or he doesn’t care what it says.  That’s a pretty scary concept – kind of a like a coach who doesn’t know the rules of his own “sport”.  

Only this is a whole lot worse.

Corruption

Ohio seems to be a typical, Mid-West state. Up to a decade ago, politically Ohio was a “swing state”, but with the advent of Donald Trump, the state has made a hard political “right”.  Still, even in the 2024 Presidential elections, 44% of the state voted Democratic.  But with “malice aforethought”, the Republican Party here in Ohio has designed a gerrymandered legislature, so biased that Democrats are represented by less than 35% of the legislators.  

They’ve done it through complete disregard for two different State Constitutional Amendments to end gerrymandering and several rulings of the State Supreme Court.  The Republican Party of Ohio today is the party of “how much power, and how much money”.   The $60 million bribe that put the former Republican state Speaker of the House and the Party State Chairman in Federal prison is only the tip of the iceberg.

You don’t have to be a Democrat to see what’s going on.  Republican candidates know that they won’t face a contest in the “general election” due to the skewed voting districts.  So they only worry about the highly biased and divided primary elections in their own Party.  And since it’s the most partisan and extreme voters that show up in the primaries, the race is to cater to their right-wing views.  We get what we “ask for” in Ohio – an extremist legislature, beholden to the money that gets them re-elected time after time.

The Teaching “Deal”

Here’s a “granular” look at the impact of money on government in this state, one that cuts close to home for me.  Teachers in Ohio, like most of the nation, are paid less than others with similar educational backgrounds.  They love to teach and they love the impact they have on kids.  But teachers also had a “special benefit”.  While annual earnings weren’t particularly high, teachers who made it through thirty or more years in the classroom got a “premiere retirement”.  Up until 2011, those teachers could retire at 35 years, and get close to 90% of their annual income. They also were guaranteed low cost health insurance, and a 3% cost of living allowance.  

You could teach for a career, and retire with dignity.  That was the state’s promise.  But in 2012, the legislature broke the deal.  They gave up their authority to set rates, and turned absolute control over to the State Teacher Retirement Board.  Essentially, the legislature “washed their hands” of the matter.  Almost immediately the Board, partially elected by active and retired teachers, but including appointed board members by the legislature, the governor, and the state department of education, acted. They ended cost of living adjustments, reduced the annual retirement income available, and raised insurance costs.

Follow the Money

So where did the money go?  The State Teacher Retirement System (STRS) took their $100 billion pension fund and invested some in private equity funds.  They signed confidentiality contracts with them. No one knew what the money was invested in, how much profit it made, and how much the Fund fees cost.  It amounted to almost $10 billion unaccounted for.  In addition, STRS put another $10 billion into the more volatile commercial real estate market.  Again, there was little transparency in how those funds were spent, or how much profit was made or money lost.

The other 80% was managed in more public funds by the STRS professional staff themselves.  They were paid at the “going Wall Street rate” of their counterparts in the private equity firms.  Everybody involved was making “good”, except for the teachers and the retirees.

And the private equity firms made substantial contributions to the Ohio politicians who controlled the board.  Even the Ohio Education Association (OEA), the teachers’ union, who dominated the elected board members, seemed to be in the “hand-out” line.  They weren’t (probably) taking bribes. But they were dependent on politicians to deal with the rest of their education agenda.  So not “rocking the boat” at STRS became the OEA mantra.

Meanwhile, teachers were required to work longer, for less retirement income.  And retired teachers were forced to live on the same amount, year after year.  I’m a retiree who depended on the “deal” for thirty-five years of employment. I’ve lost the over 25% of my spending power in the past decade. There’s been 4 ½ percent cost of living allowance, but inflation has reduced the value of a dollar by over 30%.

Money Talks

Both retirees and active teachers wanted change.  Retired teachers organizations led the way to elect Board members to reform the system.  They wanted to end private equity “deals”, control real estate losses, and make the entire process both transparent and safer.  Over time, and despite the fierce opposition of the OEA, and the Gannett Newspapers, the reformers gained a majority on the Board.

When the Board reached a reform majority, Governor Mike DeWine immediately tried to fire his own representative, Wade Steen (a reformer). He replaced him with a big campaign donor and private equity guy.  DeWine violated the law when he removed Steen, but it took almost a year to get him reinstated on the Board.  And when elected Reformers regained control of the majority, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost  almost immediately filed to have two removed, using an “anonymous letter”, written by (no surprise) the STRS staff as evidence claiming that the reformers were not “meeting their fiduciary responsibilities”.

Black Hearts

Now it looks like Yost will lose in Court.  So the state legislature’s mostly inactive Ohio Retirement Study Council is jumping into action.  After ignoring the losses at STRS for a decade, now the “Council” (made up of State legislators) has plans to change STRS governance.  They want more financial “experts” on the Board, appointed by –  guess who –  the State legislature and Governor.  They want to out-vote the reform members, and keep them at bay.  But what they really want is to keep the private equity money flowing to their campaign coffers.

Who wins if the Legislature changes the Board?  The highly paid STRS staff, the private equity firms, and the politicians with their palms greased by private equity contributions.  Who loses?  Both the teachers now working, looking to retire, and those retirees left empty handed.

Oh, and the children of Ohio lose too.  Because what new college graduate is going to want to work in the public schools, if they specifically know their retirement isn’t secure?  But, of course, that’s OK with today’s state legislature.  They don’t like public education anyway.  There’s lots of profit, and campaign donations, to be made in private education.  

Ohio, is really the corrupted heart of it all. 

Our Long National Nightmare

I remember waking up on Wednesday, November 9^th, 2016.  I hoped it was a nightmare, that the election results I watched until the darkest hours of the night had somehow changed.  I wished that Hillary Clinton, up on the stage, doing her best to show “what was right” and acknowledging the unthinkable, was a dream.  Donald Trump was the next President of the United States.  It was the sublime to the ridiculous:  Barack Obama to Donald Trump.  It took days to even believe it was possible, and it didn’t take much effort at all to wonder if it was true.

It was in that first month of the Trump Administration that I began to write the essays, now called “Our America”.  And some of those questioned the veracity of the election results, decided by such a fractional margin of the popular vote: the number 77,744 is etched in my brain. It was the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that put Trump in charge.  

Crossfire Hurricane

Then we discovered “Crossfire Hurricane”, the FBI investigation into Russian connections to the Trump campaign.  And while MAGA world did (and still does) everything they could to discredit them, there were connections.  Paul Manafort, the Trump Campaign Manager, was passing inside campaign information to the Russian government.  There were connections between Mike Flynn and Russia, and even more with Türkiye (the modern spelling of Turkey – just like Peking became Beijing).   Jared Kushner was on the phone to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.  But it wasn’t enough, even after the Mueller Report; enough to “bring down the king”.

There’s a saying attributed to Emerson: “When you strike at a king, you must kill him”.  Crossfire Hurricane struck at a king, and the result was ridiculed like a seventies sit-com as “Russia-Russia-Russia”.  Even the gravitas of Robert Mueller and Adam Schiff were unable to save the investigation from the machinations of Attorney General Barr and the propaganda wing of MAGA-world.   What we learned is that if you strike at a King, you can’t afford to be “close”.  This ain’t horseshoes or hand grenades.

That was strike one.

A Perfect Call

Then came the “perfect phone call”.  It was absolutely obvious: Donald Trump, the President of the United States was using US aid to Ukraine to extort Ukraine’s President for “evidence” against Trump’s likely opponent in 2020, Joe Biden.  My gosh; it that isn’t illegal, using public money to get personal political gain, I don’t know what is.  And while Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House, was slow to acknowledge it, other Democrats in the House felt they MUST hold Trump accountable.  They impeached him.

The evidence was clear.  But political partisanship and MAGA threats were more important than the truth.  So the Republican controlled US Senate failed to reach the 2/3 majority required to remove Trump from office.  It wasn’t even that close, despite the “prima facie” case that Trump committed an actual crime.  The expectation, that somehow Republicans would show “Profiles in Courage” in the face of the truth, showed to be the nonsense of political fiction.  It still is.

That was strike two.

Insurrection

And it emboldened MAGA-world.  Two strikes at the “King”, two failures.  No wonder they thought they were invincible.  Only Covid was able to “strike down” the Trump Presidency, and then by an even narrower margin than he won the first time.  So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that January 6^th, 2021 happened.  And no matter how hard MAGA-world tries to rewrite the history of that moment, we can all honestly still feel the fear and nausea as we watched the crowd on the steps of the Capitol.  We could literally feel the strain of our democracy, our Constitution, nearly tearing in half, as our Representatives and Senators determined to go back in the night and finish their work.

Trump had to be held accountable.  He was impeached again in the House, and tried again in the Senate.  And this time, there was a clear choice for Republicans.  They could end the Trump era, for good, for all.  Or they could hope to endear MAGA-world to themselves, to assure their own political future.  And their leader, Mitch McConnell, who clearly acknowledged to the world that Trump was responsible for the devastation, chose to vote against conviction, taking the needed 2/3 majority with him.  

Democrats weren’t wrong.  But it was still strike three.

You’re Out

Three strikes, in American culture, that means you’re out.  No wonder Joe Biden and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, were in no hurry to investigate Trump.  But the January 6^th Committee held their feet to the fire of Trump’s planned “coup d’état”.  And so, with almost visible reluctance, the Jack Smith investigation began.   It was really a matter of too little, too late.  The Supreme Court stalled, then intervened.  While Smith’s report made it clear he had “the goods” on Trump, it didn’t matter.  In the end, Trump’s lawyers were able to run out the clock.  Trump had to run for President in 2024; it was his only way to avoid conviction.  

Think of that all or nothing proposition:  win and be President, or lose and be in jail.  What would a billionaire give to make sure he won?  What deals would he make, and what lengths would he go?  Was the 2024 election somehow rigged?  This time, the number was around 255,000; the difference in the swing states that put Trump back in the Oval Office instead of a prison cell.  

That was strike four.

We probably will never know.  Even if somehow our Constitutional system survives this growing authoritarian regime; even if Democrats win back the Congress in 2026 (a fair election?) or the Presidency in 2028.  No one will go back; they’ll be no American “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.  It’s likely we’ll simply put Trump and MAGA behind us, like the Japanese Internment Camps or McCarthyism.  That is, if we get the chance to do so.  Otherwise, America, already radically changed in just over 100 days, will be unrecognizable, to us, and to the world.  

There will be no strike five.

Earlier Essays about Elections

• 77744 – 3/22/17
• Put on My Foil Hat 4/29/19
• Foil Hat Two – 1/26/22
• Foil is Real!!!! – 1/27/23

With a Roar

Donald Trump came into office with a “roar”.  He put his “richest-man-in-the-world” friend, Elon Musk, in charge of slashing the government.  They even came up with a “catchy” name for their project:  DOGE.  The Department of Government Efficiency was neither a Department (only Congress can create Departments) nor was it particularly efficient.  In fact, they were nothing if not ruthless and destructive.  There wasn’t any analysis of the “impact” of the DOGE cuts.  Elon said it best – he took a “chainsaw” to the US Government.  

President Trump is fond of using the “disease” analogy for the impact of his actions on Americans.  He says that sometimes “the medicine” makes you feel sicker before you feel better.  But the medical analogy for DOGE is the battlefield hospital in the Civil War, with arms and legs stacked outside the tent, hacked off by bloodied surgeons as quickly as casualties come through the door.

Waste, Fraud and Abuse

Musk planned on “saving” $2 Trillion from “waste, fraud and abuse”.   Then, he quickly revised the number to $1 Trillion.  But here we are, one hundred and some days later, and DOGE is “proudly” claiming to have saved $150 Billion, and Musk is going back to save Tesla.  Now, $150 Billion isn’t really “chump change”.  It’s the annual cost of climate change on Americans (CNN), or the border crisis according to the Republicans (House Budget Committee), or how much more Congress wants to spend on Defense next year (Air and Space).

But DOGE doesn’t come cost free.  In fact, estimates of the cost of DOGE’s cost-cuts, are $135 Billion (CBS).  That means that all the turmoil, all the real, actual, deaths caused by DOGE cuts, all the damage to our government and economy, might have saved $15 Billion.  That’s just about the cost of one Ford Class Aircraft Carrier (NPR).

What costs? There’s the cost of all the folks who were fired, but promised months of pay (fired in February, paid until September).  That’s money paid without work gained.  And it’s not even counting the cost of defending the myriad of Federal lawsuits DOGE created, argued “for free” by the Justice Department.   That’s work created, without funding for it.  And, of course, it doesn’t include the cost of the elderly or Veterans spending hours waiting to get through to Social Security or Medicare or the VA. And the future costs of unemployment, as the fired Federal workers can’t find jobs in the struggling economy that Trump has created. That’s not on the DOGE bill either.

Big Brother

Meanwhile, the internal government processes DOGE hacked and cut might never recover.  The actual numbers that track government inventories have been deleted from the files.  Stacks of “things”, from soup to nuts, are no longer accounted for.   And the data the “DOGE Kids” lifted from the Internal Revenue Service (and yesterday, the Postal Service) may turn up in all sorts of places.  Those of us old enough to remember 1984, the book, recognize the phrase “Big Brother is Watching”.  It was all about the eyes of the government on everything you do, public and private.  Well, “Big Brother” has a whole lot more information now, and can cross-check it, “harvesting” all the data about you and me.  To mimic my MAGA friends, “Thanks Donald Trump!!”.  

Have it Both Ways

And meanwhile, the Trump Administration is literally promising two opposite things from the tariff policy.  On the one hand, they argue that tariffs will raise so much money, that the government might consider wiping out income taxes for those making $200,000 or less.  Of course, since it’s consumers who pay the costs of the tariffs, it’s not really a “tax-cut”; it’s more of a “tax shift”.   And it’s a regressive tax shift. More of the tax burden lands on lower income Americans; forced to pay higher prices for all sorts of imported goods.

On the other hand, they promise that the tariffs will be “negotiated”, and won’t impact prices.  So if the tariffs are negotiated, and therefore not collected at the rates that Trump first imposed, then where will the money be to “cut taxes”?  Republicans in Congress are depending on the tariffs to generate the revenue to cover their proposed budget. That includes more than $1 trillion in deficits without tariff money. How will all that work? 

Congress wants to cut taxes.  Congress wants to spend money. Trump says he may not collect that money, because he’ll “make a deal”.  It all sounds like a scam…doesn’t it?

The real title for this essay should be, “…figures lie and liars figure”.  And there’s a whole lot of figuring and lying coming out of DOGE, Congress, and Trump today.

Meme Battle

Facebook is a battle zone.  What used to be a “place” where folks would share stories about their kids, or try to sell old lawn furniture, or ask for that giant pothole to get filled; is now ground zero for our political wars. Somewhere in the middle of “Buy Wings at the Depot” and a “School Record relay team”, this appears:

It’s part of the ongoing battle for “your mind”, and you don’t even see it coming.  One “meme” doesn’t make a dent, but the insidious impact of one after another, interspersed with “real life” stuff, seeps into your brain.  Then, deep in the middle of the night (for me), you think about how persuasive this unrefuted, undiscussed, out-of-context statement might be.  

Tariff’s in History

Other than in History class, most Americans don’t think much about tariffs at all.  We might vaguely remember tariffs as part of the arguments between the North and the South prior to the Civil War.  And, if you really paid attention, you might remember something about tariffs protecting American goods in the “Gilded Age” of the 1880’s and 90’s. Or  maybe the 1930’s Smoot/Hawley Act, part of Republican President Hebert Hoover’s failed attempts to end the Great Depression.  

But tariffs are front and center right now, even on Facebook.  

Boston Tea Party

Americans should recognize tariffs.  It’s part of our national “lore”, the legendary fabric of our “origin story”.   In 1773, the British Government needed money to pay for the standing armies they kept in the American colonies.  Those armies protected the colonists from attack by the Native Americans,  but also kept the colonists themselves under control.  So to raise revenue, the British instituted a tax on a staple import, tea.

Who paid the tax?  The folks who consumed the tea, the colonists.  Where did the tea come from?  The British East India Company had a monopoly on the importation of tea.  And why were the colonists upset about the tax (the tariff) on tea?  Because they had no say in the law, no vote.  

So a bunch of Boston’s finest citizens dressed up as “Indians” in the dark of night, marched by torchlight down to the harbor, boarded the British East India Company ships, and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the sea.  They used phrases like “No Taxation without Representation”, and had a catchy name for their little event, “The Boston Tea Party”.   

Yep, we were fighting about tariffs before we were even a country.  

In Fact, a Tax

Now, no one today is going to march in the dark of night on the Baltimore Harbor and dump giant cargo containers into the sea.  But there are some important lessons from the Boston Tea Party that do apply today.

First of all, the British tariff on tea was, in fact, a tax.  And the consumers of the tea, the Boston “Indians”, knew full well that they were the ones being taxed.  So let’s not fall for the idea that the British East India Company then, or Toyota or Intel or Apple today, are going to “eat” the tariff costs.  Just like the cost of tea, those taxes are going to be passed onto the consumers, us.

So when President Trump (claiming emergency powers when an emergency doesn’t exist) says that tariffs will cost “those other countries” money, he’s just wrong.  The Tea Tax wasn’t paid by the British East India Company, it was to be paid by the citizens of Boston.  The cost of our Intel chips (on almost every “smart” device) may double.  And we, the modern citizens of Boston, will have to pay the difference.

Give It Up

And what about the glib Facebook line?  Well, they’re right.  If you don’t buy imported goods, you don’t pay tariffs.  The problem for the colonists was that tea didn’t grow in the colonies, it grew in India.  And, like today, the colonists were as addicted to caffeine as we are to coffee.  So it was a tax on a staple good that colonists didn’t want to give up.  (And, dumping the tea in the harbor didn’t make the cost of tea go down.  But it did hurt the bottom line of the British East India Company, a loss that reverberated all the way back to their political friends in London). 

So, let’s give up products that need “chips” (from Taiwan).  Or give up the wood to build our houses (from Canada). Or give up shoes, 95% of them are imported.  That way, we’ll never have to pay Trump’s tariffs.  As long as we don’t have to give up coffee (99% imported).  I’d put on war paint about that.  And I wouldn’t dump it in the sea.

I’d sit down on the deck and make a pot.

The Lead

There’s an old newspaper saying:  “Don’t bury the lead”.  So here’s the lead of this essay.  There’s a school bond issue on the ballot this week for our local schools.  OUR schools need to build new or add-on to existing buildings, to keep up with the increasing population.  Drive around the Southwest Licking Local School District.  There’s new houses and apartments popping up like corn used to in those same fields.  All that building means more kids, and more kids means more schools. More schools NEVER gets cheaper.  So vote FOR the school bond issue, it’s the inevitable result of our current growth.  It (likely) will NEVER cost less, and it just has to be done.

We can argue about state school funding, federal funding cuts, voucher programs, and whether our community deserves an athletic complex with a swimming pool.  But it’s all incidental to the real issue.  More kids means more desks in classrooms.  More desks in classrooms means more classrooms, more buildings, and room to grow.  We can’t dress our kids in the pants they wore ten years ago – they won’t fit.  And neither will the number of children going into our school district.  So buy new pants now – it’s the best bargain.

The Growth

I have lived in Pataskala, Ohio for over forty-seven years.  When I came here to teach public school in 1978, Pataskala was just becoming a suburb.  There was still a working grain elevator in town, next to the railroad tracks (the building is still there), and the seniors had “tractor day” at the High School.  But the suburban growth was already here too.  In a few years, many of the old corn fields were getting sewer, water, and houses.  It happened on every turn of the winding, formerly dirt and gravel, soon to be paved, roads.

That development hasn’t stopped in our community.  The schools did some major “growing” in the 1980’s, with a new high school in 1981, and the old high school becoming the middle school.  In the next years, a “new” elementary school replaced a turn of the century (1900’s) building in Etna, and the other two elementaries were expanded.  There was another expansion in 2001.  I remember because we taught high school in a building “under construction”, and the school-wide television system was down.  We watched, with hundreds of kids, an “old school” TV on a cart in the wrestling room, as the nation suffered the attack on 9-11.  

The 2001 work added to the high school and the middle school, expanding classrooms and arts and music areas.  In addition, more work was done on the elementary schools.

Recent Times

But the suburban houses kept going up, like weeds in an untended soybean field.  By the mid-twenty-teens the 1955 middle school wasn’t big enough for three grades, and the 1980 high school wasn’t big enough for four.  In the meantime, the elementaries were re-organized into grade level buildings – two grades in each.  But that “shell game” only postponed the inevitable.  

In 2017 the School leadership found a bargain.  The state of Ohio would pay nearly half of the cost of a new high school, renovate the older high school (the white building), Kirkersville and Etna elementaries, and  build a new (and bigger) elementary to replace another “turn of the century – 1900’s”  building in Pataskala. The “cost” of their money: the state controlled the size.  And while the new schools were “bigger and better”, they also were “filled” in just a decade.

The Plan

So here we are.  The school district promises; a new fifth and sixth grade building, turning the current fourth and fifth grade building into another K-4 elementary, a new high school “wing”, and more, will meet all of our future needs.  I’m a little skeptical about that; I’m sure the folks up in Olentangy never thought their one high school would turn into four, or the Hilliard folks would go from one to three.  But Southwest Licking  is making a good faith effort to fill the District’s foreseeable needs. 

So deal with the inevitable.  It’s going to raise property taxes.  No one wants that.  But we can’t put our kids in the clothes they wore a decade ago – they don’t fit.  And our schools are already bulging at the seams.  

Vote FOR the Bond Issue – now at the Board of Elections in Newark, or at your regular polling place on Tuesday, May 6^th.  It’s the best deal we will get, for something we ultimately will have to buy.

Fall of the Soviet Union

It was only in thirty-four years ago.  The Soviet Union collapsed, driven to economic disaster by US President Ronald Reagan.  It was a simple game of “rich man’s” poker.  The Soviet Union and the United States were in an incredibly expensive arms race.  The US keeping “raising” the pot, and the USSR tried to match each bid. Some examples: the US SR-71 Blackbird high speed observation plane, versus the MIG 31 Foxhound fighter jet, and the US “Star Wars” space defense initiative versus the Soviet SK-1000 anti-satellite system.  In the end, the US was spending about 6% of America’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense. The USSR was matching the “raises”, but ended up with an unsustainable 22% of its GDP tied up in the process.

Their economy collapsed, and in 1991, the Soviet Union failed.  Out of that economic failure, the “Soviet Bloc” became sovereign nations.  The largest was in the Ukraine.  Of big concern, was what would happen to the widespread Soviet nuclear forces as the USSR dissolved into separate states. The specter of small, unstable nations with massive nuclear arms was unacceptable.  So, in 1994, the United States under President Clinton, gave the new nation of Ukraine assurances. The US said that if they would give up the Soviet nuclear arsenal in their territory, the US would protect them from future incursions (Brookings).

Russia and Ukraine

The USSR, now much smaller as Russia, also retained their only ice-free naval base at Sevastopol in the Crimean Peninsula.  While it was considered Ukrainian territory, the area around the base was governed by Russia, much like the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba.  Crimea was a continuing bone of contention between Russia and Ukraine.

In addition, the eastern provinces of Ukraine (Kharkiv, Luhansk, and Donetsk “oblasts”) had a greater population of ethnic Russians than the rest of the new nation.  There was constant instability in those regions between Ukrainians and Russians. Russia contributed to the unrest. 

In 2013-14 a pro-Russia Ukrainian President, Victor Yanukovych, was overthrown in the “Revolution of Dignity”.  Yanukovych (who had the same campaign manager as Donald Trump, Paul Manafort), fled to Moscow, and a pro-Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko won the Presidency.

Vladimir Putin sent Russian troops in to take control of the entire province of Crimea, and supported open revolt in the Eastern Provinces.  Some of the fighters there were native Ukrainians who supported Russia, and some were “undercover” Russian forces.

There was little that US President Obama could do militarily.  There was no well-organized Ukrainian military forces capable of stopping the Russian incursions, and a direct US military confrontation with Russia in Crimea was unsustainable.  Obama was able to organize world economic sanctions against Russia, hoping to create the economic pressure that Reagan used.  But Russia, with the support of China and India, was able to maintain economic stability.

Prepared for War

Ukraine recognized that this was only the beginning of Russia’s intentions towards their nation.  Both under President Poroshenko, and then President Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian military built up both land-based forces and a highly technical electronic warfare capability.  The United States was pivotal in providing weapons and advice in that buildup, often working with other NATO nations.

In February of 2022, Russia launched in all-out invasion of Ukraine.  Putin’s strategy was to pressure Ukrainian forces in the Eastern provinces and at the Crimean border, launch air attacks on cities throughout the nation, and directly attack the capital of Kyiv with mobile forces and tanks.  Surprising the world, Ukraine stopped the Russian thrust, and was able to maintain most of its borders as well.  The US under President Biden and NATO began pouring weaponry into the country. While there have been successes and failures on both sides of the conflict, it remains static today, over three years later.  

Trump’s Ceasefire

As Donald Trump ran for President in 2024, a critical promise of his campaign was that “only he” could negotiate a “deal” between Russia and Ukraine. Soon after he took office, he made it clear that he would demand concessions from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, more than President Putin of Russia. And after an ugly White House confrontation in front of the press, the Ukrainians have made some concessions.  But Putin has agreed to absolutely nothing, and seems only willing to keep Russian gains and regain Russian losses.  

Putin is making Trump (and Vance, Rubio, and the rest) look bad.  In response, the United States is threatening to walk away from the negotiations that they started.  But in the meantime, the US aid to Ukraine is diminished, leaving them struggling to maintain the battle lines they currently control.  The rest of NATO is trying to bolster them up, but US aid is critical to maintaining Ukrainian sovereignty.

History Speaks

Ukraine gave up its nuclear deterrent based on US assurances.  Russia in 2014 and again in 2022, invaded Ukrainian territory.  They are continuing attacks not only on Ukrainian military targets, but on civilians as well.  There really is no question who is the “aggressor” and who is the “defender” here.  And there should be no question what the US strategy should be.

If Trump wants a ceasefire, he cannot bargain from weakness.  His existing strategy towards Ukraine, draining them of US support and resources, only encourages Putin to continue his efforts to conquer the nation.  Trump, the “art of the deal” author, needs to give Putin a clear choice.  Either come to the table with a legitimate position, or face full American support for the Ukrainian military.  

Right now the Trump Administration is signaling the exact opposite.  The US is saying: make a deal, or we’ll withdraw, and leave Ukraine “swinging in the wind”, and Russia undeterred.  

It’s an American recipe for Ukrainian disaster.

Dow Jones

Jenn and I took a long ride in the truck yesterday, to check out a pole vault pit in Northeastern Ohio.  Along the way we listened as the “old fashioned” indicator  of the stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, fell almost 1000 points.  Like almost everything else today, “1000 points ain’t what it used to be”.  I remember teaching about Black Monday and Tuesday in 1929, the beginning of the Great Depression.  The Dow lost over 60 points in two days, the mythical “jump out of the 40^th Floor window” time on Wall Street.  But 60 points was 23% of the market value back then.  That’s 9000 points on the Dow Jones today.

Thank goodness we aren’t there yet.  But the markets lost trillions of dollars in value yesterday, and that’s not a “good thing” for most people.  In our era, most Americans are directly or indirectly invested in the market.  Got a 401-k retirement plan at work?  You’re in the market.  Got a full pension plan?  You’re in the market.  Retired and collecting a government or teacher’s pension now?  A significant portion of the money “backing” your pension is in the market.  

We’ve been through market “disasters” before.  Less than five years ago, the Covid pandemic caused a market crash, dropping by over 10,000 points and losing a third of its value.  And many Americans remember the housing bubble crash of 2008, when the market lost half its value.  But this particular economic disaster today is fully man made.  And that man’s name is Donald Trump.

Biden’s Gift

Joe Biden handed Trump a booming economy.  The markets were at record breaking levels, with the Dow Jones over 45,000 (it closed yesterday at 38170, down 16% in just four months).  Unemployment was down to under 4%. And the bugaboo of the Biden administration, inflation, was finally back to under 3%.  Sure, prices skyrocketed for a while under Biden’s watch, the results of Covid supply issues and the Government programs that “carried” many Americans through the Covid employment crisis.  But prices not only stabilized, but were going back down on most goods.  And meanwhile, wages increased almost to match the “flow” of costs.

All Trump had to do was keep his hands off the economy, and let the “Covid recovery” continue.  Instead, to use a couple of worn out phrases, “he upset the apple cart”, and “threw the baby (the economy) out with the bath water”.  And he did so because he subscribes to an arcane theory of world economics, one that Trump acknowledges comes out of “America’s Gilded Age” of the 1880’s and ‘90’s.

The “Gilded Age” was really only “gilded” for industrialists.  It was the age of Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, JP Morgan, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.  They were men of enormous wealth and power, able to control both their industries and political actions.   It was an era of the “Titans of Industry”, or the “Robber Barons”, depending on perspective.   But for the average American worker, it wasn’t particularly gilded.  Labor was cheap, hours were long, conditions were dangerous.  Injury meant loss of income; there was no such thing as “workmen’s compensation”.   It was good time for industrialists, but bad for industrial workers.

Robber Barons

Trump sees America in a second “Gilded Age”, and surrounds himself with the “robber barons” of our current era:  Musk, Linda McMahon (who’d have thought “Big Time Wrestling” was a billion dollar business!), Burgham, Bessett, Lutnick and the rest.   To those folks, like their predecessors in the 1880’s; the absolute “freedom” to do what they want with their fortunes without government restriction is paramount.  That outlook is demonstrable in the Trump Administration’s widespread attack on government regulation.  All of that is “good for the billionaires”, but not so good for the rest of us.

The second “theory” lifted from the Gilded Age is Trump’s tariff policy.  In the 1880’s, the United States was a growing industrial competitor in the world, working to build industry under protection against foreign competition through tariffs.  Most products, from shoes to shirts to vehicles, were made here.  But the US wasn’t a “world leader” in anything in those days.

Today, the US has the most powerful economy in the world.  The US has 26% of the world’s gross production.  China is second with 16% and Germany third with 4%.  The world leader doesn’t need “protection”. Realistically, other economies need protection from the US.  So the tariff policy of the “Gilded Age” essentially puts the United States in the wrong role. We have the advantage right now, instead of other nations (like China) who are in the “up and coming” position. Ultimately, tariffs are likely to hurt our economy more than help.

Wrong Tariffs, Wrong Time

Meanwhile, the tariff policy completely disrupted the “Covid Recovery” economy of Joe Biden.  Instead of things continuing to improve for the average American, we now are looking at a looming recession, with prices and unemployment going up, and investments and retirements at risk.  The “gilded advisors” of Trump say we just have to “take the medicine”. But the resulting cure is likely to be good for them, not us.

Trump essentially won the Presidency on two issues; inflation and America’s changing culture.  His economic policy is going to give America more inflation, lower wages, and less economic security.  What it will do is help his billionaire friends.  There’s no better time to have money, then when no one else has it.  That’s how Joseph Kennedy, grandfather of the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, made his fortune.  The Great Depression made his millions worth even more.  But that didn’t help America’s regular folks, then, and it won’t now.  

They just get left holding the empty bag.

Attaining Balance

It’s Easter Sunday, 2025.   Surprisingly, for Ohio, it’s a beautiful spring day, a “Hallmark” Easter.  The grass is growing (too fast), and the air is quickly warming: Happy Easter, and Passover!! But the spiral ham won’t go into the smoker until 1pm. There’s plenty of time for a “lesson” on the United States Constitution.  In particular, those powers prohibited to the United States government by the Constitution.

The authors of the Constitution were trying to strike a balance.  They rebelled against the heavy-handed administration of the British Crown a decade before. And they demanded a fair say in their own governance, and admonished the King for failing to give the colonists the “rights of Englishmen”.   But the original national government, the Continental Congress organized under the Articles of Confederation, went too far.  It weakened national powers.  

The phrase, “A sovereign nation of sovereign states” missed the mark on this first government.   The several states (the old colonies) had considerably more individual power than the national government.   It was a nation of thirteen rivals, rather than one.  So the Constitution tried to re-balance those powers, giving the national government specific areas of influence.  Other powers were given to the states, the people themselves, or prohibited all-together. 

Powers of Congress

We see the President of the United States claiming unprecedented powers today. Those original Constitutional authors placed most of those powers in the legislature, the Congress; not the executive.   The power to set tariffs, to regulate commerce, to set rules of naturalization, to declare war; all are Congress’s power, not the President’s.

Those powers are outlined in Article I (the Congress), Section 8.   There are eighteen sub-sections defining the powers of Congress, including the famous last section, the “elastic clause”. It gives Congress the power to make all laws “necessary and proper” to carry out the other powers.

Limits

But the less discussed Article I, Section 9  is what we will examine today. That specifically sets the legal limitations on the powers of Congress, and therefore, the national government.  Section 9 is best known for one of the “enslavement compromises”.  The first sub-section prohibits the national government from interfering with slave importation  to the United States for twenty years (it does allow an “import duty” of up to $10).  

And it also contains the “emoluments clause”, preventing any “officer of the United States” from receiving a gift, payment or other benefit from any “King, Prince, or foreign state” without the consent of Congress.   That raises serious questions about Donald Trump profiting from literal Princes of Saudi Arabia, or banks controlled by Russian oligarchs.

Also, Section 9 clearly states the following legal prohibition on Congress:

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

There is a separate essay on “habeas corpus” (Holding the Body) from last week.   So today, let’s look at the more obscure prohibition on passing laws of “bill of attainder” or “ex post facto”.  

Thus “beginneth” our Easter lesson.

Ex Post Facto

“Ex post facto” is Latin for after the fact.   Congress cannot “post-date” an action as against the law, that, prior to Congress’s action, was legal.  A great example of this is from the drug trade, where a law against a drug is actually against a particular chemical compound.  So Congress  can make a law against a particular hallucinogen formulation, but if chemists can slightly alter the formula; it’s legal until Congress makes another law against the “new” formulation.  

Or, for another example:  if it was legal for a permanent resident non-US citizen, to speak out against an action of the President’s administration, then neither Congress, nor certainly not the President without any authority at all; can make that against the law.   They could pass a new law with that restriction, but that law cannot be retroactive.  If what Mahmoud Khalil did was legal when he did it, then it cannot later be made illegal, “after the fact” (ex post facto). 

Bill of Attainder

Finally, a “bill of attainder” is a law that makes it illegal to have membership in a group.   For example, being a “card carrying member” (do they have memberships cards?) of the Ku Klux Klan is NOT against the law.  What is against the law?  Taking actions:  burning crosses on people’s lawns, kidnapping, lynching, or conspiring to do so; all are illegal.  But just being a member is not, and by the Constitution, cannot be.

So what about being a member of the “Tren de Aragua”, the infamous Venezuelan gang?   They certainly don’t carry cards, instead, their membership is emblazoned by tattoos on their bodies.  How is it that “migrants” are rounded up based on vague accusations of membership, without any claim of actual criminal actions?  Isn’t that the very definition of a “bill of attainder”, specifically prohibited under Article I, Section 9?

About a decade after the Constitution was ratified, Congress passed a law called the “Alien Act”.   That law allowed the President to detain and even deport an “alien” (non-US Citizen) who posed a danger to the national interest in time of war.  In America’s declared wars: the War of 1812, and the First and Second World Wars, aliens of enemy nations were rounded up and imprisoned.  In fact, during World War II the President claimed even greater powers, and imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent.  They called it “re-location”, but they were behind barbed wire fences by soldiers with guns.  

Unconstitutional

But all of those actions under the Alien Act were in time of war, a power that ONLY Congress has under Article I, Section 8.   And while Donald Trump can “declare war” on “Tren de Aragua” or “MS-13”, calling them “terrorist organizations”; his statements do not make it so.  In fact, Trump is issuing a bill of attainder, something that neither the President, or the Congress for that matter, can do.  

We are beyond the Constitution. It is up to the Congress, and the Supreme Court, to exercise their own powers to “check and balance” executive branch over-reach, and unconstitutionality.   I wish I had more faith that they will be so.  But we live in a nation where the US Supreme Court has never even explicitly overruled Korematsu v United States, the 1944 case that allowed the re-location of US citizens to continue (though several Justices in dissent called it “gravely wrong”).  

We have “arrived” at the  Constitutional crisis, the one we’ve been fearing since the first election of Donald Trump.   Our individual rights, and our Constitutional balance, are at stake.  That may  sound “apocalyptic”.   That’s because it is.

A Wider View

There’s a lot of catastrophe in our lives today.  We fear:  fear for the loss of freedom, fear for a future of financial disruption, fear for our fellow humans thrust into inhumane conditions.  And we fear that our world will never be the place we thought it was, or could be.  There is no easy way out, no election “tomorrow” to change leadership (maybe the British Parliament has it right after all).  We are, as truckers say, in “for the long haul”.  By the narrowest of margins our electoral fate was decided, and now, we must “pay the piper”.

Perhaps we need to take a wider view of our universe.  And what better place to do that from, then the James Webb Space Telescope, orbiting a central location (called L2), literally a million miles away between the earth and the sun.  The Webb is much more than just the telescope like we had in the backyard as kids.  It can measure all sorts of wavelengths beyond the “visual range”, and see far into the universe.

K2-18b

One of its targets is an “exo-planet” (a planet not orbiting our sun) called K2-18b.   It’s about six times bigger than earth and it orbits a smaller red sun 124 light years away (the 700 trillion miles – now that’s a “wider view”).  And the Webb Space Telescope can not only find K2-18b, but it can measure the infra-red radiation of the red sunlight passing through its atmosphere. 

We know that our oceans are filled with small living organisms like plankton.  There are the basic building block of the food chain, smaller living things (and giant whales) eat the plankton, bigger living things eat the smaller things:  we can all now sing “The Circle of Life” from the Lion King.  And that plankton gives off two gases into the atmosphere: dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS).  (For those of us who slept through biology class – hang on for just another paragraph!!!).

When the infra-red light of K2-18b’s sun passes through its atmosphere, it reveals the presence of DMS and DMDS.  The Webb Telescope can detect that light.  What all that might mean, is there is a planet, 700 trillion miles away, that has the presence of biological life as we know it.

Certainty

At least, that’s what some scientists think.  Others aren’t absolutely sure.  And, they are doing exactly what scientists should do:  raising questions, developing other possibilities, and looking for more evidence.  Is it possible that an atmosphere might have DMS and DMDS without the plankton producing the gases?  And, after 124 years of travel (remember, 124 light years means that the spectrum Webb is seeing actually left K2-18b in 1901 on our calendar), are we certain what we are seeing?

The scientists making the claim of life are hedging their bets as well.  They are only 99.7% sure they’re right.  For “scientific certainty” they need to reach 99.99999% (five decimal points) certain.  That will require at least two more years of data. 

So what?

We have a lot of work to do here on earth.  And it seems, that in our era, that work is becoming much harder.  For many of us, the basic building blocks of our government and our rights, are suddenly called into question.  We wonder how we can help our fellow citizens, and our fellow humans.  We no longer feel our democracy is inevitable.   It is, and always was, a work in progress, and one that needs fierce defending.  And if defending our ideals isn’t enough incentive, here’s another reason.

There might be life on a planet “far, far, away”, called K2-18b.  It might just be plankton, but where there’s plankton, there might be more.  And if we can find life on one planet in the universe, it’s likely out of the millions of planets “out there”, there’s more life to find.  Don’t we want to know, don’t we want to “…boldly go where no one has gone before”?   And if not us, shouldn’t we want our children or grandchildren to have such an opportunity?  Remember, in 1901, when the infra-red light left K2-18b, the Wright Brothers were just bicycle mechanics with an “interest” in gliders.  The Wright Flyer was still two years in the future.  

Stand on our Shoulders

Who can say how far our children can go, in the next 124 years?  Sure, we might not be able to “see” how interstellar space travel could work.  But my twenty-one year old grandfather in 1901, didn’t see how air travel would work, or even that his own son would make a living working in an electronic medium called television.  We need to give our children a chance to change even more than “just the world”. 

But to do all that, we need to get our own house in order.  If not for freedom, if not for the Constitution, if not for our “American dream”, then for our children.  We need to fix our problems so they can stand on our shoulders, and look even farther than the Webb Space Telescope can see.  

It’s up to us.

Disclosures

Full Disclosure:  I am not of the Jewish faith.   I was raised and confirmed into the Episcopal Church of the United States.  I lapsed from that faith in the mid-1970’s, and profess no organized religion today.  However, my father was Jewish, and while he didn’t practice most of his life, it was a Rabbi that officiated at his funeral.  (Mom was ex-communicated from the  Catholic Church for marrying Dad, and an Episcopal minister officiated her final service.  Dad’s funeral was handled by a Jewish Funeral home, Mom’s by a Catholic one.  We were children of a ”mixed marriage”).  

But as the son of a Jewish man, I learned a lot about Judaism growing up.    And as that son, it was often assumed by others that I was Jewish.   When I did the “Ancestry.com” genetics, my DNA was identified as 54% Jewish, 45% English/Irish/Scottish, and 1% “Mediterranean”.  That extra 4% of Jewish marked a family revelation.  Only 50% came from my Dad’s side, where was the extra 4% on Mom’s side?  My oldest sister did the research to find that ancestor, about four generations back.

So I’m “Jewish” by genetics, and often “Jewish” by cultural identification.  I’m more than just a “George Santos – Jew-ish”.   That’s worked both ways in my life.  Looking back, I think I got more first job in a Congressional office because they wanted a “Jewish kid”.  And on the other hand, I’m also aware that my “assumed” Jewishness was insulted behind my back, and sometimes even to my face.  I never used my “trump card” to get out of that – in many ways I accepted the social distinction of being Jewish.  It was, literally, part of me.

Hear O Israel

And like many American Jews, I struggled with the issues of Israelis and Palestinians.   I grew up with the almost mythical story of the Jews in Israel, literally rising from the ashes of the Holocaust to build their own nation.  The Biblical “David and Goliath” story of Israel, a small band of Jews standing against the millions of the Arab world who wanted them in the sea, was deeply engrained in my brain and soul.  (Need a refresher – watch the movie Exodus with Paul Newman). 

And like most Jews, I accepted the story that many of the Palestinians who lived in greater-Israel left at the urging of the Islamic leaders.   They were told to evacuate so that the Arab Armies could clear the Israelis out in 1948.  They could return after victory.  And that “story” is, in part, true.

But there was no Arab victory, in 1948, or 1956, or 1967, or 1973.   The Arabs kept the Palestinians encamped on the Israeli border, political pawns to use against Israel in world politics.  When Palestinians tried to assimilate into Jordan and Egypt, they were rejected.  Only in Lebanon did they find somewhat of a “home”.  And those camps, now almost eighty years later, have become the center of Palestinian resistance.  The idea of returning “home” to Israel is passed from generation to generation.  The sacrifices, some made by suicide bombers, are venerated in the family lore.  

Two State Solution

There is a “theory of revolution”, that states that revolt only happens after hope is given, then snatched away.   In the early 2000’s, there seemed to be some hope for a reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israel.  But the political party of “the two state solution” lost power in Israel, and the hard liners, willing to do almost anything to insure Israeli supremacy in the entire old Palestine, took over.  

Israel, a nation founded on the ashes of genocide, is perilously close to committing the same crime.   The results of the heinous and desperate Hamas October 7^th attack on Israeli citizens, gave license to the current Israeli government to do anything and everything to the Palestinians in Gaza.  The terrorism of October 7^thwas horrific, but the responding deaths of 50,000 Palestinians are no less awful.  

The hostages still held by surviving remnants of Hamas seem to be “inconvenient”  for both sides.   The Israeli government is still slightly restrained by their existence.  And Hamas can’t let them go, because of the horrific consequences Israel might levy on the remaining Palestinian people. 

Which Side 

For Jews in the America, it is a divisive issue.   Are they the traditional folks who fight for the oppressed, the “under-dog”, or are they in lock-step with the Netanyahu destruction of Gaza? Last year, there were Jewish college students on the sidewalks protesting against the Palestinian actions.  And there were Jewish college students having seder supper in tents in the pro-Palestinian protestors campgrounds.  (As I look back on my essays about October 7^th, I can see my own evolution from firm Israeli support, to questioning, to deep, deep concern about Israeli actions). 

Was there anti-Semitism on some college campuses?  Of course there was.  Were Jewish students at risk?  Some absolutely  were.  

But to say  that all of the protestors who couldn’t “stomach” the outrages of the Israeli attacks on Gaza were anti-Semitic is ridiculous.   They were anti-Netanyahu, anti-bombing Gaza hospitals, anti-starvation and destruction of civilians.  

Anti-Intellectual

And here’s the real “rub”.  The Trump Administration is using this watch-word of Anti-Semitism as a cudgel to beat American colleges.   They are withholding government grants and funding unless the college kowtow to the Trump’s demands.  Columbia folded, the price of their principles was $400 million.  Harvard, and other institutions, are still standing firm.

But the determination of “Anti-Semitism” isn’t the purview of Donald Trump and his minions.   It is up to the “Semites”, American Jews, to determine what is anti and what is not.  It’s not up to Trump to punish the universities.  It’s up to American Jews, many of whom are benefactors to those same universities, to make that decision.

Trump and his group are using the “Jewish issue” to pursue their own agenda of retribution against America’s colleges.   But their real issue isn’t Anti-Semitism, it’s anti-intellectualism.  Their issue isn’t what colleges “aren’t doing” for Jewish students, it’s that Trump doesn’t like open, intellectual, sometimes fiery, discussion of ideas.  The protests of last spring were against Trump’s “buddy” Netanyahu, and Trump is getting “paybacks” for him.

Trump promised to be America’s retribution in the 2024 campaign.   And, so far, he’s living up to that promise.  But don’t use “the Jews” as an excuser to muzzle colleges when it’s really about silencing America’s intellectuals.   

To plagiarize the old cartoon “Pogo”, “Them is us”.  

Guardrails

When Donald Trump was first elected President in 2016, there was a lot of talk about “guardrails”.   Those guardrails were supposed to keep the “rookie” President Trump from getting too far out of the “norm” of the American Presidency.  First, there was the “grow in the job” historic theory, that held that the responsibilities of the Presidency would “make the man”.  Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman were the examples,  “common” men who became powerful Presidents, almost by accident.   

Second, there were the people surrounding Trump.  They were highly qualified and successful on their own. There were folks like Generals Mattis, Kelly, Milley and McMasters, and men of their own power like Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, Steve Mnuchin CEO of  One West, and Gary Cohn, CEO of Goldman Sachs.   Even normally obeisant Vice President Mike Pence, was a former state governor and Congressman.  They were independently “qualified” for their roles in the Presidency, with their own “power bases”.  

Institutional Balance

Third, there was a Congress willing to stand against the President if necessary, even those in the Republican Party.   John McCain was the “poster boy” for those “renegades”, who stopped many of the extremes of the first Trump Administration.  And by the second half of Trump’s first term, there was a House controlled by the Democrats, led by the formidable Nancy Pelosi, who not only curbed the President, but even impeached him, twice.

Then there were the “accepted norms” of what a President would or would not do.   These were the “traditions” that Americans expect of their President, a series of precedents that started with George Washington and come down to the present day.  They are not “written rules”, not statutory laws, but rather traditions that every President has honored.

And finally there was a Supreme Court, narrowly divided between the “liberals” and the “conservatives”.   For most of Trump’s first term in office; there was Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Roberts on the “right”, and Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan and Ginsburg or the “left”, with Justice Kennedy straddling the middle.  

Extremes

So whatever extreme advice the Stephen Miller’s  and Rudy Giuliani’s were giving the President, there were more cautious voices inside the room.   And while the Trump first term was still controversial and disruptive, the extremes were muted by all of those “guardrails”.

The final days of the first Trump Presidency showed the strain.   Most of the “voices of reason”, Mattis, Kelly, McMasters, Priebus, and Cohn were gone.  John McCain was dead, and other Republican Senators willing to stand up to the President out-of-office (Jeff Flake of Arizona, Bob Corker from Tennessee).  The Supreme Court balance shifted with the resignation of Kennedy and the death of Ginsburg, replaced by Kavanaugh and Barrett, both “on the right”.  

And Trump proved that  “norms” no longer mattered.   His repeated unfounded claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him and undermined American confidence in the electoral system.  Trump “sowed the winds” of insurrection, and reaped the whirlwind of January 6^th.  It was by a narrow margin that Congress held the institutional line.  Only the courageous decisions of the leadership of both parties, including Mike Pence, kept the Constitutional process intact.  

Biden

President Joe Biden, well aware of his slim margin of victory, tried to return to “normalcy”.  Biden wanted a Presidency of achievement, not one of crisis.  So his response to the Trump years was that “it’s over, let’s move on”.   But, of course, it wasn’t over at all.  Trump continued to undermine American confidence in institutions, and for a long time was not even held accountable for his actions.  When the Biden Administration was finally forced (by the January 6^th Committee) to reckon with Trump’s actions, it was too late.

Whatever you think of the Trump legal team (and after reading their Court filings, I don’t think much of them), they were incredibly successful at one thing.   They were the masters of delay.  When the cases involving the then-former President finally reached the Courts, we were perilously close to the 2024 election.  At that point, his attorneys argued that instead of “trial”, the decisions about Trump should be “put to the American people” on the ballot.

But it was the US Supreme Court itself that removed the final guardrail to Trump hegemony.   And they did it with purpose, and intent.  They made the President of the United States immune from criminal prosecution for any “official” action they might take in office.  Total immunity:  the President could act without regard for legal consequences, either in office or in the future.  And the author of that decision was Chief Justice John Roberts.

Today

Trump learned a lot from his first term experience.  He had already proved that “norms” were not a problem.   If they weren’t laws, they could be ignored.  And this time, he didn’t pick “independent” leaders to serve in his administration.  Clearly, the primary qualification to serve as a Trump advisor today is, to misquote an old Monty Python line, “Fanatical devotion to the President”.  Look at his cabinet, second-rate leaders at best, from Pete Hegseth to Bobby Kennedy to Pam Bondi to JD Vance.  But they all have one thing in common:  sycophancy.  Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once a man who could stand on his own, “kisses” the Trump ring.

Congress also “drinks the Kool-Aid”.    Few Republicans stand up to Trump, because of his total control of the Republican primary base and Republican fundraising.  To vote against Trump is to invite defeat in the next primary election.  And since Republicans hold narrow margins of control in both Houses, Congress itself is now on the sidelines.  Impeachment, even for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, is not even a consideration.

Immunity

So Trump makes every decision an “executive order”, what in other forms of government would be called an “edict” or “decree”.   That’s not an accident:  if every act is “official” Trump is guaranteed by the Supreme Court to be immune from legal responsibility.  So when he ignores a Supreme Court ruling, as he is doing today, there can be no legal consequences.  And if the Court determines to enforce its order on lesser officials, Trump has the ultimate “Trump card”.  He has the absolute power of pardon:  any underling who follows Trump’s orders and runs afoul of the Courts is “safe”.

And finally, Trump has surrounded himself with extremists.   Not only are his “official advisors” beholden to him, personally, but they are signed onto an extreme agenda.  We were warned about it during the 2024 election campaign:  Project 2025.  Trump denied any knowledge of it at the time, but that Plan is now the blueprint for many of his administrative actions.  

Chief Justice Roberts, the critical vote granting Presidential immunity, may have thought he was putting Trump “behind us”.   It might have been his mistaken attempt to “return to normalcy”, avoiding an “out of the norm” trial of a former President.  That may be too charitable.  Regardless, what Roberts did was to remove one of the last guardrails restricting executive action. He created a Presidency that resembles something so far out of American norms, it might not even be a democracy.  

Yesterday, Trump and his minions sat with the dictator of El Salvador, discussing how they would ignore the Supreme Court.   It was a President sitting with a dictator. But it might foreshadow what the American Presidency is becoming:  the once elected dictator of the United States.  In large part, that scenario is John Robert’s fault.  He created this monster.

Facts and Figures

The State of Ohio has an annual budget of $98 Billion.  Need to put that into perspective?   The US Government budget is close to $7 Trillion, so Ohio’s budget is about 1½ percent the size.   And out of the Ohio total budget, $13.42 Billion is spent on education, about 14%.  That’s important:  Education is one of the things that the state has primary control over in the “government” world.  In contrast, the Federal Department of Education only spends $97 Billion a year (not including student loans) for the entire country, and Ohio only gets a small part of that, about $2.3 Billion.  

Also in Ohio, local school districts more than share the cost of education with the state. They individually raise about $13.6 Billion in local taxes.   So to wrap it up, the average K-12 School Districts in Ohio get about 46% of their annual budget from local taxes, another 46% from the State, and about 8% from the Federal government.  

Belt Tightening

Every school district in Ohio, from the top economic areas like Upper Arlington, Wyoming, or Beachwood; to the lowest in Vinton or Morgan Counties or Portsmouth: all run on tight budgets.  They spend their money to pay for teachers, and buildings, and buses, and all of the things we hope schools can do for our kids.   There’s always trade-offs:  new equipment or worn out stuff, hire more teachers or over-crowded classrooms; sponsor athletics, make parents pay huge costs or cut them all together.

In every, single, district, losing 2% of their funding means a lot more than just “belt tightening”.  It means some kind of sacrifice, something “lost” to the education program.   The more affluent districts might be able to “absorb” better than the poorer ones, but it impacts every district in some way.

The Constitution

Ohio Constitution – Article VI, Section 2

The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.

The plain meaning of this phrase of Ohio’s Constitution is clear:  “…No religious or other sect shall have any exclusive right to, or control over, any part of the school funds…”.  But we know that “plain meaning” is lost on our “Radical Republican” state legislature.  Four percent of the state school funds are, in fact, in control of private religious and other “sects”.  

While that doesn’t seem like so much, in fact it equates to a two percent cut to every public school district in the state; two percent of “school funds” NOT given to “…secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools”. And it’s worse, not only is four percent of state funds, $475 million, going to finance private education for individual students. That number is growing, as the overall state financial support for public education is shrinking.  In 2025, it’s likely to be more than $1 Billion, even as the Legislature looks to cut other education funding.

Backpack Funding

It’s called “vouchers”, or “backpack funding”.  Instead of following the state constitution and “securing a thorough and efficient system of common schools”, the state of Ohio is abrogating its responsibility.  All a parent has to do today is apply, and a voucher is symbolically placed in their child’s backpack, to use at any private school in the state.  

It’s a very seductive argument:  “Parents pay for schools, so parents should be able to use their tax money for their own child’s education”.  That’s even if that education is in a private school, a religious school, or a school with an ideological agenda.  Even if that school meets the clear language of the Constitution, a “religious or other sect”.  And even if the parent is financially well able to afford to pay themselves for private school.

Religious Education

What’s the problem with that?  First, the state has a legal obligation to the public (the “common”) schools. Funding in education is difficult at best, using a growing part of that funding to pay for private schools is syphoning money away from the public schools.   

Second, many of those school vouchers are used by religious schools, placing them in direct violation of state constitution.   In fact, the greatest use of the Ohio school voucher program is by the schools run by the Roman Catholic Church.  They even made it a point to direct their parents to the school voucher system.

I don’t have a problem with parents choosing to send their kids to private or religious schools.  “School choice” has always been allowed in Ohio, and there’s no reason to change it.   But “we the people” of the state of Ohio shouldn’t be obligated to pay for their choice.  If parents make that choice, then they are also making the choice to pay for it.  The State of Ohio does not have a legal obligation to help.  In fact, the real legal obligation of the state is clear:  a thorough and efficient system of common schools.  

Ohio – the Wild, Wild, West

Ohio is described as the “Wild West of universal vouchers” (Ohio Capital Journal).   It is the “leading edge” of public funding of private education in the nation.  And before vouchers, Ohio was the “leading edge” of private and online schooling, so leading that the largest digital school in the state, ECOT, bilked the state government of $117 million (Ohio Capital Journal).  But private and religious schools regrouped from that debacle, and found legislators to continue their funding.

And what’s that about?   It’s about money; financial support to the radical politicians who make up the majority of the Ohio Legislature.  And, beyond that, those legislators are committed to an education that reflects their own personal values, regardless of their legal mandate to public education.  They even banned “controversial” issues from discussions in Ohio’s public colleges (Ohio Capital Journal). 

So what happens to our public schools?   As the state puts more and more money into private education, the increased burden of public education falls to the local communities.  The regular folks all over Ohio pay more in local taxes for their public schools, and then have to pay for other people’s kids to go to private schools.  And the legislators continue to get more money from  their private education supporters. 

That’s unconstitutional by any plain reading of the words.  And, more importantly, it’s not fair.

History Lesson

Here’s a brief Latin class.   “Habeas” is the Latin verb for to hold or to have.  “Corpus” is pretty obvious, because it’s the “root word” for the English word, corpse.  It simply means a body, but not necessarily dead.   Put them together and it means “to hold (have) a body”.  In old English law, where our American system has its roots, asking for a “Writ of Habeas Corpus” was asking the government (the King) to explain why he is “holding a body”, simply, why is someone in custody.

It is an old English right, established even before the foundation of England’s “liberties” with the Magna Carta of 1215.   And it is engrained in the highest American law, the United States Constitution.   In Article I, Section 9, Clause 2: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Everyone in America, under the Constitution, has the right to ask why they are in custody.   Not only do they have the right to ask for the “writ”. The government is required to give a legally acceptable answer, in front of a Court of Law.  We know this, because on every cop show on TV we hear that a suspect can only be held for so long, 48 to 72 hours, without being charged.  The “Charge” is, the writ of Habeas Corpus.  That is the government’s answer for “holding the body”.   It is made in front of a court, and the court needs to accept that there is “probable cause” that the person in custody has indeed committed a crime, and can be held.

Who’s an American

“Everyone” is a “term of art” in the law.   Who is an American?  In “normal” times, everyone who is physically “in” the United States is granted legal rights.  That includes “born” US citizens, naturalized US Citizens, legal immigrants; green card, long and short term visa holders. And even migrants who are in the US without permission have rights.   (That phrase leads to the ethnic insult, someone who is “Without Papers”, a “WOP”).  

In American history there were two groups who did NOT originally have rights.   First, and most famously, were the enslaved people brought into America.  There was a difference between those who were enslaved, owned by someone forever, and those who were indentured, or contracted to work for a term of time.  The indentured still had some rights.  

The enslaved had none.  And secondly, there were the Native Americans, who were treated as “foreigners” (on their own land).   As they were born to a different “nationality”, a Native American tribe, they weren’t considered American.  Everyone else at least had basic rights.

 Among those rights are criminal rights, including the writ of habeas corpus, and right to a jury trial, and the other rights granted under the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Amendments. The Courts have even recognized those rights that weren’t criminal, including the famous five freedoms of the First Amendment:  religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition the government for redress of grievances.  The ONLY times all of those Constitutional rights can be “suspended” is during War, Rebellion, Invasion or when public safety is threatened.

This was put to the test in the early years of the American Constitutional experiment.  

John Adams

In the late 1790’s, there was a lot of pressure on President, John Adams.    The new United States was still tied to Great Britain economically, but allied to France politically.   France was in the middle of their Revolution, using much of the same rhetoric of the American rebellion.  Adams and his Federalist Party were more aligned with Britain (New England was a center of trade). The opposition party of Thomas Jefferson, “the Democratic-Republicans” were, like their leader, more aligned with France.

Adams and his Federalists passed the Insurrection Act in 1792, and the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798.   These allowed the Federal government to intervene, both in domestic insurrection, and against criticism from “foreigners” living in the United States. The Alien Act allowed the President to determine that an alien was acting against the US interest and could be jailed or deported, and the Sedition Act allowed the President to punish Americans criticizing the Government.  

The Sedition Act expired in 1801, and was never tested in Court.  The Alien Act was used to control enemy aliens during America’s declared wars, the War of 1812, and World Wars I and II.   In fact, it served as the foundation for one of the United States’ most ignominious actions.  During World War II, Americans of Japanese descent, even “natural born” American citizens, were rounded up and  “relocated” to internment camps guarded by the Army.

Civil War

And the Insurrection Act was invoked by President Lincoln during the Civil War.   He suspended writ of habeas corpus both in the areas of rebellion, and in cases where the safety of the Union war effort was involved.   This included imprisoning politicians who were opposed to the Civil War, One of those was former Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham.  

The Congressman led a pro-slavery, anti-war group called the “Copperheads”, and gave a speech  in Mt. Vernon, Ohio in 1863, far from the battlefields.   The military arrested him, and tried him by military court martial.  Vallandigham’s lawyer demanded a writ of habeas corpus, to bring the trial into civilian court. But the Supreme Court ruled that the court martial was an exercise of the President’s war powers (Ex parte Vallandigham, 68 U.S. (1 Wall.) 243).  

Vallandigham ended up exiled in Canada, where he ran for Ohio Governor “in-absentia” that fall and failed.   He did manage to get almost 40% of the votes.  Even then, Ohio was divided.

Declaring Emergencies

The key to these “extra” Presidential powers is an emergency; a war, or an insurrection.   That’s why President Trump has “declared” that the border crisis, the fentanyl crisis, and trade imbalance crises are all “emergencies”.  That claim might grant the President authority to act under Presidential decree (executive order) rather than wait on Congress to actually debate and pass laws.  And, President Trump now claims that it gives him the power to deport folks out of the country: without hearing, without legal representation, without even the writ of habeas corpus.

It’s an emergency, an “invasion” of Venezuelan gang members.  So he invokes the 1798 Alien Act.   It’s an emergency, a glut of Chinese created fentanyl coming in.  So he puts prohibitive tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada.  It’s an emergency; folks are marching in the streets, parading and speaking out against the other emergencies.  Will the President invoke the Insurrection Act, and send the US military to enforce his will?  We will know soon enough, as the Trump Administration continues to refuse to explain their actions to the world.

Why are they holding those bodies, even those bodies of innocent people?   Key your “eyes on the prize”.  If the President doesn’t have to allow for the writ of habeas corpus, he can do almost anything, without check or balance.  

It’s the signal:  our Democracy is at risk.

Teaching Government

Look, I was a government teacher for decades.  I know how confusing the American government systems can be.   After all, we have three levels of government; local, state, and federal.  And we have three branches of government at each of those levels; legislative, executive, and judicial. With all of those permutations of government, it’s no wonder kids have a tough time keeping everything straight.  

That’s not talking about the parts that aren’t even in English:  from habeas corpus to ex post facto.   Then there’s those weird, almost spooky references; to a “bill of attainder” or “corruption of blood”.  And there’s the President of the Senate whose not the President of the United States but the Vice President, unless, of course, the Vice President isn’t there, then it’s the President Pro Tempore, — whew!!

But when a person IS the President of the United States (not of the Senate and, unfortunately, not Pro Tempore) a fundamental requirement should be to understand the “terms of art” of the government.   A President is responsible for the entire government. He has, as Teddy Roosevelt put it, “the Bully Pulpit” to explain things to the Nation.  So the President, one of only forty-five to hold the honor, should have it together. (*I know, he’s the 47^th President, but he shares the “honor” of being both 45^th  and 47^th. It’s just like Grover Cleveland was 22^nd and 24^th.  We’ll get to that 23^rd President  in the middle here in just a few paragraphs).

Government Debt

So it was a surprise to me that Donald Trump doesn’t understand the governmental use of the term, deficit.   And please, please, do not argue that “…he’s not a career politician, he’s a business man.”  He’s in his second term as President, and, judging from his business practices including six bankruptcies, he ought to have a clear idea of what a deficit is.  

The United States Government spends more money than it brings in.   It can do that, by selling bonds, essentially by borrowing money and then paying it back with interest.  Each year that the government runs a “deficit” (spends more than it brings in) it adds to the National Debt.  Add decades of deficit spending, and we, The People of the United States, end up with a colossal debt.  It’s about $36 Trillion right now.

How do we fix that debt?  Well, as the old saying goes, if you want to get out of a hole, STOP DIGGING.   The US government continues to spend more than it brings in, this year, $1.9 Trillion more.  

Interesting Interest

The second question is, what impact does the debt have on our government?  Like my Mastercard, every year the government “carries” the debt, they have to pay interest on it.   There is a famous “debt clock” posted online by the US Treasury. It runs like a high speed fan, the figures ticking away at almost unreadable speed.  The US gets a great rate on the debt, financed at only 3.37% (as compared to my Mastercard, at 17.24%).  But multiply 36 trillion by .0337, and the annual interest to be paid on the debt is $1.2 Trillion.   

Lots of big numbers – but here’s the deal.   The total US Budget in 2025 is around $7 Trillion, so 17% of the budget is going to maintain the debt.  It’s not buying Abrams Tanks or F-35 Fighters, and it’s not curing cancer or protecting Yosemite National Park.  It’s not even supporting Elon Musk’s SpaceX.  And it’s not paying  the debt down. The Government is just maintaining the total debt – which of course is still increasing every year.

Trade Deficits

That’s the government deficit and debt.   And that has little to do with the “trade deficit”, one of the issues that President Trump is trying to “fix” with all of these tariffs.  A trade deficit is NOT a government deficit, even though President Trump seems to be confused between the two.  A trade deficit is simple:  people in the United States buy more stuff from China (in terms of dollars) then China buys from us.  It’s not the US (or the Chinese) government directly, it’s the businesses and consumers in the two countries that create the “sales”.  

Trump is trying to change that trade deficit by putting higher taxes on imported Chinese goods.  The theory is, that Americans will stop buying as much Chinese stuff if it costs more.  And, in the meantime, if they don’t, the extra money the US folks pay for the tax, the tariff, will go into the government coffers.  So, maybe, that might be used to reduce the US Government deficit, just like all taxes on the American people do.  

But to say, as President Trump did on Monday, that we have a “deficit with China  that’s killing us, and we need to lower the deficit so we don’t have to pay so much interest”, is conflating two very different things.   A government deficit and a trade deficit are not the same.  He got confused about that.  If Joe Biden had done that, the world would be screaming about his senility.  But, of course, Trump gets a pass.

Tariff Warning

Now what about the 23^rd President, Ohio’s own Benjamin Harrison?   Like the current President, Harrison believed in the “powers of tariffs”.  He invoked the “McKinley Tariffs” (named after Congressman William McKinley, also of Ohio, and a future President) which put a blanket 50% tariff on all imported goods.  

Harrison didn’t put those tariffs on to raise revenue (taxes).   What he wanted was Americans to buy American made goods, instead of imported goods.  He wanted to support American industrialization in the 1880’s, the beginning of the age of factories.  Americans were moving off of their farms and into the cities to take jobs “on the line”, making everything from candy bars to shoes to shirts to weapons.  And for those factories to be successful, other Americans needed to buy those products.  

Other industrial countries were able to make the same products cheaper. So in order to “level the field” (we’ve heard that used a lot recently) Harrison dumped the McKinley tariffs on them all.  Leveling the field really meant, making Americans pay more for the goods they wanted, by raising the price of European goods.  And the government “took” the difference in revenue, tax money.  Buy foreign or buy American, to the average “Joe”, costs went up.

Rhyming the Past

The stock market gradually fell by 22%. That would be equal to a 9000 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average today – it’s only down 4000 so far.   And in political terms, it cost Harrison both the Congress and ultimately, the Presidency. The 22^nd President Grover Cleveland (of New York) came back to win a second term in 1892.  Regular folks back then, just like now, realized that protective tariffs ending up costing them more.

I don’t think Joe Biden is coming back in 2028.  I hope that we still have a Democratic Republic where the vote of the people can make a difference, both in the Congressional election of 2026 and in 2028.   But I do know something that Donald Trump doesn’t, and now, so do you.  A government deficit isn’t a trade deficit, and, as Mark Twain said,  “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”.

Liberation Day

On Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day”, the President gave America the “formula” for imposing tariffs ( sanctions) on most of the nations of the world.  And the fact that he put the formula up is really all we need to know.  One of my earliest professional mentors was Pete Nix, then principal at Watkins Memorial High School and later superintendent of the school district.  If you wanted to “lose” a proposal to Pete, you’d surround it with all sorts of mathematical formulae and arcane percentages.  Pete would look at you and drawl in his Dixieland accent, “Figures lie, and liars figure”. 

I have friends who can interpret the “tariff formula”.  But for the vast majority of us, Greek letters in an equation becomes a “black box”, or as Churchill would say; “It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…”.  Who knows what it means?   For most Americans, it’s the Administration telling us, “You’re too stupid to understand what we’re doing, so just ‘trust us’. Move along, Move along.”

Pax Americana

After World War II, the United States was the leader of the free world.  The international alliances, from the United Nations to NATO to CENTO to SEATO to the more recent AUKUS; maintained general peace, a peace that  the US led, mostly through cooperation.  America provided military and economic assistance.  America promoted democracy.  And American policy made a safer and better world economically and socially.  For almost eighty years, America worked to maintain a world progression, a “Pax Americana” where worldwide conflicts, on the scale of World Wars I or II, and nuclear destruction were avoided.

Like any leader, the US made some mistakes.  We can name them:  Vietnam and Afghanistan, and other lesser failures.  And like any “good” leader, the United States made sacrifices. The US spent a lot of American dollars to keep the world safer.  And it also recognized that a worldwide economic “web” made a safer world, giving everyone a stake in prosperity.  So America took a leading role, even accepting some losses, like the increased environmental standards of the Kyoto and Paris Accords. The US did so in order to encourage other nations to do the same.  America had the best economy in the world – and used that to help the whole world.  Wealth was spent on others to preserve peace and make life better.

Rogue Elephant

But there always was a different choice.  Since the United States was the most powerful, both economically and militarily, America could choose to be the biggest “bully”.  But that’s only if the “biggest kid on the playground” was “unencumbered” by alliances.  As long as all of the interactions were one-on-one (bilateral in political science-ese); then the US would always have the advantage.  

And that’s what the Trump Administration is doing.  They are negotiating with Russia over Ukraine, often without Ukrainian involvement.  That’s what a “bully” does, changes your life and tells you to “like it”.  They are fracturing NATO, not only demanding that our allies pay more  into the alliance, but even questioning the basic premise of Article Five – that every NATO nation will defend each member as themselves.  

And now with the “Tariff Formula”, the Trump Administration is treating each nation as a “bilateral” rival.  The “Greek letter figuring” allows them to be the “Bully”, one-on-one, towards every nation from Canada to Fiji.  But a bully can’t be a leader as well.  So the United States under Donald Trump abrogates our leadership role in the world.  We are going “rogue”, acting with apparent impunity to the needs of other nations in the world, and the American populace as well.  The United States is now a rogue elephant in the room, out of control and trashing everything.  If that sounds a lot like Russia or China, it should.   

The Biggest Bully

The “Tariff Formula” is a simple outgrowth of the overall theory of the Trump Administration.  The United States is the biggest, strongest, most powerful Nation, perhaps in world history.  It is our option, to use that advantage against every other nation.  The world is a “zero-sum” game, every nation is either a winner or a loser.  And America will win, at the expense of every other nation, even our neighbors, and even our friends. In the words of Darth Vader in Star Wars, “It is our destiny”. 

The United States of America is no longer the leader of a world coalition.  Instead, Trump sees us as Imperial America.  It’s no surprise that the terms of the 19^th century are returning to our language: like  “manifest destiny” and “protective tariffs”.  And it’s inevitable that the Star Wars terms (after fifty years of influencing American life) are now those of the “Empire”, not the “Rebel Alliance”.  The US  is no longer the leader of a cooperative world.  Instead,  the US is the rogue elephant, the biggest bully on the playground.  That’s the world Donald Trump is giving us.  

We can read that formula.