Frank's Musings

Particularly following an economically devastating pandemic, dampening the price inflation that normally accompanies reawakening commerce defeats the country’s natural adjustment process

Price is a tool for allocating limited resources among consumers and businesses. It isn’t a standard of economic stability; it merely demonstrates relative scarcity of various assets, and their fungibility. When prices rise, something has caused friction in the smooth functioning of the market where assets are exchanged between living agents.

When an exogenous event like a pandemic disrupts the market’s expectations, a psychology that anticipates unending price rises may set in. Adding more tinder to the fire by raising interest rates will only exacerbate inflation, not quell it. The marketplace is a lot smarter than any group of political appointees when it comes to assimilating COVID-19.

If there’s one thing valuable that Trump’s presidency made clear, it is that a nation like ours is made up of two kinds of people. Some of us resent it when we can’t do anything for ourselves. The rest of us would rather collaborate with others because the result is almost always better.

Among other things, this could reflect the illusion of successful independence fostered by isolation imposed by the 2020-22 pandemic or more broadly by the widespread use of the internet for shopping, communicating, and even administrative work.

Even so, the statistics measuring voter turnout in The U.S. overstate the percentage of American citizens that participates in our democracy. The denominator of that turnout rate is usually the number of registered voters. Therefore, it doesn’t even include the number of citizens who don’t bother to register. The size of our populace disaffected by democratic government is probably much larger than the share of voters who support antiestablishment candidates.

Exercising one’s right to vote usually means belief that an election has some effect on what the government does and on how it does it. However, if one feels that “the system is rigged,” and ignores the majority’s will, even the results of a court-sanctioned election are suspect.  Fortunately, the 2016 victory of a nonplussed anti -establishment presidential candidate was followed by the election of a conventional president who plays by the rules.

How many more times will sufficient voters realize their responsibility to preserve the republic by exercising their right to vote.?   Apathy is as much a threat to a thriving democracy as alienation.  Despotism will inevitably replace liberal democracy in an exclusively self-involved world. 

It would be comforting to know that Trump never had our most secret nuclear documents. Based on the rumor (?) that his generals didn’t trust him, and the discussions by his cabinet officers about invoking the 25th amendment, one wonders. Did his administration really ever trust him to have unlimited access to information that could jeopardize the whole country?

Senate confirmation is required for appointment of both military general -rank officers and cabinet secretaries to their positions. This is a check on errant behavior, even of the President. Unfortunately, that alone is not a 100% guarantee of the nation’s security. So AG Garland was correct in seizing Trump’s store of White House documents.

In his MAGA world the 45th President never lost the 2020 election. He was entitled, therefore, to maintain possession of his office records. In fact, he thinks he still is.

The DOJ ‘s impoundment of those documents, regardless of their classification, must be considered a desperate assertion of power by the “deep state” to prevent the MAGA crowd from rightfully ruling the country. Was this the ultimate reason why AG Merrick Garland authorized the search warrant on Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago home?

The Justice Department not only prosecutes violators of our federal laws; it also is responsible, in Garland’s view, for defending the Constitutional system of government against domestic enemies. Trumpism joins Communism, the Whiskey Rebellion and the Confederacy as seditious threats to the Republic.

The police response to the active shooter crisis at Robb Elementary defies explanation. It doesn’t reflect ambivalence towards the fate of Hispanic American children—most of the Uvalde police force, including its overall chief and the school district chief, are also Latinos.

Was the police hierarchy more concerned at risking the lives of officers who had families to support than the lives of students who only had lives yet to live? That’s a pretty consequential balance to strike. Not to mention adult teachers’ livelihoods, too. Or was it sheer ineptitude, if not stupidity?

In the absence of a civilian ban in assault style weapons (the only reasonable step to take in our unruly democracy), we certainly need more intervention training for those we rely on to deal with active shooter situations.

It isn’t Trump who mobilized his supporters. An upset minority of voters, frustrated by their inability to do as they please without regard for the common good, has recognized its own brotherhood, with the encouragement of rabble rousers. They latched onto Donald Trump as a convenient flag carrier for their newly self-identified resentful faction,

Trump had made a career of hoodwinking financial backers who were enticed by the prospect of profiting from investments in unlikely wildcat schemes. Many of those schemes went bankrupt; but their failures have imposed little deterrence on Trump’s continued conning. He believes, as someone once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Finally, the Donald may have bit off more than he can chew. Instead of financial swindling, he has tried to hoodwink the defenders of the Constitution. Ironically, it is those rules of government that make it possible for some swindlers to operate because of the naivety of many people who believe in their automatic protection as a result of “the rule of law.” Unfortunately, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Perhaps four years of the Trump presidency has retaught us that lesson.

Moreover, those years have awakened us to our vulnerability to a major menace that has been created by the unedited, instantaneous, personal, and yet widespread nature of internet communications. There will always be another destructive avatar of disruptive impulses in the national psyche. It is the vigilance displayed by Kansan voters towards their constitution’s protection of a woman’s right to choose that will be our only guardian against authoritarianism.