19 August 2026
Why Congress Won’t Fight Trump’s Tariffs
Careerist Congressmen are happy when the President comes up with a way to raise revenue without having to increase income taxes. Trump’s tariff scheme makes American consumers pay higher prices for imports by adding higher duties to the cost of buying foreign goods. Those consumption taxes are politically more palatable to wealthy funders of both Trump’s construction projects and legislators’ reelection campaigns.
In her 7/23/2026 NYTimes Guest Essay, Ms. Natasha Sarin is vain to “hope that Congress will eventually push back” against Trump’s audacious subterfuge. He wants to give politicians a way to spend more on government contracts without having equitably to charge those contractors for the privilege. (Funny how Trump is much more concerned with the opinions of people who work for a living when he doesn’t want to lose their votes than when he hires them to complete one of his vanity projects!)
Consequently, the U.S. national debt will far exceed 40 trillion dollars before Trump’s second term of office ends, and everyone in his Republican Party is happy to let their constituents bear that burden as the price of being told what they want to hear. Well, TANSTAFL (There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch).
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Sometime, that obligation will come. The mortgage on the country’s future will long outlive Trump’s White House ballroom, his Oval Office golden tckotskeys, his Triumphal Arch, and other vanity projects. Hopefully, the preference of our democratic majority for short-term revenge on the supposedly unfair 250-year record of the Republic won’t last as long. The Congress should then be controlled by far-sighted leaders who anticipate another 250.
# posted by frank : 12:33 AM
15 August 2026
Transgender Bathroom Use
Back in the early 1970s, I shared an apartment with several male and female schoolmates who decorated one of our bathrooms with an anomalous poster. It depicted a woman with her dress hitched up standing alongside several men before a row of urinals.
That contemporary curiosity would be less startling these days. The transgender urinator would presumably be expected, when necessary, to occupy a stall or use a commode in the women’s or bisexual bathroom now. Nevertheless, it illustrates that transgenderism is really a cultural choice rather than a biological event, no matter how much corrective surgery is undertaken.
The point is that a politician's acceptance of a person's differences from standard norms is not at all corrupt. It may reflect other factors about which they are transparent, like family, occupation, sexual orientation, inability physically to come to a polling place on Election Day, etc. Blanket official derision of specific uncommon circumstances is not only "unwoke"; it actually perversely obstructs human invention of reasonable accommodation.
# posted by frank : 10:46 AM
13 August 2026
Why Congress Won’t Fight Trump’s Tariffs
Careerist Congressmen are happy when the President comes up with a way to raise revenue without having to increase income taxes. Trump’s tariff scheme makes American consumers pay higher prices for imports by adding duties to the cost of engaging in global trade. Those consumption taxes are politically more palatable to wealthy funders of both Trump’s dishonest schemes and of legislators’ reelection campaigns.
In her opinion piece in the 8/13/2026 NY Times, Natasha Sarin is vain to “hope that Congress will eventually push back” against Trump’s audacious subterfuge. He wants to give politicians a way to spend more on government contracts without having proportionately to assess those contractors for the privilege.
# posted by frank : 5:25 PM
05 August 2026
Real Cause of Fauci Hearing Travesty
It was obvious from the beginning that Senator Rand Paul’s objective in using his investigative committee to grill the former head of the NIH NIAID agency about his role in combating the COVID 19 Pandemic was only to raise his own political profile. How could he have forgotten or ignored the ultimate condemnation that the late Senator Joseph McCarthy brought on himself by conducting a similar witch-hunt of alleged communist sympathizers in the U.S. Government 75 years ago.
Was he be motivated by political ambition, resentment of unassuming intellect, or contempt for the public’s ability to think critically? Is this what democratic government is supposed to do—provide a platform for demagogues to appeal to the public’s need for entertainment?
In fact, the American public has been conditioned by commercial media continually to seek distractions from serious and more demanding aspects of life. Politicians now must compete with business and social media for their voters’ attention. Not only does that allow public office-seekers cheapen the minimum value of issues they address, it also tempts them to exaggerate, distort, or falsify some of their claims.
A liberal democratic form of government cannot honestly operate according to the same evaluative parameters as free market economics. Not every decision depends on the bottom line. When it comes to saving lives from a health crisis, the cost of carefully avoiding compounding errors of judgment is often immaterial in looking for an effective solution. That consideration may not be foremost in the minds of politicians focused primarily on their next election.
# posted by frank : 9:44 PM
