Epstein Files

An acquaintance recently asked me why I haven't posted about the Epstein files, given that is such a huge story, and has been for quite a while. 

To be honest, I am not sure exactly why, although, to be honest, I don't think that Trump is neck deep in Epstein related dirt. Certainly he was a friend, and not just in passing. It is obvious to many that Trump has no moral compass. Using women for play is just one of many flaws in his personal make-up, so I guess I preferred to focus on the danger he represents to our 250 year experiment in democracy.

Perhaps this indicates my own bias in that I consider his attacks on the institutions of our government and the guardrails that have protected our unique form of government more important than his sexual escapades. 

That being said, let me be clear. Jeffrey Epstein provided a service to a group of men who deemed themselves above, not just the law, but above any of the accepted morals of our society. They abused women, many underage girls, because they could, but also because they had a perverted belief that it was something they deserved, something that men of power and money have done throughout history, as Trump testified in his deposition during the E. Jean Carrol assault trial.

As the emails are revealing, Epstein's advice was sought after by many very rich, very powerful, very entitled men, some who sought sexual gratification, and some who sought a way to gain favor with Trump. As these revelations continue to become public, one can only hope that there is some kind of accountability, and not just the loss of one's royal standing. 

Real, hard punishment. And I don't mean prison time. Not that I wouldn't support seeing some of them in orange jumpsuits, but I would much prefer hitting them where it hurts the most. 

Isolation, shunning even, so that they can no longer be the giants of industry or politics that they believe themselves to be. And very, very large fines. Millions of dollars. 

Like the occasional example when the masses boycott certain products, we need those who do business in America to stop doing business with men like this. To set an example that such behavior, such attitudes that place people like that above the law, above responsibility for their sordid actions, will no longer be tolerated. People who engage in sex trafficking, especially when children are involved, and yes Megyn, anyone under 18 is a child, are loathsome indeed. But without the customers, there wouldn't be a business. 

Is it possible that in the future, at least in my lifetime, that the peer pressure of those who consider sex with children a crime that cannot be tolerated, will eliminate underage sex trafficking? Perhaps not, but it can only begin when people ostracize those who participate in the activity, on either side of the equation. One might even say that such a movement, to truly identify and isolate people like this, could enable us to actually claim to be a Christian nation.

Whether Democrat or Republican, Liberal or Conservative, President, ex-President or a woman like Ghislaine Maxwell, they should all be held responsible in ways that do not allow them to be active in everyday society, whether that results in a prison sentence or just by being shut out of our society. Outcasts. If we could somehow make legal the application of a scarlet letter upon their brow to indicate their worthlessness, I would heartily vote for it. 

More importantly, the saga of a man like Jeffery Epstein is a black mark on all of us. He represents greed, and power, and privilege run amok, and while some of it may have been hidden, we all know that the rich and powerful have been playing by different rules for all of history. 

Shame on all of us for believing that rich people are somehow better than us just because of their wealth, regardless of how they accumulated such wealth. We excuse their behavior because they have convinced us, the everyday folks who do all the real work in America, that without them all would be lost. A sort of too big to fail logic applied to people, not just humongous corporations.

Is Trump guilty of ignoring Epstein's horrendous treatment of women? Of course. Not because he may or may not have known about the underage girls but because he accepted, neigh, relished, the idea that men like himself are allowed to engage in such activity. As are all of those whose names are being revealed in the files. They all knew he was a slime ball, but valued his use to them to gain some advantage. 

In some ways, the men who only used him to get sex are less horrible than those who sought his advice to gain political insight or access, although I wouldn't want to be any of them when they face their day of judgement.

Moving forward, I don't expect an email that implicates the current president in the sex trafficking aspect of the scandal. I just can't imagine such an email being released, if not completely redacted so it is impossible to link to Trump.

Of course, it doesn't matter to me. He is as guilty as any and all of the men who partied and associated and sought guidance and ignored Epstein's crimes. While it is certainly ironic that a sex scandal may mark the beginning of our communal break from the spell Trump has cast on so many people, it really needs to be more than just a few men who pay the price for the likes of Jeffrey Epstein.

Whether that occurs, is the real question. 

 

 

Diane Keaton

When I first heard of the passing of Diane Keaton, already over a month ago, it hit me hard. Certainly not as hard as a family member or longtime friend, but still I felt truly sad.

I imagine I wasn't the only person to feel that way, that, in fact, it is very common for regular people to mourn the death of famous actors, or athletes or musicians, or other such people whose work they admired. Or whose life represented something beyond just respect for their accomplishments.

While I can't know for certain why other people get upset when someone like Diane Keaton passes, I can surmise why I felt sad, almost tearful, when I heard the news.

Keaton represented the type of woman that I, as a young man, was attracted to, perhaps even searched for as a life mate. 

Now, I know that sounds kind of ridiculous when one understands that what I admired about her was not really Diane Keaton, but the characters she played in the movies, especially Annie Hall.

I had been musing about this post, considering the direction and details of it, since her death, but had let the idea drop away as is evident since I have posted seven times already since her passing despite a search for Diane Keaton movies that resulted in my watching a number of her films in the two weeks or so right after her death.

Most I had never seen before, Manhattan and Interiors being the two I enjoyed the most. A few were not that good, to be honest. I still haven't had the opportunity to see Sleeper again, or Play It Again, Sam which might be an indication that I enjoyed Keaton characters that Woody Allen created for her. Perhaps it also suggests that the love that Allen felt for Keaton was transferred to the film goer in general, and myself in particular, for although they dated but never married, Keaton was a longtime defender of his less than acceptable relationship scandals while he often ran his scripts and ideas past her first, his respect for her opinions being so profound.

If I am totally honest, there may even be a bit to the idea that if Woody could successfully woo Diane, even if in the make believe world of movies, then I might find success in winning over a woman like her. In that example, Woody's well known lack of self esteem reflected my own, yet somehow he is still able to be attractive to Keaton, as it turns out, in film and real life.

What really surprised me is that I was unaware that Diane Keaton was in the Godfather movies, being one of the eight people in America to have never seen any of the those films. The fact that she was in those movies while also appearing in Love and Death and Sleeper illustrates the range of her acting ability. 

Another odd juxtaposition of roles are those she played in the aforementioned Annie Hall and Looking for Mr Goodbar both which released in 1977. I am hoping to find the latter on some streaming service some time soon, perhaps right after seeing the former again.

Over the years, as I aged along with Keaton (just to note, she was born a dozen years before me), I enjoyed her in Baby Boom, the Father of the Bride movies, the First Wives Club, The Family Stone, and Somethings Gotta Give, among others.

I also hope to see Reds again sometime in the near future although I recall losing interest in parts of the movie when I first saw it. 

So, again, why was I attracted to Keaton, or to be more realistic, her acting roles?

Since retiring, I have been watching a lot of movies, most notably older movies, older being defined as released before 1970. One that I enjoyed the most, starring my favorite black and white movie female actress, Katharine Hepburn, is Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant.

I mention Hepburn because Keaton reminds me of her. Both versatile actors, both attractive but not glamorous, perhaps best of all, both seemingly approachable, more like the girl next door as opposed to a  Hollywood starlet.

And, perhaps, most important to me, both able to play comedic roles, which I interpret as not taking themselves too seriously.

As I said in the beginning of this post, Diane Keaton represented to me the kind of woman I wanted to be around, perhaps even marry, despite my understanding that it was her roles that created that desire. 

Whether she was anything like those roles in her real life, we may find out as time passes and various people in her life open up about what she was really like. Hopefully, I won't experience too much bursting of the balloon should the reality not match my fantasy. But as someone famously said, la-di-da, la-di-da.

 

 

  

 

Mrs Dalloway and the Mailman

A few weeks ago, I borrowed two books from the library, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and Mailman, My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home, by Stephen Starring Grant.

As far I as know, I have never read a Virginia Woolf novel. Woolf was born around the same time as my paternal grandparents, and died at the start of WW2. Mrs. Dalloway was published in 1925 while Mailman... was just published this year, a hundred years later. There was no connection, in my mind, why I chose these two books, other than I had read a review of Grant's book and thought it sounded interesting, while I had read something which mentioned Woolf, and her standing in the world of literature, and realized my oversight in never reading any of her efforts.  

First, Mrs. Dalloway. 

To be frank, I struggled through the book. As to why, I have a few thoughts. As it says on the jacket, and perhaps in the mention that led me to search out this book, Woolf spends the entire novel tracing the day of a woman, Mrs. Dalloway, as she spends her time recounting and thinking about the people and things she encounters, as well as shopping and planning for the party she is throwing later that night. 

In comparison, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, also published 100 years ago, and which I recently read and discussed, took place over the course of a few months. But more importantly, at least as it applies to why I moved through that book more easily, there was action. While also some internal thinking that was reflected upon in The Sun..., it was nothing like Woolf's constant stream of thoughts, and almost random connections of the physical world and what popped into the head of the characters she creates.

Whether my preference for a bit more action is a product of being a man, or an American, or a human alive in a world with a 24/7 news cycle and instant gratification, or a combination of all of those, I am not sure. While my own writing is no way similar to Woolf's in terms of her descriptive powers, especially when detailing the environment, everything from the people in it to the world happening all around them, I do tend to have rather long sentences that my grade school English teachers would have scowled at when attempting to diagram them into their parts. (Does anyone else remember that exercise on the blackboard, breaking down a sentence into its parts, noun, verbs, etc?)

As it happens, both Hemingway and Woolf took their own lives, right around the age of 60. Whether that kind of timing is indicative of an age when truly gifted people find it difficult to prolong a life that no longer allows them to be creative, or is a coincidence, I can't say. But what is more typical is that Hemingway chose a more violent mode to end his life (gunshot) while Woolf chose a more passive vehicle, drowning. 

One thing I did notice as I read Mrs Dalloway was that I felt more engaged when she focused on some of the past relationships between the characters, especially the scenes involving Clarissa Dalloway and Peter Walsh, as well as those reflecting on the interactions between Sally Seton and Clarissa. For me, those interplays were at the heart of how all three people's lives developed over the years and came to be in the present time, when Mrs Dalloway takes place.

Another reason for my lack of enthusiasm for Mrs. Dalloway is that there is no real conclusion at the end of the book. Of course, the plot of the story isn't such that it leads to a conclusion, being a day of observation and reflection. Clarissa spends a lot of time in her head, justifying why she rejected the love of Peter Walsh, Peter spends a lot of time wondering why she did that, and why he still cares, but neither seems to come to any conclusions as to why they still think about it. Perhaps that is the point, or perhaps I have missed something in the meaning of the book. One thing is for sure, if I had been assigned it in high school, I would have liked it even less. At least now I can appreciate some of its themes through the lens of my own 60 plus years of life.

Finally, maybe the resignation as exhibited by Clarissa and Peter, reflects the shared experience of those who lived during World War 1. I know his WW1 experiences altered Hemingway's life and outlook, although he reacted through hedonism as opposed to seeking  normalization, or at what society calls normal, which Clarissa, Peter and Sally successfully find, if boring and less than rewarding. 

While I can't say it was my favorite book of the year, perhaps even one of my least favorites, I did enjoy the way Woolf incorporated those characters' past into the present. It reminded me of my recent mission to contact my friends of yore, but also about how so true it is that we can't go home again, at least when it comes to friends from decades ago.

Where Mrs Dalloway was serious and somber, Grant's Mailman... was light and featured a number of comical recollections. The author, a very successful ad man, found himself unemployed and without health insurance in his fifties, during the pandemic. He decides to apply for, then accept a job working for the United States Postal Service delivering mail in his hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, a place he had escaped from a number of decades prior.

During the pandemic, my experience, as well as my wife's was not typical. Nora was working as a floating pharmacy tech at a few local assisted living facilities. Once they suspended the techs from traveling to those places, she was reassigned to work in the warehouse picking the prescriptions that were sent to the clients of her company. In other words, she worked right through the lock down.

I was employed by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) as a general manage of one of the stores. We were given off, for a month with pay, then brought back to pick orders as part of their curbside delivery experiment, which morphed into a direct to home shipment process. Again, except for that one month, I worked through the pandemic. 

And so, fortunately, we did not experience a loss of employment or a change in income.

For Grant, who is laid off his very well paying job with only a few months health insurance coverage as part of his severance package, his entire life is upended overnight. That is the sort of desperation he was experiencing when he took a blue collar job with a government agency at the very time when so many blue collar workers were being forced to work/be exposed to COVID, and when the government was not considered a trustworthy entity.

Add to that the fact that he would be delivering mail in areas that were already isolated in a number of ways, and one can imagine the culture shock that awaited him.

The book was delightful, a word I am pretty sure I have never used in describing a book I have read. But also insightful, not just about Grant as he navigates the incredibly difficult job of rural mail carrier, but as he rekindles his relationships with people, real people in the real world so unlike that which he had lived in as a consultant, but also with his family, especially his daughters whom actually work with him for a short time delivering the mail.

I was fortunate enough to have a similar experience as a child, and young adult, working with my father as he delivered knives in the various restaurants, delis, butcher shops and convenience stores in Philadelphia, an experience which I used in a story which I wrote in college.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-dad.html 

Even though Grant did not deliver the mail all that long as he was able to acquire a job which allowed him to return to his "old" life as a white collar worker making a six figure income, he reflects fondly on the lessons, and experiences of that brief time, admitting that while economically difficult, they had exhausted their emergency funds by the end of his time with the USPS, he was proud of the work he did, and glad for the people he encountered and the hard working postal employees he met.

He realized an appreciation for the people who actually do the work in this country as opposed to what he did, well paid as it was, which did little to help others.

Interestingly, I just borrowed Bull Shit Jobs by David Graeber from the library, a book which discusses the idea that far too many jobs are worthless, do not really help anyone or produce anything meaningful while the jobs that really matter, jobs like postal workers, hair dressers, child care workers, teachers, policemen, etc, are valued far less than they should be. I will let you know my thoughts when I am done.

While I retired from the PLCB over four years ago, I have been working for a local grocery store (yes, we sell groceries), for the last three years. I work three days a week, on shipment days. We break down the skids onto U-boats, those funny looking carts with a U handle on each end and a metal flatbed about a foot above the ground, separating the product by aisle, such as pet products, paper products, laundry products, baking items, etc, then "pack out" the shelves (grocery store jargon) with the goods. 

It provides exercise, walking and lifting, some interesting interactions with customers, especially requests to reach things on the top shelf, our clientele being on the short side, and even some job satisfaction when I help people find something they need, or after a good day of filling shelves so they are neat and organized.

In this way, and also in that eighteen months when I delivered newspapers before most people woke up, I can understand Grant's realization about who does the real work in America. While I must say that I was a bit disappointed to read that he goes back to his former life, the money being the biggest factor, he at least went back with a better feeling for his neighbors, their problems, and what is most important in life.

A similar lesson as was presented in the movie Good Fortune, which I reviewed a few posts ago.

Perhaps in just that small way, Mrs. Dalloway and Mailman... were similar in that the people coming in and out of the lives of Clarissa Dalloway and Stephen Starring Grant, even though one was fictional and the other real life, still detailed the inner thoughts of everyday people. 

I am fortunate that I could leave my job tomorrow and it wouldn't dramatically effect our lives, economically speaking. But so many of the people I work with, my job being in the retail sector, are not so lucky. They work hard, as do the vast majority of blue collar workers, but are generally underpaid, especially when we read of the salaries that those who own large retail businesses earn, often hundreds of times more than the very people who do the actual work.

It is similar to the appalling treatment that federal workers are receiving from the current administration. For the first few months, there were daily proclamations from Musk and Vought and Trump about the bloated federal work force. Literally thousands of federal workers were threatened, belittled, bribed into retirement, or worse, were labelled as DEI hires which meant that they weren't qualified to be employed in the first place, and would be eliminated.

Not to mention the white collar workers, DOJ lawyers, FBI officers, various middle management staff, who were told that they weren't loyal enough to the president, the Constitution and the taxpayers who funded them, be damned.

Now, six months later, the DOJ is having a hard time finding qualified lawyers, the various scientific arms of the government are struggling to find qualified scientists and researchers, and, most glaringly, the FAA is hundreds of air traffic controllers short of the level of staffing needed to monitor our skies.

When one's employer fires people for no good reason, or alters the qualification standards to include sycophants first, competence second, or just blatantly tells you that you suck at your job, it should be expected that people will quit, or retire, as soon as viable. But more importantly, word gets out that the employer not only tolerates, but has created a hostile work environment, so the pool of replacements suffers. 

So, when I see Sean Duffy complaining that dozens of air traffic controllers are retiring every day at four and five times the normal rate, or when sick outs increase because those "essential" workers are not being paid while the House of Representatives, the very body whose job is to fashion and pass a budget, is on a paid vacation for six weeks, it should come as no surprise. In fact, rather than empathizing with those workers the president tweets in all caps that he might dock the pay of anyone who calls out even while threatening to not approve their back pay.  Can you say asshole!

I've said it before, and I will say it again. The American worker, those doing the real work driving buses, taking care of our children, tending to our sick (nurses, not as much doctors), and elderly, standing behind counters in retail environments, cooking our take out orders, delivering our mail, need to organize. Or perhaps strike.

At the least, take a day or two off. Demand not just respect, but livable wages. And a more equitable share of the vast amount of money that is created by your hard work.  

If only... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Election 2025

Before diving into my analysis of this past week's elections, I read my post election discussion from last November. Here is a link

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2024/11/election-aftermath.html 

A few of the points I made in that post stuck out as I read it. First, I reminded my readers that Harris lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a total of 250,000 votes. Out of the 150 million or so that were cast that is less than 1/2 of 1% of the votes cast. My point was that Harris wins the electoral college if those 250,000 Americans vote for her instead of Trump, regardless of whether she still loses the popular vote. That fact reminds me of the lie that Trump and his acolytes continue to tell about the 2024 election being some kind of mandate.

Another point I made regarding the possibility of a Democratic recovery had to do with how Trump governed, specifically in those critical areas of costs and immigration. 

I had created two posts meant to provide the new president with advice, both along the lines of Take the Win. What I meant was that as inflation continued to come under better control, as it had been the last year of Biden's presidency, take credit for it. Sadly, he decided to institute his crazy tariff obsession which has stalled progress on reducing inflation, is even causing an uptick. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Fed would have lowered interest rates sooner, and perhaps more often by now, if not for Trump's tariffs. The blame for that delay lies squarely at his feet.

As for immigration, the flow of illegals has practically ceased, but rather than stopping at the border, he has unleashed his own form of gestapo police in ICE clothing, masked, to boot. Here are links to those two posts. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/01/dear-president-trump-take-win.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/05/take-win-2.html 

Which brings us to the recent elections. While I agree on two fronts with the president, that the government shutdown and the fact that he was not on the ballot are two factors which lead to the beat down for the GOP, it is also certainly true that the victories by the various Democratic candidates were also a repudiation of the administration's policies, specifically the tariffs that are harming small businesses as well as everyday consumers, and the daily stories of ICE agents snatching undocumented people off the streets of America, some right in front of their kids as they are dropped at school, some at the actual immigration hearings where they are following the rules by appearing, and some at their places of work. 

Clearly, those people are not the worst of the worst. As I said in one of my posts above, showing ICE agents accompanying illegal immigrants from American jails directly onto deportation planes would have been a win. What is happening now, especially in conjunction with sending the National Guard, or actual soldiers into American cities, completely eliminates any credit he could have gained from sticking with his worst of the worst campaign rhetoric. And exposes the lie of that claim, as it is clear that there aren't millions of undocumented people committing crimes in America. Just a large quantity of people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families who violated the law by taking a shortcut into our country.

One might even speculate that providing a pathway to citizenship for anyone who has been in our country for four, six, ten or more years while emphasizing that anyone who enters illegally from now on will not be provided such a pathway, could have been a part of Take the Win.

But no, the reality is that Trump's true motivation is bigotry, pure and simple, and cruelty to send a message that "those" people should not come to our pristine (can you say white) shores.

Had Trump followed my advice, had chosen to Take the Win, his party would not have performed so badly. 

Further, if I am JD Vance or Marco Rubio, and think that they will automatically inherit the MAGA vote in 2028, I might think again. With Trump not on the ballot for that election, what makes them think they will do any better than those representing the GOP banner did this past week?

Now, of course, there is a whole year until the midterms in 2026, let alone the three years until the next presidential election. So much can and will happen in the meantime.

I expect a market down turn, not just because Trump's tariff policies are upsetting the economy, here and abroad, but because the AI driven market surge is due to peter out. In other words, we are in a bubble that will eventually burst. The only question is by how much and for how long. Should there be a 10-15% drop early in 2026, a drop that is not recovered until mid to late summer, the DEMS will certainly win back the House, and close that gap in the Senate. If the president thinks it tough to get his agenda passed now, it will get all the more difficult then. 

The real concern the White House and the GOP should feel is that the very demographics which helped them win in 2024, Latinos, young people, especially young men, and Blacks, switched sides this past week, by many percentage points. Should the economy continue to favor the rich, should unemployment push closer to 5%, should young people and minorities continue to find "affordability" to be a problem, whether the president acknowledges it or not, the 2026 midterm may look like the 2018 midterms when the Democrats regained the House by gaining 41 seats. Since, as of now, they only need 3, it is a fair bet that they will gain those seats. That if why Trump has ordered various red states, led by Texas, to redraw their maps to potentially create more GOP seats.

It is also why he is pushing Senate Republicans to nix the filibuster so he can push as much of his agenda in the next year as possible. While many seasoned GOP Senators know the folly of such an act, know that when they are in the minority they will lose any leverage they might have to slow a Democratic agenda from being fulfilled, Trump does not care about anything other than his perceived legacy. What happens to the legislative process, or to the country for that matter, is not a concern for a narcissist like Trump, only what he can do, NOW.

What is truly amazing is that day after day, the White House brags about how much money tariffs are bringing into our coffers yet claims there is no money to fund SNAP. As if this administration hasn't been moving money around since day one to reflect its priorities. As we speak, the DOJ is arguing that forcing the government to find the money to help American families buy food, Americans of all political affiliations, would do harm to the government, more harm than children and the elderly and the disabled and veterans would feel by having to skip meals. I would call it evil, except that, as I have stated many times, cruelty is the point. And to emphasize that point, with all caps and an exclamation point. Trump brags about his $300 million ballroom, and holds a party the night before SNAP benefits are to expires for all his rich friends. 

The good news, perhaps, is that the electorate is beginning to wake up, as this past week's elections seem to indicate. I am still hesitant to declare this the beginning of the end of the effectiveness of Trump's barrage of lies, as the WalMart Thanksgiving basket demonstrates. 

If you missed that particular prevarication, someone from WalMart, I assume, perhaps one of the owners who earns tens of million of dollars a year by underpaying their employees while forcing their vendors to operate with minuscule margins, told the president that the "basket" of items to create a Thanksgiving dinner cost 25% less than last year. The truth, of course, is that the basket from 2024 included many more items than this year's and that some of the items from last year were replaced with store brand items, not name brands. But, as has been famously said by many people before me, Americans aren't interested in details, so the story was presented on Truth Social, and in Fox outlets all around the country. 

Of course, I doubt that Trump has shopped for groceries in this century, but even some people who do their own shopping continue to believe these kind of lies, despite what the receipts from their own shopping trips tell them.

Please, Mr President, Take the Win.

Return the tariffs to pre-April numbers, then let people trained to negotiate complex trade deals work with our trading partners to correct the situations that need addressing.

Put your pardon pen aside, and stop sending the message that white collar crime is just all right with you.

Focus ICE on transferring illegal alien criminals from our jails to save local and state municipalities money, and transfer the real worst of the worst to their country of origin, even if you have to pay those countries to house them, as that rate will certainly be less than the cost here.

If you don't want to grant a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers or people who have been here for eight or ten years without breaking any laws, then at least let them be. Perhaps the next president will have a heart that doesn't need a microscope to detect.

Favor the fossil fuel industry, we know you love them, but leave the green energy systems and projects and incentives that are lowering the cost of energy by reducing the demand side of the supply-demand dynamic that controls the cost of all products alone.

Finally, golf.

Golf at your own courses, even if it costs the American taxpayers money, paid to your businesses, to provide security. Golf at your other favorite courses as well. Golf oversees. Golf in Greenland, Canada, Panama and at all those great courses that the Saudis have in their countries. I am willing to pay my taxes for you to break every record there is about rounds golfed by a president in four years. 

Just stop governing, we all know you don't like it, and Take the Win.  

   

 

The Tush Push, and Tariffs

That I am a Philadelphia Eagles fan is no surprise to my friends, and perhaps those who routinely read my blog. So the controversy surrounding the Tush Push should be familiar.

But for those who are not football fans, the Tush Push could be construed to be some type of reference to gay sex. As to whether there is a bit of latent homosexuality embedded in a sport like football, with all the references, the gang tackling, the piles of men upon men during many plays, that is a different topic for another day.

The Tush Push I am referencing, concerns a play being successfully used by the Eagles to gain a yard or two, especially on third and fourth down, in which the offensive line is arranged very close together, and low, the quarterback leans in even more closer to the center than usual, and one or two other players stand close behind the quarterback. At the signal to hike the ball, all the offensive linemen plow forward and down, the quarterback propels himself in an almost perpendicular line behind them, while the two players behind him push forward, often by applying thrust to his behind. The Tush Push.

Suffice it to say, it is very successful, so much so that the owners of the teams voted this past off season to outlaw it. Fortunately, for the Eagles, the effort fell two votes short and did not pass, providing us with another year of people complaining about the play.

Anyone who has watched football over the years, knows that a quarterback running or diving straight ahead behind his line has been a staple for decades. All teams have used it, most still do. So, one can say that the Eagles version is just that, a version of the quarterback sneak.

What is different however, is that the Eagles have Jalen Hurst behind center, a man who has the leg strength unlike any quarterback who has come before him. His weight lifting prowess, especially lifts which rely on strong legs, is legendary. That is why other teams struggle to imitate the play as the Eagles execute it.

All that being said, it is also true that the NFL is a reactive sport, in that when something is successful, especially on the offensive side of the ball, the specialists who coordinate the defensive side of the sport, are generally quick to react, quick to find a counter. We saw that with the RPO, run-pass option play, that, while still being used by some teams, was initially unstoppable. 

It amuses me to think that the play needs to be outlawed, that some defensive strategist will not come up with a solution that will be quickly copied by everyone else, although I would bet that next year the rules will be changed to counter its success, perhaps as simple as making it a penalty for an offensive player to push the quarterback from behind at the time of the snap of the ball.

Regardless, as this season progresses, the Eagles would be foolish not to begin developing plays which look like a tush push, but become something different. We saw that earlier in the year when Hurts stepped back and executed an underhand toss to our star running back who went around the left side, untouched, into the end zone. In other words, we need to be both ready for next year's rule changes, and begin to fool defenses this year as they continue to try new ways to stop the play. 

In addition to pulling out and running a run play to the outside, perhaps a quick pass play to a receiver who breaks out of the mass of humanity before a defensive player can react. 

Or simply, line up everyone in a tush push formation, then quickly spread out the formation as if you are going to run a standard play, only to have the QB return right behind the center at the last instant to execute a traditional quarterback sneak.

In other words, the Eagles need to adapt now, to avoid the eventual formation contrived by some defensive coordinator which stops the play, or the owners change the rules making the play, as it exists, illegal.

So, what does the Tush Push have to do with tariffs?

If you follow the news, you may be aware that last week a TV ad was run by the Ontario government which featured the words of Ronald Reagan trashing the idea of using tariffs. Immediately, our thin skinned president called it fake news and announced a 10% increase in tariffs on Canada. You know, a purely economic decision.

Now, as is the case of practically every advertisement you might see on TV, whether for toothpaste or cars or beverages, there is some truth to the words you hear, some exaggeration, some lies by omission, and some outright non-truths.

In this case, it is true that Reagan said all the words featured on the ad in a radio address he did in 1987. He did not believe in using tariffs in the long run to address economic disparities between countries, in general. However, he said those words during a speech in which he was defending the application of tariffs on Japan to counter their exporting low cost automobiles into America. He defended that action as a way to give American car companies the time to reduce their own prices, and/or make their cars more attractive if even slightly more expensive. His goal was to temporarily provide them relief, not give them reason to continue to make cars that were too expensive or just not popular. 

Of course, all of this is lost on Trump but that is no surprise as his actions belie so many of Reagan's beliefs, as a conservative, simply because, Trump is no conservative.

I often joke that Bill Clinton was the best republican president of my lifetime. I say this because of a number of laws that were passed during his two terms, but none demonstrate it more that NAFTA. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect on January 1, 1994, was a pact between the United States, Canada and Mexico, and was an extension of the agreement between the US and Canada which was negotiated by Reagan and signed in 1988. 

NAFTA was an extremely bipartisan bill. It received 234 votes in the House, 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. In the Senate it was 61-38, with 34 GOP and 27 votes for its passage. You could even say it was more popular with Republicans than Democrats, even though there was a Democrat in the White House, although, as I said earlier in this post, a president from the Democratic party with Republican leanings. 

Has there been such a vote, with such agreement (and disagreement as there was a similar breakdown between the parties in who voted no) in history? Certainly, in today's world where bipartisan is defined as two or three, perhaps even as many as half a dozen defections from one party to support a bill authored by the other party, something with that dynamic could not occur. 

You see, for all of my life, free trade has been a foundational tenet of the conservative mindset, and therefore the GOP. That is why I say that Trump is no conservative, at least not on that subject, as he has enacted tariffs against virtually all of the world, or at least all of the countries that actively trade with America.

What boggles my mind is that it was corporations that took advantage of trade pacts like NAFTA, or Trump's version called USMCA, by sending jobs offshore to countries with lower standards of living, lax environmental rules, and little to no worker protections. In fact, as I have stated before, so often this offshoring of jobs was defended by conservatives who claimed that consumer prices in America stayed low while workers in those poorer nations were able to earn better wages by working to make products for America. 

Both of which are true. It is undeniable that the standard of living has increased in many Asian countries due to American companies manufacturing products there and clearly cheap products are being purchased in America at an incredible rate. Can you say WalMart?

Still, there is a long term price for such short term thinking, and so Trump is correct when he says we should make more things in America, but wrong when he blames other countries, and then enacts tariffs to punish them for "robbing" us. We may have been robbed, but it was by the large corporations that sent the jobs overseas, not the countries who allowed them to provide jobs to their workers. In fact, one could even say that by allowing American companies to provide these jobs, they were merely following a Make (fill in the country) Great again. They didn't care about Americans losing their jobs, only that their workers were employed. Vietnam First, one might say.

And, of course, the corporations didn't care either because that business model was profitable, very profitable. 

However, and this is the link to the Tush Push, countries, like defensive coordinators, adapt. If a tariff is punishing an industry in their country, they counter with their own tariffs. Or find another source for their products. That is the essence of what Reagan was saying in that radio speech. That, in the long run, tariffs are bad for the global economy in that it creates reasons for even more tariffs, which keep the cycle going. A cycle that results in higher prices for everyone.

Sadly, Trump is not capable of adapting. He is the tariff president, proudly proclaims so, and will not back down. He may resort to signing as executive order to counter the negative consequences of his actions, but will never admit that his policies are wrong. 

My fear is that the world is starting to learn how to interact with Trump, how to outmaneuver him as they stroke his ego with platitudes and concessions that were in their benefit to begin with. Trump starts a trade war, other countries react, then negotiate with him to return to the status quo while he pretends that he accomplished something. He is like the arsonist who sets a fire then takes credit when he puts it out. 

A good example of that is the controversy surrounding soybean purchases from US farmers by China. In the announcement from the White House, the administration reported that China would be purchasing 12 million metric tons of soybeans for the remainder of 2025 while praising Trump's use of tariff threats to solve this crisis for the farmers who were afraid that their soybean crop would rot in the fields and silos. 

Unfortunately, even with this big purchase, this year China will only have purchased a little over 18 million metric tons of soybeans, well short of the 28 million metric tons which has been averaged the last five years, and will mark the lowest amount of soybean purchases since 2018. 

And why did China cease its purchases? As a reaction to Trump's tariff war! 

So, at least for the soybean farmers, things are worse. As to whether there might be gains in some other areas, such as rare earth metal sales, it remains to be seen how things will wind up. The problem however, as Reagan stated, is that our trading partner reacted to the unilateral application of tariffs, in this case, hurting American soybean farmers. As the negotiations continue, I expect there will be compromises and concessions on both sides. That is the point of talking. 

Sadly, Trump believes more in manipulation, coercion, threats, and bullying as opposed to discussion. While this has worked for him in his interactions with the Republican party, it will be less successful on the world stage, perhaps even counterproductive with China where their leader answers to no one, can even choose to hurt a part of his population to make an international point. There are not meaningful elections in China for Xi to worry about.

Their are other suppliers of soybeans, other trading partners that large economies like the EU and China can engage with to sell and buy their products. 

Like the tush push, other plays that can be used to win the game. The question is, how long will the American electorate continue to believe the dual lies, that Trump is a great businessman, and that he cares about addressing the economic problems that face our country, problems that require real solutions based on actual concepts that go beyond, do-what-I say-or-else, or worse, I-know-more-about-everything-than-anyone.

I have posted with the title of economics a few times. Here are links to two of them, written in 2019. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-womans-worth.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2019/04/debt-as-weapon.html