Author: haroldblackphd

More seemingly random thoughts

There was this blackout in Spain and Portugal but I could find no mention of what caused it as millions of people plunged into darkness and paralyzed life on the Iberian peninsula. Why? Was it “renewables”? Naturally the authorities denied it and simply said that they did not know what caused the blackout. If that is the case then those authorities need to be fired. There was also a story about blackouts in Germany because the wind did not blow for a week.

I am surprised that the term “blackouts” has survived the woke dictionary revisions.

The Wall Street Journal continues its leftward migration in the headline on April 29 that read “President escalates his fight to deport migrants” Gee I thought he was trying to deport illegals. Anyway, isn’t “migrants” defined as those coming across borders for employment and education and likely will return home? Do the “migrants” in the Wall Street Journal article fit this definition? If so there would be little need for the president to deport them since they would self deport.

Mike Waltz is out as national security advisor and sent into purgatory as US Ambassador to the UN. Waltz, the good soldier that he is, graciously accepted the demotion. I am still waiting on Hegseth to be fired for sharing details of the Signal chat and including his brother and wife on it. Maybe Trump can make him ambassador to Ukraine.

The economy had “negative growth” during the first quarter falling by 0.3%. Naturally the president blamed Biden. “This is Biden. And you could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden because it doesn’t just happen on a daily or an hourly basis.” Wow. Blaming Biden for next quarter too doesn’t portend well for the economy, does it? As to the stock market tanking and having about the worst 100 days of any president, it was apparently Biden’s fault too. “The stock market in this case is, it says how bad the situation we inherited. This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s. I didn’t take over until January 20^th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang. This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!” 

Sorry Mr. President, but man up. It is your economy now. If you had stuck with the domestic agenda and had just targeted China instead of our allies, the economy would be booming. I hope you understand that your universal so-called “reciprocal” tariffs will bring the democrats back into power much like what happened in Canada. As American consumers, who in large part rejected Biden because of inflation, find that prices are going up even more, republicans will suffer in the midterms. Why isn’t this obvious? So take off all the punitive tariffs on our allies and make it truly reciprocal with no universal base. Stop this Canada as the 51^st state nonsense and get rid of those Harvard PhDs, Peter Navarro and Stephen Miran, with their truly bizarre notions about economics.

Do you have music intersections with your children? My daughter and I intersect on some vocalists like Sade. But she doesn’t listen to other stuff I like and I don’t care for what else she likes. My son and I intersect on some jazz but not on much else. I think he still listens to hip-hop but has few intersections with his son. Of course I have no intersections with my grandchildren. I wonder if my grandson and his son have any intersections. 

I am an empiricist. If you can show me that CRT has raised the reading and math proficiency of black kids, then I will wholeheartedly endorse it.

If you can show me how DEI has improved the economic wellbeing of blacks I will embrace it as well. The reason that so many universities went all in for DEI is because it allowed them to expand the bureaucracy by hiring legions of administrators adding to the power of presidents and chancellors. Show me if this increased the performance of black and Hispanic students. Did it?

The DEI surge also led to the establishment and proliferation of departments with limited value. Departments such as gender studies, women’s studies, sexuality studies and black studies. These should have been incorporated within departments such as sociology and political science. That they were not is telling. If the research in the new fields did not rise to the level of the “research” in sociology, political “science” and the rest, then perhaps they should not have been formed at all. But apparently the white leftists who rule the departments in liberal arts did not want to expand their faculties to take in even more liberal leftist “scholars” – most of them minorities – of the far left subjects. Even more telling is that the research of these scholars would not likely be publishable in the mainline journals in sociology and political science making promotion and tenure problematic at best. By shunting them off to their own departments the traditional ones leaves their departments mostly white and could avoids the embarrassment of having to fire minority junior faculty for failing to publish in their field’s leading journals.

Trump saves the Canadian Liberals while throwing stones!

Canada just gave Trump the finger. Before his tariffs the Canadian liberals were on the run. A sluggish economy and the boorish tactics of Justin Trudeau had propelled the conservatives into a 25 point lead in the polls. Then came the president with his tariffs threatening to force Canada into becoming the 51^st state and Elon Musk tweeting that Canada was not a real country. Trump in his usual hyperbole said that “Without us, Canada cannot make it. Canada relies on us 95%. We rely on it 4%.” Of course the truth is a bit different. We are Canada’s largest trading partner but US trade accounts for only 19 percent of Canadian GDP.

Trudeau resigns, the conservatives are ascendant and then voila! Trump declares war against Canada. All of a sudden the Liberals were up by two points as their new leader Mark Carney made Trump the focus of his campaign. Never mind the slow growing economy. Never mind the dire economics and budget excesses of Liberal governments past and present, Trump not the economy became the issue. Although the conservatives tried their best to pivot from attacking the failures of the liberals to attacking the president, they lost. Now instead of reform, Carney will double down on the failed liberal agenda. He is Al Gore with a Canadian accent. Despite the mineral and oil riches of the country, Carney is a green zealot and probably will be forced to making appropriate clucking noises toward more pipelines and utilization of resources. Carney is a smart man, having been head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. If he is really smart then he needs to expand pipelines and export terminals for gas and oil and cultivate trade deals with China, India and Japan. But I doubt that he will shed his green skin.

However, if he doesn’t change the downward slide of the Canadian economy, he won’t be prime minister for long. What will be interesting to watch will be his attempts to decouple the Canadian economy from the American one. We are by far the Canadians biggest trading partner but they are ours as well. Look to Canada to attempt to negotiate free trade agreements with the rest of the world and even snuggle closer to China. Trump is forcing this upon Canada and the Canadians at least for the moment seem willing to suffer more economically in order to assert their national pride. Carney probably sent Trump a thank you note.

I wonder if Trump was surprised to find that Canadians are a people with a backbone and national pride? I believe that only they and the Chinese have countered Trump’s tariffs with tariffs of their own on American goods. Sixty percent of Canadians have canceled American vacations. Many are selling their American vacation homes. Eighty percent are boycotting American products and turning hostile toward their neighbors to the south. Ninety percent reject the ridiculous idea of an American statehood. Seventy percent consider America as the enemy. Only Trump could transform our closest friend into our closest enemy. I guess my Canadian bear hunting days are over. 

Throwing Stones. Et tu Donald?

The other day White House press secretary, on the one hand, Karoline Leavitt blasted the Biden Administration for its lack of transparency, “I can tell you there was certainly a lack of transparency from the former president, from the entire former administration.” Well those in glass houses should not throw stones, especially if the glass house is the White House. Then Leavitt excoriated Amazon over its decision to show the costs that Trump’s tariffs add to consumer purchases on its website calling it a hostile and political act. Huh? Had she no shame for telling the world that Trump’s White House also is less than transparent? 

Why is this different from separating the sales tax from the merchandise price on a receipt? For years, gas pumps broke down the cost of the gas showing how much went to federal and state taxes. Wasn’t Amazon just trying to show the consumer that the seller is not responsible for the increase in prices? If Trump’s tariffs stay in place, the American consumer will see a rise in prices. Is Trump going to blame “greedy” corporations? Is he going to blame the Fed? Is he going to blame Joe Biden? You can bet he will try to shift the blame so naturally he has got to shut down the disclosure from Amazon showing that he is responsible for the price increase. Trump threatened the automobile makers not to raise prices but to eat the increased costs. They may be able to do that for a little while but not so for all the small businesses whose viability will be threatened by the increase in their costs. Again Trump is anti-small business. I hope they all will put a Trump tariff increase on their merchandise and in their advertising. I hope they put it on their sales tickets too. Trump bullied Amazon into backing down. Is this what they mean by “bully pulpit”? But he won’t be able to bully all of businesses to hide the impact of his tariffs on consumer prices.

Eat more chicken?

Did you see the reporting on the Italian study that chicken eaters have a greater chance of dying from gastrointestinal cancers? It says that eating more than 300 grams of chicken per week elevates the risk of cancer. (sorry Chick-fil-A cows). Yet other studies show that saturated fat is higher in red meat than poultry and white meat and studies have shown that red meat increases the risk of heart disease more than white meat. The plant lovers are doing high fives. The Italian study did not reveal how the chicken was prepared. Do the Italians do fried chicken and chicken fingers? I am particularly fond of putting cubed chicken on my pesto pizzas. The study did not account for physical fitness or physical activity or individual diets. But the sample was over 4,000 participants and its difficult to imagine that somehow randomly the chicken eaters were sloths who shunned vegetables and fruits. However, I would be a bit suspicious if I found out that the research was sponsored by PETA.

Somehow I am reminded of the old saw about Colonel Sanders going to heaven and finding out that God is a chicken.

I haven’t eaten red meat – other than that which I kill myself – since 1971. But even before that I didn’t eat veal since I was six when I found out that my grandfather had slaughtered my pet calf – Billy – and its body parts were now in grandmother’s freezer.

I do think that how they raise chickens is beyond shameful and is cruel and inhumane, Also they are injected with hormones and other bad stuff. No wonder the Europeans restrict importing American agriculture. Slaughterhouses are also horrible, My Dad told me that he and his brothers were migrant laborers to make tuition to go to college and sometimes had to work in slaughterhouses. He too said it is best not to see how sausages are made. It’s a miracle that he insisted on meat at every meal (or else it wasn’t food). But Dad did have a history of stomach problems and died from gastrointestinal cancer at age 88. Dad was born in 1913 and his life expectancy was 58 years. He was fond of saying of how every day past 58 was a blessing. When he was told that he had stomach cancer and that because of his previous stomach surgeries that they could not take any more of his stomach, he opted not to have any further medical treatment. His reaction to what the doctors told him was not “why me” but “why not me.” Miss you Dad.

Less chicken but more babies?

All of a sudden there is this interest in the world not producing enough babies. I bet Mathus is shocked. The replacement rate is 2.1 and all developed countries are well below that. The average in the world is 2.24. The US fertility rate is 1.63 which means a shrinking population with all its attendant problems. However, consider that the major cause of the drop in childbirths in the US is not the rise in income, the rise of women in the workforce but rather the decrease in births among teenagers. Birthrates actually increased in 2024 for women 25-44 but decreased for those 15-24. Hispanic and Asian women had increases in fertility rates in 2024 while fertility rates for black women declined 4%—the largest year-over-year decrease. Abortion plays a large part of the black statistics. Black Americans make up 11.7% of people living in the United States but account for 39.5% of all abortions. Forty-three black babies will die by abortion for every 100 live births. Abortions outnumber live births in New York City. Over half of Planned Parenthood’s 2 million clients are black women. Margaret Sanger would be proud.

Most of the fertility rates above replacement are in the Middle East and Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa. But those rates are falling too and are below those in Europe in the last century. Asian rates are the lowest with Japan at 1.23, China at 1.02 and South Korea at 0.74. Some people have pointed to immigration as a solution to the falling population in the US. However, the countries from which most of the immigrants come also have fertility rates below replacement. What can be done? Virtually all efforts worldwide have failed. Elon Musk (who is trying to raise the fertility rate by himself) proposes a $5,000 “baby bonus.” That’s a joke right? Even the Scandinavian countries with their generous welfare have low fertility rates. Norway for example provides free kindergarten and 80 percent of salary for the first 12 months of the baby’s life. Fertility is 1.46. In our country, we don’t have free kindergarten – I wish we did for working mothers below a certain income level – but we do have a plethora of programs to benefit parents. There is the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid coverage for poorer households. There are also Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, child care subsidies, rental housing assistance, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, school meals, and cash welfare. And these are just at the Federal level. However, as Federal support has increased, the birthrate has decreased.

To date, there have been no successful programs to incentivize women to have more babies. Personally, I think that for a growing number of people worldwide having children is expensive, stressful, time consuming and a pain in the rear. Even those of us who love children I think breathe a sigh of relief when they finally leave the household. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) the requisite number of children are born from artificial insemination, hatched in laboratories and raised by the state in nurseries. Will we come to that given the failure of economic incentives to produce more births? Stay tuned.

Who is boycotting Target now?

Remember the backlash Target got last year for prominently displaying pride merchandise during the designated pride month? The clothing and toys were at the entrance and many customers were appalled. Conservatives called for a boycott. So the company pushed the stuff to the back of some stores and took it out of others announcing that it will sell only pride-themed apparel and home goods in select stores, based on historical sales performance. Nonetheless, the Minneapolis based Target’s website is still replete with pride stuff both for adults and children’s clothing and children’s toys. As a result I closed my Target account and quit shopping there. I guess I was part of the “right-wing” backlash. But Target has always been on left, with pride merchandise and a staunch supporter of DEI. Target said that it is still committed to supporting the LGBTQ community and “most importantly, we want to create a welcoming and supportive environment for our LGBTQIA+ team members, which reflects our culture of care for the over 400,000 people who work at Target.”

Well imagine my surprise when Target announced that it was ending its DEI programs and goals citing an “evolving external landscape.” The company said it was ending its program to help black employees build meaningful careers, improve the experience of black shoppers and to promote black-owned businesses. I was surprised.. I expected it to do like Costco and tell Trump and Robbie Starbucks to pound sand. But no, Target apparently decided that the LBGTQ folk were more important than black people – or so it appears.

The usual suspects were outraged. Al Sharpton called for a boycott. A Georgia pastor of a megachurch led a forty day “fast” of Target – whatever that means – and endorsed a full boycott to end at Easter. Amazingly the public responded with Target suffering declines in foot traffic for 10 consecutive weeks and its stock falling to a four year low.  I don’t know if the pressure on Target will last or will be transitory. I found it interesting that some writers said that Costco was benefiting from the boycott on Target. I would have thought maybe Walmart would benefit having a similar customer base – although it had curtailed its DEI program. But Costco? One would think that their customer base was different from that of Target’s.

If Target is being boycotted by those on the right and now by those on the left, I guess the only ones who continue to shop there are those in the middle. I guess all this puts conservatives in somewhat of a dilemma, Should you go back to shopping at Target since Al Sharpton wants to boycott them or should you stay away so long as they continue to have LGBTQ children’s clothes and LGBTQ themed children’s toys? Maybe I should go to Costco. But I stopped going there when they quit carrying my favorite pimento cheese (now reinstated) because the owner made some disparaging remarks about Black Lives Matter. I like Sam’s better anyway.

Shedeur Sanders and Quinn Ewers, victims of racism?

Much has been said about Shedeur Sanders falling to the fifth round of the NFL draft. Rightly so. But somewhat ignored is Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers not being selected until the seventh round by the Miami Dolphins. Sanders had been touted as a round one pick and to have been the quarterback picked after Miami’s Cam Ward. He wasn’t and being passed over until the fifth round was shocking. Quarterback deficient teams like the Las Vegas Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers passed on him elicited charges of racism. Not drafting Sanders was a revelation. Even Dallas passing (no pun intended) on him when he could have backed up Dax Prescott was a head scratcher.

The reasons given for passing on Sanders were his unprofessional attitude and entitlement demeanor. He knew he was talented and playing the most important position in football. His father is the great Deion Sanders who is a hall of famer and has no shortage of braggadocio and attitude. Must run in the family.

Predictably there were cries of racism by the usual suspects. Jamaal Bowman – who thank goodness is no longer in the congress – opined that race was a factor. “The NFL doesn’t like Shedeur Sanders because he wears gold chains and talks like a rapper. They don’t care that he’s a leader, intelligent, tough and completed 77% of his passes with no o line and no running game,” Huh?. I guess Bowman forgot that Ward was taken number one and is black and that 14 black quarterbacks started at the beginning of the 2024 season. Lastly, Bowman has overlooked all the NFL players who are tattooed to the max and having bad hair days. He is also overlooking the number of black NFL coaches and GMs that passed on Sanders. Is Mike Tomlin a racist? One person tweeted that Sanders was being blackballed, an obvious reference to racism.

At the NFL combine, Sanders was said to be arrogant, unprofessional and not prepared. He seemed entitled. Maybe Bowman and those other who shout racism will reconsider their comments when Donald Trump is on their side calling the NFL stupid for now drafting Sanders early. The president tweeted “What is wrong with NFL owners, are they STUPID? Deion Sanders was a great college football player, and was even greater in the NFL. He’s also a very good coach, streetwise and smart! Therefore, Shedeur, his quarterback son, has PHENOMENAL GENES, and is all set for Greatness. He should be ‘picked’ IMMEDIATELY by a team that wants to WIN. Good luck Shedeur, and say hello to your wonderful father!” How about that sports fans? Jamaal Bowman and Donald Trump agree!

But what about Ewers? He was the number one quarterback coming out of high school in Texas. He landed a big NIL deal and spent his freshman year at the Ohio State University (Go Bucks!) before transferring to Texas. He kept the wunderkind Archie Manning on the bench for two years and led Texas to the college playoffs in their first year in the SEC where they only lost to my Georgia Bulldogs (twice). Go Dawgs!. Ewers was projected to be drafted on Day two but slid all the way down to the seventh round. Why hasn’t this been analyzed to death like Sanders? Was Ewers unprofessional? Did he have attitude? Was he entitled? No Ewers is boringly white with no gold chains, no visible tats, boring haircut and no rapper lingo. Yet teams passed on him and drafted Dillon Gabriel, Jalen Milroe, Tyler Shough and 9 other quarterbacks ahead of him. Tyler who? Looking for excuses, some say that Ewers has trouble reading defenses and is inconsistent. Yet he started for Texas for three years. If those things are true what does it say about Manning? So if Sanders did not get drafted early because he was too black then maybe Ewers didn’t get drafted early because he was too white.

Maybe Ewers slid to the seventh round because he is apparently not very smart. Unlike ex-Georgia QB Carson Beck who transferred to the University of Miami after deciding not to go to the NFL. Beck is making $4.3 million in NIL money at Miami and would have made less in the NFL. The same is true for Ewers who had one year of eligibility left. He had to leave Texas because Manning was no longer going to bide his time on the bench. But if Ewers had transferred – say to Georgia or Tennessee – he would have likely gotten Carson Beck NIL money. Instead he goes to the Dolphins in round 7. Starting salaries in the NFL are slotted and the slot value for the 231^st pick is $4.3 million over four years. Ewers would have gotten that for just one year to stay in college. 

Regardless, both are probably embarrassed and as President Trump intimated, so should the NFL.

Chairman Warsh? Not likely.

The media wants us to believe that former Fed governor Kevin Warsh is Trump’s favorite to replace Jerome Powell. Rumor has it that when the president kept blasting Powell on social media, that Warsh told him to cool down the rhetoric leading Trump to say that he was not going to fire Powell (which would be a royal mess). Warsh suddenly became the focus of the media, giving speeches, being on panels and showing up on talk shows. Many think that when Powell’s term expires on May 25, 2026, Trump will replace him with Warsh. But not so fast my friends. Powell’s term as governor doesn’t end until January 31, 2028. So what happens if Powell does not resign as governor? Then Trump will not be able to select Warsh or anyone not currently a governor unless some other governor quits. Of course, Trump could try to fire Powell after his term as chair expires which would be less contentious  – although he could be reappointed as chair which has zero chance of happening. 

Nonetheless, Warsh would not be a logical fit given the president’s obsession with low interest rates. Warsh was not a fan of the expansive monetary policy in then Fed chair Ben Bernanke’s final year. He also was critical of Bernanke straying outside the Fed’s traditional lane. Bernanke introduced the press conference following the Open Market Committee Meeting – something continued by Janet Yellen and Powell. Previous Fed chairs were more secretive by not giving the public and the markets what amounts to forward guidance. When I was a Nashville Fed director, I recall a meeting in Alan Greenspan’s office. In two frames was a reporting of a testimony on what the Fed was going to do with interest rates. One article said that Greenspan indicated that rates might go down. The other said that Greenspan hinted that rates might go up. Greenspan said it was the perfect testimony. Greenspan also ordered the firing of a regional bank director who told his local newspaper about the deliberations held at one of the policy meetings. I also remember Greenspan telling all us directors and all the reserve bank presidents to never say anything that could move markets. Times have changed with governors and reserve bank presidents opining in the press about the economy and monetary policy. I had also served on the deregulation committee established by the Monetary Control Act of 1980. Paul Volcker was chair and cautioned secrecy. These Fed chairs followed the dictum of “never explain and never apologize.”

One thing a chairman Warsh would do is to stop the Fed’s reliance on current government data. This is too a product of Bernanke. Monetary policy operates with a significant lag of 12-18 months. Current data reflect the impact of actions past. Thus, the market waiting breathlessly to see what the latest figures on unemployment and inflation is of little value in making decisions about monetary policy today. Moreover, those are preliminary data that are being reported. Those data are always revised later and could be quite different from the earlier data. Yet the Fed is acting as though these unreliable early projections are in fact important in decision making. Warsh would stop this nonsense.

A chairman Warsh would return the Fed to its roots. The chair would not be blabbing about the outcomes of the Open Market Committee. Warsh would also be less accommodating to the whims of the congress and importantly to those of the president. Bernanke’s Fed endorsed increased federal spending leading to an increase in the national debt and the resulting inflation that characterized the Biden years. Warsh has said “Each time the Fed jumps into action, the more it expands its size and scope, encroaching further on other macroeconomic domains, encouraging misallocation of capital, increasing the risk of future shocks, and compelling the Fed to act even more aggressively.” Does that sound like someone that would be simpatico with Donald Trump’s obsession to lower interest rates? Not likely and if Warsh were appointed Fed chair and abandoned his principles like so many have before him, the markets would not take seriously anything else he might say.

BTW, Warsh does not need the job. He is married to Jane Lauder, heir to the Estee Lauder fortune.

NIH research funding: vital, wasteful or both?

Over $120 billion research grants at universities are federally funded. Of course the federal government funds all sorts of things at our colleges like research grants, financial aid and student loans. Here are the top ten recipients of federal funds for 2023.

1. Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts

$9 billion.

2. Johns Hopkins University

Baltimore, Maryland

$2.9 billion 

3. University of California, San Diego

San Diego, California

$1.54 billion 

4. University of Washington

Seattle, Washington

$1.52 billion. 

5. University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan

$1.35 billion 

6. Columbia University

New York City, New York

$1.3 billion

7. Stanford University

Stanford, California

$1 billion

8. Yale University

New Haven, Connecticut

$899 million.

9. Duke University

Durham, North Carolina

$863 million

10. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

$800 million

Harvard looks like a misprint. In 2023 NIH awarded $35 billion in grants to more than 300,000 researchers at 2,500 universities. With advent of Donald Trump, NIH has been terminating grants for LGBTQ, public health equity and DEI related research. For example, NIH had awarded grants to “transform culture at NIH-funded extramural institutions” by “building a self-reinforcing community of scientists committed to diversity and inclusive excellence.” A grant proposal from Vanderbilt which received funding explicitly stated the intent to “focus on the cluster hiring of faculty from minoritized racial and ethnic groups, specifically Black, Latinx, American Indian, and Pacific Islander scientists.” Personally, I would reject any proposal that contained the recently invented word “Latinx.”

Naturally, the recipients and their universities are crying foul saying things like “These cuts ignore the needs of our communities and hinder medical advancements that benefit everyone” and “We’re halting lifesaving science.” Others have said that “The discoveries treating cancer and diabetes originated from basic research conducted decades ago.  A sudden funding freeze would force us to halt the recruitment and training of brilliant scientists, abandon purchasing cutting-edge equipment and dramatically curtail our experiments at the threshold of treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and aging. The effect would be to harm millions of Americans awaiting these medical advances.”

Some of this is true and also totally beside the point. Researchers would contend that every penny received is vital to their mission and is spent wisely. But is it? We all have seen examples of funding that is just plain weird. Consider the following

•  NIH provided $533,000 to study the “effects of meditation…from reading Buddhist texts,” $1.5 million to develop a smartphone game to help parents of children with picky-eating habits, $387,000 to provide Swedish massages to rabbits, and $371,000 to study whether moms love dogs or their own children more.
• The National Science Foundation awarded an $856,000 grant to train three mountain lions to use treadmills to study mountain lions’ use of energy while hunting. This follows NSF’s earlier grant to study shrimps’ ability to walk on treadmills.
•  Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, released a 2018 report that honey bees dance more, a move that signals food location—when they’re given cocaine. 

Also in addition to these types of grants, as I have reported before, the integrity of the research has been called into question. A noted researcher has said that “The NIH is fundamentally broken and morally corrupted. Corruption, waste, and fraud are not occasional lapses but systemic failures. The agency must be gutted and reformed if we are to salvage scientific integrity.

One of the most damning indictments against the NIH is the reproducibility crisis. Science is supposed to be built on verifiable, repeatable results, yet the vast majority of research funded by the NIH fails cannot be duplicated. Dr. Isaiah Hankel notes that much of the research produced via NIH grants cannot be reproduced and that only 11 percent of the oncology studies can be replicated. I have noted similar findings throughout much of academic research calling into question recommendations and policies that flow from findings that cannot be corroborated.

However, this is ending with the appointment of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya to head NIH. Dr Bhattacharya testified at his confirmation hearing that NIH funded fraudulent Alzheimer’s research that misled the entire field for years. It seems to me that NIH should mandate that all research proposals have results that can be replicated and that funded research can only be published if results can be duplicated. We know that to say that all the federally funded research is essential and vital is a lie. What we must make certain is that bogus results generated from research are not incorporated into public policy.

BTW I searched for how much in Federal grants was going to UT-Knoxville but found only $12 million while Vanderbilt’s was $77 million. Most of the funding is for medical research rather than in the academic areas.

Mea Culpa. When I wrote that the firing of the two democrat board members at the National Credit Union Administration was a toe in the water by the president to firing Jerome Powell I may have been half right. NCUA board members are on the same regulatory plane as the governors of the Federal Reserve. Therefore, the president firing members of the NCUA board is akin to firing a member of the Fed’s board of governors. However, since NCUA regulates credit unions and not banks, the firings have gone mostly unnoticed outside the credit union industry. Markets were not roiled.  Elizabeth Warren who is the ranking minority on the Senate Banking Committee issued a rather mild and tepid statement, “President Trump just fired two Board Members at the National Credit Union Administration in his continued attack on American consumers. This is the latest attempt by Trump to skirt the rule of law, undermine independent agencies, and illegally purge the government of those who work for the American people.” Ho hum. Contrast this with her statement on the president’s attempt to eliminated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, “President Trump just gutted almost all CFPB staff, so the agency can’t do its job of helping Americans who get scammed by big banks and giant corporations. Dismantling the CFPB in the face of a court order blocking an illegal shutdown is yet another assault on consumers and our democracy by this lawless Administration, and we will fight back with everything we’ve got.” Apparently, the NCUA firings did not merit “fighting back with everything we’ve got.”

President Trump’s actions may have been a test run to firing the governors of the Fed but it still remains a puzzle as to why he was so loudly indicating that he would fire Jay Powell. Yes if he did it would crash markets worldwide, admittedly a bad thing. It would have prompted an immediate test in the courts. But a more simple action would be to fire Powell from his chairmanship of the Fed while leaving him in place as a governor. That way the president could get ride of Powell as chairman and replace him with Fed governor Michelle Bowman. I think it is weird that there is nothing on this in the media. Surely Trump’s people must have thought of this. Right?

But in addition to testing whether a governor can be fired, Trump’s actions may actually be a prelude to merging the banking agencies. Let us assume that he does not replace the NCUA board members. Then the board cannot function for lack of a quorum. Then he could announce his intention to consolidate NCUA and the banking agencies. For instance, all regulatory functions could be merged into the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency – another one of my old agencies. NCUA is the Fed, FDIC and OCC rolled into one. It regulates, insures and charters credit unions. So why do we need three banking agencies to do the same things only one at a time? Strip away all the Fed’s regulatory functions and let it do only monetary policy. Merge those functions and the FDIC into the OCC, which now regulates and charters national banks. However leave NCUA as a standalone agency. Credit unions are fundamentally different from banks. The assets of all the credit unions in the country are less than that of each of the three largest US banks. Yes there are some relatively large credit unions, but in the main credit unions are too small to be regulated as banks. 

What about savings banks? Once they were called savings and loan associations and were regulated by the Office of Thrift Supervision. After the OTS was dissolved in 2010, the responsibilities of regulating the S&Ls were divided among the Fed (S&L holding companies, the OCC (federal savings associations) and the FDIC (state-chartered savings associations). BTW, I was appointed to be one of the four public interest members of the committee mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act to oversee the merger of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) into the FDIC. There are some that will argue that the same can be done with credit unions and although I disagree, that remains a real possibility.

It just seems reasonable to think that if the president is so intent on eliminating duplication within the Federal government, then merger of the bank regulators should be on the table.

Ukraine, Froot Loops, Pete Hegseth, the WHO and Tammy Duckworth

Did Trump’s people seriously think that Zelenskyy would agree to cede Crimea to Russia in order to end the war? If he had, he would have been ousted as Ukrainian president. The proposal did not even call for a withdrawal of the Russian troops occupying Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – probably because Trump’s chief negotiator Steve Witkoff didn’t know their names. I have no idea how this war will end with any outcome other than a stalemate. Kiev is not strong enough to oust Russia from its southern provinces and Russia will only subdue Ukraine with an agonizingly slow bloody slough. Maybe Kiev is hoping that the Russian public will get tired of seeing body bags coming home and legions of wounded and maimed young men in the streets of Moscow (a la Vietnam). Recall that Russia invaded Georgia (no not that Georgia) and Chechnya. The result of the war with Georgia was that the Russians agreed to remove their troops back to where they were before the invasion. The Ukrainians want the same to happen. They want the Russians out of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. They know that they will not be able to oust the Russians from the Crimea but would probably settle for the status quo before the invasion. 

Trump now says he has “no intention” of firing Jerome Powell. Again, I think the markets are now providing the checks and balances to his actions – until the Supreme Court defines the limits of the executive. The markets have rejected the notion of firing the Fed chair. Now if the president only gets the message that they don’t like the tariffs either. To that point the president actually indicated that the 145% tariffs on China will come down saying “It won’t be that high. It will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero.” Did I once say that the president was erratic?

Remember my posting on Fruit Loops? Well the FDA is moving to ban artificial colorings from our food by the end of next year. RFK, Jr has been pushing this for years and his FDA commissioner Dr Marty Makary – who I really like – is Kennedy’s point person and will get it done.

Trump has expressed his displeasure with Commerce Secretary Lutnick over his handling of the tariffs. I have not heard him say anything about the mess at Defense. Secretary Hegseth has fired three of his top aides over leaks. He is still embroiled in the Signal controversy. Now it seems that he is including his wife in confidential meetings. One of his ex-aides has pointed to career staff at Defense as the source of the leaks saying that those people are still in contact with Obama/Biden officials like Susan Rice. Also, Hegseth has replaced field commanders that have in one way or another resisted his leadership, mostly regarding DEI. He has also lost the confidence of some republican leaders. Rep Don Bacon says that he would fire him and that “He should know better than to share operational details of imminent combat strikes on an unclassified application. A second lieutenant would have his career ended over this.” Appointing Hegseth was a headscratcher. He might have to go back to his weekend gig at Fox.

Did you know that the US is withdrawing from the World Health Organization” Here is the notice from the White House:

The United States noticed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2020 due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms, and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.  In addition, the WHO continues to demand unfairly onerous payments from the United States, far out of proportion with other countries’ assessed payments.  China, with a population of 1.4 billion, has 300 percent of the population of the United States, yet contributes nearly 90 percent less to the WHO.  

Although the benefit of the WHO to developing countries is obvious, it was not so obvious what the benefits to the US were. A withdrawal from the World Trade Organization is more obvious given Trump’s embrace of trade restrictions. Anyway, he says that the WTO benefits everyone but the US.

Dick Durbin has announced he is not going to seek re-election. Since he is from Illinois, it is doubtful that his replacement will be any better. Yet Durbin is marginally better than his Illinois colleague, Tammy Duckworth, having actually voted for the confirmation of 5 of Trump’s nominees while Duckworth voted for only one. However, I will cut her some slack. She was born in Thailand and was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot during the Iraq War. She was shot down and lost both her legs. She, however, continued to serve in the Illinois National Guard for another 10 years retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. She has been a staunch critic of Trump and Hegseth’s firing of top military officers saying that the administration is replacing competent veteran leadership with yes-men who declare fealty to the president. She is especially upset that the vast majority of those replaced are women and people of color. Of course, those that were replaced by Trump were cited for implementing Biden’s policies regarding DEI. But weren’t they just carrying out orders? Couldn’t Hegseth simply have ordered them to dismantle all the DEI stuff and replaced them if they didn’t? BTW, Duckworth should know that currently Xi is purging some of his top generals as well. I bet our generals will suffer a much milder fate. Incidentally, Duckworth has two daughters, the second of which was born while she was serving in the senate.

On Donald Trump: I have some good news and some bad news

First the bad news. Stop tweeting! His comments are jarring, immature and those of an egotistical bully. I said the same during his first term and I feel even more strongly now. Of course there are those who will defend whatever the president does, much like those that defended and keep defending Joe Biden. Mind you, I am not anti-Trump. I am anti-Trump, the tweeter. He continues to insult Fed chair, Jerome Powell.

“With Energy Costs way down, food prices (including Biden’s egg disaster!) substantially lower, and most other ‘things’ trending down, there is virtually No Inflation. With these costs trending down so nicely, just what I predicted they would do, there can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW,”

“Powell has always been ‘To Late,’ except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected. How did that work out?”

“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” “I’m not happy with him.”

“Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

These tweets are a bad look and makes one wonder if Trump is losing it. Is he feeling the pressure from the market tanking, the dollar falling and the Treasury bond rates rising as reactions to his tariffs? The last round of insults caused the Dow Jones to fall by 972 points and the dollar hit new lows against the major currencies. Trump is trying to set up Powell as the fall guy if his policies fail. However, he isn’t fooling anyone. He needs to end the threats against Powell and the uncertainty about tariffs. Although Trump favors weakening the dollar, maybe the sharp rise in Treasury yields will cause him to back off his childish tweets. But Powell is not the only one. Remember all the ones about (Crooked) Hillary Clinton and (Sleepy) Joe Biden? In fact the New York Times has compiled a list of 281 people that Trump has insulted so far on social media. Maybe the president thinks that insulting a person enough times will result in a change in behavior. I don’t think he can intimidate Powell. I don’t even know if he has even sat down and had a conversation with him. What he needs to do is have a weekly scheduled meeting with the Fed chair and discuss matters privately rather than loudly on social media.

Now the good news.

This administration has done more in its first one hundred days than most administrations do in eight years. Of course, it was left a mess by the Biden Administration. DEI had infested corporations, universities, the federal government and the US military. Critical race theory is a Marxist doctrine that was teaching our kids to hate each other. I remember what a black high school physics teacher once told me that CRT was being used to cover up the failure of teachers to teach black kids and to blame it on racism. He said “What am I to tell my white students who are struggling?” The Green New Deal which seemed to be a bad joke when it was first introduced by Bernie Sanders and AOC turned out to be Biden’s industrial policy. Bad regulations were enacted and trillions thrown to their green buddies on wasteful, inefficient projects. Natural gas terminals were ordered shuttered. Millions of acres of resource rich lands were closed to exploration. Coal plants were driven out of business. Al Gore got rich. Biden opened the border and let over 10 million illegals flood into the country, many of them totally undesirable. Biden turned a deaf ear to the fentanyl, child trafficking and sexual assaults occurring among the illegals. The government was bloated – is overbloated a word? Government spending was out of control rife with waste and fraud. All of this led to powerful and entrenched special interests in government, academia, and corporate America that was not going to go away quietly. Resist might be the mantra of the leftists on campus but it is the mantra of all those whose wallets and interests are adversely impacted by Trump.

Biden’s foreign policy was a disaster. Trump came in and immediately started negotiating to end the war in Ukraine. He pledged more support to Israel and backed their stated desire to completely wipe away Hamas. He threatened Iran. He bombed the Houthis. He kicked out the South African ambassador and offered the Afrikaner farmers entry and an easy path to American citizenship. However, it seemed that he only picked on the little guys, leaving Russia and China basically threat free despite Russian aggression in Ukraine and Chinese aggression in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan. It appears that he is jettisoning all of sub-Sahara Africa and leaving it to the Chinese. But he has threatened to force Canada to become the 51^st state, invade Panama, Mexico and Greenland. He has even vowed aggressive action if Venezuela invades Guyana. I am surprised he hasn’t brought back the Monroe Doctrine. He has even threatened the foundations of NATO.

Yes there was a lot to do. More, perhaps, than any administration had attempted in the past. I am for most for it. It needed to be done. Of course, the only problem is that Trump’s efforts and those of Elon Musk and DOGE are only temporary. They can and will be overturned by the next democrat administration. The only way to make them permanent is to keep the majority in the House and elect 60 republican senators – of which there is no chance of happening. As a matter of fact, the opposite is more likely if Trump doesn’t stop doing the one thing that will severely damage his administration – tariffs.

Trump is obsessed with tariffs and somehow thinks that our trillion dollar deficit in goods (omitting the surplus in services) constitutes a “national emergency.” His instincts are backed by his economic yes-men, Peter Navarro and Stephen Miran, both of whom have Harvard PhDs – which should give one caution. So Trump announces his tariffs on Mexico and Canada in violation of his own trade agreement from his first term. He then imposes tariffs on aluminum and steel and announces his “reciprocal” tariffs which place tariffs on all countries even those that we have trade surpluses not deficits. The market tanks so he announces a slight reprieve for 90 days. However, the tariffs stay on Mexico and Canada and go to 145% on China. BTW, the tariffs on solar panels made in Southeast Asia are over 3,521 percent (that’s not a misprint).

Now some more bad news.

I am convinced that Trump is anti-small business. Trump discriminated against small firms during covid and now he is doing it with tariffs. His tariffs will drive many small business out of business. It will cause a significant decrease in employment as small businesses fail. A company that imports fake eyelashes has stopped shipments because with the high tariffs, its cost of importing is greater than the price at which it can sell the eyelashes. Maybe they should call Kristi Noem and get her to give them an exemption from Trump much like he gave Apple and the big electronics firms. If there should be an exemption from these tariffs it should be with small firms not the big ones.