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Boasberg vs Trump. Trump vs Massie

Boasberg vs Trump: Round 2

A federal judge threw out Trump’s baseless, vindictive and childish “Justice” Department’s subpoenas against Fed chairman Powell. Trump wants Powell out at the Fed and will go to any depths to make it so. The charge was laughable – that the renovation of the Fed headquarters was $2.5 billion rather than the estimated $1.9 billion. In DC, a cost overrun that small is within budget. Mind you Trump’s own renovation project – blowing up the East Wing to put in his ballroom went from $200 million to $400 million. Is Trump going to subpoena himself?

It was evident that Fox’s Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s US attorney for the District of Columbia really likes her job. Not only did she not have the guts to tell Trump that this dog won’t hunt, she actually blasted the judge for his ruling saying that the judge “has neutered the grand jury’s ability to investigate crime.” She also said “The American public is fed up with public monies that seem to go into a black hole, especially in D.C., where no one is held accountable.” She could have been referring to the president. She then called the ruling “outrageous” and “the antithesis of American justice” and said her office would appeal. Whoa there! This is nonsense and she knows it – or at least I hope she does – and is putting on a show to stay in the president’s good graces. Someone needs to remind her that if she appeals, the senate will not have hearings on Kevin Warsh as the new Fed chairman. North Carolina’s Thom Tillis has said that as long as Powell is being investigated that there will be no hearings. If Judge Jeanine isn’t embarrassed, I am embarrassed for her.

What really makes the case interesting is that the judge was Chief US District judge James Boasberg who may be Trump’s least favorite judge – if that is possible. Pirro called him an “activist judge.” Trump has called him worse. Of course an “activist” judge is now any judge that issues a ruling against Trump’s expansion of executive power. Isn’t an “activist” judge one who rules based on personal and political beliefs rather than the Constitution (re: Sotomayor or Brown Jackson)? Boasberg seems to be operating within the limits of the Constitution – but that is my view and of course I am not a Constitutional lawyer.

Boasberg did speak the truth in his ruling about the harassment of Powell which said in part “The Government has offered no evidence whatsoever that Powell committed any crime other than displeasing the President.” I had speculated that if it went to a grand jury, the charge would have been found baseless. I actually find comfort in knowing that the judge did not let it even waste the government’s money by allowing this joke of an investigation from proceeding. But what I found interesting was that the judge’s opinion was 27 pages when it could have been one paragraph.

Boasberg had incurred the wrath of Trump over the deportation of the hundreds of Venezuelans to an El Salvador maximum security prison despite the order that he had issued hours before they were deported. He ordered them returned. Boasberg ruled that the court had found “probable cause” to move on criminal contempt proceedings against the Trump administration for failing to return the migrants to U.S. soil, citing what he described as the administration’s “willful disregard” of the court. Also recall that Kristi (ex-Border Barbie) did a photo-op at the prison wearing provocative clothing in front of the prisoners photographed behind her. Again if Boasberg is an “activist” judge show me the receipts.

Trump vs Massie

Disclosure: I like Thomas Massie and wish we have more politicians like him in both parties.

Trump’s least favorite US representative is probably not Omar but Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, the sole House republican that has the guts to consistently oppose the president on principle. Massie – like Kentucky’s Rand Paul – is a libertarian and seldom strays from those basic tenets. He clashes with the president who is certainly no libertarian or economic conservative. Massie consistently opposes wasteful government spending and executive overreach. He is also against Trump’s incursion into Iran without consulting the congress. Trump wants him gone. The Trump-linked MAGA-KY PAC has spent over $3.6 million in negative ads to get him ousted. Trump even went to Massie’s district to campaign with Massie’s primary opponent Ed Gallrein. Predictably Trump did not mince his words, “Thomas Massie is a disaster for our party,” Trump said. “We got to get rid of this loser, this guy is bad. He’s disloyal to the Republican Party, he’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America, and he’s got to be voted out of the office as soon as possible.” Typical Trump verbiage. 

Trump is always mad at Massie, lately for his role in forcing the “Justice” Department to release the Epstein files. Massie co-sponsored the bill with California’s Ro Khanna that passed in the House to release the files. Trump agreed to release the files after figuring out that it was likely that the bill would also pass the Senate. Massie has easily defeated challengers before, winning his district by 75% of the votes. Massie is agrarian and a farmer in his part of rural Kentucky. He doesn’t identify with his constituents because he is one of them. He always explains that he is doing and why it is right even if it goes against the president. As one of his supporters says “He’s got that trust with people. We know that he doesn’t always go with the party, but he usually has a good reason.”

On a personal note, I admire Massie for his courage of convictions. He is one of the few politicians that is refreshingly open and honest. I believe him when he says “My dream is not to be a politician. My dream, I’m living it here on my farm already and that is marrying my high school sweetheart, building our small castle with our own resources on top of a hill. This is actually the farm my wife grew up on. And to be raising a family here and teaching them values

like self-sufficiency, that’s my dream.” How can you not like this guy?

Repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Act

The Fed’s Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow and will not change its Fed funds target rate. Since Stephen Miran is no longer visiting the Board and has gone back to his day job at the Council of Economic Advisors, the vote to hold should be unanimous. At the meeting the dual mandate of full employment versus price stability will be front and center. Of course the president will want a rate cut as the economy is sputtering. But inflation is growing.

Job growth is turning out to be an oxymoron with jobs actually shrinking, so the Fed should lower rates, right? However, inflation is growing putting pressure on the Fed to raise rates. What to do?  It is time to have the Fed ditch its dual mandate of full employment and inflation that was dictated by the Employment Act of 1946.  That act also created the Council of Economic Advisors and the congressional Joint Economic Committee. Congress was unhappy with how the Fed was doing its job and In 1978 Congress passed the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act also known as the Humphrey-Hawkins Act to amend the Employment Act of 1946. Humphrey-Hawkins (yes that Humphrey) specified explicit unemployment and inflation goals. Within five years, unemployment should not exceed 3 percent for people 20 years or older and inflation should be reduced to 3 percent or less. By 1988, the inflation rate should be zero, provided that pursuing this goal would not interfere with the employment goal. 

Obviously, the Fed has failed to reach and maintain the goals dictated by Humphrey-Hawkins. But the Act is still on the books and essentially the suggestions regarding the employment and inflation goals are simply ignored. The Fed now simply chooses which goal is more politically expedient and seeks to implement policy changes to achieve less pressure from the congress and the president unless those pressures are deemed to lead to more economic troubles. That was the case with this first year of the Trump presidency where the lower rates demanded by the president were deemed to be too inflationary.

But isn’t it time to repeal the Act which has turned the Fed into a political animal when it should be concentrating solely on monetary affairs? I favor doing having the Fed only concern itself with inflation. That is the variable that it has some influence over but not employment where at best the Fed can try to lead the horse to water. Paul Ryan – remember him – tried to get Humphrey-Hawkins repealed to concentrate solely on inflation. Mike Pence and Tennessee’s Bob Coker were senators who were working with Ryan for repeal. 

The dual mandate has been responsible for quantitative easing and the enormous buildup in the Fed’s portfolio that has been so disruptive in financial markets. It has made the Fed an even more political animal as it is mucking around in fiscal rather than only monetary policy. Now the chairman and the Fed governors pretend they can be economic saviors able to rescue workers and business from the consequences of failed fiscal and regulatory policies thereby incurring the wrath of irresponsible politicians who blame the Fed for their own political follies. All this led Alan Greenspan to ask the congress to repeal Humphrey-Hawkins.

Nothing was done post Greenspan especially since Ryan, Coker and Pence left the congress. But the dual mandate has probably done more to damage the reputation of the Fed than any since piece of legislation. If I were Fed chair I would simply ignore the employment statistics and concentrate solely on inflation. I would cite Fed independence and that inflation is the most debilitating economic variable rather than unemployment. Seriously, Jay Powell has shown the Fed’s independence in Trump’s attempts to force the it to lower its Fed funds target rate. Isn’t it about time to really assert Fed’s independence for the benefit of the economy by ditching the dual mandate? What will Kevin Warsh do as chairman? As Bob Coker once said “Monetary policy should not be bipolar.”

Arms for Iran. ARMs for mortgages too.

Do we have an exit strategy?

Was it a surprise that the Iranians shut down the Straits of Hormuz? Shouldn’t there have been a strategy implemented on Day One to keep the straits open? Maybe the surprise was that after decapitating the Iranian leadership that the country didn’t fold like a house of cards. However, the Iranians were obviously prepared for war and are willing to wage it. Maybe Trump was convinced that a bombing campaign would quickly subdue the country. Let us assume that he simply didn’t know history. Never has a bombing campaign succeeded to win a war without boots on the ground except perhaps the nukes over Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But prior to that we murdered Japanese civilians by firebombing their cities. Given that their homes were primarily made of wood, the toll was horrific. We killed over 100,000 civilians and left over a million homeless. Curtis LeMay who commanded the US forces stated that if we had lost the war he would have been prosecuted as a war criminal. Yet the Japanese never surrendered until we nuked them and yet there is evidence that what motivated their surrender was the invasion by the Russians in Manchuria.

Although the president never spelled out his objectives, I am sure that nuking the Iranians was off the table. Maybe he thought it was going to be like the earlier raid in June where he would bomb a few sites and declare victory. But not in this instance. The Iranians are pursuing an interesting strategy in not attacking Israel in force but rather the US installations around the Gulf and strategically attacking our installations – but not civilians. Trump wanted the Iranian citizens to “take back their country.” But probably miscalculated. 

It would have been nice to have articulated an exit strategy but lacking that at least a strategy to keep the straits open. The longer the straits are closed then the more pressure on the US to reach an agreement with the Iranian new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei who is even more hardline than his late father. How can the US open the straits? It does not have the ships to escort every ship through the straits. Even if it did it would run the danger of the US ships being hit by missiles and drones. It cannot take out every missile that can hit shipping in the straits. It can’t even prevent the mining of the straits by the Iranians. Although the US navy has attacked Iranian ships and even a submarine, most of the mines are laid by frogmen operating out of small fishing vessels. BTW, The Iranians are shipping their own oil on their tankers through the straits. Why aren’t those tankers stopped by our navy? Again, unless the Iranians run out of missiles and drones (and we bomb all their production facilities) at some point Trump is going to have to declare victory. The problem is that the Iranians are going to insist that to reopen the straits that major concessions are made to them – stop the embargos and lift the sanctions. They will probably insist on restarting their nuclear program but that is a nonstarter. Life got a lot more interesting. Shutting down the Straits of Hormuz is a global economic killer. The Iranians know it. We know it too. Surely Trump knows it. The question is that this looks more and more like a miscalculation and an absence of a viable strategy of keeping the straits open.

Trump’s Karoline (Lying) Leavitt said “The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s desperate and reckless closure of the Strait of Hormuz for decades, and it has been part of the Trump administration’s planning well before Operation Epic Fury was ever launched. The U.S. operation to wipe out Iran’s military capability “is quite literally intended to deprive them of their ability to close the Strait.” Oops! Now Trump is sending more troops to the Gulf including 2,500 marines along with the USS Tripoli amphibious battle group. Please don’t tell me he is going to put boots on the ground. I wish he would just say that the US will always seek to degrade Iran’s capability to build a nuclear weapon, declare victory and leave. Instead it looks as though he is going to dig us deeper and deeper into a hole that will be increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves. I hope not. 

At least Joe Biden is no longer president. Trump, to his credit, has stopped the green nonsense and moved to make the US energy independent. He has ended the stupid embargo on the sale of LNG, issued more drilling permits, opened up previously closed land for drilling. Alaska’s governor is touting pipelines to Japan and South Korea, two countries currently dependent on oil coming through the Straits of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia is now routing oil through its pipelines to the Red Sea. All this will mitigate to some extent the closure of the Straits on energy prices. The major concern with then be “what about fertilizer?”

The return of the adjustable rate mortgage

Mortgage rates have fallen below 6 percent but the rates on adjustable rate mortgages have fallen even faster causing an upsurge in the use of those rates by homeowners. The benefit of an ARM is that if rates fall even more, then the mortgages can be refinanced into a fixed rate mortgage. However, if rates go up then when the mortgage rates adjust, they can cause some financial stress. Theoretically, when the homeowner qualifies for an adjustable rate mortgage then they are supposed to be able to qualify even at the highest projected rate. That is what a prudent lender would do. The problem is that most mortgages are sold either to Fannie Mae or to private investors removing the default risk from the originator after a certain period of time.

One of the threats from the war in Iran is that inflation will go higher – the new data show that food prices went up 3.1 percent last month. Higher inflation means even higher mortgage rates so buyers are tempted to lock in a 7 year adjustable in hopes that the rates seven years from now will be lower. Then they would refinance into a lower fixed rate loan. 

BTW, I know this sounds like a self-promotion but I instituted the first adjustable rate loans while on the board of the National Credit Union Administration. We were faced with inflationary recession and rising interest rates. Credit union loans were all fixed rate so if loans on the books were at low rates while deposit liabilities were having to be paid higher rates, credit unions were in danger of becoming insolvent. So I proposed that we revise the language in our lending regs which read that loans had to be repaid in mostly equal installments to simply remove the words “mostly equal” thereby creating what we called a variable interest rate loan. A week later the savings and loan regulator adopted similar language calling it an adjustable rate loan. So if you get an ARM and rates go up instead of down, it’s my fault.

Ignorance on the school board and “what’s an analog clock?”

Its election time in Tennessee

Its election time and for whatever reason I get a spate of calls from local candidates seeking my support. This time a person running for the school board called me. I told him that I would not support anyone who did not aggressively advocate for Direct Instruction and phonics. He had no clue what I was talking about. I said “How can you run for the school board if you don’t know about the effectiveness of teaching methods?” He mumbled something about my being able to educate him. I said no. Educate yourself. That episode highlighted how useless is the Board of “Education” in educating our kids. Earlier when I tried to get three different board members interested in alternative instruction methods, none showed any interest in changing the status quo even though their schools had proficiency levels of under 10 percent.

I could care less how the school administration is spending my money. All I care about is educating our children to read, write and do arithmetic. Nothing else matters to me. The current method of instruction written in all the texts by professors of education who then teach it in their classrooms and is endorsed by the accreditation boards is called “balanced literacy” which ignores phonics. When I tried to get a reading curriculum put into the Knoxville schools based on phonics, the school superintendent rejected it because “it contains too much reading.” I kid you not. But phonics works. I’ve written about the Mississippi miracle where that state that was last in reading proficiency adopted phonics and has now risen up to 11^th. I was once told that by using phonics in K-3, children learn to read. Afterwards they read to learn. The reading scores in Knoxville’s elementary schools are abysmal. We all should be ashamed that in the city with the University of Tennessee that our children can’t read and the school administration and board of education refuse to do anything about it.

I’ve posted before Here the 2024 third grade reading chart for Knox County. Here it is again. The plot has proficiency on the vertical axis and economic disadvantaged on the horizontal axis. The red line is the state average which is abysmal. Knox county is worse. Only 17 of the 52 Knox County elementary schools are above the line. This should be scandalous. Direct Instruction has shown that virtually every child can read at grade level unless suffering from a serious learning deficiency. Even the best elementary school in the county is at less than 90 percent proficiency. It has less than 10 percent disadvantaged students. Note the one outlier. The second highest school has 40 percent disadvantaged. Why doesn’t the superintendent take what is working at that school and impose it throughout the system? That he doesn’t is the clearest indication that he should be fired. But of course, the school board would have to do that and they don’t have a clue – or care – about proficiency either. I think the surest way to motivate the superintendent would be to tie his salary increases to changes in proficiency.

My annual “wellness” exam

I had my annual physical – now called a “wellness” exam because I am 80. The nurse had two memory tests. The first was she wanted me to draw a clock showing 11:10. So I drew this one

She was aghast and said “I meant the clock with the numbers on it and the hands showing 11:10.” I then drew this one

She also said that I had to remember three words and that she would ask me later what they were. They were “village, kitchen and baby.” So when she asked me I said to her: “Do you remember what the three words were?” She said yes. I said that maybe I didn’t believe her and if she had forgotten them, then when I told her the right words, she would say that I was wrong remember when in fact I was right. I told her to write them down first. Of course, I was joking but for some reason she didn’t appreciate my sense of humor.

World Baseball Classic. Women’s History Month. A Gut Feeling?

Fun baseball in March!

At the World Baseball Classic, the highly favorite US team got saved from an unceremonious ouster by that juggernaut baseball country – Italy. Yes Italy, the winners of Pool B which was comprised of the US, Mexico, Brazil and Great Britain. If Italy had lost to Mexico or won by fewer than four runs, the US would have been out. But the Italians who beat the US 8-6 beat Mexico 9-1. Both stunners given the talent of those two teams. It’s my granddaughter’s fault. Her team at Major League Baseball was responsible for putting together the lists of players eligible to play for each country. So all the teams featured major league and high minor league players. Most had Americans on their squads. Philadelphia’s Aaron Nola pitched for Italy. Kansas City’s Vinnie Pasquantino was the hitting star for Team Italia. The British team only had two players from the United Kingdom on its roster. There were two from the Bahamas (including Jazz Chisholm) and all the rest were born in the US. Interestingly, there were more black American starters for the British team than for any US major league team. Still my favorite player is Lars Nootbaar who in the last WBC played for Team Japan.

March is Women’s History Month

It is women’s History Month. Isn’t it interesting that both “women” and “history” have men in them? Women and history. Regardless, this is the month in which we tell her-story. I find it particularly interesting that in Women’s History Month, the congress is finally getting around to authorizing an Office on Men’s Health. The Office on Women’s Health was established in 1991 as part of the Department of Health and Human Services. But no men’s health. That will soon be rectified. The bill has two democrat and two republican sponsors. The AMA has endorsed it and Kennedy wants it as part of his MAHA agenda. Will this be one of the few bills that will pass unanimously?

Eight Years?

The website Stat Morning Rounds reports that there is a study published in Nature Medicine stating that eight years is how long the composition of someone’s gut microbiome may be affected by a course of oral antibiotics. Eight years? I was rendered speechless. Does Kennedy know about this? Read the article for yourself and see what you think. Here is Stat’s summary:

Nature Medicine. In a study of nearly 15,000 people in Sweden, those who’d taken antibiotics within a year of testing had a major reduction in specimen diversity in the gut microbiome. But there was also significant diversity loss when antibiotics were taken 1-4 years and 4-8 years earlier. Specific antibiotics had the strongest associations: clindamycin, fluoroquinolones, and flucloxacillin. Penicillin V, common outside of Sweden, saw small and short-lasting gut changes. The researchers are collecting additional samples from almost half the participants for more longitudinal data.  

No new bills is a threat? Jones Act. Bondi in hiding.

No new bills – please!

The president has threatened not to sign another bill until the congress passes the SAVE Act. This may be the best news I have seen this year. Earlier the president threatened to implement the SAVE Act all by himself via executive order. But A federal judge in 2025 blocked that attempt that sought to require proof of citizenship for voter registration. Of course, the president actually doesn’t have to sign a bill for it to become law. If congress passes a bill and Trump takes no action for 10 days while the congress is in session, the measure becomes law without his signature. So what the president needs to do is say he will not sign a law and if congress passes one, he will veto it. I have a modest proposal: why don’t we declare the rest of the month “new law-free March?” Recall Gideon Tucker’s famous saying: “No man’s, life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” That was true when Tucker said it in 1866 and it is true now. So please, please, please (to quote James Brown) Mr President, NO NEW LAWS!

The only way to pass the SAVE Act is to dump the filibuster. The republican leadership is loath to do so even in the face of mounting pressure from the president. Senate majority leader Thune knows that once you open this door then all sorts of mischief can happen – although he probably thanks Harry Reid for lifting the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, else no one would ever get confirmed in this fractured political environment. But the breaking news is that John Cornyn is showing his desperation to get reelected and has had a miraculous epiphany and now supports ending the filibuster in order to get Trump’s endorsement in his race against Ken Paxton.

Repeal the Jones Act

Hawaii has the second highest gas prices in the country – or should I say out of the country. Sounds reasonable given that it is an island and all their oil must be shipped in. California is first due to all the silly rules and high taxes. But Hawaii even with its own brand of leftwing politics could see lower gas prices just by getting an exemption from the Jones Act. This is an act that Trump probably loves. It mandates that anything shipped from one US port to another must be made via a US built ship that is US owned and crewed. The act – formally the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 – is pure protectionism. It was intended to protect American ships from foreign competition. It also was to protect American shipbuilders. To put it mildly, the act failed on both accounts. American shipbuilding is in the tank and the American fleet is pitifully small. There are hardly any US flagged ships. There are only 92 Jones compliant US ships and 55 are oil tankers. There are 93 other US flagged ships but they are foreign built and are therefore non-Jones Act compliant and cannot carry cargo between US ports. Isn’t this stupid? Only the 55 can transport oil between US ports but again the cost of transporting oil from a US port to Hawaii is more expensive than shipping it from a foreign source. It costs more to ship oil on US tankers from the Gulf to Hawaii than from the Middle East to Hawaii. To deliver gas from say the Gulf of Mexico or Alaska to Hawaii, it can only be done on American ships. The result is that all Hawaii gas gets shipped from foreign ports on foreign ships.

American shipping is in decline because all the costs, environmental laws and regulations make building a US ship five times more expensive that one built in China. Also U.S. ship operating costs are estimated at nearly 3 times foreign costs. So it is cheaper not to build the ships in the US despite the Jones Act. Why Hawaii isn’t exempt from the Jones Act has long been a mystery to me. BTW, the same applies to Puerto Rico. Why not just repeal the darn thing?

Bondi in hiding?

Attorney General Pam (Blondie) Bondi has move into a nondisclosed military base housing. Bondi, along with Secretary of State Rubio, Trump advisor Stephen Miller, Kristi (ex-border Barbie) Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth now live in military housing somewhere in the DC area. I don’t know where but I am certain we are not talking about barracks. All are doing so for security reasons. Apparently the administration is taking seriously threats against all of them. I am somewhat surprised that this is not true for some of the Supreme Court justices as well. When I was in DC, at least three justices lived either in or near my neighborhood. We all knew where they lived and sometimes there would be a picket or two outside their homes. Recall the threat on Justice Kavanaugh? I presume that these homes are now being protected by law enforcement. So one asks “Why can’t the same be said for Bondi and the other Trump officials? BTW, I don’t recall this happening during other administrations.

Its Spring Break

It is spring break. When I was teaching I hated spring break and lobbied unsuccessfully that instead of spring break we just shortened the semester by a week. For me spring break was a disaster and would undo all the hard work of getting the students used to my demanding style. I would force them to participate, write papers, take essay exams with no aids (no cellphones, no laptops allowed). Then they would go off to the beach, drink, party and who knows what else. They would come back to class all tanned and mellow and have no desire to think about present value, strong form efficiency or asset pricing models. Attendance was terrible and attitudes were worse. Maybe the solution was that if I couldn’t get spring break cancelled maybe I should have gone to the beach too.

A case for TPS. Who’s your congressman? 

A Case for TPS

I know that the president hates the Temporary Protected Status (except for white South African farmers) but if there were ever a need for TPS it is the Christians of Nigeria. Over the past 15 years, an astounding 56,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed. Saying that Nigeria is the most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian is an understatement. Well known is the menace of Boko Haram which has killed, raped and kidnapped Nigerian Christians since 2009. But now there is persecution by radical Fulani Muslims. President Trump has sent 200 troops to the country to consult with the Nigerian military and has appointed West Virginia republican Rep. Riley Moore to investigate the situation and report back to him – which is simply flabbergasting. What does Moore know about Nigeria?

Moore has recommended the U.S. and Nigeria form a “bilateral agreement” to “protect vulnerable Christian communities from violent persecution, eliminate jihadist terror activity in the region, further economic cooperation, and counter adversaries in the region, including the Chinese Communist Party and Russian Federation.” Whoopie. Well isn’t this a perfect situation for TPS? Why don’t we offer sanctuary to a selected number of Nigerians who are most at risk?

Our intellectually challenged representatives

I feel sorry for those living in Tennessee’s sixth district. They have Andy Ogles as their representative. Ogles, who has never distinguished himself intellectually now is firing off tweets targeting Muslims. Ogles tweeted that “Muslims don’t belong in American society. “Pluralism is a lie.” So much for religious freedom. Ogles plans to propose legislation to ban entry to the U.S. from a set of Muslim-majority countries. Of course, he may be speaking for the president who has restricted entry into the country for 39 nations. Trump has been especially harsh toward Rep. Ilan Omar and her fellow Somali-Americans, calling them “garbage” and saying he wanted them sent “back to where they came from” – which is Minnesota. Not a good look for the president of this country.

Of course the republicans have been quiet. Not so the democrats. Hakeem Jeffries tweeted “Andy Ogles is a malignant clown and pathological liar who has fabricated his whole life story. Disgusting Islamophobes like you do not belong in Congress or in civilized society. And that’s why House Democrats will defeat you in November.”  But Ogles is not alone. Florida’s Randy Fine, another towering intellect posted: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., has pushed for immigration changes, posting: “No more Islamic immigration. Denaturalize, deport, repeat.” Gee thanks guys for making republicans proud.

So much for comity in the House of Representatives. Undaunted Ogles responded “To Hakeem Jeffries, Gavin Newsom, and the high-ranking Democrats flooding X to condemn me: A Muslim shot and killed three Americans in Texas. Two Muslims tried to blow up New York City…again. Meanwhile, all DHS counterterrorism programs are unfunded because you shut them down.”

Although I condemn radical Muslims who commit violent acts and seek to impose Sharia law, it is sheer bigotry to damn the Muslims writ large. It is akin to labelling every Hispanic a member of the Sinaloa cartel, or every Chinese-American a Chinese spy. It was not long ago where every violent act from a black was shouted by southern racists as being typical of the entire race. Blacks were labeled with all sorts of scandalous names and caricatures. Black men were a “menace” and a threat to white womanhood. It came as no surprise that when the University of Georgia realized that they were going to lose their case not accepting black students, that they said they would accept only the woman – Charlayne Hunter – and not the man – Hamilton Holmes (who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in chemistry. I wonder what Ogles, Fine and Clyde think about the shootings in Chicago?

These republicans are doing the same with all Muslims. This is disgraceful. They should all read Betrayal of Command: My Marine Corps Journey (Afghanistan 2001-2004) by Lt. Colonel Asad “Genghis” Khan. If they have any decency – which I doubt – they would all be ashamed of their Islamophobia when they read this story of a modern American hero. The congress has long been noted for its lack of intellectuals. I guess that Ogles, Fine and Clyde balance out AOC, Omar and Tlaib.

God is non-binary? Prasad out at FDA. Mississippi State on probation?

God is non-binary?

Somehow Jasmine Crockett lost a double digit lead and her primary to a little known state representative who opines that there are 6 genders and God is non-binary. I kid you not. James Talarico a really progressive Presbyterian seminarian, was dismissed by Crockett as “just another white man of privilege.” As expected, Crockett got 80 percent of the black vote but Talarico got 60 percent of the white vote (mostly college educated). He also got 60 percent of the Latino and Asian vote. His rather progressive interpretation of Christianity was not an issue in his campaign as he stressed in his Spanish language ads “faith and family and jobs and bringing people together.” 

But you can be certain that whoever wins the republican runoff will hammer to death that Talarico does not oppose boys playing girls sports, he says that abortion is justified in the Bible, he favors gender surgeries and therapies for children and says that God is “non-binary.” Don’t forget that Talarico is a seminary student and justifies his views based on his interpretation of the scriptures. During a debate to stop gender-altering surgeries, he commented “In committee, I listened to 15 hours of testimony about this bill. The worst part, for me, was the number of Christians who used scripture to justify hurting children. Even on this floor today, a member tried to justify a hateful amendment in the name of God’s law.” I bet there are a bunch of people all of a sudden wishing Jasmine Crockett had won.

Trump who has stayed silent is probably being pushed to endorse Cornyn in the runoff against Paxton. But Paxton has a significant lead over Cornyn in the polls (if that means anything anymore). If Paxton beats Cornyn, the democrats are sure to make this a race about character – of which Paxton is sorely lacking. Talarico will lean hard into a populist, anti-corruption message. He already argues that America’s affordability crisis is a direct result of corruption and wants billionaire money out of politics (save George Soros?). He calls Paxton “the most corrupt politician in America.” So Texas politics, like the past presidential elections will face a Hobson’s Choice. Come on, can’t we do better than this?

Prasad out at the FDA

The Wall Street Journal may have gotten Vinay Prasad, head of the FDA’s biologics division ousted (again). Prasad was fired once and then brought back. The Journal had reported that Dr Prasad had withdrawn approval of UniQure’s gene therapy treatment for Huntington’s disease for lack of a placebo control test. Huntington’s disease afflicts about 40,000 patients in the U.S. and there are no current treatments that slow its progression. But UniQure’s therapy slowed progression by 75% compared to the natural course of the disease. However, UniQure could not conduct a placebo trial as demanded by Dr Prasad because recruiting patients with a rare and debilitating disease for a placebo trial can be difficult if not unethical. Under Prasad the FDA has rejected at least 23 rare disease therapies. UniQure said Monday it aims to seek approval in Europe and the U.K., so patients may have to leave the U.S. to get treated. But maybe with Prasad forced out, the FDA will exercise some regulatory flexibility. Like over at Commerce, the advisory committees on vaccines and rare diseases were fired and replaced with folk sympathetic to the views of RFK jr. So Prasad was making decisions without the advice of experts in the field – which seems to be par for the course under Kennedy. It will be interesting to see how his ouster affects decision making at the FDA.

Mississippi State should get the death penalty!

Mississippi State (the other bulldogs) has broken the NCAA rules governing special benefits. Not once but twice! Shouldn’t it get the death penalty? One violation was that it hosted three golf recruits at a golf outing where the recruits played a round of golf. Mississippi State paid the $150 cost of the outing – a clear violation of NCAA rules. The second violation was that a recruit for the men’s track and field team brought his girlfriend on an official visit. She was not an approved guest and was provided lunch on the visit. The cost of the meal, $22.54, was a clear violation of NCAA rules and had to be paid back by the recruit. Mind you, LSU has just been reported to be paying its football team over $40 million which is just fine – so long as the school didn’t pay for the lunch of a wide receiver’s girlfriend at McDonald’s.

Lastly, I would be remiss if I ignored the 250^th anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. My favorite book of all time and one of the most influential books of all time.

The Straits of Hormuz. BLS reporting.

The shutting down of the Straits of Hormuz

Question: If our diesel comes from the Gulf of Mexico, then why did the price per gallon jump by a $1 over the past two days?

Iran firing all those missiles and drones at all their neighbors is creating a lot of anger levied at both Iran and the US. One report said that the Saudis were starting to use their own air force to bomb Iranian targets.

Iran shut down the Straits of Hormuz when four of its drones hit oil tankers traveling through the straits. Brig Gen Ebrahim Jabbari, a senior adviser to Iran’s revolution guards, said “We will attack and set ablaze any ship attempting to cross.” Maritime insurers promptly started canceling insurance. Twenty million barrels travel through the straits every day. Iran is threatening to fire missiles at any ship going through the straits. Larger quantities of food also go through the straits. Insurance companies are starting to drop insurance from the tankers operating in the Gulf. Trump has said that he will have the military force safe passage through the straits. But can he really? Currently the straits are effectively shut down with hundreds of ships stuck in the Persian Gulf. Iran has missiles to dissuade shipping and also can mine the straits if need be. Oil prices are now above $100 a barrel and analysts are saying the global economy is in danger of going into a recession. Of particular interest is that almost 50% of China’s oil goes through the strait. So what will China do?

I find it a bit interesting that the Saudis would shut down their Saudi Ras Tanura oil refinery, the country’s largest just because two drones were intercepted over the site. Qatar halted liquefied natural gas production due to a couple of drones. Isn’t that an overabundance of caution?

Trump says he as a work-around bringing more supplies online. Venezuela anyone? But when? And how is that going to get those 700 ships in the Persian Gulf to their ports? What is Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the slain previous supreme leader, going to do? I would think that the younger Khamenei would be wise to zoom his meetings.

Somewhat overlook but almost of equal importance is the fertilizer that goes through the straits. Did you know that the Persian Gulf is a primary source of the world’s fertilizers? Fertilizer is produced in the region and shipped around the world. It will have an impact on food production in the Ukraine – Europe’s breadbasket. everywhere. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain supply more than a third of the world’s urea, an important nitrogen fertilizer, and nearly a quarter of ammonia. And they all use the Strait of Hormuz to export their products. Prices for fertilizer have increased almost 35 percent. Food, like oil, will get more expensive. If this war goes on for much longer we will surely see inflationary recession, which Iran is counting on. Who blinks first?

Jobs. What jobs?

The latest job report revision came out and the stock market fell 900 points indicating that a lot of misinformed dumb people are in the market. The press said that markets fell because of the dismal jobs report and economists were predicting modest job gains. Well those economists give the profession a bad name – if that is possible. We should know by now that the initial jobs reports are nowhere close to reality. Recall when Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for not reporting favorable job numbers claiming that she was a democrat and wanted to make him look bad? Well how does he look now? His Commerce secretary Lutnick also promptly fired the members of the two advisory boards at the Bureau because I guess they were made up of too many democrats. Well, when the Bureau releases its job data, they are from a survey of businesses and are then revised. Invariably the revision is downward. The markets should be used to this so when the market reacts to a release, it is admitting that it was duped. 

Consider that last year the jobs report said that 147,000 jobs were added in June. The White House issued glowing press releases and Trump was running around doing high fives. Karoline Leavitt was crowing about the Trump economy. The market went up. Well in August the numbers were revised to show a growth of only 14,000 jobs. So maybe the larger number was a misprint? Then the final revision was made last month and lo and behold, instead of a gain of 147,000 jobs, the reality was that there was a job loss of 20,000 jobs! How could this be? Shouldn’t Trump fire these guys too? The sobering number is that over the past two years job “growth” has been overstated by one million jobs.

The January report showed a gain of 126,000 jobs. Again the White House was jubilant. But virtually all the jogs were in healthcare or state and local governments. One wonders what the actual numbers are after they get revised? The February jobs report says that the US lost 92,000 jobs. The market was expecting a gain – again showing the fallibility of those in the markets. The Wall Street Journal’s survey of experts expected 50,000 more jobs. Maybe the Wall Street Journal should find some other “experts.” Mind you, if the initial survey shows a 92,000 job loss then what will the revisions show? These numbers will cause Trump to put even more pressure on the Fed to lower its Fed funds target rate at its March 17-18 meeting. However, the Fed expected to hold due to the inflation numbers going up. Trump’s guy at the Fed, Stepen Miran is back at his old job at the National Economic Council and Kevin Warsh has yet to have had hearings. I don’t think there will be a single vote on the Open Market Committee to lower short term rates especially because of the pressure on prices that will soon be reflected due to the jump in gas prices. The bottom line is that no one should give credence to the preliminary survey numbers reported by the BLS. The fact that some people do never ceases to amaze me.

Noem out. Is Bondi next?

Kristi Noem is out at Homeland Security. Seems that the republicans were more upset over her spending $200 million on self-promotions than they were with her bungling of the ICE operations in Minneapolis. Trump has moved her to something he just seemed to have just made up – the Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, Trump’s new so-called security initiative in the Western Hemisphere. Even before it begins the initiative is being mocked. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said “Let me congratulate the former Homeland Security secretary on her appointment to be the Shield of the Americas, which I’m pretty sure the president came up with when he watched the last Avengers movie.” Ted Lieu (D-CA) said “Thank you to Trump for promoting Kristi Noem to Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas, a position that Trump literally created a few hours ago. Pleas also promote Pam Bondi to be Special Attorney General to the Shield of the Americas.” I guess this goes with the so-called Board of Peace. The Shield of the Americas is to target drug trafficking, the cartels and illegal immigration. 

Now that Noem is out, the democrats will set their sights on ousting Pam Bondi and Stephen Miller next. They may get some help with republicans on Bondi who has been sharply criticized for her bungling handling of the Epstein files. That seems to have upset republicans more than her mismanagement of the “Justice” Department. 

As to Stephen Miller, the democrats will get no republican support to oust perhaps the most odious of all presidential advisors. Miller is the key architect of Trump’s deportation policies and was a vocal advocate of using military force to acquire Greenland. Even Trump said of Miller that he (Miller) wouldn’t stop until everyone looked like him – white and bald? Miller has been called every name in the book by those on the left – and some on the right. Racist, bigot, callous, sinister, malevolent, cruel, heartless, venomous, toxic, dangerous, depraved, fascist, brutal and unbalanced are only a few. Yes, perhaps to all of these. 

But there is literally no republican support to remove him. In fact, republicans are more likely to defend his actions. Lindsey Graham says “People can disagree with Stephen on rhetoric and they can disagree with him on policy but the question is, ‘Is Miller in jeopardy in Trump World?’ Absolutely not. It doesn’t matter what a senator thinks about a president’s adviser, as long as the president has confidence in that adviser.” More than a dozen Republican senators have praised Miller and pushed back against those who want to diminish Miller’s clout at the White House including Tennessee’s Bill Hagerty who says “Stephen has effectively pushed for policies that are making America safer, like in Memphis in my home state of Tennessee, more prosperous, and more respected around the world”.

One of the few vocal republicans critics of Miller is North Carolina’s Thom Tillis who of course is not seeking reelection. Tillis is also a critic of Trump seeking to indict Fed chairman Powell on charges of lying to congress. On Miller’s remark about Greenland, Tillis said “Look either Stephen Miller needs to get into a lane where he knows what he’s talking about or get out of this job.” On the senate floor Tillis said “I’m sick of stupid. I want good advice for this president, because I want this president to have a good legacy. And this nonsense on what’s going on with Greenland is a distraction from the good work he’s doing, and the amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.” Tillis even called Miller a “sycophant.” Saying “A sycophant is more than just a ‘yes-man.’ It refers to someone who acts excessively servile toward someone important in order to gain an advantage.”

The senator compared Miller to Tolkien’s Grima Wormtongue from “The Lord of the Rings,” who is an adviser to a king. “He uses whispers and false flattery to control the King’s decisions, all while secretly serving Saruman,” the North Carolina Republican continued in his post. “He is a classic example of a sycophant who uses his position to poison a leader’s standing for his own benefit.” Actually, by invoking Wormtongue, the wicked counsellor who whispers evil counsel direct into the king’s ear, Tillis is actually complimenting Miller.

I am sure that Tillis knows that in this and most administrations, being a sycophant is more the rule than the exception. But Miller is by no means a unique feature in the political arena. He is probably no more of a Svengali as say James Carville, who was the evil persona of the Clintons or Lee Atwater to Reagan.  Aristotle said that ‘tyrants are always fond of bad men, because they love to be flattered’, establishing a connection between misrule and bad counsel. The same is true for non-tyrants as well. But the evil counselor serves as a useful foil to the political leader as foes can concentrate on the advisor as a proxy for attacking the leader. And when that advisor’s use life has expired, they can be jettisoned rather than the leader removed (see Kristi Noem). That time has not yet arrived for Stephen Miller.