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Is this your next pickup?

Have you heard of the Slate truck? It is a bare bones, minimalist tiny electric pick up truck. It is priced at $27,000 and if the federal tax credit hangs around, it will set you back $19,500. What do you get for that price? Not much. It has roll up windows, no info system, no touch screen, no radio and no paint. So I guess it is a blank Slate. However, you can pay extra and get those things and a bunch more. It does have a smartphone holder so you can still talk to Siri or use Waze. It is being backed by Jeff Bezos who seems to be the Elon Musk me too guy. “So you have Space X well I have Blue Origin! You have Tesla well I put a few million into Rivian and now I have Slate!”

Incredibly some writers are asking if Slate will be a Tesla killer. Huh? Was Yugo a Porsche killer? Was the Chevy Volt a threat to the Tesla Model S? The people that I know who buy Teslas are attracted to its technology. Slate is the anti-Tesla with no technology. They will appeal to completely different markets. Tesla offers the cybertruck which starts at $70,000 and goes up north of $100,000. Do you really think a teeny EV pickup with a 150 mile range and no gizmos will endanger Tesla? Not likely. However there will be a market for a cheap EV pickup. Given the high tariffs on Chinese EVs, it is impossible to get a cheap EV (there they start around $15,000). Toyota even makes a $15,000 EV for the Chinese market. Let’s just say that those who are wishing that the Slate will be a threat to Tesla are just Elon Musk haters who are hoping for Tesla’s demise which may happen but not because of Slate.

I have always wondered why all the US EV startups have started with high priced vehicles. Rivian which continues to have a look of surprise on it starts at $70,000 and go up towards $100,000. Every time I see one I say “Does that look like $70,000 to you?” Not to me. Lucids also start around $70,000 and go past $100,000. Of course the Big Three have their own EVs, Ford has the EV Mustang and the F-150 Lighting. General Motors has the Lyric, Blazer EV, Equinox EV and the Silverado EV. All are cheaper than the startups but no one thinks that they endanger Tesla. Do they? Well if they don’t then why would Slate?

So the F-150 Lightning and Silverado EVs aren’t considered a Tesla killers but a $20,000 pint-sized EV is? This makes no sense to me. Musk has promised but failed to deliver a $25,000 EV, there will be certainly market for the Slate. I would not mind having one at the farm. My first pickup was a bare bones F-150. It too had roll up windows. It had air conditioning and four wheel drive – an essential at the farm. If the Slate is available with four wheel drive, I could use it to haul stuff around the farm and take dead deer to the processor during deer season. I would not need my F-250 diesel for farm work and could use it for heavy loads and with my fifth wheel. I think America needs cheap EVs. But these will be no threat to Elon Musk and Tesla. 

Are American’s going to demand a vehicle with no auto light dimmer, no touch screen, no power windows and no backup camera. That remains to be seen. Yes all those are available as accessories and will they be so often demanded that Slate will start offering an upgrade with those niceties standard? Whereas I would never have a cybertruck, I might buy a Slate. On the other hand, I have no need or desire for an EV auto, regardless of price. 

It is noteworthy that the Slate will be built in Indiana which has 2 republican senators and 7 of nine representatives are also republican. It is probably a mere coincidence that since Trump is talking about getting rid of the $7,000 federal tax credit on US made EVs that Slate will be made in republican country. Want to bet that the Indiana republicans are already lobbying to keep that tax credit?

Crypto 101

Do you understand cryptocurrencies? I don’t but as a professor teaching a class on financial markets, I feel obligated to make intelligent clucking sounding noises to the students even on subjects that I know little about. Here is my lecture on cryptocurrencies.

I cannot understand why anyone would want to buy and hold cryptos. When they first came on the scene I thought they were just a vehicle for money laundering. Of course, I was right but apparently they are useful for something else – but what? Some have touted crypto as the new gold and would act as a store of value and would protect against inflated government money. But crypto has proven to be no store of money. Its price is volatile and recently has been moving in the opposite direction as gold. 

But what is crypto? It is a digital or virtual currency secured by cryptography, which supposedly makes it nearly impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Most cryptocurrencies exist on decentralized networks using blockchain technology—a distributed ledger enforced by a disparate network of computers.

Cryptos at first were not issued by governments making them free from government control, interference or manipulation. However, governments soon started attempting to regulate cryptos, to adopt them and even to issue them.

There is now a digital yuan – the digital renminbi. Will there soon be a digital dollar? Some countries like Argentina, Brazil and Vietnam have high holdings of cryptocurrencies among their populations. Over a third of the citizens in those countries use crypto in day to day transactions. Countries that do are mostly ones with high economic instability. Argentina instituted a new cryptocurrency touted by its president which later crashed resulting in millions of dollars in losses and charges that the president somehow profited from the crash. The Trump Administration has created a strategic Bitcoin Reserve that will treat bitcoin as a reserve asset and a Digital Asset Stockpile, consisting of digital assets other than bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited in criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Why? Again, I haven’t a clue. By the way, the market is clueless as well. However, the government will not buy crypto and will only hold (hoard?) what it only seizes.

What are the advantages of cryptocurrencies? You can’t hide them from the government. Governments monitor blockchains which are cryptos’ public ledgers. Crypto exchanges are regulated by the SEC. You have to pay taxes on them because the federal government treats them as property for tax purposes.  The IRS considers them either as capital gains or ordinary income depending on how long you hold the cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies are price volatile, have high energy consumption for mining activities and are used in criminal activities. They also have been hacked and stolen – most notably by the North Koreans.

In finance we associate volatility with risk. The more volatile is the price of an asset, the more risk associated with it. Bitcoin, the most popular crypto, has had over 15 major corrections (extreme movements in price) over the past 15 years but each time recovered with an even higher price with a beginning to end gain of over 40,000 percent! Remember when it was $105,000 per coin before falling to $84,000 and then surging to $94,000? Perhaps the volatility has to do with the nascent nature of crypto. It only has been around 15 years or so. All new markets tend to be volatile as new products enter and new participants enter. Maybe when the market matures, that the price volatility will lessen. Finance calls this type of risk “idiosyncratic” or “unsystematic” which is risk unique to the asset and not to the market (which is called systematic risk).

Central to the appeal and functionality of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is blockchain technology. As its name indicates, a blockchain is essentially a set of connected blocks of information on an online ledger. Each block contains a set of transactions that have been independently verified by each validator on a network. Every new block generated must be verified before being confirmed.

What about “mining?” First off, crypto mining is not environmentally friendly. Bitcoin mining exposes millions to harmful air pollution each year. There is significant greenhouse gas emissions from Bitcoin mining, which requires vast amounts of electricity. The noise levels of the cryptocurrency mines has reached 72 decibels — well above the 55 dB limit beyond which the World Health Organization (WHO) deems to be dangerous for human health.  China banned cryptomining in 2021 causing the amount of mining operations to explode worldwide. In the United States crypto mining consumed an estimated 36 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, as much as all of the electricity consumed in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island put together. 

Using powerful computers, crypto miners solve complex mathematical problems that are required to validate transactions on the blockchain. Blockchain networks serve as a public ledger for all transactions, promoting transparency. One expert says “This competitive process rewards successful participants with newly generated tokens while maintaining the integrity of the decentralized system. Essentially, mining combines network security with financial incentives in a technological ecosystem designed to operate without central authority.” The upfront capital needed for mining equipment, access to cheap electricity, and reliable internet infrastructure can be prohibitive and the mining ecosystem is increasingly dominated by industrial-scale operations established in regions with lower electricity costs. But what of the costs?  Mining for cryptocurrency may no longer worth it. According to a recent study, the cost of electricity and computational power needed to mine for Bitcoin now often exceeds the actual value of the coin. 

That is interesting. Some have said that one of the positive features of Bitcoin was that its supply is limited unlike that of government fiat currencies. For Bitcoin it is 21 million coins. However, this only limits Bitcoin because other coins can easily be created and most do not have limits on supply. New coins are added to the Bitcoin supply approximately every 10 minutes, which is the average amount of time that it takes to create a new block on the Bitcoin blockchain. By design, the number of bitcoins minted per block is reduced by 50% after every 210,000 blocks, or about once every four years. Whew! If the supply of bitcoin ever reached 21 million then no more can be generated meaning that bitcoin miners could only earn income from transaction fees.

Although bitcoin is the most famous cryptocurrency there are many others. At https://coinmarketcap.com/coins/ you can find the top 100 cryptocurrencies. However, missing from that list are the memecoins which point to the absurdity of cryptocurrencies. A meme coin is a cryptocurrency arising from a joke or some humorous characteristic. The first memecoin was s–tcoin (I kid you not) which has a market cap of $116,000 https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/shitcoin/

There is the Doge coin (sound familiar?) and the ever popular Fartcoin (again I kid you not), Some memecoins have high market capitalizations. Ask yourself, why would anyone buy a Fartcoin? Dogecoin was released after being created as a joke. But then Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla-branded merchandise could be purchased with Dogecoin. Is this where the name “Department of Government Efficiency originated? Both the president and the first lady have their own memecoins. The meme coin $Trump has a market value of $2.5 billion. First lady Melania Trump also has a meme coin with a market value of $224 million. Recently, the president tweeted “Whichever 220 users hold the most Trump tokens between now and May 12 will get an exclusive invitation to a dinner attended by the President”. The result was that the president netted $900,000 in trading fees over a two day period. Georgia senator Ossoff says that this is grounds for impeachment. But for this president, what isn’t?

Replace the income tax with tariffs? 

Peter Earle at AIER has written an article commenting on President Trump’s saying that tariffs can replace federal income taxes for those earning under $200,000. https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariffs-instead-of-taxes-a-back-of-envelope-estimate/ I have written before that whoever thought this us obviously could not do math. Earle agrees.

Here is the president’s tweet:

“When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned. It will be a BONANZA FOR AMERICA!!! THE EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE IS HAPPENING!!!”

On April 8^th the president crowed that we were already raking in $2 billion a day from the tariffs. Of course the president is notable for his hyperbole. He just misplaced a few zeros. The actual amount was $200 million a day. But hey, what’s a few zeros among friends? Yet, even when all of the tariffs are being collected, will it be sufficient to eliminate the income tax for those earning less that $200,000? 

Actually, it is economically and mathematically impossible.

Earle points out the difficulties that arise from such a suggestion. First, 54% of income taxes are paid by those earning under $200,000. This amounts to $1.19 trillion that would need to be replaced by tariffs. Ceteris paribus (all things equal), on all imported goods in 2023 this would mean a tariff of 39 percent on everything imported. This is a marked increase from the average rate of 2.5% in 2023. The question is whether a universal tariff of 39 percent would collect $1.19 trillion? The answer is no. Trump is assuming that Americans will purchase the same amount of goods when the tariffs are imposed. Where did he learn his economics?

Tariffs translate to higher consumer prices. Higher prices translate to lower quantities demanded and lower quantities demanded translate to lower revenues. So $1.19 trillion will not be collected. How much less depends on the elasticity of demand for the imported goods. We do know that higher prices mean lower real incomes. We also know that higher prices on imported goods will cause increased demand for domestic substitutes further decreasing the amount raised from tariffs. That means for each decrease in revenues from the tariffs, the tariffs would have to increase even more in order to try to reach the $1.19 trillion needed. Earle states that if the amount of imported goods purchased shrank by 50 percent then the tariffs would have to rise to 77 percent. But if those tariffs increase prices even more – which they will – then the tariffs would have to go up even more. It would be a never ending cycle. 

The bottom line being that trying to replace the income tax with tariffs will result in a net economic loss accompanied by price inflation. It will also mean fewer imports leading to less tariff revenue. There will be less choice for the American consumer, inefficient industires, fewers goods and higher prices. This is the rebirth of mercantilism and will result in Trump’s Fortress America. The president says that we don’t need their cars, we don’t need their energy, we don’t need their lumber. I guess we also do not need their toys, clothes, hats, belts, textiles, electronics and agriculture products either. But I am in trouble. My jeans are from Mexico. My shoes from Cambodia. My pants from Bangladesh. My belt and socks from China. My shirt from India. My underwear from Kenya. Kenya? Yes Kenya. My Georgia bulldog cap is from China – Go Dawgs! ! (包括 的例句)!

Trump may not need foreign made stuff but apparently I do.

I presume this idea emanated from Trump’s two advisors who have PhDs from Harvard. Further evidence that Harvard is not “elite”. These guys obviously can’t do math and need to go back and take Harvard’s remedial math course. Earle calls the notion of tariff substitution for income taxes untenable. I call it foolish.

She’s Back!

Did all of a sudden we missed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? First they lead Biden on to a stage to talk to the disabled. Then Harris shows up to talk to a bunch of leftists in San Francisco – is there any other kind? Somewhere I read that Biden wants a fee of $300,000 to slur – er to speak. Who would pay that? Harris is “only” charging $50,000. But she needs to do something about her persona. She left me shaking my head saying “and this person could have been president of the United States?” One report described the speech as lurching from “cacophonous shouting to saccharine sing-song.” I don’t know if she did one of her famous word salads but in her speech was a rather powerful message that had to appeal to both the Trump haters and the rest of us.

“We all know President Trump and his administration and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious. But what they’re overlooking, what they have overlooked, is that fear is not the only thing that is contagious. Courage is contagious.” She then referenced a video of a herd of African elephants instinctively formed an “alert circle,” intended to protect the younger elephants at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park this morning, as a 5.2 magnitude earthquake shook southern California. Harris said:

“In the video, for those who haven’t seen it, those elephants were there, and as soon as they felt the earth shaking beneath their feet, they got in a circle and stood next to each other to protect the most vulnerable. 

Think about it. What a powerful metaphor. Because we know those who try to incite fear are most effective when they divide and conquer, when they separate the herd, when they try to make everyone think they are alone. But in the face of crisis, the lesson is: don’t scatter. The instinct has to be to immediately find and connect with each other and to know that the circle will be strong.”

Isn’t it interesting that she picked a video featuring elephants? But this is a message that should be heeded by all. It applies to all of those who the left tried to intimidate under the yoke of the Biden Administration. Remember the FBI raiding the homes of abortion protestors? Remember the raid on Mar-a-Lago? Remember the FBI raiding 35 MAGA allies of Trump? Recall the terrorist activities of the CFPB? The debanking of conservative organizations? Recall Biden’s abuse of power? And don’t forget the persecution of the South Dakota ranchers who were grazing their cattle on some national land.

Harris may have meant her illustration as a cautionary tale against the abuses of Donald Trump but it applies to the abuse of power, period. Her silence during the Biden years speaks volumes.

Harris needs to ditch the cackles. She needs to quit all the gesturing. She needs to hire speech consultants to try to turn her into a serious person free from ridicule. Right now she is a sad caricature. But can she be saved?

Just never forget the words of T. S. Elliot

Half of the harm that is done in this world

Is due to people who want to feel important.

They don’t mean to do harm – but the harm does not interest them.

Or they do not see it, or they justify it

Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle

To think well of themselves.

– T. S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1949)

Pardon me but here are some more random thoughts.

Why do baseball managers wear baseball uniforms? Can you imagine coaches having to wear football or basketball uniforms? Rick Barnes in shorts?

The fact that fans support teams that have no chance of winning a championship shows the love for the game. Realistically only a few teams in baseball and football have a chance for a championship. I thought the same about basketball. Then I saw that the top seeded teams were Cleveland and Oklahoma City. I thought it was a misprint.

Can you imagine having season tickets for the Miami Marlins, the Oakland (Sacramento) Athletics, the Chicago White Sox, the Cleveland Browns (sorry Jimmy Haslam) or the New York Jets/Giants? Those are true fans.

I saw a white cybertruck. It was white with custom wheels and in the foundation series. I talked to the owner and told him – truthfully – that his truck was stunning. He beamed. I meant it. Usually when I see a cybertruck I think there goes someone with more money than brains. I still think that unless it is a white foundation truck with trick wheels.

The fans at major league baseball games during the beginning of the season look like they are at a football game sitting in freezing temperatures and driving snow. Opening day was March 27. When did they start playing baseball in March? The season is too long and should start in mid-April.

Harvard is now offering a remedial math course. Harvard? It rejects 97 percent of its applicants. Obviously it should reject a few more. Harvard says its due to the pandemic. That’s like saying the dog ate my homework. 

That the democrats are still in disarray only shows how badly Biden screwed up everything. I thought the border crisis could only be solved with new legislation? What was a flood is now a trickle. It has gotten so boring that Fox has taken its imbedded reporter out of Eagle Pass, Texas.

Did you see that Joe Biden resurfaced and gave a speech to a group of advocates for the disabled? Someone has a sense of humor. Maybe it takes one to know one.

Instead of having a message other than hating Trump there is no coherent positive message coming out of the democrat party. Then why its vice chairman is fermenting even more discord by threatening to primary incumbents is puzzling.

Equally puzzling is the talk of the democrats running AOC for president. Huh? And you thought Harris was verbally challenged? More realistically is her running against Schumer for his senate seat.  Well if Adam Schiff, Mazie Hirono and Ruben Gallego can be senators I guess that AOC can be one too. Who is the dumbest republican senator? MSNBC says its Tommy (Coach) Tuberville who will give up that honor to run for governor of Alabama.

Remember all those hate filled sarcastic Trump tweets about Mitch McConnell? He even ridiculed Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife calling her “Coco Chow.” Trump has called McConnell a “sullen unsmiling political hack.” Trump said “I feel sorry for Mitch. He wanted to go to the end and he wanted to stay leader. He’s not equipped mentally, he wasn’t equipped 10 years ago mentally in my opinion.” Of course McConnell reportedly has called Trump “stupid” and ” ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist.” Apparently there is no love lost between the two. 

Curiously, Trump has not attacked the other senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul who opposes Trump’s budget plan, is opposed to the tariffs and co-sponsored a bill to strip Trump of the power to unilaterally impose tariffs. Paul says “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives.” Paul didn’t even endorse Trump for president. It is interesting that over in the House, the most vocal republican opposing Trump’s policies is also from Kentucky, Thomas Massie for whom Trump has tweeted “HE SHOULD BE PRIMARIED. I will lead the charge against him. He’s just another GRANDSTANDER, who’s too much trouble, and not worth the fight.” Massie responded “POTUS is spending his day attacking me and Canada. The difference is Canada will eventually cave.”

Paul must have been reading my blog when he ridiculed Trump’s tariffs saying “I have a deficit at my grocery store.” So why has Trump not attacked Paul with his avalanche of caps and exclamation points?

Trump wants Europe to buy more American agriculture, cars and get rid of their value added taxes. Both the Europeans and the Brits have told him to pound sand saying that those items are off the table and are nonnegotiable. How will Trump respond? Maybe he will threaten to double their tariffs but so far, silence.

Halleluiah! The president signed an order to rescind the Biden rule governing the flow of water through showerheads proclaiming that he was making showers great again. The rule was stupid as evidenced by it taking 13,000 words to define “showerhead.” The rule was supposed to conserve water but usage increased as people took longer showers. However, Trump’s order did not get rid of the restriction, it only reverted to the one set in 1992 that mandates a 2.5 gallon per minute standard. The 1992 law also mandated a maximum flush volume for toilets at 1.8 gallons.  Previously toilets flushed at 3 gallons or more. 

Those early 1.8 gallon toilets had to be flushed multiple times to get rid of heavy loads – if you know what I mean. I still have one toilet that can be vexing. I am tempted to replace it. I did replace an older toilet with one that advertises being able to flush a bucket of golf balls with a single flush. That should enough power to flush down anything that might come out of me. Maybe.

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.