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Trump and Vance vs Zelenskyy Round One

Trump continues to shake up the status quo. Was anyone surprised that the Trump/Vance versus Zelenskyy meeting went off the rails? The surprise is that it occurred in front of the cameras. I was expecting the usual pleasantries and then for the contentiousness to occur off camera. I thought it a bit unusual that Vance was at the meeting. But perhaps Vance, who has never been a fan of aid to Ukraine, wanted in on the meeting and Trump obliged. Recall that in 2022 Vance said to Steve Bannon “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” It seemed that Vance intentionally tried to provoke Zelenskyy. It worked. 

As I said previously, Trump was trying to extort an agreement for the Ukraine to give us their minerals in exchange for the weapons we had given them. Zelenskyy had said that the weapons were a grant rather than an IOU. I thought that Zelenskyy would bargain for a low past payment and payment for future deliveries. Moreover, I had said that Zelenskyy would want a security guarantee from Trump if there was to be a truce with Putin and that Trump would not give it. On that point, I was correct. Why would Zelenskyy stop the war under a condition of no security guarantee? He knows that Putin will not give back the territory seized. He knows that Putin would violate the truce at first opportunity. The Russian occupied territory contains 40 percent of Ukraine’s minerals and that Putin has offered Trump a deal for access to those minerals. I would be surprised if Trump and Putin have not been talking about such a deal.

I didn’t expect an agreement with Zelenskyy because Trump is never going to guarantee Ukraine’s safety and Zelenskyy would be fool to sign an agreement without it. Trump looks down on Zelenskyy. He considers him a two-bit dictator who used to be a poor stand up comedian. Trump wants to extricate America from the war and let the burden fall upon the Europeans. The question is that if we stop arming Ukraine and they start losing the war more quickly than they are losing it now, will Europe commit ground troops to the conflict as some have suggested? Didn’t Macron say “We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment”? That would embroil Europe in a major land war. Trump calls it World War III. But can it be a world war if we are sitting on the sidelines? Yes I know that much of Ukraine’s support comes from NATO and if NATO gets involved, the US is supposed to enter on their side. With Trump, that won’t happen. 

Even if Trump agreed to provide security to Ukraine in exchange for its minerals, I would not be shocked if he broke it much like he renegotiated NAFTA and proceeded to break the agreement that he put in its place. If I were Zelenskyy I would be cautious in thinking that Trump can be trusted to keep his word.

It was actually fun watching all the Trumpers falling over themselves defending Trump while all the Trump haters were assailing Trump and Vance. I don’t know about you but I don’t make apologies for the behavior of others. The first polls indicate that Zelenskyy actually increased his support among his countrymen. One said “Our leader, despite the pressure, stands firm in defending the interests of Ukraine and Ukrainians. … We need only a just peace with security guarantees.” Another said that there was “complete disrespect” from the United States in the Oval Office exchange, despite the fact that Ukraine “was the first country that stood up to Russia.” The Ukrainians know that Putin will violate any agreement if he can and cannot be trusted. I think Trump knows that too, but he simply doesn’t care what happens to Ukraine.

On the home front: Lindsey Graham, who never saw a war he didn’t like actually defended Trump. “Somebody asked me, am I embarrassed about Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country. We want to be helpful. What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful, and I don’t know if we can ever do business with Zelenskyy again. The way he handled the meeting, the way he confronted the president, was just over the top.” Tennessee’s Diane Harshberger said “Zelenskyy could have left the White House today with a peace deal for his country, ending this conflict. Instead, he chose to disrespect our President and nation. Thank you, President Trump and Vice President Vance, for standing up for our country!” Contrast this with democrat senator Sheldon Whitehouse “Our leaders acting like ventriloquist dummies for Putin. Disgusting,” Or democrat Chris Murphy’s “What an utter embarrassment for America.” Here is a quote China’s favorite congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) saying Zelenskyy “went into the Oval Office and stood up to Russia’s best negotiators.”

Over in Europe, their leaders are solidly behind Zelensky. European president Ursula von der Leyen posted on X, “Be strong, be brave, be fearless. You are never alone, dear President Zelenskyy. Zelenskyy’s “dignity honors the bravery of the Ukrainian people. We will continue working with you for a just and lasting peace.” Freidrich Merz, the next chancellor of Germany said that “we must never confuse aggressor and victim in this terrible war.” Then there is this, European Union foreign minister Kaja Kallas said that “today it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.” The free world needs a new leader? Wow!

If Trump’s goal was to splinter our European alliances, then he is succeeding with his tariff war, confrontation with Zelenskyy and JD Vance’s speeches in European castigating our allies. It is clear that Trump wants the Europeans to be on their own, develop their own defense capabilities and wind down US involvement. The EU’s defense budget is about the same as Russia’s despite being a much larger and richer entity. The bully in Washington seems to be forcing them to have to depend more on themselves than on the US to protect themselves from the bully in Moscow.

More thoughts from the classroom

In my first class after coming out of retirement to teach one section of Financial Markets and Institutions, I told the students that I was an unapologetic capitalist. I told them I loved this country and that I was going to work to help them understand how to separate truth from propaganda. I said that they need to examine everything with a skeptical mind. Did they believe in global warming? Why? Did they think America was racist? Why? Did they hate capitalism? Why? How do they define freedom? I told them that yes, my African ancestors went through hell in this country as slaves. But they would have gone through a greater hell had they remained ”free” in Congo under the yoke of Leopold. I said that if you combined the household income from my African countries, Congo, Mali and Cameroon you would be able to buy groceries at Publix for a couple of months and then you would starve. So I am blessed and awfully lucky to be here. I said that I see ads touting pizzas for $9.99 which much of the world would look upon as a luxury. I said would you rather be in Gaza? In Sudan? In South Africa? In Libya? In Russia? In China? In the Congo, heaven’s forbid! Is there anywhere else in the world where you would rather be than here? Why? Is there an economic system you prefer? Why? Aren’t you really lucky in the randomness of your birth? What do you think about Critical Race Theory? Is Trump a bigot for dismantling DEI? What do you think about ESG? Now what evidence do you have to support your opinions?

Of course hardly any have thought about any of this. At this stage of their maturity they have just adopted views and opinions that feel good to them. They do not care about current events. I am trying to get them to at least read the Wall Street Journal daily. Yes I know that the Journal has devolved into being a quasi-leftwing paper but it still reports valuable news and events. In class I was talking about municipal bonds, state income taxes and local property taxes as collateral for certain issues. I said that Ron DeSantis is floating the idea of the state, rather than the municipality, controlling property taxes. I asked a student “Who is Ron DeSantis?” She didn’t know. I then asked the class if they knew to raise their hands. Only 5 raised their hands. I told them that I felt like crying. 

I talked about bond covenants, both affirmative and negative covenants. I talked about ESG and whether the author of an article that the students should have read is correct in classifying ESG as an affirmative covenant. Spoiler alert: I bet that only a couple of students read the article and most have not heard of ESG. We talked about JP Morgan and Blackrock dropping ESG and why I think Larry Fink is the most dangerous person on the planet. BTW, I also mentioned that I was in a high school band with two of the Pips. Only one had heard of the Pips. The others probably thought my two band members were soliciting for Atlanta’s red light ladies.

I have told the students to not believe anything that I say. I don’t want them to blindly nod their heads. I know that what I say will go against most of what they have been fed by their media sources,Tik Tok, teachers K-12 to the university and what feels right. Even after class discussions I don’t know if they really believe that usury laws and minimum wage laws are harmful to the poor. They probably still believe, despite my best efforts, that if you have no usury laws that the poor will be forced to pay predatory rates and if there were no minimum wages, the poor would be forced to work for $2 an hour. I have told them not to believe me. Just prove me wrong and if they do I will adopt their opinion. 

I told them the first day that I tested using short answers, problems and essays. That their grades would be lower than if I used multiple choice/true false but they would learn more. Seven students immediately dropped. After the first exam, 17 students failed to come to the next class to pick up their papers. At the last class there were only 32 students out of the original 59. I actually was a bit depressed that they would opt to run away rather than face the challenge. However, one student came by my office and said that although she had made the lowest grade on the exam than she had ever made, that this was the first exam in four years that tested her knowledge and that she would do better. Yet another student said that I was being unfair in how I tested. I told her that she could drop the course.

But should I get depressed because the students don’t know Ron DeSantis? Should I get depressed because they can’t figure out what 5 percent of $10,000 is? Should I get depressed because they are college seniors and will join the workforce this naïve? Should I get depressed because almost half the class has dropped? I know that once they start working for a living that many will morph into something other than what they are now. But it gives me no small comfort that they are basically clueless. BTW this is nothing new. Before I retired I had a student chide me for expecting him to know stuff. He said “Why should I know geography when I have mapquest?” “Why should I know how to spell when I have spell check?” “Why should I know anything since I can google it?” Why indeed? 

This all, of course, is a result of our dumbing down curricula. Many school systems no longer teach reading, writing and arithmetic and those that do teach it badly. Many systems no longer give grades. I had French and Latin in my segregated high school. How many schools offer Latin? I once had a student say to me “How do you know so much?” I told him that he was not asking the right question.

This is what the liberals have given us. If this were a corporate product, it would be driven out of business and the company would declare bankruptcy. Yet we allow this to happen to our children. Isn’t it time to completely blow up the education-industrial complex?

Resistance is Futile!

Kelly Loeffler, Trump’s nominee to head the Small Business Administration, was in the news. When she showed up at the SBA, she was struck by how few employees were at work in the office. She posted a video of empty cubicles and said that over 90 percent of the employees were absent from the office. Loeffler went on to say that she was fully supportive of Trump’s (actually Elon Musk’s) order to return to work. My question is why couldn’t she have ordered that the workers come back to the office herself? It will be interesting to see how many federal employees quit. Some have whined that their commute will be four hours and they will quit first rather than have to face the DC traffic. Gee, why do you live four hours away from your job in the first place? Have you been on the Beltway? Its brutal almost 24/7. 

During my years in DC I lived in the city and my son went to public schools. But I lived in the Palisades area near Georgetown University and not across the Anacostia River. Certainly, those government employees could have found suitable housing west of Rock Creek Park. But I wager that these liberal democrats are terrified at living in mostly black DC and sending their kids to public schools. Don’t they know that most black DC politicians send their kids to private schools? I am now waiting to see the reaction when Trump – having read my blog? – orders the agencies out of DC. He wants to drain the swamp and that is the way to do it. I bet that at least 50 percent will quit.

Loeffler was confirmed by a vote of 52-46. I went “huh”? Why did 46 democrats vote against her? Jacky Rosen was the only democrat who voted for her. I thought it would be unanimous since she served in the senate from my home state of Georgia. Didn’t Marco Rubio get confirmed unanimously? So why not Loeffler? 

I wondered about the other nominees. Turns out that ten democrats only voted for one nominee (Marco Rubio). Five democrats voted for two. Bernie Sanders is one of these along with Chuck Schumer. The only nominees not to get a single democrat vote were Pete Hegseth, Russell Voight (called the most dangerous nominee), Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, jr and Howard Lutnick. Howard Lutnick? Among the republicans Mitch McConnell voted against three while Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against two (Hegseth and Kash Patel). Kristin Guillibrand was the senator one who voted against most of the nominees. Four democrats voted for ten of the nominees. They were John Fetterman (no surprise), Maggie Hassan, Rueben Gallego (big surprise) and Jeanne Shaheen (again no surprise). The nominee getting the next most votes was Brooke Rollins with 72-28. Again the opposition was symbolic rather than substantial. Rollins should have been unanimously confirmed.

I don’t know legislative history but I would guess that these are the most “no” votes ever received by a presidential slate of nominees. The open hostility shown to many of these nominees reflected badly on the democrats. Elizabeth Warren, Mazie Hirono and Guillibrand, in the words of my sainted mother, “showed out”. I guess that they and most on their side of the aisle will be in the resistance and seek to block Trump and his cabinet from reforming the government. But as I have said before, just be cool. When the democrats return to the White House, as eventually they will, all will be restored. DEI and trans policies will be resuscitated, funding will be appropriated and the waste and fraud that the democrats love so well will return. But in the meanwhile, to the surprise of many – including me – Trump has gotten all his people across the finish line. The most intriguing nominee is still to come. Its the nominee for secretary of labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer who was a sop to the Teamsters. My bet is that she will get more democrat votes than any other nominee and have the most republican opposition. She has been voted out of committee with 8 of the 11 democrats surprisingly voting “no”. Those 8 would vote against the Pope if he were a Trump nominee. Rand Paul was the only republican opposed. She will be easily confirmed. To quote the Borg, “Resistance is futile.”

Wither the neocons?

I am certainly no expert on foreign policy. Much of what I think is probably naïve. Yet it seems to me that the hawks are out of favor in this Trump administration. In the first Trump administration several of those close to him were known as neocons: Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, Jim Mattis and John Bolton were prominent in the administration as were those in the hierarchies of the State Department and the Pentagon. Neocons are supposed to believe in market capitalism. But at their core they are interventionalists and want to spread whatever it is they believe in throughout the world and will use military force to do it. Hence, Viet Nam, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not so much with the second Trump Administration. There is probably a term for the anti-neocon (and no its not “weenie”). Trump this time is a non-interventionist – except for taking over Greenland, seizing the Panama Canal and making Canada the 51^st state. But who is being picky? Trump is seeking to extricate the country from the morasses in Gaza and in the Ukraine. So where are the neocons wanting to keep feeding the war machine? Even Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham have been uncharacteristically quiet. Instead we have JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard who certainly is no neocon and said she was fighting against the “Biden-Clinton-neocon-neolib foreign policy.”

In Gaza Trump has proposed ending the Hamas – Israeli War by expelling all the Palestinians, dispersing them throughout the Arab world and taking control of Gaza. He wants to turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. In Ukraine he is extorting an agreement from Zelenskyy to have Ukraine’s minerals pay for US support (something I broached in an earlier blog). Trump wants $500 billion while Zelenskyy says that the US has given them as a grant “only” $100 billion. The actual figure is close to $200 billion. They will agree soon on a figure. But what will that gain Ukraine? Will Trump say that if you sell us your minerals we will protect you from the big bad wolf Putin? Not likely since Trump insists that Ukraine is NATO’s problem. In fact Putin is offering Trump access to Ukraine’s minerals in the territory seized by Russia. I guess that offer is only if Russia is allowed to keep that territory.

Trump is letting Marco Rubio be the point man in the negotiations over Ukraine. Joining Rubio are national security advisor Michael Waltz and Mideast envoy Steven Witkoff. The Russians are there but not the Ukrainians. Of course Trump has called Zelenskyy a two bit comedian and has chided him for taking the wrong side in our presidential election. But still it is Zelenskyy’s country that the US and Russia are haggling over it so shouldn’t they be at the table? NATO is also excluded. This is reminiscent of Yalta where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin decided the fate of Germany and Eastern Europe. The Ukrainians hope for a better fate this time rather than being returned to the Russians under whose yoke they have suffered throughout history. Stalin’s Holodomor is Ukraine’s Holocaust. I don’t know the outcome of the negotiations but somehow the O’Jays “Backstabber” keeps playing in my head. BTW, the lead singer of the O’Jays, Eddie Lavert was a cousin of mine.

Zelenskyy has got to be a bit trepidatious. The US voted with Russia, China and Iran on a rather mild resolution saying that Russia invaded Ukraine with “devastating and long-lasting consequences” and called for an early cessation of hostilities. Sounds right to me. So why did the US vote against it if not to throw Zelenskyy a finger and coddle Putin? Of course, Trump had said that Ukraine was responsible for starting the war. Trump’s nominee for Deputy Defense secretary in his congressional hearings hemmed and hawed and refused to say whether Russia started the war. When asked, the nominee Stephen Feinberg, said diplomatically “I’m not privy to the details of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, what the sensitivities are, what the president’s trying to accomplish — so I’d be afraid to speak out of turn and undermine that. I do have confidence that the president is very skillful at this, and he’ll find the right way to help the United States.” The pushback came from the democrats on the committee and not the republicans (who are obviously scared of Trump). Hey, republicans, want to revisit your attack on Ketanji Brown Jackson on what’s a woman?

BTW the democrats all of a sudden care about the welfare of the military. They are pretending to be all in a tizzy over possible cuts in defense. Noted defense hawks (not!) Tim Kaine and Jack Reed all of a sudden argue that cuts would undermine national security and cripple the military. What! The democrats said what? Is this the first time this century that democrats actually made clucking noises on protecting national security and funding the military? Again, the power of Trump continues to amaze.

Some more humor

I was shocked when my mother voted for Kamala

She never would have done that when she was alive.

If a democrat wins, I’m leaving,

If a republican wins, I’m also leaving.
This has nothing to do with politics.
I just really want to travel.

The problem with Trump jokes

Republicans don’t think they’re funny, and democrats don’t think they’re jokes.

Why did the democrats lose the election?

They were Biden their time

The worst problem at the congressional baseball game is 

All the republicans are in right field

If there weren’t any democrats…

Then who would be left?

How can NASCAR racers be republicans

if all they do is go left?

Why was Trump impeached twice?

He wanted to prove that anything a Democrat can do, he can do better and in half the time.

Why did the democrat walk into a bar?

Because Kamala Harris set it so low.

How do politicians keep their breath fresh? 

With Entitle-mints.

What did the Trump say to China? 

We are going to build a Great Firewall and make your hackers pay for it.

What do you call Al Gore’s drumming? 

An algorithm.

What do you call a basement full of liberals? 

A whine cellar.

What is a democratic free market? 

One that hands out slices of cheese

Why did God create democrats? 

In order to make used car salesmen look good.

What the difference between a liberal and the rear end of a horse? 

I don’t know.

Who said that democrats have no standards?

In fact, they have double standards.

I hope Elon Musk never gets involved in a scandal

Elongate would be really drawn out.

According to my calculations, about 40% of Americans are republicans

But that’s just a conservative estimate

How do you hide money from a republican?

Put it in an LGBTQ textbook.

Elon Musk’s plan for Mars colonization will include only republicans.

Well it is the red planet.

How many democrats does it take to fix a problem?

No one knows. It’s never happened.

I was trying to think of past republicans similar to Marjorie Taylor Greene

But they just Palin comparison.

What’s the difference between Elon Musk and God?

God doesn’t think he’s Elon Musk.

What did the republicans do when Obama won the election 2 times in a row?

They pulled out their Trump card

Some republican and a few socialists live in the same building. One day there is a fire, but only the socialists die. Why? 

Everyone else was at work.

The only reason the democrats haven’t risen up and overthrown the government 

The republicans are the ones with the guns.

Why were democrats in the early lead on election day?

The republicans weren’t off of work yet.

Elon Musk is originally from South Africa, which is strange

You’d think he was from mad-at-gas-car.

Elon Musk, Tiger Woods, the Pope and a college student are on an airplane …

The plane is going down, the pilots bailed, it’s going to crash. 
there’s 4 of them and only 3 parachutes …
Tiger Woods says “I’m the greatest golfer in history, I should get a parachute.”
Everyone agrees, Tiger takes a parachute and jumps out of the plane. 
Elon Musk says “I’m the smartest man in the world, I should get a parachute.”
Everyone agrees, Musk jumps out of the plane. 
The pope tells the college student “My son, take this last parachute and live a long happy life.”
The college student says “We can both go. the smartest man just jumped out with my backpack.”

Before Elon Musk started Tesla

… he was plain old Lon Musk

President Trump was told there were at least 12 Brazilians in the migrant caravan headed to the Southern border…

He turned to his Treasury Secretary and said: “how much is a brazillion?”

Some people are skeptical of migrants because they think they don’t embrace their new country’s culture

But I teach calculus to international students at my local university and they all integrate really well.

Some illegals from Siberia decided to come into Canada and hired a boat to take them but the captain seemed to have gotten lost. Nervously one of them asked him “Are you alright?” He said “Yeah, I just need to get my Bering Strait.”

I was at the mall and saw a boy selling week old “Democrat Puppies” in the parking lot. A week later the boy was back in the parking lot selling “Republican Puppies”. I asked him what happened?  He said “they opened their eyes.”

Defund the UN

Speaking of waste and fraud, why doesn’t Trump defund the UN? It is contrary to everything Trump espouses yet he nominated Elise Stefanik, the representative from New York who was one of his staunchest backers, to be UN ambassador. What a strange way to show his gratitude. What an awful job. Why would she want to sit in a room full of pompous diplomats who hate America and are antisemitic and listen to babbling nonsense? Virtually every UN organization incorporates climate change and gender issues including transgenderism as part of their work. If Trump is defunding these activities in the states, then why send the UN $22 billion to advance this agenda internationally? And I thought Stefanik was smart.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “The International Organization for Migration lists as among its central areas of activity “gender equality,” “environmental sustainability” and “reducing global inequalities.” It sponsors programs like “Strengthening Women’s Resilience in the Face of Climate Change in El Salvador.” The U.N. Commission on Human Rights promotes a variety of transgender propaganda campaigns, such as helping Nepalese “LGBTIQ+ writers to tell their own story.”  Nepalese LBGTQ writers? Who knew?

Recall that press secretary Katherine Levitt said regarding the expenditures at USAID that she did not want her tax dollars going to that crap? What about the funding of this UN crap? What about diversity, equity and inclusion being at the heart of UNFPA’s workforce?  What about funding job training for gays and lesbians in Brazil? What about funding “Being LGBT in the Caribbean?” Where is DOGE on all of this? What does Stefanik think about this “crap”?

In 2023, Mike Lee (R-UT) and Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced bills not only to defund the UN but to leave it as well. Lee said “No more blank checks for the United Nations. Americans’ hard-earned dollars have been funneled into initiatives that fly in the face of our values – enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry,” Roy said “This year, the United Nations’ corruption, and its despicable, brazen political agenda have been on full display. From UNRWA actively protecting Hamas and acting against our ally Israel, delayed condemning Hamas, to China being elected to the “Human Rights Council,” to the propagation of climate hysteria, covering for China’s forced abortion and sterilization programs, the UN’s decades-old, internal rot once again raises the questions of why the United States is even still a member or why we’re wasting billions — indeed, $12.5 billion in 2021 — every year on it. The UN doesn’t deserve one single dime of American taxpayer money or one bit of our support; we should defund it and leave immediately.”

What is Trump’s reaction? Well on February 4, he issued the following executive order.

Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary, in consultation with the UN Ambassador, shall conduct a review of all international intergovernmental organizations of which the United States is a member and provides any type of funding or other support, and all conventions and treaties to which the United States is a party, to determine which organizations, conventions, and treaties are contrary to the interests of the United States and whether such organizations, conventions, or treaties can be reformed.  Upon the conclusion of that review, the Secretary shall report the findings to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and provide recommendations as to whether the United States should withdraw from any such organizations, conventions, or treaties. 

So why send Stefanik over to the UN when she is much more valuable in the House? Why not send Steve Bannon instead? That would really shake things up. Then go ahead and get out of the UN. It is a useless organization. Fund those activities that do not conflict with this country’s priorities and goals out of the State Department. Evict them from New York. They belong in Brussels anyway.

A Fake Constitutional Crisis

The democrats and their sycophants in the media are screaming “constitutional crisis!” Being Trump haters and the guardians of unlimited government spending they are whining about Trump and DOGE. Andy Kim (D-NJ) “We are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis.” Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “The president and his allies’ moves represent “illegal seizures of power” that have thrown the U.S. into a constitutional crisis.” Angus King (I-ME) “We are in the middle of the biggest Constitutional crisis our nation has ever seen & every day we’re inching further from the democracy our founders created.” Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) “We’ve got our toes right on the edge of a constitutional crisis here. Only John Fetterman (D-PA) seems to have kept his cool saying that the courts will decide what is or isn’t constitutional, “There isn’t a constitutional crisis, and all of these things ― it’s just a lot of noise.” Who would have thought that Fetterman would continue to be the only democrat who makes sense rather than nonsense?

What about the media? NPR – which Trump should defund – says “It’s clear President Trump has gone beyond the powers of the executive branch.” But then says “At this moment, the executive branch has not taken the position that it can violate court orders or that it does not need to comply with court orders. So as long as we remain in a system in which the executive follows, or at least states that it has to follow what a court says, I have hope that the system will hold.” Doesn’t sound like a constitutional crisis to me. The Atlantic screams “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here! If Congress won’t stop Donald Trump and Elon Musk from arrogating its power over federal spending, who will? 

Hum. Did NPR and the Atlantic think that Joe Biden’s actions constituted a constitutional crisis? Didn’t Biden ignore court orders, including that of the Supreme Court in his efforts to forgive student debt? The courts said that it was unconstitutional. Biden ignored the ruling and bragged “The Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn’t stop me.” Sounds like a constitutional crisis to me that the left chose to ignore. Hey republicans, why wasn’t this an impeachable offense? Did we have a constitutional crisis when Biden proclaimed that the constitution had been amended – unbeknownst to us all – to include the Equal Rights amendment? No, because we all knew that Biden was an addled delusional old fool.

The left only screams “constitutional crisis” when they are not the ones violating it or advocating an overthrow of it. The left routinely ignores the second amendment and hates the Electoral College. Doesn’t the left always proclaim that the constitution is flawed and needs to be rewritten? How is it that all of a sudden they have embraced the sanctity of a document written by a bunch of slave holding old white men? Isn’t it amazing what Donald Trump can do?

So far Trump is facing over 70 lawsuits. He has won some and lost some. On those that he has lost, he said he will appeal. To date there has been no indication that he will ignore the courts like Biden did. What Trump is doing is trying to exert control over the entire executive branch of the government. So is that unconstitutional?

Perhaps the democrats are confused over our form of government and to what constitutes the executive branch. Primer: the federal government consists of three branches: the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch. The executive branch includes the president’s cabinet and a myriad of federal agencies such as the SEC, the FCC, CFPB, FAA, FTC, USAID and a host of others including the financial regulatory agencies the OCC, NCUA, FDIC and the FED. All agencies whose leaders are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate are within the executive branch. 

Trump says that he has the authority to fire the boards and leaders of these agencies since he has authority over the executive branch. He also asserts that he can have control over their spending even though some budgets are appropriated by the Congress and others come from the charging of assessments. Trump argues that these agencies are not “independent”. His argument is that insulation from presidential authority runs counter to Article II of the Constitution. The President should be able to supervise how they do their job. Trump says these agencies have become unaccountable for their actions and should be reined in. These agencies have exceeded their constitutional authority. 

The Wall Street Journal, often a Trump adversary, is on Trump’s side. It says “The Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department both enforce antitrust and consumer protection laws. But the Attorney General answers to the President, while the FTC Chair doesn’t. This makes no logicalgoverning sense.”

So the issue is who holds the independent agencies accountable for their actions. If they are part of the legislative branch then it would be the congress. However, they are part of the executive branch. Shouldn’t the responsibility then fall to the president? The constitutional crisis may well be the lack of accountability of these agencies. I think Trump wants to have a clear ruling from the Supreme Court on the independence of these agencies and their oversight. 

Again the Wall Street Journal says “The president ordered agency heads to scour every regulation and bit of guidance under their remit and make lists of those that violate the constitution, exceed legislative power, go beyond the clear words of a statute or harm the national interest. The White House is laying the groundwork to declare hundreds of rules null and void on grounds that they weren’t lawful in the first place. Will it get sued? Yes, and the White House knows it. The clear hope is to build on recent Supreme Court rulings that rein in the bureaucratic state.”  Suits? Trump says “bring it on.”

Constitutional crisis? More like constitutional cleanup. It will be interesting to see what the courts have to say about agency independence and about impoundment when the White House decides not to spend monies appropriated by the congress. That should prove interesting.

Volodymyr the First. Is Trump jealous?

Donald Trump clearly dislikes Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It probably stems from Trump accusing Zelenskyy of taking sides during the campaign. Recall that Zelenskyy on a visit to the UN met with Harris and not with Trump. Trump said that Zelenskyy wanted Harris to win in order to “keep the money flowing.” He said “Every time Zelenskyy comes to the United States, he walks away with $100 billion. I think he’s the greatest salesman on Earth. But we’re stuck in that war unless I’m president.” Zelenskyy then criticized JD Vance for his views on Ukraine and was flown to Pennsylvania in an Air Force C-17 to tour an ammunition plant with Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Zelenskyy was accused of trying to influence the election. One critic said “Zelensky is also attacking JD Vance in the biggest, most important battleground state in the country during an election year. If that isn’t foreign election interference I don’t know what is.” Another opined “Zelensky is openly campaigning for Democrats in battleground Pennsylvania today some 50 days out from our Presidential election. Unreal.” 

Trump was infuriated. So his actions toward Zelenskyy are no surprise. Calling him a dictator is relatively mind – for Donald Trump. But the media immediately defended Zelenskyy giving further evidence that it suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The media’s reflex response was “If Trump thinks he’s a dictator then he is not.” Trump had said that Zelenskyy’s term in office had expired but that he suspended elections declaring martial law which made him a dictator. The media said “No he isn’t because Ukrainian law prohibits elections during periods of martial law”. 

The headlines blared that Trump was falsely accusing Zelenskyy of being a dictator. All the European leaders immediately came to Zelenskyy’s aid saying that he was not a dictator. Googled it and there is page after page accusing Trump of making a false accusation. Some even compared Zelenskyy to Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. The British parliament suspended general elections from 1935 to 1945 allowing Churchill to serve from 1940 to 1945 without the benefit of elections. Interestingly, when elections were held two months after VE day, Churchill lost. Lincoln never suspended elections but did suspend habeas corpus to rein in confederate sympathizers in Maryland in 1863 after both the House and the Senate passed bills giving Lincoln the right to do so. Lincoln proclaimed “Whereas the Constitution of the United States has ordained that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless when, in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

I am convinced that if Trump had lauded Zelenskyy as a wonderful fellow who was saving the world from being ravished by the evil Putin and having a wonderful relationship with his subjects, that the media would have immediately branded Zelenskyy as a dictator. Note that none of the media denials went any further than the dictator part. I guess the media does not want the public to know that Zelenskyy has banned eleven political parties asserting that they are sympathetic to Russia. He expelled members of the Ukrainian parliament and revoked their citizenship over claims that they were sympathetic to Russia. Zelenskyy banned the Russian Orthodox Church which is the largest church in the Ukraine claiming the church was a threat to national security and its priests were Russian spies. He has also frozen the assets of his predecessor Petro Poroshenko who was deposed in part due to his relationship with Putin. Zelenskyy has also censored free speech and sought to control the Ukrainian media. He consolidated television programming into a single state controlled outlet. Ukrainian journalists claim that they have been threatened and are under government surveillance if they do not parrot the official government line.

Our media ignores these actions. Rather they are more interested in refuting anything that Trump says or tweets. Trump said that Zelenskyy had poor approval ratings, had started the war and had gotten millions of Ukrainians killed. The media said “No!” His approval rating is 57% not the 4 percent cited by Trump, that Russia started the war and that Ukrainian casualties are around 80,000 killed and 400,000 wounded not millions. So Trump is lying and he must be lying about the dictator thing too. This is sloppy journalism at best and assumes that the public is too lazy to find out the truth. Trump is smart. He knows that by proclaiming Zelenskyy as a dictator, that the press will take the opposite stance. Since the press is always reporting the democrat claim that Trump wants to be a dictator, Trump knows that it can’t show parallels between him and Zelensky.

So is Zelenskyy a dictator? Do the above actions of censoring the press, banning the largest church in the country, expelling members of parliament, freezing the assets of the opposition, limiting the news, banning political parties and threatening journalists, are those of a dictator? They are indeed. However, even I understand that those actions may be deemed as justified during a time of war. But it still does not negate the old saying that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then odds are that it is a duck.

Democrats unhinged

Here are just some of the choice comments made by democrats ranting about Elon Musk.

Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

“An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.DOGE is not a real government agency. DOGE has no authority to make spending decisions. DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law. DOGE’s conduct cannot be allowed to stand. Congress must take action to restore the rule of law.

Hey Chuck, If this is true then won’t the courts shut them down? You certainly have enough lawsuits going.

Maxine Waters (D-CA)

“We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your ass. Nobody told you you could get all of our private information. Nobody told you you could be in charge of the payments of this country”.

“We have told you that you’ve made enough money off our government yourself, and now you want to take everybody else’s payroll and make sure that they don’t make the kind of money that you’ve made. Oh, you want to use our money to go to Mars.”

“We’re in a crisis in this country because Trump and Elon Musk and the billionaires have decided they’re going to put us all in our place. They’re going to run this country. They’re going to make sure that they take over everything”.

“Are we going to let them do that? Are we going to let them run this government in the way that they can make even more money and so they won’t stop? It is so brazen every day they’re taking new actions. They’re taking executive actions. Every day they’re doing something,”

BTW, Waters, a millionaire herself, must have ignored the influence wielded by democrat billionaires over the past four years. Forbes reported that 83 billionaires supported democrats in the last election while 52 backed Trump.  Laurene Powell Jobs, Bill Gates, Jonathan Gray, Marc Benioff, Mark Cuban, George and Alex Soros, Reid Hoffman, Crystal Sacca, Jamie Dimon, David Geffen, Jennifer Pritzker, Barry Diller, Stanley and Karen Hubbard, William and John Fisher, Tom Steyer, Craig Newmark, Steven Rales, David Hall, Gordon Getty, George Lucas, Dean Metropoulos, Steven Spielberg, Eric Schmidt, William Ackman, Andres Santo Domingo, Christy Walton, Eli Broad, Jim Simons, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Bloomberg and David Bonderman are just some of those who we know about. I didn’t hear Mad Max railing about these billionaires. I guess they were just supporting Kamala out of the goodness of their hearts and had no influence whatsoever on Biden and his policies.

Squad Member Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)

“Elon Musk is a Nazi nepo baby, a godless lawless billionaire, who no one elected. Elon, this is the American people. This is not your trashy Cybertruck that you can just dismantle, pick apart, and sell the pieces of. We will see you in the court, in Congress, in the streets.”

Nazi nepo baby? A godless lawless billionaire? Well no one is perfect. I admit the Cybertruck is a bit weird. I don’t think that it is street legal in Europe or China. I have counted four in my neighborhood environs along with two Hummer EVs. They are huge but so is my extended cab, extended bed, diesel F-250.  Is Elon going to make a mini-cyber for Europe and China?

Squad Member Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

“We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your ass, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it.”

Maxine. Jasmine. What’s this fixation with Musk’s rear end?

Squad Member Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ)

“God damn it shut down the Senate!”  “We will not take this. We will fight back!” “Anytime a person can pay $250 million into a campaign, and they be given full access to the Department of the Treasury of the United States of America, we are at war!”

War? LaMonica? I wonder if her parents read my blog about turning “white” names into “black” ones by adding “La” to them? Didn’t Bill Gates give the Harris campaign $50 million? Didn’t Michael Bloomberg give $47 billion? BTW LaMonica, surely Joe Biden and Kamala Harris weren’t running the last government. George and Alex Soros anyone?

Squad Member Summer Lee (D-PA)

“I don’t believe that we can afford to mince many words. President Trump is conducting an illegal and dangerous power grab, to call it what it is. Elon Musk is stealing from you, the American people, your jobs, your benefits, your data.”

I guess the EPA, the FBI, the IRS, DOJ and the CFPB were not conducting dangerous power grabs over the last four years. The courts will tell us whether what Musk is doing is illegal.

Squad Member Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

“So let me get this straight, he wants contracts for cancer research cancelled but says let’s keep contracts for his company SpaceX to do research. Greedy billionaire trying to ripoff the American people pretending to be altruistic is all I see.”

 Omar is referring to the freeze put on HHS funding initiatives until Robert Kennedy, Jr and his team could review them. That meant long-standing meetings designed to allocate grant money to medical research were canceled without indication they would be rescheduled. One of those meetings concerned cancer research.

Squad Member Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

“The American people feel very much we’re in a constitutional crisis. They cannot understand, you know, this billionaire. … And to think that he can just walk in, to an agency that I can tell you, for many of my families, from Social Security, Medicare, I mean, it is literally part of how they survive in our country.”

Seems like they are all reading from the same playbook. I want them to take a poll in Tlaib’s district to see how many there think we are in a “constitutional crisis.” Did she think we were in a constitutional crisis when Biden ignored the law and ignored the courts with his actions on illegals and on student debt?

Greg Casar (D-TX), Head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

“Five inspector generals that were looking into Elon Musk’s companies were fired by the Trump-Musk administration. These inspector generals, who are independent, protected by law, they are the people that find the waste, fraud, and abuse, and found many of the cases of waste, fraud and abuse that have been brought up today — fired because they were looking into Elon Musk. You know what Elon Musk doesn’t seem to be looking into? His own contracts. …  Just last year, Elon Musk was promised $3 billion from close to 100 contracts with the federal government.” 

Greg, If the IGs were doing their job there would be no need for DOGE. But of course, there is no government waste and fraud, right?

Robert Garcia (D-CA)

 “What the American public wants is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy.”

Is this a threat? Obviously not since Garcia later said “No reasonable person would view my comments as a threat.” Well what about all those crazy unreasonable people out there, Robert?

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) 

“While we’re sitting here and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are recklessly and illegally dismantling the federal government, shuttering federal agencies, firing federal workers, withholding funds vital to the safety and well-being of our communities and hacking our sensitive data systems.” 

Thanks Melanie. For a while it looked like only minorities were anti-Musk. But of course you did minor in American Indian studies.

Squad Member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)

“This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed,”

“This dude is not smart, and the danger in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise that Elon has, I mean, this guy is one of the most morally vacant but also just least knowledgeable about these systems that we know of,”

“They don’t do their homework, clearly. Like, they’re putting 19-year-olds in at the Treasury.”

“What Donald Trump has done is that he has completely given up his power and handed a lot of it over to Elon Musk. Elon Musk has appointed some teenagers and some people in their early 20s into essentially trying to raid government systems.”

“I’m not rocking with anybody sympathetic to Nazis”

Hold it! AOC who is not the most erudite person in Congress called Musk dumb? The founder of Tesla and Space X dumb? Did you get rid of your dumb Tesla? Did you see how dumb Musk’s dumb Space X caught that dumb rocket booster descending back to the dumb launch pad at Boca Chica, Texas? What a dumb thing to say.

What is interesting to me is that 82 percent of democrats say that reducing government waste and fraud is important but only 28 percent approve of Musk and DOGE. What I want to hear is how democrats would eliminate waste and fraud because all I hear is caterwauling over Musk. So dems, what would you do? Silence.

Lemme see, 5% of $10,000 is 200, right?

I am back in the classroom after 13 years. I was worried about the cultural divide. I cannot relate to these students and they cannot relate to me. None had been born when Bill Clinton was president. Most were in the second grade when I retired. I am older than their grandparents. My children are older than their parents. My grandchildren are all older than any of them. Tic Tok is one of those windup clocks. I am on no social media sites. I tried to get on X after Elon Musk acquired Twitter, but X rejects any effort I make to create an account and I am not smart enough to figure out why. I must be a Luddite since I can’t even figure out how to use the technology in the classroom. Its almost embarrassing.

I gave a lecture on financial markets. As is my wont I told about the origins of the US stock market and why it was initially denominated in 8ths. I talked about the Spanish dollar divided into 8 reales and that the coin dominated the American colonies even after the US decided to mint its own currencies dominated in 100ths after 1792. In the colonies the Spanish pieces of 8 was divided into bits rather than reales. Remember 2 bits, 4 bits, six bits a dollar, all for UT stand up and holler?

For me this was fun. Not so much for the students who were wondering if they had wandered into the wrong class. Isn’t this a finance class and not a history class? Who really cares why the stock market is denominated in 100ths while the bond market remains denominated in 8ths? I even showed them the narrower margins in the stock market because of this (one penny versus 12.5 cents). The students yawned. Then I said remember in Treasure Island, Long John Silver’s parrot kept barking “Pieces of 8! Pieces of 8!”? The students probably thought that Long John Silver was some fish-selling dude.

I gave them an exam. It was short answer, one problem and three essays. Students had to answer in the spaces provided on the exam and could not use their computers. They complained. They wanted to answer using their laptops. I told them that the computer could not monitor them if they answered on it. They complained that in their four years they had only been tested with multiple choice/true false exams on the computer. Well during my four years at Georgia I only had one multiple choice exam and I refused to take it. So my making them write out their answers was unfair. I also would not let them use a calculator. I told them that they could do the computations in their head and if they used a calculator it meant that they did not understand the concept. The problem involved them being able to compute 5% of $10,000. Over half of them could not do it. When I went over the exam in class, I had to ask ten students what the answer was before one said $500. Again a student complained that the question was unfair and I should have given them the answer because it compared the coupon rate on a bond to its yield to find out if the bond sold at a discount, par or a premium.

I also take off for misspelled words. On the syllabus I toldl the students that I have a zero tolerance for misspelling principal, yield, receive, guarantee and separate. So of course they wrote principle, yeild, recieve, garantee and seperate. Several students also misspelled “usury” even though I spelled it correctly in the question.

These students are passive. I have not been interrupted a single time by students asking questions or for a clarification. Not once! I was talking about Fed policy and changing the fed funds rate by 50 basis points when I realized that some of them didn’t know what a basis point was – and these are finance majors. So I asked “What’s a basis point?” I said that I had wasted the last 30 minutes because they did not know what I was talking about. When I now see a student with dazed eyes I say “Ask me a question.” When they said that they don’t have one, I say “Then make one up.”

These students have had basic economics, introductory finance, financial statements and investments. Yet they cannot draw a supply and demand diagram. They haven’t even heard of net present value. When I asked them about how the market allocates credit, they had no idea. When I introduce a subject I ask them a basic question. Define “interest rates”. They can’t do it. I ask them “Is the minimum wage good or bad.” They say “good” and then I show them it can be both and can create unemployment among those the politicians want to help. I do the same with usury laws. I asked them who holds the most US debt. They all said China. Of course the answer is the Fed and the US government. Even Japan holds more US debt than China. I guess I need to put my lectures on Tik Tok.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some very strong students in this class. Most are smarter than they show. Its that they have not been trained to use their brains and to think how to solve problems. Case in point was a question on the Fed’s Open Market Committee. I said that if inflation were forecast, what actions would the FOMC take to counter it. Half the class said the Fed would buy T-bills and lower interest rates! When I went over the test I asked a student who got it wrong, “If the Fed wanted to slow down the economy, what would happen to interest rates.” He knew that the Fed would raise interest rates. So why did he get the answer to the exam wrong? It was obviously my fault in how I asked the question.

When the semester began I said that I did not want to be the only person in the class having fun. I am actually enjoying being back in the classroom but the student reaction is definitely bimodal. This is messing up my turkey season and I cannot spend a solid week at the farm until spring break. But this is a one off. Seven students dropped when I told them how I tested. Fifteen more did not show up after getting their exam grades. Hopefully the students remaining will be motivated to read the financial press and understand what they are reading. One day they will have to use these skills in the workplace. At least one student said that she has started listening to a financial blog and now understands much of what they are saying.

So maybe there is hope.