Easy Sunday: Affirmation at ChatGPT

 Be careful out there.

     "Smile and bob and pretend to be interested in other people's hobbies precisely so that you may screw things out of them." 

           Sinclair Lewis's review of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Like many other Americans, I have spent some time playing with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence apps.

If ChatGPT is new to you, it is simple: Simply put ChatGPT in your browser's address bar and push enter. You will get a dialog box that asks "Where should we begin" or something similar. Type in a question.

I asked it a question of concern for me and perhaps some of my readers:

What is the best refuge or safety spot for assets if one thinks the USA is in danger of currency loss?

It responded:

That’s an excellent (and very timely) question — but also one that depends heavily on what kind of danger you’re imagining (inflation, de-dollarization, debt crisis, geopolitical instability, etc.) and what kind of assets you hold (cash, equities, real estate, etc.).

Let’s go through this carefully and systematically.

It gave what I consider an excellent answer -- a more thorough one than I would have given a client as a financial advisor. It suggested gold and silver, plus bonds denominated in currencies of Switzerland, Singapore, and Norway, all of which have very strong currencies, insulating them from the spiraling debt problems of the USA.

In addition to the advice, notice that I got a compliment. Chat GPT likes me! It respects me! It ends with:

Would you like me to tailor this to a specific scenario — for example, “a U.S. dollar collapse due to hyperinflation” vs. “a long-term erosion of the dollar’s reserve status”?

So very helpful. I don't answer that, but I ask a new question:

I am an American retail investor. How can I buy Swiss or Norway bond assets in an easily investable format?

It responds: 

Excellent — and very practical — follow-up. For a U.S. retail investor. . . . 

It goes on to give me some ticker symbols for Swiss currency and bond funds, then asks how it can be of further help.

Here is the observation and warning: ChatGPT has a voice and personality. It thinks my question was excellent. And practical! That's me!  

I am being seduced by a process designed to use my instincts as a human to make me reliant and engaged. Seventy-six years of interactions with other people give me cues and expectations and read-the-room common-sense gut feelings about what is transpiring. I feel like there is "someone" in there who knows and likes me. 

My sweet golden retriever knew and liked me. Her emotion was real. ChatGPT's is not. There is no "someone" in there.

I don't have any particular sense that I am being "marketed to" here, or steered in a direction toward a profitable sale. At this point ChatGPT is just building a trusting relationship with a future paying customer.

ChatGPT was started as a nonprofit but now is part of Microsoft. It is a business. Grok is a competitor AI application, owned by Elon Musk. Claude is yet another competitor, owned by Google and Amazon. I don't have the ownerships straight in my mind, and there is a lot of wheeling and dealing and change going on, but I know one thing clearly: Artificial intelligence applications are created by businesses, and sooner or later they need to monetize their business. That isn't bad. It is inevitable. It is why they are making multi-billion-dollar investments. They are in the lose-money-to-gain-market-dominance phase of AI.

I need to keep reminding myself: These aren't buddies. They don't really know and like me and think my questions are astute. The AI voice sounds like a person but it isn't a person. The voice comes from computer chips and software inside giant sterile buildings.

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Are you betting that the first pitch of game seven will be a strike?

Gresham's Law in economics: 

     Bad money drives out good money.

We are seeing Gresham's law at work in sports:

     Gambling is taking over the game.

Guest post author Jack Mullen is a lifelong athlete and sports fan. He laments that the games themselves are losing prominence as a contest of athleticism, instead becoming recast as a mechanism for making bets. Jack remembers when gambling was considered a vice sufficiently immoral that it was underground, secretive, and illegal. Leaders of sports leagues understood that gambling would sow doubts about the legitimacy of their games.

Is Jack just a naive sentimentalist, resisting change in the manner typical of old men? The "good old days" were never as good as people remember them, and I hear arguments that gambling brings energy and attention to a game. If a multitasking, distracted American public now watches sports while holding a smart phone in their hands -- and many do -- at least sports gambling means that people are on a betting site, betting on the game they are watching, not deleting emails. That is more engagement, not less. Possibly a reader will make that argument as a comment or guest post.

But it isn't the argument Jack makes. He is old school. He loves the game.

Mullen

Guest Post by Jack Mullen

“Say it ain’t so, Chauncey!”

Sports gambling has now inched forward and become the new, favorite, All-American drug, thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court decision that opened the flood gates for legalized sports betting.

Baseball, thanks to two strong-willed commissioners, kept its sport clean for as long as it could. Kennesaw Mountain Landis, Major League Baseball's first commissioner, banished “Shoeless Joe Jackson” and most of his teammates on the 1919 Chicago White Sox for “throwing” the World Series. Commissioner Bart Giamatti banned Pete Rose for life after an investigation found he bet on games while managing the Cincinnati Reds from 1985 to 1987.

Landis and Giamatti stand out as paragons of virtue compared to most of the knuckleheads who were, and still are, leaders in the sports world, amateur and professional.

Basketball is the scandal du jour lately. Once the Supreme Court gave the green light to nationwide sports betting, who would have been surprised to learn that last week’s indictments of 30 defendants, including Portland Trail Blazer coach Chauncey Billups and Miami guard Terry Rozier, would center in on gambling-related charges? The Supreme Court let the gambling genie out of the bottle.

In case you have not noticed, sports betting is everywhere, thanks to the professional leagues and the sports media, especially ESPN.

My enjoyment of watching games is diluted when ads, in cahoots with sports leagues, not only entice viewers with incentives to start gambling, but are marketed with current players like LeBron James in his Draft Kings commercial with Kevin Hart. Talk radio shows are consumed by analysis of “point spreads” in upcoming games.

Technology aids bettors who want to place a “prop bet” on their cell phone over, say, how many pitches Shohei Ohtani will toss in the next World Series game, even to the point that you can bet whether the next pitch will be a ball or a strike. The Oakland A’s, soon to be the Las Vegas A’s, market the fact that you will be able to place a “prop bet” on the next pitch right from your seat in their futuristic new Las Vegas ball park.

Not enough is said about gambling being an addictive disease. Why so little coverage when Michael Jordan gambled hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey casino? Why does ESPN play ads for gambling sites even as it covers the latest FBI gambling indictments?

The NCAA, the governing body for intercollegiate sports, ruled that college athletes can now bet on pro sports. Are you kidding? Most college football players have friends in pro football who can talk about their injury and whether they can play in the upcoming game. This is the kind of information gamblers love to ascertain.

President Trump wants Baseball Commissioner Robert Manfred to reinstate Pete Rose to be eligible for a spot in the Hall of Fame. You just know that Manfred, like so many big law firms and universities, will cave.

Where have you gone, you Kennesaw Mountain Landises and Bart Giamatties? We need leaders like you to bring sports back to a spot where fans aren't concerned about games being rigged by mobsters, the guys who used Chauncey Billups, maybe knowingly, maybe unknowingly, as assets. 

Mullen, 1965. Catching a pass from Bill Enyart

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Re-normalizing a White America

U.S. Department of Labor:

“The American Dream belongs to the American People."

And who are the American people? Here they are:

This month the U.S. Department of Labor began posting images on its social media accounts promoting Project Firewall. It is President Donald Trump's initiative to put much tighter limits on H-1B visas that allow work permits for foreign workers. Their official ad campaign shows images of American life:

Official Department of Labor Facebook page

Husband, wife, two young children, house, small Protestant church, small downtown, a factory with brown smoke entering blue skies. 

The United States is in backlash mode on diversity and inclusion, away from a 50-year trend that reimagined who was an American. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians were here, but outside the notion of "regular." In the 1960s they began entering mainstream consciousness as fellow Americans.

The Coca-Cola ad "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony," drew national attention. The first images were of blond White women.

But as the music swelled, the camera showed a wider group of people, some Black, some Hispanic, some Asian. The ad was new at the time. Look at all the different people!

The half century has brought Black, Hispanic, Asian people into advertisements. Diversity and inclusion became mainstream. White boys wore the number 23 basketball jersey -- Michael Jordan's number. Tiger Woods endorsed business consultancies. Kids of South Asian extraction won spelling bees. Kids of Chinese extraction won math contests. Meanwhile, immigrants from Latin America and Asia changed the country's demographics. The United States is 19 percent Hispanic; 12 percent Black; six percent Asian. 

The changes have made some people uncomfortable, Trump among them. Backlash against high immigration numbers has happened repeatedly in American history. Immigration supporters and advocates (like me) had a job to do and we failed at it. Knowing that high levels of immigration create resentment, we had a duty to be certain that immigration looked orderly and that it was framed as patriotic. Instead, Democrats allowed disorder at the Southern border, and diversity was celebrated in progressive circles as rejection of the incumbent culture. "Melting pot" was thought racist. We were tone-deaf to America. Trump took advantage of that.

Critics of these ads liken them to Stalin's or Hitler's propaganda posters. I disagree. The images are not a celebration of Aryan youth or the Soviet proletariat. They are a sentimental return to an imagined 1950s golden age. Postwar American men could work and support a family and buy a home. Wives were homemakers. Non-white people were nearly invisible. The imagery is familiar to me: It reminds me of my Dick and Jane readers in first grade. It was good to be a White boy in the 1950s. I played cowboys and Indians. 

Project Firewall imagery reverses the DEI mindset where any commercial or government image of Americans would have, by design, a careful count of diverse identities. Project Firewall's  reverse branding is an over-reaction. It is an outlier. Weird. Retro in a bad way. And it will get swamped by ads from businesses with diverse customers.

Nike 

Direct to consumer drug ad

Kellogg's

Project Firewall's imagery will likely raise the status of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. She drew favorable attention from Trump for the giant banner of Trump's face on a DOL building. This ad campaign serves her, but not Trump. Project Firewall imagery is an over-reaction. It is an insult to the 40-something percent of Americans who look nothing like the people in the images, and anyone under age 70 who sees those images as ancient history, not reminders. Many people included in images of ethnic diversity voted for Trump because they thought they were part of Trump's America; they were fellow Americans worried about "illegals." "Illegals" were the outsiders, not them.

This imagery is over-reach and hubris. It expresses Trump's can-do rush to reverse anything that seems "woke." It is no-apology Trump. 

America is in backlash against DEI, but it has not gone Nazi. The people who identify with those images of real Americans were a majority of voters in 1950, but not now. This imagery insults the people who were the margin that got Trump elected.

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Showdown at the Supreme Court

Dilemma for Chief Justice John Roberts:

Either he sacrifices Article One, and goes down in history as the chief justice who destroyed a republic based on representation by the people;

Or

He sacrifices Article Three, and goes down in history as the chief justice who destroyed a republic based on the rule of law.

President Trump has made it clear that he does not intend to be a good sport if he loses the tariff case. Trump called the tariff case the Court's "most important case ever." 

Trump hints that he might simply ignore an adverse decision by the Court. That would mean that the Marbury v. Madison precedent establishing that courts determine the law would be conditional on the temperament of the executive, not a bedrock principle of a country that obeyed its own laws. 

College classmate John Shutkin thinks Trump's threat will backfire. I had asked him what he thought about Trump's announcement that he planned to attend the Supreme Court hearing, an implied threat: I'm watching you; don't disappoint me, or else. John had a distinguished career as a lawyer, serving as general counsel for large law and accounting firms.

Shutkin

Guest Post by John Shutkin

So Trump is going to sit in on the oral argument of the tariff cases  before the U.S. Supreme Court,  or at least is threatening to do so. (We do know he has a deserved reputation for being a TACO). If so, my condolences to the Court personnel who will have to deal with the logistics and security involved.  And will they even get paid for that?

In any event, the good news about Trump, if there is any, is that he lacks any subtlety in his words or actions; as the point has been made time and time again, he says the quiet parts out loud. And his obvious motive here is to put pressure on what he has called — unfortunately, with some justification — "my Supreme Court." This is like the parent who comes to his kid's class on visitors' day to make sure the kid behaves himself.

The further good news is that, as with many of Trump's moves, his obviousness backfires.  Just look at how he has so jeopardized the prosecutions/persecutions of James Comey, John Bolton, and Letitia James (and likely soon Adam Schiff) with his loud threats about going after these people, regardless of the crimes alleged, followed up by the firing of any Department of Justice personnel who do not proceed with indictments.  Absent such statements and actions, establishing selective prosecution is hugely difficult. But here, the defendant's respective counsel need simply republish these statements and actions and they have pretty much proven their case. Plus, Trump makes himself ripe for being called on to testify about these things if the prosecutions ever get to that stage.

So, too, I think, if Trump shows up for the oral argument, it will backfire. As we all know, Chief Justice Roberts cares, to a pathetic extent, about his "legacy." And, though he may want part of his legacy to be his Court's embrace of the "unitary executive" theory (code for "let Trump do whatever he wants, with impunity and immunity"), I am quite sure that he doesn't want that to be overshadowed by a legacy as "Trump's puppet."  In this regard, I would like to think that he is watching Mike Johnson's emasculation as House Leader as he kowtows to all of Trump's demands. If so, then Roberts may feel, as he did with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) case several years ago, that he has to show that his legacy transcends political partisanship, and what better way to do that than by ruling against Trump even as Trump sits glaring at him from the visitors' gallery (or whatever golden throne he is provided to sit in) and clearly trying to cower him into ruling in Trump's favor?  Put in more direct terms, though he may not show it on the bench, I'll bet that this really pisses Roberts off.

Moreover, as a matter of law, this should be a no brainer to rule against Trump, notwithstanding the unitary executive theory (which shouldn't apply to Congress, anyhow). The statutory law — not just legal precedent, which this Court seems able to casually disregard — is quite clear: Tariffs are the sole prerogative of Congress, with the exception of truly extraordinary circumstances, which clearly are not present here.  

So what do I predict?  Even given that Justices Alito and Thomas are already bought and paid for by Trump and the MAGAs, I think a clear majority, and maybe even 7-2, will rule against the tariffs.  And Roberts will feel that his perceived legacy for judicial independence has been preserved and, indeed, enhanced.

But what do I know? I predicted that Trump's political career was DOA after January 6th. In any event, for better or worse, since we are talking about a judicial ruling (even one likely to have any number of separate opinions), we will all learn how this turns out.  

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"Bristles of swine." My amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court

James Madison: 

"Imposts [i.e. tariffs] must be founded on the principles of mutual concession." 

My brief: 

"Congressional legislation can be messy and full of special cases, but that is a feature, not a bug; the country itself is messy and full of special cases."

Amicus briefs are submitted on paper in little bound booklets

My "friend of the court" brief to the U.S. Supreme Court argues that imposing taxes is the job of Congress, not the president.

     ---This is written in the Constitution.
     ---This is the original and traditional practice.
     ---There is good, practical reason for it.

President Trump's argument to the Supreme Court is that he has emergency powers allowing him to create tariffs at will. He also argues that his tariffs must continue because they reflect the public interest.

My brief argues that the clear letter of the Constitution says he does not have that right, and moreover, that tariffs must be created by Congress to reflect the public interest. 

I use a tiny item -- the current tariff on glass used in wine bottles and the historical tariff on "bristles of swine" -- as my case in point. The bigger issue, of course, is that this overreach in tariffs is a step toward tyranny in multiple arenas. 

Here is how my brief begins:  

STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE

Peter W. Sage, age 76, is a retired professional who operates a small farm and vineyard in Southern Oregon. He is financially vulnerable to extra costs imposed by tariffs. The tariff on wine bottles dramatically reduces the margin on sales of inventory-clearing wines at discount venues such as Costco and Trader Joe’s, where margins were already thin. 

Mr. Sage relies on the constitutional structure of the United States, specifically on the separation of powers and Congress’s exclusive authority to impose tariffs, to protect his financial interests. Congressional authority over tariffs provides him with practical access to decision-makers in the House and Senate who understand and represent the needs of small agricultural producers in Southern Oregon like himself.

In addition to these concrete economic concerns, Mr. Sage has, for almost a decade, written about executive overreach in his political blog, Up Close with Peter Sage, where he reports on in-person interactions with presidential candidates in New Hampshire and Iowa. Until recently, Mr. Sage’s warnings about unchecked executive power were largely theoretical. However, he now fears targeted retaliation by the President of the United States, including politically-motivated IRS audits, placement on a no-fly list, interference with the naturalization status of family members, and harassment of lawfully present Hispanic workers at his vineyard. 

These threats are manifesting now, in real time. 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT: 

The International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not explicitly authorize the imposition of tariffs, particularly not the expansive authority claimed in this instance. In Mr. Sage’s view, interpreting IEEPA to grant such unlimited power to impose taxes on the American public would represent the most evident unconstitutional transfer of legislative authority in his lifetime.

Mr. Sage can talk to his elected representatives. His economic interests as a small vineyard operator in Southern Oregon are directly threatened by cutting Congress out of its role in regulating tariffs. Oregon representatives can politically horse trade with representatives in sister states, they can bargain and barter for their constituencies seeking win-win outcomes. Mr. Sage wants tariffs to be controlled exactly as the constitution provides. 

This brief frames Mr. Sage’s argument around three statutory domains where Congress has exercised exclusive authority: tariffs, the judiciary, and the civil service. These domains, grounded in Article I and shaped by generations of legislative action, are the constitutional guardrails preventing executive power from subsuming the entire machinery of government.

The generation that carried out the American Revolution and drafted the Constitution asserted that taxation without representation was tyranny. Tariffs were a point of controversy at the nation’s founding. Alexander Hamilton sought to persuade Congress of the value of protecting infant industries with tariffs, as he outlined in his Report on the Subject of Manufactures. 

James Madison, a member of the House of Representatives, spoke on the floor of the House of the need to consider the concerns of different constituencies: 

That it will be necessary on the one hand, to weigh and regard the sentiments of the gentlemen from the different parts of the United States; but on the other hand, we must limit our consideration on this head, and notwithstanding all the deference and respect we pay to those sentiments, we must consider the general interest of the union, for this is as much every gentleman’s duty to consider as is the local or state interest—and any system of impost that this committee will adopt, must be founded on the principles of mutual concession.

The First Congress immediately got to work on a tariff. The Tariff of 1789 advantaged and disadvantaged certain goods. For example: Madeira wine, 18 cents a gallon; all other wines, 10 cents a gallon; brown sugars, one cent a pound; loaf sugars, three cents a pound; tallow candles, two cents a pound; wax or spermaceti candles, six cents a pound.

In 1804, Congress amended the Act of 1789. It added a list of items exempted from tariffs: rags of linen; cotton, woolen, and hempen cloth; bristles of swine; and the bark of the cork tree.

Mr. Sage may not succeed in eliminating tariffs on wine bottles; he expects that he will not. He recognizes that his is a particular interest, but not one more particular than the interest of people making use of bristles of swine in 1804, and that particular problem found relief in legislation. 

Tariffs injure different people in different ways, which is why Mr. Sage considers it both constitutional and reasonable that Congress—an institution that combines and melds a multiplicity of interests—is the body given authority to weigh and negotiate the various claims of people affected by a tariff. Mr. Sage argues that the people who hear his concerns must be decision-makers, not bystanders, for there to be representation. He recognizes that congressional legislation can be messy and full of special cases, but that is a feature, not a bug; the country itself is messy and full of special cases.

Mr. Sage has both a private and public interest in ending the practice of the government using pretexts of war powers or emergencies to remove his right of representation on tax matters. Pretextual emergencies, if allowed by the courts to stand, create an unchecked executive. It is dangerous behavior and precedent. Mr. Sage considers this a strong place to draw the line, since the notion that taxation requires representation is both written into the Constitution and deeply rooted in American history. 

The unchecked use of tariff authority by the Executive risks transforming them into instruments of domestic retribution, selectively harming particular regions, industries, or groups of citizens within our own borders. Targeting a state or a sector gives the executive the power to punish an area or industry unmoored from the representational process that was designed to restrain such targeting. Every member of Congress must face the political consequences of tariff policy at home; a second term president, by contrast, faces none. That insulation from accountability makes the unilateral exercise of tariff power especially dangerous. The only thing worse than the messy, interest-laden, compromise-driven process of Congress exercising its constitutional tariff powers is Congress not exercising them at all. Disorder in legislation is a symptom of democratic engagement; order imposed by a single will is a symptom of tyranny. 

The Framers understood that the taxing power, including tariffs, belongs to the people’s representatives precisely because its burdens fall unevenly. Mr. Sage therefore asks this Court to reaffirm the principle that taxation—by whatever name, and however imposed—must remain under the control of those answerable to the people.

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Trump Third Term

Loophole.

Trump is floating a plan to stay in office past 2028. He is doing it deftly -- by denying it. 

He is letting the idea percolate and normalize.

For sale at the official Trump merchandise store: $50.

President Trump is using a well-known technique for testing an idea that risks sharp rejection. Make a "joke" about it. Or suggest an idea by denying it. ("You wouldn't want to come to my place for a drink, would you?") Now the idea is on the table, so an unthinkable idea has become thinkable and a matter of debate. Then maybe Trump can call whatever happens a groundswell of support. After all, Trump now has enormous power over the indicia of popular support -- the media, the Department of Justice and the military, the  wealthiest people in the world, and the ability to count and report election results. 

Asked if he planned to stay on as president after 2028 Trump  told a reporter this week:

I would love to do it — I have the best numbers ever! … Am I not ruling it out? You’ll have to tell me.

Then he added,

But I wouldn’t do it. It’s too cute. I think the people wouldn’t like that. It wouldn’t be right.

So, of course, Trump rejects the idea. Sure, it would give him more power to express his greatness, but "it wouldn't be right." That would deter Trump, right? Ha!

Conde Cox is an attorney with special expertise in bankruptcy. That expertise put Donald Trump on his radar as a man with a huge vulnerability to going bankrupt yet again -- unless he got elected president. Cox has observed how Trump deals with desperate situations. Now Trump has a desperate need not to be a lame duck where Republicans can dare show independence. Cox is the immediate past president of the Federal Bar Association — Oregon Chapter. He has been rated for many years as a Thomson-Reuters "Super Lawyer" in the field of business bankruptcy. 

Cox

Guest Post by Conde Cox

As a 46-year lawyer, as a member of the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, as a keenly interested observer of constitutional law issues, and as someone who vomited at the sight of the insurrection against our Republic that transpired on Jan 6, I write to speculate about the various possible grounds upon which President Trump and his advisors (such as Steve Bannon) might be planning to rely as a means of circumventing the restrictions imposed by the 22nd Amendment that otherwise would prevent Trump from seeking a third or even fourth presidential term. 

Here is the language of the 22nd Amendment:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice. . . . ” 

The point I wish to make here is that by using the phrase “shall be elected to the office” instead of “shall serve in the office” the 22nd Amendment opens itself up to interpretations that would allow Trump to serve more than two presidential terms.

Here’s how:

Trump could argue that the federal election results in 2028 are invalid (by reason of vague and unsupported allegations of fraud like those which resulted in the January 6th insurrection), and therefore that no one can “be elected” to the presidency in 2028. Thus, Trump can argue that he can assume the presidency by acclamation and not by election, and therefore that he will not have been “elected” for “more than two terms.” I doubt whether Trump will get away with this, just as his minions did not get away with lynching Vice President Pence or changing the Electoral College vote certification on January 6, 2021. But he may try it. 

Alternatively, Trump could make a deal, if has not already done so as part of his appointment of JD Vance as his running mate in 2024, that would result in Vance running for president in 2028 with Trump as his VP nominee. The agreement would be that Vance will resign immediately after elected, thereby allowing Trump to become president for a third term as he would not have been “elected” for a third term, thereby avoiding the restrictions of the 22nd Amendment. I find this option very possible, and to constitute exactly the kind of pretense dishonesty that this president is capable of and engages in repeatedly.

Had Trump not been elected in 2024, it is my opinion that he would likely be in Chapter 11 bankruptcy now to forestall the collection of many adverse court judgments that otherwise would have been entered against him. He will therefore do almost anything to hold onto this office. He will do this for compelling personal protection reasons, and certainly not for protection of the republic nor to facilitate the public interest.

 

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Just do it.

Trump is the "Just Do It" president.

He gets shit done.

He destroyed the East Wing.

It was a powerful message from Trump, and a net-positive one for him. Americans want decisive action so much that they tolerate being lied to, stolen from, and having their democratic republic turned into a corrupt, crony-capitalist autocracy.

One of the ideas floating in the zeitgeist is that the U.S. is so rule-bound and full of veto points that nothing good can get done. Congress is hopeless. Lawyers stop everything. We are a helpless giant.

Gulliver, restrained by the Lilliputians 

Democrats tend to blame corporate lobbyists. Republicans tend to blame environmental nitpickers. Affordable housing advocates blame NIMBY neighbors. So many reasons things cannot get done. Excuses, excuses.

American voters grew impatient with uncontrolled immigration during Biden's term. Biden said he couldn't process asylum claims so nothing could be done. The problem festered.

Trump said he wanted a White House ballroom. I know of no groundswell of public opinion demanding a White House ballroom, but no matter. Trump wanted it, so he acted. It was an act of defiance immediately after the No Kings rally. It was a complement to the image of Trump dumping poop onto protesters. He just did it. Take that, America. 

There were no images of historians and architects in white lab coats holding tweezers to examine and study the wainscoting. We saw an excavator dropping the building into a dumpster.

It is a synecdoche for the Trump presidency. It was quick and dirty, but he acted and he didn't care what critics thought.

Too many immigrants, too fast, too unregulated?  Bring in ICE and get it done. Are they brutal? Yeah. It is a brutal job.

Too many illegal drugs coming in from Latin America?  Bomb boats suspected of carrying drugs. Is it murder? Yeah. Trump says they deserve to die.

Universities too woke? Take away their research grant money away. Does it stifle health research? Yeah. But universities projected elitist values.

America has a trade imbalance? Place high tariffs on everyone. Does that damage trade relationships? Yeah. But they will try to negotiate something.

Campaign magazine: "Arguably, the best tag line of the 20th Century."

Elon Musk's chainsaw was a powerful image. Musk's error was in thinking that American's disliked "federal bureaucrats."  They do. But they also like weather data, air traffic control, veterans health care, and forest fire suppression. Quick and dirty backfired here. Musk got pushed out.

Trump chooses his own targets with a better eye to popularity. He is keeping his campaign promises. He can claim a mandate.

Democrats have a mythic hero: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They want a party leader to stand up and do things the way FDR did. Remember: FDR took bold action on the Depression. Some New Deal programs worked. Some didn't. He got criticized by naysayers and do-nothings. But he acted.

Trump is a dangerous man with corrupt, venal, autocratic instincts and utter disregard for the rule of law. The tear-down of the East Wing demonstrates that he will destroy what he doesn't like to make room for something new. He is a change agent. He is not a ditherer. He commands resources.

Democrats criticize Trump's methods. There is room for a Democratic alternative to Trump. But Democrats need to voice solutions, not just criticisms. Democrats risk looking like all they can do is complain about the methods of people who do try to fix problems. Democrats need to voice an effective triage plan to determine who can stay in the U.S. and who will be deported, and then sell that plan to the American people. Let's hear a plan.

If Trump is replaced it will be by somebody who takes the metaphorical equivalent of an excavator to the problems of inflation, housing and healthcare affordability, the deficit, immigration, wage stagnation, and the other problems facing the country. 

Trump -- for all his many, many faults -- knows how to send a message of action.

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Easy Sunday: The freedom to be grandiose

The new East-Wing ballroom will be fit for a king.

French King Louis XIV

Donald Trump's grandiosity makes an impression. He creates a 21st Century version of what circus showman P.T. Barnum called "The Greatest Show on Earth." Not just great. The greatest. In Trump's election-eve campaign speech in November, 2024 he told the enthusiastic crowd that the border patrol gave him "the strongest, the strongest endorsement you’ve ever heard." Trump continued:

 They said, “He’s the greatest president in history."

And I said to them, "does that mean I am greater than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington?'" 

They said "Yes, sir, you’re better than both of them."

The greatest. Like the steaks. Like the new ballroom.

A serious-minded observer has reason to worry about this second-Trump term. He is unconstrained. He gets to express his desire for more. His taste in home and office decoration is the least dangerous of the various ways this president can express his love of boundless grandiosity. No amount of gold is too much. So what? America can survive his crass taste in architecture and furnishings. Some Americans probably share his taste.

Trump's New York home in Trump Tower

Democrats of refined sensibilities likely look at this and see behavior beyond parody, like the uniforms of African and Latin American dictators. Idi Amin didn't know when to stop. There was no "enough" on self-congratulatory medals.

Idi Amin, Ugandan dictator

Trump’s crass, venal, over-the-top willfulness sends a message that touches a part of the American psyche. Democrats find him dangerous and disgusting, but they need to recognize that he is giving a great many Americans something they like. He is entertaining. He is bigger than life. He is like a movie action-figure. Some would say hero; some would say anti-hero. But either way he is free to enjoy glorious, boundless excess of consumption and cruelty. The ballroom design is a message: more, more, more. (The ballroom destruction is another, which I will describe tomorrow.)

Trump projects the liberation of dreams, where one can fly. Anyone who enters Costco gets a bit of the experience. There are giant piles of shirts and sweaters. There are huge stacks of food in huge packages on top of pallets of yet more. It is bottomless. So much stuff! Cornucopia! Milk and honey! Our cups runneth over!

Trump taste for gross excess is natural to him. It is a performance, but an honest one from him. Trump is sending a message many Americans like, and it is rooted in the idea of American greatness. He continues the frontier ethic. Free land for the taking. The world is spread out like an all-you-can-eat buffet. Take it all. Gold! Land! Sex!

Canada and Greenland, too.

Boats in the Caribbean? Blow them to smithereens. They are nobodies and his to waste.

Trump doesn’t let goody-goody feminized taste-makers tell him to exercise restraint, or respect historic traditions, or obey rules regarding manners or fairness or even the Geneva Convention. He shows that Americans can do what they will, if they are in sync with what Trump wants. Trump is free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, he is free at last. Congress sure the heck can’t stop him.

And he is damned well going to make every last use of that freedom. He is going to build what he wants, take what he wants, and screw Democrats and RINOs and anyone else who gets in his way. There is no “too much.” The ballroom proves that.

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Ronald Reagan lectures Trump on tariffs

This week the Canadian province of Ontario sponsored a paid ad intended for a U.S. audience. It had a message:

Tariffs are bad. They cost jobs. Your own Republican president Reagan said so.

A year ago Ontario sent a love note to the newly-elected Trump in the form of a different paid aid. That one said in effect, "We are your friend and ally; let's get along."  

Trump responded with a punitive tariff. 

Trump sends mixed messages of courtship and threat to Canada. Trump sees Canada as an underdeveloped acquisition property. He tells them to get smart and join the U.S., or else face bad consequences. This inspires Canadian nationalism. This changes the incentives for Canadian politicians at the national and provincial levels. They must be the strong protector of Canadian sovereignty that most Canadian voters demand.

College classmate Sandford Borins is Canadian. He is a professor of Public Management Emeritus at the University of Toronto, having retired in July 2020 after a 45-year academic career. He maintains his own website where he shares his thoughts on politics in Canada: https://sandfordborins.com. This is an advance version of what he will be publishing there shortly.

Borins, wearing the King Charles III Coronation Medal for public service, which he was recently awarded.

 

Guest Post by Sandford Borins

A Temper Tantrum or a Deadlock?

In response to the Government of Ontario’s ad quoting a Ronald Reagan speech criticizing tariffs, Donald Trump announced that “ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED.” Would a government really terminate trade negotiations with its second-largest trading partner because its head of state doesn’t like an ad campaign run by a subnational jurisdiction? If Donald Trump is president, it might well. But Canadians are treating Trump’s pronouncement as a late-night temper tantrum.

Events don’t happen out of thin air, and it is useful to understand how the Ontario government came to launch this ad campaign, and why it drew such a furious reaction. The Progressive Conservative Party, headed by Doug Ford, has been in power since 2018. One of its standard practices has been using the government budget to pay for advocacy (one might also say partisan) advertising, mainly on mainstream media. Much of it has been directed at Ontarians, for example telling us how well our economy, and thus the Ford Government, is doing. Earlier this year, when Trump started referring to Canada as the 51st state, the Ford Government ran an upbeat advertising campaign in the U.S reminding Americans of their long-standing economic partnership with Ontario.

Click: America's "ally to the north"

The latest ad, which was Premier Ford’s brainchild, cites Republican icon Ronald Reagan’s strong and articulate support for free trade and opposition to tariffs. 

Click: CBC shows the "Ronald Reagan" ad

Furthermore, Doug Ford has defined his political brand as “captain Canada,” a tough-talking patriot who can stand up to the Americans. He won re-election last February by wearing a “Canada is not for sale” cap and defining the key issue as who can best protect Ontario. The Ford Government was also the first to pull American products from the shelves in the provincial liquor stores.

Donald Trump’s temper tantrum is easy to understand. The Ontario ads use the voice and words of an American icon against him and attempt to mobilize the traditional Republican Party against the MAGA Party. While foreign governments lobby the U.S. through diplomatic channels, only one foreign government – a subnational one, no less – has gone public through mainstream media advertising. The ads, often run during the baseball playoffs, are being noticed. This is a shocking contrast to the dominance Trump craves and obsequiousness he demands in Oval Office visits by foreign leaders.

Trump had his tantrum. The Ford Government will pull the ads, but only after the first two World Series games. Trump will call it a win, but his temper tantrum can only increase the attention paid to the ads, a win for Ford. Negotiations will resume.

The most difficult aspect of the negotiations concerns the Canadian auto sector, which is located entirely in Ontario. The federal and Ontario governments are clinging to the vision embodied in trade agreements for the last 60 years of an integrated U.S.-Canada auto industry with parts and assembled vehicles moving freely across the border in a balanced flow. However, Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have continually said that the auto assembly is a strategic sector, and Canada should not be exporting cars to the U.S., period. Their threats and the imposition of tariffs on the auto sector have already begun to have an impact. Last week Stellantis said it would move production of a new Jeep model from suburban Toronto to Illinois (3000 jobs) and GM said it would stop production of its electric van in southwest Ontario (1200 jobs). The government of Canada is treating these moves as a betrayal of promises Stellantis and GM made in return for government support. It is responding by threatening to sue the manufacturers and imposing quotas and tariffs on autos they export from the U.S. to Canada.

As populists, Donald Trump and Doug Ford have a common vision. They see manufacturing as essential to the economy and blue-collar, traditionally male, jobs in manufacturing as essential to their political success. This is win-lose, not win-win. Negotiations will resume now that Doug Ford has once again flipped the bird at Donald Trump and Donald Trump has had his temper tantrum. But with these irreconcilable differences it is unlikely that the negotiations will get to "yes" anytime soon.

 

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