In Loving Memory of my Mother, Harriet Barfield Black, August 6, 1918-April 20, 2020 I am having COVID-19 fatigue. It’s appropriate that the first three letters and the last two letters of pandemic spell panic because it seems that every action and reaction to the virus is knee jerk. Our leaders, on virtually every level, medical experts, modelers, politicians, academics and pundits all give the impression that no one knows what they are doing. That is why I have decided on taking a leave of absence from the COVID-19 panic and opine on another subject entirely: the Electoral College. There … Read More

The President has just released his Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal. Since every budget proposal from every president is usually proclaimed “dead on arrival” by the opposition party, the question is “why?” and he answer is “because he has to.” The president is mandated by law to produce a budget annually but there is no law mandating that congress must pass one. In fact, it is increasingly rare that a budget is ever passed. Rather hundreds of employees at the Office of Management and Budget must waste their time preparing the president’s proposal. Then, my former colleagues at the Congressional … Read More

When he reached his 80s, my dad said that the scammers must think that he had gotten stupid from all the scam calls he was now getting. Well if that were the case, then the American electorate must have just turned 80. How else to explain the serious discussion about Medicare for All where the government takes over the healthcare insurance industry? The gang that gave us Obamacare with its high deductibles and rising premiums are now going to make things worse. With straight faces comes one proposal costing $3 trillion a year and another at “only” $2 trillion a … Read More

Every generation looks aghast at the next generation. Socrates lamented that “children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” My father was mortified at my generation with its race riots, Vietnam protests, civil rights upheaval, lax morals, dope smoking and free love. I chastised my children for handing out participation trophies, dumbing down of school curricula, and creating the entitlement generation. That generation is now called millennials and should be called the know-hardly-anything generation with almost a total absence of curiosity. This is a generation … Read More

Being old, social media mystifies me. I cannot fathom why anyone would be on Facebook providing information to hackers, thieves and predators about their family, activities and possessions. To me, Facebook “friends” are equivalent to be being friends with Harvey the 6-foot white rabbit. During my final years at the University my doctoral students persuaded me to join Twitter because the regulators I researched tweeted information days earlier than it appeared in their press releases. Still I shuddered at the thought of following someone and having someone following me. But I learned to hate Twitter because the news is now … Read More

Every year that John Conyers (D-MI) was in Congress, he introduced a bill calling for reparations for black Americans as a compensation for their ancestors being enslaved. The argument being that enslaved blacks contributed to the wealth of the nation without being adequately compensated for their labor. Now that Conyers is no longer in Congress, the mantle has been taken up by Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX). This is the same Jackson Lee who wondered in a congressional hearing if the Mars lander could go over and take a picture of the flag planted by Neil Armstrong. Nevertheless, the bill which … Read More

Who would have thought that the announced candidates for president could make Donald Trump seem normal? Consider the following positions that these candidates have endorsed:     Free college Forgive $1.6 trillion in college debt Green new deal Decriminalize illegal border crossing Reparations Medicare for all regardless of citizenship status (elimination of private insurance) Abolish the electoral college Increase the size of the supreme court Bash the rich (increase marginal tax to 70%, add wealth tax, financial transactions tax on Wall Street) National legalization of marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes Universal childcare Guaranteed jobs Breakup big tech companies … Read More

In one Rocky and His Friends episode, the bad guy, Boris Badenov, sought to incapacitate America by spraying its leaders with goof gas turning geniuses into babbling idiots. He went to Washington and listened to a debate in Congress, looked at his colleague, Natasha Fatale, and said “someone beat us to it”. I had the same feeling when I watched the roll-out of the so-called “Green New Deal”. The main speaker was the socialist darling of the media who was just elected to Congress. Under normal circumstances virtually any other person who misspoke as much and was so consistently wrong, … Read More

In the last month or so of 2018, we saw a highly volatile stock market capped off at year’s end by the largest single point gain in history. All the pundits have an explanation. It’s Brexit, oil prices, slowing world economies, Trump’s tariffs on friends and foes and, of course, the Fed. Blaming the Federal Reserve seems to be the president’s favorite, as he regularly excoriates Fed chairman Powell, saying that his appointment was the president’s worse mistake. There was even speculation that Trump might fire Powell. The question is, “could he, since the Senate confirms the Fed chairs to … Read More

In this very strange political season pollsters tell us that the most important concerns of the electorate are immigration and healthcare. When I saw that healthcare was a concern, I thought that it meant poor outcomes, or poor access, or lack of services, inadequate care or improper diagnoses and medications. But no. The concerns were not with healthcare but rather with health insurance. Obamacare (the “Affordable” Care Act) mandated that everyone purchase health insurance. The result was a decrease in the number of uninsured from 44 million to around 28 million. Obamacare lead to predictable results: a lessening of choice … Read More