Salem Political Snark

A USAID worker I know died helping others. Trump is trashing his memory.

Mark Mitchell worked for the USAID -- the United States Agency for International Development.

He joined the monthly Salon discussion group that my wife and I are members of prior to his USAID job. Once Mark became part of USAID, his overseas postings prevented him from attending our meetings except when he returned to Salem for a visit.

But he'd keep in touch with us via email, and always had fascinating stories to tell of his USAID work when we'd see him periodically. Then one day a close friend of his told us that Mark had died when the bus he was traveling in had a serious accident in Georgia, the country next to Russia, not the state. 

Mark's name is on the USAID Memorial Wall. The May 2024 issue of The Foreign Service Journal has a page listing the "99 memorialized names of USAID Foreign Service officers, Foreign Service Nationals, and contractors who lost their lives while serving the U.S. government to promote international development." Mark Mitchell is in the final 2010-present category.

Mark was a realist. He would talk about the problems he and USAID were having in whichever country he was posted, which included Afghanistan. But he also spoke about the importance of the work he was doing in countries that needed the assistance USAID brought to the people there.

If Mark was still alive, he'd be justifiably outraged at the wrecking ball Donald Trump and his billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, are flinging at USAID. Musk has said with zero evidence to back him up that USAID is a criminal organization. That's an insult to the brave, hard-working people who work for the agency.

Far from proving criminality, a Washington Post story says that 11 of 12 claims by the Trump administration about USAID merely wasting taxpayer money are misleading, wrong, or lack context.

The only claim that was true was: “$1.5 million to ‘advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities’." That sounds fine to me, but even if someone is a DEI-hater, spending $1.5 million on a dubious project out of a $40 billion budget certainly doesn't justify putting USAID "in a wood chipper," as Elon Musk said in a disgusting tweet on X.

Here's excerpts from the Washington Post story.

As the Trump administration this week dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, the primary vehicle for U.S. foreign aid, the White House issued a statement justifying its actions. Titled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep,” the news release claimed USAID “has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.”

The news release then listed 12 examples, plucked from the websites of right-wing media. But the numbers cited — as low as $32,000 — hardly justify the claim that these are “massive sums” of money. In fact, they are so low that some of the funds appear to have been awarded at the ambassador level, without Washington involvement. At least one dated from the first Trump administration, and some were actually State Department grants, not USAID.

...In fiscal year 2023, USAID was appropriated about $25 billion by Congress, according to ForeignAssistance.gov. (The website in recent days has been changed to combine USAID spending with foreign aid distributed by the State Department, so the combined total is nearly $39 billion.) The White House identified only about $12 million in grants — one of which was $6 million — though one allegation vaguely claimed “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Upon inspection, that turned out to be from 2005 to 2008.

As a reader service, we examined these line items, as they have spread across social media. By eliminating USAID’s website, the administration made [it] harder to ascertain the details of some of these programs. But we determined that, as framed by the White House, only one claim — out of 12 — was accurate.

By contrast, Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who has a home in Oregon, wrote a moving piece about USAID, "The World's Richest Men Take On the World's Poorest Children." This excerpt describes some of the benefits USAID brings to the world.

I’ve seen genuine improvements in U.S.A.I.D. over the years. Its public-private partnership to tackle lead poisoning, announced last year, was a model of American leadership. And so from my travels, this is what U.S.A.I.D. has come to mean to me:

I’ve seen women and girls with obstetric fistula, a horrific childbirth injury, get a $600 surgery that gives them back their lives — and this is something that U.S.A.I.D. supports.

I’ve seen men humiliated by elephantiasis and grotesquely enlarged scrotums, occasionally requiring a wheelbarrow to support their organs as they walk. And U.S.A.I.D. has fought this disease and made it less common.

I’ve seen children dying of malaria (and I’ve had malaria), and I’ve seen U.S.A.I.D. help achieve major strides against the disease over the last two decades.

I’ve seen southern Africa ravaged by AIDS. And then President George W. Bush’s landmark program against AIDS, called PEPFAR and implemented in part through U.S.A.I.D., transformed the landscape. I saw coffin makers in Lesotho and Malawi grumble that their business was collapsing because far fewer people were dying. PEPFAR has saved 26 million lives so far. (In the coming months, I’ll see if I can calculate how many lives are lost to Trump’s cuts in aid.)

I’ve seen the suffering of communities where people in middle age routinely go blind from trachoma, river blindness or cataracts — and the transformation when U.S.A.I.D. helps prevent such blindness.

Trump scoffed that U.S.A.I.D. was “run by radical lunatics.” Is it radical lunacy to try to save children’s lives? To promote literacy for girls? To fight blindness?

If this is woke, what about the evangelical Christians in International Justice Mission, which, with U.S.A.I.D. support, has done outstanding work battling sex trafficking of children in Cambodia and the Philippines? Does Trump believe that rescuing children from rape is a radical lunatic cause?

Trump’s moves are of uncertain legality, not least because U.S.A.I.D. was established by Congress, but the outcomes are indisputable. Around the world children are already missing health care and food because of the assault on the agency that Kennedy founded to uphold our values and protect our interests.

To billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But to anyone with a heart, it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening.

Trump wants to destroy our democracy. Harris was right on about that.

Kamala Harris has been vindicated.  

After her loss last November, many people claimed that her campaign was too focused on the danger to our democracy that Trump posed instead of doing more to reassure voters that if elected she'd work to bring down the price of groceries and inflation in general.

Now, two and a half weeks into the chaos that the Trump administration has produced, it's clear that if anything, Harris should have uttered her warnings about how Trump would subvert our democracy in a louder voice. 

For every day it becomes more obvious that while Trump's first term in office was marked by his failure to abide by the unwritten norms that all preceding presidents have followed, whether Republican or Democrat, his second term will be marked by a failure to abide by written laws -- a much more serious offense.

This strikes at the heart of our democracy. 

The American Constitution was designed by our founding fathers to spread power among three co-equal branches of government: the legislative branch, Congress; the executive branch, led by the President; the judicial branch, led by the Supreme Court.

But Trump and his billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, currently are acting to defund and dissolve agencies that were established by Congress, along with refusing to spend money on programs authorized by Congress. 

A federal law prevents presidents from impounding funds appropriated by Congress unless the legislative branch agrees to this. Disturbingly, that hasn't stopped Trump and his co-president, Musk, from taking steps to do away with the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The richest man in the world and the President of the United States sent a message over the weekend to USAID, the world’s largest provider of humanitarian assistance depended on for survival by millions of the world’s poorest people: “Time to die.”

Two weeks into Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office, the Washington headquarters of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) shuttered its doors on Monday, making it the latest, most visible casualty in the new administration’s sweeping dismantling of America’s foreign aid apparatus. 

Hours later, USAID employees couldn’t tell if their agency still existed. Its website went dark, social media accounts vanished, and staff found themselves locked out of email servers. Overnight, photos documenting decades of aid work and agency logos vanished from the Washington office’s walls.

The unravelling of the agency, which employs over 10,000 people who assist tens of millions worldwide every year, began last week with sweeping personnel cuts: half its global health staff dismissed, 60% of its humanitarian assistance bureau eliminated, and 500 employees terminated, including at least 56 senior officials. 

By Saturday night, two top security officials were placed on administrative leave for refusing to grant billionaire Elon Musk’s personnel access to classified agency systems.

The assault further escalated as Musk announced he had secured the president’s support to abolish USAID entirely after over six decades of operation.

“I went over it with him in detail, and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said. “USAID is a criminal organization. It’s time for it to die.”

This is blatantly illegal. Only Congress can abolish USAID or revoke its funding. Sadly, it's only one of many examples of how Trump and his cronies are ignoring the law. Their scheme appears to be unfolding along this line:

(1) Break the law.
(2) Lawsuits are filed against the Trump administration.
(3) Keep on breaking the law.
(4) Appeal adverse court rulings.
(5) Keep on breaking the law.
(6) The Supreme Court rules against the Trump administration.
(7) Keep on breaking the law.

There's a lot not to like here.

A president is expected to follow the law to the best of his abilities. That's the oath Trump took on inauguration day, to uphold the Constitution and the laws that flow from the Constitution. But Trump is acting like an authoritarian, not a president. 

I expect that even if courts issue injunctions against seemingly illegal actions of the Trump administration, he will ignore those rulings, claiming that the Constitution allows a president virtually unlimited power. 

By the time a case reaches the Supreme Court, which could take years, Trump will have succeeded in fashioning the federal government into his twisted anti-democracy MAGA image. And even if the Supreme Court finds that his actions are unconstitutional, my bet is that Trump will ignore that ruling also.

This is how a democracy becomes an autocracy. A duly elected leader uses his position to dismantle the democracy that put him in power. This is possible in the United States today because the Republican Party has decided that kneeling before the altar of Trump is preferable to upholding the Constitution. 

Scary. Super scary. 

I've been avidly following politics ever since John Kennedy was president. Since, we've had some good presidents and some bad presidents. But none have tried to accomplish what Trump is doing: assert presidential power in a crude, heartless, dangerous way that threatens the rule of law that is the foundation of our democracy. 

My hope is that when the political shit really hits the fan, as the saying goes, the American people will rise up, take to the streets, and speak with a loud unified voice that even Trump will have to pay attention to: We're mad as hell and we're not taking this anymore.

Meet the six 19-25 year old dudes who Musk has given access to your SSN

Did you think that your Social Security number was kept secret by the federal government through rigorous security measures?

Well, think again, because Trump's billionaire buddy, Elon Musk, has allowed six 19 to 25 year old dudes access to the Treasury Department's payment system that has sensitive information which, until now, was closely guarded.

WIRED has a bombshell story about this by Vittoria Elliott, "The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk's Government Takeover." Excerpt:

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.

WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more.

On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.

Yahoo News has a photo of the six men in a disturbing Daily Beast story about their lack of training and experience, "Unmasked: Musk's Secret Goon Squad -- Who Are All Under 26." 

One is a 19-year-old college freshman and heir to a popcorn fortune. Another was hosting Model UN sessions in 2019 and a third was given money by his parents to invest in stocks while at his high school in Silicon Valley.

...Three do not even have degrees. And one who does is trying to cash in on his new job by charging people to read his Substack entry which boasts, “Why DOGE: Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America.”

...The group’s relative lack of experience—especially no previous positions in government work—has Democrats crying foul they were granted access to sensitive records while remaining largely in the shadows, away from public scrutiny.

All six desperately tried to cover their digital tracks recently, almost all of them deleting LinkedIn profiles, X accounts and even Facebook.

So these six guys, all of whom are just fine with them being able to know the Social Security numbers of hundreds of millions of Americans, suddenly become all secretive when their identities are released to the public -- an amazing display of hypocrisy, but par for the course in Trumpland. 

An ABC News story, "Treasury Dept. gives Elon Musk's team access to federal payment system: Sources," describes how outrageous this action is. Nothing like it has ever happened before.

The Treasury Department has given Elon Musk and representatives of his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team access to the vast federal payment system responsible for handling trillions of dollars in government expenditures, multiple sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The payment system -- which is essentially a checkbook for the entire federal government -- is a closely held operation run by career officials, with a limited number of people authorized to access the information given it contains sensitive information about hundreds of millions of Americans.

Senate Democrats in a fiery news conference on Monday said they were "pulling the fire alarm" to warn about the dangers posed by DOGE and Elon Musk's access to Treasury's payments system.

..."Donald Trump basically handed DOGE the Social Security data of virtually every American citizen," Schumer said. "Donald Trump gave DOGE access to America's personal tax refund data. He gave DOGE access to peoples Medicare and Medicaid benefits, disability payment data, veteran benefit data."

Sen. Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said people are "creeped out" by the data access.

"Musk has access to personal information of hundreds of millions of American bank accounts, tax data, Social Security numbers, home addresses. People are creeped out," Wyden said. "The Musk hatchet brigade has infiltrated a gold mine of data that every foreign spy and every corrupt actor would love to see. It is a prescription for nightmares."

I find it hard to believe that this is what those who voted for Trump last November wanted to have happen after he became president again.

Hopefully Republicans as well as Democrats will let the White House know that strengthening our southern border and reducing grocery prices is one thing, but giving 19-25 year olds with no security clearances or government experience access to the Social Security numbers of most Americans is a whole other thing. 

Trump's new tariffs are a big tax increase on ordinary Americans

Another day, another crazy decision by Trump. The newest contribution to the steadily growing list of illegal, improper, or inadvisable moves by the Trump administration is tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico, and China.

Before I describe how dumb this is, let's get one simple fact straight, something that Trump either doesn't understand or lies about.

Tariffs imposed by the United States are paid by the American companies importing the goods, not by the exporting nation or companies doing the exporting. 

Since those American companies either have to pay for the full cost of the tariffs themselves, or pass some of the cost on to consumers via higher prices, this means that a tariff is a tax. It isn't free money, no matter how often Trump praises tariffs as a way to increase federal revenues.

Yes, the money raised by tariffs goes to the federal government. But that money is a tax increase on the American public, either directly through higher prices or indirectly if paid by the companies importing goods subject to tariffs.

This fact needs to be screamed from the rooftops by journalists and Democratic officials.

Because Trump's decision today to impose a 25% tariff on goods imported from Canada and Mexico (aside from a 10% tariff on Canadian oil) and a 10% tariff on imported goods from China, is a large tax increase -- no matter how Republicans try to spin this.

Those tariffs go into effect next Tuesday. Likely this will happen, though when it comes to all things Trumpian, one can never be sure what whim will emerge from the often incoherent brain of our newly elected president.

There are three possible reasons Trump is imposing the tariffs: (1) To raise money that will help offset the cost of extending and expanding tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy; (2) To put pressure on Canada, Mexico, and China to comply with stuff Trump wants them to do; (3) Protect American industries from foreign competition. 

I suspect that #1 is the main reason Trump is going ahead with tariffs. There's no way federal programs can be cut sufficiently to offset the cost of the tax cuts he wants. At least, not without stimulating a revolt by American citizens who like those programs.

So tariffs are a (thinly) disguised tax hike that will make it easier to justify the cost of the Republican tax cuts. Obviously it makes little or no sense to pay for a tax cut with a tax hike, but making sense was given up by the Republican Party when it became the Cult of Trump.

There'd be some justification for the tariffs if they truly were being used as leverage to get Canada, Mexico, and China to do things that benefit the United States. However, Trump says that he won't consider cancelling the tariffs until the supply of fentanyl into the United States is drastically slowed by those countries.

Problem is, very little fentanyl crosses the Canadian border, and both Mexico and China say they're doing about the best they can to reduce fentanyl production and trafficking. All three countries have a reasonable point when they say that demand for illicit drugs in the United States is the real cause of the fentanyl problem.

Protecting American industries and manufacturing is a laudable goal when an essential product is primarily imported from a country that isn't friendly to the United States. But Mexico and Canada are our allies. They're next door to us. It's crazy to single them out for 25% tariffs, especially since they are two of our three largest trading partners, China being the third.

Of course, those countries can retaliate by imposing tariffs on goods imported from the United States. This already has started to happen.

Mexico and Canada immediately vowed to impose tariffs of their own. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announced retaliatory tariffs starting with 25 percent tariffs on approximately $20 billion worth of U.S. goods on Tuesday, with $85 billion more to follow within three weeks.

...The nation’s commerce ministry said China would file a case against the United States at the World Trade Organization and also vowed unspecified “corresponding countermeasures to firmly safeguard its rights and interests.”

The burden on American consumers promises to be large. Tariffs will result in higher prices and more inflation, according to a CNN story.

Trump’s proposed tariffs could add $272 billion a year to tax burdens, according to Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Corpay Cross-Border Solutions. The Peterson Institute has estimated Trump’s proposed tariffs would cost the typical US household over $2,600 a year.

...mainstream economists largely agree that tariffs cause inflation. That’s because importers — not the countries exporting the goods — pay the tax, and they typically pass that cost on to consumers in the form of higher prices. New research from the Peterson Institute for International Economics suggests Trump’s aggressive tariff campaign will force American consumers to pay more for practically everything — from foreign-made sneakers and toys to food.

Because of the risk that Trump's tariffs will rekindle inflation, the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to cut interest rates, which still are at high levels, with a 30 year mortgage hovering around 7% even after several rate cuts last year by the Fed. 

And I won't be surprised if the stock market declines next week. Trump may love tariffs, but most corporations and investors don't. Trade wars tend to be losers for everyone involved. A Politico story says: 

Economists warn new tariffs could hurt the U.S. economy, rattle the stock market and frustrate Trump’s desire for the Federal Reserve to further lower interest rates.

The combination of a 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10 percent tariff on China goods could cause U.S. economic output to decline by 1.5 percent in 2025 and 2.1 percent in 2026 as higher prices dampen consumer spending and business investment, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, a division of the accounting firm Ernst & Young.

Trump is wrong that DEI caused the D.C. aviation disaster

Silence means surrender to tyrants. I'd rather be writing about other things than Trump's latest outrageous action, but I refuse to allow myself to be shocked into submission by the mountains of authoritarian crap that Trump is shoveling out in these early days of his presidency.

For as soon as the American public accepts Trump's completely unacceptable behavior as something that we simply have to silently put up with, that's the day our nation slides irrevocably into a dictatorship. 

Today Trump broke new ground for a president, and not at all in a good way.

For he claimed with zero evidence that DEI -- diversity, equity, inclusion -- policies were responsible for yesterday's collision in Washington D.C. of a passenger plane with a military helicopter that killed all 67 people on the two aircraft, 64 passengers and crew on the plane and three soldiers on the helicopter. 

No other president in the history of our country has politicized a disaster in the disgusting fashion that Trump did. With air crashes, it has been a universal practice to express sympathy for those who died and their loved ones, then say that the cause will be determined by the National Transportation Safety Board after a thorough expert investigation.

But Trump blabbed on about DEI being the likely reason for the crash, as you can see in this video. 

It seems that Trump is mainly suggesting, completely falsely, that the FAA air traffic controller on duty was unqualified to perform his or her job, being a DEI hire -- though Trump also appears to be saying that the airplane and helicopter pilots might also be incompetent DEI personnel.

This is beyond absurd.

Today I heard a man interviewed on a news program about what his son recently had to go through in his quest to become an air traffic controller. The training is highly rigorous, taking many months, with lots of opportunities for being washed out of the program if someone shows they don't have what it takes to be an air traffic controller. 

There aren't lower standards for women, minorities, or someone with a disability. When Trump spoke at the news conference about the FAA allowing the hiring of people with significant mental or physical problems, this was intended in part to encourage injured military veterans  to apply for a job.

And those DEI-related policies were in place during the entire four years of Trump's first term in office, during which there were no significant plane crashes, just as there weren't any during the DEI-friendly Biden administration. 

Accidents happen. The cause of this one will be determined by experts, not by Trump. He needs to keep his mouth shut when he feels an urge to politicize disasters, something that Trump did after the flooding in North Carolina and the wildfires in Los Angeles. 

In this instance, Trump is adding to the distress felt by the family and friends of the pilots killed in the mid-air collision, along with the air traffic controllers who work at the Ronald Reagan Airport. Telling a national audience that the pilots and air traffic controllers could be DEI hires who caused the collision is beyond cruel, even by Trump's extremely lax moral standards. 

Every day I'm proud that I voted for Kamala Harris. Those who voted for Trump now are seeing the result of their action -- the Liar in Chief taking a wrecking ball to the decency that previous presidents demonstrated after national disasters. 

No eggs points to danger of Trump administration incompetence

I'm not an egg eater, but my wife is. When she puts eggs on the list for my LifeSource Natural Foods shopping, ideally the pasture-raised variety, I buy a dozen.

But today, for the first time I can remember, the shelves were completely bare in the egg section. I didn't look for eggs when I went to Trader Joe's, Natural Grocers, and Fred Meyer (there's four stops on my weekly grocery shopping expedition), so I don't know if any or all of those stores also were out.

LifeSource has a "Where are the eggs?" page on their web site. They offer three reasons. 

(1) Avian influenza, or bird flu. A recent New York Times story says that 136 million birds have been infected or killed since bird flu came to the United States in 2022. And over 30 million chickens have been killed in the last three months to prevent the spread of bird flu. 

(2) Ballot measures. California and Oregon require that only cage-free eggs can be sold in the state, with Oregon limiting this to producers with at least 3,000 egg laying hens. This decreases supply to some extent.

(3) Increasing demand for eggs. LifeSource says:

Eggs sales and demand have only continued to increase.  This has helped smaller farms to increase their sales but has also put a strain on their ability to meet increasing demand due to increasing feed prices, staffing, space, and laws and regulations that come into play when farms increase in stock and size.

Of these three reasons, bird flu obviously is the key reason for the current shortage of eggs, since the other two reasons are long term, having been around for a while. 

This worries me, because Donald Trump and his newly installed administration are notoriously bad at public health and science. I recall Trump complaining about Covid testing in 2020 when the pandemic was starting to take off, absurdly saying that if fewer tests were performed, there would be fewer cases.

No, there would be the same number of cases. We just wouldn't know about them.

So I'm concerned that Trump is going to try to put a happy face on communications by his administration about bird flu and egg shortages -- including not taking strong steps to kill infected chickens before the disease spreads further. Sure, that would create an even larger temporary egg shortage, but that would be better than bird flu decimating the entire American egg production.

Bird flu also can be contacted by humans. Currently the CDC reports that there have been 67 reported bird flu cases in the United States, including one death. Oregon has had one case. But viruses evolve to become more contagious. That's their superpower, mutations that enable viruses to spread more easily.

Fortunately, in the last days of the Biden administration the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded Moderna $590 million to continue developing a vaccine to protect humans against bird flu. 

Unfortunately, Trump has nominated a vaccine-skeptic and generally deeply weird person, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Combine this with efforts by the Trump administration to undo contracts awarded by the Biden administration, and there's good reason to worry about how Trump and his merry band of science-deniers will handle bird flu outbreaks.

Ordinarily I rejoice at the incompetence of the Trump administration because this makes them less able to do radical stuff that harms the American people. But in the case of bird flu, and public health overall, I want them to be competent at handling emergencies, especially pandemics.

After Kennedy's cousin, Caroline Kennedy, called him a predator in a message she released today, hopefully this will help sway some Republican senators to vote against him. He sounds like someone who shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near an important position in the Trump administration.

Caroline Kennedy has called her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a "predator" and "unqualified" to be the new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services secretary just hours before he was scheduled to appear for confirmation hearings in the Senate.

In a video posted to social media alongside a letter addressed to several lawmakers, Caroline Kennedy said she decided to speak out against her cousin because of the high-profile role he could assume in President Trump's administration, overseeing agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. She urged the Senate to reject his nomination.

"He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience," she said. "His views on vaccines are dangerous and willfully misinformed."

NPR has reported that Kennedy has a history of attacking vaccines, including routine vaccinations for children.

My great idea for lifting Democratic spirits in the age of Trump

Like so many others who voted for Kamala Harris, then watched Donald Trump defeat her in a fairly convincing though not overwhelming fashion, I'm politically depressed.

Meaning, I'm still enjoying the personal life I was leading before the election. But when my attention turns to Trump, my spirits sink. 

Trump looks like he's hugely enjoying the kickoff to his second term. He's keeping his promise to be a dictator on Day 1, extending that promise throughout his first week in office. I expect Trump will attempt to realize his authoritarian dreams throughout his entire presidency.

Meanwhile, while Trump holds center stage both because he's the newly elected president and because he's a skilled showman, Democratic leaders are barely visible. They pop up on CNN and MSNBC, plus the Sunday talk shows, to express their concerns about what Trump is doing.

Then they recede into their corner of the nation's political ring, wiping their brows with the exertion of issuing some feeble warnings about Trump's actions, while Trump struts around the center of the ring, arms outstretched, proclaiming victory over woke liberals and indeed anyone who dares stand in his way, including moderate Republicans.

I realize that the Democratic Party is licking its post-election wounds as it tries to figure out what went wrong with the 2024 election, how best to handle Trump, and who is going to emerge as leaders of the party.

However, I can't wait for all that to happen. I'm already tired of Trump having virtually free rein to spout his lies, exaggerations, and deceptions. I want to see a Democrat making forceful responses to Trump's B.S. that reach a really wide audience, not just political news junkies like me.

This is my great idea for making that happen. Obviously it isn't the only thing the Democratic Party needs to do, public communication-wise, but it would be a good start.

My dream is for Democrats to have a charismatic, personable, young, attractive person (I'm visualizing a woman like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) be the spokesperson of brief 3-5 minute videos that would be shared on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Blue Sky, a web site, and elsewhere on the internet.

The videos would both describe and criticize actions by the Trump administration. The tone would be informal, blunt, honest, real, a mixture of ridicule and outrage. The goal would be to reach the broadest possible audience, with a special focus on those who don't have time or the inclination to read the New York Times or Washington Post.

An overarching theme would be "Yikes, can you believe what Trump is doing now? It's so crazy as to almost be unbelievable, yet it is. Listen up for what's going on."

The production value would be high, even though the look and feel of the videos would be akin to those of PoliticalGirl -- someone my wife found today after I shared with her my idea about what the Democratic Party should do. Here's a sample PoliticalGirl video.

What I'd like to see happen is the Democratic Party learning from its mistakes, some of which I see as: (1) appearing too old, even though Harris was younger than Trump; (2) failing to talk to people in ordinary language they resonate with, something Trump is skilled at; (3) not addressing the key concerns of most Americans in a simple easy-to-grasp fashion.

Currently there's no place people can go to learn how the Trump Opposition views his policies, many of which are much more extreme than what he expressed during the presidential campaign, where Trump kept saying that he didn't know or care much about Project 2025 -- which now, no big surprise, is the blueprint that he's following in his attempt to dismantle the federal government and form it into an extension of Trump's authoritarianism.

What I'm suggesting would be an entertaining and informative must-see for anyone who wants to know more about what Trump is up to, or dislikes what he's doing and wants to learn how a Democratic Party spokesperson feels about this.

Upcoming "livability" property tax levy explained at Salem City Club talk

Today Keith Stahley, Salem's City Manager (basically the CEO of city government), gave a presentation to the Salem City Club about the city's budget problems that led to a decision by the City Council to put a "livability" property tax levy on the May 2025 ballot.

Livability refers to the Library, Center 50+, and Parks/Recreation -- funding for which will be the focus of the levy. I took photos of almost all of Stahley's slide presentation, missing just a couple of slides. I'll use those slides as the basis for this report on what Stahley said. 

Keith Stahley, standing at a podium vacated by City Club president Sean Nikas

Stahley started off by saying that this year is special for the City of Salem. We are at a budgetary cliff, a Thelma and Louise moment (for those old enough to remember the 1991 movie). City government faces a $13.81 million deficit. The only options are more revenue or less expense.

The slide above shows how the city is spending its money in Fiscal Year 2025, which runs from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. Police and Fire make up about 60% of the $191 million general fund budget. Community Services, which includes the Library, Center 50+, and Parks/Recreation, comprise about 10% of the budget. 

The budgetary woes of the City of Salem aren't unique. Other cities in Oregon are facing similar problems.

About $8 million has been cut from the general fund budget in FY 2024 and 2025.

A Revenue Task Force came up with eight options for bringing more money into the general fund. The highlighted options are the current favorites: Franchise Fee increase for the near-term option; Local Option Property Tax Levy for the medium-term option; Payment in Lieu of Taxes (County, State, Federal) for the Long-Term Option). The latter refers to the fact that government agencies don't pay property taxes, with state government getting out of $7.3 million a year that the City of Salem hopes to obtain from the state legislature.

A poll conducted for the City of Salem found that residents don't favor any tax increase that generates more revenue for city services. A Public Safety levy polled better than a Community Livability levy, which will be on the May ballot.

Stahley said that for the levy to pass, community support will have to be increased through various means: the Mayor and City Council; Unions and City Employees; Boards, Commissions, and Foundations; Community Organizations. He noted that a levy in Gresham started with less than 40% support in February and eventually passed with 64% support in May. 

The local option levy was chosen by the City Council in November 2024 to fund the Library, Parks, and Center 50+. 

A local option levy is a temporary property tax, usually lasting five years.

The tax rates per $1,000 of property value shown between the horizontal lines are the favored rates for the levy: $.99 to $1.10. The amount remains to be determined. The household impact of the $1.00 rate is $234 per year, which indicates that city officials are assuming an average household property value of $234,000. I assume this is correct, though some Googling revealed that the median sold home price in Salem is about $445,000. However, in Oregon the market value can differ quite a bit from the value used for property taxes.

The livability levy would raise around $14-16 million in FY 2026, while the livability services are budgeted at about $21 million. But as shown in another slide below, the services generate income that markedly reduces the gap between expenses and revenues.

Salem's Library currently is only open 38 hours a week, while the Eugene Library is open 61 hours. Even if the budget cuts made to the Salem Library are restored, it will only be open 53 hours. Much better, but not great. The West Salem branch would go from 10 hours a week to 25 hours.

Once revenues generated by the Library, Center 50+, and Parks/Recreation are included, the net cost of these services in FY 2026 is estimated to be about $15.1 million. So there's only about a $1 million gap between what could be raised by the livability levy and the cost of those services, which Stahley said could be managed fairly easily.

A general fund deficit would still exist, just a much smaller one.

These are some other ways for the City of Salem to raise revenue and cut expenses.

Here's the timeline for the May election. The Library Foundation is going to pay for the $35,000 cost of the election from their funds. 

During the Q&A part of the program, Stahley said that the May election was favored for the levy because if it passes, money would begin to be available in November 2025, when property tax statements go out. Asked whether the Chamber of Commerce would support the levy, he said that the Chamber is involved with an efficiency review committee that will look at how city government operates. He's hopeful that the committee will say that the budget is in great shape.

Every Trump voter should hang their head in shame after January 6 pardons

Trump voters, you knew what you were getting when you cast your ballot for him.

A man who lies incessantly, who lacks any sense of moral decency, who loves dictators and hates democracy, who has no commitment to upholding the Constitution because his goal is only to uphold himself.

Yet you preferred Donald Trump over Kamala Harris. Maybe it was because the price of groceries was too high. Maybe it was because you wanted our southern border to be strengthened and undocumented immigrants to be deported from the United States.

I can understand those reasons. They make sense. Almost everybody dislikes inflation and a failure to comply with immigration laws. 

But what progressives like me can't understand is how most Trump voters, along with almost all Republican politicians, are unable to disagree with their Dear Leader no matter how horribly he behaves.

On his first day in office, January 20, Trump pardoned all of the January 6, 2021 rioters who attempted an insurrection against the lawful transfer of presidential power following Biden's clear-cut victory over Trump.

Politico describes the pardons.

President Donald Trump pardoned about 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol in his name on Jan. 6, 2021, instantly laying waste to the Justice Department’s four-year drive to punish the first disruption of the transfer of power in American history.

The sweeping grant of clemency includes “full, complete and unconditional” pardons for some of the most notorious participants in the attack, including hundreds convicted of assaulting police, carrying firearms, destroying property or otherwise contributing to the violent rampage. Trump also ordered his Justice Department to shut down hundreds of pending Jan. 6 prosecutions, including many for violent crimes.

Among those freed from jail with a stroke of Trump’s pen: Enrique Tarrio, the former national leader of the far-right Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for a seditious conspiracy related to the attack; Guy Reffitt, who carried a firearm during a standoff with police that helped facilitate the mob’s approach to the Capitol; and Ryan Samsel, the first rioter to breach police lines who was facing a long list of assault charges.

So much for Republicans being strong on law and order. The undeniable leader of the Republican Party has pardoned hundreds of people who attacked police officers on January 6, going so far as to call them "hostages" even after they were convicted of serious crimes by a jury of their peers.

Trump used the hostage line at most of his campaign rallies in the run-up to the 2024 election. Trump said that he was going to pardon the "January 6 hostages," though even Vance, his vice-president, expected that he would focus on those who didn't attack the police.

This is why I think all Trump voters should hang their heads in shame. You knowingly cast a ballot for a man who doesn't respect either our legal system or law enforcement. Another Politico story describes the political backlash that likely will follow Trump's pardons of January 6 lawbreakers. 

Trump promised to “free” the Jan. 6 defendants on his first day back in office, and he has now followed through on that promise. But this will not be a one-day story, and Trump — and the Republican Party — may come to regret the political costs of this decision.

For starters, Trump’s blanket pardon is unpopular, and it could help to frame early perceptions of his return to the White House. After the election, multiple polls reported that somewhere around two-thirds of Americans opposed Trump’s promise to pardon the Jan. 6 defendants, including about two-thirds of independents.

It is not hard to understand why: Despite the best efforts of Trump and many of his political allies, most Americans have not forgotten about what happened that day, and most Americans have rejected the fantasyland version of events that Trump has sought to portray. That is why Trump’s approval rating collapsed after Jan. 6, even though it has since recovered.

That is why surveys showed most Americans wanted Trump to stand trial in Washington in the Justice Department’s prosecution alleging that he tried to steal the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 riot. That is why most Americans repeatedly told pollsters that they thought Trump was guilty of criminal conduct. And that is why about half of the country said that Trump should have gone to prison if he had been convicted in the election subversion case.

...Trump’s mass pardon has also created a political problem for many of his fellow Republicans. He has once again cut the legs out from under his own vice president, who said less than two weeks ago, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Plenty of other Republicans took the same position that JD Vance did and will now have to twist themselves into knots explaining their past comments and their vocal defenses of Trump, who has once again made them look credulous and foolish.

That is just the short-term fallout. The potential for political backlash will linger for months and years to come. That’s because the Jan. 6 defendants are not just going to evaporate into society.

Trump has once again sent a disturbing message to his supporters: If you engage in political violence on my behalf, I will protect you. Tarrio, Rhodes and their associates should feel emboldened, and there is no telling what they will do with Trump now firmly behind them.

Even setting aside the prospect of further political violence, you can safely expect a fair amount of recidivism among those who were convicted — particularly the defendants convicted of violent conduct. That means that we may see and read stories in the years to come involving Jan. 6 defendants pardoned by Trump who went on to commit more — and potentially more serious — crimes.

After Trump lost to Biden, yet never stopped falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him, Republican politicians were frequently asked if they believed that Trump had lost in a free and fair election. 

Most would equivocate, saying wishy-washy stuff like "Biden is the president." Now a new question should be asked of every Republican politician at every level: federal, state, local. Do you support Trump's pardon of those who attacked police officers at the January 6 insurrection?

Any politician who doesn't respond with a firm "No," doesn't deserve to be in office, because they've shown their disrespect for the rule of law and those who enforce our laws.

Why I'm going to look upon Trump's second term as a political experiment

Progressives like me have a choice to make now that Trump has been inaugurated for a second term as president. How do we preserve our sanity during the next four years?

I have Democratic friends who say that they're unable to pay attention to the news anymore, given all the crazy stuff the Trump administration will be doing. This doesn't appeal to me. I believe in staying informed, not ignoring what's going on.

Another option is to remain in a more or less constant state of outrage as Trump dismantles valuable programs and policies from the Biden administration and institutes his own right-wing priorities. This also isn't appealing to me. I've got better things to do than be incessantly irritated.

I've concluded that the healthiest thing for me to do is look upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment. Which, of course, it is.

Last November a majority of American voters embraced a hypothesis: Donald Trump will bring more benefits to the United States than Kamala Harris would. I favored the opposite hypothesis, but I respect the decision of voters to put Trump in charge of federal government policies.

Now we'll see what the outcome of the political experiment that will take place from now until election day in 2028 will be, with interim results being reported in the 2026 midterm election. Every decision that Trump makes during the next four years will have effects, large or small, on our country.

Fairly soon we'll have indications of how key questions will be answered. Here's a few of them.

Is inflation going up or down?
Is the budget deficit increasing or decreasing?
Will deporting undocumented immigrants help or hurt the economy?
Will tariffs on imported goods kick off an unproductive trade war?
Can an end to the Ukraine-Russia war be negotiated that isn't a giveaway to Putin?
Are entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security being protected?
Are other countries more or less willing to support the United States?
Does the stock market look positively upon how things are going?

Causes have effects which then become causes that produce more effects. And so it goes, in politics as in other areas of life.

Trump does his best to deny reality through lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and such. This works for him up to a point. However, reality has a way of coming out on top eventually, because facts are stronger than fictions.

Trump has made a lot of promises. His slew of executive orders that he signed today are a down payment on keeping some of those promises. Many of them will be challenged legally. Others will be implemented only partially, if at all.

Every newly-elected president has a honeymoon period. Trump's has just begun. It will end before too long. Then our country will begin to see the shortcomings in Trumpian programs and policies. His approval rating likely will fall. 

Republicans control the presidency and both chambers of Congress. Whatever the results of the political experiment Trump's election unleashed upon the United States are, they will be owned by Trump and the Republican Party.

I love science. It's humanity's best way of knowing reality. By looking upon Trump's presidency as a political experiment, rather than a horrible happening, I feel that I'll strike a good balance between ignoring the news and being outraged by the news.

Sure, a scientist wants their hypothesis to be confirmed. My hypothesis is that while Trump will have some clear successes, he will have more failures and limited successes -- leaving the American public dissatisfied with his presidency by the time of the 2026 midterms.

Of course, I may be wrong. A scientist is concerned mainly with getting valid results of the experiment being conducted, not with a particular outcome. By viewing the Trump administration as a political experiment, I'm hoping to be able to look upon his presidency with a certain detachment.

That said, I think Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is unbelievably ridiculous. I'll never stop saying "Gulf of Mexico." My bet is that most Americans will do the same.