Month: November 2024

This is Thanksgiving Week. Expressing gratitude is too important to limit to only one day. Especially when half the day may be devoted to watching football games. (Or perhaps for the younger folks, playing touch football in the front yard.)

I was reminded as I listened to one of my favorite ministers this morning that we need to express our gratitude. And to be grateful even when it may be hard to find something to be thankful for.  As my friend, Willie Jolley says, “Every setback is a chance to recalibrate, refocus, and rise stronger.”

President-elect Trump has completed the nomination process for most high-level positions. I was hoping one of my friends would be nominated for Secretary of Agriculture. But Brooke Rollins seems to have a solid background in agriculture and may have the stature to work with other Secretaries and Congress in support of farmers and ranchers. Helping Congress maneuver the competition of a 5-year Farm Bill will be her first job. The bill is two years overdue.

You have heard that Trump wants to eliminate the Department of Education. This department has been on its own since 1979. Prior to that it was part of the Health, Education and Welfare Department, formed in 1953. Unfortunately, the rankings of our students compared to other countries have declined during those years.

I come from a long line of public-school teachers. It is not the teachers’ fault that only 80% of adults can read today, compared to 90% in 1950. And math scores for students rank behind 25 other countries. The various new-fangled ways of doing simple arithmetic problems are so complicated that well-educated parents and grandparents can’t help their 9-year-old with homework. What about the other one of the 3 R’s? Writing skills are lacking, too. It’s no surprise that only 40% of employers consider their new employees, including college graduates, proficient in writing.

So, eliminate the Department of Education. Encourage the 4400 federal employees there to return to their hometown and take a teaching position. They just might learn something from other teachers, and even their students.

I’m grateful for all readers of my Weekly Comments. Let’s hope our schools can focus on teaching students the basics of “readin’, ritin’, and rithmetic” so more youngsters can comprehend, decipher, and debate the written word.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“It’s not a bad old Thanksgiving at that… Let’s see what we got to be thankful for. Congress adjourning, I know will be the first thing that comes into your mind. But that blessing will be short-lived, for they are soon to meet again. Wall Street stocks are about back up to where the suckers can start buying again. The farmers can be thankful. Didn’t the Farm Board decide in Washington last week that they could have cheaper interest? All the farmers have to do now is to find something new to put up as security.” DT #1042, Nov. 27, 1929

“Thanksgiving Day. In the days of its founders, they were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all they expected. But now neither government or nature can give enough but what we think it’s too little. Those old boys in the Fall of the year, if they could gather in a few pumpkins, potatoes and some corn for the winter, they was in a thanking mood. But if we can’t gather in a new Buick, a new radio, a tuxedo and some government relief, why we feel like the world is agin us.” DT #2594, Nov. 28, 1934

“The reason there wasn’t much unemployment in the last ten years pre- ceding ’29 [the Roaring Twenties] was every man that was out of a job went to work for the government—state or city. It costs ten times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good.” DT #1770, March 27, 1932

Donald Trump has created quite a stir in naming about 40 nominees for Cabinet and other high-level positions. A couple of individuals are controversial, but no one has gotten the attention in Washington as much as the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).

It’s not really a department; more of an advisory team headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. They are determined to identify wasteful projects and programs.

Senator Lankford of Oklahoma already has a list from 2023, including these highly questionable expenditures of our tax dollars: Free Drag Shows in Ecuador; a study of the value of wearing seat belts and helmets in Ghana; building a Wine Country Walking Trail in Napa Valley ($4 million); a project to re-educate people who are ignorant about climate change ($400,000); and almost a Billion dollars on tents along the Mexican border to process illegal immigrants.

Will Rogers summed it up in 1932, “The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it’s in the way that it’s spent.”

As Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20, what can we expect in the first months of the second Trump Administration? Remember, he survived two assassination attempts and many supporters say he was saved by the Hand of God. We have heard him say he’ll immediately start deporting criminal illegal aliens, including gang members. And expand oil and gas production, including more facilities for exporting LNG. He will eliminate many excessive regulations that add costs to almost every product and service that we buy.

Concerning tariffs, I think Trump will use them mainly for bargaining for better trade deals with other countries. Except for China. Items we are used to buying at low prices from China will increase in price. This is either because of the tariff, or they will be manufactured in a more expensive country, including here.

What about Democrats who despise Trump and said he is a “threat to democracy?” Do they think there will be an election on Nov. 7, 2028? Are they still convinced he is another Hitler? Reminder: Hitler killed 6,000,000 Jews. Perhaps it’s time to permanently ban such derogatory names when referring to prominent politicians from either Party.

As a fun question, we can ask what magazine will be the first to put a flattering photo of First Lady Melania Trump on the cover?

Here’s another fun question: what if acres voted instead of people? We all know about “red” states (Republican) and “blue” states (Democratic). But have you seen a map of red and blue COUNTIES? For the 2024 Presidential election, the map of counties is almost 90% red. Of course, the counties with big cities have vastly more people than a typical rural county.

For discussion, exclude land owned by government, churches, and other non-tax paying entities. Suppose every privately owned acre of land had one vote. One acre equals one vote.

You may say that wouldn’t be fair. But do you realize that every acre is taxed? A farmer pays property taxes on every acre whether it makes any money or not. Every business pays property taxes. Don’t forget that forests and cropland provide a valuable service to us and animals. Plants “breathe in” carbon dioxide and expel oxygen. Without millions of acres of green plants, we wouldn’t have any oxygen to breathe.

How would this work? In towns and cities, for example if an apartment complex had 10 adults living on one acre, they would meet and decide which candidate gets their one vote. For a business or manufacturer, the owner or a Board of Directors would cast the votes for their acres.

Don’t worry. There’s no way three-fourths of the states would pass a Constitutional Amendment to make this change. Three-fourths of counties, yes. But not states.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

“Did you charge off money given to the Democratic campaign? You could, it’s a legitimate charity, not organized, but a charity nonetheless.” DT #822, March 15, 1929

Today, most of my Republican friends are as happy as a hog wallowing in a mud puddle. And some Democratic friends are drowning in their tears.

As I watched the gathering at the Harris/Walz Victory Party, about midnight I halfway expected to hear the ghost of Don Meridith start singing, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.” (Older fans of Monday Night Football will get that one.)

In some of our top universities, with our top students, the election results were so troubling that professors canceled classes Wednesday so they could get therapy, hold hands and play tiddlywinks. And that was just for the professors.

Another group dealing with grief are journalists. Many journalists have forgotten their job is to collect information and process it into a newsworthy form for the public. Instead, they became biased advocates and commentators in their “news” stories.

“All I know is what I read in the newspaper.” If the only newspapers you read recently were the New York Times and the Washington Post, three-fourths of the political news was slanted favorably toward Kamala Harris and negatively toward Donald Trump. Most network TV coverage was similar. In general, mass media failed to recognize the disappointment by the majority of Americans in the economy, inflation, illegal immigration, crime, religious division, and other issues they dealt with daily.

If our journalists, especially the White House Press Corps, had reported honestly on the mental decline of President Biden, the Democrats would have had an open Primary election season with several candidates, including Kamala Harris. The candidate who emerged would have been “toughened in battle” and well prepared to take on Donald Trump.

Unfortunately, Kamala Harris was plucked out of the air as an untested substitute. You are reading and hearing many reasons why she lost to Trump. I’m offering this one: she has no ability to respond to impromptu questions with answers that are precise, accurate and short. Naturally, almost every politician learns how to avoid direct answers. But at some point, a candidate for President has to clearly state their policies and plans to implement them.

Also, the Vice-President based her campaign mainly on abortion, January 6, and that Trump is a felon. Those were not the top issues for the voters.

Bill Clinton got elected in the 1990s with the theme, “It’s the economy, stupid.” I heard a pundit explain one reason Harris/Walz lost was their underlying theme, “The economy is great. You’re stupid.”

The Harris/Walz campaign raised and spent a BILLION dollars. As Will Rogers wrote in 1931, “Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with nowadays.”

Despite the Trump win, Democrats won more Senate and House seats than expected.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. This date marks the official end of World War I, on 11/11 at 11:00 a.m., 1918. We salute all veterans. In 1927, Will Rogers wrote that we should honor our veterans and keep them in a good humor because if another war breaks out “we might want to use these boys again.”

With the election over, Congress will soon reconvene in what’s known as a lame-duck session. As Will Rogers defined it after the 1932 election, a Lame-Duck Congress is “like where some fellows worked for you and their work wasn’t satisfactory and you let ’em out, but after you fired ’em, you let ’em stay long enough so they could burn your house down.”

Historic quotes by Will Rogers

“FOR SALE—Would like to sell, trade, dispose of or give away to right parties the right of franchise of what is humorously known as Democratic Party. Said franchise calls for license to enter in national elections; said right of franchise is supposed to be used every four years, but if intelligent parties had it, they would let various elections go by default when understood they had no chance. If in right hands and only used in times when it had an ‘issue’ or when Republican Party had split, think it could be made to pay, but present owners have absolutely no business with it. Under present management they have killed off more good men than [railroad] crossings have.” DT #712, Nov. 7, 1928

“Let everybody, including the candidates, get into a good humor as quick as they got into a bad one. Both gangs have been bad sports, so see if at least one can’t redeem themselves by offering no alibis, but cooperate with the winner. So, cheer up. Let’s all be friends again. One of the evils of democracy is you have to put up with the [person] you elect whether you want him or not. That’s why we call it democracy.”  DT 1953, Nov. 7, 1932