Month: December 2025

How has 2025 been for you? For many, it has been a mix of both good and sad news, high expectations and disappointing results.

The year had a crushing start for Will Rogers fans and family. On Jan. 7, the Pacific Palisades fire in California destroyed the house and barn at the Will Rogers State Historic Park.

I won’t go into details of policies and politics that contributed to the tragic loss of over 6000 structures. Unfortunately, hardly any new construction has been started to rebuild Pacific Palisades and other LA suburbs destroyed by the fires.

Of course, the election of Donald Trump and a Republican Congress has had the most impact on 2025. This is probably the most sudden impact for any new President since Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The country is divided on whether that impact is good or bad.

On the economy, Sen. Schumer gave President Trump an F. However, most Republicans are pleased with low inflation, lower gasoline prices, slightly lower interest rates, and the S&P 500 is up 18%. And Trump emphasizes the changes in taxes that will take effect in 2026.

The contrast of illegal immigration under President Biden and President Trump is the most dramatic, from 10,000,000 to near 0. The Dept. of Homeland Security (I.C.E.) has arrested and deported 600,000 criminal immigrants and 2,000,000 have self-deported.

Oddly, a lot of Americans protest the removal of murderers, rapists, drug dealers and other illegal aliens who committed serious crimes. They are led by a few Governors and Mayors who seem to favor criminals over their own citizens and victims of those criminals.

Internationally, Trump’s success at negotiating peace settlements, including Radical Islamists vs. Israel, has hit a road block in Ukraine. Putin of Russia does not negotiate. Unlike other national leaders, Putin has no soul, no concern for human life except his own. For Putin, capturing Ukraine is simply the first step to overrun eastern Europe and restore the former USSR.

A couple of personal notes: I recovered quickly from open-heart surgery in July. Only missed a couple of events and was back to full strength by September. Jennifer Rogers, Will’s great-granddaughter, and I finished our little book, “Common Horse Sense from Will Rogers: Seven Timeless Tips for Leaders (and Everyone Else).” And I announced that I am transitioning out as the main organizer for the annual Conservation Tillage and Technology Conference after 39 years.

Looking forward to the new year… I’m continuing as Executive Director of the Ohio No-Till Council. I’ll be speaking at the National No-Till Conference in St. Louis, Jan. 6-9. Jennifer Rogers and I are working on an expanded version of our “Common Horse Sense” book and preparing for presentations across the country as the USA celebrates 250 years. Plus, Historic Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica (and going through Claremore, Oklahoma) is celebrating 100 years.

I hope you have plenty of reasons to anticipate a Happy New Year.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

       “If I wanted to start an insane asylum that would be 100 percent cuckoo, I would just admit applicants that thought they knew something about Russia.” DT #1291, Sept. 14, 1934

      “I know common sense when I see it, and the commoner the better I know it.” WA #202, Oct. 24, 1926

      “A comedian is not supposed to be serious nor to know much. As long as he is silly enough to get laughs, why, people let it go at that. But I claim you have to have a serious streak in you or you can’t see the funny side in the other fellow.” WA #13, March 11, 1923

COLUMBUS, Ohio: I feel sad for “my” friend Henry Ford. In 1908 he sold the first Model T Ford for $850. In a few years, half the vehicles on American roads, including those in the ditch, were Model T Fords.

Henry Ford accomplished this feat without government support or incentive payments to the buyers. And he never sold one for less than it cost to produce it.

Roughly a hundred years later, Henry’s great-grandson Bill Ford, and the Board of Directors, announced the company would take an immediate write off of $19,000,000,000 after losing $13,000,000,000 in four years of manufacturing an electric pickup, the Ford F-150 Lightning.

How and why did this happen? Bill Ford is a smart man. The Board is comprised of smart business people. But in 2021, President Biden followed the advice of climatologists and announced that any automotive manufacturer that hoped to be in business in ten years had better plan to shut down production of gasoline cars and trucks. All new vehicles would soon be electric, with the power coming from solar and wind.

So, Ford was coerced into spending billions to produce the Ford F-150 Lightning, then sell each one at a $50,000 loss.

Two weeks ago, in “Weekly Comments” I wrote about this situation, without the details. President Trump lifted the Biden-era restrictions on gasoline.

Of course, this is not without controversy. Many well-informed smart folks say that reducing carbon dioxide is more important than allowing us to drive vehicles that we prefer. And if manufacturers lose Billions, that’s better than the Trillions global warming will cost us. With rising ocean levels, coastal cities and communities will be swamped. With rising summer temperatures, the Corn Belt will become the new Cotton Belt.

Meanwhile, Congress left town without solving the over-priced health insurance problem. Here’s why the “Affordable Care Act” is unaffordable. Imagine an auto insurance company that announces they will only insure cars and trucks for lousy drivers. They know the claims will be at least triple the income from premiums, but are counting on the government to keep them in business. Now, this is not exactly how Obamacare was set up. But by setting the rates the same for healthy young folks as for people with chronic diseases and other health problems, it’s logical that healthy people would refuse to buy the insurance. Congress can’t seem to reach a compromise that keeps health insurance subsidies for low-income people, eliminates cheating, and reduces overall health costs for all of us, not just the 20- to 40-million on Obamacare.

I hope you are in the Christmas spirit. Men are glad to have three more days to decide what to buy for the women in their lives. And if you are buying your wife a new vehicle, please consider a Ford. They need a few million sales to make up the $32 Billion lost on Lightning.

Historic (Christmas) quotes by Will Rogers:

“I am too busy replacing presents to write today. I bought some mechanical and electric things for the kids and wore ’em out playing with ’em myself.”  DT #120, Dec. 23, 1926

“Merry Christmas, my constant readers, both of you…. Men, act surprised this morning as if you didn’t know the tie was coming.”  DT #121, Dec. 24, 1926

“Well, tomorrow is ‘wish’ day. Everybody is ‘wishing’ somebody something, and I guess it’s just as well everybody don’t know what they are being ‘wished.’ But, generally speaking, we do have good cheer in our hearts on Christmas. ‘Course, we can’t hardly wait till the day is over and to get back to our devilment again.” DT # 1379, Dec. 24, 1930

Wars, and rumors of wars. Some folks say we are at war with Venezuela. Did you know Thailand is at war with Cambodia?

Will Rogers wrote, “They are pretty bad, these big wars over Commerce. They kill more people. But one over religion is really the most bitter.” (WA #350, Sept. 8, 1929)

The biggest and longest war over religion is one that President Thomas Jefferson entered in 1801 against radical Muslims in the Mediterranean Sea. Attacks by radical Muslims continued through the years. The deadliest for us was on September 11, 2001. Israel was attacked on October 7, 2023. In a relatively minor attack, we lost two soldiers in Syria last week. Then yesterday in Australia, on the first day of Hanukkah, a pair of Islamic radicals killed at least 16 Jews and injured 40 others.

Radical Muslims have been in a religious war against Jews, Christians and everybody else for more than two hundred years. The hatred against Jews was allowed to expand here on college campuses and a few cities after the Oct. 7 murders. You may criticize President Trump, but he put an end to those campus takeovers. The FBI and Homeland Security are searching out potential Islamic murderers who either entered illegally or were welcomed as refugees from Afghanistan, Somalia and other countries.

In Australia, the government was warned for two years about radical Islamic influence but did nothing to stop it.

Unfortunately, the civilized world may be harassed by radical Muslims for another 200 years.

You probably heard that farmers will receive $12 Billion from USDA. And you may be wondering why. Well, the cost of the inputs a farmer needs to raise a crop (seed, fertilizer, diesel fuel, pesticides) has increased a lot over the last 5 or 6 years while the price received for those crops has been stagnant. Tariffs against China get part of the blame.

China has been a major buyer of our crops, especially soybeans. When President Trump started using tariffs as a way to balance trade, the Communist leader, Xi Jinping, decided to stop buying our soybeans to get even with Trump.

Our farmers are so productive that we depend on exports, especially for soybeans, corn, wheat and cotton, to use up our crops.

Ninety years ago, the plan was to reduce production. As Will Rogers said on radio, April 21, 1935, “Somebody had a plan to plow under every third acre of wheat…We wanted to raise commodity prices, and (Secretary of Agriculture) Henry Wallace, naturally wanted to give the farmer a profit.” For the last fifty years, the policy reversed: grow all we can grow, find non-food uses (ethanol from corn), and “feed the world.” But the world found other places they can get their food from, often at a cheaper price.

This is far from a complete explanation of why or how, or even which, farmers will receive their share of the money. The funds will come from tariffs already collected.

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

        “This Tariff, it’s what started Politics… It split Washington and Jefferson…  (President) Hoover pulled a bad one when he ever let them kid him into promising to monkey with that thing. It was before election and he was trying to please everybody. All he had to promise to do was to get some sort of legislation to assist the Farmer. If there is one deed in Mr. Hoover’s life he would like to live over and have another crack at, it’s this same opening up that Tariff debate. For twenty men can enter a room as friends and someone can bring up the Tariff and you will find nineteen bodies on the floor with only one living that escaped. There is only one answer to it. ‘I want everything protected that I make, or raise, and I want everything to come in free that I have to buy.’ So as no two raise, make, eat and wear exactly the same things, there is no two that would ever agree 100 percent.” (WA #350, Sept. 8, 1929)

On this date in 1941, also a Sunday, Japan launched a surprise attack on our naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. The USS Oklahoma and USS Arizona were sunk and other battleships were badly damaged. More than 2400 Americans were killed and 1100 wounded.

You may remember that last year the Biden Administration declared the average gas mileage for cars and SUVs would increase dramatically to 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In response, Ford, GM, and most other auto manufacturers invested billions in factories to build electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries. Why? Because it would be impossible to persuade us to trade our roomy SUVs and pick-ups that get 20 to 30 mpg for tiny gas-powered “minis” that get 50.

Meanwhile, the manufacturers have lost billions on the EVs they sold (with a $7500 rebate to the buyer). They have to charge more for gas-powered cars and trucks to make up for the loss.

The exception to this financial debacle is Tesla. Their EVs are popular and Tesla (Elon Musk) has made a pile of money. Tesla’s stock price in ten years rose from $15 to $450. Ford stock in 2015 was $9 and today it’s up to… $13.

This week, the Trump Administration canceled the 50-mpg requirement, reducing it to 35 miles per gallon.

I don’t pretend to know the business of building cars and trucks or what fuel they ought to run on. I’ve heard that we are getting short on electricity as demand, especially from huge data centers, is increasing faster than we are building baseload power plants. At the same time, we seem to have an abundance of oil.

New York City is gearing up for the new mayor. Except for the 1,100,000 that voted for Mr. Mamdani, everyone understands the wisdom from Winston Churchill, “The vice of capitalism is that it represents the unequal sharing of blessings; whereas socialism stands for the equal sharing of misery.”

On a high note, as we enter the Christmas season, we recognize a fellow who, 40 years ago, started building computers in his dorm room at the University of Texas. This week, Michael Dell and his wife announced they are donating $6.4 Billion to add to the $1000 accounts set up for every baby born in the next 3 years. That gift will add about $250 for each of those babies. Dell is encouraging other wealthy folks to donate. As Will Rogers wrote, “People are marvelous in their generosity if they just know the cause is there.” (DT #1523, June 10, 1931)

Here is an item in the new book by Jennifer Rogers and me, “Common Horse Sense from Will Rogers: Seven Timeless Tips for Leaders (and Everyone Else)”: On Henry Ford, who invented assembly line production for cars: “If there had never been a Ford car, there never would have been a cheap car…. Ford’s success is due to the fact he uses common sense in his business instead of a board of directors. He shames a lot of the other concerns in paying high wages. He believes in giving a man a job.” (Radio, June 1, 1930)

Historic quote by Will Rogers:

         “The best news in the paper today was no joke. The Rockefeller Foundation, for the health and betterment of people of all parts of the world, spent $22,000,000 last year and $144,000,000 since its organization in 1913. And it’s been worth $1,000,000 as an inspiration to other tremendous rich men to do fine things.   

          “The whole viewpoint of the people in regard to our rich men has been changed in the last few years. Now we judge a man’s greatness on how he has spent his money. I guess there has never been a time in our history when as many fools are making money as now. Just to be rich and nothing else, is practically a disgrace nowadays.” DT #897, June 11, 1929 (Note: this was 5 months before the stock market crashed)