Yesterday was a national day for protesters. Anyone who has ever protested against anything was welcome to protest. Even rank amateurs with a box of crayons and a piece of cardboard could join the party.

The common theme, if there was one, was “Hands Off.” Apparently, they want the Trump administration to stop searching the $6,000,000,000,000 federal budget for waste, fraud and abuse. I saw a lot of different “hands off” signs. One I didn’t see, but should have been prominent, is “Hands Off my Fraud.”

The biggest protest was in Washington, DC.  Maybe half a million protested against the reduction in the number of federal employees. Many of the protesters are employees who don’t want to go to their offices during the week, but they showed up there on Saturday.

If Kamala Harris was watching these huge anti-Trump protests across the whole country she was probably yelling at the television, “Where were these millions of folks when I needed them on November 5?”

The protesters probably missed the news that the Senate and House each passed a bill to keep the tax cuts that all taxpayers benefited from since 2017, plus additional reductions. Now, this is two different bills, and they will do some horse trading to come up with a final bill.

Whether this tax bill will make up for the recent stock market losses will depend on how long you can hang on to your stocks. The tariffs announced Wednesday have rattled stocks around the world. I’m no stock prognosticator. But I’m optimistic the Dow Jones will rebound within a few months. A lot of countries are ready to deal on tariffs.

On the other hand, a pessimist might point to October 1929. During the Great Depression that followed, the Dow dropped about 80%. It did not return to the 1929 high until 1953.

Let me come back to federal employees. I know several people in the Dept. of Agriculture. They do valuable research that helps keep our farmers in business and food affordable. The Soil Health unit with about 20 professionals was wiped out. At a time when dust storms are rampant and we are losing valuable topsoil through water erosion, we need more focus, not less, on practices that make our farmland healthier. No-till and cover crops instead of degenerative tillage.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“New York can’t sleep tonight wondering what the stock market will open at tomorrow. Radio just had its usual amount of static over the weekend… ‘Why does this have to happen?’ They say, ‘It’s for the good of the country.’ Now you tell one.” DT #793, Feb. 10, 1929

“(The old pioneer) wanted to plow up the land that should have been left to grass.  We’re just now learning that we can rob from nature the same way as we can rob from an individual.  All he had was an ax, and a plow, and a gun, and he just went out and lived off nature. But really, he thought it was nature he was living off of, but it was really future generations that he was living off of.” Radio, Apr. 14, 1935