Columnist.
In this time when virtually all our standards and traditions are falling away or being scrapped, we should be concerned about what America will look like in another generation. Will America even be recognizable?
Was it a breakdown of distribution components? Did information editors snooze through this big news? What was it that caused the recent important news about climate change to not be widely distributed?
Thank goodness for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects what our Founders viewed as our God-given rights to free exercise of religion, free speech, freedom of the press, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances.
Whether you think the way the FBI handled the Hillary Clinton email issue was correct or not, or whether the anti-Trump email correspondence between FBI employee lovers was problematic, honest Americans will have to agree that when a congressional committee with oversight authority of the Department of Justice and the FBI issues proper requests or demands for documents from the DOJ or FBI, and after many months the requests or demands have yet to be fulfilled, something wreaks in the swamp.
"On local news stations across the United States last month, dozens of anchors gave the same speech to their combined millions of viewers. It included a warning about fake news, a promise to report fairly and accurately and a request that viewers go to the station's website and comment 'if you believe our coverage is unfair,'" The New York Times reported last week.
Human beings have been consuming coffee for decades, at least, and perhaps for centuries. But despite the drink's long and loved history, a story in the newspaper last Friday informed us coffee drinkers that the beverage harbors harmful elements that can cause cancer. Who knew?
An unspeakable tragedy, carried out by a maniac who had given people close to him — as well as health practitioners and law enforcement — ample warning of his deficient mental state, has set loose so many reactions. Some of these reactions are natural and necessary, like grief, sorrow, and anger. Others, not so much.
In late January, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, after being removed as deputy to Director Christopher Wray, announced that he was resigning his position effective March 18. McCabe has had a dark cloud hanging over him for a while, and last Friday Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him before his resignation took effect, denying McCabe his retirement benefits.
President Donald Trump continues with his "America First" campaign, announcing a move that is aimed at the tilted playing field on international trade. Critics say Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum coming into the country will usher in a trade war and harm America. However, the fact is that we are already in a trade war; we have been it for many years; and we are losing it.
Some of us seasoned citizens look out across the social landscape and are aghast at what we see. Our relatively stable culture of a few decades ago has certainly changed. And not for the better.
The national debt virtually doubled in the eight years of President Barack Obama. From the $10.6 trillion debt when he took office in 2009 that was created by all the presidents before him until the end of his terms in 2017, the debt grew to nearly $20 trillion. That was, of course, the largest increase under any president in history.
The reactions to this horror are predictable; we've seen them before. Rage, disgust, and sadness, of course, but other things, as well.
Over the last couple of years we have seen the Internal Revenue Service target conservative organizations seeking 501(c)(3) status and heap time delays and over-the-top demands for information on them to delay or deny granting that status. We have seen the Department of Education sneakily change Common Core from guidelines to policy.
America has many problems these days, and some of them are very serious. Among those on the long list are: a serious drug problem, international anxieties, the strong division between the political Left and Right, and our once-stable but now collapsing cultural environment.
DACA and "Dreamers" are a serious and important problem.
Is the fact that overregulation kills economic growth one of the country's best-kept secrets? Or is it perhaps that the effects of overregulation are not widely understood or discussed? With all that's been going on — the tax bill, the government shutdown, everything President Donald Trump says, does, wears, tweets or thinks — showing the downside of too many regulations and too much government doesn't attract nearly as much attentions as it should.
One of the favored attacks on President Donald Trump by his detractors is that he is mentally unstable and emotionally unfit for the office. This perspective has attracted quite a following and has grown to include fears of doom and catastrophe. And in order to protect the nation from the eventual horrible fate he will bring about, a few congressional Democrats have taken the unusual step of suggesting the invoking of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution to remove Trump from office.
After the election Trump's most ardent critics set sail for sunny and warm climes, armed and ready to criticize his every move. But they boarded the wrong ship and now are headed where the Titanic rests.
The struggle among congressional Republicans to design a tax reform bill was an arduous process, with constant opposition and obstruction from Democrats, and more than a little internal discord, as Republicans objected to some features that were contained in the bill and displeased that other features were missing. Now that it has been completed and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been signed into law, whether what Congress produced is good or bad depends upon whom you ask, as is always the case in political matters.
We will start 2018 with strong economic performance numbers from 2017.
