Posted on by kenferriesblog

Another ‘turning point?’

For the better part of 10 years, I have had columns printed from time to time in the Tribune. Most of the columns were political in nature and reflected only my personal take on the issues of the day. Strangely enough, one of the early columns, published on February 25, 2016, had to do with my reaction to attending a Donald Trump rally down in South Carolina. At the time, Donald was still a longshot and more of a cartoonish character than a serious contender for the presidency of these United States.

A paragraph from the middle of that column proved to be prescient: “…This guy is good on the stump. Very good…it wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. He didn’t talk to the crowd, he wooed it…For 50 minutes he held that crowd in the palm of his hand.”

In retrospect, the warning was implicit, “Take this guy seriously, because the folks cheering insanely in that audience take him all too seriously.”

For one reason or another, it has been nearly a calendar year since my words have seen print.

Nevertheless, every so often someone, often a total stranger, will come up to me and ask, “When are you going to write another column?” It’s flattering, even if I have no good answer to explain my silence.

It happened again the other night.

I was attending a memorial service remembering American citizens gunned down like dogs on the streets of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

My God, I thought. Ten years after seeing an affable Donald Trump woo those South Carolina voters, how has it come to this?

Ten years of increasing political bickering. Ten years of intensifying national chaos. Ten years of trying to understand what motivates folks, some of them my friends, to disbelieve what they can see with their own eyes – or find ways to justify what they are seeing.

I know there are those, some with advanced educational degrees, who will defend to the death their allegiance to this president, his drift towards autocracy notwithstanding. Even to defending the chain of events that led to the blood of American citizens soaking the frozen streets of Minneapolis.

I am reminded of the words of Founding Father James Madison, revered as the architect of the Constitution with its representative government and checks and balances, on the death of pure democracies: “…Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

As we stagger towards the 250th anniversary of our national existence, is Madison’s critique about the short duration of such governments and their violent deaths about to be fulfilled here by a government turned over to one man and his faction?

I hear it said that Minneapolis is a “turning point.” That it is the singular event that will cause ordinary citizens, the Joe’s and Kathy’s of the body politic, to send an unmistakable message, by elections or by other means, to a government that is theoretically “of the people, by the people, and for the people” that enough is enough.

Problem is, we have had turning points before — Sandy Hook, Parkland, George Floyd, Uvalde. The fervor of the moment fades, and the comfort of a return to temporary normalcy beckons. The “normalcy” is only temporary because there will be further “turning points” down the road that test the national will until there is no national will left to be tested.

In our current situation, as electoral victors, those in power have the right to pursue their policies. But those they govern have the right to expect those policies and the tactics used to bring them to fruition must square with our laws, our Constitution, and our national sense of right and wrong.

I have my doubts about the longevity of this “turning point”. Whether it will prove to be only temporary or something more substantial remains to be seen.

When the dust settles, I hope to be around and able to find words to mollify Madison’s ghost: “Not yet, my friend, not yet.”

Maybe – just maybe – what Madison helped build will survive. There are no guarantees.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Small mercies — all we can hope for …

Happy one-eighth!

As of June 30, 2025, one-eighth of the term of our bombastic narcissist-in-chief is over!!! Yes, this means a mere seven-eighths of this not-so-magical carpet ride is still to come but thank heaven for small mercies.

Small mercies are all we can hope for from a Supreme Court that continues to be complicit in the disassembling of what used to be called the “United” States of America.

In a recent installment, the Supremes took up the issue of birthright citizenship –and then ducked it, by focusing instead on whether a single federal district court, or a combination of lower district courts, could put a nationwide stay on an executive order that most legal scholars – and the district courts where the question has been considered on its merits – have agreed is blatantly unconstitutional on its face.

Without wandering off into the legal weeds, which is where six of nine Supreme Court justices seem to be most comfortable operating, we now have a situation where each state can have a different definition of the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – a subject upon which prior Supreme Courts have ruled in the past – and each state’s definition can be acted upon unless, or until, the issue “percolates” back up the federal judicial system for a nationwide ruling at some indeterminate point in the future, should four justices ever agree to again take up the case they could have ruled upon, but didn’t.

In the meanwhile (and this is where “disassembly” comes into play), thanks to the cover provided by the executive order upheld by the Supreme Court, the issue of birthright citizenship will be treated on a state-by-state basis, rather than governed by a national standard that is the same from sea to shining sea, and all the flyover states in between. Should that happen, a baby born in one state might be considered a citizen by birth, but a baby born in another state might not be considered a citizen at all.

If a baby born in a state that recognizes birthright citizenship is then moved to a state that does not, will that baby still be a citizen of the United States? Can the baby be a citizen of the United States in one state but not in the other?

As near as can be made out, our president’s position is that Fourteenth Amendment Birthright Citizenship, a post-Civil War action ratified in 1868, was intended to apply only to the children of former slaves – and no one else. This includes the offspring of undocumented parents or “birth tourists,” people who come the United States temporarily just to give birth and provide their offspring with U.S. citizenship (something that was once highly prized, but increasingly maybe not so much).

Again, the president’s position, no matter how much support it might currently attract in an increasingly nativist America, has been consistently rejected in prior Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1898. It is not his call to change it by executive fiat, but that of the Congress acting through the constitutional amendment process. His executive meddling introduces an element of uncertainty into what has been a settled point of law for generations. That doubt creates an environment that invites chaos, which is a state this administration seems to believe is most conducive to its plans for the remaining seven-eighths of this term and (shudder) perhaps beyond.

This is not just about babies. The logic of the court’s decision can be applied to the effect of any of this administration’s questionable edicts. The president issues an executive order, however anti-democratic on its face, but no single federal lower court, or combination of lower courts across the nation, can issue a stay of that order. The order, no matter how anti-democratic or unconstitutional, will stand until the matter works its way up through the district and appellate courts and is taken up (maybe) by a Supreme Court predisposed to cater to the executive’s wishes.

This process will take a huge financial investment and years, if ever, until we have a decision on the merits of the issue.

Meanwhile, the executive branch, ruling through executive orders, successfully sidesteps the other two formerly co-equal branches of government. Added to the broad immunity granted to the president by the Supreme Court in 2024, we are well on our way to this administration’s apparent goal, the autocracy so feared by the founders of the Republic and so cherished by our current president.

But again, small mercies.

Happy one-eighth!!!

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Judicial review? Yes? No? Maybe?

Recently, Chief Justice John Roberts offered his thoughts on the role of the Supreme Court: “In our Constitution, the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, the acts of Congress or acts of the president.”

Justice Roberts is talking about a concept called “judicial review.” The idea is that the Supreme Court, and the federal judiciary generally, have the power to review the acts of the other co-equal branches, executive and legislative, and rule upon the constitutionality of their acts. Should the court find unconstitutionality, the presumption is that the other branch is blocked from continuing to act “unconstitutionally.”

Interestingly, and perhaps significantly, there is nothing in the Constitution about “judicial review”.

It isn’t there.

There is no legislative action that codifies the concept of “judicial review” into law.

It isn’t there.

“Judicial review” traces its pedigree back to a single legal case decided by the Supreme Court in 1803, Marbury v. Madison.

Without getting sidetracked into the weeds, the Marbury decision held that the federal courts could not enforce provisions adopted by Congress that violated the Constitution. In denying itself the power to enforce an unconstitutional provision, the Supreme Court claimed the power to render decisions concerning the constitutionality of the actions of a co-equal branch. A review of the matter at issue – by the court – was necessary to determine the question of constitutionality in the first place, i.e. Judicial Review.

It had always been presumed that the federal courts could review state actions. If an action by a state was determined to be contrary to the provisions of the federal Constitution, the court could nullify the state action as being “unconstitutional.”

The Marbury case was different. What the court was reviewing was not a state action, but the action of a co-equal branch of the federal government.

Again, there was not then, nor is there now, any statutory or constitutional basis for such a power.

Nevertheless, over time, the outcome in Marbury v. Madison became accepted case law. Judge Roberts’ statement accurately states the current understanding of what is “judicial review.” For more than 220 years, this landmark decision crafted by the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall has defined the balance between the judicial branch and the other two co-equal branches,

But is that the end of the matter?

When asked recently if he was responsible for upholding the Constitution, our current president pleaded ignorance (never mind that oath he swore on Jan. 20, 2025) and passed off the question of “whose” responsibility it was to his “brilliant lawyers.”

Brilliant lawyers are still capable of coming up with less than brilliant answers, especially if the prime qualification for their job is unwavering loyalty to a single individual.

If, as Roberts claims, the federal courts have the “authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, the acts of Congress or acts of the president,” in the absence of specific constitutional or statutory authorization, from whence does this “authority” come?

Is “judicial review” simply a power created by the federal judiciary by itself, for itself? If this is the case, are the other two branches bound by the pronouncements of this co-equal branch?

In other words, if the courts find something to be unconstitutional, is that finding merely advisory, or is it binding, on the other branches? Can the other branches come up with their own findings and act upon them?

Recently, presidential advisor Stephen Miller commented that the “Constitution was the supreme law of the land.” Note that he did not say that the Constitution,   “as interpreted by the Supreme Court” was the supreme law of the land.

Can a president, relying on the advice of his “brilliant lawyers” and convinced in his own mind that he has the power to do so, come up with his own interpretation of the Constitution and act upon it in defiance of the court’s interpretation?

Andrew Jackson, our president’s favorite president, came very close to doing precisely that in the forced removal of the Cherokee nation from Georgia to what later became Oklahoma.

Should our president defy the judiciary, what power does the judiciary have to block him? Alexander Hamilton called the judiciary the “least dangerous” branch of government because it had neither the “power of the sword” (the law enforcement powers controlled by the executive) nor the “power of the purse” (access to funds controlled by Congress) to enforce it decisions.

The power of the court rests on nothing more substantial than the willingness of the other branches to follow a more than 220-year-old tradition of deference to the court’s interpretation of the law and public support for its decisions, in other words, public pressure. If public opinion of the Roberts court is nearing the basement at about a 40 percent approval rating, it might not be wise to bet the farm on the public’s rallying to the court’s defense in the case of a showdown between the executive and judicial branches. The third branch, the legislative branch, has been broken for years as too many of its members care more about keeping their jobs than doing their jobs. It would likely be a non-factor in any presidential powerplay.

If acceptance of the ruling in Marbury v. Madison were to be aggressively challenged, the outcome could be far from certain.  A result putting Marbury v. Madison into question could lead to major chaos by kicking away one of the foundational supports of the entire judicial system to satisfy the druthers of a president who has demonstrated his predilection to operate in a chaotic atmosphere.

Hopefully, none of this will ever happen.

But what if it does?

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Rewriting history right before our eyes …

I am getting tired of people in positions of power trying to rewrite history, especially history that I saw becoming history with my own two surgically corrected eyes.

On Page 8 of last Friday’s Kokomo Tribune (yes, I still subscribe to the local newspaper, and so should you because you’d miss it if it went away), there appeared an Associated Press report with the local headline “Trump envoy: Ukrainians ‘brought this on themselves’ after aid paused.”

The “person of power” being quoted was “U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia,” a retired lieutenant general named Keith Kellogg. A quick check confirmed my assumption that he retired from our own armed forces, because for a person supposedly trying to broker a deal between two sovereign nations, he did not sound even-handed in his estimation of the positions of the two combatants.

It all goes back to that imbroglio in the White House back on February 28. Subsequently, you-know-who “paused” military aid to Ukraine and “paused” the sharing of U.S. intelligence with that beleaguered country. Then the United States cut off access to the commercial satellite imagery that gave the Ukrainians a chance to look into the movements of their enemy.

These moves appeared to be intended to cripple one party in this conflict and improve the hand of the other. Not exactly the acts of a good-faith mediator.

The article refers to a shouting match between the president of Ukraine and you-know-who and his live ventriloquist’s dummy, Boy Blunder.

Hold the presses!

My surgically corrected eyes watched that mess in real time and in living color. Yes, there were voices raised, but it wasn’t the president of Ukraine. It was our own twosome “excoriating” (what a wonderful word!) a guy trying save his country from a painfully drawn-out extinction.

All my surgically corrected eyes saw was a blindsided Ukrainian trying to get a word in edgewise between the rants of our own people.

Did he look happy? No. Was his country being trashed? Most definitely.

Lt. Gen. Kellogg’s reaction to the “pauses”? He is quoted as saying that they were already having an impact, and that the Ukrainians “brought it on themselves.” “The best way I can describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose,” he said. “You got their attention.”

The retired lieutenant general is reminded that the “mule” in question has spent the last three years fighting a war of survival he was expected to lose in three days.

There is a more colorful word in the English language for “mule,” but this is a family newspaper. You can guess who deserves it the most in this instance

It isn’t the guy from Kyiv.

Over the last three years, that guy has thanked the United States profusely for its assistance, including at least one time before a joint session of Congress, where he received a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. That was back when Republicans still thought democracy was worth saving.

What is his current sin? What deserved a two-by-four across the nose? I suspect it has to do with his standing up for his county’s interests and failing to kiss the ring of you-know-who. It’s hard to kiss a ring when it comes at you, unexpectedly, as part of a cheap diplomatic sucker punch

This whole sorry incident is symptomatic of yet another attempt by this administration to rewrite history – even though we saw the first draft with our own eyes.

We are now told Ukraine started the war. Excuse me. Have we forgotten the two-mile-long column of heavy military equipment lined up on a highway aimed straight at Kyiv? Have we forgotten the little comedian-turned-president who, as the Russians advanced, spurned being evacuated with a courageous “I need ammunition, not a ride”?

The aim currently appears to be to force an ally to a negotiation that confirms the theft by military force of at least 20 percent of its territory, with no security assurances beyond those made in 1994 when Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons (an estimated 1,700 nuclear warheads). They did this as part of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons signed in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s unlamented dissolution.

And what did they receive in exchange?

Assurances that their independence and sovereignty in their existing borders would be respected.

Assurances to which this country and today’s aggressor state are both signatories.

Now both signatories seem to be reneging. For the United States, it seems to be in the hopes of currying favor with an authoritarian leader who has never made a promise he was not willing to break, as he has shown with depressing regularity.

Ukraine is fighting for its life with its own blood. No American blood is being spilled (think Vietnam, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq). Monetary and military assistance instead is a pretty good deal – especially since most of the money is spent buying American equipment and keeping American workers employed.

The next potential dominoes – Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania – are watching closely to see which way to jump, as is Poland and most of Eastern Europe.

Believe your eyes – surgically corrected or not.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Small yipping dogs and the future of the world

Have you ever noticed that it is usually the smallest, scrawniest rat dog that yips the loudest and quickly becomes an annoyance?

Which brings us to our recently minted vice president, J.D. Vance, and his incendiary role in February 28’s debacle of a photo-op gone disastrously off the rails.

When in a photo-op with your boss present, the traditional role of a vice president is to sit quietly and listen to the immortal words of the top dog. The vice president should speak only if spoken to. It is expected they will always look worshipfully at the guy in charge. Fawning, while optional, is highly recommended. More lap dog than attack dog.

But not our recently minted vice president.

Sitting on a couch with an uncomfortable looking Marco Rubio (who, allegedly, is in charge of our relations with foreign heads of state and all things diplomatic), our bearded former freshman senator from Ohio interrupted the flow of a tense, but nonetheless diplomatically acceptable, dialog between his boss and the president of a foreign state supposedly allied to the United States, and began to yip vociferously

After making it abundantly clear that he disrespected our ally, the newly minted vice president angrily charged that our ally had disrespected us. He yipped about how our ally hadn’t thanked us enough for what in reality is the boost his country has given to the American armaments industry. (After all, his country used the monetary grants from the United States to buy weapons and ammunition from American manufacturers.)

Then the beleaguered and blind-sided foreign head of state made a boo-boo.

He pointed out that while the country invading his country was just next door, we in the United States have an ocean moat, a moat that has protected us in the past but may not offer such security in the future.

This roused our real-estate-agent-in-chief and deal-maker-non-pariel from a state of glowering, but largely silent, intensity and set him off on a trip down memory lane. In a barrage of indignation, he revisited the various injuries done to him in the past, with special emphasis on those wounds suffered jointly with his good friend Comrade Putin.

We’ve heard it all before ad nauseam ad infinitum ad mortem.

His role completed in this likely ambush; our recently minted vice president mercifully ceased his yipping.

Silent as the tomb, Marco Rubio lived down to his nickname, “Little Marco.”

Our chief deal maker tossed our ally out of the White House with orders that he not be readmitted until he was ready to do a deal no matter how costly, unfair or disastrous that deal may be to the country he leads.

As I write this, I am painfully aware that a good chunk of my fellow citizens (probably not a majority, but a good chunk, nevertheless) think all this is wonderful stuff.

Our big boss was strong and put this supplicant in his place. He told it like it is, and if it isn’t pretty – tough. It’s the way of the world. Get on the bus or get run over by it.

That goes for our so-called allies as well. Who needs or wants the allies who have stood with us for generations? We have new friends: Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, or any other strong-man regime elsewhere on the planet.

And all this is apparently good enough for the cabal of invertebrates posing as Republican senators and representatives who appear willing to sell their souls, their constituents – and their country – down the tubes so long as they avoid primary opposition that might threaten their jobs.

Shakespeare couldn’t have plotted a better tragedy.

If we squander trust, if we squander honor, if we squander truth – those attributes that America has enjoyed in some measure as leader of the Free World order that has existed since World War II, we will find they are extremely hard to regain. If ever.

February 28, 2025, will go down as a dark day in American diplomacy. It is the day we told our friends to go their own way without us and cozied up to those who wish for this nation nothing but ill.

As for our recently minted vice president? Hopefully at the next photo-op his role will be limited to going to get the diet cola. No yipping allowed.   

Posted on by kenferriesblog

We won’t be fooled again …?

I’ve been writing these columns sporadically for several years. I haven’t claimed to have any information beyond that available to the public, of which I am a card-carrying member. But even with this limitation, there are ironies out there if you take the trouble to look.

Take, for example, the 2024 election, and the odds of what is to follow over the next four years.

Consider the different economies.

One of them is the “macro economy.” This is the world of national and international economic statistics, hedge funds, and arcane numbers calculated and disseminated by the modern-day equivalent of the medieval alchemists and soothsayers. Today, we call them “economists.”

By this yardstick, as 2024 dawned, the United States was doing well. Very well, by some accounts. Unlike most of the other countries with whom we uneasily co-exist on this fractured planet, the United States had an economy that was still expanding. Unemployment was at historic lows. Even the bête noire of economies everywhere, the dreaded inflation monster, showed steady signs of coming under control as supply (severely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic) caught up with demand.

Massive infusions of federal dollars into an economy crippled by COVID helped stave off a recession (or worse), but at the price of increased short-term deficits that were projected by the economic gurus to show longer-term dividends, ironically enough, beginning in early 2025.

Democrats chose to run a campaign based on these positive economic signs. In doing so, they were not deceiving the American people. What they were saying was true, at least in terms of macroeconomic reality.

There were, however, other economies in play. One is far away from the realm of the elite acolytes found in the temple of macroeconomics. It is where the economy interfaces with the consumer daily – and that interface is often difficult.

Microeconomics isn’t concerned with grand macroeconomic trends, theories, or academic projections. Its major question is how does Joe Citizen fare when he daily interacts with the macroeconomy.    

One among many points of interface with the larger economy, each one having the potential to become a source of discontent, was how did Joe Citizen fare at the local grocery store?

The reality? No amount of reasoned explanation changes the fact the prices had risen, justifications or explanations be damned. The widespread resentment in the middle and lower classes, which include most of us, created a potent political opportunity for anyone willing to take advantage of it.

As the 2024 election played out, Democrats ran based on macroeconomics because that is where they could make the strongest case for their stewardship of the economy, with the promise that this success would, well, trickle down to consumers over time (apologies to Ronald Reagan). The not-surprising result was that many consumers felt neglected, or maybe even betrayed.

The opposition didn’t talk much about the big picture, first because it didn’t have much new to say about it, and second, it sensed the public didn’t care about the “why” as much as they wanted to hear who to blame and “what” the politicians were going to do about it. Dissatisfied voters would tolerate much in return for a promise of a reduction in the price of everything they needed to consume daily.

Macroeconomics or microeconomics. Which should have priority? The answer to the question has much to do with understanding the results of November 5, 2024.

And what about the future?

The only honest answer is “who knows?”

But there are early signs.

The president-elect has already made it clear that the prime qualification for a place on his team is loyalty. Loyalty to him personally, above all else, apparently including the Constitution, despite the fact his appointees must first swear to defend the Constitution, not the president, from all enemies “foreign and domestic.” Well, not all his appointees, because he is carving out a new powerful position for the wealthiest man on Earth that does not appear to require Senate confirmation or, for that matter, any oath other than the unsaid, but understood, loyalty to the leader himself, and (by happy coincidence) the opportunity to make even more money.

There is nothing that disqualifies an individual from public service simply because of wealth. If, thanks to the porous nature of our federal campaign finance laws, someone chooses to donate $270,000,000 of their personal funds to their favorite candidate, surely the Founding Fathers would not take offense. A compliant Supreme Court certainly hasn’t.

Among the balance of the president-elect’s appointees, there is more than a sprinkling of millionaires and multi-millionaires who will assist the new president in formulating and executing public policy. With whom are these folks more likely to align? Whose interests are they more likely to prioritize? Those of similar background and life experience? Or Joe Citizen buying his pound of bacon at the local Piggly-Wiggly?

The supreme irony would be if, having come to power on the backs of the dissatisfied little guy, the new administration leaves office having served the interests of the elite at the expense of the little guys who got them there in the first place. As allegedly occurred in the prior administration, macroeconomic considerations would trump, no pun intended, the microeconomic concerns of most of the American people. Which is precisely what president-elect railed against through the 2024 campaign.

Or as The Who put it back in 1971, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

Only time will tell if we have been fooled again.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

As the mind wanders …

Funny the associations the mind can make when it wanders.

As this is written, I am listening to the sound of feet stomping around on my roof. No, this is not the patter of tiny reindeer, but rather, the clomping and hammering of a crew of roofers. Our 135-year-old slate had given up the ghost, and if we want to have insurance, well, the slate had to go over the rainbow bridge, or whatever might be the slate equivalent.

I’m not here to write about slate, but, unbidden, the first association crossed my mind.

Most of this very hard-working crew are of the “brown” people ethnicity we heard so much about in the recent election, many of whom are marked for deportation according to our president-elect. While I don’t generally believe much of what you-know-who says, over the years I have come to accept he often makes good on his threats.

Then I wondered what the effect would be of such a reverse Exodus. Instead of Charlton Heston and the Israelites heading to the Promised Land, millions among us are slated (no pun intended) to be escorted from what has been their promised land and booted unceremoniously back to their place of birth. That’s assuming their place of birth is willing to take them in, a small but not insignificant detail which has not been part of the discussion. If we have the right to control our borders, which we undoubtedly have, so too have those nation states we cavalierly assume will run the risk of having their own economies, fragile as they may be, upended by the influx of this reverse flow.

Then came the second association.

In a recent issue of this award-winning newspaper, there was the headline “Ripple Effect” with the sub-head “Business Interests: Deportations could upend Indiana’s economy.” You might want to burrow into your Google machine, or better yet, buy a subscription to this award-winning newspaper while it’s still here, because the numbers are significant.

Granted, the source of the numbers is the American Immigration Council, which sounds like a cabal of left-wing liberal extremists, not to mention elitists. But for the sake of argument, they estimate there are 104,500 undocumented immigrants in our beloved state, 7,100 of whom are also entrepreneurs providing goods and services to the rest of us. These folks have household incomes totaling $3.1billion with total spending power of $2.4 billion, much of which is going to be spent in local economies around the state. The same group is estimated to contribute $247.3 million in state and local taxes, and a whopping $400.3 million in federal taxes.

For the mathematically inclined, according to numbers felt good enough to be printed on the front page of our local award-winning newspaper, the taxes alone amount to a grand total of $647.6 million dollars – not bad for a bunch of so-called “rapists and murderers” by any measure, and a number the absence of which would be felt, and probably would have to be replaced from somewhere, most likely from the wallets of those of us who remain after the great departure.

Remember, the folks whose panties are currently in a bunch over the possibility of losing these workers are the same business interests who a few weeks ago were trumpeting the need for, well, you-know-who.

Which brought me to my third association.

There is, of course, another side to almost everything. In a recent “Sound Off” column appearing in our award-winning journal, the author rhapsodized about the trouncing you-know-who gave Kamala Harris. You-know-who won with about 50 percent of the total vote and less than a 2 percent margin over his opponent (about 2.5 million votes out of a total of about 155 million cast). Not exactly a trouncing (except in an archaic Electoral College), but nevertheless a clear victory that must be admitted.

It should also be remembered that the number of votes cast for Harris, coupled with the fewer votes cast in 2024 than in 2020, means that a majority of eligible voters did not vote for you-know-who. Talk of a mandate should probably be taken with several grains of salt. A clear win certainly, a mandate? That remains to be seen.

Which brought me to my fourth association.

Since the infamous (to some) 2020 election, America has been force-fed a constant stream of inflammatory rhetoric about what was going to happen in 2024 as the result of a corrupt and quasi-criminal election system. Strangely enough, not a peep has been heard about this crisis since the election. Apparently winning cures all. It also makes you wonder if all the dire predictions were all froth and no beer in the first place. Just saying.

Which brought me to my fifth association.

The author of the Sound Off column piously recites that entering the promised land illegally is a crime, therefore, as the Red Queen said, “off with their heads!” Ironically, this call to action appears next to an editorial cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press depicting a gentleman looking a lot like you-know-who is holding a book titled “Law” (right side up this time) and laughing uproariously. Pot calling the kettle black perhaps?

Rather than incurring the cost of mass deportations, and the hit they will inflict on our local, state, and national economies, might it make more sense to first seal the southern border, which is a policy decision the president-elect has every right to make, subject to congressional and judicial clean bills of health that would be expected from a Congress and Supreme Court controlled by you-know-who. If it takes a wall, build the wall, but don’t expect anyone else to pay for it other than the good old American taxpayer.

And what about the millions of undocumented immigrants who are embedded in our society and contribute significantly to its strength and success? When the border is sealed to the new administration’s satisfaction, why not install a path to citizenship for those already here? Make it tough. Make it so that, after extending a due process procedure, those really found to be murderers and rapists (which is certainly a tiny minority by anyone’s standards, despite being you-know-who’s bete noire), then deport or incarcerate them in at least more manageable numbers.

Admittedly, for those who got in under the wire, it’s like being awarded one of Willie Wonka’s “golden tickets,” but that might be a preferable outcome rather than risking the destruction of the chocolate factory itself.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

How low can he go?

It is a constant source of amazement that no matter how low our former president can go in his public acts and pronouncements, he can always go even lower. It’s as if just when we think he’s hit the basement floor and can go no deeper that he discovers a new sub-basement and jumps right in with both feet, heel spurs and all.

In one of his more recent contretemps (I hesitate to say his last contretemps because you never know what trouble he can get himself into between the time this is written and when it appears in print!), he made some comments comparing (and equating) the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military  award.

The sound bite currently making the rounds on mainstream media is from a few days ago as our former president talked about the award of the medal to Miriam Adelson back in 2018. Speaking of the Medal of Freedom and comparing it to the Medal of Honor, our former president is quoted as saying, “… it’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman, and they’re rated equal.”

No harm to Miriam, who is currently a 78-year-old healthy, beautiful woman and who had introduced the former president at the event where he made the remarks. But things are not equal.

Miriam is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, who passed away in 2021. Together, they had – and have – more money than God. (Current estimate by Forbes for Miriam and family? $28 billion – with a “b.”) And you, dear reader, if you squandered away the vacation money on the first night at the craps table at the Sands, or later the Venetian, you have contributed your mite to that wealth.

Nobody begrudges Sheldon and Miriam’s success.  They can spend their money as they want, and they have, with many goodly causes being the beneficiaries.

They can also spend their money for political purposes. Thanks to the porous nature of our federal campaign finance laws, the practical effect is a license to give as much as you want, with no upper limit.

In the case of Sheldon and Miriam, according to reports from federal records, in the period 2010 through 2020, the Adelsons donated more than $500 million to Republican party campaigns and super PACs.

In the years since Sheldon’s death, Miriam has continued her politically motivated philanthropies towards the Republican party in general, and Donald Trump specifically. In May 2024, Politico reported that Mrs. Adelson would be donating $90 million dollars to a Super Pac supporting our former president and, as of this week, news reports quoted Adelson’s political aide saying that she is going to do “whatever it takes” to assure the GOP candidate’s success.

Again, under current law, there is nothing illegal about any of this. I only use the numbers as a setup for the following question – and remember we’re talking about our former president here. Which do you suppose had more to do with Miriam’s Presidential Medal of Freedom? The good works … or the political contributions?

You be the judge.

On the other hand, with the Congressional Medal of Honor, I, like many of my generation, have grade school, high school, and college friends and acquaintances who, even if they did not receive the Medal of Honor, still lie quietly in their caskets (if there was anything to send home), or live their lives with prosthetics, or depend on prescribed (or non-prescribed) drugs to get through a day. Some relive the horrors of their experiences nightly. Those no longer with us remain in our memories, forever in their late teens or early twenties.

These folks, the injured and the lost, cannot hope to match the monetary contributions that might lead to a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

All they had to contribute to their country was their body when called to defend it, and, in all too many instances, the only life they had to give when that defense required it.

Equal?

Not even close.

On Friday, the Veterans of Foreign Wars noted their shock at what they called the former president’s “asinine comments” that so “crassly characterize the sacrifices of those who have risked their lives above and beyond the call of duty.” Many of us agree our former Commander in Chief should retract his insult to all who have worn their country’s uniform. Most of us know he won’t.

If you ever wore a uniform and have since added a MAGA hat to your current “uniform,” might I suggest you find the nearest trash fire and contribute your hat to that.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Putting the toothpaste back in the tube …

It’s about those Trump yard sign slogans we are seeing around town.

To date, I have noticed three variations. The first, and to be fair, I think the rarest, is simply crass and in poor taste. I mean, what does “No more bull—t” add to the public discourse surrounding this presidential election?  It didn’t do much for us Boomers when we used it 55 years ago, and I don’t think it will do much for today’s imitators either. Come to think of it, assuming that the amount of bovine manure being spread around is relevant, Democrats could appropriate the same theme with greater cause. Thankfully, they have so far resisted the temptation to play the potty mouth card as a part of their campaign.

The two more common calls to action, “Make America Great Again” and “Take America Back,” are more interesting because one is unnecessary, and the other is an impossibility.

As to the first, I must admit that I failed to get the memo advising me America was no longer great. Here I am, drifting through life, fat (but not grotesquely so, thank you very much), dumb, and happy, thinking that the lowest unemployment rate in memory, the strongest stock market in history, more Americans having access to health insurance than ever before, the strongest military on the face of the earth, allies willing to work with us to achieve common goals, an industrial sector on the rebound, the strongest economy among all first-world nations, an inflation rate in decline, much overdue infrastructure projects being undertaken, still being the country pesky undocumented aliens are willing to risk their lives to get into by any means possible – even illegally – are good things. In my innocence, silly me, I believed all were indications of a country already great by nearly any measure.

There is a contrary view, promoted by MAGA-Republicans, a certain presidential candidate, and a vast right-wing echo chamber, that sees America as a country in carnage that can be saved only by them and only if their prescription for 2025 and beyond is followed to the letter.

If they and their fellow travelers are the source of a voter’s information, it is understandable for the faithful to wallow in the doom and gloom.

As to which view is more accurate, it must be pointed out that the flagship network pushing the carnage scenario has already been adjudged liable for millions of dollars for disseminating “news” coverage that it knew, at the time, to be false. On the trustworthy meter, draw your own conclusions.

The last slogan is probably the most interesting. “Take America Back” generates two immediate questions: take it back to “when?” and take it back for “whom?”

On the “when,” my money would be on the Fifties and Sixties. American industry dominated the world. Jobs were not hard to come by, and if they were lost during a recession, more opportunities would be coming down the pike. All sorts of modern conveniences made their debut and were gobbled up by a public who had surplus money to spend as the result of union-driven wage increases in the manufacturing sector. Middle class families were anxious to put the privations of the war years behind them. Televisions ads featuring women typically portrayed them in non-threatening “housewife” roles emoting over the latest gizmo due to go on the market. Despite seething discontent under the surface, minority groups largely kept quiet and gratefully took whatever scraps fell off the prosperity table. Amazingly, some of the minority groups being dealt with today had yet to be labeled as groups back then, so far were they beneath the public’s consciousness.

News flash: The conditions that made these halcyon days possible no longer exist. They’re not coming back.

In the aftermath of World War II, the only intact industrial and manufacturing base was our own. All the others had been bombed, blitzed, or even nuked, into irrelevance.

America is no longer the only player on the board. There are multiple competitors, including economic giants in Asia and the Far East that were economic nonentities not so many years ago.

This republic of ours is still great, but it’s no longer the only giant astride the world. Nor, if a prosperous world economy is a goal to be pursued (not to mention additional markets for our goods), should we want it to be.

Finally, who is the intended beneficiary of taking America back in time?

I suspect the answer is supplied by the title of one of the television shows popular at the time: “Father Knows Best.”

Under this theory, the answer to the future is the past. What apparently is envisioned is a return to a country where power resides in the hands of wise men, mostly Caucasian, married (with children), Christians, preferably Conservative Christians, who are convinced that our Republic has had its day and who are willing to sacrifice said Republic for a return to the halcyon days of yore.

Minimize the role of women and minorities, and, assuming elections will be used at all to put some lipstick on the pig, rig them to produce a desired result.

Can it be done? Will it be done?

No.

Think of a tube of toothpaste.

Think of our world as the product of squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. To “Take America Back” would entail trying to shove some toothpaste back into the tube.

Try it.

To say it can be done is a lie. To promise voters you will deliver on the lie is an even greater deception.

Posted on by kenferriesblog

Of fireworks and presidents

It occurs to me as I sit here listening to the battle between West Taylor Street and West Jackson Street as to which can more loudly celebrate the 248th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, that when the 249th anniversary rolls around, while the explosives may be similar, the realities underlying the pyrotechnics may be much different – perhaps forever.

I refer, of course, to the fact that that there is a presidential election in November.

On the one hand, we have a guy who’s done not badly over the last three and a half years in the Oval Office, especially given an evenly split Senate and an openly adversarial House.

Lest we forget, after a lifetime of public service, he had an unmitigatedly disastrous 90 minutes of a debate a couple of weeks ago.

In fairness, the content of his remarks wasn’t all that bad, but the optics of their delivery were terrible.

And, oh yeah, he’s an old man.

On the other hand, we have a man who did visually better in the debate, even if some of his remarks were non-responsive, bordered on the incomprehensible, or were outright lies.

And, oh yeah, he’s another old man.

I know what follows is going to anger many of my fellow citizens, especially here in Kokomo, but if you wanted to be alliterative, an argument can be made that he is also a fraud, a felon, and a fascist.

The so-called university bearing his name was shut down as a fraudulent con. After going through the American criminal justice system, with all the presumptions of innocence that entails, he was unanimously found guilty as a felon. If you listen to his pronouncements on how he will proceed should he be re-elected, fascist is an apt description.

Harsh, but it is what it is.

I don’t expect to change any minds with this recitation of flaws in the candidates. But there is another recent development that means we should be making decisions with our eyes wide open.

Our Supreme Court has fallen into the trap its most honored jurist, John Marshall, feared the most, it has become political, bending over backwards to advance one political agenda at the expense of another.

In its most recent decision involving presidential immunity, a majority of the court has wandered far down the trail towards what is called, in the political science business, a “unitary presidency.”

Essentially, this means the idea of three co-equal branches of government, as set out in the Constitution, is consigned to the scrapheap of history. In its stead is established an imperial presidency wherein the actions of that branch are beyond challenge assuming the president is acting within their “official” duties – of which they are the “decider-in-chief” as to what is official, or unofficial.

The most contentious of the debates during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 involved the office of the chief executive officer, i.e. the president.

The question: How to give that officer enough power to effectively lead the new-born nation – but not so much power as to become, in all but name, a king.

And in the back of their minds, especially in that of James Madison, how to provide enough restraint on the office, for example, through the creation of a system of checks and balances, for the nation to survive a less than virtuous occupant at the head of the executive branch.

Such restraint is antithetical to the idea of a unitary president.

There “we the people” have it – a contest between a candidate who, while old, has done nothing to indicate a desire to upend the Constitution and 248 years of a government with three co-equal branches, and another, also old, who appears to desire to reimagine the office to his own personal benefit and has a Supreme Court apparently willing to run interference to allow such re-imaginings to become reality.

Think well about the choices. If current trends are carried to their likely conclusion, the people’s ability to make free choices in the future may be seriously circumscribed.