Tariff and SOTU Update

Okay, I noted a couple of days ago that Trump defied the Supreme Court by instigating new tariffs - first 10 percent, then 15 percent - based on a loophole.  That loophole is Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which the Shapiro logistics company explains as follows:

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 is a U.S. trade law provision that gives the President temporary authority to address serious balance-of-payments deficits or significant declines in the value of the U.S. dollar. It is designed as a short-term economic safeguard tool, allowing the administration to respond quickly to international financial instability or trade imbalances.

Unlike other trade enforcement mechanisms that target specific countries or unfair trade practices, Section 122 can be applied more broadly and is primarily focused on macroeconomic concerns rather than individual trade violations.

You know what's funny?  I'll tell you.  The plaintiffs in the Supreme Court tariff case used Section 122 as their argument against the tariffs Trump had implemented.  Now, the new tariff imposed under this very section of the Trade Act of 1974 could be subject to a new lawsuit.  And even this tariff stands, it is only supposed to last 150 days, after which Congress is required  approve any new tariffs, which, as Joseph Brusuelas wrote on The Real Economy Blog wrote, "will prompt businesses and households to either pull forward planned purchases, or simply delay them until the tariffs expire."  That's not good for the economy, nor is the uncertainty created by the prospect of more litigation that will delay the refunds to business the Court ordered Trump to give to businesses affected by the earlier tariffs - refunds averaging about $153 billion. 

As for the State of the Union address . . . yeah, of course I didn't see it.  I personally think we should go back to when the White House sent a message to Congress as a letter instead of delivering in it person.

In fact, both Presidents George Washington and John Adams delivered State of The Union addresses in person, but President Thomas Jefferson started the tradition of written messages to Congress in 1801 for two reasons.  First, he felt that delivering the State of the Union message in person would make him seem like a king.  Second, Jefferson had a stammer and abhorred public speaking.  James Madison would continue Jefferson's practice of delivering written messages to Congress when he became President in 1809, and it was not until 1913 when President Woodrow Wilson (above) resumed the practice of delivering the State of the Union address in person, which he did to demonstrate how serious he was about his agenda, particularly his New Freedom economic agenda.  There were fourteen instances after 1913 when Presidents reverted to a letter to Congress, most notably when Franklin Roosevelt sent letters to Congress during World War II.  Jimmy Carter sent the last message to Congress by letter in January 1981 as a lame-duck President, right about the same time Styx released as a single a song that itself made for a perfect State of the Union address for the beginning of 1981, the deliberately ironically titled "The Best of Times": "I know you feel these are the worst of times, I do believe it's true."  The Iran crisis, a sour economy, John Lennon having just been murdered . . . you get the picture.

And given Trump's apparent inability to resist breaking out into a fascist groove thing at the podium, rumor has it it's the end of paradise. 

Trumpety Bumpety

Trump got a rude awakening when the Supreme Court rule 6 to 3 against Trump trying to establish tariffs unilaterally, based on a 1970s law that allowed tariffs to be established by the executive branch for  national security reasons.  Chief Justice John Roberts gave Trump a chance to dial back the tariffs, but Trump apparently found a loophole to declare a comprehensive 10 percent tariff on all imported goods.  Hours later, he increased it to 15 percent. 

Whatever.  I'm sick and tired of following Trump's import-tax antics.  

Anyway, I'm sure he'll explain his stupid tariffs - and how the 2020 election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden - when he gives his State of the Union address to Congress tonight.  Al I can think of is how I wish my state of the Union, New Jersey (see what I did there? double meaning) would secede from it.

I can't be bothered to watch.  I have to finish a video for my YouTube channel about a topic having nothing to do with Trump.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get a nice, chewy piece of salt water tariff. 😝

Take a Message to Congress

Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. President, was known to be afflicted with a stammer and so feared public speaking that he became the first of 24 consecutive U.S. Presidents to deliver the annual presidential message to Congress - now known as the State of the Union address - as a printed text to the Capitol for a clerk to read.  Given Joe Biden's own stammer - and given his lifelong ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time - he could have easily revived the tradition that Jefferson began.  In fact, many Democrats might have been more than happy with such a decision.

Democrats needn't have worried.  President Biden delivered a strong speech that was as powerful as Mario Cuomo's famous keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention and roared out of the gate with strenuous defenses of the American democratic system and aid for Ukraine as well as a condemnation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.  He doubled down on his record, citing the increases in infrastructure spending and the decrease in the unemployment rate and reminding Americans that COVID had gripped the country at the time of his inauguration and how all of these advances came once his administration got control of and helped end the pandemic.

Even better, he pushed for the immigration bill that Republicans had supported before Donald Trump told them not to, citing the bill's highlights and what it would accomplish with Senator James Lankford - the Oklahoma Republican who spearheaded the bill nodding and vocalizing his agreement.  President Biden even showed up Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), having an appreciative  laugh at her MAGA hat and red blazer as he entered the House chamber and later taking up her dare to mention the name of Laken Riley - the Georgia nursing student murdered by an illegal immigrant - in his support for the Republican immigration bill.  (A similar bill giving states more power to challenge federal immigration laws when wanting to deport illegal immigrants, named for Laken Riley, passed the House hours before.)  His mere energy got Republicans so angry when he proposed increased aid to education, improving literacy, working on reducing inflation further - the sort of issues no one could oppose - and they subsequently booed them.  Most importantly, he played up the assault on women's reproductive rights and addressed members of the Supreme Court in the second person - to their faces - in admonitory language and vowed that women were ready to reverse the Dobbs decision at the ballot box.  (Justice Alito, who actually wrote the Dobbs decision was nowhere to be found, as usual.)  

President Biden even address the age issue, noting that with age comes wisdom, and he reminded people that Trump - whom he referred to thirteen times as "my predecessor" - was almost as old as he was but his ideas - oligarchy, patriarchy, authoritarianism - were older.  But for all of his abilities to ad-lib and banter with Republicans like they were his sparring partners in a boxing ring, he did have a couple of missteps, coughing on occasion and stumbling over his words in talking about women's political power and saying that they had already helped Democrats in 2022 and "in 2020" when he meant to say "in 2022 and 2023."  Also, one speech does not a turnaround make, and a Make America Great Again PAC ad showing a compilation of Biden's verbal and physical slip-ups is now getting a good deal of attention.  (It also juxtaposes these scenes with a clip of Kamala Harris laughing, the better to remind MAGA voters that a Biden death in office would give us a female President who is half black and half South Asian and prefers Bootsy Collins to Phil Collins . . . and her husband's a Jew!) 

With Nikki Haley - who frequently raised the specter of "President Harris" to Republican presidential primary voters - now out of the presidential campaign (as is Dean Phillips on the Democratic side), President Biden needs to win of swing voters - some of whom supported Haley in the GOP primaries - and neutralize the inevitable MAGA mobilization.  He needs to keep up what he did this past Thursday.  Thankfully, he appears to be doing that; he's been on the campaign trail this weekend, as Biden-Trump Mark Two - the first general presidential election rematch since 1956 - begins in earnest.

I forgot about the Republican response to Biden's address from Katie Britt.  I sort of prefer to.

Biden's State Of the Union Address

So I understand President Biden gave his first State Of the Union address last week . . . 

First of all, I'm glad it was only an hour long.  Secondly, I think he did a pretty good job, and the sight of maybe only three out of five hundred or so people wearing face coverings in the U.S. House chamber right after the mandate for wearing them in the House was lifted was reassuring.

Although I think Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene should have been required to be gagged.

I won't even repeat what they said.

President Biden made his intentions on handling the war in Ukraine clear, promising to stand behind Ukrainian sovereignty and defend freedom - certifying himself as a wartime President in a war we're not even fighting.  He also struck an even balance between liberal and centrist concerns regarding domestic issues by advocating for the more popular elements of his Build Back Better plan (a term he didn't actually use in the speech), including a $15 minimum wage, a child tax credit extension, making child care costs affordable and a call to defend, not defund, the police.

All of this even gave the President a bounce in the polls when he badly needed it.  In the first and so far only poll taken after the State Of the Union address, from Marist College and public broadcasting, his approval rating is up to 47 percent. Broken down, Biden's handling of the Ukraine crisis is up 18 points, to 52 percent,  his handling of the COVID pandemic is up 8 points, to 55 percent, and even though his handling of the economy is still under water, it's up 8 points, to 45 percent.  

All in all, he still has a good deal of work to do to put himself and the Democrats in a comfortable situation before the November midterms, but the State Of the Union address was a step in the right direction. 

The Last Time Ever I Saw Your Face . . .

. . . it was in April 2020. 

But get ready to rejoice, my friends!  Face coverings (FCs) appear to be on the way out, at least for a good long time before we have to deal with COVID again, in its current strain or in a future one.

With the seven-day average of new COVID cases having dropped to below 70,000 for the first time since October, and with hospitalizations down significantly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says we don't have to wear FCs in areas where hospitalization rates are low or medium - about 70 percent of counties, districts (Alaska) and parishes (Louisiana) in the United States.  Most of the 30 percent of the counties, districts and parishes with high hospitalization rates are in - you guessed it - the South and West.

Where  I live, a nearby town that happens to be one of these suburbs reinventing itself as a destination town - it has an art museum - is repealing its FC mandate ahead of schedule.  The art museum is resuming its free admission on the first Thursday night of the month this week for the first time in two years.  I'm probably going to hold off, though, and not go to a free first Thursday night until April or May just to be on the safe side.

Oh, yeah, don't expect the FCs to come off at President Biden's State Of the Union address tonight, even though the District of Columbia has a low hospitalization rate, because, as I understand it, FCs are still required on federal property.  And, the last time I checked, the U.S .Capitol is federal property (at least until the next insurrection).  On this, Biden ain't budging, thanks largely to his COVID paranoia after FC restrictions were lifted in June 2021, and FCs were being taken off just as the delta corona was taking off.  Thus, FCs and COVID tests will be required for those who attend the speech in person. 

And so, let history record that the only two times that two women - Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - were sitting behind the President in a joint session of Congress, they were wearing face coverings both times. The pandemic will likely be over completely in 2023, but Kevin McCarthy will likely be sitting in Nancy Pelosi's place. 

At least both people behind President Biden will still both be Californians.

However, it will be appropriate if all of Congress is masked up like armed bandits tonight, if only to remind us what Mark Twain once said about Congress being America's only criminal class. 

Democrats Hit Rock Bottom

Nancy Pelosi ripped apart Trump's State of the Union speech the other night because it was full of lies and distortions. Not that it mattered. The speech was a spectacular success, which only forces us to look at the spectacle that is the Democratic Party declining and falling like the Roman Coliseum because they still haven't figured out how to take on Trump.

The Democrats had Trump on the run only a week ago, but now he has been acquitted of high crimes and misdemeanors by the Senate, his approval rating is at its highest in his term, and yet the Democratic Party keeps blowing it.  They still, even after a caucus in Iowa, can't figure out whom to nominate for President.  Not that it matters.  People are ready to shrug off impeachment and the mere fact that Trump is a two-faced liar and give him another term to reward him for the economy, which has benefited Wall Street more than Main Street.

And Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbuagh.

This was infinitely worse than inducting Madonna into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I suppose now that, if the Democrats ever regain the White House (yeah, right!), Nicki Minaj will get a Kennedy Center honor?

Democrats may be infuriated, but they have little opportunity to channel their anger and no recourse for channeling it into anything constructive .  They have all of these internecine fights over the direction of the party instead of talking to the voters about health care, transportation, climate - things that matter.  Relevance, of course is something the Democrats haven't had a sense of for the past four decades.   

Of course, this is only one bad week for the Democrats, and maybe they'll get their groove after New Hampshire.  Note that I didn't see they will get their groove "back," since one cannot regain what one never had. >:-(

I'm just glad I have a passport. 

A Very Brief Post About the State of the Union Speech

I want to call out Donald Trump on every lie he told at the delayed State of the Union address this past Tuesday, such as his mischaracterization of the New York State abortion law and his over-the-top lies about the southern border, but if I did that,  I'd develop rigor mortis from sitting at my PC for hours to document them.  And blow Blogger.com's available bandwidth.

So I'll just say this.  If future State of the Union addresses are going to have displays of ardent nationalism on the floor of the House of Representatives - chants of "U-S-A!  U-S-A!" from the Republicans - we should go back to having the annual presidential message to Congress delivered by a clerk.  Good grief, Congress looks more like the Berlin Reichstag these days!

Virginia? Please, one disaster at a time . . . I'll get to that later.

Union Busting

I couldn't watch President Obama's third (and maybe last?) State Of the union address last night, but I understand the base of the Democratic party was pleased. That's not necessarily a good thing. The base of either party swoons too easily to partisan presidential rhetoric.

Anyway, the President, as I understand it, demanded that Republicans work with him on restoring fairness to the tax code and have the wealthy pat their fair share, along with urging action on immigration reform, tax credits for companies that invest in factories in America, and clean energy incentives. Republicans responded by saying - angrily, of course - that the President was was just trying to divide people along class lines and stuff big government down our throats.

So what did I miss?

Anyway, Obama hoped to sharpen the definition between what the Democrats stand for (assuming they stand for something) and what the Republicans stand for, and show that the Democratic vision of America is more populistic and more equitable, with the hope of getting people to start debating over just what kind of country we want to live in.

Hmph. I know what kind of country I want to live in, and this ain't it. Because every public amenity I support that makes any country worth living in - public medical insurance, high-quality surface mass transit, world-class public schools, a federal department of artistic and cultural affairs (which Quincy Jones supports), and public broadcasting that's more like the BBC (the Best Broadcasting Corporation) than PBS (Pro-Business Soapbox, Pathetic Broadcasting Service, Pretentious Blowhard Shows) or NPR (Not Particularly Riveting) - isn't likely to become reality any time soon. Nor is any other legislation I support - tougher gun laws, re-introducing the Equal Rights Amendment, overturning Citizens United. I know what I want to United States to be like, and it isn't. And realities that have nothing to do with Democratic politics or Republican politics but, rather, American thinking will continue to prevent my America from materializing.

State Of the State Of the Union

President Obama's State of the Union address last night hit all the right notes, emphasizing a commitment to job creation, urging Congress to complete work on health care reform, and reiterating the need to reform the nation's banking system. So why did I go away largely uninspired?

Obama, to his credit, didn't lay out a laundry list of wonkish, detailed proposals. Speeches like that are a cure for insomnia. But State of the Union addresses have a soporific quality to them for the predictability of their content and the aftermath, particularly in the inevitable contrarian tone of the opposition's response. It simply wasn't the time for rhetorical flourishes, and Obama pretty much stuck to what was expected. It was thus a solid but measured and unspectacular speech.

Some moments stood out. President Obama announced that eight billion dollars would be committed to start building high-speed rail projects, he recommitted himself to allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military (but, again, did not offer a timetable), and made it clear that he wanted to soften the Supreme Court ruling allowing more corporate money in election campaigns.

The last point created a stir. Obama's (also most people's) interpretation of the ruling caused Justice Samuel Alito to shake his head and mutter "Not true, not true," reminding me once again why I, a resident of Alito's former hometown of West Caldwell, New Jersey, don't brag about Alito or my hometown.

Republicans are likely to be against anything Obama proposes, despite his pleas for bipartisanship. Obama has apparently tried to call the Republicans on their obstructionism and give them some responsibility for helping the President and the Democrats get things done, hopefully holding them accountable in part for gridlock. That may make Republicans look bad - John McCain has already come out against Obama's new jobs bill - but it's not going to get them motivated to help anyone accomplish anything. Besides, Republicans have opposed to medical insurance reform (government takeover of health care), modernizing Amtrak (government takeover of transportation and mobility), financial regulation (government takeover of banks),and gays serving openly in the military (wonder what kind of government takeover they're afraid of here?). Virginia's new Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, made the Republicans' refusal to relent on anything clear in his party's response, hammering away at Big Government to an invited audience in the Virginia House of Delegates chamber in Richmond (which Mark Shields jokingly called the "State of the Confederacy" address). MSNBC noted that this was the first time the Republicans had delivered a State of the Union response in the form of an address rather than one person alone in a room with a TV camera (forgetting that New Jersey governor Christine Whitman pulled the same stunt in the nineties after one of President Clinton's Sate of the Union addresses by addressing an invited audience in the New Jersey Assembly chamber).

Many of the proposals Obama has made revive the economy to create jobs - government investment in key programs, spending freezes on other programs to cut the deficit - are sure to be debated over the net few weeks and months, but sooner later there'll be a time when talk has to end and action has to begin. And once it does begin, Obama's initiatives will hopefully create more jobs. They'd better. America is out work.

Literally. Actress America Ferrera is unemployed. ABC just canceled her show "Ugly Betty."