Don’t you just love the language used by the Associated Press and other news outlets when the stock market overall goes down some. “Plunge”…. “Crisis”…. “Dropped” …. “Tumbled”….. “Slide”….. . What a bunch of balderdash!!!
The article headline said the S&P was down 6%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 5.5%, and the Nasdaq composite down 5.8%. Take a minute to think about it. If something you wanted to buy went from $1.00 down to 94 cents, would you think the world was coming to an end? That’s down 6%.
Ya’all need a lesson in economics, not panic. Stocks are pieces of ownership in companies. Whether stock values go up or down has no impact on the companies themselves. They don’t get money from stock purchases or from stock sales. They just continue on doing business as usual and doing their best to maximize profits.
The value of a stock is supposed to reflect the net earnings of the underlying company. This is expressed as a price of a share of stock when compared to the earnings of the company and is commonly known as the P:E ratio. It is estimated that the current P:E ratio of the stocks in the Standard and Poor index is about 28:1. The overall estimated P:E Ratio for the entire United States Stock Market is about 22.25:1. The healthy P:E Ratio over a long period of years is more in the 18-21 range, so by this measure, the stock market is over valued and due for what is known as a “correction”.
Everyone needs to calm down. President Trump knows what he is doing. The United States of America has been the ATM Piggy Bank for the world for decades. It cannot continue on this course or the USA will, indeed, go bankrupt and go in default on its debt obligations. Trump is standing firm on making trade fair with “reciprocal” tariffs on countries with which we trade. Sound fair to me given there has been such an imbalance to date. Every country wants to sell in the USA but does not want the USA to sell in their home countries. Won’t work any longer.
And you hear that the price of products is going to go up. Maybe. But the market is already paying about the maximum price it will for a given item. So, other countries will absorb most of the tariff applied to it. If the price of something goes up, the United States consumer has the ultimate weapon: don’t buy the object offered. Period.
Over time, we will see more and more production of things being done in our country by our workers under our worker safety laws and under our environmental protection laws at wages that support families here and not in some foreign country. Don’t you want that?
So, again, calm down about the stock market. It will recover and your investments and 401(K)s will be just fine. It may take a bit of time.
End “Home Rule” of D.C.
With all that has gone on in Washington, D.C., it is time for Congress to take serious action. All of you and I know the governance of the District of Columbia is corrupt and incompetent. It is time to revoke “Home Rule” for the District; something Congress has the full power to accomplish.
Now we even have D.C. judges trying to over rule decisions made by the President of the United States. The worst of them is U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. He even ordered President Trump to turn plane loads of illegal criminal aliens around and bring them back into our country when they were headed for prison in El Salvador. I am thinking, “Just who in the Hell do these judges think they are???”. And this comes on the heels of J6 decisions a couple of years earlier that jailed American citizens for years when they peacefully stepped foot in the U.S. Capital in January 2021. Thankfully, President Trump pardoned most, but D.C. judges are responsible for incredible injustices and even suicides. And now those judges want to be President. They even resisted the release of citizens who had been pardoned. The U.S. Marshalls had to be sent in.
If I read things correctly, the establishment of “Home Rule” for the District of Columbia took place on December 24, 1973 under the President Richard Nixon administration. I’m not sure it has ever worked. The U.S. Constitution provides Congress has plenary (total) legislative authority of the federal district (District of Columbia). Home Rule delegated some of the day-to-day work of municipal government to local entities.
We know as of today, the governance is abysmal. We know the physical maintenance is terrible. We know crime is out of control. We know actions of judges and the courts are not only bad, but may be illegal themselves. And I was surprised to learn the D.C. judges are specifically appointed by the President of the United States.
It is time for Congress to take back control of and governance of the District of Columbia. I have no idea why this has not been done before now. If Congress does not take back control of the seat of the federal government, it is derelict in its duty. As for the federal judges; maybe they cannot be summarily removed, but Congress has total control of purse strings that support their courts. Time to bring those budgets to zero. And, frankly, Judge Boasberg should be impeached immediately.
We cannot have a country where the balance of power between the three branches of the United States federal government has been bastardized to such imbalance as presently exists. Federal District courts cannot rule over the Presidency and every decision coming out of the Executive Branch. My biggest issue is with the U.S. Supreme Court that has allowed all of the overstepping to happen. Too long Supreme Court justices have remained silent or cowards. The Supreme Court could stop all of the nonsense, but has not.
The Executive Branch through the President cannot act by itself to stop all of the roadblocks being put its way. The Congress and the Supreme Court have the power to correct all. It is time if we want to have a strong, healthy Constitutional Republic. Article II of the Constitution states, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”…… not in Congress or the Courts.
Tax $$ and NPR/PBS
It is long past time for taxpayer dollars from the federal government to be sent off to the Public Broadcasting System and the National Public Radio. We are not talking a few dollars but hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting takes federal tax dollars north of $500 million a year. Time for it to come to a screeching halt.
As one who drives a lot for business, I do a good deal of radio listening. An Indianapolis PBS station is one I frequent from time to time. I finally had to give it up. The reason was I became irritated with the politically left Democrat messages that came through either explicitly or subtlety in even the words or the slant of reports much too often.
Then I did a bit of research. I ran into an OpenSecrets report that 100% of political donations from PBS employees went to Democrats during the 2024 political cycle. And since 1996, going back nearly 30 years and more than $85,000 in donations, according to OpenSecrets data, there has only been one cycle (2004) in which Republicans received more in campaign contributions than Democrats from PBS employees.
Among NPR employees, the imbalance is even worse. OpenSecets NPR data of nearly $60,000 in donations goes back 33 years to 1992. There has never been an election in that period in which NPR employees donated more to Republicans than Democrats. OpenSecrets states in fact, in those 16 political cycles, Republicans only received any funding at all in just two cycles, and that includes a paltry $1 — yes, one buck — last year to then GOP presidential candidate Doug Burgum.
Do you think something is amiss? NPR/PBS are Democrat political propaganda arms and have been forever.
I come from a journalism background in newspapers. I don’t think any newspapers ever were supported with tax dollars from the government — state or federal. Newspapers in their day were supported by subscription dollars and dollars from advertisers. The lived by being relevant to their subscriber readers. Their time passed for several reasons, which I intend to write about in the future, and new media, primarily electronic, means are and have been emerging.
It is long past time, again, for tax dollars to stop going to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, and PBS. If they are to live, they must earn the support of listeners and advertisers. If enough want the kind of biased news and messages they broadcast and will pay for it, they will prosper. If not, they will fold up and fade away.
Our nation is in a financial crisis and this funding is certainly one that is no longer justified, if it ever was. And this is not over. The next look needs to be at the “Voice of America” which received over $250 million in 2023. It needs to be axed as well.
The Penalty of Leadership
In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity.
Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work.
In art, in literature, in music, in industry; the reward and the punishment are always the same.
The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.
When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone — if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging.
Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting.
Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build; no one will strive to surpass or to slander you, unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius.
Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done.
Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius.
Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all.
The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by.
The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership.
Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy — but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.
There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions — envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass.
And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains — the leader.
Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman; each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.
That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.
That which deserves to live — lives.
[From an advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post, January 2nd, 1915, by the Cadillac Motor Car Company]
The Rise of “Immigrant” Culture in France
France is dying. It is a piecemeal death. One business district at a time. One neighborhood at a time. A restaurant, a business, a theater, a hotel here and there. Each death so sad but survivable. But as the piecemeal deaths mount, they become an aggregate, and now France is dying.
Jean Raspail, a French writer, warned the French in clear language in 1973 that the open borders acceptance of immigrant-invaders meant the death of France.
Enoch Powell, a British politician and writer, warned the British. It proved to be impossible to warn the indifferent populations imbued with racist guilt from decades of propagandistic indoctrination. Enoch Powell was denounced and Jean Raspail ignored. Marine Le Pen, the only politician in France who stands for the French people, may be headed to prison for standing up for French ethnics against the immigrant-invaders.
The same destruction of nation is happening all over Europe, especially in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the UK, countries in which the ethnic female population has no protection against gang rape by immigrant invaders. Women are discouraged from reporting their gang rapes, because it is considered racist against immigrants.
This is Europe today. A cultural dead zone or a rising new culture based on immigrant, largely Muslim mores.
European and English friends friends say: “Don’t come back. It will break your heart. It is not like you remember it.” But still the tourists go. They are shown around the still safe areas and kept from seeing the encroaching barbarity. It is like a sponsored trip to Israel. You are not shown the bad stuff, only the good stuff.
Trump is right. Europe is a basket case. Why are Americans supporting an alien culture in Europe to the point of possibly having nuclear war with Russia, a Christian nation that protects its citizens even though under a dictatorship? The United States should no longer align with the decadent and declining countries. None in Europe are any longer ethnic nations.
European governments, who refuse to protect their citizens from immigrant-invaders, appear to want war with Russia. Any war won’t last long. Europe is dead just like the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, or is it the Gulf of America, where the Mississippi River dumps chemical fertilizer runoff from commercial agribusiness and other pollutants killing life.
The United States has the same anti-Western intellectual class as Europe. How can Trump address our vulnerability from our internal enemies, which is where our vulnerability lies? With an estimated 20 million illegal aliens (foreign invaders) in the United States, the potential for very negative social and cultural change is here.
The United States of America is a melting pot with tradition, history, common values and loyalty to the Constitution. It must not allow the changes seen in Europe to infect this country. All illegal immigrants (aliens) must be sent home. For any chance of resurrection, Europe should do the same.
[Revised and Edited from the Internet]
The War Goes On
Contrary to the claim by columnist Brian Howey in his March 1st writing, the United States is not preparing “to switch sides to Russia”. That is a ridiculous claim.
President Trump wants the war to stop. He wants the killing of the young on both sides to end. This was a war never started when Trump was last President. It began under the US regime of President Joe Biden. Old Joe may have even given the green light to military action with his remarks on January 20, 2022. I quote: “I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades (Ukraine). And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”
President Putin has always wanted as much of Ukraine as he could get. The fighting now has become a standoff with little movement east by Ukraine troops or west by Russian troops. And President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has become an overbearing tyrant for that country. For example, he banned all independent TV media with a collapse of all media into one state controlled one. He suspended multiple opposition political parties. He has banned the Russian Orthodox Church which has had a century’s long presence in Ukraine.
Then when President Trump thought there was an agreement for the United States to have access to Ukraine rare earth minerals which would both benefit Ukraine and the United States, Zelenskyy queered the deal when demanding more from Trump. We all saw that on national TV.
And, again contrary to Tribune reporting, President Trump did not “walk out” of the meeting with Zelenskyy. Trump threw Zelenskyy out of the White House and sent him and his entourage packing. No lunch.
All Zelenskyy had to do was agree to what had been negotiated by others ahead of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. This would have given the United States access to much desired rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine. This would have meant both a financial interest of the US in Ukraine and the presence of people from the United States there in significant numbers. Clearly, this would be an enormous deterrent to Russia to do anything more militarily.
President Putin is not going to give up the territory it currently occupies which reportedly contains largely Russian speaking people. This is a given. So, if fighting stops with lines as they are, the killing stops and the Ukraine-US mining agreement becomes an indirect way of stopping any further incursions by Russia into Ukraine.
One more thing — we learned that the USA has funded multiple biological laboratories in Ukraine. Why? One has to wonder if this is yet another evil action taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci. That is a whole other possible story.
Confused
It seems that Johnnie Walker in his “Sound Off” letter to the Tribune on February 27th is a little confused. He starts right off suggesting DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) should continue when President Trump wants job applicants, college applicants, and any applying for a position to be considered on merit against the requirements for whatever is being applied for rather than upon race, color, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Merit considers education and skills as the reasons for qualification.
Choosing merit over DEI does not degenerate African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants or any other identities including European Americans. Everyone starts out equal with no “group” having an advantage over another. Seems pretty straight forward and honest.
As for immigrants, no one is suggesting legal immigration is not OK. Those that came to this country in the late 1800s and early 1900s came legally. They were greeted by the Statue of Liberty as were and will be all legal immigrants. Illegal aliens are criminals according to US law and are not welcome. They need to return to home countries rather than largely be a drag on the US economy.
And concerning cutting federal government spending significantly, that has to happen or the USA will go bankrupt. It is that simple. Already Elon Musk and the Musketeers have found massive corruption and fraud in the way US taxpayer dollars have been handed out. That must be rooted out and stopped and even more spending must be cut. Yes, this will be painful, but so is surgery to fix health issues, which is what this really is.
Our country is in trouble. Left that way by the four year Democrat regime of President Joe Biden with the help of Senator Chuck Schumer and RINO Senator Mitch McConnell…. And many more.
We have one chance to make America great again. I hope we don’t blow it.
A New Day: MAHA
You know, there are days and there are days. Today, I deeply believe has been one blessed day for the United States of America. We have witnessed the swearing in of Robert F. Kennedy Jr to be the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) for all of us.
Kennedy has dedicated his life to the betterment of our environment and the health of all people in our country. He has pointed out time and time again that as a country we are sick and getting sicker with every day that passes. He strongly believes it is all connected to our food supply (Big Food) and to Big Pharma and Big Agriculture. I could not agree more.
Ever since my encounter with Rachael Carson’s book, Silent Spring, in the very early 1970’s, I have done whatever was in my power to help address environmental issues. This was first when the CEO/Publisher of the Kokomo Tribune, then as a biological scientist at Purdue working on graduate level research. That was a long time ago and much has happened since. The advent of genetic engineering of crops and the use of very toxic poisons in agriculture has only gotten worse. It continues to grow.
And in our food supply, the use of all sorts of chemicals in food is rampant. It seems the food production companies don’t really given a damn about our health. They want us addicted to whatever they produce.
And we see the push for more and more pharmaceuticals about every minute we watch television. The advertising is all over the place. I hope you have been listening to the possible side effects of everything promoted. As a scientist, I have from the very beginning been very skeptical of the mRNA vaccines that never were properly tested for effect and safety.
So, we now have a Secretary of Health and Human Services that is going to take a look at it all… and make drastic changes. This is really Bobby’s way of lifting us all up. He has said that every day for the past 20 years he has gotten out of bed, gotten on his knees, and prayed for God to bring him a way to make change. He has said God brought him President Donald Trump. Trump and Kennedy have joined in a mission to Make America Healthy Again.
When I saw him being sworn in, I have to admit it brought tears to my eyes. We all need to be very grateful. Thank God.
The Musketeers with Bloodhound
Brian Howey in a Feb. 10th column in the Kokomo Tribune states in his opening paragraph that the federal government is bloated, wasteful, and inefficient. Then in the closing paragraph he states that President Trump, via Elon Musk, is causing “….a constitutional crisis in the making. These are emerging dictatorial powers replacing the lawful order that has served Americans well for nearly 250 years”. Really!
America (the USA) is in deep debt to the tune of about $35 trillion dollars. The current financial course is not sustainable and has not been for years. At some point, the wall will be hit and catastrophe will follow unless drastic change occurs.
Howey writes about all the wonderful things USAID is and has been doing in the world. He does not write about all the corruption, perverted programs and organizations that USAID has been funding in the USA and around the world. Musk and the Musketeers have exposed corruption, fraud, and outright stealing of taxpayer money in billions of dollars.
Howey quotes the Washington Post… now there is sure a credible source of news. We know better. He says the Post reported Musk’s DOGE staffers accessed sensitive internal data systems, including those of the U.S. Treasury. DAAAAAA! And exactly how does one review what has been historically done without viewing records? President Trump runs the Executive Branch of which the Treasury Department is a part. He has authorized the Musk DOGE probes.
What scares the crap out of those who want to hide nefarious acts is that “Follow the Money” has taken on new meaning when the bloodhound is an algorithm-powered web crawling bot designed to drill through internal government firewalls and map out redundancy, waste, and longstanding hidden internal influence networks established over decades. This is called transparency; something many do not want.
I, for one, am all in for Elon Musk and his Musketeers. They need to keep going through every government agency that disburses taxpayer money. They need to report to the taxpayers exactly how they have been cheated and robbed…. and how the USA has gotten into $35 trillion dollars in debt.
Maybe full transparency will change the course of the USA. Maybe we will realize we cannot be the ATM for the world and that other countries must take care of themselves. Maybe we can stop the funding of domestic graft and nonsense. Maybe we can finally honestly make “America First”.
TPS Ending
Temporary Protective Status, also known as TPS, is ending the United States at least for some. It will be for more if we can get the liberal courts out of the way. That will be a challenge for US Attorney General Pam Bondi.
TPS was supposed to be just that — temporary with no path to US citizenship. It was to provide a way for the United States to host people from other countries for a time when conditions in home countries were threatening. The problem is that, particularly during the Biden administration, TPS turned into PPS, permanent protective status. Renewals of extensions came to be automatic with no end.
Under the current President Trump administration, TPS has returned to what it was intended for in the first place. Many of those who are in the United States under TPS are on their way back to their home countries. The Trump administration, for example, is ending TPS for 350,000 from Venezuela which is about half of the total Venezuelans numbering about 600,000. The remainder face ending TPS with return to Venezuela later this year.
Reportedly, about 1 million people from 17 countries currently reside in the United States under TPS. These include people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Sudan. Trump tried to end TPS for these people in his first term but was thwarted by immigration advocacy groups through court action. Times are different now. More returns home are on the horizon.
All of this is just a part of moving out of the United States of America people who are either in the country illegally or have temporary status. It is a move to establish residence only for American citizens or people who have arrived via lawful pathways. It is for people who have followed the long path to citizenship, are temporary foreign students, or have some other legal authority under immigration law.
President Trump promised removal of illegal aliens in addition to ending TPS. There are millions to be sent back to home countries. The herculean effort has begun.