Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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When in the Senate chamber, Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, sits by choice at the desk used by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. New York’s scholar-senator would have recognized that Sasse has published a book of political philosophy in the form of a guide to parenting. Moynihan understood that politics is downstream from culture, which flows through families. Sasse, a Yale history Ph.D. whose well-furnished mind resembles Moynihan’s, understands this: America is a creedal nation made not by history’s churning but by the decision of philo...
The U.S. and Russia are engaged in a rivalry for dominance once again, this time in the wheat market. After Russia recently pulled ahead, the U.S. has fought back, with the help of a weaker dollar. One irony of the situation is that the U.S. is taking market share partly as the FBI investigation into ties between President Donald Trump’s aides and Russia. The probe has weakened the greenback and made American grain cheaper for overseas buyers. That’s helping the U.S. to regain its position as the world’s largest wheat exporter for the first tim...
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Republicans like to point out how disastrous President Barack Obama’s tenure was for the Democratic Party. During his presidency, Democrats reached new lows in state legislative, gubernatorial and congressional seats. More than 1,000 state and federal seats moved to the GOP. And though many prefer to blame James Comey or Russia, there can be no question that Democratic losses in 2016 were compounded by an inept Clinton campaign team that ignored the plight of working-class Americans in the Rust Belt, focusing instead on people who looked and t...
Although William J. Baumol, who recently died at 95, was not widely known beyond the ranks of economists, all Americans are living with, and policymakers are struggling with, “Baumol’s disease.” It is one reason brisk economic growth is becoming more elusive as it becomes more urgent. And it is a disease particularly pertinent to the increasingly fraught health care debate. Born in the Bronx, Baumol spent his teaching career at Princeton and NYU but remained an aficionado of New York opera, and when in 1962 the Metropolitan Opera’s orchest...
As the Trump presidency enters its fourth month, conservatives are eager for more legislative successes, more nominations and confirmations of judges, the rapid confirmation of a new FBI director and other achievements. Given the charges of collusion and obstruction that have dogged Donald Trump and his administration from before he took his oath of office as president, the appointment of former FBI director Robert Mueller as a special prosecutor to oversee the Justice Department’s inquiry into those charges is a greatly encouraging d...
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If President Donald Trump’s critics in the Democratic Party and the news media want to bring him down -- which manifestly they do, at all costs -- they had better come up with something better than vague insinuations and clumsy metaphor-heavy inferences. An editorial in Friday’s New York Times -- “The Trump-Russia Nexus” -- is a fine instance of the kind of empty gesturing I mean. The word “nexus” itself a word writers sometimes use when they don’t have something more concrete or specific to allege. It’s not any one thing, the word seems to s...
By George Will In July 1954, a 19-year-old Memphis truck driver recorded at Sun Studio the song “That’s All Right.” When a local disc jockey promised to play it, the truck driver tuned his parents’ radio to the station and went to a movie. His mother pulled him from the theater because the DJ was playing the record repeatedly and wanted to interview the singer immediately. The DJ asked where the singer had gone to high school. He answered, “Humes,” an all-white school. The DJ asked because many callers “who like your record think you must be c...
Strolling through the bustling construction zone of Amazon’s urban campus in Seattle, you instantly recognize the charm offensive the company has aimed at its hometown. “Banistas” at two outdoor stands offer bananas -- a visual cue to Amazon’s smiley logo - to employees and passers-by. Most American cities would do backflips to have a jobs juggernaut like Amazon.com in their midst. After all, the company will soon fill more than 10 million square feet of office space in a place where it now employs more than 30,000 people. But Seattle is not...
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Hearing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional monologue this week about his son’s condition and his family’s experience in the moments after his birth, I had a flashback to the day my son was born and we learned he had Down syndrome. My husband and I had a lot of questions about Cole’s future.Whether he’d have health care shouldn’t have had to be one of them. When you’re facing years of doctor’s appointments, you want to know that having a preexisting condition,such as an extra 21st chromosome or a heart defect, won’t prevent you or yo...
It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about Donald Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence. In February, acknowledging Black History Month, Trump said that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” Because Trump is syntactically challenged, it was possibl...
Like Alexis de Tocqueville nearly 200 years ago, I believe American society thrives when people act out of an enlightened regard for themselves that constantly prompts them to assist each other. I remain optimistic that our nation can unify around policies that promote a system of mutual benefit for people from all walks of life. As President Donald Trump nears 100 days in office, we are moving closer to that ideal in some respects, but not in others. But no president can - or should - be expected to solve every problem alone. To be...
Attempting comprehensive tax reform is like trying to tug many bones from the clamped jaws of many mastiffs. Every provision of the code -- now approaching 4 million words -- was put there to placate a clamorous faction, or to create a grateful group that will fund its congressional defenders. Still, Washington will take another stab at comprehensiveness, undeterred by the misadventures of comprehensive immigration and health care reforms. Consider just one tax change that should be made and certainly will not be. The deductibility of mortgage...
Let’s face it: The past 100 days have been a disaster . . . for Democrats. While much ink has been spilled in the past week assessing President Trump’s first 100 days in office, the Democrats’ abysmal performance has largely escaped scrutiny. So let’s review their record. The Democrats spent much of Trump’s first months in office pushing their unfounded narrative of Trump’s alleged collusion with Vladimir Putin. But that narrative went up in smoke when Trump launched missile strikes against Putin’s Syrian ally, Bashar Assad. Trump not only hit...
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Despite the best efforts of the White House “PR apparatus” to sell the president’s first 100 days as a success, the New York Times declared in an editorial, the new administration has, in fact, been plagued by “many missteps” including a “bungled sales job” on his first major legislative initiative and a “snakebit” confirmation process, all of which have produced “a flurry of articles bemoaning the lack of focus in the White House.” The first 100 days, the Times declared, is a period the president “might prefer to forget.” The president...
President Donald Trump’s apologists were convinced that the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the strikes on Syria and the mega-bomb dropped in Afghanistan signaled Trump had “grown.” He’s learning on the job! He’s coming back into the mainstream! As we’ve seen each and every time he showed signs of maturing, excitement over momentary improvement was vastly overblown. Consider this past week: - Trump was uninformed or lied about the whereabouts of the USS Vinson, falsely suggesting the “armada” was heading for North Korea. - While foreign...
In his first annual message to Congress, John Quincy Adams, among the most experienced and intellectually formidable presidents, warned leaders against giving the impression that “we are palsied by the will of our constituents.” In this regard, if in no other, the 45th president resembles the sixth. Donald Trump’s “Oh, never mind” presidency was produced by voters stung by the contempt they detected directed toward them by the upper crust. Their insurrection has been rewarded by Trump’s swift shedding of campaign commitments, a repudiation...
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For the past few years, I’ve sat in New Orleans high school classrooms watching students debate the fairest way for government to raise revenue. They role-play - first as management consultants advising legislators; then as lawmakers, weighing what to tax: property vs. sales vs. income. Are there limits on what or who can be taxed? Is a flat tax or a progressive rate structure fairer? Sometimes their discussions are heated. These teenagers, however, have an edge that many adults don’t: basic tax literacy. Guided by Tulane law students, the hig...
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With a mellifluous name suggesting bucolic tranquility, Rep. Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, is an unlikely object of the caterwauling recently directed at him and the House Freedom Caucus he leads. The vituperation was occasioned by the HFC’s role rescuing Republicans from embracing an unpopular first draft of legislation to replace Obamacare. A decisive blow against the bill was struck by the quintessential Republican moderate, New Jersey’s Rodney Frelinghuysen, chairman of the Appropriations Committee whose family has inc...
Dear Editor, Waitsburg citizens, across the board, are concerned about the future of the city. Marty Dunn summed up the purpose of the mayor and city council when he told the Times, “The biggest challenge and needs currently facing the city is maintaining our infrastructure.” I particularly enjoyed his humorous conclusion, when he added, “Without having to raise the taxes and fees…” That’s funny; without raising taxes and fees. What a kidder that Marty is. Humor aside, the future revolves around the reality of the present. Only those persons at...
