Author: p_c_neary@hotmail.com

If I asked you to describe inflation, could you do so? Some might say it’s when prices rise. Some would say it’s “bad.” Others might comment that it’s why they can’t afford their groceries, or rent, a car or a home. These descriptions are not wrong, but like the old tale of the blind men and the elephant, they’re not quite complete, either.

Prices are a symptom of inflation; you can’t have inflation without rising prices, but not all rising prices indicate inflation. Prices are set by supply and demand. If more people want to buy something, and the quantity for sale is limited, the price goes up. That’s not inflation, that’s just the market doing what the market does.

The best and shortest description of inflation comes from the legendary American economist Milton Friedman, who said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” That clears it up, right? Sorry, but here’s what he meant: inflation happens when too much money is chasing too few things (goods and services). Let’s look at an example.

Imagine an estate sale, where Granny’s elephant-foot lamp, Gramp’s velvet Elvis picture, and Uncle Ernie’s bottle cap collection are up for bid. People will arrive and bid what they think the items are worth to them, based on how much money they have. People with more money might bid more, or people with less money overall might bid more if they value the object more. It’s a simple marketplace. Now imagine that as people enter, you hand everyone $500 cash, no strings attached. Suddenly, the man who collects bottle caps is willing to bid more for Ernie’s stash, not because it’s worth more, but because he can. The woman who has always wanted a matching elephant-foot lamp won’t get beat because she runs out of cash, she’ll run it up all the way to $500+ since she can. Nearly all the prices at the auction will increase, even though the goods for sale did not change! Why? Inflation. You handed out cash, and that made too much money chase too few things.

Notice that nobody did anything wrong here. You are free to give away your money, and the estate sale just sold things as they always do, and the people bought things as they always do. That’s inflation.

Is inflation bad? No, not at all. In a perfect market, supply and demand work themselves out and prices could–in theory–become set: neither inflation or deflation. But of course markets are never perfect. And deflation, when (you guessed it) too little money is chasing too many things is really bad. Periods of deflation usually happen when an entire economy collapses; for example, the US experienced years of deflation during the Great Depression. Why would prices going down (a symptom of deflation) ever be bad? Another example:

The economy is deflating. You go to the store to buy a 400″, surround-sound, 3D immersive TV. The price is US $1000. You think, “wait, prices are going down, so next week it will be only $950.” You’re right, so you keep waiting, because it only makes sense. But everybody else is too. So no one is buying anything, and all their money is sitting on the sidelines (“too little money chasing too many things.”). Now the store is cancelling televisions from its suppliers, and the suppliers are laying off their workers, and soon you are out of a job, even though you got a sweet deal on your television.

Both of these examples hit on a key to inflation: psychology. If the price rise or the money supply is a one-time change (I won the daily double, or the government gave me a stimulus check), it’s unlikely to cause more than a temporary price increase, and therefore no inflation. But if there is a supply of money that keeps flowing, inflation can build. A third example:

You go to the store during your lunch hour and they’re changing the prices as you wait in line for the register. “Yikes!” you think, so you grab a few extra items to lock in the price now, and as soon as you check-out, you head back to work. You tell the boss, “I can’t afford to buy dinner on my salary; give me a raise or I quit!” The boss is sympathetic, and you’re a great employee, so he says “yes” and gives you a raise. Other employees line up. “We have the same problem, and we didn’t even get to go out to buy stuff at lunch!” The boss raises everyone’s pay, then starts raising his prices to cover it. A vicious cycle has started. Everybody expects the prices to rise, and pay to rise, which leads to one fueling the other until paper money becomes essentially worthless. This ends in hyperinflation, where people are being paid twice a day in wheelbarrows full of paper money which they then rush out and try to buy something.

To recap, during our recent pandemic, markets got all screwed up (technical economic term, that). Things weren’t literally moving, perishables were rotting before they could be marketed, people could not work to keep things working. This created shortages, at the same time the government was worried about a complete collapse of the economy since so many people were out of work. So the US government (and others) created various monetary stimuli (i.e., artificially increased how much money was available). They sent stimulus checks, froze rents and repossessions, deferred some payments, etc.. This extra money kept people from begging on the streets until the economy could get back on its feet. But it also meant that a lot of money was chasing a few things, which meant (you guessed it): inflation.

Now let’s not be too critical of our leaders (red & blue) here. It’s not like there is an economic control panel that shows just how far to push things. And if you have a panel of five economic experts advising you, you’ll get six different answers. Back in 2008, President Obama was more concerned with moving too far, too fast, and he got a very slow recovery from the financial crisis. President Biden “learned” from that and went big, adding in many long-time progressive programs to the spending spree, because as Rahm Emanuel (who wants to be President someday soon) liked to say, “you should never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” And thus we experienced the inflation that became the hot topic of the 2024 election cycle.

I understand how debilitating inflation can be. When I was in high school (and buffalo still roamed the plains), the inflation rate averaged over 9% per year; when I was in “college,” it averaged 11% annually! For comparison, the catastrophic post-pandemic inflation the US experienced topped out at 8%, so you’ll find me in the “we made too much of this thing” aisle. And before someone says, “Pat, you’re an expat, you didn’t experience inflation here!” Well, amigo, inflation has been higher in Mexico than in the US throughout the period.

Anyway, while some prices may go down because their spikes were related to the market, no one is proposing (or could achieve) a sustained, across-the-board reduction in prices because (you’re right again) that would involve deflation, which is bad, bad, bad. The federal government, especially the Federal Reserve (hereafter “the Fed”), seeks a stable inflation rate around 2% annually. Just enough to prevent a deflationary spiral, not enough to get into the psychology of wheelbarrow money. They do this by controlling the interest rate for lending. Reduce it and banks lend more at less interest, increase it and banks lend less at greater interest.* More money from banks to people and businesses is the juice that gets things going, less money is the glue which slows things down.

What about tariffs? Will they cause inflation? Let’s apply what we’ve learned! Tariffs are paid at the point a product is imported. They are paid once, at a percentage rate of the value of the good. You could call them a tax, and it wouldn’t be terribly wrong. A small tariff results in a small tax, a huge tariff might result in the item no longer for sale, because it’s so expensive to buy with a tariff added on. So we are talking about a price increase, but is it inflation?

Many things can happen when a tariff is introduced:

• The buyers can stop buying the product, so no money is raised, but also no one pays any more.
• The buyers can keep buying the product and pay the entire extra fare.
• The importer can “eat” some of the tariff, charging his customers some extra, but not the same as the full tariff.
• The foreign producer can lower their prices, resulting in a lower tariff.

Ignoring the first outcome, the other three have an increase in prices. But is it because more money is chasing fewer things? No. In fact, all three generally happen at the same time. WalMart went to its Chinese manufactures and grabbed them by the Yuan, saying if they still wanted to supply WalMart, they were going to eat some delicious tariff tofu. And WalMart decided to raise some prices, too. And people decided whether to keep shopping at WalMart, buy less, or substitute with lower-cost, domestic products.

This was all the market at work, as it should be. Now, a sufficiently high general tariff, across the board in an environment where many products people need are produced abroad (like the US until recently), could send a supply shock through an economy. Supplies would freeze up (like they did during the pandemic), and soon too much residual money would be chasing too few goods. Even if the price rise was one-time due to tariffs, if they were large enough, it could set people into the psychology of inflation.

While most economists insisted President Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs were exactly the kind to shock the US economy into an inflationary spiral, he has since backed down from them. The tariffs left are much greater than anything the US has experienced in ninety years, but not so great they should spark inflation. But that’s a debatable point. The data so far shows producers ate some of the tariff and importers/wholesalers ate some, but there’s still some tariff cost to go around. Guess who’s next in line? Us.

Each month, the federal government announces updated inflation numbers, including revising previous announcements. There are two numbers you need to watch: the overall inflation rate, and the core goods inflation rate. The former adds in many things, including things like groceries and gasoline, which can shoot up or down any given month. The latter number only counts more stable products, so it isn’t as affected by external forces. In today’s partisan environment, the two sides choose to focus on whatever element best fits their political arguments, so I recommend you ignore them (the partisans, not the data). Here are the keys: is the overall rate consistently changing up or down, in an identifiable pattern? And is the core goods rate making large/sudden moves (up or down)?

The overall trend here is a slight rise for the most recent data.

And here is a slightly more pronounced rise. Anyone saying anything definitive about this data and (1) tariffs , (2) stagflation, or (3) a recession is playing politics, as there isn’t enough definitive data to make a trend. It’s like calling the outcome of a baseball game by the strike count (“That’s a strike, looks like the Orioles are going to win. No, wait, that’s a ball, now it’s the Nats’ game to lose!”). The bottom line is the US economy is at an inflection point, which is why everybody is trying to predict what happens next (or pre-emptively blame someone else).

The real fear is tariffs cause a moderate increase in prices just as the Fed starts to reduce interest rates, and we have more money chasing fewer things. That sounds a lot like too much money chasing too few things, just as tariff prices increases hit.

That way bad things lie.

*This is a gross simplification of all the Fed does, but you’ve suffered enough for one post, haven’t you?

Here’s a quiz; choose carefully!

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component of the US Department of Homeland Security is

• a) a bunch of jack-booted, racist thugs on a power trip
• b) cowards hiding behind masks and terrorizing innocents
• c) the modern-day Gestapo for the Trump administration
• d) routinely violating the Constitution and everyone’s civil rights
• e) all of the above

The correct answer is, if you thought this was a real quiz, you desperately need to continue reading. If you correctly diagnosed the cleverly-hidden satire font, keep reading, too. You may be surprised!

I’m going to take some of the main criticisms I see in social media memes (so much from which to choose!) and explain why they are wrong using everyday language and examples.

Aren’t the masks and lack of uniforms Gestapo tactics? They used to teach history on the History channel; apparently not so much anymore. For the record, the Gestapo proudly wore uniforms, as they were associated with the SchutzStaffel, or SS, under Himmler. They did so because they wanted to strike fear into anyone who saw them, and they didn’t wear masks, because they did not fear anyone attacking them. ICE on the other hand does not wear uniforms because they often have to sneak up on suspects, and they wear masks specifically because they do fear people attacking them (or their families). ICE should have some identifying item (e.g., a badge, a tear-open jacket which shows POLICE) to show once the suspects are engaged, to be clear they are federal agents. But even that depends on the situation, and does not preclude them from completing the arrest without producing those identifying items. Here’s a fine video from NBC Boston which explains:

“ICE is terrorizing brown-skinned people at the airport.” This is part technical correction, part understanding what your rights are, and aren’t. First off, there is (generally) no ICE at the airport. You may see this as an unimportant distinction, but if you want t0 talk intelligently about a subject, you should probably know enough to identify the correct agency. If you’re flying anywhere, you’ll encounter TSA before you board an aircraft. As a reminder of the limits of your rights, try refusing to be searched at the TSA check point, and let me know how that goes! If you’re arriving in the United States, you’ll encounter Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which checks your passport and inspects your luggage. Again, US law and many lawsuits have established that CBP officers have a broad ability to search you and your belongings (including your cell phone) when you arrive. It’s nothing new; it’s been that way since before cell phones!

Perhaps you’ve heard of legal immigrants being arrested at the airport? There are numerous such reports. For example, I just read a Washington Post story entitled, “Scientist on green card detained for a week without explanation, lawyer says.” Yet within the story are these sentences:

In 2011, Kim faced a minor marijuana possession charge in Texas, (his attorney) said, but he fulfilled a community service requirement and successfully petitioned for nondisclosure to seal the offense from the public record.

“If a green card holder is convicted of a drug offense, violating their status, that person is issued a Notice to Appear and CBP coordinates detention space with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement],” a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said Tuesday in a statement to The Washington Post. “This alien is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings.”

Now, you and I may argue about whether deporting a scientist for a decade-old marijuana conviction is a smart policy. But like so many of these stories, there is a valid, legal reason people are being detained. Expunged records are legally available to immigration officials. There is an explanation, and it’s not because of the color of his skin.

Where’s your warrant? No doubt you saw a video with people asking ICE agents some variation on this question. The most famous is NY City Councilman Brad Lander in this clip:

Once and for all, ICE does not need a “judicial warrant” to arrest an illegal immigrant. That’s the law, despite what you may have read on some meme. They do need one to enter private property, but they often get past that by getting consent of the property owner. And there is no right for anyone to interfere with ICE by asking to see such a warrant. Ahh, but Mr. Lander is an American citizen, so how come ICE can arrest him? Watch the video. He locks arms with the man detained and refuses to let go, thus interfering with the federal agents. When you interfere with federal law enforcement, do you think they have to stop, leave, and go get a warrant to arrest you? No they don’t. If they do intend to charge you, they’ll need to explain to a judge the basis for the arrest. In most of these cases, the charges are dropped, which is appropriate.

Lost in this nonsense is the concept of nonviolent resistance, which is legitimate. Mr. Lander can stand up for his principals and interfere, and may pay a price for that act. Nonviolent resistance is not a “don’t go to jail card.” It means you’re ready to pay the price for your beliefs. Good for you. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous missive was titled “Letter from a Birmingham jail” for a reason! But don’t think that in any way permits you to interfere with federal law enforcement, nor does it allow you to cross from nonviolent to more active measures (like throwing stones, wrestling, etc.).

Either everyone has due process, or no one does. This one sounds catchy, I’ll give you that. And people tend to think of rights as an all-or-nothing thing. The problem here is treating due process like a thing, rather than what it is: a process. I mean, the word is right there! Due process is different for different people and different circumstances. It means that whatever process (there’s that word again) is in place for the action involved must be followed. The government doesn’t get to short-circuit it. But the process is not the same for all people, at all times, in all actions. For example, in the case of illegal immigration due process, the appropriate law is called expedited removal. It reads:

undocumented persons who are apprehended anywhere in the U.S., cannot prove they have resided in the U.S. for at least two years; and, entered the U.S. between Ports of Entry (POEs) or were paroled into the U.S. and have their parole status revoked, may be deported in as little as a single day without an immigration court hearing or other appearance before an immigration judge.

While the Trump administration has expanded who and where is subject to expedited removal, this law has been in effect going all the way back to George W. Bush. That is the due process: show you’ve been here at least two years and arrived at a POE, or you’re gone. In other cases due process involves much more, but the point to take away is it’s often different.

“ICE is harassing American citizens who did nothing wrong.” This one often comes up when ICE arrests a group and then ends up releasing one of the group because they are a citizen. But here’s the rub: if I show you a picture of a group, can you tell me which are citizens? When ICE goes to arrest a group, they can’t make immediate judgments about who is or isn’t a citizen. They do have information identifying the illegal aliens (legal term) they are going to arrest, and helping such a person hide, flee or evade arrest is a crime. It’s called harboring. The best example of this Kenny Laynez, an eighteen year-old US citizen detained for six hours in Florida. Here’s his arrest video:

Now I think the way the Florida Highway Patrol officers talked to/about the detainees is totally inappropriate. But what young Mr. Laynez did wrong was (1) refuse to open his door, (2) struggle with the officer who removed him, and (3) knowingly giving illegal immigrants a ride. I also think his comments about “you can’t do that” and “That’s not the way you arrest someone” were irritants, but of course the police should be professional enough to ignore them. Should he have been tried? No, and he wasn’t. He was released six hours later, as soon as they confirmed his citizenship. Which leads to the next one:

“I thought they were going to remove the worst first.” I often hear this from people who readily admit they never watched a single Trump campaign rally. While Trump did commit to rounding up the “bad hombres” (his words), he absolutely made it clear he intended the largest deportation effort in US history. Now no one should be under the ridiculous impression that all deportations were on hold until every violent criminal was first deported. When ICE finds a violent criminal alien along with many other nonviolent ones, they all get rolled up. This only makes sense.

Trump has widened the drag net for all illegal aliens, and made it clear that self-deportation is the best way to avoid ICE. While the numbers are in dispute, somewhere between 200,000 and one million illegal immigrants have left the country since the Trump administration began. And ICE stands to go from an annual budget of US $3 billion to US $45 billion, with a onetime plus-up of US $30 billion for detention facilities. So this more intensive search/detain/deport approach is likely to accelerate, not decelerate. Which relates to my final point:

“They are deporting immigrants who have no criminal record.” This sounds like a damning observation, if you don’t listen closely. Let me give you the same concept in a different example, to make the point clear.

They’re arresting fraudsters who haven’t killed anyone.

They’re arresting sexual assaulters who didn’t steal anything

They’re arresting thieves who pays their taxes

They’re arresting politicians who tell the truth.

That last one is of course an impossibility. I just put it there to make sure you’re still reading. What all these examples have in common is a classification error. Illegal immigration is a civil offense, not a criminal one. But in everyday language, both are crimes. I have yet to hear anyone shrug off President Trump’s being found “liable” for sexual abuse because it was a civil court finding.

By definition, illegal aliens have committed a civil violation, so mentioning they haven’t committed a crime is either (1) wrong, or (2) confused. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Now some like to point out that “the detained man has been living in the country for twenty years.” I know of no other crime where we decide, “well, it was so long ago, that’s that, guess we can’t do anything about it.” Certainly President Trump was accused of a crime from thirty years ago, at a date and time unspecified. An Egyptian illegal immigrant lived here peaceably in Colorado with his family (also illegal) for almost three years before he decided to “kill all the Zionists” (his words) by throwing Molotov cocktails at them. Was that the first thing he did wrong?

In case you think the real problem is the numbers ICE is rolling up, consider this chart. Trump’s 2025 numbers? So far, 150,000 deportations. He’s on track to perhaps slightly beat . . . Joe Biden’s record of last year. Was Joe Biden secretly running a Nazi regime? Was he only deporting the worst of the worst? Where was the outrage then?

The government has between one and one-and-a-half million final deportation orders outstanding. These are people of all types who have completed every avenue to become legal immigrants, including asylum, and been turned away. They have no more due process when it comes to being deported. And they are all still in the country. They can be detained by ICE at any time, anywhere, and summarily deported. They have exhausted all forms of due process. But you can bet someone with a cell phone will record the encounter and claim the SS is among us.

You don’t have to agree with the Trump administration’s immigration and deportation policy. You may want to complain about it (I do sometimes, too), or even engage in civil disobedience. Go for it! First ask yourself why it’s different in your mind than last year under the Biden administration, or back in 2012 under President Obama? But comparing it to Nazi Germany and denigrating the ICE officers doing their legal mission under the rules that exist? nICE try, but wrong!

For many years, and verified by study after study, sociologists and child development experts have noted that the youngest children raised in wealth develop faster and better academically than their cohort children raised in poverty. Duh, you might think. But the real question is whether it’s the money or something else associated with the wealth/poverty conditions. Perhaps rich parents spend more time with their children (including two parent vs one parent households), or buy/read more books to them, or hire more qualified care-givers, or provide better nutrition and so forth. If it’s just the money, it points to an obvious solution.

In 2018 a group of researchers decided to take on the challenge of studying the issue. It was not just a theoretical assignment. Real debates were going in Washington, DC (and elsewhere) about direct monthly payments to poor parents of young children, along with related proposals for Universal Basic Income (UBI, the idea of a cash supplement available to all people from the government). The researchers developed the Baby’s First Years randomized control trial: the gold standard among scientific research. They identified one-thousand racially and ethnically diverse mothers (from New York, greater Omaha metropolitan area, New Orleans, and Minneapolis/St. Paul) with incomes below the U.S.federal poverty line, whom they recruited from postpartum wards in 2018-19, and randomized to receive either $333/month or$20/month for the first several years of their children’s lives. The $20 group was the control, representing an amount which induced the mothers to participate, but not enough to make a difference in their children’s development. The $333 group may not sound like much either, but it represented an 18% increase in their available income, a sum designed to elicit a positive change. The study was planned to last forty months, but they extended it twice to a total of seventy-six months.

The rigor of the study is unquestioned: children were routinely tested for four primary child outcomes (language, executive function, social/emotional development, and resting high-frequency brain activity) as well as three secondary child outcomes (visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy skills, and diagnosis of developmental conditions).

By early 2022, the team released preliminary results: children in the $333 group were more likely to show brain activity patterns associated with the development of thinking and learning. The results hit just as Republicans in Congress had torpedoed a Child Tax Credit, creating a cascade of bad press. Press reporting and politicians skipped mentioning the usual disclaimers: it was only a preliminary result, it was only one of seven possible measure areas, the results were suggestive (even such a well-designed study cannot be definitive, after all). NBC led with “Giving low-income families cash can help babies’ brain activity” and “No-strings-attached subsidies for low-income families improved brain activity in infants, a novel clinical trial finds.” The New York Times headline was “Cash Aid to Poor Mothers Increases Brain Activity in Babies, Study Finds” but then immediately added the political spin “The research could have policy implications as President Biden pushes to revive his proposal to expand the child tax credit.” And other legacy media wrote/led with much the same.

In May of this year, the team publicized their final results. What, you didn’t hear about it? No one did. Here is the final outcome: After the first four years of the intervention, we find no statistically significant impacts of the cash transfers on four preregistered primary outcomes nor on three secondary outcomes. Zero. Nada, Ziltch. The preliminary finding of increased brain activity washed out when all the data was accumulated; it happens.

How did I find out? Yesterday, the New York Times ran with this headline: Study May Undercut Idea That Cash Payments to Poor Families Help Child Development” with the subtitle, “Rigorous new research appears to show that monthly checks intended to help disadvantaged children did little for their well-being, adding a new element to a dispute over expanded government aid.” Kudos to the Times for even uncovering the report, but I do note they re-introduce uncertainty they didn’t show (“May Undercut . . .”) when they liked the preliminary result. And the secondary language (“adding a new element . . .”) fairly runs away from the obvious.

Speaking of running away, the research team quietly completed the study without publicizing the results, just formally submitting them. The Times buried this point in the article, although it did also note that several co-authors declined to comment on their work.

The study results speak for themselves. Several outside experts wonder whether the pandemic somehow skewed the results, but it is unclear how that would happen, or what to do about it. I do add that two additional findings undercut another common argument: the high-cash mothers in the study did not spend the extra money on alcohol and cigarettes, at least according to self-reporting. Also, they were less likely to work full-time, and reported higher stress than the low-cash mothers.

What to take from all this? Unlike the media and political left which ran with the story as a scientific fact when they approved of the preliminary results, I’m not sure it is definitive in its final form. Maybe the pandemic was too large, the stipend was too small, or maybe the kids will improve academically later in life. Maybe. The real lesson here is how science was used as a political weapon. Acclaimed when it confirms one side’s views, literally hidden–by both the researchers themselves and the media–when it does not. There is a related problem in the sciences called the “file drawer effect.” It happens when scientists simply don’t publish negative research findings; they simply drop them in their files to disappear. This has the effect of letting other scientists end up re-creating the same research rather than building on the negative outcomes, so it wastes resources. But it also indicts the scientists’ objectivity, as they put the outcomes they desire above what the data show.

I haven’t seen any other coverage, especially in the legacy media sites which initially reported. Maybe it’s coming. But the next time someone pipes up with “follow the science,” ask them about the Baby’s First Years study. It’s hard to follow what is hidden.

I have tried politely suggesting people think before texting/tweeting/etc. I have tried mildly poking fun at social media inaccuracies, or gently correcting them. I have tried appealing to people’s humanity, and even pointed out the discrepancy between demanding truth and posting lies. I guess it’s time for a different tack.

The amount of disinformation or just plain stupidity in social media is reaching some unequaled crescendo. It’s not just the politicians, who truth be told, have always shaded the truth, known as spin. Next it spread to the news media and talking heads, who carefully maintained an air of credibility and non-partisanship while clearly favoring one side or the other. Now it’s further democratized to the general public, where people known as trolls take it to a whole new level.

Who or what are trolls? They have always been with us, but in bygone days they were easier to avoid or shame, which regulated their behavior. Trolls are people who simply enjoy causing other people to get angry, especially people with whom they disagree politically or culturally. You might have had a family troll, your distant cousin or uncle who always showed up at family gatherings and brought up some contentious issue or piece of family history, ensuring a loud argument which could never be resolved. He did it because it was his idea of fun. Or she did it because it made her the center of attention. The reason is irrelevant in the end. It was a fundamentally anti-social behavior. But you could avoid being around that troll, or someone more powerful or influential in the family could warn them to STFU (Latin for “please don’t say that”).

Now they’re much harder to avoid. The algorithms which control social media notice who your trolls are, and feed them to you to get a reaction (remember, that’s how they win advertising dollars, by the amount of time and interaction you spend on their media). It’s designed to get you to interact with the trolls, or in internet jargon, “feed the trolls.” Now my wise friends are tut-tutting (love that phrase), “Pat, you know we’re wise to the world, and we would never feed the trolls.” And that may be true. Now you’ve become the trolls!

Yes, I said it, but this is an intervention. Too many of my wise, seasoned, and very lovable internet friends have become trolls. No, they’re not as bad as those family trolls, who were professional psychopaths. Rather, my friends are just practicing occasional troll behavior, which in some ways is more concerning. Other people quickly learn to ignore professional trolls, but when an average upstanding citizen does it, they take others in, too. Because your friends believe you would never troll them.

It’s not all my friends’ fault. Yes, our leaders set a bad example, but I remind that that has always been the case (read about the public lying between Jefferson and Adams, for Heaven’s sake!). And opinion leaders do it too. Fox News is full of it, in all senses of the phrase. Rachel Maddow is a Troll Queen who came to prominence promising to uncover Trump as a Russian mole. . . still waiting on that. These people aren’t stupid, they are businesses or entertainers who knows that outrageous claims=dollars in their pocket. And they won’t stop. But you can.

What evidence shall I present? To avoid unnecessarily calling friends out, I won’t be too specific. But time and again I see people either sharing sources they should know better, or posting garbage that a millisecond fact check would show as wrong. I’m not talking about sharing a New York Times editorial about whether tariffs help or hurt a nation’s economy: that’s arguable, and have at it. I’m talking about claiming Elon Musk is a grifter getting rich off insider government contracts. Or Canada is a fentanyl threat. Or government employees must liquidate Thrift Savings Program accounts to avoid Trump seizing them. Or all foreign aid is either fraud, waste, or abuse. Or the 2024 federal voting results were hacked. Or freeze your credit because DOGE has your data. Stop it already.

In case you’ve missed the news lately, it’s easy to doctor a picture, so any incriminating photo that looks absolutely incredible and you’ve never sent it before? It’s probably fake. Try using Google Lens (formerly Google reverse image search), which will tell you if a photo is AI-generated. Is it a text/tweet? Does it have a date/time stamp? can you access the account and check? Yes, yes, you can, if you care about the truth.

Listen, I’m not saying you can’t express your opinions. Many times when friends share something, I ask them to restate, in their own words, how they feel, and that comes across more reasonable and honest. Or I ask them to check what they are about to share: just type the first line in with the word “hoax” added, and see what Señor Google has to say. When you just share something because you know it’s going to “pwn the libs/Maga crowd,” what you’re really saying is “I don’t care about the truth. I don’t care about my social media friends. I don’t even care if anyone does something stupid because of what I posted.” That, mis amigos, is quite anti-social behavior. Troll-like.

Even worse (I know, it’s possible!), while troll-like behavior is making your “friends” dumber, it’s making you dumber, too. See, when you post something without fact-checking, or just because it makes you feel good to denigrate somebody else, that All-Seeing Eye (the algorithm) says, “hey, John Doe falls for this sh!t. Feed him more!” See, the algorithm doesn’t care about right and wrong, so if you choose to ignore what’s correct or real, it will, too. And you get a steady diet of social media stool. Enjoy!

Way back when, the comedian Jeff Foxworthy had a routine which always ended with the punchline, “here’s your sign.” The set-up was about the fact that stupid people should wear a sign indicating their status (stupid) so you wouldn’t be surprised when their stupidity showed up. It may seem a little harsh, but it was an effective joke routine, and the material to set it up was almost endless.

Next time you’re about to troll, stop, think twice, and remember; Here’s your sign!

After the passage of President Trump’s “One, Big Beautiful Bill” (its literal title, hereafter OBBB), you no doubt have seen some fairly apocalyptic predictions about Medicaid. Keep in mind that these are all predictions. What can we say factually about the program and what the OBBB says about it?

What is Medicaid? Formally Title XIX of the Social Security Act of 1965, Medicaid is a federal-state partnership that provides medical assistance to low-income individuals and families who cannot afford private health insurance. I bolded the key terms. The federal government provides most of the funds (two-thirds) and dictates who always qualifies and what care must be covered. The states provide the rest of the funding and administer the program (with significant variance between the states). It was designed to provide health care to the poorest and neediest: a truly charitable endeavor. In 1965, about 2% of Americans were covered by Medicaid; today it is around 20%. Are there ten times more poor and needy today? Of course not. The change in enrollment is driven by increasing eligibility over time. This chart details some of the changes:

Form the 1970s through 2008, the number of Americans enrolled in Medicaid was driven by population increases (200 million to 300 million approximately) and by more inclusive rules (for example, greater eligibility for women, children, and people with disabilities). The biggest change begins in 2010, when President Obama signed into the law the Affordable Care Act (ACA in the chart, hereafter “Obamacare”).

This law greatly decreased the number of those uninsured by making health insurance mandatory (the personal insurance mandate, backed by a tax penalty), by offering Obamacare marketplaces where insurance could be purchased with a means-tested federal government subsidy, and by increasing eligibility for Medicaid. Most people don’t realize that in the great debate over Obamacare (for example, the personal mandate was ruled constitutional by the US Supreme Court, but effectively rescinded by the Trump administration in 2017 when the tax penalty was set to zero), most of the gains in insurance coverage were due to the simple increase in eligibility in Medicaid (which didn’t require any grand new law).

In the chart, Medicaid enrollment sharply increases after 2008, going from about 40 million to over 90 million at peak. This was also accelerated by a pandemic-era (2020) legal change, called continuous enrollment, which required states to leave persons receiving Medicaid on the rolls whether they still qualified or not. The point here was to avoid cutting people off from their only health insurance during a pandemic. Medicaid enrollment currently stands at around 80 million, after continuous enrollment was cancelled in 2023. The point here is that 15 million people were removed from Medicaid under the Biden administration, not because the government is cruel, but because they were not eligible, under the law.

While most of Medicaid funding goes for poor people over 65 years old and those disabled, the fastest growing segment of Medicaid enrollees is (non-disabled) adult men, age 18-40 who are eligible under the relaxed Obamacare income rules rules. The second fastest-growing group is children, oftentimes children of adults eligible for Medicaid. The federal cost of Medicaid has skyrocketed: from US$333B before Obamacare to US$860B in 2023.

Now to the OBBB. It:

• Requires able-bodied adults aged 19-64, who are enrolled in Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion, to work/volunteer/participate in other approved activities for at least 80 hours per month to maintain their coverage.
• Restricts state provider-tax arrangements. This sounds obscure, and it is, but some states taxed medical providers, then charged the federal government too, in effect “laundering” federal resources for state priorities that otherwise would be prohibited. California, for example, used the money to provide health insurance for illegal aliens/undocumented persons. It wasn’t technically illegal, but it most specifically is, now.
• Eliminates certain recent increases in federal funding to states to encourage them to increase Medicaid eligibility, and increases eligibility checks from once every year to once every six months.
• Denies eligibility to non-citizens, some lawful permanent residents, and refugees.
• That’s it. Notice there is no change to eligibility for pregnant women, poor single parents, the disabled, or any other groups.

There are endless estimates about how much money will be “cut/saved,” how many people will be dis-enrolled, how many people will die. It is important to note that all of these estimates are, in fact, just estimates. Estimates of how people will respond to Medicaid and other changes in law have been poor, at best. When the Trump administration eliminated the personal mandate, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated 15 million people (healthy young folks who didn’t care to have any insurance anyway) would quit; they didn’t quit, at all. Now CBO estimates between 10 and 15 million will lose coverage. Are they right this time? No one knows.

Look at the facts of Medicaid coverage above, and the OBBB provisions. Ask yourself these questions:

• Should Medicaid be a program for the poorest and neediest, or a mini-form of universal medical coverage?
• Should working-age men with no disabilities be required to work/volunteer 20 hours a week in order to have government-provided health coverage?
• Should non-citizens have the same healthcare coverage as poor/needy Americans?
• Should states be permitted to use federal resources for programs not authorized by federal rules?
• If the estimated 15 million loss in enrollees under the Trump administration bothers you, how do you feel about the 15 million actually dis-enrolled under the Biden administration?
• How much of the increase in Medicaid enrollment and spending is consistent with the program’s intent? and finally,
• How much are you willing to pay for all of this? Before you toss out “what about ________?” naming another budget item you would rather cut, look at this chart of current federal appropriations. If you can’t cut Social Security, Medicare, or Interest on the debt, the remaining options are limited!

Don’t engage with the headlines designed to enrage you; think! I am not saying cuts to Medicaid are a great idea, but neither are they catastrophic. If you want to join in and debate the topic, first learn something about it. Or at least something more than “people will die” or “what about the children?”

The Two-State Solution is the holy grail of Mideast politics: a way to solve the unending Arab-Israeli conflict by creating a “Palestinian”* state aside the existing Jewish state of Israel. It was the original UN plan for the partition of the region, but was rejected by the Arab countries and peoples. That was only the first time it failed. There were several other attempts, and every time the sides got close, extremists intervened (Jewish extremists assassinated their Prime Minister, Arab extremists provoked widespread violence) to undermine progress.

Despite this long history, western politicians and experts continue to insist the Two-State Solution is the only way to achieve peace. Even after the October 7th terrorist attack, some people continue to support the notion. While Israel is closely divided on politics in pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, almost nobody there favors a Two-State Solution now. Let me provide an analogy to which Americans can relate.

For our hypothetical situation, let’s change the events of 9/11 to more closely resemble that of 10/7. Imagine a group of highly-organized, Native American terrorists working across several reservations staged the attack. They took down one of the twin towers with a plane and occupied other buildings. During the ensuing stand-off, they filmed hostages begging for their lives before cutting their throats. Eventually, American military units stormed the buildings, but some terrorists escaped with hostages, returning to the reservations.

Then imagine people citing the long history of American mistreatment of Native Americans, justifying the attacks. Accepting the progressive critique of how “Indians” were treated (I don’t, but . . .), it easily surpasses anything the Jews have done to the Palestinians. After all, the Native population in America is a tiny percentage of what it once was, while the Palestinian population has grown five-fold since 1948. (Note: Next time someone says Gaza and the West Bank are prisons or concentration camps, ask them when has anybody ever seen a concentration camp which had a natural population increase of 500%?) Now imagine even more people, especially people outside the United States, calling on America to set the reservations free as independent nations. How would Americans feel about this “Two-State Solution”? I’m inclined to think we might have seen the third use of nuclear weapons, myself.

In a previous post (Gaza Delenda Est), I called for eliminating Hamas and removing the Palestinian people from Gaza (remember, you heard it first here!). Many of my astute friends pointed out the extreme challenges to this approach– which I acknowledge–and those challenges remain. I will note that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have done much (but not all) of the required military work, and both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump had mooted the same idea (removing the Palestinians). I suggest the Overton window (a concept that says the range of acceptable opinion on anything is a variable which can be moved) has changed.

But none of that addresses the larger problem of Palestinian statehood. There has never been a real Palestinian state, and now there never will be. Nobody wants the Palestinian people. When the Romans exiled the Jews from their homeland, the Jews became wildly successful expats throughout the empire (much to their eventual chagrin, as it made them convenient scapegoats, too). When the Palestinians suffered their Nakba (“catastrophe”), or exile, they became a corrosive force everywhere they went. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) went to Lebanon, upset its delicate ethnic and religious balance, and Beirut went from being the “Paris of the Mideast” to a poster-child for desolation. The PLO then moved to Tunisia and created more havoc. Palestinian refugees went to Jordan and almost overthrew the monarchy. They went to Egypt and had to be forcibly suppressed. And they stayed in Israeli-occupied areas and fought, and fought, and fought.

Worst of all, they gave control of Gaza to Hamas, a move which Israel tacitly accepted, a major mistake by Netanyahu. He thought Hamas was happy to be perfromative against Israel, launching some missiles, conducting some raids, living the good life while corrupting UN aid and building tunnels that no Palestinian civilian could ever use as bomb shelters. Netanyahu and the IDF focused on Iran and Hezbollah, which is why the October 7th attack was such a success (and why the war with Iran is, too). But most importantly, Gaza under Hamas was a precursor: the Palestinians had, for all intents and purposes, a state. When they did, they turned it into a corrupt terrorist base. Where is the evidence that would ever change?

Israel cannot accept incorporating the West Bank, because to do so would very soon make Jews a minority in Israel. They can’t go on forever as an occupying power either. Eventually they will have to grant some successor regime in the West Bank limited autonomy. Such a regime will by necessity need to be not only demilitarized, but completely disarmed., and it will (also of necessity) exist at the sufferance of Israel. It will not be a normal state, because the people have not demonstrated any ability to act as one. Yes, they’ll vote for their leaders, create their own internal rules, and police themselves. No, they won’t vote in the United Nations, conduct foreign policy, or have any authority over the Jews who live amongst them (in some cases) or surround them.

Every act of violence, every new bit of evidence of the corruption and terror Hamas wrought, re-sets the timeline for eventual peace. And only after a prolonged period of peace is the prospect of a Palestinian mini-state even a possibility. Few people reading this (even the youngest) will ever live to see it, and it will only happen when those same Palestinians give up their dreams of reclaiming the country from the Jews.

Palestinians had a state for moments in 1948; they launched an invasion and lost it. They had a territory in 1994, and used it for corruption and terrorism (two intifadas). They had an enclave (Gaza) which freely elected a terrorist organization. How many times does the Two State Solution have to fail?

*I choose to initially refer to the terms Palestine/Palestinian within quotations marks to denote my belief using such terms denotes a reality that does not exist. The people living there are, and always have been in modern times, Arabs. I only use the marks the first time in any blog, to make the point, and afterwards use without further comment. I believe any nation should be able to determine how they are labelled. People from the United States are “Americans,” not United States-ians, because we choose to be called Americans.