I skipped a day out of niceness after the Strib published my editorial, which I am told drew a number of negative comments in the paper. I don’t read them, not worth the waste of brain cells. In any event, back to my pointing out the foibles of the paper’s news headlines and story selection. You will not two broad themes, which I would guess are organized across the Dem-supporting mainstream media. One–the tariff issue is causing all kinds of problems and two, government funding cuts are bad, very bad and we will give you all kinds of examples of that. The tariff and trade issue is complex. On the whole trade barriers are bad and do nothing to help the country enacting them, although they may be justified in some cases. The way Trump is dealing with the issue is just stupid, he is offending countries who are our friends and who we need, no matter what he thinks. And he is endangering all Republicans by re-igniting inflation, and no matter what he believes, that is exactly what his tariffs will do, as well as hurt companies and workers in this country that depend on exports. Farmers are particularly unhappy and they are a key part of the Republican base. But the Strib never points out that Canada, for example, has all kinds of tariffs and trade barriers against US products, and those should be dealt with.
Government size and incompetence is a real issue, a huge problem, and these cuts are long overdue. NPR for example, can get funding from radical left billionaires if it wants to spread their propaganda, taxpayers should not pay for this partisan crap. Government employees on the whole are overpaid, do not work hard and are often incompetent. The fewer of them the better. The issue will be how do we actually attract people who want to work hard and do a good job into government. And maybe the answer is that we privatize everything we can, everything and just avoid the whole bureaucratic mess that inevitably hampers people’s spirit and desire to work and effectiveness. Most of the whining stories about programs being cut, and there are several a day in the Strib, ignore the fact that whatever these programs are supposed to be doing, they never actually accomplish, and they could all be done more effectively with private sector funding.
