This and That---April 28, 2025 Edition

A few random observations, charts and factoids to provide some context on what is going on in the world.

Trump Has Turned Politics Upside Down

President Trump's approval rating has been dropping over the last month based on the chaos surrounding his tariff policy and the incessant negative news coverage surrounding deporting illegal aliens such as Kilmar Obrego Garcia.

What I find interesting is that when you break down the numbers by age groups Trump has positive approvals with every group but those age 70+. according to the RealClearPolitics.com poll average.

The age 70+ age group disapproves of Trump's job approval by -14 points.

Credit: https://x.com/LokiJulianus/status/1914801223175201194

This is incredible to someone like me that has followed politics for a long time.

Younger voters have traditionally been the most liberal and older voters the most conservative.

Trump is +9 with Millennials who have previously disdained all things conservative for their entire life.

Trump has literally turned politics upside down.

Why are those age 70+ of this mind?

The best theory I have seen is these are the people who still get most of their news and information from mainstream sources.

The others are finding a much more balanced view of information on the internet and social media.

I guess the older folks seem to believe the narrative that Trump is going to cut their Social Security and Medicare.

Oh Canada!

It appears that Donald Trump has also turned politics upside down in Canada.

Canada's national elections are being held today.

In early January Justin Trudeau was forced to resign as head of the Liberal Party and as Prime Minister of Canada due to massive unpopularity.

Trudeau was replaced by Mark Carney.

At the time that Trudeau stepped the Liberals were given less than a 10% chance to win the election and the betting odds suggested that Conservative Party candidate Pierre Poilievre had a better than 90% chance to be the next Prime Minister.

Carney is now the heavy betting favorite.

Source: https://polymarket.com/event/next-prime-minster-of-canada?tid=1745424446777

I don't know that I have ever seen an election turned upside down more dramatically in such a short period of time than what we have seen in Canada.

Does this have anything much to do with any dramatic changes in the policies of Carney or Poilievre ?

No.

It is almost totally a reaction to Donald Trump's comments about wanting to make Canada the 51st state and a surge of nationalism and anti-Trump sentiments north of the border.

Carney appears to be leading in recent polls based on the fact that more voters believe he will best stand up to Trump. Carney is favored on this question by 43%-37% by voters.

Of course, Trudeau brought all of this on by telling Trump that Canada could not continue to exist if Canada had to pay tariffs on the over $600 billion of goods it exports to the United States. 22% of Canada's GDP is tied to those exports.

It will be interesting to see what happens today and with U.S./Canada relations going forward.

However, Trump may actually want the Liberals to win as it may accelerate further weakening of Canada due to its progressive and woke policies of the Liberal Party which may drive the more conservative and resource rich Western provinces closer to the U.S. 

What Are The Odds?

Another data point that caught my eye recently is this report from Bloomberg that 12% of all jobs in New York City are for people who are caring for a relative and being paid by the Medicaid program.

In 2014 there were only 20,000 people being paid to stay at home and care for a relative.

The next year the Obama administration relaxed the eligibility rules and the next year 250,000 were being paid by Medicaid.

That number is now 620,000---12% of all jobs in New York City.

This factoid actually might be more shocking than the shift in the voting odds in Canada.

What are the odds that a substantial number of these jobs are fraudulent in some way?

And yet the Democrats are taking Elon Musk, DOGE and President Trump to task for anything that might reduce Medicaid spending?

The fact is that by getting rid of obvious fraud there will be more money for those truly deserving.

Don't Put Your Fist Through A Wall

When you see figures that show 12% of NYC's jobs are being paid for by Medicaid to care for a relative it might be natural to want to put your fist through a wall if you are a taxpayer.

The chart below shows what a bad idea that is as it shows the number of annual hospital visits for punching a wall broken down by age.

Credit: https://x.com/m3pols/status/1912908124929081576

It seems that teenagers are the most likely to try to put their fist through a wall.

This statistic shows pretty clearly that the prefrontal cortex of the brain is the last part of the brain to develop. That is the area of the brain that is responsible for higher-level cognitive functions like planning, decision making and impulse control.

It generally does not fully develop and mature until age 25. 

However, this chart shows that is a general rule.

There was one person at age 69 who thought it was good idea to take out their anger on a wall.

The good news is that despite the disapproval of Trump by those age 70+ it is unlikely that any will take their frustration out on a wall!

Tornado Time

I came closer to death on this date 64 years ago than I have on any other day of my 75 years of life. 

I know something about the dangers and risks of tornadoes having survived a direct hit to my home from a category f4 tornado on that day six decades ago (Wind speeds in excess of 207 mph. Only about 1% of tornados reach this level of devastating damage) 

The memories of that day are as clear to me today as if it was yesterday. I wrote about that experience in these pages 14 years ago which I have inserted below.

It is tornado time this year.

The months of April, May and June usually present the greatest risk of tornado activity in the United States.

Source: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/tornadoes/patterns

The common narrative we hear today is that climate change is causing an increase in violent storms such as tornadoes and hurricanes. In his 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore claimed that tornadoes would increase in frequency and intensity due to global warming.

However, the facts do not support that narrative.

Those claims are often accompanied by a chart like this that supposedly shows an increased level of tornado activity over the last 25-30 years.

Source: https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/monthly-and-annual-numbers-tornadoes-graphs-and-maps

Before you believe that tornado activity is trending up, bear in mind that tornado reporting is much better today than it was 30, 40 or 50 years ago. 

Nothing occurs on the face of our earth today that is not reported and chronicled. It was not always that way. In years past, many smaller tornadoes were never recorded as they meandered harmlessly across a Kansas field.

The advent of Doppler radar in the early 1990's made it possible to document every tornado no matter how small. The fact is that most tornadoes are category f0 or f1 and they comprise 80% of all tornadoes.

A better perspective in comparing tornado activity over the years is to focus on those storms that are rated f3 to f5 on the Fujita scale. These are the tornadoes that cause the most severe damage and would clearly have been captured in previous statistics.  

This data indicates that tornado activity is actually less severe in the United States today than it was previously and has actually been trending downwards in recent years. 

Credit: https://climateataglance.com/climate-at-a-glance-tornadoes/

This graphic shows the path of every recorded Ef2+ tornado track between 1880 and 2019. The areas of the United States with the greatest storm risk are the Central and Southeastern states.

Source: https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/is-tornado-alley-shifting-east/1162839

One change that has occurred with tornadoes in the last 40 years is that the most common area of tornado activity has shifted east from the tornado alley of the past.

Source: Source: https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/is-tornado-alley-shifting-east/1162839

This seems to be due to less moisture in the Plains states which has forced the storm track to the east centered in the Mississippi and Tennessee Valleys.

Note that when I wrote the blog post below in 2011 we were experiencing a spike in tornado activity.

 

Climate alarmists jumped on this at the time but the tornado activity quickly settled down. We have seen nothing like that year since and the downward trend has continued.

Could it be that man has nothing to do with the weather or climate?

Am I crazy in believing that it is in God's hands?

I needed to believe that 64 years ago today. 

A Tornado Tale

(Originally published April 25, 2011)

50 years ago today I came close to death. I was in a house that took a direct hit from an f4 Tornado (winds of 207-260 mph) in Eaton, Ohio. It was shortly before 4:00pm on a late April afternoon and I was in my bedroom organizing baseball cards after school with my best friend. 

My mother was visiting a neighbor with my younger brother.  I looked out the back window and looming straight ahead about a half mile away was a tornado dancing back and forth right in front of my eyes.  It appeared to be on a direct path to our home.

I remember seeing details that you normally don't pick up in photographs.  I clearly could see lumber, shingles and other debris swirling around near the top of the twister.  We made a quick call to my friend's home to warn them of the approaching tornado and headed for the basement.  We bounded down the stairs. 

We heard the sound of a car's horn racing down the main road that was parallel to the tornado's path.  We later learned it was the family who operated the farm behind us who had decided to run for it rather than go to their basement.

A few seconds later the tornado hit. It was a deafening roar.  It was as if you were standing right by the railroad tracks and a train was going by at enormous speed. I covered my ears with my hands because of the roar.  I remember my friend and I shouting at each other at the top of our lungs but you could not hear a word over the sound.  Suddenly it got even louder and it sounded as if the entire house was caving in. 

I remember looking up at the floor and joists above me and thinking that this was it.  I fully expected to be buried alive. Time did slow down.  I remember thinking I had just turned 11 years old and this was the end of the road for me.  It then became deathly quiet.  The floor had held and my friend and I checked each other to be sure we were all right.

We cautiously started up the basement stairs.  The door would not open but we both put our shoulder to it and pushed hard. We got it about half way open and slithered out the basement door.  Staring at us through the adjoining door to the garage was a steel beam that had been thrown around like a tooth pick. It had penetrated almost a foot through the door into the house.  

The windows on the back side of the house that faced the tornado were all broken.  The draperies hung in tatters and were now blowing in the wind.  The windows on the front of the house were intact but were caked with dirt and grass that looked like it had been sprayed on. The dirt was so thick you could not see through the windows at all.  All through the house lay debris. Drywall from the ceiling was laying all over. You could look up and see the sky through the open roof.

I tried to make my way back to my bedroom but I couldn't navigate the debris that littered the hallway.  My friend and I went out the front door and we could see the tornado continuing on its way to more destruction down the road.  The tornado looked much better from the backside.

I did not have shoes on but I began running toward the house where my mother was.  It had been spared but for some minor damage.  It was a debris field of 2x4's, downed electric wires and protruding nails to get to her. I saw some hay straw blown straight into some siding as if it was a nail. 

I reached my mother and looked back at our house for the first time.  I almost could not believe the sight.  It looked as if our house had been bombed.  I had a hard time choking back tears as I saw our house.  I kept saying to my mother, "Look at our house".  She just kept repeating, "It is ok.  You are alive". Even after 50 years, you do not forget a day like that.

Photographs and other background on the tornado of April 25, 1961.

Photo taken of the tornado by a local photographer at close to the time it destroyed our house.

Photo of what was left of the Turner farmhouse that was directly behind our house.  Witnesses said that when the tornado hit the 2-story frame house it lifted it straight up and the house exploded. The entire remains of the house was deposited in the basement as debris.  Fortunately, the Turner family did not go to the basement for shelter.  Mr. and Mrs. Turner started for the basement but their 20-year son did not feel the house could withstand the tornado.  They jumped in their car and made a run for it.  That decision undoubtedly saved their lives. It was their car horn I heard in the basement right before the tornado struck.

Our house was totally constructed out of stone.  I was in the basement on the left side of the house as you look at this picture.  The people on top of debris to the left are where the garage and a back porch used to be both of which were on a slab.  It was the sound of the collapse of this part of the house that had me thinking the entire house was coming down on me. You can also see that the entire roof on the side of the basement that I was in was destroyed.

The house as it looked shortly after construction in 1957 (4 years before the tornado). I was in the bedroom looking out the window on the far right side of the house when I first saw the tornado approaching.

The house from the right front showing the collapsed garage.  I was in the basement near this corner of the house when the tornado struck.

My friend and I ended up with our picture in the newspaper. (top left)

The couple who owned the farm behind us stand in front of what was left of their house. (bottom right)

Through April 24, 2011 according to the National Weather Service, there have been 438 confirmed tornadoes in the United States. Only one has been an f4 similar to the Eaton tornado of 1961.  

We have already seen 306 tornadoes in April, 2011. This is the highest April total ever.  The previous record was 267 in 1974. The average number of April tornadoes is 163.  Keep your eyes on the sky and take shelter immediately if one of these terrible twisters heads your way.

Heroes?

 This is how Dictionary.com defines the word "hero".

The people who typically are admired as heroes are the soldiers who storm the beach, the firefighter who braves the blaze to save a child trapped by the flames or the good samaritan who stops what they are doing to help an accident victim.

They put a higher purpose above themselves. They model how the rest of us should live life the right way.

You also have those people who are looked up to as heroes because of the courage and grace they have displayed in overcoming significant personal tragedies or challenges.

President Trump honored some of these heroes at the speech he gave to a Joint Session of Congress last month.

They included a 13-year old boy who had survived brain cancer and dreamed of becoming a Secret Service agent, the wife of  a New York police officer who had been murdered in the line of duty and the mother of a young woman who had been killed by an illegal immigrant.

Most Democrats in the chamber that night would not rise to honor these heroes or even provide lukewarm applause.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/california-dem-says-flight-attendant-told-him-party-looked-heartless-not-standing-boy-cancer

However, Democrats recently have shown a proclivity to make heroes out of those which should register close to ZERO on the hero meter.

Think back to the way the Democrats lionized George Floyd in 2020.

Yes, the death of Floyd was a tragedy.

However, what did Floyd do to merit hero status?

Floyd had been arrested at least 10 times for various crimes during his life including drug-related charges, theft and aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon for which he received a 5-year prison sentence.

His autopsy showed he had fentanyl, methamphetamine and cannabis in his system at the time of his arrest for allegedly attempting to pass a counterfeit $20 bill to a local merchant.

George Floyd should not have died in police custody.

However, what did he do to be a hero other than to advance a liberal political narrative that the police should be defunded?

We see the same things playing out in the news today in which Democrats are trying to elevate people to hero status who are anything but.

Consider the amount of Democrat and media attention to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the illegal immigrant who had lived in Maryland for 13 years, who was deported by ICE and is now jailed in his home country of El Salvador.

The Democrats have made Abrego Garcia a cause celebre after a leftist judge ordered he be returned to the United States.

However, that decision apparently is now up to El Salvador since he is a citizen of that country. 

For context, ask yourself if a U.S. citizen had defected to Russia and after ten years Russia decided he was a bad actor and deported him back to the United States, would the United States believe it had a duty to return him to Russia? 

Senator Chris Van Hollen went to El Salvador to attempt to get Abrego Garcia returned to the United States.

Congresswoman Maxine Decker (D-OR) has also traveled to El Salvador and stated she will not leave until Abrego Garcia returns to the United States.

Who is this hero?

Abrego Garcia entered the United States illegally in 2012.

Two courts later entered a finding that he was a member of the notorious MS-13 gang.

A court ruled he should be deported years ago. Abrego Garcia has already had many days in court.

Removal was put on hold as Abrego Garcia claimed that he would be targeted in El Salvador by a rival gang (the 18th Street Gang). That gang has subsequently been disbanded due to the get tough policies of the current President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele.

Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee in 2022 for speeding where it was discovered he was transporting eight individuals from Texas to Maryland that had all the earmarks of a human trafficking operation.

In 2021 Abrego Garcia's wife filed for a protective order against him after he hit her at least two times in the previous several months.

It is disputed whether Abrego Garcia should have been deported to El Salvador due to his claims about possible persecution of a rival gang.

However, there is no dispute that he is in the United Stated unlawfully. This has already been adjudicated in a court of law which ruled that he can be removed.

If not El Salvador would he be better served by being deported to Somalia, South Sudan or Sweden if they would take him?

Is this a hero or is it just another case of using a man as a political prop?

Maxine Dexter makes an excellent case that it is the latter.

She is going to ignore all the other needs of representing her constituents over an illegal alien gang member who beat his wife?

We also have the recent case of Karmelo Anthony, an African American teenager who killed an 18 year white high school, after a dispute about seating arrangements at a school track meet.

Anthony did not like being asked to change seats and in response pulled out a knife and stabbed Austin Metcalf to death.

Anthony has subsequently  raised over $500,000 on the fundraising site GiveSendGo.

His victim has raised a mere $25 in donations to assist in the costs of his burial.

Is there something off here?

Source: https://www.givesendgo.com/search/karmelo

Anthony was released by a liberal judge who only required he post a $250,000 bond and is under house arrest wearing an ankle monitor.

It seems his family wants to make sure he is comfortable as they have just started renting a $900,000 house and are now reportedly driving a new Cadillac Escalade since the $500,000 came in.

Senator Ted Cruz asks the obvious question.

Is Karmelo Anthony a hero?

What would the reaction have been in this case if Austin Metcalf had pulled out a knife and stabbed Karmelo Anthony?

Would he be considered a hero?

How much would have been contributed to his "defense" fund?

Why do Democrats persist in making heroes out of people who register next to zero on any rational scale of hero status?

It is beyond my comprehension.

Is there anything that Democrats do today that is not totally dictated by politics to the exclusion of rational thinking, common sense and basic values?

Looking at who they promote as heroes should be enough to answer that question. 

It Depends On Who You Ask

At the end of April Donald Trump will have completed 100 days of his second term in office.

How is he doing?

It depends on who you ask.

I was struck by the wide variation in President Trump's approval rating in several polls released this week.

Trump's net approval varies from +8 in the Daily Mail polling to -12 with Quinnipiac.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating

It does really depend on who you ask and apparently who is doing the asking.

For perspective, the Daily Mail polling shows Trump with the highest net approval he has ever had.

Bear in mind that this poll was also taken after all of the tariff and stock market chaos.

This poll was also taken after all the media exposure of the illegal immigrant and MS-13 gang member who lived in Maryland that was deported to an El Salvador prison with a federal judge and Democrats arguing the man should be returned to the United States.

The positive approval that Trump has is clearly centered on the level of support that his policies have with the American people.

That is most apparent by looking at the % of voters who support different policies that Trump is advancing.

First, look at the change in the percent of voters who favor deporting all illegal immigrants from 2016 to 2025 as reported by The Washington Post.

Only 36% of voters favored deporting all illegals in 2016. It is now 56%.

While Trump's overall approval is +2 in the Harvard Harris poll but the support for his policies is much higher.

Immigration continues to be Trump's signature issue as seen in the support for total deportation of every illegal in the WP poll above.

Further, in the Harvard Harris poll 74% support in the deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes.

70% support closing the border.

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2025/HHP_APRIL_Final.pdf

There is also strong support (57%+) approval for finding and eliminating fraud and waste in government spending (DOGE), banning men who have undergone sex change operations from competing in women's sports, declaring there are only two genders, freezing foreign aid and placing reciprocal tariffs on countries that have tariffs on U.S. goods.

In fact, the only issue that Trump has championed on the list that does not have at least 50% support is renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

One thing is sure about Trump's first 100 days.

It has been a period of unprecedented activity.

A recent CNN poll suggests that there are also very few Trump voters who regret their vote based on what he is doing.

Link: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1912516580748960144

There has been little that Trump campaigned on that he has not acted on.

For example, look at the southwest border.

In March, there were only 11,000 border encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.

That is down from around 100,000 per month in the last three months of 2024 and from around 200,000 per month in March, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Source: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters

Joe Biden and the Democrats stated repeatedly that it was impossible to stop the flow of illegals into the country without Congressional action.

It was a lie.

All it took was a change in leadership and the will to enforce existing laws.

Trump's unprecedented activity has also been met with unprecedented actions by activist left-leaning judges that have ruled time and time again against almost every policy that Trump has instituted.

For example, in the entire history of the United States, federal judges have only issued around 180 nationwide injunctions against the President of the United States.

These were almost unknown until the last several decades. 127 of the 180 were since 1963.

However, 64 universal injunctions were issued against Trump in his first term and 30 so far in his second term.

Think about it. 

About half of all nationwide injunctions ever issued by the courts since 1787 just so happen to have targeted Donald Trump.

However, Joe Biden openly defied a Supreme Court ruling that the President did not have the authority to cancel student loan debt and bragged about it.

Were any injunctions issued against any of Biden's student loan debt cancellations?

Link: https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/1777404435544649895

In addition, were there any nationwide injunction issued as Joe Biden subverted the laws of the United States and flew hundreds of thousand of unvetted migrants directly into the country?

More than 500,000 otherwise inadmissible migrants were flown into the United States and given parole to stay for up to two years from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela by the Biden administration without any evidentiary hearing or fact-finding about their eligibility.

However, one federal judge blocks Trump from deporting the same migrants back to their home countries?

The guy frames it all rather well on X.

One unelected judge can subvert the executive authority of a duly elected President who had the support of over 77 million voters?

This is what our system of justice has become?

How is Trump doing in his first 100 days?

It really does depend on who ask, doesn't it?

Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

Taxes are always a popular point for discussion.

That is especially true on the day after the federal income tax filing deadline.

It is also a major discussion topic in Washington, D.C. right now as President Trump and the Republicans in Congress work towards making the Trump tax cuts of his first term permanent.

Those tax cuts, which too effect in 2018, are scheduled to expire on December 31, 2025.

This includes individual income tax rate reductions, the doubled standard deduction, the increased child tax credit, the pass-through business deduction, and the estate tax exemption which was increased.

The Trump tax cuts also reduced the corporate income tax from 35% to 21% among other changes.

The Democrats opposed the Trump tax cuts when they were passed in 2017 arguing they would reduce necessary tax revenues and also be a windfall for the rich.

How has this worked out?

Individual income tax collections were $1.867 trillion in 2017, the year before the tax changes took effect. 

In 2023 (the most recent year that the IRS has published data), individual income tax collections were $2.561 trillion after reaching $2.903 trillion in 2022.

Business taxes increased from $339 billion in 2017 to $457 billion in 2023.

In other words, despite the reduction in tax rates, individual tax collections increased 37% and business taxes increased 35% in the first six years of the Trump tax cuts.

Individual tax collections were actually up 56% in the five years ending in 2022. 

This chart from the IRS website provides an overview.

Source: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book

Here are the actual numbers behind that chart.

Source: Source: https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book

Note that overall tax collections were relatively stagnant for a number of years from 2014 up to and including the Covid shutdown year of 2020.

There is also usually a lag effect with any tax policy changes.

It takes some time for individuals and businesses to adapt and adjust their behaviors to the new tax regime.

Therefore, it is likely that the Trump tax changes contributed materially to the upturn in revenues in recent years combined with the low interest rates and accommodative fiscal policy and money printing during the post-Covid Biden years.

What about the share the rich pay in income taxes?

Has it gone down as a result of the Trump tax cuts as Democrats suggested it would ?

In 2017, the top 1% carried 38% of the individual income tax burden and the the top 10% paid 70%.

Source: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/who-pays-income-taxes-2017

In 2022, (the most recent year for this data) the top 1% paid 40.4% of all income taxes and the top 10% had increased to 72% of the total.

The bottom 50%, those with incomes below $50,000, pay just 3% of the total tax burden.

Source: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/who-pays-income-taxes-tax-year-2022

It is true that the adjusted gross income share of the rich increased slightly between 2017 and 2022 (most likely due to stock market gains) but the ratio of the percentage of personal income tax paid to AGI share was essentially unchanged.

These charts also show just how progressive the United States income tax system is and has continued to be even after the Trump tax cuts.

Those with more income pay a substantially greater share of their income in taxes than those with less income.

The top 1% pay a share of taxes that is 1.8x their share of income.

Conversely, the bottom 50% pay just .3x of their share of income.

The share of taxes that the bottom 50% pay as a percent of income is also substantially lower compared to the left-leaning European countries that the Democrats want the United States to emulate.

The average worker in Europe pays almost $12,000 more in taxes than they would in the United States.

Source: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/bigger-government-means-giving-almost-half-paycheck#european-middle-class-pays-high-taxes

 

It is true that the extra taxes in Europe do fund more government provided social benefits.

However, when you consider the redistributive effects of lower taxes in the United States the bottom 50% in the United States is doing considerably better than their European counterparts.

This chart shows the total new transfers received by the bottom 50% by country by adding the benefit of lower taxes on the bottom 50% to government benefits.

The United States is actually redistributing more to the bottom 50% than any European country. 

Source: https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/bigger-government-means-giving-almost-half-paycheck#european-middle-class-pays-high-taxes

Keep these statistics in mind as you hear Democrats or media pundits argue that the rich do not pay their "fair" share of taxes or that somehow making the Trump tax cuts permanent is going to be a tax giveaway to the rich.

In fact, I would not be surprised that in the final negotiations on the extension of the Trump tax cuts that a higher tax rate is not imposed on $1+ million income earners.

Democrats have long argued that the "rich" should pay more.

I can easily see Trump co-opting another Democrat issue as he has done time and time again in the past and agreeing to some type of tax increase on the "rich" (which would include Trump himself) as part of a final deal.

Are the Democrats going to vote against a tax increase on the rich after complaining about it for so long?

It is called "The Art of the Deal" for a reason.

Reform Is No Snap

The United States spent over $100 billion on food stamp assistance last year for over 42 million recipients.

An additional $7 billion was spent on the Women's, Infant and Children  (WIC)  Nutrition Program and almost $30 billion was spent on child nutrition of which most went to school lunches and breakfasts.

About 60% (over 20 million) of all K-12 students the United States participate in the School Lunch Program funded by the federal government. Another 32% participate in the School Breakfast Program.

In total, the federal government spent over $140 billion on various food and nutrition programs last year.

All of this data is contained in an annual keydata report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers these programs.

As we look to 2025 I expect that the food stamp program, officially referred to as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), will receive increased scrutiny by the Trump administration and in various states.

For example, legislation was recently introduced in Texas to ban the use of food stamps to purchase soft drinks and other sugary beverages.

The soda companies are not happy about it.

Source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas-take/article/texas-food-stamps-soda-ban-20244503.php

West Virginia and Utah are other states that are considering such a ban.

In order to implement such a ban the states would need a waiver from the Department of Agriculture.

In the past, states such as Minnesota and Maine sought a waiver to limit sugary drinks and/or candy from the SNAP program but those waivers were denied on the argument of administrative complexity.

However, a new day is upon us in Washington, D.C.

The old rules and ideas no longer apply.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is in favor of the ban and stated he is going to lobby Congress to modify the SNAP rules.

You would expect the beverage industry to lobby strongly against this ban. They have already come out strongly against the proposal in Texas as the headline above suggests.

Sweetened beverages make up about 10% of all purchases under food stamps.

That is almost $10 billion of revenues to Coca-Cola, Pepsi and others.

What you might not expect is that the American Heart Association also sent a representative to testify against the ban in Texas.

Does the AHA honestly believe that sugary drinks are nutritious and heart healthy?

Link: https://x.com/travelingenes/status/1899988872928379149

Was the AHA's position above based on principle or something else?

Money has a way of taking precedence over everything else.

For example, the CEO of the American Heart Association made over $4 million in compensation in 2024.  

Source: https://www.charitywatch.org/nonprofit-compensation-packages-of-1-million-or-more

Some of the large recent corporate donors to the American Heart Association have been Pepsico, Kroger and Kellogg's to name a few.

In addition, WalMart, through its WalMart Foundation, provided a $900,000 grant to the AHA to address food insecurity just last year.

It is estimated that anywhere from 18%-26% of the total amount of food stamp spending in the United States is spent with one retailer---WalMart.

We are talking about $20-$25 billion in revenues per year to WalMart just from food stamps..

If you took WalMart's food stamp revenues by itself, it would rank in the top half of all Fortune 500 companies.

The food stamp business is big business and means big money.

Is it just a coincidence that the AHA took the position it did on the Texas legislation?

To its credit, after a tremendous amount of blowback, the AHA has recently reversed course and stated that its position on the Texas legislative ban was an "unfortunate mistake."

I would say so.

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/american-heart-association-retracts-food-stamp-soda-opposition

It is just another example of how intertwined many business and charitable organizations are with government programs.

It is a big reason it is so hard to make reductions or reforms in these programs.

The dollars that flow through those government programs are funding a lot more than meets the eye.

Big pharma. Defense contractors. IT consultants. Hospital systems. Colleges and universities. Scores and scores of non profits and NGO's.

There is a long list that rely on that government money.

Sugary drinks have another problem beyond not exactly fitting the description of being "nutritious" for a program that is supposed to be about "nutrition".

Purchases of soft drinks are easily used to commit fraud in the food stamp program.

In Kentucky's Appalachia region they even have a name for it..."The Pop Train" where food stamps are turned into cash.

WKYT in Lexington, Kentucky reported on "The Pop Train" in 2014 that I wrote about in these pages before.

"It happens everyday. We see it often," said Jackson Police Chief Ken Spicer.

WKYT's Miranda Combs investigated after receiving numerous calls telling WKYT to be at the Jackson Walmart or Save-A-Lot at the first of the month when SNAP benefits -- or food stamps -- are given out. The callers and Jackson's police chief told WKYT there would be people pushing and unloading carts and carts full of pop.

Chief Spicer told WKYT people will buy the pop with food stamps, then turn around and sell it for cash. He says typically the sale is made to small convenience stores outside the Breathitt County line. 

In 2016 the USDA did an analysis on what types of items food stamp recipients spent their benefits on and did a comparison to households that did not use food stamps.

A few observations from the data.

SNAP households spent 30% more on sweetened beverages than non-SNAP households.

They spent 21% more on meat, poultry and seafood.

They spent 30% less on vegetables and 35% less on fruits.

They spent 37% more on prepared foods.

They spent over three times as much on baby food as non-SNAP households.

Non-SNAP households spent ten times as much as SNAP households on flour and prepared flour mixes.

Credit: https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1905700210690687275

If you look at the data the one thing that stands out in all of this is that SNAP households overwhelmingly spend their benefits on convenience items where little work or preparation effort is required.

Soft drinks in a bottle. Prepared foods. Baby foods that are ready made. Almost no interest in making or baking anything.

In President Trump's first term he floated the idea of replacing a portion of food stamps each month with a so-called Harvest Box that would be delivered to each SNAP household.

The "Harvest Box" would contain domestically grown food and include "shelf-stable" items such as juice, pasta, peanut butter, canned meat and beans. It is estimated that this would save $129 billion over a decade, driven in part by government purchasing power at the wholesale level.

In addition to insuring that everyone got nutritious food the "Harvest Box" program would also have  curtailed a great deal of opportunity for fraud in the food stamp program.

This proposal failed to gain any traction in Congress due in part to strong opposition from the grocery lobby that reportedly derives about 7.5% of sales from food stamps and arguments that it was demeaning and impractical.

However, how can we be spending over $140 billion annually on food and nutrition programs in the United States and still hear that people are going hungry?

Source: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america

It seems that some type of reform of the food stamp program is necessary to insure that spending that amount of money is getting the results it is supposed to.

In the 1970's conservative icon William Buckley proposed a simple, streamlined system to limit administrative complexity and costs that would insure no one would go hungry in the United States.

He proposed that the federal government provide a basic level of free food for all Americans.

The Atlantic recounted the proposal in an article in 2014 on the need to streamline and reform the nation's byzantine set of assistance programs,

The federal government would provide grocery stores with quantities of cheap dried foods. Anybody who wanted—“you, me, Nelson Rockefeller,” he quipped—could help themselves to as much as they cared to take. Buckley’s suggested list of free foods included powdered skim milk, soybeans, bulgur wheat, and lard.

That might be too simple, straightforward and draconian but it would be totally focused on eliminating the core problem of hunger with the least amount of cost, administration and bureaucracy while limiting the number of special interests who are profiting from all of it.

We can only hope that 2025 is the year that reform comes to the food stamp program among many other government programs.

Closing In On The End Of The Road

In my last blog post I highlighted the enormous number of gray-haired Baby Boomers who want Donald Trump and DOGE to keep their "hands off" cutting any of the federal budget.

This is despite the fact that the stated mission of DOGE is to identify "waste, fraud and abuse" in federal spending.

I did not think I would ever see a time where people were protesting in order to make sure that waste, fraud and abuse continue in federal government spending.

Let's put all of this in context.

The federal government is currently spending  $7.1 trillion per year.

Revenues are projected at $5 trillion.

That projects to a $2.1 trillion deficit for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2025 which is the same as it has been over the last 12 months.

Source: https://www.crfb.org/blogs/12-month-rolling-deficit-21-trillion-march-2025

The total federal debt is approaching $37 trillion.

Annual interest on that debt is now over $1 trillion

That means that about 20% of current total revenues are necessary to just pay the interest on the debt.

Source: https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Interest on the federal debt is quickly crowding out almost everything else in the federal budget.

Only Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security are larger items in the budget. 

Interest expense has already overtaken Defense spending.

 

Source: https://www.usdebtclock.org/

For perspective, federal spending in 2019 (the year before Covid) was $4.4 trillion.

Spending has increased by $2.7 trillion (+61.3%) in just the last six years. The annual deficit has more than doubled from $$984 billion in 2019 to $2.1 trillion today.

A recent Fox News poll found that 31% of voters believed that the national debt was a crisis and another 48% viewed it as a major problem. Only 20% see it as a minor problem or not a problem at all.

Interestingly, more voters actually saw the national debt as a bigger problem in 2011 and 2013 when the debt was much smaller.

In 2011, federal debt was around 95% of GDP. Today it is 122% of GDP.

Source: https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2025/03/fox_march-14-17-2025_national_topline_march-20-release.pdf

The current annual deficit as a percent of GDP is around 7%.

By comparison, here is how that compares to other major countries.

For the United States to get to the average budget deficit of these other countries would require that annual spending be reduced by $560 billion.

When voters were asked in the Fox News poll about their views on specific programs that could be reduced, it seems that there is no majority support for anything

The same poll found that 58% of voters disapproved of the work that Elon Musk was doing with DOGE to identify waste, fraud and abuse.

Let's recap where we are.

The United States is drowning in debt and living off of deficit spending with no end in sight.

The majority of voters apparently do not want Donald Trump to do anything about it.

They certainly do not want Elon Musk to do anything about it.

That leaves us with Congress.

What are the budget blueprints they have been working on for next 10-year budget cycle?

Last week the Senate passed a blueprint proposal (51-48) that would cut spending by $4 billion over 10 years.

Seriously?

That's right---$4 billion over 10 years compared to this year's budget of $7.1 trillion.

Why did they even bother with $4 billion? 

That doesn't even amount to a rounding error on the $86 trillion of projected spending over the next 10 years.

The House was working on a proposal that would trim $1.5 trillion over 10 years.

That sounds better but if averaged out that would be $150 billion next year on current year spending of over $7 trillion---barely 2% in reduced spending.

However, in the end, the House concurred with the Senate bill to advance the budget blueprint accepting the reality that there was no way the Senate would approve of more cuts.

It is reported that the reluctant House Republican members who want more serious spending cuts were promised verbally that cuts in line with the $1.5 trillion will be in the final budget bill that is being targeted for vote later this year.

As it is, the House approved the Senate budget blueprint by a margin of only two votes with not one Democrat in favor.

President Trump had earlier announced his full support for the Senate budget blueprint that passed that chamber which contains just $4 billion in proposed spending cuts over the next 10 years.

And we have people protesting that they want President Trump to keep his "hands off" federal spending?

What does this tell me?

We have millions upon millions of unserious citizens who are being governed by scores and scores of other unserious people in Washington, D.C.

There are a number of  Republicans who are willing to attempt to get the deficit issue under control.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be one Democrat willing to step up and do what is necessary.

Therefore, the slim majorities in Congress dictate that the only practical option is to keep kicking the can further down the road.

Of course, the end of that road will not be a very nice place for any of us.

It is what it is.