Category Archives: business news

business news

This a ‘disaster,’ Mr. President?

The job numbers came in this morning — and they look pretty darn good.

The U.S. Labor Department reported today that the economy added 211,000 non-farm jobs to payrolls in April and the unemployment rate fell to 4.4 percent.

The boost in jobs was considerably greater than analysts had predicted. The jobless rate has inched a bit closer to what one might consider to be “full employment” in the United States.

Donald J. Trump used to disparage the Labor Department figures as phony, bogus, cooked up, fake. That, of course, was during the Obama administration. The president doesn’t say those things now that he’s on the job.

Hey, I’ll give the president credit for presiding over this sparkling jobs report. Let there be many more of them.

I do have one question: A little more than three months into your presidency, is this the economic “disaster” and the “mess” you have said repeatedly you inherited from Barack Obama?

business news, national news

UAL settlement means airline messed up big time

Dr. David Dao has just received a lot of money — reportedly — from a commercial air carrier that treated him quite badly.

Many millions of Americans have seen the video that went viral almost immediately after it was recorded: airport security officers dragged Dao off a United Airlines flight after he declined to give up his seat. Dao suffered facial injuries, he lost some teeth, while passengers shrieked their indignation at what happened.

You know the story. UAL wanted to make room on a fully booked flight for four airline employees who needed to get from Chicago to Louisville. The airline sought passengers to volunteer to surrender their seats; no one answered the call. UAL then selected four names at random and ordered them off the plane; three of them complied. Dr. Dao said “no.” He had patients to see at the other end of the flight.

The airline then called security. Officers wrestled with Dao. They hauled him off the plane.

Well, that ain’t how you treat your paying customers, United Airlines. The airline’s boss, Oscar Munoz, at first defended the officers, then backed off. He now calls it a “system failure” for which he is responsible. “I own it,” he said.

Commercial air travel hasn’t been much fun since 9/11. You know what I mean. Air security has tightened. Passengers are subjected to random searches. Flight attendants get testy when passengers gripe too vigorously.

The settlement today tells me the airline has acknowledged it messed up. United has announced policy changes. It will offer significant amounts of money to passengers who give up their seats on overbooked flights.

This incident tarnishes an entire airline needlessly. Why? Because it employs a lot of folks who do their jobs well and who had nothing to do with the incident in question.

David Dao’s settlement amount is a secret. My sense is that it was for a lot of dough. Fine.

The bigger issue rests with the policy changes that United has enacted. May it not be lost on other air carriers who depend on the public to keep their birds in the air.

business news, local news, media news

Happy Trails, Part 12

My mind has this habit of wandering backward.

Yes, it goes forward, too. It’s been moving ahead in this post-retirement phase to the next great adventure that awaits my wife and me. When it’s not thinking ahead, it occasionally drifts into the past.

My mind did so again today as I began thinking about two colleagues of mine who died within a week of each other under quite different circumstances.

Buddy Seewald died in an auto accident north of Amarillo. He wasn’t ready to leave this world. It happened. He was gone. Just like that.

Then came news of the death of Virgil Van Camp, a much older gentleman, who died of natural causes at the age of 87.

I wrote about them in September 2013. Here’s the link to that earlier piece.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2013/09/there-goes-another-good-man/

I tend to reminisce in my own mind about my past, about the career path I chose and the people I met along the way. Buddy and Virgil were two men who affected me greatly during the time we worked together. They were contributors to the Amarillo Globe-News opinion pages, which I had the high honor of editing for nearly 18 years.

My memory of them reminds me of how much tried-and-true fun I had pursuing this particular craft.

They enabled us to keep the newspaper more relevant in people’s lives. They would share their world view on particular issues. They would debate them between themselves and share their differing perspectives with Globe-News readers.

This was just on the eve of the Internet Invasion, before newspapers — the printed version that carriers would toss onto our porches — began losing their relevance.

I was proud to be a part of that era. It saddens me at some level to see all the changes that are occurring within the industry. Newspapers are printing fewer copies each day. They’re moving toward what publishers call the “digital product”; as an aside, I detest the word “product” to describe a printed newspaper.

While I am somewhat sad these days, I also look back with great fondness at the journey I was allowed to travel.

Friends and associates like Buddy and Virgil made it all the more fun.

business news, International news

NAFTA on the ropes, now it’s back on its feet

This just in: Donald J. Trump has decided that the United States will not withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Well. How about that?

Word came out today that the president might pull out of NAFTA, an agreement he criticized throughout his campaign for the White House.

Then he got on the phone today with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Both men talked to our president and apparently persuaded him to pull away from his threat to abandon NAFTA.

This is good news.

I have long supported NAFTA. I believe free trade among the North American nations has been good for all of them and it has helped strengthen the alliances among them. I hope this means Trump will cease his NAFTA-bashing and try to smooth the tension that has developed between the United States and the other two nations individually.

The president has proposed a 20 percent tariff on Canadian lumber shipped to the United States; and, of course, he and the Mexican government have been arguing over who’s going to pay for construction of a wall along our southern border.

The NAFTA pullout is now off the table. May it never return.

business news, national news, political news

Tax ‘reform’ unveiled … now let’s see how it affects POTUS

I believe another mega-rich guy, the Texan H. Ross Perot, once said that the “devil is in the details.”

With that, one of the details of Donald John Trump’s tax proposal must include just how this “reform” affects the individual who has pitched it.

Yes, I’m talking about tax returns. Release them, Mr. President.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the president will not release those tax returns. There’s been enough information released already, he said. I disagree, quite naturally, with what the secretary suggests.

The major points about the president’s tax plan include a dramatic reduction — from 35 percent to 15 percent — in corporate income taxes for small businesses and a huge increase in the standard deduction for individuals’ tax returns.

As The Hill reported: “The plan would repeal taxes that mostly affect wealthy Americans, such as the alternative minimum tax for individuals and the estate tax. But it would also ‘eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers,’ according to the one-page outline released Wednesday.”

Why is release of the president’s tax returns relevant? He has not divested himself of his huge business interests. Therefore, he stands to be affected in some fashion by what he has pitched. Americans have the right to know just how Donald Trump’s portfolio is affected.

He isn’t likely to release those returns just because many of his fellow Americans want him to do so. Still, it’s worth making the demand yet again. I believe I will keep yammering about the returns during Trump’s time in office.

But here’s another wrinkle.

How does the tax plan affect revenue to pay for at least two major Trump proposals: infrastructure repair and, yep, that dadgum wall.

Trump wants to spend about a trillion bucks to fix highways, bridges and airports. Will these tax cuts reduce cash flow into the Treasury, making it impossible to “pay as you go” on these projects?

Oh, and the wall is going to cost — according to varying estimates — as much as $25 billion. How does the president intend to pay for that project? Do not tell me “Mexico is going to pay for it.” That will not happen. 

As it’s often said: The president proposes, Congress disposes. You can bet your last nickel that congressional progressives will continue to insist that Trump release his tax returns as condition for any tax overhaul.

My gut tells me the disposition of this tax plan — absent the president’s release of his tax returns — continues to be one of the great mysteries in the nation’s capital.

business news, International news, national news, political news

Now it’s NAFTA in the crosshairs

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Let me try to figure this out.

Donald J. Trump gets elected president and then launches a war of words with Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto over whether Mexico will pay for construction of “the wall” between our two countries.

Then this week the president announces plan to impose a 20-percent import tariff on lumber coming from Canada, which shares an even longer border with the United States.

Oh, and today we get word that the Trump administration is considering a wholesale withdrawal from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which would bust up one of the largest trade agreements in world history.

Yes, the president is trying to put “America first,” but at what cost?

NAFTA has been demonized wrongly as a job killer. It’s been no such thing. It has sought to open up trade lanes among these three giant North American neighbors, allowing a freer flow of goods in and out of the United States to two of our strongest allies.

NAFTA order being drafted

Automation has been the No 1 job killer in this country. No trade war, or blustering about putting America first, or any chest-thumping on the world stage is going to reverse the automation trend that has occurred in industrialized nations around the world.

For the life of me I cannot figure the president out.

He calls China a “currency manipulator” and then backs totally away from that assertion, looking for China’s help in stopping North Korea’s march toward becoming a nuclear power. Trump has yet to condemn Russia fully for meddling in our 2016 presidential election, although he has sounded a bit angrier about Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war. He scolds Australia’s prime minister over the phone and then hangs up on him. Trump declines to shake hands with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a White House photo op.

He’s now launching trade wars against two of our largest trading partners.

Someone … pass the Pepto. Please.

business news, local news

City clearing the way toward more progress

I’ve actually discovered a downside to no longer working full time in the job I used to do.

It is that I am no longer “in the loop” with events that occur daily in Amarillo’s downtown business district. My perch as editorial page editor of the Amarillo Globe-News kept me close to the action. Those days are gone.

They’re knocking down an old retail building at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Polk Street. I had to find out about it by inquiring on social media.

I also learned that once was known as the Blackburn Building is going to become a parking lot for motor vehicles driven into downtown to use some of the other sites being rehabilitated, renovated and rebuilt.

There’s the usual expressions of dismay by those who lament the loss of an old building. I feel their angst and their pain. I hate seeing old structures knocked down, too. Then again, it’s fair to ask: What would the Blackburn Building have become had the wreckers hadn’t started leveling it?

This, I suppose, is my way of expressing continued support for the makeover that’s underway in Amarillo’s downtown district.

The old Levine Building next to where the Blackburn Building once stood is being redone. That’s a good thing, yes? On 10th Avenue, the old Firestone service center is being transformed into a residential/retail location, or so I understand. That, too, preserves an old structure.

There’s plenty of new-building construction also underway farther north along Polk. Let’s not forget the major makeover being done to the Commerce Building, which eventually will become home to West Texas A&M University’s downtown Amarillo campus; the WT site won’t resemble the Commerce Building and it will essentially be a new structure.

All this activity isn’t producing a completely positive short-term outlook. For instance, WT is going to vacate the Chase Tower, along with Southwestern Public Service, which is set to move into a new office complex on Buchanan Street. Many floors in the Chase Tower are going dark — and soon. Commercial real estate brokers have assured me that they are supremely confident the Chase Tower’s darkened offices will be filled again in short order.

Let’s hope for the best on that.

Change can be painful, especially when it involves wrecking balls, dump trucks and front-end loaders. We’re seeing some of the pain being inflicted now where the Blackburn Building once stood.

I remain hopeful that we’ll get past the pain just as soon as new business and entertainment activity breathes new life into Amarillo’s downtown district.

business news, national news, political news

Trump Hotel poses potentially huge conflict for … Trump the POTUS

How in the world does Donald John Trump get away with this?

He serves as president of the United States. He continues to hold onto business interests, such as the Trump International Hotel, which plays host to foreign government leaders; those foreign governments spend money doing business at this hotel.

And the president somehow doesn’t violate the “emoluments clause” of the U.S. Constitution, the clause that says president’s cannot accept money or other inducements from foreign governments?

It’s an anti-bribery clause, in a manner of speaking.

Yet the president continues to dine there, which I suppose he is entitled to do. What is making my head spin is how this particular hotel can, in the words of The Hill, be the “go-to” place for foreign government dignitaries.

Isn’t the Constitution clear about this?

The emoluments clause is in the very first article of the Constitution. The founders were clear, I have thought, to prevent the president from doing any form of private business with any “King, Prince or foreign State.”

Let’s remember that Trump hasn’t divested himself of his vast business empire; he’s handed it all over to his sons

But as The Hill reports: “The hotel has been the go-to location for foreign leaders and dignitaries since it opened last fall, when Trump was still a presidential candidate.”

He’s no longer a candidate. He’s now the man. The president of the United States. Leader of the free world. Commander in chief. Head of state.

Unless he’s giving away all the services his hotel is providing those foreign “dignitaries and leaders,” it seems to me that he’s committing an unconstitutional act.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns become central to public policy

Tom Cotton is an earnest young man who happens to be a U.S. senator from Arkansas.

He held a town hall meeting this week back home. Someone asked him about Donald J. Trump’s tax returns and wondered why the president won’t release them.

Sen. Cotton, a fellow Republican, then gave the wrong answer. He said Trump is “under audit” by the Internal Revenue Service. The response drew a chorus of boos.

Here’s my take.

If the president has nothing to hide, he ought to release the tax returns. The questions from many Americans — and yes, many of us do care about this matter — center on the president’s foreign investments. The Russia story isn’t about to wither away. It’s going to remain on our national front burner for as long as Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns in direct contradiction to four decades of custom; presidential nominees of both parties have made their returns public since 1976.

Cotton gets an earful

Sen. Cotton’s tepid defense of the president’s refusal didn’t escape the belief among many at his town hall meeting that Trump’s “audit” dodge doesn’t hold up. The IRS has said — without commenting on Trump’s situation specifically — that an audit does not prevent release of one’s returns.

Meanwhile, the questions about foreign investments persist. They will continue to persist until the president does what he should have done when he became a candidate for the nation’s highest office.

business news, national news, political news

Tax returns, Mr. President … give ’em up

Gosh, I hate talking about Donald John Trump’s tax returns.

Just kidding. No, I don’t.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., says tax-filing time is a good time to see what — if anything — the president is hiding from the American people he governs.

I agree with the Bay State’s senior senator.

We’ve waited long enough to see what precisely is in those returns. Trump has balked long enough at doing what other presidential candidates for 40 years have done, which is to release their complete returns for public inspection.

Trump keeps telling us he can’t release his returns because he’s being audited. The Internal Revenue Service says, in effect, that the president is engaging in a dodge; an audit doesn’t prohibit the returns’ release.

Meanwhile, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has said that any hope of enacting tax reform depends on the president releasing those returns. Sure, that’s hardball politicking. Inquiring minds want to know, especially the minds of those of us who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016.

Time to come clean

I mean, he’s still the president of all Americans. We’re all required to file our taxes. Here in Amarillo, candidates for public office are required to provide full financial disclosure.

The president of the United States of America is not above the law. In this case, even though releasing the returns isn’t a legal requirement, it has been a longstanding custom that’s been accepted as standard operating procedure for all candidates for the presidency.

Sure, many Americans don’t seem to think these returns matter. Others of us, though, think quite the opposite.

Many of us are waiting, Mr. President. Please show us, sir, that you aren’t hiding something.