The news networks tonight are all over the story from New York in which the New York attorney general, Letitia James, has filed a comprehensive lawsuit against Donald J. Trump and three of his adult children.
Her allegation? That the Trumps falsified their business’s net worth in obtaining loans. They allegedly fudged the value of their assets, allowing them to get loans at a favorable rate.
Something has raced past me. How did the Trumps fool lenders into thinking their assets were greater than they were?
Financial institutions are regulated by the feds. If a borrower simply says he or she is worth X amount of money, do the lenders take them at their word? Of course not! They can check tax rolls to know the truth, right?
I am waiting for an explanation into how the Trumps (allegedly) fooled the banks.
Amarillo city officials are going on trial very soon in which they will have to defend the legitimacy of a multimillion-dollar effort to deliver a new municipal complex of offices and convention space.
The lawsuit comes from businessman Alex Fairly. The trial will be in a Potter County district court. Fairly believes the city acted illegally in issuing $260 million in “anticipation notes.”
I am not going to assess whether the city’s actions broke the law. I am, though, in a position to comment on the timing of the issuance.
You see, voters already had spoken decisively in November 2020 when they rejected a $275 million general obligation bond issue to — that’s right — revamp the Civic Center and relocate City Hall. The City Council didn’t seem to care about what voters decided.
So, it acted without voters’ approval by issuing those anticipation notes. The debt load carried by the notes is virtually identical to the load that voters rejected.
I hate saying this, because for years I was a staunch supporter of City Council initiatives, but the decision to supersede voters’ rejection smacks too much of municipal arrogance.
It’s the timing of the issuance juxtaposed with the rejection of the bond issue that ought to rankle residents. Fairly has intimated, further, that the issuance of the debt notes was done without adequate public notice, giving residents a chance to comment publicly on what they thought about the project.
To be sure, if I still lived in Amarillo and had a chance to vote on the bond issue in November 2020 I likely would have voted “yes” on the city request. I can argue all day and into the night about the need for the city to upgrade its Civic Center and find a new site for City Hall. Most voters, though, said “no” to the proposal.
For the city to then come back and issue the anticipation notes — which do not require voter approval — well, plays right into the righteous anger that fuels a lot of voters’ interest in government.
The tumult and tempest arising from the arrival of immigrants and, yes, refugees from Latin America have in their way taken me back to an earlier time in Texas when such new arrivals spawned violent protests and outright hatred.
Republican governors have taken great joy in sending migrants to Democratically held jurisdictions in a ploy to stick it in their ear. You favor welcoming these folks? Here, you can have ’em!
The Vietnam War ended in 1975 and with the end of the shooting in Vietnam thousands of refugees fled from Southeast Asia to the United States. They didn’t want to live under communist rule, so they found their way to the Land of Opportunity.
Many of those refugees settled along the Texas coast, seeking to resume their lives as fishermen and women. They sought to capitalize on the shrimp harvest opportunities. Not everyone welcomed them.
The Ku Klux Klan reared its ugly and evil head, raiding the Vietnamese shrimp fleets, cutting their nets and threatening the newcomers with violence if they didn’t leave the country. There was violence. Klansmen were charged with bringing physical harm and death to the Vietnamese.
Over time, though, the violence subsided. Today, in communities such as Port Arthur — with its substantial Vietnamese-American population — you find the influence of the descendants of those refugees in a most remarkable way. Check out the honor rolls of public high schools and you see plenty of names such as Nguyen, Phang and Lam. Yes, the children and grandchildren of those refugees excel academically and take that excellence with them into successful careers as adults
Do we really want to deny the current refugees — who flee communist tyranny in places such as Nicaragua and Venezuela — the same opportunity to succeed?
Two Republican governors — Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida — are doing a fine job of turning human beings’ hardship into a political stunt that they believe will resonate with Americans.
They are engaging in some of the cruelest policy decisions many of us have ever seen. They have decided to send migrants seeking entry into the United States to more liberal-leaning states to … seemingly make some kind of political point.
I wanted to toss a heavy object at my TV earlier this week when I witnessed the image of DeSantis laughing at the torment he is inflicting on immigrants from Latin America. He put 50 of them — including families with small children — on a chartered jet and flew them to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.
He told them they would begin processing for entry into the United States. The migrants instead were delivered to an empty parking lot. Ah, but there was DeSantis in Florida, yukking it up over the game he is playing with the lives of desperate human beings fleeing tyranny.
Greg Abbott isn’t any better. He is shipping migrants out of Texas on buses, delivering them to Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other communities known to be friendlier toward these migrants.
I understand fully that President Biden’s immigration policy so far is not dealing adequately with the numbers of people seeking asylum and even a safe place to escape the horrors of life in their home countries. However, is the Republican response any better? Do these governors offer any policy alternatives?
No! Instead, they play games with human lives in a disgraceful display of callousness.
Hey, let’s heap a good bit of good cheer on the Joe Biden administration, shall we? Why the high-five and the back-slap? Because the administration did what Americans expect it to do by stepping in to broker a deal that averted a potentially catastrophic blow to the nation’s economy.
As President Biden might say, this is a “big … fu**ing … deal,” if you get my drift.
Had the strike gone forward, as it was slated to do on Friday, valuable shipments of grain, food, all sorts of commodities, heavy equipment — you name it — would have come to a halt. You want a “supply chain crisis?” There you have it … in spades!
But the tentative agreement, presuming it’s ratified by the unions and the rail lines, means the goods will keep rolling and the crisis will have been averted.
You all know that this blog supports President Biden and the work he is doing on our behalf. I will offer a word of good cheer to the president, because I believe he deserves it. However, the big winner of this deal happens to be the 330 million Americans that the president represents.
Americans keep getting buffeted by doomsayers who suggest the economy is tanking, that “socialists” are poised to take over the government, that the U.S.A has become the “laughingstock of the world.”
The news about the White House stepping up to provide its good offices to end a potentially horrendous labor dispute demonstrates that the opposite of all that is so very true.
As The Hill reports: “It’s a big political risk. If it all blew up, the administration was going to be left holding the bag,” an industry source familiar with the talks said.
As I scan the main drag through Princeton, Texas — the four-lane federal highway U.S. 380 — I see evidence of something I had hoped to see.
It’s the price of gasoline receding. At virtually all the fuel dealerships along the highway, the price of regular unleaded gas is now selling from $2.93 per gallon to $2.99.
Hmm. It’s a far cry from the $4-plus we were paying this past spring and summer, yes? I know that other parts of the country were paying a good bit more than we were in Texas. Their gas prices are coming down, too.
It’s cheaper, for sure. It damn sure isn’t “cheap.” We’ve all become accustomed to a sort of new normal ever since gasoline spiked up in the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo. Prior to that we were paying double-digit prices to fuel our vehicles; after that, well, we haven’t seen double digits since.
Now we are going to “salute” gas prices inching below 3 bucks per gallon? I won’t go that far. However, it is a relief and I welcome it.
A frequent critic of www.highplainsblogger.com decided to weigh in with a comment about President Biden’s job performance.
He disagrees — not surprisingly — with my assessment of the job growth that has occurred during the Biden administration. My critic says Biden has created “no real new jobs.” That the only jobs being “created” are the old jobs that are being filled again.
Hmm. I rolled that one around for just a moment.
It occurred to me that the old jobs are just as valuable as the new jobs. I mean, those who are filling the old jobs are paying taxes and contributing to the nation’s economic well-being just as much as they would be had they occupied “new jobs.” Isn’t that right?
The critic just cannot seem to grasp that I remain as faithful to Joe Biden as he does to Donald Trump. Except for this important qualifier: Biden defeated Trump in 2020. Oh, and Trump is in a deep pile of dookey over, well … you know.
The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives sought to make some political hay by asking if we are “better off today than we were two years ago.”
Well, Kevin McCarthy of California, your effort to denigrate Joe Biden’s presidency deserves a look. So … here goes:
On Biden’s watch, Congress approved a bipartisan bill — the first in 30-something years — that seeks to stem gun violence.
When Russia invaded Ukraine this past February, President Biden was able to present a unified NATO and European Union front in response to the illegal and criminal act of war.
The president was able to shepherd through Congress a massive infrastructure improvement bill that seeks to repair our nation’s roads, bridges and airports.
Joe Biden nominated and then welcomed the nation’s first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
We have turned the corner on the international pandemic.
Fuel prices, which skyrocketed and led the inflationary surge of recent months, have retreated dramatically.
The United States has created more private-sector jobs in the first two years of President Biden’s term than at any similar time in its history.
Unemployment currently stands at 3.5%.
Congressional Democrats — fighting unanimous Republican opposition — managed to pass the nation’s first-ever meaningful law dealing with climate change; it also seeks to curb health costs and reduce inflation.
We have cut by roughly half the nation’s annual budget deficit.
So, taken together, I think I have an answer to Leader McCarthy’s question.
Yes. We are better off than we were when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office.
President Biden is going to get a bill quite soon that won’t have any Republican votes attached to it. The blunt truth is that I wished for at least a smattering of GOP support from Congress to send the Inflation Reduction Act to the president.
Alas, it didn’t happen. However, I am going to say loudly and clearly that Democrats in the Senate and the House have done well for those of they represent across the land.
House Democrats today stood together to enact the IRA. It seeks to reduce inflation, seeks to reduce carbon emissions, seeks to reduce the cost of drugs.
Republicans, of course, say it doesn’t do anything to help us. I will disagree with their bloviating.
The Inflation Reduction Act represents a significant effort to curb climate change. Indeed, it is this nation’s largest-ever investment to help curb carbon emissions.
I have to ask: Why is that a bad thing?
It’s not a bad thing at all! Republican obstructionists, though, remain bound to their commitment to block anything President Biden and Democrats want to accomplish.
It is to their everlasting shame. Democrats, meanwhile, have earned the nation’s gratitude. They have, as Joe Biden once declared, produced a big fu**ing deal.
Here’s a bit of unsolicited advice for President Biden’s team of advisers and economic gurus.
Do not seek to redefine what constitutes an economic recession.
The feds this past week reported that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product fell for the second consecutive quarter. Isn’t that metric usually what economists call a recession?
We now hear Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen say that it’s not necessarily preordained that we’re in a recession. President Biden won’t acknowledge the inevitable, either.
In truth, any declaration on the health of the economy is supposed to come from an independent, bipartisan group of economists. That group will meet very soon to issue its proclamation.
I realize that Joe Biden wants the economy to keep humming along. We’re going to get a Labor Department jobs report at the end of the week. Those numbers will tell us a good bit more about whether we’re in a recession … which I believe is the case.
And that will be the case no matter how the administration might seek to spin it.
