This Just In – In Russia, the first day of May marks the arrival of Spring. A festival ensues on the first two days of this month.
It’s pretty easy to conflate the Russian event with the other well-known use of “MayDay” … when spoken three times (like “Beetlejuice”) it is an internationally recognized distress signal … much like waving our flag in an inverted position.
At 100 days of this administration, we’re crying MayDay all over the country.
Generating interesting news between Christmas and New Year’s Day is challenging. The government (which generates a LOT of news) is generally closed. Markets are far less active. At the close of 2024, there were many stories about the transition from the Biden administration to the current one, focusing on economic policy and impact.
These were stories that, in general, pretended that a normal, logical person was coming into office to replace Joe Biden. They ignored what might happen to the world’s economy if a demented person who promised irrational things were to step into the presidency.
So these economists stated facts. They said that the 47th president was inheriting an economy that was “the envy of the world” — exceptionally stable, with healthy manufacturing growth and a strong dollar. It’s an enviable way to take over a government. All you have to do is nothing.
Presidents get often undeserved blame for bad economies and similarly undeserved credit for economic booms. In this case, if the 47th president had come in and spent four days a week playing golf and the other three sleeping and dreaming about golf, the world’s economy would be in glorious shape and he would start hearing accolades for his role in, you know, doing nothing.
The completion of 100 days of a presidency is a point of inflection as per tradition. Since nearly all administrations start on the same day, there are many apples-to-apples comparisons to make, including the prices of everyday things, like apples. It’s useful to those of us who want to be fair in making such comparisons.
The current president promised a whole portfolio of tariffs when taking office. I honestly believe that two things about this are true.
1) He doesn’t understand and refuses to learn how tariffs work and that they are paid for by American consumers; and
2) He believes that he can take the country back 100 years to a pre-personal income tax system that relies largely on tariffs. He thinks he will eliminate the federal income tax.
No one around him could persuade him otherwise. He has, illegally, insisted on imposing hundreds of tariffs in a blanket manner so that he can “make trade deals” (receive bribes) for various countries to be excused from this extortion. Conducting a criminal enterprise like this from the Oval Office would make Spiro Agnew blush.
So a single individual (the 47th president) has contracted a thriving U.S. economy in 100 days and after the close of the second quarter we will officially be in a recession. His response to these objectively true indicators yesterday was to suggest that American children may have only two dolls under the Christmas tree instead of 30. Our kids need to toughen up.
This is a difficult situation for a demented person, who cannot remember names, obviously has trouble with his hair and makeup and is in a job that was way over his head on the best day of his life (which was many, many years ago).
This president was asked what the Declaration of Independence (a copy of which is displayed in the Oval Office) is all about. He said it was about love and unity. It’s about taxation without representation, disrespect and severance. It’s about divorce – something familiar.
We must hope that he will do what he has done in his marriages when the going got tough – quit. The MayDay call is loud and clear.
(featured image: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – [email protected] and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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