Hey, It's Only Money, Right?

"You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you're out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are."- Rufus T. Firefly - "Duck Soup"

I know, it sounds a lot like the "suckers and losers" remark by President Trump to former White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly. But there are times I feel like I'm in a Marx Brothers movie these days.

Except it's not as funny.

And it also seems as though the leader of the free world is worried about anything but wrapping this thing up. Sailors and Marines trapped on the USS Abraham Lincoln for 260 days with short rations? Hey, they haven't been out long enough according to the President. Gas prices are high because we don't control the Strait of Hormuz? Get used to it, says the President.

Meanwhile the fixation with proving someone destroyed the Washington reflecting pool his contractor actually botched is becoming an obsession. He has torn down the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom bigger than the executive mansion. He is preparing an overwrought replica of the Arc d' Triomphe, has covered statues with gold gilt and is apparently preparing to change the pillars at the White House to a style more to his taste. He is trying to add his name again to the Kennedy Center after a vote of his handpicked board, which he heads. This is in defiance of a court order that said no.

He is paying companies to not build wind farms because he doesn't like the look of windmills. So far, the total cost of cancellation is $4 billion of your tax dollars. The White House work is now about $1 billion. His other projects in the capital so far total $132 million. If he builds his gaudy arch, that's another $100 million.

The cost of the White House work alone was equal to all SNAP food benefits to the needy in 2025. You know, the ones that have been cut.

Now, he has applied his personal aesthetic to ship design.

Modern aircraft carriers, of which we have 11 now active, have switched from using steam pressure to catapult fighters off the deck, to electromagnets. They require fewer men to operate, 2 versus 11, and can be adjusted for smaller unmanned drones which might be torn apart by the jolt of a steam catapult. They also launch more planes in less time, as there is no need to build up steam pressure between launches.

China also uses them, and France will on a carrier under construction now.

But President Trump doesn't like them. Why, he hasn't said, but he has ordered that carriers now in the design stage go back to steam, despite the fact that no company makes them anymore. Perhaps his worry has to do with this...

Either way, the redesign and refit on one carrier under construction, and another in the design stage, will involve billions of dollars. But it gets worse.

The President doesn't like the way modern carriers look. That vertical structure on a carrier is called the "island." It contains the bridge, radar, and combat information center of the ship. On modern carriers, it has been moved further to the rear.

Experts say it is for these reasons...

• More Forward Real Estate: Pushing the island back opens up a half-acre of usable space on the forward deck, giving deck crews more room to stage, arm, and line up aircraft for the catapults.
• Better Sortie Generation: If an aircraft experiences a minor system glitch before launch, it can be bypassed or temporarily reset without blocking the flow of other planes taxiing from the rear.
• Improved Elevator Placement: Moving the superstructure optimizes the location of aircraft elevators, making the movement of munitions and planes between the hangar deck and flight deck smoother.

But President Trump says, he prefers the look of WWII carriers of 80 years ago.

And he wants the island moved back to the middle. You think changing the catapults is costly? I know, never mind the opinions of naval designers and engineers, it just looks prettier. Well, frankly, so does this...

If this nonsense borne of some sort of nostalgia continues, expect carrier decks to look like this again, and soon...

Here's my ultimate point. All of this has a Marie Antoinette quality about it, except soon we won't be able to afford bread or cake.

The planning of this war in Iran makes Pickett's Charge look like a masterstroke. We are running out of sophisticated weapons, putting our personnel under tremendous stress due to extended deployments, and increasing prices here at home. That is in addition to the damage tariffs had already done.

But the ultimate damage is to our economy. Job gains last month were non-existent; in fact, we lost jobs. Earlier rosier reports were adjusted downwards. Inflation continues to bedevil consumers, and interest rates have to stay high because of that. Here is a chart of growth in our Gross Domestic Product...

Yes, the pandemic threw us into a tailspin economically, but we climbed our way out of it. By election day in 2024, inflation was at 2.4%. Now it's 3.5%.

The President got his childishly named "Big Beautiful Bill Act" passed last year, and it is on the way to drowning us in debt. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Tax Foundation projected that the decrease in tax receipts expands the federal deficit by several trillion dollars over the budget window. No, increased business activity will not, and never has, made up for revenue losses.

"Trickle down" doesn't work.

We have now, finally, hit a national debt figure of $40 trillion. The interest payments on that debt now total more than the budget for the Defense Department.

For comparison, the national debt, the whole thing, in the year 2000 was only $5.7 trillion. That is all debt accumulated from the Revolutionary War to then. We have added over $34 trillion in just 26 years. In other words, we have spent $1.3 trillion more than we took in every year since then.

And a reminder: in 2000, we had a budget surplus. We were in the black and had been for 2 years. And the consequences of this current bout of irresponsibility?

• Inflation: Creating too much money to service debt reduces the purchasing power of the dollar.
• Interest Costs: Paying interest on tens of trillions of dollars in debt consumes a rapidly growing portion of the federal budget.
• Market Confidence: Financial leaders warn that unsustainable deficits could eventually spark a bond market crisis if global investors lose faith in U.S. financial stability.

If you are collecting Social Security or enjoying the benefits of Medicare or Medicaid, you will be vulnerable, to say the least. Yeah, the market is roaring right now, mainly due to AI. When that bubble bursts, look out.

And, look, I don't blame all this on Donald Trump, though debt accumulation during his terms has been the highest ever. A spineless and feckless US Congress must shoulder most of the blame.

It is so much easier to cut taxes than to tell the public that we have bills to pay. It is so much easier to say yes to these moronic vanity projects than to risk a primary challenger. It's easier to pretend that some domestic bunch of Bolsheviks or Muslims is taking over.

It's so much easier to use phony arguments and fake data to undermine the public's trust in scientists or doctors. It is so much easier to play on America's lesser angels than to say we use a lot of immigrant labor and fix the system.

It is so much easier to divert the country's attention with silly social issues that aren't really issues at all than deal with the nuts and bolts of running an economy.

From the economy to vaccines to war itself, we are being mismanaged and misled, and are now so polarized that no one on either side can admit it. We are in our own corners, and the other guy can't be right, even if he obviously is.

The President isn't worried about any of this, as he has personally made over $2.4 billion since being elected and is on the verge of granting himself permission to actually start a bank. He and his kids, and Steve Witkoff's kids, are set, and he even has a new jet for when he leaves office.

We, though, are going to have to live with the consequences of this unparalleled era of governmental malpractice.

Or as President Rufus T. Firefly sang...

"The last man nearly ruined this place he didn't know what to do with it. If you think this country's bad off now, just wait till I get through with it!"