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Needed Housing Shouldn't Be Built On The Backs Of American Workers

Needed Housing Shouldn't Be Built On The Backs Of American Workers

Arguments over immigration can be smart or misguided, but they are always complicated. Let's start with an annoying one. Donald Trump's ramp-up of immigration arrests has hit the construction industry, much of whose labor force is undocumented.

Employers of such workers are blaming the raids for the rising cost of housing, a hot topic at the moment. But then you hear of a builder in Jacksonville, Florida, complaining that because of the supposed labor shortage, framers who used to be paid $20 an hour may now cost $40 an hour or more.

A framer cuts the wood and erects the skeleton of the house. It is brutal work, hoisting 50-pound beams while balancing on open framing high above the ground. Framers work in bitter cold and torrid heat. They get rained on.

It would seem fair to pay these guys $40 an hour. On a 100-degree day, I passed Spanish-speaking workers putting in long hours on a high-rise construction project. One took off his T-shirt and wrung out the sweat while laughing. It was a union job, so he was almost certainly documented.

And I thought, yes, America needs immigrants like him and furthermore is lucky to get them. Millions of migrants without papers have been working in this country for years without running afoul of other laws. They shouldn't be rounded up. They should be made legal.

So, what am I saying about current immigration policy? I'm no fan of Trump, but he does get credit for making clear that the border is closed to unauthorized entries. An undocumented workforce hurts the wages and benefits of legal workers. It should not be used as a way to cut costs for others.

Teachers' unions would have a nervous breakdown if schools could start hiring Australians without papers as a money-saving measure. Somehow, we've looked the other way when the illegal workforce is concentrated on hard manual labor. Americans buying homes thanks to their market-rate pay should be paying their construction workers market rates.

The reasons so many Americans can't afford a house, or think they can't, are varied. And not every economist agrees that there even is a serious "housing shortage." The White House's 2026 Economic Report of the President cited a shortage of 10 million homes. Estimates from mainstream economists range from 5 million to almost no shortfall at all.

The economist at Homes.com criticized the White House number for measuring only single-family homes built pre-2008 and not apartments and other multi-family dwellings.

A county-level analysis places the shortage at about 4.5 million homes in California and virtually none in North Dakota and West Virginia. Home prices are a function of supply and demand. There's fierce demand in select areas, especially on the coasts, where land for building is hemmed in by oceans.

Some on both the left and the right blame these areas' zoning laws for the difficulty of building houses. But these places are already densely populated. Ditch all their zoning rules, and you ruin the quality of life that made them desirable in the first place.

High interest rates also make buying a home with a mortgage more expensive. And many homebuyers insist on single-family homes that are far grander than the original 750-square-foot Levittown model. The average new single-family house is about 2,400 square feet.

America needs more immigrants, both with fancy tech degrees and willing muscle. Americans have a right to decide how many may come and what skills they bring.

A one-time dispensation for good foreigners who took jobs our government didn't care about protecting back then would be in order. But undercutting domestic workers with illegal ones to push wages lower is vastly unfair.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Poor Kim Guilfoyle Never Mastered The Trumpian Art Of The Shakedown

Poor Kim Guilfoyle Never Mastered The Trumpian Art Of The Shakedown

About three weeks before Republicans expect an electoral beating, Donald Trump had to get rid of Kimberly Guilfoyle, his ambassador to Greece. He simply had to.

Trump's money-grabbing corruption was wearing thin even on devoted fans, but the president knew how to wrap his mob-like patter in foggy euphemisms and double meanings.

Guilfoyle was not good at it. Not at all.

The mob rarely threatens reluctant targets outright. It says things like: "Nice place you've got here. Shame if something happened to it." Or "Do me a favor," as in Trump's 2019 call seeking dirt on Joe Biden from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: "I would like you to do us a favor, though."

When confronted with an incontrovertible fact, Trump claims ignorance. He said he didn't know about the $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. As for sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, Trump said, "I barely knew him." Trump's name appears in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times.

This week, Trump almost denied knowing Guilfoyle. "She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago." Guilfoyle and Donald Trump Jr. had been engaged for about four years.

As president, Trump had real power to back up his grifts. Guilfoyle had connections to that power, which she waved around with zero discretion and awe-inspiring vulgarity.

At the Davos gathering, Guilfoyle bragged about her buddy-buddy ties to two Greek tycoons who were paying for her luxury travel around Europe.

Already a Trump family nuisance, Guilfoyle wasn't invited to a dinner run by Greek House Davos earlier this year in honor of Trump's son Eric. She was recorded saying to an American businessman on the guest list: "You know, I can deliver the world to you. Which you deserve. I'm going to make you a lot of f——ing money."

She later said in her disjointed way, "You don't have the f——ing U.S., you know, ambassador to Greece not come. She [the dinner organizer] should be kissing my f—-ing ass."

All this was reported in The Wall Street Journal, which has become America's leading journalistic enterprise. The Journal had earlier reported on Guilfoyle's attempted shakedown of Eric Deters, co-owner of a successful regional pizza chain and unsuccessful candidate in Kentucky for Congress and governor.

Deters wanted Guilfoyle's help with, among other things, stopping an Internal Revenue Service probe into his tax deductions. Guilfoyle texted hm with a request to covertly pay off $100,000 she owed on her American Express card: "Honey please I need you to get this done for me today."

If Deters followed through, she also told him, "I will be your Trump ride or die, forever and ever."

Needless to say, Deters was himself no class act. He had been disbarred from practicing law in Kentucky. When he tried to get reinstated, and ultimately failed, he called members of the state bar association "jokes of human excrement." When banned from entering the Hamilton County (Ohio) courthouse, Deters threatened on social media to burn the building down.

A fine state of affairs the United States finds itself in. In exchange for a $100,000 payoff, Guilfoyle offers to help a known grifter succeed in his latest grifts via her connections to the kleptocracy theme park known as the Trump administration.

Before Trump made her ambassador, he was reportedly annoyed that she was soliciting money from Mar-a-Lago members to invest in her various ventures. He sternly informed Guilfoyle that she was supposed to be raising money for him.

When news broke this week that Guilfoyle had "resigned" as ambassador to Greece, Trump told reporters, "I mean, I don't know. She's an ambassador ... She was always very nice."

That's how it's done.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

If Hegseth Wants to Strip the Military of Weirdos, He Should Resign

If Hegseth Wants to Strip the Military of Weirdos, He Should Resign

Where did this guy come from? How did a TV personality end up leading America's defense department, especially in a time of war?

Donald Trump put Pete Hegseth in charge of the Department of Defense. It's now officially called the War Department, but I'm not ready to go there.

In one of his stranger announcements, Hegseth vowed to rid the U.S. military of "weirdos" and "beardos." Sure enough, Hegseth does not have a beard, unlike the "beardo" Ulysses S. Grant or his Confederate opponent, Robert E. Lee.

As for the weirdo part, well ... Jury's out for Hegseth. Take a look at his gelled hairdo with the Cruella de Vil white streak. Or his insistence in creating a cinematically pleasing military.

And for all his talk of manliness, here's a military leader who brought his wife to high-level intelligence briefings. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said it was "not normal at all" for spouses to sit in such meetings. "Not normal at all" is a polite way of saying "weird."

It should be noted that Hegseth is not the weirdest member of Trump's Cabinet. That distinction goes to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Bobby" was busy peddling suspicion of vaccines while holding a stake in lawsuits against the companies that make them. The truly weird stuff — dropping a dead bear cub in Central Park, talking about the worm in his brain — you already know.

Hegseth's weirdo speech was mocked by conservative and liberal media alike. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board was gentler about it. While approving some of Hegseth's proposals, it condemned his strange attacks as "gratuitous potshots" that could make military recruiting harder.

One can agree with some Hegseth initiatives, for example, removing DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) practices from the department, though he overstated how widespread they were. DEI has reportedly played no role in warfighting decisions.

But Hegseth went about it in a way that seemed designed to humiliate women and men of color serving their country, and without explanation. He made a show of removing four Army colonels, two Black males and two females from a list of officers slated for promotion to brigadier general. This was despite objections from then-Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, an Iraq War veteran who led a cavalry platoon in Baghdad.

In fairness, we must mention that Hegseth was also a combat veteran, with two Bronze Stars. But that's all the more reason not to turn the Defense Department into an elimination-style TV game show.

Hegseth has called for speeding development of robotics and autonomous systems, which is necessary. But has he ever looked at the beardos, weirdos and, in his word, "fatties" working in these kinds of labs?

We must concede that the world would be a safer place if Iran did not have nuclear weapons. Also, that the U.S. military, despite its current secretary, has performed well in battle. But our soldiers — and civilians — deserve better than a made-for-TV secretary of defense appointed by a made-for-TV president.

Recall how tough-talker Trump avoided the Vietnam War draft through five deferments, four for school and one medical. The medical one was allegedly for bone spurs in his heel, although he had been a star high school athlete. He couldn't remember which heel.

The "War Department" TV ads, narrated by Cadet Bone Spurs himself, portray a fighting force of Tom Cruises. The ad ends with a shot of an American eagle flying to a stop at the center of a dark screen with the words WAR.GOV below.

Very Marvel Comics. Is the former Department of Defense now run by the Avengers?

Trying To Buy Votes Is Just Plain Wrong, No Matter Who Offers The Payoff

Trying To Buy Votes Is Just Plain Wrong, No Matter Who Offers The Payoff

It would be hard to find a more insulting offer than to exchange money for your vote. That's exactly what President Donald Trump did in announcing that if voters keep Republicans in power come the midterms, he'll send every adult citizen a $5,000 check.

Now, one would not put money on that promise. Even if Republicans do retain control of both the House and the Senate, the promise will surely be thrown in the same manila folder as the vow to release the Epstein files, all of them.

Of course, Trump would not be paying us five grand — the federal government would. That would cost around $1.2 trillion. Trump says the money would come from his tariff collections. The math doesn't work. The tariffs so far have raised only about $270 billion after subtracting the court-ordered refunds to importers.

To be fair to Republicans, the offer has turned a number of their stomachs. "I disagree with it," said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC). "It's pay-to-play ... Plus, where are you getting the money? I think we're in debt $40 trillion."

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) was less diplomatic: "Some of us think dependency is evil and soul sucking, in all its forms."

Others skipped the moral disapproval but questioned the mechanics of handing out all that dough. Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) said, "The devil's always in the details."

Actually, the devil is in the offer. It is a buying of votes. If Republicans attempt a partisan comeback by arguing that Democrats do it, too, they have a point. Democrats do buy votes, though they usually couch the exchange in less vulgar terms.

Was Joe Biden buying votes when he promised to help pay off student loans? He was. He announced his student-debt cancellation plan, which would have erased up to $10,000 in debt for qualifying borrowers, shortly before the 2022 midterms.

Helping pay for education sounds nice on the surface. But it raised resentment in families who saved money for college. One middle-income father, ordinarily a devoted Democrat, complained to me that he sent his high-achieving son to a community college for the first two years because it was free.

Has New York Gov. Kathy Hochul put votes on the auction block by mailing checks of up to $200 "to help families keep pace with the rising cost of energy"? Of course. A Democrat up for reelection, Hochul is in a surprisingly close race with Republican Bruce Blakeman, a Nassau County executive.

Her pitch is pretty blatant: "You don't have to do a thing. No application, no paperwork ... If you're eligible, the check is coming to you." She pretties it up by calling the payments an investment.

These days, Vice President JD Vance sees himself as Trump's sander, smoothing the abrasive edges of his policies without sounding overly critical, important if he harbors his own presidential ambitions. Vance also suggested that wealthy Americans wouldn't get those $5,000 checks.

"What the president is saying," Vance explained, "is if you keep us in power and allow us to continue to do these things, then you're going to share in some of the benefits ..."

Which of "these things" is he referring to? Surely not the tariffs, the Iran war, the government borrowings that have made life in America a lot more expensive.

There's the argument that farm subsidies and tax cuts are also payoffs for votes. One difference is that the farm money goes mainly to farmers and the tax cuts go mostly to the upper incomes who least need the help.

All politicians should be called out for vote buying with taxpayer dollars. Trump's $5,000 bid just adds insult by being so blatant.

Too Many 'Influencers' Are Money-Grubbing Con Artists, Or Worse

Too Many 'Influencers' Are Money-Grubbing Con Artists, Or Worse

Not all of them. Some influencers simply want to persuade and perhaps help others better their lives or their community. Their subject could be politics, economics, music, health or fashion. But social media has become inundated with influencers who harm their devotees, some on purpose. Or make money off their trusting audience by endorsing so-so products.

Influencers are people who build followers on social media or other digital platforms. They use the attention to shape opinions, tastes, or get the audience to buy stuff. They post comments, videos, reviews, or endorsements, often for pay or to get freebies.

Those who post outrageous, socially harmful things for clicks, for attention, deserve to be ignored. But often outraged readers only amplify the influencer's wicked intent by reposting the rot while condemning it. They too get clicks. It's the nature of the game. And that back-and-forth is why so many of us are so angry.

An army of would-be influencers have turned Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother who killed her three children, into some kind of heroine. One can honestly believe she's evil or that mental illness made her do it. But she is no hero.

A battalion of counter-influencers is now going after Clancy's apparent fan club. They too are hoping for attention and with it, clicks. One especially grievous example is a weepy woman holding her baby: She's describing Clancy's anguish while listing all the medical problems her own child was allegedly suffering.

The baby looked bouncy, leading one to ask whether the mother was engaged in Munchausen syndrome by proxy. That is a mental disorder whereby a guardian fabricates illnesses or symptoms in a person under his or her care to draw attention and sympathy from doctors and others. When the exploited victim is young, it is considered a form of child abuse.

One angry response on TikTok repeats her entire rant as he rants at it. Note that neither poster gets identified here.

But this hunger for "engagement," a nice word for attention, sometimes reaches tragic levels. In August, a pretty, young Japanese influencer killed herself on a TikTok livestream. Mina Chan had over 300,000 followers on TikTok and 150,000 on Instagram. Her posts revolved around a K-pop group, ENHYPEN. The story goes that she had handed a flower to one of the performers and was then hounded on social media for allegedly pretending to have a close relationship with the group. She apologized on the scene. Chan's family confirmed her death on Instagram.

Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton reportedly livestreamed 15 minutes of self-harm, that is, cutting himself on TikTok. Videos of women sharing intimate details of their romantic problems are rampant. Some announce their impending divorce before their spouse even knows.

On a very different subject, many social media addicts are getting fleeced by financial advisers on TikTok. Some of the advice could be good, but a lot of it is claptrap. The Wall Street Journal reported on a study finding "those who use social media for investment advice rated their investment knowledge higher than those who don't, but perform worse on an objective knowledge test."

These followers were also more susceptible to investment fraud. Many such videos showcase the adviser sitting in their Mercedes or otherwise flaunting their wealth. Their audience tends to be young, much of it Gen Z.

YouTube is chock-full of very useful videos offering fashion, computing, or other guidance. Trouble is, many include links to buy the things they are praising. That's OK, one supposes, if they label the content as sponsored.

Look, most of us want attention, and social media offers some very clever entertainment, commentary and how-to. But it's getting wild out there. Clicker beware.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Liz Cheney

Are Women More Committed To Democracy And Fairness Than Men?

This is a generalization, I know. As Mark Twain is said to have said, "All generalizations are false, including this one." But there is growing evidence that women tend to be more protective of our American democracy than men. They are more willing to put their foot down when partisan schemers try to game the electoral system, mostly by changing the rules or gerrymandering.

A recent sign that women place more value on being a force for good comes out of conservative Utah. Both parties gerrymander, that is, draw voting district boundaries to give unfair advantage to their candidates. But a faith-based group called Mormon Women for Ethical Government wanted to stop that practice. In 2018, they backed Proposition 4, a ballot measure to create an independent districting commission that would prevent gerrymandering. It passed a statewide vote.

The backstory: Utah remains solidly Republican, but its capital, Salt Lake City, has become bluer in recent years. In 2021, the Republican-run legislature drew its own congressional map that split Salt Lake County to favor their party. The women sued.

It takes a certain inner steel to keep things honest when gaming the system might result in a preferred outcome. About 40 percent of the Mormon women's group are registered Republicans, and only 34 percent are Democrats. Their motivation is simply to maintain a level playing field.

"Gerrymandering breaks things," the group's co-executive director Emmy Petty Adams said. "It physically fractures communities. It breaks trust."

The matter has been in and out of courts, and the fight is not over. But because the Utah Supreme Court refused in February to block the new nonpartisan map, the 2026 election will be conducted under the new districts.

Defenders of democratic integrity understand that safeguarding free and fair elections is the best way to guarantee the public good. It's in their interest to ensure that their votes are properly counted.

It was hard to find a more conservative and politically brave House Republican than Wyoming's Liz Cheney. She voted to impeach President Donald Trump after the January 6, 2001 attack on the Capitol and did not flinch before the inevitable blowback. She was also one of only two Republicans to later serve on the House January 6 Select Committee, which investigated the violent rampage and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The other Republican was Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a decorated combat veteran. Cheney ran for another term, undoubtedly knowing that she would lose the Republican primary to Trump's revenge pick. Kinzinger retired from the House.

"If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic," Cheney said shortly before the primary vote, "I'm going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day."

Over in the Senate, Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska voted to convict Trump for inciting an insurrection. Five Republican men did join them: Richard Burr, North Carolina; Bill Cassidy, Louisiana; Mitt Romney, Utah; Ben Sasse, Nebraska; and Pat Toomey, Pennsylvania.

It's important to note, however, that there were 42 male Republicans in the Senate compared with just eight female Republicans. Thus, the men voting for conviction represented only 12 percent of the male Republican caucus, while the two women represented a quarter of its female members. Four of the men subsequently retired. Cassidy remained in office, but come the primary, Trump punished him by endorsing Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA). She went on to become Louisiana's Republican Senate nominee. Cassidy gets credit for putting himself before the voters.

Of course, there are plenty of unprincipled women in politics. No need to list them here. The point is that women seem more invested in keeping politics honest, as a generalization, of course.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

John Galliano and Anna Wintour

A Fashion Queen's Luxury Splendor Can't Quite Conceal Her Moral Squalor

Anna Wintour spent nearly four decades reigning over Vogue magazine. She was chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute and its glitzy gala. Wintour is an inspiration for the imperious fashion editor in The Devil Wears Prada. With her trademark bob hairdo, sunglasses, and snotty English accent, Wintour has been the style influence who crowns the influencers.

But her honking blunder in choosing designer John Galliano for a solo show has sullied her legacy. Even worse, it was set to open alongside the institute's fundraising red-carpet blowout. Galliano is known for his antisemitic and anti-Asian tirades. France convicted him of a hate-speech crime, and several luxury brands summarily dropped him.

Some Vogue insiders explain that the 76-year-old Wintour suffers from being out of step with the next generation, that she's not current on social media. Others, myself included, believe she is out of step with decency and judgment.

Granted, the fashion business obsesses on outward appearances. That's its business. But balance sheets for companies making chemicals and ball bearings include a line called "goodwill." It's for intangible assets that make people feel good about the brand.

One must suffer a moral deficiency to celebrate a guy who shouts, "I love Hitler" in public places. Those words are vulgar and offensive everywhere, but especially so at institutions with many Jewish patrons and in an industry with a large Jewish presence.

It makes no difference that Galliano is considered one of the designer greats. Or that he often comes off as just a weirdo with his pirate mustache and frozen grimace. Or that he claims to have been under the influence of some inebriant during his outbursts. Or that he issued an apology for "the hurt I caused to the Jewish and Asian communities."

That level of sympathy was lacking in Wintour. After Galliano pulled out from the Met show, she issued a statement that "John's decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is."

Wintour's touting of bigots because they're clever with clothes is not limited to this individual. It was found that Rama Duwaji, the fashion-forward wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had provided crude antisemitic illustrations for a book. Her earlier social media posts also trafficked in the N-word and made anti-gay slurs.

But Wintour gushed over the girl's style in the May issue of Vogue: "I'm full of admiration for New York City's new first lady because she looks so cool and wears a lot of vintage" and so forth.

We understand that the rag trade is not overly invested in its players' moral fiber. And there are artists whose views are repugnant, but if they're especially good at the craft, their reputation can be largely restored with the passage of a few decades.

During World War II, Coco Chanel had ties to Nazi officials for whom she did spying. She tried to use the Nazi anti-Jewish property laws to seize control of the perfume business from her Jewish partners. We're talking about Chanel No. 5.

In 1954, at age 70, Chanel regrouped with a successful comeback fashion collection. American women responded eagerly to Coco's new collection. The French were less enthusiastic.

Ask us again about Galliano in 2035.

Wintour offers a reminder that an arbiter of fashion taste and style can harbor the conscience of a slob. Criticize the response to Galliano as shaming, if you must. But some things are shameful.

The Met Gala, long an Olympics of vulgar exhibitionism, does raise money for a good cause. The Galliano affair was bad for the museum and bad for fashion as a culture.

Meanwhile, goodbye Anna Wintour.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

DSA Should Drop The Blue-Collar Cosplay That Working Voters Reject

DSA Should Drop The Blue-Collar Cosplay That Working Voters Reject

Classic Labor Day imagery shows men wearing hard hats and tough women in uniforms. These are Americans who did not build their muscles at a wellness club.

By contrast, actual photos of the Democratic Socialists of America show seas of white faces belonging to college graduates. The only work most of them have done with their hands is typing. But the DSA is run by leaders who pretend otherwise, pushing forward candidates who play-act as tradespeople.

Their costume party doesn't seem to fool actual blue-collar workers. In Democratic primaries, DSA candidates routinely trail behind traditional Democrats among this voting group — and by a lot.

These fake working folk are so transparently phony, you wonder why even the left-wingers buy into it. The best explanations are they like the show, are young and lonely, and see radical politics as a career path to being an influencer.

This month's proletarian-in-drag is Gustavo Gordillo, chairman of New York's DSA chapter. Before he was outed as privileged, Gordillo described himself as a child of struggling immigrants from Peru and as an electrician. It so happens that his father founded an engineering and consulting firm and owns two multimillion-dollar homes in Florida.

Gordillo's parents bought their boy a Brooklyn townhouse now worth $1.4 million through a limited liability corporation. During a gut renovation, Gordillo lived in a rental apartment where he failed to pay rent. His landlord tried to evict him.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani nevertheless chose Gordillo as The Right Stuff to explain his plan for city-owned grocery stores to the public. In a local TV interview, Gordillo rejected the bodegas' complaints that their city-run rivals, unlike them, would be paying no rent or property taxes — and that taxpayers would capitalize them to the tune of $70 million and also subsidize their prices.

Asked on a news show if he thought that was fair to the bodega owners, Gordillo responded that if they couldn't compete with publicly-owned stores then "they shouldn't be in business."

By the way, Gordillo was never a licensed electrician, but you guessed that. He did, however, graduate from Yale with an art degree.

The director of Mamdani's Office to Protect Tenants is the inexplicable Cea Weaver. She famously described "homeownership" as "a weapon of white supremacy." It was subsequently revealed that Weaver's mother lived in a $1.5-million home in Nashville, where the median single-family house is valued at under $500,000.

As implied earlier, real blue-collar voters haven't been taken in by these performances. In Michigan, the radical left candidate Abdul El-Sayed barely scraped a win in the Democratic Senate primary. Michigan doesn't break down the primary vote by education, but a Detroit News poll taken before showed Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens ahead of El-Sayed among the non-college-educated by 22 points.

In Maine, Graham Platner, the preppie who claimed to be an oysterman, won the Democratic primary to challenge Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins with DSA support. But confronted with an abuse-of-women charge too far, he had to drop out.

Which is just as well. Polls had Platner trailing Collins by 21 points among voters without a four-year college degree. His Democratic replacement, Troy Jackson, polls a bit better among this group but not well at all. A NYT/Siena poll showed Collins leading Jackson by 18 points among voters without a college degree.

Wonder what the real oyster farmers are thinking.

The left ought to stop hating on Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman. He won a purple-state seat with 46 percent of the non-college vote, a far higher number than Democrats normally get. Fetterman is one reason Democrats might win a Senate majority in the midterms. Not that the fringe cares.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.


As Trump's Power Wanes, Canadians Are Not Alone In Calling His Bluff

As Trump's Power Wanes, Canadians Are Not Alone In Calling His Bluff

Oh good, another war. This time a trade war with Canada and for no other reason than ... what? To give Donald Trump a new stage for big-league bullying? To divert attention from the Jeffrey Epstein files? Who knows. Whatever. Trying to humiliate our closest ally does not serve American interests, ya think?

I say "trying" because Trump's powers are much diminished. Canadians are calling Trump's bluff, as are other countries and even some formerly supine Republican lawmakers. And it's getting harder to ignore the loose screws rattling around his head.

We won't go into the particulars of this latest trade dispute. Canada as well as the United States appeared to have thrown in last-minute demands. And Trump's new tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods affect only about 5% of Canada's exports to the U.S.

The bigger story here is the willingness of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to defend his nation's honor even at a cost to his economy.

Moments after the tariffs went into effect, Trump recycled a golden oldie of abuse by posting on Truth Social, "Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!! They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No More!!!"

About our great farmers, Trump has just lowered taxes on foreign beef in an obvious attempt to cut prices for steaks and hamburgers before the midterm elections. The higher prices were a godsend to American cattle ranchers already coping with wildfires, droughts and restrictions on shipments of young Mexican cattle to be fattened in U.S. feedlots.

"You don't put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last," U.S. Cattlemen's Association President Justin Tupper said in response.

Trump keeps saying that the U.S. doesn't need Canadian products. But guess what his new round of tariffs doesn't include? Canadian oil or gas.

Talk of turning Canada into a state is perhaps Trump's most hostile assault on Canadian pride. Trump had referred to former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as Gov. Trudeau. (He's quite the card.) He called the border between our two countries "an artificially drawn line" and said he would use "economic force" to make a takeover happen.

While visiting the Oval Office last year, Carney said that Canada "is not for sale" and "won't be for sale ever." Trump responded, "Never say never."

Over the weekend, Trump's first vice president, Mike Pence, provided a dose of sobriety. "American consumers pay American tariffs," he said. "My hope is, for the sake of American families and for the sake of the American economy, that what we're looking at here is negotiation and not confrontation in a trade war."

Though Trump's tantrums should fly over the northern border like bad weather systems that will pass, the abuse has long-term effects that have already come back to bite us. Against Trump's wishes, Canada is now doing its separate deals with China. He has threatened a 100 percent tariff on Canada over that.

A recent Angus Reid survey of Canadians found that more than 75 percent wanted Carney to hold his ground, even as 90 percent worried about economic costs. The Canadian pollster has also found that 79 percent of Americans still liked Canadians. But even if Canadians don't think Americans dislike them, the fact remains that the voters elected Trump twice.

Trump just said he'll tack 50% tariffs on vehicles and parts from Canada. A silver lining is that Trump's broadsides have become so unhinged, the prospects of his Republican enablers retaining that much power after November are much reduced.

Trump may be seeming more temporary, but in the meantime, we have another war, a ridiculous trade war.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

David Crowley

Are Mainstream Democrats Taking Back Their Party From The DSA Fringe?

You couldn't find a wackier candidate than Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist vying to become the governor of Wisconsin. She wanted to defund police and abolish ICE, topping it all off with a call to end Thanksgiving. Saturday Night Live couldn't have made her up.

Hong lost the Democratic primary but left behind some sobering thoughts. She finished second by only a hair and against a sterling Democrat with relevant experience. The winner, David Crowley, is the Milwaukee County Executive and an African American born into poverty.

Crowley will face off against Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany, a MAGA right-winger who voted against certifying the 2020 election. GOP-aligned groups spent heavily to promote Hong's candidacy in the primary for obvious reasons.

You know who put Crowley over the top? Rural Wisconsin voters.

Over in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed by the fringe-left leaders, beat Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens by a similar tiny margin. She did extraordinarily well in working-class areas in and around Detroit. El-Sayed flew to victory on the wings of college towns.

Could normal Democrats build an alliance between the urban working class and rural voters? That might become a more pressing requirement if El-Sayed loses to Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, which will probably happen. El-Sayed has burned bridges with many Jewish voters, a constituency Democrats have traditionally relied upon. He also has his inflammatory influencer friend, Hasan Piker — who said America deserved 9/11 — hanging around his neck.

Rogers is an establishment Republican who defended the 2020 election results that made Joe Biden president. He has since veered more toward MAGA and won Donald Trump's endorsement in the Republican Party.

But Trump undoubtedly figured that Rogers would have a better chance of victory in this swing state than a fire-breathing right-winger. And a Rogers win in November could keep majority control of the Senate in Republican hands.

Are we done with polls yet? Polls issued right before these primaries showed both Hong and El-Sayed beating their opponents by double digits. The photo-finish results suggest the pollsters know nothing. But belief in their "findings" can alter election outcomes.

A Marquette poll from March showed Crowley supported by only three percent of Democratic primary voters. He left the race, believing that Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez would be the stronger Democrat. He also didn't want to split the mainstream Democrats' votes. When Rodriguez later dropped out due to campaign finance accounting problems, Crowley jumped back in.

Looking forward to 2028, the Democratic National Committee has chosen South Carolina as the site of its first presidential primary. That makes some democratic socialists uncomfortable. In 2020, South Carolina played a major role in making Joe Biden the Democratic nominee over Bernie Sanders. In earlier contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, the generally white and college-educated electorate had sent Sanders toward the head of the pack.

Come South Carolina and the other southern Democratic primaries with their huge African American voting bloc, Biden shot ahead. It wasn't because the voters were "conservative," as Sanders grumbled. It's because they cared more about health coverage, racial fairness, and income inequality than the left's boutique issues: defunding police, transgender rights, and the obsession with identity politics. What did Latinx mean?

Mostly, it was the belief, a correct belief, that Biden could beat Trump, and Sanders could not. Black voters favored Biden over Sanders by four to one.

Moderate Democrats may be finally putting up effective resistance to the highly organized fringe left. Step one is reorganizing primaries to better reflect the preferences of the Democratic mainstream. Step two is getting Democratic normies out to vote. Step three is to build on issues regular people care about. They can do it.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Bernie Sanders

Socialist? Capitalist? Americans Live In A Mixed Economy, Without Labels

Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan keeps calling himself a capitalist. And the Democratic Socialists of America keep backing him to the eyeballs.

Why? Because the DSA understands that El-Sayed has to say that to win over even Democrats in a moderate state like Michigan. They firmly expect that once elected, he would do as they say, which happily conforms with what he truly believes.

Confusing? Yes, on purpose. But let's move beyond this war of labels. Let's stop using socialist and capitalist as either compliments or denunciations.

The United States has a mixed economy, as do most modern countries. It has an economic system in which both the government and the private sector control resources. The American government runs public education, Medicare, and the U.S. Postal Service, to name a few programs. They are all taxpayer supported.

Why does a stamp on a letter going from a remote farmhouse in North Dakota to Chicago cost the same as a stamp on a letter sent from one Chicago apartment to another three blocks away? In a purely capitalist system, the stamp's price would have reflected the difference in cost of delivery. The North Dakotan would have had to pay for this service, a lot more. But U.S. law mandates "universal service," which keeps the cost of a stamp fixed. Thus, dense cities subsidize mail delivery in rural areas.

Private companies, such as UPS and FedEx, charge vastly higher prices for delivery to remote places. Note that President Donald Trump has supported selling off the USPS to a private company.

Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through the Social Security Act of 1935 as part of his New Deal program. America was in the jaws of Great Depression, and FDR used the power of the federal government to create jobs, stabilize the financial system and keep the destitute elderly alive.

New York's Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, says he's another FDR. But FDR said, "No one in the United States believes more firmly than I in the system of private business, private property and private profit."

Roosevelt's new government programs were intended to save the capitalist-market system from collapsing, not, to use Mamdani's words, "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism." Where are the heroic peasants of the Soviet agitprop films waving banners?

Socialist Bernie Sanders heralds Sweden as the socialist model, citing its free health care, free college, and so forth. He also says, "I don't think billionaires should exist."

Sanders may not be up to date on Sweden's economy. It is highly capitalist with more billionaires per capita than the United States. The social programs he admires are supported by taxes.

Sweden, meanwhile, has been tightening the rules for receiving government benefits. For example, it's been cutting benefits to those not working. It has also adopted a hyper-restrictive immigration policy. In addition to the shock of a massive influx of people from very different cultures, Swedes rebelled at the impoverished newcomers' claims on its social programs.

The number of migrants entering Sweden was down to 12,000 last year from 117,000 in 2016. And the country is trying to get people already there with residency permits to leave.

What do the "abolish-ICE" Democratic Socialists think of that?

As conservative economist Milton Friedman famously put it, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state."

Here's how it works: Our capitalist-market system generates a huge amount of wealth that can be taxed to pay for social and other programs. A balance must be found between encouraging wealth creation and crafting a tax code able to raise money for desired public needs. That's a lot harder than throwing around dated labels.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

What is the death count under Donald Trump? We're not talking about loss of life in his war with Iran. We're not talking about natural deaths by aging or unpreventable diseases. We mean Americans who die because they refuse safe vaccines that Trump or his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., questions or discourages.

A recent occurrence of death and suffering comes from the refusal by many parents to let doctors give their newborns a vitamin K shot. Infants are naturally deficient in vitamin K, which helps prevent blood clots and internal bleeding, which can be horrific. K is a vitamin, not a vaccine. But ill-informed parents have developed suspicion of anything delivered with a needle.

Vitamin K shots were once routinely given, but now many parents refuse them. In 2024, an estimated 5.2% of American babies were not injected with vitamin K, up from 2.9% in 2017. At least 12 such babies have died, and far more have suffered permanent brain damage. Doctors believe the real numbers are far higher than reported.

Who's to blame — the parents for not studying the matter, or a health department that has cast aspersions on accepted science? Jessica Kirk, a pediatric specialist at a Florida hospital, recalls trying to comfort a grieving parent. "But what I could not bring myself to say to her was, 'There's nothing you could have done.'"

Falling vaccination rates are to blame for America's worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years. Parents are refusing the effective measles, mumps and rubella vaccine over the false claim that it causes autism. Trump is said to be hounding Bobby to look deeper for a link that 138 studies by real scientists could not find. Trump now insists that the shot be broken up into separate injections, based on zero science.

Several children infected with measles died last year, when there were far fewer cases. Many more had to be hospitalized with serious complications.

Trump makes us dizzy complaining that he doesn't get credit for speeding up development of a COVID-19 vaccine -- and then putting "Bobby," a vaccine skeptic with a bizarre past, in charge of Health and Human Services. He gushes about having "a Kennedy" from "the greatest political family" in his administration. What fun that must have been.

Trump never directly discouraged Americans from getting COVID shots. But he kept minimizing the severity of the disease. He said it would "go away" or that it was under control. Trump would not receive the vaccine before cameras. That gave Americans who suspected that vaccines posed dangers more reasons to avoid them.

An estimated 250,000 Americans died unnecessarily from COVID by refusing to be vaccinated after the shots became widely available. Who's to blame? The first Trump administration, or people who didn't seek out expert advice to get vaccinated?

Trump is allegedly unhappy with Bobby for not doing more to fan suspicion of vaccines. Really, RFK Jr. has done quite enough harm already putting Americans' health at risk.

Complicating matters for Trump are new findings from a friendly pollster that vaccine skepticism is highly unpopular with voters. In another survey, 80% of adults said they trusted their doctors most, while only 34% put their faith in Bobby.

Why is Trump pushing doubt in mainstream science when he and his family reportedly get all the shots? Could it be fumes circulating in his 80-year-old head? Could it be a pleasurable jolt of power from persuading people to, in effect, gamble with their lives? That possibility is too grim to contemplate.

Suffice it to say, though, the Trump administration is doing real harm, and some of it is costing American lives.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

The Democratic Socialists of America use people of color as fashion accessories. Sure, they put black or brown faces on ballots, and they talk a big game about racism. But black and brown voters are not choosing their candidates. The DSA national membership chooses, and it is 85% white.

Look at the crowds. In October 2019, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders staged a rally at the Queensbridge housing project, across from Manhattan. Its residents are 47% black, 34% Latino and 10% Asian. News photos showed a nearly unbroken sea of white enthusiasts.

The head of the Queensbridge Resident Association called the organizers "disrespectful." They didn't even bother to place flyers in the buildings.

During the 2020 presidential race, Bernie Sanders rode high in the early Democratic primaries, where voters are mainly comfy whites. But when the primaries moved south, where Democratic voters are overwhelmingly black, he got creamed. In South Carolina, he lost to Joe Biden by 29 percentage points.

Asked to respond to that massive comeuppance, Sanders waved off the importance of those black voters. They were "conservative," he said. "But you know what? We're out of the Deep South now. And we're moving up."

That rankled several prominent black officials. "I was very concerned with that comment," said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. "Black voters in the South are not very conservative" and "essentially dismissing the South was a slight at African American voters."

A recent poll in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary has 67 percent of blacks supporting the white candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens. Only 21 percent back the DSA's Abdul El-Sayed. A prominent El-Sayed supporter, William Lawrence, is on record denouncing black political leaders as a "pillar" of the "capitalist, imperialist" American establishment. Their support of the Democratic leadership, Lawrence said, "defangs the white left."

He really said that.

Sanders has a spotty history on race. He had joined the white flight out of New York City in the 1960s, when a new generation of black activists didn't care to take orders from white liberals. Sanders repaired to Burlington, Vermont, then less than one percent black. There he built a white-dominated socialist movement, using people of color as window dressing from the very start.

In his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' chief black intellectual, Cornel West, called Barack Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface." (Also, a "war criminal.")

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has followed the playbook. He has an odd character named Gustavo Gordillo defending his city-run grocery stores. Co-chair of DSA's New York chapter, Gordillo is an immigrant from Peru who studied "radical Latin American cinema" in college. He tried to move up in the art world, but after apparently not succeeding, decided to try his hand as a DSA celebrity.

Gordillo is now on TV "explaining" Mamdani's plan for government groceries, one costing taxpayers an amazing $30 million. Asked whether it's OK for publicly owned stores to put nearby bodegas out of business, Gordillo chirped that if bringing down prices in the neighborhood "is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn't have been in that business in the first place."

The bodega owners are largely Dominican, Yemeni or from other recent immigrant groups. Their little stores are entrepreneurial ventures that put families on the path of economic advancement. The owners work their tails off long into the night, often confronting criminals bent on everything from shameless shoplifting to armed robbery.

And now Gordillo is on TV arguing that bodega owners who can't compete with stores built with taxpayer dollars — and that don't have to pay rent or property taxes — are somehow deficient businesspeople.

None of the above is made up, I swear.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

A Face in the Crowd is the prophetic 1957 movie about a charismatic drifter "discovered" in an Arkansas jail. The face belongs to "Lonesome" Rhodes, a scoundrel whose folksy act catapults him to national prominence. "Lonesome" (Andy Griffith) abuses women, but the crowd only sees a lovable spinner of down-home yarns. He deflates after getting caught on an open mic mocking his followers as idiots and fools.

Maine's Graham Platner was a face in the crowd, sold to Democrats as a salt-of-the-sea oysterman who actually came from a privileged background. The senatorial candidate survived his sordid history of mistreating women until a plausible accusation of rape finally did him in.

American politics feasts on stories of candidates from humble backgrounds who know what it means to be a working stiff. Some such contenders are uncovered as bums or phonies. But some are the real thing.

They would include Dan Osborn of Nebraska. He is the steamfitter and former union organizer from Omaha running for the senate as an independent against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Osborn now has a decent chance of prevailing in November. His is not a new face. He had run in 2024 as an independent who did surprisingly well against Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. Osborn lost by only 7 points in a state that Donald Trump carried by about 21 points. Osborn clearly has appeal.

After the election, Osborn launched a PAC called the Working Class Heroes Fund. Its stated mission is to support candidates like him, regardless of party label. With Ricketts an heir to a family fortune exceeding $1 billion, Osborn has predictably framed the race as between the "billionaire class" and the working class.

One of his challenges, though, is to minimize the extent to which Democrats openly want him to win. Nebraska Democrats are not running their own candidate and urge their contributors to back Osborn.

To prevail in a conservative state like Nebraska, Osborn needs support from disaffected or moderate Republicans. If elected, he vows not to caucus with either party. And he criticizes Democrats for their focus on white-collar professionals.

Working in his favor is the fact that many Nebraska Republicans are not hard right. Omaha Rep. Don Bacon, for example, is a Republican moderate known for often criticizing Trump. His is a swing district, nationally known as the "blue dot." Seeing himself at a disadvantage among MAGA Republicans and Democrats desperate for a win, Bacon decided not to seek another term.

Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse is a traditional conservative known for his intellect and courteous manners. Sasse was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. He is now bravely confronting Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Trump's job approval rating in Nebraska is evenly divided or slightly underwater. And so a working man fixed on pragmatic solutions would seem a serious challenger.

Arizona Democrats have Katie Hobbs running for reelection as governor. The product of a middle-class family, Hobbs put herself through college. While secretary of state in 2020, she earned national renown for defending Arizona's election results against phony claims of voter fraud.

As governor, she has lured business to her state, which explains her directing ads toward Republicans and independents. Many Arizonans, meanwhile, remain incensed at Trump's shabby treatment of the late Republican icon John McCain.

McCain's widow, Cindy McCain, has publicly endorsed Hobbs against her Republican opponent, Andy Biggs. Tied hand and foot to Trump, Biggs tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Moderate Democrats do have a good shot at winning this November. Electorates may have grown weary of faces in the crowd, entertainers offering colorful tales and little more.

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Yes, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's socialist picks just knocked off some Democratic incumbents in New York City. They included surprising defeats, especially that of Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, whose social media swims with past calls to abolish the police, free prisoners and stop deportations for any reason, presumably including murder.

It's not like Espaillat's district was dominated by the young professionals who flocked to Mamdani. His electorate is 52 percent Hispanic and includes such non-hipster neighborhoods as Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx.

Nonetheless, Mamdani may have seriously misread the national mood when he said right before the primaries: "When does the race for 2028 begin? It starts now." That was an awesome display of grandiosity for a guy who didn't get even 50% of the vote even though he was the official Democratic candidate in a very Democratic city.

The New York primaries may indeed be kicking off the presidential contest in 2028, but not in a way Democrats would like. Look at recent history. Backlash against Donald Trump's erratic governing style returned control of the House to the Democrats in 2018. Similar forces helped Joe Biden to take the presidency from Trump two years later.

The Democratic left sold these results as a thumbs-up for its radical agenda. But those same views — things like defunding police and obsession with transgender issues — turned off the middle America voters who gave Biden his win in 2020.

Two years later, Republicans retook the House majority by weaponizing the dumbest things left-wingers had said. Similar dynamics powered Trump's return to the presidency in the 2024 election. It is dangerous to assume that disgust with Trump translates into a desire to stop immigration enforcement.

The recently elected Mamdani, meanwhile, is enjoying an overly long honeymoon. The reality is sure to overtake the massive publicity he attaches to the smallest of achievements. New Yorkers are noticing that there are still no free buses, as promised. The rents are not frozen. And universal childcare has not happened. Mamdani has also antagonized the financial business leaders, jeopardizing the prospects of the young grads seeking white-collar jobs, that is, much of his base.

Democrats seeking victories in the heartland should fear having the excesses of coastal socialists hanging around their neck. The veteran New York political analyst Errol Louis described the dangers New York's far left pose to the Democrats' future. As an anchor at Spectrum News NY1, he has interviewed them all.

"They've got some ideas that will not sell in Des Moines or in, you know, Cleveland," Louis said. Their strategists tell him that they're "gonna fight, fight, fight ... get themselves arrested, introduce legislation, whether or not it has a chance of getting a hearing or ever becoming law."

Barack Obama understands well the radicals' lack of appeal outside choice urban corridors. He's called out affluent progressives who think they earn halos by pushing polices deemed to help the less fortunate but end up costing Democrats at the polls. They can embrace left-liberal politics without personally paying a price, Obama said last year. "You could still make a lot of money. You could still hang out in Aspen and Milan and travel and have a house in the Hamptons and still think of yourself as a progressive."

Democrats have fine hopes that this year's midterms will deliver at least a House majority. The growing dislike of Trump puts wind in their sails.

Come the 2028 presidential contest, however, Trump will presumably not be running. But the Democrats' aggravating radicals will still be at it. If the race for 2028 starts now, Democrats should be concerned.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

We can thank China that gasoline prices aren't higher than they are.

By last month, China had cut imports of oil by three million barrels a day, the daily consumption of Italy and France combined. China's economy, meanwhile, hums along.

Americans agonize over how the price of oil affects gas at the pump. Were it not for China, a tank of gas would cost considerably more. "China is Propping Up the World Economy by Importing a Lot Less Oil," reads a Wall Street Journal headline.

There are several reasons China has been able to cut oil imports, but one is its move away from gas-powered vehicles into electric vehicles. China has also invested heavily in electric-powered high-speed rail, letting travelers replace oil-guzzling short flights and trips in gas-powered cars with train travel. By 2030, China's EVs could displace 2.7 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.

If the war with Iran is truly over, and it may not be, Americans' price of oil should be coming down. That's already started, but economists warn that the decline will be slow.

Thus, Donald Trump's long crusade against electrified vehicles and promotion of gas-powered ones is hard to explain other than his personal ties with the oil industry. The U.S. is producing more fossil fuel, but much of it is being exported to other countries willing to pay a lot for it. Get this: If Americans want more of their fuel to stay home, they'll have to pay more for it.

Trump hollers that Americans must drill-drill-drill to cushion themselves from the cost of foreign energy. And so what did he do first day back in office? He ordered the Energy Department to restart exports of American-produced natural gas. He also supports exporting U.S. oil, branding it as "energy dominance."

Other than environmentalists, and bless you all, Americans tend not to care what powers their cars. Electricity, gasoline, whale oil ... Buyers of cars or trucks generally prefer whichever option is cheaper. Happily, the energy source that does least damage to the planet is now the less expensive one.

True, it costs more to make electric vehicles than gas-powered ones. However — and this is a big however — the cost to operate EVs is a lot less. And the more gasoline costs, the better the electric car deal becomes.

A Chevy Equinox EV costs about $35,000, but the price for the gas-powered version of the compact SUV is $30,000. But if an Equinox owner in, say, Iowa drives about 11,000 miles a year — the American average — over 10 years, they will be spending nearly $10,000 more to power the gas SUV than the electric one.

We get it. If you must have a new Chevy Equinox right now and can't spare an extra $5,000, then the gas version may be regarded as a necessary purchase. What happens 10 or 15 years down the road can be worried about later.

Electricity prices had also been going up, but nowhere near as much as oil prices. That's because power plants use energy sources other than oil, including hydro, wind, solar and nuclear, in addition to natural gas.

But those who can plan for their economic future should be onto it. And so are countries that do planning, such as China. The U.S. tried under President Joe Biden to electrify the economy, but Trump has undermined almost all that progress. What's promoting American consumers' new interest in electric vehicles is the high price of gasoline.

If this country had made the kind of advances China has, we wouldn't be caring so much about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. On some things, China knows better.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

How is it that the "Saxophone Colossus" Sonny Rollins lived to 95? Aren't jazz musicians supposed to die at tragically early ages? Actually, that's a myth that Rollins and others proved flawed.

It's true that Bix Beiderbecke, king of the cornet, was gone at 28, Charlie Parker at 34, Dinah Washington at 39, John Coltrane at 40. Billie Holiday made it to 44 — not young, but an age that should have been before her time.

Some musicians, classical and rock, as well as jazz, reach especially advanced ages. The music stimulates their mind, connects them with others and lowers stress. Importantly, performing is also a physical workout. Watch the virtuosi sweat.

Tony Bennett passed at 96, having sung only 23 months earlier (with Lady Gaga). Though the performances were billed as "One Last Time," Bennett seemed in fine form.

The early deaths were usually tied to addictions. Biedernecke was an alcoholic. Washington was cut down by abuse of prescription drugs. Parker, Coltrane and Holiday suffered multiple addictions.

How did Walter Theodore Rollins escape? Born in Harlem, Rollins took some wrong turns. At 21, he helped rob a tobacco store and did time in jail. And he got hooked on heroin. But at around age 24, Rollins put himself into the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and broke the habit.

Also called the Lexington Narcotic Farm, the facility was both a prison and hospital for addicts. Numerous musicians and artists passed through. Relapses were common, but Rollins was not among them.

From then on, Rollins committed himself to staying sober and healthy, spiritually and physically. He got into yoga and meditation, which he practiced religiously. Many a recovering alcoholic know their power.

It is a falsehood, as Rollins demonstrated, that getting high feeds creativity. A year after leaving "Lexington," as musicians called the hospital, Rollins recorded his seminal album, "Saxophone Colossus." From there he built his legacy as an improvisational genius.

Rollins was not alone among other jazz greats who lived well into their 90s. They include Eubie Blake (96), Marian McPartland and Benny Carter (95), Lionel Hampton and Bucky Pizzarelli (94).

The list of rock musicians perishing in their 20s and 30s from drug abuse is voluminous: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse all died at 27. Sid Vicious didn't make it past 21. But Mick Jagger still performs at 82.

Let's not overstate the extent to which mind-altering substances spur creativity by relaxing the brain and freeing up associations. Researchers find that novel thoughts do not necessarily lead to good art.

I recall attending a memorial service for Horace Silver, the master of hard bop, who had died at the respectably ripe age of 85. The son of a Cape Verdean immigrant, Silver started life with scoliosis among other physical burdens. But he used those challenges to pursue a life dedicated to family, spirit and healthy eating. He had cut down touring to spend more time with his wife and son. It's all there in his autobiography, "Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty."

When the service ended, young jazz musicians filled the church with Silver's gospel-flavored, Brazilian-inspired sounds. (Steely Dan borrowed heavily from Silver for their opening of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number.")

Like Rollins, Silver lacked nothing in creativity and didn't regard self-destruction as the price for producing original sounds. Starting in 1959, Rollins "disappeared" for a while to work on his art. He would practice for hours on New York's Williamsburg Bridge.

He emerged three years later with an album called "The Bridge." And as a bonus, he had 64 years left to make more music. Rollins knew that great artists didn't have to die young.