Ken's Comments

It has only taken 60 days to see the difference in the Biden Administration's relations with China and Russia versus the Trump Administration's relations. For four years, we heard that President Trump was too nice to dictators, referring in particular to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.  When Trump met the leaders he was cordial and friendly and did nothing to embarrass them publicly.  This was met with great criticism and, on at least one occasion, it was justified such as President Trump's fumbling of a question about Russia's interference in the 2016 election.   On the other hand, while President Trump was cordial to these leaders, the Trump Administration did things the Obama Administration didn't to curtail Russian expansionism.  The Obama Administration refused to provide military weapons to the Ukraine to help them fight the Russians invading their country, the Trump Administration delivered that aid.  Where President Obama drew a line in the sand when...

Second guessing is the order of the day and it's time for me to join in.  This is a look back to what happened wrong and right, and what could have been done better.  To do this, let's use the standards set forth by NY Governor Mario Cuomo during some of his press conferences.  When asked why he was looking for 40,000 ventilators earlier this year when NY needed less than 10,000, Gov. Cuomo said, and I paraphrase you act based on what you know at the time, and a related point would be did you act based on what you knew at the time.  In another press conference Gov. Cuomo speculated on what he might have done differently if he knew then what he knew now.  A fair analysis of the actions of the Trump Administration can be made using those standards. 1. Acting based on what you know. The Administration has a standard cast of characters who are called on when there are epidemics.  This includes the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Contr...

The biggest contributors to the causes of climate change today are second and third world countries.  The Paris plan for addressing climate change gave those countries a grace period while placing a greater burden on developed countries like the United States. Americans have argued against that accord asking why those who are doing the most polluting make the least contributions to fixing the problem.  The argument made by the second and third world countries is that they are johnny come latelies to polluting the world.  It was the Western countries who created the situation first, with excessive pollution from the mid-1800s through the late 1900s.  They should not suffer the biggest burden of cleaning up while the original contributors go scot free. If I were running the US, what I'd propose is a multi-billion dollar aid package to second and third world countries.  We'll pay a significant percentage of the cost of buying what you need to clean up your coun...

If you don't like President Trump's tariffs give me a better alternative.  I've listened to the naysayers, the free marketers, and no one is suggesting China isn't subsidizing their companies to enable them to dump steel and aluminum at below market prices or enabling the theft of technology.  But I don't hear them offering any new ideas for enabling American companies to compete and for American workers to regain the quality jobs that go with these industries other than for our companies to compete better.  I do have an alternative to tariffs but it probably would not be enacted.  But before I get there let me start by poking holes in the arguments of the naysayers, including those who complain that the price of products will rise and consumers will be the losers here.  Let's start with the point on which I believe there is little disagreement.  We do need to do something about the trade imbalance and China.  China has been waging economic war on th...