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GELFAND’S WORLD –
Welcome to the District of Columbia Employment Agency. And if I may ask, what was your previous employment?
Four Star General.
Well that certainly is impressive, but I must point out that we already have four generals in our files.
More seriously
The new administration is off to a rousing start, but with a curiously rash tone in its public comments. As far as they are concerned, it's always somebody else's fault. The sudden flurry of serious airplane crashes is now blamed on the previous president, although his term was graced by as clean a safety record as you are likely to see. Still, the new person in charge of transportation treats the new run of smoldering metal as something to be laughed at, and uses the name Biden in a discourteous way.
But perhaps we can simply attribute this to bad Karma, just the universe's way of informing the current administration that some things such as the air traffic control system require careful attention.
The subject of inflation is the opposite case. It really is Trump's fault. Under Joe Biden and his appointees, the economy had been coming in for a smooth landing on the inflation charts. We were down to traditionally low levels which looked to be stable. The Federal Reserve had been watching and acting carefully and had signaled its willingness to begin the process of lowering interest rates.
Then came the election of Donald Trump and his signaling that he would institute tariffs on numerous foreign trading partners. If you wanted to create inflation, it would be hard to imagine a quicker and more effective way of doing so -- the tariffs go right onto consumer price tags. How could it be any different? The only alternative is for importers to start looking for products from the few countries that won't be hit, with all the predictable supply limitations and supply chain deficits, or for manufacturers to begin the expensive process of moving factories.
It's therefore not surprising that the threat of tariffs resulted in predictions of inflation and even a little preliminary price gouging. Finally, Donald Trump admitted that this country is in for an inflationary period. But for the Trump administration, nothing is ever its fault. They are trying to pin the blame on Biden. Surprised?
At some point, and it is likely soon, Trump and his administration will get the blame for what happens in the economy. Considering the global trade war and mass government firings, the results are predicted to be recessionary at best. Of course there is always the possibility that the Trump actions are just negotiating probes and are destined to be bargained away. The result would be some modest level of reduction in the government's workforce and some modest rule changes in foreign trade. But even if this were to be the result, the current chaos in the markets will inevitably cause some economic slowing accompanied by rising prices. As in so many other things, Trump will create what he accuses others of doing.
Some things aren't funny
The destruction and bloodshed in Ukraine are a great tragedy that didn't have to occur. Donald Trump said that he would settle the war in a day. The method that he and Vladimir Putin chose to find this settlement was to hold a conference with only Russia and the U.S. present. From what we read, the conference did not find a way for Russia to withdraw peacefully.
But suddenly, what we are hearing from Trump is that the war is Ukraine's fault. Once again, it's an effort in blaming the victim. It's hard to imagine something more outrageous coming from the lips of the Soviet Ambassador in 1967.
In the meantime, we have less bloody but nevertheless painful events happening on the domestic front. The war against American science is just one, but will serve for illustrative purposes.
As one working biologist explained to me, the cuts in grant funding are equivalent to a 30% cut in American scientific input. As of the moment, I was told, his organization is now able to pay salaries (due to a court order) but has stopped doing any grant-funded research.
I can remember a similar hiatus during the ramp-up to the Covid pandemic, but that was due to an out-of-control viral infection, not from the illogical actions of an illogical person. There is no rational reason to damage a system that works well and has been tested repeatedly. All those new drugs you see advertised on television -- the ones that have names ending in "mab" -- those drugs are the result of an invention made in the 1970s combined with all the new discoveries on how cell interactions take place. It has taken a lot of work by a lot of people to get to where we are now, but we are not yet at the place we would like to be. There is a lot more known about, for example, breast and prostate cancer than were known twenty and thirty years ago. You might say that we have learned enough to keep learning and to develop the knowledge we will need to be able to treat the really nasty illnesses.
And there are many people who work extra hours for modest pay and have been making those discoveries. Why is it that the political right wing finds it enjoyable to handicap their work and to harm them personally?
One Trumpian Strategy
I'd like to finish by sharing with you an essay by Remy Porter in a website known as The Daily WTF. The site's founders claim that WTF stands for "worse than failure," although I suspect that they are being a bit tongue in cheek here.
Anyway, Porter has been a critic of bad software design and bad management practices for a number of years, but he usually confines his comments to technical aspects. In this case, he points out that the current behavior by Elon Musk and his cronies fits all the definitions of really bad management. You can read it here.
Porter concentrates much of his ire on the current process whereby the Musk group (known as Doge) fires a large group of people indiscriminately, other than to concoct some excuse such as their being probationary employees. Then, when it turns out that these are the people who are in charge of maintaining nuclear weapons (a true story) or fighting bird flu, there is scrambling to undo those acts.
Porter has been discussing management practices in the computer industry for years, so he is familiar enough with bonehead behavior. But the latest stuff by Doge is so weird -- even by industry startup standards -- that Porter was inspired to protest.
Of course Porter is just the guy who was a couple of days ahead of the rest of the world, who are starting to respond to Musk and Doge in similar ways. You can find one other example here in which the experiences of real people experiencing the off-again-on-again nature of this administration's words are laid bare.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
