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Basketball Season Can’t Come Fast Enough

The NBA regular season starts October 20, and Michigan and Michigan State begin their college basketball seasons on November 2. As far as I am concerned, for fans of Michigan, Michigan State and the Detroit Lions, basketball can’t come fast enough.

Football in Michigan is in a sorry state, especially after this past weekend.

The Lions’ defense is so bad that the offense may need to score 31 points just to stay in the game. Some days, even that may not be enough. The Lions lost 32–26 to Carolina Sunday night and have now given up 127 points in four games. Their secondary continues to struggle, and penalties and poor execution aren’t helping.

Yesterday’s game also got off to the kind of start that makes you wonder whether everyone was ready to play. The Lions committed an illegal-procedure penalty on their opening possession. Later, they had to call a timeout because they were missing a player on a field-goal attempt. Surprisingly, the missing player was the long snapper, one of the most specialized positions on the team.

The good news is that the Lions can move the football. Jared Goff threw for 412 yards against Carolina. The bad news is that the Lions needed him to throw 52 passes because their running game produced only 46 yards. A team built around a strong offensive line and running game suddenly looks very different.

Michigan has almost the opposite problem. Its defense can keep the Wolverines in games, but the offense has to find a way to score. Michigan lost 20–14 to Minnesota Saturday and is now 0–2 in the Big Ten. The Wolverines managed only 101 passing yards and turned the ball over three times.

The offensive line has struggled with both run blocking and pass protection, while the passing game hasn’t frightened opposing defenses. That is a shame because Michigan has a very good defense. Unfortunately, turnovers, penalties and other mistakes continue to put that defense in difficult situations. Too many of those mistakes look less like a lack of talent and more like a lack of discipline.

Michigan State may have even more work ahead. The Spartans lost 31–3 to Wisconsin Saturday and have now lost three straight games. They managed only 235 yards of offense against the Badgers and converted just one of six fourth-down attempts. Michigan State is also 0–2 in the Big Ten.

I remain willing to give new head coach Pat Fitzgerald time. He knows what it takes to win in the Big Ten, but the size of the rebuilding job is becoming apparent.

That brings us to November 7, when Michigan State travels to Ann Arbor to play Michigan. Both teams are currently 0–2 in conference play. I don’t know what their records will look like by then, but right now it isn’t difficult to imagine that game being played by two teams desperately searching for something positive from their football seasons.

In the meantime, basketball is coming.

The Pistons open October 20 against Boston. Michigan opens November 2 against Oakland, while Michigan State opens the same day against Quinnipiac.

I am ready.

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Maybe I Need to Stop Complaining About E-Bikes

I’ve spent years grumbling about e-bikes on bike trails. At 75, I’m beginning to think I may have been missing something.

I don’t particularly like e-bikes. Actually, that’s putting it mildly. As an avid cyclist, I’ve spent more than a few miles complaining about them.

My biggest complaint isn’t really the bike. It’s often the person riding it. I’ll be riding along a beautiful bike trail when someone on a rented e-bike comes flying past with no warning and no “on your left.” Sometimes riders are side-by-side, taking up most of the trail. Too often they’re going faster than their experience or surroundings warrant, and many aren’t wearing helmets.

E-bikes can also be considerably heavier than conventional road bikes. Put a relatively inexperienced rider on a heavier bicycle traveling 20 miles per hour, mix in pedestrians, children and other cyclists, and the consequences of a collision can become serious. A recent New York Times article about e-bike and scooter injuries in New York City reinforced many of my concerns about what happens when speed, weight and inexperienced riders come together.

I’ve had plenty of reasons to complain. However, lately I’ve begun reconsidering my position.

Then I Started Talking to E-Bike Riders

Over the years, I’ve talked with several people riding e-bikes, and I’ve heard one comment repeatedly: “Without this bike, I wouldn’t be riding at all.”

That got my attention.

Some have bad knees. Others have heart or lung limitations. Some no longer have the leg strength they once had, while others simply can’t ride the distances or hills they could when they were younger. An electric motor doesn’t necessarily replace their effort. It supplements it, allowing someone who might otherwise be sitting at home to get outside and ride a bicycle.

At 75, that argument is becoming easier for me to accept.

Then I Read About Grip Strength

This week I read a Wall Street Journal article about something that sounds completely unrelated to bicycles: grip strength.

Doctors and researchers increasingly view grip strength as a useful indicator of overall strength and fitness as we age. That doesn’t mean squeezing something harder magically makes us healthier. Rather, declining grip strength can be one indication that muscle strength elsewhere in the body is declining.

That made me think about biking.

Every time I ride, I use my hands and forearms to control the handlebars and operate the brakes and shifters. Cycling, however, involves much more than our hands. We use our legs, stabilize our torso, coordinate our hands, eyes and feet, react to changing terrain and constantly make small adjustments to maintain our balance.

Perhaps the real connection isn’t simply grip strength.

Perhaps it’s functional strength.

Balance May Be Even More Important

For people my age, balance may be particularly important. Falls are one of the major threats to independence as we get older, and research suggests older cyclists may have an advantage. Studies comparing older cyclists with non-cyclists have found that cyclists perform better on several measures of balance.

That makes intuitive sense to me. Think about everything that happens during a bicycle ride. You start from a dead stop, balance at slow speeds, turn, brake, look behind you, avoid potholes, react to pedestrians, shift your weight, stop with one foot down and then start again.

Your brain and body are constantly communicating.

At 75, I’m beginning to appreciate how valuable that may be.

Which Brings Me Back to E-Bikes

Suppose someone my age can no longer comfortably ride a conventional bicycle. Which is better—stop riding or ride an e-bike?

I’m increasingly convinced the answer is obvious.

Ride the e-bike.

Research involving older adults suggests e-bikes can help people remain physically active, particularly those with limitations that otherwise make cycling difficult. An e-bike may not provide exactly the same workout as my conventional bicycle, but it doesn’t have to.

For many older people, the real choice isn’t an e-bike versus a road bike.

It’s an e-bike versus no bike at all.

That’s a completely different comparison, and I think that’s what I’ve sometimes failed to appreciate.

I Still Have Some Rules

My newfound tolerance has limits. If e-bikes are going to share recreational trails with conventional bicycles, pedestrians and children, their riders have responsibilities. Learn basic trail etiquette. Slow down when approaching other people. Announce yourself before passing. Don’t treat a recreational trail like a racetrack. Wear a helmet, and understand the machine you’re riding.

An e-bike allows someone without years of cycling experience to reach speeds that previously required considerable conditioning.

The motor can provide the speed. It doesn’t provide the judgment.

That still has to come from the rider.

Perhaps bike shops renting or selling e-bikes should spend more time teaching people how to ride them safely, rather than simply showing customers how to turn on the electric assist.

I’m Changing My Mind

If an e-bike allows a 70-year-old to keep riding for another decade, that’s a good thing. If it gets someone with bad knees off the couch and onto a trail, that’s a good thing. If it allows a husband and wife with different physical abilities to continue riding together, that’s a good thing. If cycling helps us maintain our cardiovascular fitness, leg strength, coordination and balance as we age, that’s a very good thing.

The Wall Street Journal article about grip strength reminded me of something larger. As we get older, the goal isn’t simply to live longer.

It’s to remain capable.

We want to be strong enough to open the jar, balanced enough to avoid the fall, fit enough to climb the stairs and independent enough to keep doing the things we enjoy.

Maybe that includes being healthy enough to get on a bicycle and ride—even if that bicycle has a battery.

So, to my fellow older cyclists riding e-bikes: I promise to complain about you less.

Just do me one favor.

Wear a helmet, slow down when you pass me and please say:

“On your left.”

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Quote of the Day

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

— Often attributed to George Eliot

Whether George Eliot actually said it is uncertain, but I like the thought. Changing our minds and changing our habits shouldn’t have an expiration date.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to the older person who refuses to stop moving simply because moving has become more difficult.

Maybe it’s an e-bike instead of a road bike. Maybe it’s walking instead of running. Maybe it’s using lighter weights at the gym. The important thing is continuing to move.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to the cyclist—electric or otherwise—who passes someone on a bike trail at high speed without giving a warning.

Three words aren’t difficult:

“On your left.”

Question of the Day

As we get older, should we sometimes be more willing to change the way we do something if the alternative is eventually giving it up altogether?

Lyrics of the Day

Friday’s answer:

“Money” — Pink Floyd

Today’s lyric:

“I get knocked down, but I get up again.”

Name the song and the artist and put your answer in the comment section of the blog below.

Answer next time.

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I read a fascinating New York Times article this week about Meta—the parent company of Facebook and Instagram—and the enormous tax benefits it has claimed related to its investments in artificial intelligence and data centers.

It got my attention for several reasons.

Maybe that’s because I spent much of my career in finance. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this isn’t really a story about accounting.

It’s a story about whether our tax system works equally for everyone.

Meta isn’t accused of hiding billions of dollars in a suitcase.

It’s doing something much more sophisticated.

It is using provisions Congress put into the tax code—including research tax credits and deductions associated with enormous investments—to dramatically reduce the taxes it otherwise would pay.

That raises some questions I think are worth asking.

This Isn’t the Tax Code Most of Us Know

For most Americans, taxes aren’t particularly creative.

If you’re an employee, your employer reports your wages to the IRS.

Taxes are withheld from your paycheck.

You might deduct mortgage interest or charitable contributions. Maybe you have investment income or retirement distributions.

But there’s only so much maneuvering room.

A company like Meta operates in a completely different universe.

Meta reported more than $200 billion in revenue in 2025.

It reported approximately $3.9 billion in research and development tax credits for that year alone.

That’s perfectly legal if the company qualifies for them.

But how do we determine whether it does?

That’s where things become interesting.

Is a Data Center Really Research?

According to The New York Times, Meta has claimed billions of dollars in federal research tax credits by treating qualifying aspects of its enormous AI data-center projects as research.

When most of us hear “research,” we probably imagine scientists developing new drugs or engineers inventing new technologies.

Meta’s argument is more complicated.

Building cutting-edge AI infrastructure involves solving technical problems that may never have been solved before. Meta therefore contends that qualifying portions of that work constitute research under the tax code.

Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.

I’m certainly not qualified to decide. But someone has to.

And that someone is the IRS.

Two Sets of Books?

Here’s another part of this story I find fascinating.

Public companies tell investors how profitable they are.

Executives discuss earnings growth and return on investment. They explain why billions spent on data centers will produce future profits.

Then the tax department goes to work.

The same company may legally tell the IRS that some of those expenditures qualify for research credits, immediate deductions or accelerated depreciation.

That can make it sound as though the company is telling Wall Street one story and the IRS another.

But we need to be careful.

Financial accounting and tax accounting are not the same thing.

Congress deliberately creates tax incentives to encourage certain activities. A company can legitimately report an investment one way under financial-accounting rules and receive different treatment under the tax code.

That isn’t inherently dishonest.

The more interesting questions are: How aggressively should a corporation interpret those rules when billions of dollars are at stake?

And: Who has the ability to challenge that interpretation?

Imagine the Audit

Suppose the IRS decides to audit Meta.

Who sits on Meta’s side of the table?

Potentially some of the best tax attorneys, accountants, economists and consultants money can buy.

They may have spent months—or years—designing and documenting a particular tax position.

Now look across the table.

Who represents the American taxpayer?

IRS revenue agents, attorneys and specialists.

For years, government watchdogs have warned that the IRS has struggled to maintain the staffing and expertise required to audit highly complicated taxpayers.

That’s not surprising.

Auditing my tax return wouldn’t require an army of specialists.

Auditing Meta’s might.

Then the IRS Lost Thousands of People

That brings us to what has happened since President Trump returned to office.

The IRS began 2025 with roughly 103,000 employees.

By January 2026, more than 31,000 employees had separated or accepted incentives to leave. Even after some hiring, the agency’s net staffing was down about 28 percent.

More important for this discussion, roughly one-third of the IRS’s revenue agents left.

Revenue agents are among the professionals responsible for sophisticated examinations of individuals and businesses.

The effects are already showing up.

The IRS opened more than 120,000 fewer audits in 2025 than the previous year, while revenue collected through enforcement declined by almost $5 billion.

The Trump administration argues that technology, including artificial intelligence, can help the IRS operate more efficiently with fewer employees.

Maybe it can.

But here’s the question I keep coming back to:

Can software replace the experienced tax professionals needed to challenge the most sophisticated corporations in America?

We’re about to find out.

The Risk-Reward Calculation

Put yourself in the position of a corporate tax executive.

Your job is to legally minimize your company’s taxes.

Suppose your advisers identify an aggressive but defensible interpretation of the tax code that could save the company $1 billion.

What’s the probability anyone will seriously challenge it?

If there is a strong likelihood that experienced IRS specialists will examine the position, management has one risk calculation.

If the chance of a sophisticated audit is small, management has another.

Meta’s own financial statements give us an interesting glimpse into this world.

At the end of 2025, Meta reported $11.23 billion in net uncertain tax positions, predominantly involving research tax credits and transfer pricing with foreign subsidiaries.

That doesn’t mean Meta did anything improper.

Companies are required to account for uncertain tax positions.

But $11 billion tells us something important: Enormous amounts of money can depend upon tax questions where the answer isn’t necessarily black and white.

The Referee Problem

Our income-tax system depends heavily upon voluntary compliance.

Most people pay what they owe because the law requires it and because they know the IRS may check.

Enforcement provides the referee.

But imagine playing a football game where one team has 50 coaches studying the rulebook and there is one referee responsible for watching the offense and defense.

Eventually the rulebook isn’t the biggest problem.

The lack of referees is.

That’s what concerns me about reducing the government’s ability to examine highly complicated tax returns.

This isn’t an argument for harassing ordinary taxpayers. Quite the opposite.

Most ordinary taxpayers have income that’s easily verified through W-2s, 1099s and other reporting. The difficult enforcement problem lies at the other end—where transactions are extraordinarily complicated and billions of dollars can turn on the interpretation of a few words in the tax code.

Is Meta the Problem?

I don’t think so.

If Congress gives a corporation a legal tax deduction, I expect the corporation to take it.

If Congress creates an R&D credit and Meta legitimately qualifies, I expect Meta to claim it.

A corporation’s management has responsibilities to its shareholders.

So perhaps Meta isn’t the problem.

Maybe the system is.

Congress writes an extraordinarily complicated tax code filled with incentives, deductions and credits.

Corporations hire extraordinarily talented people to maximize those benefits.

Then we reduce the resources available to the government to determine whether the resulting tax returns comply with the law.

What should we expect to happen?

Then I Looked at My Own Tax Return

All these billions of dollars can become mind-numbing.

So I decided to make this personal.

I pulled out my own 2025 federal income-tax return.

My federal income tax was approximately 12.5% of my adjusted gross income.

Then I looked again at Meta.

Based on its financial disclosures, Meta’s current federal income-tax expense was approximately 3.6% of its U.S. income in 2025.

Before anyone writes to tell me I’m comparing apples and oranges, I understand that.

My 12.5% and Meta’s 3.6% aren’t technically equivalent tax rates. Corporate tax accounting involves deferred taxes, credits and other adjustments that make direct comparisons difficult.

But I’m still left staring at those two numbers.

12.5%.

3.6%.

And I can’t help asking:

Does that seem fair?

What Does $3.9 Billion Look Like?

One number particularly caught my attention.

Meta reported approximately $3.9 billion in research and development tax credits in 2025.

Not $3.9 million.

$3.9 billion.

Congress created the research tax credit because we want businesses to conduct research, develop technology and invest in the future.

There’s a legitimate public-policy argument for doing that.

But let’s put $3.9 billion into terms we can understand.

The average SNAP benefit for people living in households with children is about $174 per person per month. At that average, $3.9 billion is roughly equivalent to an entire year of SNAP benefits for about 1.9 million people living in households with children.

That’s a lot of groceries.

Or consider health insurance.

The average person receiving an Affordable Care Act premium tax credit in 2026 receives approximately $650 per month. At that average, $3.9 billion is roughly equivalent to a year’s premium assistance for about 500,000 people.

That’s a lot of health insurance.

I’m not saying that without Meta’s research credit Congress would automatically spend $3.9 billion on SNAP or health insurance.

Nor am I saying Meta necessarily did anything illegal.

Congress created the credit. If Meta legitimately qualifies, our tax laws allow the company to claim it.

My question is different.

What Do We Choose to Subsidize?

We frequently hear that the federal government can’t afford things.

We can’t afford food assistance.

We can’t afford health-care subsidies.

We can’t afford this program or that program.

That may be true. With a national debt around $40 trillion, we absolutely need to make choices.

But tax breaks are choices too.

When Congress allows a taxpayer to reduce its tax liability through credits or deductions, the Treasury collects less revenue than it otherwise would. That’s why economists refer to many of these provisions as tax expenditures.

The money doesn’t pass through Washington in the same way a SNAP payment does. But it still affects the federal budget. And that’s where this becomes uncomfortable for me.

We can debate how much government should spend on food assistance.

We can debate how much it should subsidize health insurance.

Those debates become political very quickly.

But shouldn’t we apply similar scrutiny when the beneficiary is one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the world?

I’m Not Angry at Meta

This may sound strange after everything I’ve written.

But I’m not particularly angry at Meta for taking a tax credit Congress created.

If my accountant tells me I’m entitled to a legal deduction, I’m probably going to take it.

Why would I expect Meta to behave differently?

My concern is with the system we’ve created.

Congress writes the tax laws.

Congress decides what receives favorable tax treatment.

Meta hires extraordinarily talented people to understand those laws and legally minimize its taxes.

And we’ve simultaneously reduced the government’s ability to examine extraordinarily complicated corporate tax returns.

That’s the part that troubles me.

When I filed my return last year, there wasn’t much mystery.

The IRS knew much of my income from information already reported to it.

There wasn’t an army of tax lawyers figuring out whether I could characterize something differently and save another billion dollars.

I paid what the tax code said I owed.

That amounted to approximately 12.5% of my adjusted gross income.

Meta played under a very different part of the same tax code and reported current federal income-tax expense equal to roughly 3.6% of its U.S. income.

Again, those aren’t identical measurements.

Maybe every dollar of Meta’s tax benefits is completely justified under the laws Congress wrote.

But that brings me right back to my original question:

Are those the tax laws we want?

Because ultimately this isn’t simply about Meta.

It’s about who writes the rules, who benefits from them, who has the resources to take maximum advantage of them—and whether we have enough referees to make sure everyone is actually playing by those rules.

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Quote of the Day

“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

That doesn’t answer how much any of us should pay.

But it reminds us that taxes aren’t simply money disappearing into Washington. They’re how we collectively pay for the government and services we’ve decided we want.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to the career IRS revenue agents, attorneys, accountants, economists and other professionals who try to enforce an extraordinarily complicated tax code.

Their job isn’t to make people pay more than they owe.

It’s to make sure they pay what the law says they owe.

For the tax system to be credible, somebody on the other side of the table needs to understand the rules just as well as the taxpayer’s experts do.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to Congress for creating a tax code so complicated that understanding it has become an industry of its own.

Tax incentives can serve legitimate purposes.

But when billions of dollars depend upon interpretations that require armies of lawyers and accountants to understand, perhaps we should ask whether complexity itself has become part of the problem.

Question of the Day

If an ordinary taxpayer pays a higher percentage of income in federal income tax than one of America’s most profitable corporations, does that necessarily mean the system is unfair—or does it mean we need to look much more closely at the rules that produced those results?

And perhaps more importantly:

Who should decide which activities deserve billions of dollars in tax benefits?

Lyrics of the Day

Wednesday’s answer:

“Think” — Aretha Franklin

Today’s lyric:

“Money, it’s a gas.”

Name the song and the artist and put your answer in the comment section below.

Answer next time.

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Why Do Smart Men Do Such Stupid Things?

A story out of Cornell University caught my attention this week.

A female student has filed a lawsuit alleging that seven members of a fraternity drugged and sexually assaulted her at their fraternity house in October 2024.

The allegations are disturbing. They are also allegations.

The young men accused are entitled to defend themselves, and I don’t know enough to determine what happened that night. But the story raised two broader questions for me:

Why do intelligent, accomplished men sometimes do incredibly stupid—and sometimes terrible—things when it comes to women and sex?

And: When they do, why are we sometimes reluctant to hold them accountable?

Being Smart Isn’t the Same as Having Good Judgment

We tend to assume intelligence and good judgment travel together. They don’t necessarily.

Psychologists distinguish between intelligence—the ability to learn, reason and solve problems—and rational judgment, which involves making sound decisions and regulating our behavior.

A person can be extraordinarily talented academically and still exercise terrible judgment.

Being smart may help you understand calculus. It doesn’t guarantee empathy, character or respect for another person’s boundaries.

Alcohol Matters—but It Isn’t an Excuse

Alcohol frequently appears in research about sexual aggression.

It can impair judgment, weaken inhibitions and focus our attention on what’s immediately in front of us rather than longer-term consequences.

That may help explain behavior. But explanation and excuse are different things.

If I get drunk and drive my car into another vehicle, alcohol doesn’t absolve me of responsibility. Why should sexual misconduct be different?

Being drunk may help explain a terrible decision. It doesn’t transfer responsibility for that decision to someone else.

Then There’s the Group

Most of us behave differently in groups than we do alone. We look to people around us for clues about what’s acceptable. If everyone approves, something begins to seem acceptable. If nobody objects, we may assume nobody sees a problem.

A young man may go along because he thinks his friends approve. His friends may remain silent because they think everyone else approves.

And suddenly nobody asks: What would I think if this were happening to someone I love?

Imagine she’s your daughter. Your sister. Your girlfriend. Your granddaughter.

Would the behavior suddenly look different?

The more important question isn’t someone’s IQ.

It’s whether we see the woman in front of us as a human being deserving the same dignity and protection we would demand for someone we love.

Then Something Strange Happens

Suppose misconduct occurs.

Our attention sometimes begins to shift. Instead of asking what the man did, we start asking what the woman did.

She can drink too much. She can go to a fraternity party. She can flirt. A woman can make an unwise decision but that doesn’t give someone else permission to assault her.

“But This Could Ruin His Life”

A young man is found responsible for serious misconduct, and suddenly we hear about everything he stands to lose. His education. His career. His reputation. His future.

Those things matter. Due process matters. Evidence matters. False accusations can destroy lives too. No one should lose his freedom, education or reputation simply because an accusation has been made.

But once serious misconduct has been fairly established, consequences are not an unfortunate distraction from accountability. They are accountability.

What About Her Life?

If we’re going to ask what punishment might do to the perpetrator’s life, shouldn’t we also ask what the original act did to hers?

Maybe she has difficulty trusting people. Maybe relationships become harder. Maybe she struggles academically. Maybe the effects continue for years. The consequences will differ for every person.

There’s something backwards about spending more time worrying about the consequences imposed on someone found responsible than about the consequences experienced by the person who was harmed.

Does Privilege Change the Equation?

Would we react the same way if the accused young men were poor, unknown, poorly educated and unknown?

I’d like to think so. I’m not certain we always do. Privilege shouldn’t purchase a discount on accountability. The evidence should determine responsibility. The seriousness of the conduct should help determine the consequences. Status shouldn’t.

The punishment should fit what was proved. And there should be opportunities, where appropriate, for rehabilitation and redemption.

However, redemption generally begins with something much harder: Taking responsibility. Acknowledging what you did. Accepting the consequences. Trying to become a different person afterward.

Where Are the Other Men?

There’s one final piece I keep coming back to.

If something inappropriate is happening in a room full of men: Who says stop?

We spend a lot of time teaching young women how to protect themselves. Perhaps we’ve spent too little time asking young men: What are you supposed to do when another man crosses the line?

Being a good man isn’t simply refusing to participate. Sometimes it means being the guy willing to say: This stops now. It means: Taking action.

That takes something intelligence can’t provide. It takes character.

Maybe We’re Teaching the Wrong Lesson

We spend enormous amounts of time preparing young people to succeed. Maybe we need to teach our sons and grandsons something even more fundamental:

Respect the dignity of the person in front of you. If you cross that line, being smart, successful, wealthy or promising doesn’t exempt you from the consequences.

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Quote of the Day

“Character, however, is what you really are.”

— John Wooden

Intelligence, education, wealth and success may tell us something about a person’s abilities.

Character tells us something different—and perhaps more important—about what that person does when nobody is stopping him.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to the person in the group who is willing to say, “Stop.”

It takes very little courage to go along with your friends. It takes considerably more to challenge them when you know something is wrong.

Sometimes being a good man isn’t simply refusing to participate. It’s being willing to protect someone else when everyone around you remains silent.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to the argument: “But holding him accountable could ruin his future.”

Due process matters. Evidence matters. Punishment should fit what was actually proved. But when serious misconduct has been fairly established, a promising future shouldn’t purchase a discount on accountability.

Before worrying exclusively about what the consequences might do to his future, perhaps we should spend at least as much time considering what his actions did to hers future.

Question of the Day

Why are we sometimes more concerned about the consequences that accountability may have on the person who caused the harm than we are about the consequences experienced by the person who was harmed?

And would we feel differently if the woman involved were our daughter, granddaughter, sister or close friend?

Lyrics of the Day

Monday’s answer:

“Centerfield” — John Fogerty

Today’s lyric:

“You better think about what you’re trying to do to me.”

Name the song and the artist and put your answer in the comment section of the blog below.

Answer next time.

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My Verlander Moment

I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was June 12, 2007. I was umpiring a doubleheader in the Ann Arbor Recreation Department’s Wooden Bat League at Veterans Park on the west side of Ann Arbor.

I had worked the plate in the first game and was on the bases for the second.

Between innings, I was standing in the right-field grass, stopwatch running, waiting for the teams to take the field. My partner and I had agreed before the game that we were going to enforce the time limit between innings.

We were well past it.

Neither team had made a move.

Suddenly, my partner called me in for a conference.

He explained the problem.

Justin Verlander had a no-hitter going into the ninth inning against the Milwaukee Brewers. Apparently, everyone at Veterans Park was listening to the game on the radio, and neither team wanted to take the field until Verlander either completed the no-hitter or gave up a hit.

My partner wasn’t sure what to do.

I was.

I announced that our game was being delayed because of technical issues and would resume as soon as those technical issues were resolved.

For the next 15 minutes or so, players, umpires and spectators at Veterans Park listened as Verlander completed the first no-hitter of his career.

I then announced that the technical issues had been resolved, and our game resumed.

I had a smile on my face for the rest of the night.

Nineteen years later, I watched Verlander take a Major League mound for the final time.

It brought back a pretty good memory.

While We Said Goodbye to Verlander, Another Baseball Career Was Ending

Laz Díaz spent more than three decades behind Major League catchers. On Saturday, baseball quietly said goodbye to him too.

Like most Tigers fans watching Saturday’s game, much of my attention was focused on Justin Verlander.

And rightfully so.

We were watching the final start of a remarkable 21-year career. Verlander gave Detroit one last glimpse of the pitcher we’ve watched for so many years—5⅓ innings, six strikeouts and an emotional walk from the mound after his seven-year-old daughter Genevieve came running out to embrace him.

But I found myself watching someone else too.

The guy standing behind home plate: Laz Díaz.

Saturday was Verlander’s final start. Coincidentally, it was also Díaz’s final game behind the plate after a Major League umpiring career that began at Tiger Stadium in 1995.

As a former high-school umpire myself, I particularly enjoyed watching the respect the players, managers and coaches showed Díaz throughout the game.

A Different Kind of Baseball Career

Players become famous.

Umpires generally become famous only when something goes wrong.

For more than three decades, Díaz stood behind Major League catchers, worked alongside generations of players and managers and watched baseball change dramatically around him.

Think about the span of that career.

When Díaz made his Major League debut at Tiger Stadium in 1995, Sparky Anderson was managing the Tigers. Lou Whitaker, Kirk Gibson and Cecil Fielder were still playing.

Díaz went on to work three World Series and eventually became a crew chief.

Thirty-one years later, he returned to Detroit for his final weekend as a Major League umpire.

And standing 60 feet, six inches away on Saturday was Justin Verlander making his final start.

There’s another wonderful connection.

Díaz was the home-plate umpire for Verlander’s first postseason start in 2006.

Twenty years later, he was behind the plate for Verlander’s last regular-season start.

A Hollywood script couldn’t have made it much better.

Why I Always Enjoyed Watching Him

Díaz was one of my favorite umpires.

Not because he never missed a call.

Every umpire misses calls.

I liked him because he seemed to understand something important about umpiring:

The game wasn’t about him.

He respected the players.

He respected the game.

But he also seemed to enjoy himself.

That matters.

Baseball is a serious business at the Major League level, but ultimately it’s still a game.

Díaz never seemed to forget that.

Saturday provided a wonderful example.

Major League Baseball now uses the Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System. If a player believes the umpire missed a pitch, he can challenge the call and let technology decide.

Díaz faced four challenges Saturday.

He went four-for-four.

Every one of his calls was upheld.

Each time the computer confirmed his call, Díaz seemed to enjoy it a little more.

There were smiles.

There was playful body language.

By the end, there was even a little celebratory dance.

Here was a man finishing more than three decades of calling balls and strikes having some fun with the computer that was checking his work.

I loved it.

And Apparently, the Players Did Too

What touched me most was watching the players.

As the game progressed, you could sense their affection and respect for Díaz.

There was joking.

There were smiles.

There was the kind of interaction that comes from people who have spent years together inside the foul lines of Major League Baseball.

At one point, Díaz even jokingly “checked” Verlander’s glove for a sticky substance, producing a laugh between two men finishing extraordinary careers on the same afternoon.

That moment probably said more about Díaz than any statistic could.

He could enforce the rules without forgetting the people playing the game.

Two Goodbyes

Saturday will understandably be remembered as Justin Verlander’s day.

Someday we’ll almost certainly watch Verlander take his place among baseball’s immortals in Cooperstown.

But from my perspective as someone who once put on the mask and chest protector—even if it was only at the high-school level—Saturday had another story worth remembering.

One great baseball career was ending on the mound.

Another was ending behind the plate.

Justin Verlander spent 21 years trying to fool hitters.

Laz Díaz spent more than three decades trying not to be fooled by pitchers.

And on his final afternoon behind the plate, when four players asked a computer to check his work, the computer essentially told him:

Laz, you got every one right.

Díaz smiled, celebrated a little and enjoyed the moment.

After all those years behind the plate, he’d earned it.

Not a bad way for an umpire to say goodbye.

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Question of the Day: What Kind of Inheritance Are We Leaving Our Grandchildren?

I’ve been thinking about inheritance lately.

Not because I’m planning on going anywhere soon, but at 75, I think about these things differently than I did at 45.

Most people I know from my generation have a simple goal.

If we’ve been fortunate enough to accumulate some savings, we’d like to leave something behind for our children and grandchildren.

Maybe it’s a house.

Maybe it’s an investment account.

Maybe it’s enough money to help with an education, a first home or simply make life a little easier.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to do that.

But even if we can’t leave our children a financial inheritance, I think most of us would agree on one thing:

We certainly don’t want to leave them our bills.

Imagine dying with a huge credit-card balance and telling your children:

Sorry. We enjoyed spending the money. Now you figure out how to pay for it.

Most of us would be horrified by the idea.

Which makes me wonder:

Why do we think so differently when the debt belongs to all of us?

Two Very Different Ideas About Responsibility

In our personal lives, many of us have spent decades trying to be financially responsible.

We paid our mortgages. We saved for retirement. We tried not to accumulate debt we couldn’t repay.

Eventually, many of us began thinking about what we might leave behind.

It’s my definition of a legacy:

Leave the people who follow you a little better off than you were.

Yet collectively, we’re doing something very different.

The federal government has accumulated roughly $40 trillion in gross debt.

More important than the exact number is its direction.

It’s still going up.

CBO projects annual federal deficits continuing to grow over the coming decade.

That’s not an inheritance I want to leave my children and grandchildren.

But I am.

Our Grandchildren Aren’t Getting a $40 Trillion Bill

There’s an important distinction.

The Treasury isn’t someday going to divide $40 trillion among Americans and send our children and grandchildren invoices.

The United States can refinance debt, collect taxes and issue Treasury securities. Borrowing can also be entirely appropriate during wars, recessions, pandemics and other national emergencies.

I’m not arguing that all government debt is bad.

I’m arguing something different.

Debt has a cost.

And the more debt we accumulate today, the more difficult choices future Americans may have to make because of decisions we made before they had any say in them.

The Real Inheritance May Be the Interest

CBO projects the federal government will spend about $1 trillion on net interest in 2026.

By 2036, it projects roughly $2.1 trillion a year.

Think about that.

That money isn’t educating a child.

It isn’t repairing a bridge.

It isn’t supporting Social Security.

It isn’t strengthening the military.

It isn’t curing cancer.

It’s the cost of financing previous borrowing.

That’s the inheritance problem.

Every dollar future taxpayers devote to interest is a dollar unavailable for something else—or a dollar that must be raised through additional taxes or borrowing.

The debt limits their choices.

And That’s Where the Contradiction Hits Me

I will feel pretty good if I’m able to leave my children and grandchildren some money.

At the same time, I’m part of a generation that has benefited from decades of federal spending while repeatedly electing governments that spent more than they collected.

We enjoyed the services.

We received the benefits.

We accepted the tax cuts.

And we borrowed part of the difference.

We’ve cut taxes without fully offsetting the lost revenue.

We’ve increased spending without fully paying for it.

We’ve fought wars and responded to recessions, a financial crisis and a pandemic.

There are plenty of explanations.

But explanations don’t make the debt disappear.

Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Question

Political debates about debt usually begin with:

What should we cut?

Or:

Whose taxes should we raise?

Those questions immediately divide us.

Maybe we should begin somewhere else.

What do we owe the generations that come after us?

That’s the same question many of us ask when doing our estate planning.

Have I taken care of my responsibilities?

Have I avoided leaving unnecessary problems?

And, if I’ve been fortunate, have I left something behind that makes their lives a little better?

If those are reasonable questions around our kitchen tables, why aren’t they reasonable questions in Washington?

We Inherited Something Too

It’s also worth remembering that previous generations didn’t simply leave us debt.

They left us assets.

They built interstate highways, water systems and universities.

They funded scientific research.

They created Social Security and Medicare.

They built infrastructure and institutions we still rely upon.

Some of those investments were financed with debt.

So perhaps the goal shouldn’t be to leave our grandchildren no national debt.

That isn’t realistic, and it may not even be desirable.

Maybe the more important goal is this:

Leave them a country whose assets, opportunities and financial capacity are greater than what our parents left us—and stronger than the debt obligations we’re passing along.

Maybe that’s what a national legacy should look like.

**************************************************************************************************

Quote of the Day

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

— Jackie Robinson

That seems appropriate today for two very different reasons.

A baseball umpire finishes a 31-year career with the respect of the people around him.

And the rest of us have to decide what kind of impact we’re going to leave on the generations that follow us.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to Laz Díaz.

Thirty-one years in Major League Baseball.

Three World Series. Thousands of games. Millions of pitches. And through it all, he seemed to remember that while the calls mattered, so did the people.

Thanks for the memories, Laz.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to our remarkable ability to worry about the inheritance we’re leaving our own children while paying far less attention to the financial inheritance we’re collectively leaving everyone’s children.

We’ll spend hours with financial advisers making sure our personal affairs are in order.

Maybe we should demand the same attention to the country’s balance sheet.

Question of the Day

If one of our responsibilities as parents and grandparents is to leave the next generation better off than we were, should that same responsibility influence the way we think about the national debt?

And if so, what are we personally willing to give up—or pay more for—to make that happen?

Lyrics of the Day

Yesterday’s answer:

“Come Together” — The Beatles.

Today’s lyric seems appropriate for a day when I’m thinking about baseball:

“Put me in, Coach, I’m ready to play today.”

Name the song and the artist.

Answer tomorrow.

Video of the Day

https://www.mlb.com/video/laz-diaz-is-honored-before-last-game?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Major League Baseball honored Díaz at Comerica Park on Sunday before the final game of his 31-year career.

A fitting goodbye for an umpire who clearly loved the game.

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Part Three: Congress has a scorekeeper. It tells us what legislation is likely to cost. What happens when we don’t like the answer?

In Part One, I asked whether tax cuts really pay for themselves.

In most instances they covered some of the tax cuts, but rarely did they cover all the tax cuts.

Tax cuts can encourage economic activity. That growth can generate additional tax revenue. But historically, it generally hasn’t generated enough additional revenue to replace everything given up.

In Part Two, I looked at the last time Washington took in more money than it spent.

That happened for four consecutive years from 1998 through 2001.

There wasn’t one magic ingredient.

A strong economy helped enormously. So did adequate revenue, spending restraint, some good fortune and budget rules that made it harder for Congress to simply borrow the difference.

After looking at those two stories, another question occurred to me.

Didn’t we know much of this before we made some of these decisions?

Increasingly, the answer is yes, which brings me to an organization most Americans probably don’t spend much time thinking about.

The Congressional Budget Office.

Washington’s Scorekeeper

Congress created the Congressional Budget Office—CBO—in 1974.

Its job isn’t to decide whether legislation is good or bad.

It doesn’t decide whether taxes should be higher or lower.

And it doesn’t tell members of Congress how to vote.

It does the math.

CBO estimates what proposed legislation is likely to do to federal spending and deficits. For tax legislation, it works with the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Think of them as Washington’s scorekeepers.

The players decide how to play the game. The scorekeeper tells us the score.

The Scorekeeper Isn’t Always Right

CBO makes projections. It doesn’t predict the future with certainty.

It makes assumptions about economic growth, inflation, interest rates and how people and businesses will respond to government policy.

Sometimes those assumptions will be wrong.

Recessions happen.

Pandemics arrive.

Wars begin.

Technology changes productivity.

We shouldn’t treat a CBO estimate as though it were carved into a stone tablet. But that doesn’t make it useless.

If Leah and I were contemplating a major financial decision and our financial adviser told us it was likely to cost substantially more than we expected, I wouldn’t throw away the analysis because the adviser couldn’t guarantee exactly what would happen ten years from now.

I’d want to understand it. Then we’d decide whether the benefit was worth the cost. That seems like a reasonable way to think about CBO too.

Congress Knew the 2025 “Big Beautiful Bill” Would Increase Borrowing

As Congress considered the 2025 tax and spending legislation, CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation analyzed its likely effect on the federal budget.

The projections showed substantially more federal borrowing. Congress passed it anyway.

CBO now estimates that after including economic effects and additional interest costs, the legislation will increase federal deficits by about $4.2 trillion through 2034.

That doesn’t automatically mean Congress made the wrong decision.

Lawmakers may believe a policy is worth additional borrowing. They may believe CBO is underestimating future economic growth. They may place greater importance on other objectives.

Those are judgments Congress is entitled to make.

CBO Is an Adviser, Not a Referee

CBO describes its own cost estimates as advisory. They can be used to help Congress decide rules, but CBO doesn’t enforce those rules; congressional budget committees do.

In other words, the scorekeeper can tell Congress:

This is likely to add substantially to the debt.

Congress can respond:

We understand. We’re doing it anyway.

That surprised me.

Didn’t We Once Have a Rule Against This?

Sort of. In Part Two, I discussed PAYGO—“pay as you go.” The basic idea is wonderfully simple. If Congress creates new spending or cuts taxes, it should generally find a way to pay for it.

Spend another dollar? Find another dollar.

Cut a dollar of revenue? Find an offset somewhere else.

PAYGO still exists in various forms, including a federal statute enacted in 2010. But it isn’t an absolute barrier.

Congress can enact legislation that changes, postpones or effectively waives some of its consequences. So perhaps the more important question isn’t whether we have budget rules.

It’s whether we’re willing to live by them.

What If We Actually Required PAYGO?

Suppose Congress wanted to enact a $1 trillion tax cut.

Fine.

But Congress would also have to identify $1 trillion in spending reductions, other revenue or some combination of the two.

Or suppose Congress wanted to create a new $500 billion government program.

Fine.

Congress would have to explain how it intended to pay for it.

Suddenly the conversation changes.

Instead of:

Should we cut taxes?

It becomes:

Should we cut taxes—and what are we willing to give up to pay for them?

Instead of:

Should government provide this new benefit?

It becomes:

Should government provide this benefit—and who is going to pay for it?

Those are much harder questions. Maybe that’s exactly why Congress avoids asking them.

And Then I Started Thinking About Us

It’s easy to blame Congress. But we elected them.

Most of us say we’re concerned about federal borrowing but, the conversation becomes more difficult when the solution affects us personally.

Tell me Washington should reduce spending, and I might agree. Tell me which program you’re cutting, and I may have a different reaction.

Tell someone taxes need to increase to reduce the deficit, and they may agree. Tell them their taxes are going up, and the conversation changes.

We want Social Security.

We want Medicare.

We want national defense.

We want veterans’ benefits.

We want highways.

We want disaster assistance.

We want safe food and drugs.

There’s nothing irrational about wanting those things. But eventually the arithmetic catches up with us.

Maybe Congress Is Responding to Us

Imagine you’re running for Congress.

One candidate says:

I’ll cut your taxes and protect the government programs you depend upon.

Another says:

I’ll raise some taxes and reduce some benefits because we have to start dealing with the debt.

Which campaign speech gets the applause?

If voters reward tax cuts and new benefits but punish tax increases and spending reductions, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when politicians give us what we’re asking for and then borrow the difference.

That doesn’t excuse elected officials from making difficult decisions. Leadership sometimes requires telling people something they don’t want to hear.

Maybe our national debt isn’t simply something Washington did to us. Maybe it’s also something we’ve allowed Washington to do for us.

The Benefit Comes Today. The Bill Comes Later.

There’s another political reality. CBO often evaluates legislation over a ten-year period.

Members of the House face voters every two years. Presidents every four. Senators every six.

The political benefit of a tax cut or new government program can appear immediately. The debt accumulates gradually.

A taxpayer may notice additional money in a paycheck this year. The benefit is visible.

The borrowing is largely invisible. At least until the interest bill arrives. CBO now projects net federal interest costs rising from about $1 trillion in 2026 to $2.1 trillion in 2036. Eventually, later arrives.

What If Budget Neutral Were the Starting Point?

I’m beginning to wonder whether we need a much simpler expectation.

Not that taxes should always be higher. Not that spending should always be lower. Not that CBO should decide public policy. But perhaps this: Major new tax cuts and major new spending programs should normally be paid for.

If Congress wants to make an exception because of a recession, war, pandemic or genuine national emergency, explain why.

Budget neutrality isn’t a magic wand. There would be arguments about what counts as savings, what time-period should be used and whether CBO’s assumptions are reasonable. And sometimes borrowing makes sense.

But the starting question would change.

Instead of: How much can we borrow?

We would ask: How are we going to pay for this?

Maybe the Scorekeeper Isn’t the Problem

After looking at this, I don’t think our problem is that we don’t have enough information.

CBO provides estimates. The Joint Committee on Taxation analyzes tax legislation. Economists debate the assumptions. Members of Congress have staffs. The numbers are publicly available.

We may disagree with a projection. We may decide a policy is worth borrowing money for.

But we can’t really say nobody warned us. Which leaves me with an uncomfortable conclusion.

Maybe Washington’s fiscal problem isn’t primarily an accounting problem. Maybe it’s a political problem. And perhaps it’s also a voter problem.

We want benefits today, but we don’t like paying for them today. And our political system makes it remarkably easy to send part of the bill to tomorrow. To our children and to our grandchildren.

Three Questions

After working through these three articles, I’ve ended up with three fairly simple questions.

Part One: When we cut taxes, does economic growth replace the revenue we give up?

Usually, not all of it.

Part Two: Can the federal government live within its means?

We’ve done it before, although it required a strong economy, adequate revenue, spending restraint, favorable circumstances and compromise.

And finally:

Part Three: If we know a policy is likely to increase the debt, should Congress have to explain how it intends to pay for it before passing it?

Maybe that’s the conversation we ought to be having.

Not whether Republicans are better with money. Not whether Democrats are better with money. History gives both parties plenty to answer for.

The question is much simpler. If we aren’t willing to pay for the government we want, how long are we willing to keep sending the bill to our children and grandchildren?

Quote of the Day

“There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

— Popularized by economist Milton Friedman

Someone always pays.

The question is whether it’s us—or someone who comes after us.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to the people at CBO, the Joint Committee on Taxation and other nonpartisan institutions whose job is to give elected officials information they may not particularly want to hear.

Good decisions require good information.

Even when we don’t like the answer.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to all of us—including politicians and voters—when we demand fiscal responsibility right up until fiscal responsibility costs us something.

It’s easy to cut somebody else’s program.

It’s easy to raise somebody else’s taxes.

The hard part begins when the sacrifice becomes ours.

Question of the Day

Here’s the question I’d really like readers to answer:

Should Congress normally be required to pay for major new tax cuts and major new spending programs rather than adding their cost to the national debt?

And if your answer is yes, should there be exceptions for recessions, wars and genuine national emergencies?

Lyrics of the Day

Yesterday’s answer:

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — The Rolling Stones.

And for the final installment:

“You better free your mind instead.”

Name the song and the artist.

Answer in my next post.

Video of the Day:

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Part Two: We actually paid our annual bills without borrowing the difference. How did we do it?

Yesterday I asked whether tax cuts really pay for themselves.

The evidence I found suggests that while tax cuts can stimulate economic activity, the resulting growth generally doesn’t produce enough additional revenue to replace everything the government gives up.

That left me wondering about the other side of the equation.

Have we ever actually gotten this right?

The answer surprised me.

For four consecutive years—from 1998 through 2001—the federal government took in more money than it spent.

No trillion-dollar annual shortfall.

No additional borrowing simply to make that year’s ends meet.

Think about how remarkable that sounds today.

So what happened?

Was it Bill Clinton?

Was it Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress?

Higher taxes?

Lower spending?

A booming economy?

The answer turns out to be:

Some of all of them.

And a little good fortune besides.

It Started Before Clinton and Gingrich

The story actually begins with President George H.W. Bush.

By 1990, Washington had become increasingly concerned about persistent federal borrowing.

Bush reached a budget agreement with Congress that included spending restraints and higher taxes.

Politically, that decision was costly because he had famously promised:

“Read my lips: no new taxes.”

But the agreement also established rules designed to make Washington think harder about how it would pay for things.

One became known as PAYGO—“pay as you go.”

The concept was pretty simple.

If Congress wanted certain new spending or tax reductions, it was generally supposed to find savings or additional revenue somewhere else.

Congress also placed limits on portions of federal spending.

Washington was making it harder to simply put every new idea on the national credit card.

Then Clinton Made Another Difficult Choice

Bill Clinton became president in 1993 with the federal government still spending considerably more than it collected.

That year, Congress passed a deficit-reduction package.

Among other things, it raised taxes, particularly on higher-income Americans.

Republicans strongly opposed it.

Some predicted that higher taxes would damage the economy.

Instead, the economy entered one of the strongest expansions in American history.

Millions of people went to work.

Businesses grew.

Corporate profits increased.

The stock market soared.

And when people earn more and businesses make more money, the government collects more taxes.

Money coming into Washington began rising rapidly.

Then Newt Gingrich Arrived

Republicans took control of Congress after the 1994 election, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House.

Clinton and Gingrich were hardly political buddies.

They fought over taxes.

They fought over spending.

They fought so bitterly that parts of the federal government shut down.

But something remarkable happened while they were fighting.

The government’s financial condition kept getting better.

Republicans pushed to restrain spending and balance the budget.

Clinton resisted some of their proposed cuts but also made deficit reduction an important part of his agenda.

Eventually, in 1997, Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress reached a bipartisan budget agreement.

Neither side got everything it wanted.

Then something happened that neither side fully anticipated.

The Economy Took Off

As late as 1997, government forecasters still expected Washington to continue spending more than it collected.

Instead, the economy performed much better than expected.

Unemployment fell.

Productivity increased.

Corporate profits grew.

The technology boom sent the stock market soaring.

And that stock-market boom produced unexpectedly large amounts of tax revenue, particularly from capital gains.

Washington suddenly had far more money coming in than experts had predicted.

At the same time, a strong economy meant fewer people needed some forms of government assistance.

More money coming in.

Less pressure on some spending.

That’s a pretty good recipe for improving your finances—whether you’re the United States government or a family sitting at the kitchen table.

We Also Got a Break From History

There was another enormous advantage.

The Cold War had ended.

For decades, the United States had spent enormous amounts competing militarily with the Soviet Union.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, defense spending declined substantially relative to the size of the economy.

People called it the peace dividend.

Washington didn’t suddenly stop caring about national security.

The world had changed, allowing the country to devote a smaller share of its resources to defense.

Combine that with the booming economy and unexpectedly strong tax collections, and balancing the budget became considerably easier.

Then Washington Did Something Important

Washington could have spent all that unexpected money.

Politicians could have immediately created large new programs or enacted much larger tax cuts.

For a while, they largely resisted doing that.

That’s not to say Clinton and Gingrich suddenly became models of fiscal harmony.

They didn’t.

But Washington allowed much of the improvement to flow through to the government’s bottom line.

And in 1998, something happened that hadn’t occurred in decades.

The federal government took in more money than it spent.

Then it happened again in 1999.

And again in 2000.

And again in 2001.

For four consecutive years, Washington didn’t have to borrow money simply to cover that year’s bills.

So Who Gets the Credit?

This is usually where the political argument starts.

Democrats point to Bill Clinton.

Republicans point to Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress.

Others point to George H.W. Bush and the politically costly budget agreement he signed in 1990.

They’re all part of the story.

But I’m reluctant to give any politician too much credit.

The economy performed far better than expected.

The stock-market boom produced unusually high tax revenue.

The end of the Cold War allowed defense spending to decline.

Those were enormous advantages no president or Speaker created.

But political choices mattered too.

Washington had adopted rules intended to discourage new borrowing.

Taxes had been increased.

Spending had been restrained in important areas.

And when unexpected revenue arrived, Washington didn’t immediately spend all of it.

Maybe the politicians’ biggest accomplishment was simply this:

For a while, they didn’t get in the way of the good fortune they had been given.

And Something Else Started Happening

When the government stopped borrowing as much money, something else improved.

Its interest burden became easier to manage.

Think of your own household.

If you carry a large credit-card balance, part of every month’s payment goes toward interest rather than something you’d actually like to buy.

Reduce the balance and eventually the interest bill comes down too.

The federal government works much the same way.

For a few years, America briefly had that cycle working in our favor.

Compare that with today.

CBO projects federal net interest spending of about $1 trillion in 2026, rising to roughly $2.1 trillion by 2036 if current law generally remains in place.

Debt produces interest.

Interest contributes to deficits.

Deficits produce more debt.

And the cycle continues.

Then It Ended

The good times didn’t last.

The technology bubble burst.

The economy entered a recession in 2001.

The September 11 attacks changed America’s national-security needs almost overnight.

Taxes were reduced.

Defense and homeland-security spending increased.

Wars followed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Other federal spending increased as well.

By 2002, Washington was again spending more than it collected.

We haven’t recorded another annual unified federal budget surplus since.

What Can We Learn From It?

I don’t think the answer is simply to recreate Bill Clinton’s tax rates.

Nor is it to recreate Newt Gingrich’s spending priorities.

America is different today.

Our population is older.

Social Security and Medicare cost considerably more.

The international environment is different.

And we’re carrying vastly more debt.

But I think the 1990s still have something to teach us.

A strong economy matters enormously.

Adequate tax revenue matters.

Controlling spending matters.

Not immediately spending every unexpected dollar matters.

And perhaps most importantly, compromise matters.

Nobody Got Everything They Wanted

Bill Clinton didn’t get everything he wanted.

Newt Gingrich didn’t get everything he wanted.

Republicans didn’t get everything they wanted.

Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted.

George H.W. Bush made a budget deal that was politically costly.

Yet over the course of the decade, Washington went from borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars a year to taking in more than it spent.

Maybe the lesson of the 1990s isn’t really about Clinton or Gingrich.

Maybe it’s much simpler.

Living within your means requires saying no.

Sometimes to spending.

Sometimes to tax cuts.

Sometimes to your own political party.

And sometimes to voters who want government benefits without wanting to pay for them.

For four years, the United States demonstrated that balancing the federal budget wasn’t impossible.

We had some extraordinary good fortune.

But we also made some difficult choices.

We haven’t forgotten how arithmetic works.

The question is whether we’ve forgotten how to compromise.

Coming Tomorrow: If We Know the Cost, Why Don’t We Pay for It?

While researching Parts One and Two, something began bothering me.

Today Congress has an organization whose job is to estimate what proposed legislation will cost.

It’s called the Congressional Budget Office.

So if we have a reasonably good idea that a tax cut or spending program will add to the debt before Congress votes on it, why do we pass it without paying for it?

That’s tomorrow’s question.

Quote of the Day

“Politics is the art of the possible.”

— Otto von Bismarck

Perhaps governing is also the art of accepting that getting something usually means giving something else up.

Orchid of the Day

Today’s Orchid goes to politicians who are willing to compromise and accept 70 or 80 percent of what they want rather than accomplishing nothing because they couldn’t get 100 percent.

Compromise isn’t surrender.

Sometimes it’s how governing actually gets done.

Onion of the Day

Today’s Onion goes to anyone who claims one president, one Speaker, one political party or one policy single-handedly created the budget surpluses of the late 1990s.

The history is considerably more interesting than that.

Question of the Day

Would you be more willing to accept a political compromise you didn’t particularly like if you believed it would materially reduce the national debt?

How much compromise would you accept?

Lyrics of the Day

Yesterday’s answer:

“Sunny Afternoon” — The Kinks.

Today’s lyric:

“You can’t always get what you want.”

Name the song and the group and submit your answer in the comments section below.

Answer tomorrow.

Video of the Day:

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We've been trying versions of the same idea for 45 years. What actually happened?

I’ve been thinking lately about something that isn’t exactly a new problem.

How do we pay for the government we want without continually borrowing more money?

With our national debt now around $40 trillion, that question seems more important than ever.

But rather than start with what Republicans say or what Democrats say, I decided to look backward and ask what actually happened.

That led me in two different—but closely connected—directions. And eventually to a third.

Today, in Part One, I’m looking at tax cuts.

For more than four decades, we’ve repeatedly heard that reducing taxes will encourage investment, stimulate the economy and produce additional tax revenue. There is evidence that some of that happens.

But I’ve always wondered about the next question:

Does the additional economic growth generate enough revenue to pay for the tax cuts?

We’ve tried versions of this idea under Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Donald Trump and, most recently, with the “Big Beautiful Bill” enacted in 2025.

So I decided to look at the results.

In Part Two, I’ll look at something almost completely different.

There actually was a period in recent American history when Washington stopped adding to the debt through its annual budget.

For four consecutive years—from 1998 through 2001—the federal government took in more money than it spent.

How did that happen?

And in Part Three, I’ll look at a question that emerged while researching the first two:

If Congress has reasonably good estimates of what legislation will cost before voting on it, why don’t we require ourselves to pay for it?

I think the three stories belong together.

I’m not expecting them to provide a magic formula for eliminating a $40 trillion national debt.

But perhaps looking at what we’ve actually tried—and what actually happened—is a better place to start than listening to another round of political promises.

Part One. Do Tax Cuts Pay for Themselves?

Something I read in The New York Times this week got me thinking about an economic idea we’ve been experimenting with for most of my adult life.

It received widespread attention when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981.

The idea was relatively simple.

Cut taxes.

Leave more money with individuals and businesses.

They’ll spend and invest more. Businesses will expand. More people will work. The economy will grow.

And as the economy grows, the government will collect some of the lost tax revenue back.

It sounds reasonable.

And here’s something important I found as I started looking into it:

Part of it works.

Tax policy affects behavior. Lower tax rates can encourage work, saving and investment.

But there’s another part of the argument that interests me much more.

Does the additional economic growth generate enough additional tax revenue to pay for the tax cuts?

We’ve now had more than four decades to find out.

The Idea Sounds Pretty Good

When Reagan took office, America had serious economic problems.

Inflation was high. Interest rates were high. The economy was struggling.

Reagan argued that high tax rates discouraged work, investment and entrepreneurship.

Lower the rates, the argument went, and people would have greater incentives to work, save and invest.

That’s what became known as supply-side economics—or, more popularly, Reaganomics.

The economy eventually grew strongly during the Reagan years.

But here’s the distinction that sometimes gets lost: Helping the economy grow and paying for a tax cut aren’t the same thing.

The government still has bills to pay

If we collect less money in taxes, something eventually must happen.

We spend less.

We borrow more.

Or economic growth generates enough additional tax revenue to make up for what we gave up.

That third possibility is the one I wanted to understand.

So What Happened?

The Reagan tax cuts were followed by substantial economic growth, particularly after the severe recession of the early 1980s.

Federal income-tax revenue initially declined relative to the size of the economy. The economic pie got bigger. But the government’s share of that pie got smaller.

The growth didn’t simply replace all the revenue that had been given up.

In 2001 and 2003 we tried substantial tax reductions again under President George W. Bush.

The economy grew during much of that period too. But once again, the tax reductions didn’t pay for themselves.

That doesn’t mean tax cuts caused all the deficits that followed. Far from it.

We fought wars. Federal spending increased. Eventually we experienced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

There’s plenty of responsibility to go around. But the pattern was becoming interesting.

Then We Tried It Again

In 2017, Congress enacted another major tax reduction.

This one is particularly useful because the Congressional Budget Office tried to calculate both sides of the equation.

The CBO concluded that the tax law did increase economic activity. That’s important. Part of the theory worked.

The stronger economy generated additional tax revenue.

But CBO estimated that after accounting for the additional cost of servicing the debt, the stronger economy offset only about 20 percent of the projected increase in deficits.

Think about that. We got additional growth. We got additional tax revenue.

We just didn’t get enough to pay the bill.

Now We’re Trying It Again

That brings me to the tax and spending legislation enacted in 2025, commonly called the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Once again, taxes were reduced substantially.

And once again, supporters argued that lower taxes would help stimulate economic growth.

The CBO projects additional economic activity from the law. But it also projects substantially more borrowing.

Its current estimate is that, after including both economic effects and additional interest costs, the legislation will add about $4.2 trillion to federal deficits through 2034.

And that’s where this stopped being simply an economic question for me.

This legislation didn’t just reduce taxes. It also reduced spending on programs that millions of Americans depend upon.

Who Gets the Benefit—and Who Pays?

Two of the programs affected are Medicaid and SNAP, the food-assistance program.

Supporters of the changes make arguments that deserve to be heard.

They say work requirements encourage employment. They say government assistance should be directed toward people who genuinely need it. They say waste and improper payments should be reduced.

Those are legitimate issues to debate.

But I wanted to know something else.

Who receives the benefits from the tax and spending changes—and who is most affected by the reductions in government assistance?

What I found bothered me

The CBO estimates that the 2025 law reduces resources toward the bottom while increasing them in the middle and toward the top; its average figures are about -$1,214 annually for the lowest decile and +$13,622 for the highest. CBO attributes much of the loss at the bottom to Medicaid and SNAP reductions.

The direction is difficult for me to ignore

I have no objection to successful people being successful.

I’ve been fortunate in my own life. I don’t believe people should be penalized simply because they’ve worked hard, invested wisely or done well financially.

But I have difficulty understanding the wisdom of substantially reducing taxes when many of the benefits flow toward people who are already doing well, while simultaneously reducing food and health-care assistance relied upon by people who have considerably less.

Especially when we’re still borrowing trillions of dollars.

If we were making those sacrifices to solve our national debt problem, I could at least understand the argument.

But we’re not.

We’re reducing assistance for some people who have the fewest resources. We’re providing significant tax benefits to people with considerably more.

And we’re still adding trillions of dollars to the debt.

That is the part I have trouble reconciling.

The $40 Trillion Question

I don’t blame our enormous national debt on Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, or Trump

And I certainly don’t blame it exclusively on Republicans or Democrats.

We’ve all had a hand in it.

We’ve cut taxes. We’ve increased spending. We’ve fought wars. We’ve responded to recessions and a pandemic.

Social Security and Medicare costs have increased as our population has aged.

And increasingly, we’re spending enormous amounts simply paying interest on money we’ve already borrowed.

But after more than four decades of trying versions of the same tax-cut strategy, I think we’re entitled to ask: Did it work the way we were told it would?

The answer seems more complicated than either side would probably like.

Tax cuts can help stimulate economic activity.

Economic growth can return some of the lost revenue.

But the evidence I’ve looked at doesn’t support the idea that large tax cuts routinely generate enough additional revenue to pay for themselves.

Maybe the Question Is Simpler Than We Make It

I’m not arguing that taxes should always be higher.

I’m not arguing that every government program should be protected.

And I’m certainly not arguing that successful people should be punished for being successful.

I’m asking something much simpler.

If we cut taxes, shouldn’t we be honest about what happens next?

If economic growth replaces the lost revenue, it will be wonderful. But if it doesn’t, there are only a few choices.

We cut spending. We borrow the difference. Or, we do both.

And when we cut spending, we should also be honest about who is affected.

For 45 years, we’ve heard some version of the argument that economic growth will help make up for the cost of tax cuts. Growth does help. It just doesn’t make the bill disappear.

With roughly $40 trillion already on the national credit card, “eventually the growth will pay for it” is becoming a very expensive promise.

Coming Tomorrow: We Actually Did It Once

Looking at 45 years of tax cuts left me with another question.

Has Washington ever successfully done this differently?

Surprisingly, yes.

For four consecutive years beginning in 1998, the federal government actually collected more money than it spent.

Tomorrow I’ll look at how that happened—and whether there’s anything we can learn from it today.

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Quote of the Day: “A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.”

— William Feather

Sometimes an old observation sounds remarkably current.

Orchid of the Day: Today’s Orchid goes to any elected official—Republican, Democrat or independent—who is willing to tell voters that we cannot indefinitely have everything we want from government without paying for it.

That’s probably not a great campaign slogan.

But it might be a pretty good way to govern.

Onion of the Day: The idea that there is always an easy way out of difficult financial choices.

Cut taxes and growth will solve it.

Increase spending and somebody else will pay for it.

Borrow the money and worry about it later.

Eventually, later arrives.

Question of the Day: If balancing the federal budget required some combination of higher taxes and lower government spending, would you personally be willing to accept some of each?

And if so, what tax benefit or government program affecting you would you be willing to give up?

That’s where this conversation gets a lot harder.

Lyrics of the Day: “And the taxman’s taken all my dough.”

What song is it—and who recorded it? If you know the answer, please provide your response in the comments section below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day September 23: “I will be watching you” by Police

Video of the Day: Justin Verlander’s Retirement Speech | Detroit Tigers JV Career Celebration

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The Camera Protects Both Sides

Something I read recently in The Atlantic reminded me of a decision I was involved in more than a decade ago when I was Vice President of Finance at the University of Toledo.

In 2015, the University of Toledo Police Department began equipping its officers with body cameras. Capt. Jeff Newton, who reported to me at the time, was involved in implementing the program, and I was able to allocate the funding necessary to purchase the cameras.

I thought it was an easy decision, but Jeff told me not everyone in the police department agreed. I remember being surprised when Jeff told me some officers didn’t like the idea of having their actions recorded and potentially reviewed later.

I understood their concern, but Jeff and I understood the body camera isn’t just there to protect the public. It’s there to protect the police officer. We went ahead with the implementation.

More than a decade later, I believe that argument is even stronger.

What Actually Happened?

I thought about my experience at UT after reading about a recent ICE shooting described in The Atlantic.

According to the article, an ICE officer shot someone while attempting to make an arrest. ICE requires officers making arrests to have body cameras and instructs them to activate the cameras before engaging in enforcement activity. But the officer involved in this shooting wasn’t wearing one.

The circumstances surrounding the shooting are disputed.

And that is exactly why the camera matters.

When a law-enforcement officer uses deadly force, there may be two very different versions of what happened.

The officer says one thing.

The person arrested—or witnesses—may say something else.

Lawyers get involved. Politicians get involved. Social media gets involved.

Before long, everyone has an opinion.

A body camera can’t answer every question.

But it can answer a very important one: What actually happened?

Cameras Protect Police Officers Doing Their Job Properly

This was the argument I made at the University of Toledo years ago.

Imagine that an officer is accused of using excessive force during an arrest.

The person arrested says the officer attacked him without provocation.

The officer says the person resisted arrest and threatened him.

Without video, investigators may be left trying to determine whose version is more credible.

With video, there may be objective evidence.

Maybe the video shows the officer acting improperly. If so, the public deserves to know that.

Maybe it shows exactly the opposite. Maybe it shows that the officer remained calm, followed proper procedures and used force only after the person resisted or threatened someone.

That camera may become the officer’s best witness.

Cameras Also Protect the Public

The other side is equally important.

Police officers have extraordinary authority.

They can stop us. They can detain us. They can arrest us. And under certain circumstances, they can legally use force—including deadly force.

Most officers exercise that authority responsibly.

But when someone is given that much power, accountability comes with it.

A body camera provides an independent record of how that authority was exercised.

If an officer behaves professionally, the video can demonstrate that.

If an officer behaves improperly, the video can demonstrate that too.

The camera doesn’t take sides. That’s its value.

Cameras Aren’t Perfect

Body cameras aren’t a magic solution.

Research on whether cameras reduce police use of force has produced mixed results.

A camera also doesn’t necessarily show everything an officer sees. The angle may be different. Something important may happen outside the camera’s field of view. Video may not reveal what an officer knew or reasonably believed at a particular moment.

There are legitimate privacy concerns as well, particularly when officers enter someone’s home or encounter victims during highly personal situations.

Those concerns need to be addressed through good policies.

But they don’t eliminate the basic value of having a visual record of a disputed encounter.

A Camera That Isn’t on Doesn’t Help

There’s one more issue that seems obvious to me.

If a law-enforcement agency requires body cameras, wearing and activating them can’t be optional.

There will occasionally be legitimate reasons why a recording isn’t available. Equipment can malfunction. Events can unfold too quickly. An officer may face an immediate threat before having an opportunity to activate a camera.

But when policy requires a camera and there isn’t a recording, there should be an explanation.

Otherwise, we’ve spent the money, developed the policy and equipped the officers—but lost the evidence at precisely the moment we needed it.

What I Believed Then, I Still Believe Today

Looking back at my experience at the University of Toledo, I understand the officers’ concerns a little better today.

None of us would particularly enjoy going to work knowing that many of our actions could be recorded and later reviewed.

But police work is different from most jobs.

Police officers carry enormous responsibility and enormous authority.

With that responsibility comes accountability.

And I continue to believe body cameras are one of those rare tools that can serve both sides of the relationship.

They can protect citizens from misconduct.

They can protect police officers from false accusations.

They can provide prosecutors and courts with better evidence.

And perhaps most importantly, they can give the rest of us something more reliable than competing stories about what happened.

When we introduced body cameras at the University of Toledo more than a decade ago, my argument was simple and it still applies today. If you did the right thing, wouldn’t you want the camera to show it?

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Does Congress Really Need to Fix College Sports?

I love college sports.

My daughter Katy played on the NCAA Division II national championship softball team in 2007. I’ve been watching Michigan and Michigan State football and basketball for most of my life.

I’ll readily admit that college sports today barely resembles the college sports Katy played and I grew up watching.

Today, athletes can make substantial amounts of money from their name, image and likeness. The transfer portal allows athletes to move from school to school. Schools are beginning to share revenue directly with athletes. Conference realignment has produced leagues that sometimes make little geographic sense.

The line between amateur and professional sports has become increasingly difficult to find.

College sports has problems. I’m just not convinced Congress should be responsible for solving them.

Congress Is Getting Involved

I started thinking about this after reading a recent New York Times article about congressional efforts to bring some order to college athletics.

The Senate is considering the Protect College Sports Act, which would establish national rules covering NIL rights, scholarships, medical benefits, transfers and other aspects of college athletics.

And this isn’t some fringe proposal. It’s bipartisan. Last week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to move forward with consideration of the legislation.

Supporters make a reasonable argument.

College sports now operate under a confusing mixture of NCAA rules, state laws, court decisions and individual conference policies. A university in one state may operate under different rules from a university in another state even though the schools compete against each other.

A national system probably does need some national rules.

But that raises a different question: How involved should Congress become?

What Is Congress For?

We have a national debt measured exceeding $40 trillion.

Social Security and Medicare face significant long-term financial pressures.

Congress continually struggles with immigration.

We have major questions involving health care, housing, infrastructure, energy, national defense and artificial intelligence.

We have a war with Iran that Congress has not approved.

Those are issues that unquestionably require federal attention.

When I look at Congress spending its time deciding how college athletics should regulate NIL payments and transfers, and I find myself asking: Is this really what we need the United States Congress working on?

I get the desire to fix college sports. College athletics isn’t merely Saturday afternoon entertainment anymore.

It’s a multibillion-dollar national enterprise. Athletes, television contracts and NIL businesses cross state lines. There are legitimate federal questions involving antitrust law, employment law and Title IX.

So perhaps Congress does have a role. I’m just not convinced it should be running the show.

Establish Some Rules and Boundaries

Congress may need to establish some basic rules.

It may need to clarify how federal antitrust and employment laws apply. It may have a role in protecting athletes’ basic rights and preventing conflicting state laws from creating an unworkable national system.

But after establishing those boundaries, shouldn’t the people who operate college athletics be responsible for figuring out the rest?

Universities and conferences helped create the current system. They chased enormous television contracts. They changed conferences in pursuit of additional revenue. Coaching salaries exploded. Athletic departments built increasingly elaborate facilities.

Meanwhile, the NCAA resisted allowing athletes to share meaningfully in the enormous amount of money being generated around them.

Eventually courts, state legislatures and changing public attitudes disrupted the old model.

Now the system is chaotic. But does the fact that college athletics created a mess mean Congress should clean it up?

I’m not convinced.

College Sports Needs to Admit What It Has Become

Part of the solution may require everyone involved to acknowledge something they resisted acknowledging for decades: Big-time college sports is a business.

We can still love Michigan football on Saturday afternoon. The players can still be students. The traditions can still matter.

But major college football and basketball are also enormous commercial enterprises.

Universities, conferences, athletes and whatever governing organization eventually emerges need to create a system that recognizes that reality while also protecting athletes and preserving opportunities in college sports that don’t generate significant revenue

Congress Has Plenty to Do

I realize Congress can address more than one issue at a time. And supporters of this legislation can reasonably argue that college athletes deserve federal protection too.

Fair enough.

But governing requires priorities.

Not every national problem requires a federal solution.

College athletics absolutely needs fixing. Athletes deserve reasonable protection. Universities need predictable rules. Fans deserve a system they can understand.

I agree with all of that.

I’m just not convinced senators and representatives should be the people to decide exactly how college sports should operate.

Perhaps Congress should establish a few basic legal rules and boundaries and then say to the universities, conferences, athletic organizations and athletes: Now fix your own game.

Because Washington already has plenty of other problems that only Washington can solve.

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Quote of the Day: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” — Winston Churchill

Orchid of the Day: This evening in Petoskey, there was not a cloud in the sky. The temperature was in the mid-60s. The water on Little Traverse Bay was a beautiful blue, with a few whitecaps. Leah and I couldn’t pass up a little drive in the car to take it all in. It was well spent forty-five minutes as we drove from Petoskey to Charlevoix to Boyne City to Wallon Village and back to Petoskey.

Onion of the Day: Anyone who thinks a body camera is only there to catch a police officer doing something wrong.

A body camera can certainly document misconduct. But it can also document an officer doing everything right. When accusations are made and memories differ, an objective recording may be the best protection a police officer has. Sometimes accountability and protection are the same thing.

Question of the Day: If you were a police officer and knew you had acted properly during a difficult arrest, would you want the encounter recorded on a body camera? Why or why not?

Lyrics of the Day: “Every move you make, I’ll be watching you.” A perfect choice for today’s blog.

If you know the song and artist, please leave your answer in the comments below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day, September 21, 2026: People are Strang by The Doors

Video of the Day: Gimme Shelter

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How Do the Oddsmakers Do It?

Saturday morning, I was talking with my best friend, George, about the Michigan and Michigan State football games. We were both struck by the point spreads. Michigan State was about a 24-point underdog, while Michigan was favored over UTEP by roughly 35.

We talked about how tempting it was to put a few bucks on the underdogs. After all, 24 and 35 points are a lot of points in a football game. Then we decided the oddsmakers probably knew what they were doing and kept our money in our pockets.

For one half Saturday afternoon, I thought we had given the oddsmakers far too much credit. UTEP actually led Michigan twice, and Michigan was ahead only 17–14 at halftime. Michigan was supposed to win by 35?

The oddsmakers had blown this one.

Then Michigan came out for the second half and overwhelmed UTEP. The Wolverines scored 28 points in the third quarter and won 52–17.

Margin of victory: 35 points.

George immediately sent me a text: “Oddsmakers nail it again. Wow!”

Which got me wondering: How in the world do the oddsmakers do it?

The Answer Isn’t What I Expected

So I asked ChatGPT to help me understand how the oddsmakers do it.

The first thing I learned is that the final point spread isn’t really the prediction of one brilliant oddsmaker sitting in Las Vegas. It is closer to a market price.

Someone has to establish the opening line, of course. Those initial numbers are based on sophisticated statistical models and power ratings that attempt to measure the relative strength of the teams. Then adjustments are made for things like home-field advantage, injuries, matchups and other information that could affect the game.

Once that opening line appears, something interesting happens. The bettors go to work.

The Market Takes Over

The sportsbooks that establish the first lines initially accept relatively small wagers. Professional gamblers—often called “sharps”—immediately look for mistakes.

Suppose Michigan opens as a 30-point favorite, but sophisticated bettors believe the difference between the teams is closer to 35.

They bet Michigan. The sportsbook reacts and moves the line. Maybe it becomes Michigan –31½. More money comes in. The line moves again.

As the week progresses, betting limits increase and more money enters the market. Other sportsbooks watch those movements and adjust their numbers as well. Eventually the line reaches a point where knowledgeable bettors no longer see an obvious advantage on either side. That’s how an opening line gradually becomes the closing line we see shortly before kickoff.

So when George and I were talking Saturday morning, we weren’t simply disagreeing with an oddsmaker. We were disagreeing with computer models, professional oddsmakers and thousands of bettors—some of whom make their living finding mistakes in betting lines.

That’s a much tougher crowd to outsmart.

Here’s the Surprising Part

Michigan’s 35-point victory makes it look as though the betting market predicted the game almost perfectly. It didn’t. The exact result was largely coincidence.

One analysis of more than 3,000 major-college football games from 2022 through 2025 found that the closing point spread missed the actual margin of victory by an average of about 12 points. Through the first three weeks of this season, the average miss has been about 11 points.

Think about that.

Oddsmakers aren’t fortune tellers. They don’t know the final score. Michigan winning by exactly 35 was unusual.

What the betting market is remarkably good at doing is establishing a number that is very difficult to beat consistently.

Why Is That?

I think the answer is something economists have understood for a long time. Markets can be pretty good at combining information.

One bettor knows Michigan better than almost anyone. Another specializes in UTEP. Someone else has a sophisticated computer model. Another bettor closely follows injuries. Still another studies offensive and defensive matchups. Each person has a little piece of information. Then they put real money behind their opinions.

If enough knowledgeable people think the line is wrong in the same direction, the line moves.

In that sense, the final point spread represents the collective judgment of an enormous number of people trying very hard—and risking their own money—to prove everyone else wrong. It’s the wisdom of the crowd with money attached to it.

The Sportsbook Still Has an Advantage

There’s one more thing I learned.The sportsbook doesn’t need to predict the score perfectly to make money.

A typical point-spread wager requires a bettor to risk about $110 to win $100. That difference—often called the vig or juice—gives the sportsbook its built-in advantage.

That means a bettor who wins exactly half of his bets will lose money over time. At standard –110 pricing, you need to win roughly 52.4% just to break even.

That may not sound difficult. It is. Because you’re trying to find errors in a market that thousands of other people are simultaneously trying to exploit.

We Made the Right Bet

Which brings me back to Saturday morning. Michigan favored by 35.

George and I thought that number looked crazy. Fortunately, we decided not to put our money where our mouths were.

Sometimes the smartest bet you make is the one you don’t make.

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What Are We So Afraid Of?

I read an opinion piece in The New York Times this week that got me thinking about something I’ve been struggling with for quite a while.

The article described a controversy involving Bo French, the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner. French had posted a photograph of a group of young Texas fans who appeared to be South Asian and complained about what their presence said about the university.

The article also described other statements French has made about Muslims, Chinese people and foreigners.

For me, the article raised broader questions about Christian nationalism—the idea that Christianity should occupy a special place not simply in American culture, but in American government and public institutions.

As I read the article, my thoughts went beyond that controversy. I started thinking about conversations I’ve had with many people I know.

Why do so many Americans—including many White Christians—believe the United States was founded as a Christian nation, when our Constitution deliberately protects religious freedom and prevents the government from establishing a religion? Why are so many Americans fearful of immigration when immigration has been such an important part of the American story? Why are some White Americans uncomfortable with people of different races or religions?

And perhaps the question I’ve been struggling with most: Where does that fear come from?

Is it racism?

Is it ignorance?

Is it fear of change?

Or is it simply that many of us have spent most of our lives around people who look like us, worship like us and share similar backgrounds?

I don’t know. That’s one reason I’m writing about it.

I occasionally hear friends, neighbors and people I have known for years—good people whom I like and respect—talk about immigrants, Muslims, Black Americans or other groups in ways that make me uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s a joke. Sometimes it’s a sweeping generalization. Sometimes it’s an assumption about an entire group of people based on the behavior of a few.

I find myself wondering: What are we so afraid of?

Religion

Christianity has played an enormous role in American history.

Many of our founders were Christians. Christian churches have been central to American communities for generations. Christian beliefs influenced our culture and many of the people who created our government.

Christianity is unquestionably an important part of America’s heritage. But that’s different from saying the United States government was established as a Christian government.

The Constitution doesn’t establish Christianity—or any other religion—as the nation’s official religion. Article VI says that no religious test can be required for public office. The First Amendment begins by prohibiting Congress from establishing religion while also protecting its free exercise.

Those two ideas belong together. Government shouldn’t establish a religion. And government shouldn’t prevent us from practicing ours.

I can practice Christianity. My neighbor can practice Judaism. Another neighbor can be Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist. Someone else can believe in no religion at all. All of us are equally American.

Yet the belief that America was intended to be a Christian nation is widespread.

A Pew Research Center survey found that 60% of Americans—and 81% of White evangelical Protestants—believed the founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation. I find that fascinating, and it raises a question for me: Does protecting someone else’s religious freedom somehow threaten mine?

I don’t see how. In fact, it seems to me that the same Constitution protecting a Muslim’s right to worship is protecting my right to worship as a Christian.

Immigration

I have similar questions when I listen to the immigration debate.

Let’s make an important distinction. A country has every right to control its borders. We should know who is entering the United States. We need an immigration system that is orderly, enforceable and fair.

We can have legitimate disagreements over how many immigrants should be admitted, what should happen to people who enter illegally, how asylum should work and what responsibilities immigrants have when they come here. Those are policy questions.

Unfortunately, sometimes our conversation moves beyond immigration policy and becomes something else. It becomes a conversation about immigrants themselves.

They’re taking over. They don’t share our values. They’re changing our country. They don’t belong here.

That’s where I begin to struggle. Because America has always been changing.

The Irish changed America. The Italians changed America. The Germans changed America. Eastern European Jews changed America. Chinese immigrants changed America. Polish immigrants changed America. Mexican immigrants changed America. And generations of immigrants from virtually every corner of the world have changed America.

They didn’t simply become Americans. They helped create what America became. That doesn’t mean immigration has always been easy. It hasn’t.

Earlier generations of immigrants were frequently greeted with many of the same fears we hear today. They looked different. They worshiped differently. They spoke different languages. They ate different food. People worried that they wouldn’t assimilate.

And then something interesting happened. Their children became our classmates. Their grandchildren became our doctors, teachers, business owners, police officers, soldiers and neighbors.

Eventually we stopped calling most of them immigrants. We just called them Americans.

Concern Is Real

Recent Pew research found that most Americans still believe openness to people from around the world is an essential part of our national identity. But there are important differences underlying that overall number.

Evangelical Protestants were almost evenly divided: 54% said America’s openness is essential to our identity, while 45% said too much openness risks causing America to lose its identity. More than half said the growing immigrant population has been a change for the worse.

But here’s another statistic I think is equally important. Seven out of ten Americans say our racial and ethnic diversity strengthens American society. Even among evangelical Protestants, a majority agrees.

So, this isn’t a simple story about White Christians rejecting diversity.

Reality is more complicated than that

Which brings me back to what I’m really trying to understand.

Is It Fear?

Why are we sometimes so uncomfortable with people who are different from us?

Is it racism?

Sometimes I’m sure it is. But I don’t think that explains everything.

Is it ignorance? Perhaps, but the more I’ve thought about it, the less comfortable I am using that word. Maybe some of it is simply unfamiliarity.

It’s easier to fear “Muslims” if you’ve never had a Muslim neighbor.

It’s easier to make assumptions about Black people if you’ve never had a meaningful relationship with a Black family.

It’s easier to fear immigrants if you don’t actually know any.

Once the category becomes a person, things can change.

“The Muslim” becomes Ahmed from work.

“The immigrant” becomes Maria whose daughter plays soccer with your granddaughter.

“The Black guy” becomes the person you play golf with every Thursday.

And suddenly the stereotypes don’t work as well.

Because now we’re talking about people.

Maybe It’s Also About Change

I think there’s something else involved. America is changing.

Walk through almost any major American city and you’ll see people from different races, cultures and religions.

For some Americans, that change is exciting. For others, it may feel unsettling.

And perhaps that’s especially true for people who grew up in communities where most people looked like them, worshiped like them and shared many of the same cultural traditions.

Fear of change is human. But I do think there’s a question worth asking: Does someone else’s increasing presence in America require me to lose something?

If my neighbor is Muslim, does that make me less Christian?

If a Hispanic family moves into my neighborhood, does that make me less American?

If the racial composition of America continues to change, does that diminish my citizenship?

For me, it doesn’t.

Someone else gaining acceptance doesn’t require me to lose mine.

Someone else exercising religious freedom doesn’t diminish my religious freedom.

Someone else becoming an American doesn’t make me less American.

Maybe that’s one of the ideas we need to remind ourselves of occasionally.

I Think About My Own Life

Over 75 years I’ve met thousands of people.

I have many friends of different races and different religions. I’ve worked with people of different races and different religions. I have many friends whose political beliefs are completely different from mine.

Most are wonderful people.

A few are jerks.

Every group seems to contain both.

I’ve never found a race with a monopoly on character.

I’ve never found a religion with a monopoly on goodness.

And I’ve certainly never found a political party with a monopoly on wisdom.

The older I get, the less interested I am in knowing what group someone belongs to and the more interested I am in knowing what kind of person they are.

Are they honest?

Do they treat people decently?

Do they take responsibility for themselves?

Are they good parents?

Are they good neighbors?

Will they help someone who needs help?

Those characteristics tell me considerably more about someone than the color of their skin or where they worship on Sunday, Saturday, Friday—or whether they worship at all.

Who Gets to Be “Us”?

America has spent nearly 250 years arguing about who fully belongs here. We’ve expanded our understanding of that answer repeatedly. And yet we still seem tempted to draw another line separating us from them. Maybe that’s human nature. But one of the remarkable things about the American experiment is that our definition of “us” has continually become larger.

People who once weren’t included eventually demanded to be included.

Immigrants who were once viewed suspiciously became part of the American mainstream.

Religions once regarded as foreign became familiar.

People who once had fewer rights fought to obtain them.

America didn’t become weaker because the definition of us expanded.

I believe that we are becoming what our founding ideals said we were supposed to become.

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Whose House Is It?

Something President Trump said Friday caught my attention.

It wasn’t simply his announcement that he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House.

Explaining his authority to exclude news organizations, Trump started to refer to the White House as “my” house before correcting himself and calling it “the people’s house.”

Trump’s correction gets to the heart of what bothers me. Whose house is it?

I’ve always thought of the White House as America’s house. Presidents come and go. They live there temporarily. The American people own the place.

This Isn’t About CNN

Trump said he was banning the three news organizations because of what he considers years of “fake news” coverage. He also suggested other news organizations could be next.

That’s where I have a problem. This isn’t about whether I like CNN, Politico or any other news organization. News organizations make mistakes. Some stories are poorly reported. Some commentators are biased.

A president has every right to criticize them. He can call a story unfair. He can point out factual errors. He can refuse an interview. But there’s an important difference between criticizing the press and using government power to punish the press for its coverage.

What About the First Amendment?

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. That doesn’t mean every reporter has a constitutional right to attend every meeting in the White House.

The Oval Office has limited space. The White House must make decisions about press pools and access. But courts have also recognized an important principle: government can’t simply exclude journalists from otherwise available press access because officials don’t like their viewpoint.

That’s why this issue is bigger than whether CNN has treated Donald Trump fairly.

Who gets to decide what is “fake news”? The president? CNN? Fox News? The New York Times? Me? You?

I would rather leave that decision to the American people.

Reverse the Parties

I find this question useful when thinking about presidential power: Would I be comfortable giving the same power to a president I strongly disagreed with?

Imagine a Democratic president banning Fox News from the White House because the president believed Fox had repeatedly treated the administration unfairly.

Would conservatives accept that? I doubt it. And I don’t think they should.

The First Amendment shouldn’t change depending upon which political party controls the White House.

The Press Isn’t There for the President

White House reporters are there for us. Their job isn’t to make the president comfortable. Their job is to ask questions of someone exercising enormous governmental power on behalf of the American people.

Sometimes those questions will be unfair. Sometimes they’ll be irritating. Sometimes they’ll be wrong.

What happens if news organizations begin to believe aggressive coverage could cost them White House access?

Be nice and you get invited in.

Be critical and you might find yourself outside the gate.

That’s not the relationship I want between government and the press.

An Important Update

Since I wrote this, the story has continued to develop.

On Monday, CNN, MS NOW and Politico filed a federal lawsuit challenging the ban on First Amendment grounds.

Perhaps even more interesting, the major television networks—including Fox News—suspended their White House television pool coverage after CNN was prevented from performing its scheduled pool duties. I think Fox’s participation is significant.

This shouldn’t be a question of liberal media versus conservative media. It’s a question of whether the government should determine press access based on whether the president approves of a news organization’s coverage.

America’s House

Which brings me back to Trump’s momentary choice of words.

“My” house. Then the correction: “The people’s house.”

Donald Trump doesn’t own the White House. Neither did Joe Biden, Barack Obama or George W. Bush. Every president is a temporary occupant.

The institution remains. And the journalists asking uncomfortable questions aren’t intruders in someone’s private home.

They’re part of the system through which the American people learn what their government is doing.

Today the excluded organization might be CNN. Someday it could be Fox News.

That’s why this isn’t really about CNN—or Donald Trump. It’s about what power we’re willing to give any president. The White House belongs to the American people.

Presidents are temporary occupants.

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What Does GPT Stand For?

One of the subscribers to this blog asked me what the GPT stands for in ChatGPT.

Since I didn’t know the answer, I asked ChatGPT. Here is what I learned.

GPT stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer.”

In plain English:

Generative — it generates new text and other content in response to you.

Pre-trained — before you use it, it has already been trained on large amounts of information to learn patterns in language.

Transformer — the type of AI architecture it uses to understand relationships among words and concepts and produce responses.

So ChatGPT essentially means a conversational—or “chat”—version of a Generative Pre-trained Transformer.

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Quote of the Day: “Liberty is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”— George Orwell

Orchid of the Day: The major television networks—including Fox News.

After CNN, MS NOW and Politico were barred from the White House, the television networks suspended their White House pool coverage rather than simply taking CNN’s place.

Whatever you think of any of these news organizations, I think there is something encouraging about competitors standing together for the principle that government shouldn’t determine press access based on whether it likes the coverage.

Onion of the Day: Putting people into categories before getting to know them. Muslim. Immigrant. Black. White. Hispanic. Christian. Liberal. Conservative. Labels sometimes tell us something about people. They rarely tell us enough.

Maybe we’d all be better off spending a little less time deciding what groups of people are like and a little more time actually getting to know the people in them.

Question of the Day: Would you support a president excluding a news organization from the White House because the president believes its coverage is unfair—even if the president were someone you strongly opposed?

Lyrics of the Day: “People are strange when you’re a stranger.”

If you know the song and artist, please leave your answer in the comments below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day, September 16, 2026: Imagine by John Lennon

Video of the Day: Cyndi Lauper - “If I Could Turn Back Time” (Cher Tribute) | 2018 Kennedy Center Honors

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Sometimes You Should Just Say No

Here’s a situation where I think the answer should have been pretty simple. No, thank you.

Before getting into the details, let me make something clear. I’m not accusing Donald Trump Jr. of committing a crime. I don’t know that the Russian oligarch who helped pay for his wedding celebration expected anything in return. And I have seen no evidence establishing a quid pro quo.

But that’s not the standard I’m applying.

Ethical judgment can require a higher standard than merely asking whether prosecutors can prove a crime.

Sometimes the question isn’t Is this illegal? It’s Should I be doing this in the first place?

And when you’re the son of the president of the United States and a politically connected Russian billionaire with close ties to Vladimir Putin offers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on your wedding celebration, I think that’s exactly the question you should be asking.

Quite a Wedding Gift

Donald Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May. It was an elaborate three-day celebration spread across two private islands.

This week, ProPublica reported something about the celebration that hadn’t previously been disclosed. A Russian oligarch named Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward the festivities.

According to ProPublica, Kremlev paid to rent one of the private islands, where guests stayed and one of the receptions was held. He also paid for a large fireworks display and other expenses.

After the story appeared, Trump Jr. and his wife confirmed Kremlev’s role. They described him as “our dear friend Umar” and said his contribution was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend.

Maybe that’s exactly what it was. That’s not really my problem with it.

Who Is Umar Kremlev?

This isn’t a college roommate picking up the bar tab.

Kremlev is a wealthy and politically connected Russian businessman who heads the International Boxing Association.

More importantly, he has significant ties to Vladimir Putin and Russia’s political establishment.

Putin awarded Kremlev Russia’s Order of Friendship shortly before the wedding. Kremlev was also in China as part of the Russian delegation accompanying Putin in the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding. Ukraine has sanctioned Kremlev, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.

Kremlev’s representatives say he and Trump Jr. are friends, that they don’t discuss politics and that there was no political motivation behind the wedding gift.

Trump Jr. and his wife have similarly rejected the suggestion that their friendship should be portrayed as political or sinister.

That may all be true.But here’s my question: Why put yourself in this position in the first place?

Donald Trump Jr. Isn’t Just Another Private Citizen.

Donald Trump Jr. doesn’t hold a position in the federal government. That’s an important distinction. But he’s also not simply another private citizen. He’s the president’s son.

He’s politically active on his father’s behalf. He has relationships throughout the Trump political organization and administration. And he’s involved in businesses and investments whose interests can intersect with government policy.

That doesn’t mean Donald Trump Jr. is responsible for his father’s foreign policy. It does mean his relationships with powerful foreign figures deserve scrutiny.

That’s one of the realities of being a member of the president’s immediate family.

I’ve Applied This Standard Before

I want to be consistent about something. I thought the appearance created by Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings while his father was vice president and later president was wrong.

I thought Hunter Biden showed poor judgment by entering into foreign business relationships that could create the appearance that his family name and proximity to political power had value.

The appearance mattered. And if I thought it mattered when the president’s name was Biden, I have to believe it matters when the president’s name is Trump.

This shouldn’t be complicated by party affiliation.

Children of presidents aren’t automatically government officials, and they shouldn’t have to give up their private lives simply because a parent occupies the White House.

But they should understand something that comes with being part of a president’s immediate family: People may want a relationship with you because of your relationship with the president. That creates a responsibility to exercise judgment about the money, gifts and business opportunities you accept.

The standard applies whether we’re talking about Hunter Biden, Donald Trump Jr. or the child of any future president: Don’t put yourself—or the president—in a position where Americans reasonably have to wonder whether a foreign interest is buying access or influence.

The Appearance Matters

Here’s where I think people sometimes misunderstand ethics. Something doesn’t have to be a bribe to be inappropriate. You don’t have to prove a quid pro quo before asking whether accepting something was a good idea. That’s especially true when we’re talking about someone reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars entertaining the president’s son, his bride and their guests.

Maybe Kremlev expected absolutely nothing in return. Perhaps he simply likes Donald Trump Jr. and wanted to give his friend an extraordinarily generous wedding present. But gifts create relationships. And enormous gifts create enormous questions.

Russia Makes This Different

There’s another reason this bothers me.

Russia isn’t just another country with which America occasionally disagrees.

Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States has spent years confronting Russian cyberattacks, espionage and attempts to influence American politics.

American presidents—Republican and Democratic—have had to make enormously consequential decisions involving Russia. And Vladimir Putin remains one of the most consequential foreign leaders the United States must deal with.

Would a reasonable person looking at this relationship wonder whether such an enormous gift could create influence, access or obligation?

Congress Is Asking Questions Too

This story isn’t going away immediately.

The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee has opened an inquiry into the relationship and requested documents and communications concerning Kremlev and the wedding expenses.

That inquiry doesn’t establish wrongdoing. But it demonstrates exactly why accepting the gift created a problem that could easily have been avoided.

Instead of discussing American policy toward Russia, members of Congress are now asking whether a Russian oligarch’s extraordinarily generous gift to the president’s son created a potential foreign entanglement.

Whatever the investigation ultimately finds, Donald Trump Jr. could have avoided the entire issue with four words: We can’t accept this.

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Is It Still My Blog If AI Helps Me Write It?

If you’ve noticed any difference in Thoughts for the Day since I returned from my summer break, there is a reason. I am using ChatGPT to assist in the writing of this blog.

During my summer break, I used the time to rethink the amount of time and effort I was spending on my blog. I wanted to spend more of my time conceptualizing what I was writing about and less time with the clerical functions of putting words to paper.

I looked at AI as a possible solution. I tested it out and decided to give it try.

Over the last several weeks, artificial intelligence has become an integral part of how I develop this blog. So far, I like how it is working, but I want your feedback.

The Ideas Are Still Mine

My process hasn’t changed as much as you might think. I still begin by reading.

Every day I work my way through newspapers, magazines, newsletters and Substack writers. When something catches my attention, I save it.

Sometimes it’s a major political story. Sometimes it’s economics, sports, leadership or something happening here in Michigan. Sometimes it’s simply a story that makes me stop and think. Then I ask myself the same question I’ve always asked: What do I think about this, and is there something here worth sharing?

That’s where AI has changed my process.

Instead of spending much of my writing time struggling to turn an idea into 800 or 1,000 reasonably coherent words, I can spend more time thinking about what I want those words to say.

I Provide the Direction and Desired Outcome

The best way I can describe my relationship with ChatGPT is this: I provide the direction and desired outcome. AI helps me figure out the best route to get there.

Take the article you just read.

I read multiple news articles from various sources about the Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin reportedly spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on part of Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration.

What interested me wasn’t simply another story involving the Trump family. The question I wanted to explore was broader: What ethical responsibility does a president’s immediate family have when accepting enormous gifts from politically connected foreign individuals?

That was my idea. I told ChatGPT what bothered me about the situation and asked it to help develop a first draft.

As I reviewed the first draft, I realized I needed to address Hunter Biden.

I had questioned the appearance created by Hunter Biden’s foreign business relationships. If I was going to criticize Donald Trump Jr., I wanted to make certain I was applying the same standard.

That led to the central idea of the article: Ethical judgment can require a higher standard than merely asking whether prosecutors can prove a crime.

That’s what I mean when I say AI has improved my writing process. It didn’t tell me what to believe. It helped me more clearly express what I already believed.

ChatGPT Challenges Me

This may be the part of using ChatGPT that has surprised me the most. It doesn’t always agree with the way I initially frame something.

• · If I make a factual statement that goes beyond what the available evidence establishes, it may suggest that I qualify it.

• · If I describe an allegation as though it were an established fact, it points out the difference.

• · If my argument would be stronger by acknowledging the other side, it tells me.

• · I’m using language that sounds more partisan than analytical, it helps me rewrite it.

I find that valuable.

“Thoughts for the Day” Should be Thought Provoking.

I have opinions and I’m not afraid to express them. But I don’t want Thoughts for the Day to be just me expressing my opinions I want to make it informative and thought provoking.

I’d much rather have someone finish an article and say: “I hadn’t thought about it that way.” AI is helping me that.

What AI Does for Me

I use ChatGPT in several ways.

• · It helps me research background information and identify facts that need verification.

• · It helps organize scattered thoughts into a logical argument.

• · It produces a first draft from the ideas and direction I provide.

• · It helps shorten something when I’ve become too wordy.

• · It identifies places where an argument needs more balance or evidence.

And perhaps most importantly, I can challenge it.

I can say, “That doesn’t sound like me.”. “You’re missing the point I’m trying to make.”. That sounds too political.”, or “I don’t like it. Try again.” And it does.

What AI Doesn’t Do

There is another side of this that I think is important. ChatGPT doesn’t decide what goes into Thoughts for the Day. It doesn’t decide what I believe. It doesn’t decide whether the final article accurately represents my views.

I read it. I change it. I question it. I add things. I delete things. Sometimes I reject entire sections.

The final product is all mine.

Is This Cheating?

I’ve actually wondered about that.

If someone else—or something else—helps produce the words, are they still my words? I’ve decided I’m comfortable with the answer.

Writers have always used tools.

• · We went from typewriters to word processors.

• · Spell-check corrected our spelling.

• · Grammar programs improved our sentences.

• · Google dramatically changed how we research.

• · Editors have always helped writers organize thoughts and improve prose.

AI is certainly a much more powerful tool than any of those. But I think the fundamental question remains the same: Who is doing the thinking?

I come to the process with the subject, the questions, the argument and usually the conclusion. AI helps me develop those ideas into a better piece of writing.

Something Else Has Changed

There has been another benefit I didn’t anticipate. I’m spending more of my time thinking and less of my time producing words.

For me, that’s a very good trade. Writing 1,000 words takes time. Organizing them takes time. Rewriting awkward paragraphs takes time.Finding the right transition takes time.

Those things are necessary, but they aren’t necessarily the most valuable part of writing. The most valuable part is deciding what you actually have to say.

AI has shifted more of my time toward that part of the process. I can focus on the big-picture concept, challenge my own assumptions, look for weaknesses in my argument and think more carefully about the message I’m trying to communicate.

The result, at least from my perspective, is that Thoughts for the Day has become more thought-provoking, better organized and somewhat less politically biased.

However, I’m not the best person to judge.

So I’m Asking You

Have you noticed a difference? Do you think the writing is better? Are the arguments clearer? Does the blog seem more balanced—or less? Does it still sound like me?

And perhaps the most interesting question: Does knowing that I use artificial intelligence as part of the writing process change how you feel about what you’re reading? Don’t worry about hurting my feelings.

What do you think? Please provide your response in the comment section of the blog.

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Quote of the Day: “The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” — Gustave Flaubert

Orchid of the Day: Readers of Thoughts for the Day.

You read it, challenge me, disagree with me, encourage me and occasionally tell me I’m full of it. That’s exactly what I want.

A blog called Thoughts for the Day shouldn’t end the conversation. It should start one.

Onion of the Day: Using artificial intelligence as a substitute for thinking.

AI can research, organize, draft, edit and challenge. What it shouldn’t do is relieve us of the responsibility to think for ourselves. If we simply ask a computer what we should believe and accept the answer, we’ve missed the point of this extraordinary technology.

AI should make us better thinkers—not replace the need to think.

Question of the Day:Has my increased use of ChatGPT made Thoughts for the Day better, worse—or simply different?

Please provide your response in the comment section of the blog.

Lyrics of the Day: “You may say I’m a dreamer.”

If you know the song and artist, please leave your answer in the comments below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day, September 16, 2026: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones

Video of the Day: Calls of the Game: Detroit stops New Orleans’ 2-point attempt to secure 31-30 win | Lions vs Saints

Leah and I made a quick trip to Brighton over the last two days. With the additional driving while we were there, I had to fill my gas tank twice.

A year ago, I rarely put more than $40 at a time into my tank. On this trip, I was close to $60 each time.

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That got me thinking about something we hear discussed every day in terms of oil prices, inflation and geopolitics but experience much more personally when we pull into a gas station.

What has the war in Iran cost the average American family?

Gasoline prices have increased by more than $1 per gallon since before the war began.

Leah and I drive about 31,000 miles a year. Our two cars average roughly 20 miles per gallon, which means we buy approximately 1,550 gallons of gasoline annually. A $1-per-gallon increase therefore costs us about $1,550 more per year.

For Leah and me, that’s an inconvenience. For a young working family already struggling with groceries, housing, childcare and other expenses, another $100 or more a month for gasoline can require real lifestyle changes.

The war isn’t the only factor affecting gasoline prices. Oil prices are influenced by global supply, refinery capacity, other conflicts and market expectations.

But the war in Iran and the resulting disruption of Middle Eastern oil supplies have clearly contributed to the increase.

I have been critical of President Trump’s decision to enter this war and of how the administration has conducted it. I continue to question whether the war was necessary and whether its consequences were adequately considered before it began.

Those consequences aren’t confined to Iran or the Pentagon. Americans encounter one of them every time they pull up to the gas pump.

Protecting Elections Without Preventing People From Voting

I’ve written several times recently about voting, election security and what I believe should be a simple principle:

Make it difficult to vote illegally. Make it easy for every eligible American to vote legally.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that brings us back to that question. The Court refused to allow the U.S. Postal Service to implement new restrictions on mail-in ballots before the November midterm elections.

The restrictions grew out of an executive order President Trump issued in March intended, according to the administration, to strengthen the integrity of federal elections.

On the surface, that sounds reasonable. Who doesn’t want secure elections?

But the details matter.

Under the new Postal Service rules, state and local election officials would have been required to use specially approved ballot envelopes containing unique barcodes. Election officials also would have been required to upload information about mail-ballot voters into a new federal portal.

Before accepting batches of ballots for delivery, the Postal Service would verify that the ballots and voter information met the new requirements.

The problem was that these weren’t minor administrative changes. They were being imposed shortly before an election in which millions of Americans will vote by mail, and the infrastructure necessary to implement some of the requirements wasn’t yet fully operational.

Federal judges blocked the requirements from taking effect. The administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Yesterday, the Court said no.

An Important Distinction

The Supreme Court did not issue a final ruling declaring President Trump’s executive order unconstitutional. Nor did it finally determine whether the Postal Service could ever adopt some version of these requirements. The underlying litigation will continue.

The question before the Supreme Court was whether the government should be allowed to implement the new requirements while those cases proceed.

The Court declined to do so.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas disagreed.

So this isn’t the final chapter.

But it is an important one.

We’ve Been Here Before

This debate should sound familiar to regular readers of Thoughts for the Day.

We’ve talked about the SAVE Act, claims of widespread noncitizen voting, voter identification and mail-in voting.

And I’ve repeatedly made the same argument. Voter fraud exists. It should be investigated. When someone votes illegally that person should be prosecuted.

But the existence of some illegal voting doesn’t automatically justify every restriction proposed in the name of preventing it.

The proper question is one of proportionality: How much burden should we place on millions of legitimate voters to prevent illegal votes?

That’s the question I keep coming back to.

Consider What Was at Stake

Millions of Americans vote by mail. They include elderly voters, disabled voters, military personnel, people living in rural communities, people traveling for work and ordinary Americans who simply choose to vote by mail when their state allows them to do so.

The government’s objective—making sure ballots are legitimate—is reasonable.

But suppose a new system designed to prevent an illegal ballot also prevents perfectly legal ballots from reaching legitimate voters or being counted.

Have we strengthened election integrity? Or weakened it?

A secure election isn’t one in which nobody can cheat because we’ve made it too difficult for legitimate voters to participate.

A secure election is one in which eligible voters can vote, ineligible people cannot, and every legally cast ballot is counted accurately.

There’s Also a Constitutional Question

Who gets to make the rules?

The Constitution doesn’t give the president general authority to run federal elections.

States have primary responsibility for administering elections, while the Constitution gives Congress authority to regulate the times, places and manner of congressional elections.

That doesn’t mean the federal executive branch has no role.

The Postal Service obviously has an enormous responsibility when states choose to conduct voting through the mail. But delivering election mail and determining the conditions under which Americans may receive and return their ballots are very different things.

That’s why this dispute is about more than mail-in voting. It is also about separation of powers.

This Is What Checks and Balances Look Like

I’ve written a lot lately about our constitutional system of checks and balances.

Sometimes the phrase sounds like something from a high-school civics textbook.

This case shows what it means in practice.

The president issued an executive order.

An executive agency developed regulations to carry it out.

States and voting-rights organizations challenged those regulations.

Federal judges stopped them from taking effect.

The administration appealed.

And the Supreme Court refused to allow the requirements to be implemented while the litigation continues.

That’s the system working.

It doesn’t mean the courts are always right.

It doesn’t mean the president is always wrong.

And it doesn’t tell us how the litigation ultimately will end.

It means presidential power has limits and another branch of government gets to decide whether those limits have been crossed.

That principle matters regardless of which political party occupies the White House.

Election Integrity and Voting Rights

I sometimes think we’ve allowed these two ideas to become political opposites.

They shouldn’t be. Americans should demand both.

We should have accurate voter rolls. We should verify that voters are eligible. We should investigate fraud. We should protect ballots from tampering. We should count votes accurately. And we should make certain government doesn’t create unnecessary obstacles preventing eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote.

Those aren’t contradictory goals. They’re the foundation of a trustworthy election.

The objective isn’t to make voting harder. The objective is to make illegal voting harder while making sure every eligible American can cast a ballot—and have it counted.

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When Protecting the Vote Can Threaten the Voter

Here’s another election story that caught my attention. And once again, it involves noncitizen voting.

According to a whistleblower disclosure reported by The Guardian and the Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security has launched an effort called the “Unlawful Voter Initiative” to identify noncitizens who may be registered to vote or voting illegally.

Let me begin where I have begun before. Noncitizens shouldn’t be voting in American elections. If someone who isn’t legally entitled to vote knowingly casts a ballot, investigate it and, when the evidence supports it, prosecute it.

What concerns me is what reportedly is being done in the name of finding those voters.

Forty Investigations a Day

According to the whistleblower, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees were pulled from their regular duties in late August, given less than two hours of training and assigned to investigate people DHS believed might be unlawfully registered to vote.

The reported goal was 40 people per employee per day.

Think about that.

Roughly 12 minutes to investigate someone, compare federal information with state voter-registration records, determine whether there is a problem and potentially create a federal law-enforcement record about that person.

This isn’t checking whether someone’s Costco membership has expired.

We’re potentially putting an American citizen into a federal law-enforcement database as someone suspected of illegally voting.

I’d like the government to take more than 12 minutes before doing that.

Then There Is the Data

Perhaps more troubling are questions about the accuracy of the information being used.

According to the whistleblower, DHS data sometimes didn’t match information contained in state voter systems. That matters because immigration and citizenship records aren’t necessarily designed to determine someone’s current voting eligibility.

Someone, for example, could have become a naturalized American citizen after information in another government database was created. Bad data plus a rushed investigation seems like a pretty good formula for bad conclusions.

And once incorrect information enters a government law-enforcement database, how easy is it to get it removed?

How Were They Accessing the Records?

This may be the strangest part.

According to the whistleblower, employees sometimes were instructed to use state voter-registration lookup systems intended for individual voters checking their own registrations. The whistleblower alleges employees questioned whether using those systems to investigate other people might violate state law and were told to continue.

These are allegations, and DHS disputes the whistleblower’s characterization. The department says it is comparing publicly available state voter information with federal records of known noncitizens as part of a legitimate effort to protect elections.

That explanation deserves to be heard. But so do the concerns raised by the people being asked to perform the work.

Different Programs. Same Question.

This is where today’s two election stories connect.

In the Postal Service case, the Trump administration wanted new federal requirements imposed on mail ballots shortly before the November election.

Now we have another federal initiative intended to address noncitizen voting, with a whistleblower raising questions about unreliable information, inadequate training and potentially improper methods.

Different programs. Same fundamental question:

Is the remedy proportional to the problem?

Show Me the Problem

President Trump and his administration repeatedly describe noncitizen voting as a serious threat to American elections, even though the facts do not support this threat. That doesn’t mean illegal voting never occurs.

It does mean we should establish the magnitude of the problem before constructing an enormous federal apparatus to solve it. Government shouldn’t begin with the assumption that widespread fraud exists and then build increasingly intrusive systems hoping to find evidence supporting that assumption.

If DHS identifies noncitizens who knowingly voted illegally, prosecute them. And if DHS discovers evidence that the problem is widespread, show us the evidence.

The evidence should determine the response.

There’s a Bigger Issue Here

The Constitution largely places election administration with the states, subject to Congress’s constitutional authority over federal elections. Yet we’re increasingly seeing the federal executive branch become involved in areas traditionally administered by state and local election officials.

The Justice Department has sought detailed voter information from numerous states. The Postal Service developed new ballot-verification requirements.

Now DHS reportedly is searching state voter-registration systems for suspected noncitizen voters.

Perhaps each initiative can be defended individually. But taken together, they raise a question worth asking: Is the administration creating a federal election-enforcement system that Congress never created?

That question should concern us regardless of whether the president directing it is a Republican or Democrat.

Election Integrity Requires Accuracy Too

Election integrity matters. But integrity has to apply to the government’s conduct as well.

If we’re going to accuse someone of voting illegally, we’d better be right.

If we’re going to place someone’s name into a federal law-enforcement database, we’d better be right.

If we’re going to access state voter records, we’d better do it legally.

And if we’re going to impose new restrictions affecting millions of voters, we’d better demonstrate that the problem we’re solving justifies the burden we’re creating.

That’s not being soft on voter fraud. That’s due process.

It brings me back to the principle I’ve been arguing throughout these recent discussions about voting: Make it difficult to vote illegally. Make it easy to vote legally.

And before government treats an American citizen like a criminal, make damn sure you’ve got the right person.

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Ironic Honesty

Yesterday I played in the Ann Arbor Rotary Golf Outing, an outstanding event that is worth the down-and-back drive from Petoskey.

At the start of the round, I asked one of my teammates in the other cart if he would keep track of how many of the 20 mulligans we used throughout the round so we didn’t use more than we purchased.

I got a response I never expected.

Which brings me to my...

Quote of the Day

“Honestly, no, because I will cheat.”

Sometimes honesty comes from the most unexpected places.

Orchid of the Day

The federal courts doing what our constitutional system asks them to do: review the exercise of government power.

The Supreme Court’s action doesn’t determine the ultimate legality of the Postal Service rules.

It means the rules won’t take effect while the litigation continues.

Courts aren’t supposed to decide whether a policy is politically popular.

They’re supposed to decide whether government acted within the law.

Onion of the Day

A government investigation that reportedly expects an employee with less than two hours of training to investigate 40 potential illegal voters in a day.

If we’re serious about election integrity, accuracy ought to be at least as important as speed.

Twelve minutes seems awfully quick when the person on the other end of the investigation may be a perfectly legal American voter.

Questions of the Day

Can we protect election integrity without making it unnecessarily difficult for eligible Americans to vote?

And:

Before government creates new voting restrictions, should it first have to demonstrate—with evidence—the size of the problem those restrictions are intended to solve?

Lyrics of the Day

“You can’t always get what you want.”

If you know the song and artist, please leave your answer in the comments below.

Answer to Friday’s Lyrics of the Day

“The Rising” — Bruce Springsteen

Video of the Day:

(2699) Calls of the Game: Detroit stops New Orleans' 2-point attempt to secure 31-30 win | Lions vs Saints - YouTube

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The Day America Changed: September 11, 2001

Although it has been 25 years, I remember the day like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in a Senior Management Team meeting when Tony Denton received a message that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

My first reaction was that it must have been a terrible accident. I felt awful for the victims, but terrorism never crossed my mind. About 20 minutes later, Tony announced that a second plane had crashed into the other tower. At that point, everything changed. I realized our country was under attack.

Then we heard about the plane that crashed into the Pentagon and another that had gone down in Pennsylvania. The meeting ended as all of us sought more information.

I walked down the hallway to the admitting office. The televisions in the waiting room were on, and everyone seemed glued to the screens. I stopped and watched for a few minutes. Then, I went into management mode. I talked to the person in charge of admissions and asked her to make sure the department was prepared for the unlikely event something happened nearby or whether patients were referred to us from one of the attack sites.

Looking back, there probably wasn’t much practical reason to think that would happen. But nobody knew what was coming next. And that may be one of my strongest memories of that morning. We didn’t know whether the attacks were over.

I tried to treat the remainder of the day as normally as possible. That was impossible.

When word came that both towers had collapsed, I realized the death toll was going to be enormous. I began thinking about people I knew who worked in New York City and wondering whether they were safe.

When I got home that evening, I saw something else I will always remember.

My daughter Katy was a senior in high school and almost never watched television. She was glued to it.

For the remainder of the week, whenever Katy was home, she was watching coverage of the attacks, the rescue efforts and the country’s response.

Katy and her high school band were scheduled to perform in New York City in the spring of 2002, so what had happened suddenly seemed much closer to home. I have often wondered how much that week influenced the direction her life eventually took.

I believe the 9/11 attacks and especially the heroism of the police officers, firefighters and other first responders helped set Katy on a path toward law enforcement. She majored in criminal justice in college and has now been a federal agent for 15 years.

One day can change a country. Sometimes it can also change a life.

The Days After

The remainder of that week was emotional and gut-wrenching as we began to understand the magnitude of what had happened. But there was something else happening at the same time. The country came together.

For a brief period, the political differences that normally separated Americans seemed insignificant. People rallied around President George W. Bush, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the police, firefighters and rescue workers. American flags seemed to appear everywhere. Strangers talked to one another. People wanted to help.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded civilian air traffic, and major sporting events were postponed. One of the things I remember most was how eerie the world seemed during those days when airplanes weren’t flying.

At the time, we lived in the flight path of planes leaving Willow Run Airport. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I had become to hearing airplanes overhead until suddenly there weren’t any. The silence was noticeable. And unsettling.

I spent much of my spare time watching television coverage of the rescue and recovery efforts. Like millions of Americans, I was consumed by 9/11 and by how our country would respond.

Eventually, sports returned.

I remember baseball and football games being especially emotional and patriotic. When baseball returned to New York, the reaction was breathtaking. The same thing happened throughout the country. I don’t think I have ever heard the national anthem or God Bless America sung with as much emotion as they were sung during those weeks.

For a short time, we weren’t Republicans or Democrats. We weren’t conservatives or liberals. We were Americans.

Twenty-five years later, that may be one of the things I miss most about the days following September 11. Not fear, not anger and certainly not the tragedy, but the realization that, when confronted with something larger than our differences, Americans were capable of standing together.

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Twenty-Five Years Later: How 9/11 Changed America

September 11 didn’t end when the fires were extinguished and the debris was eventually removed. We have been living with its consequences ever since.

Some of the changes are so much a part of everyday life today that younger Americans may not realize there was ever another way.

Remember When You Could Walk Someone to the Airport Gate?

Before 9/11, family and friends routinely accompanied airline passengers through security and waited with them at the gate. Airport security was considerably less intrusive. Taking off your shoes wasn’t part of flying. Neither were the restrictions on liquids, full-body scanners, reinforced cockpit doors and many of the other security procedures we now take for granted. The Transportation Security Administration didn’t even exist. Congress created the TSA in November 2001, two months after the attacks.

Today, those procedures seem normal. That’s what happens after 25 years. The extraordinary becomes ordinary.

Our Government Changed

Airports weren’t the only thing that changed. The federal government underwent one of its largest reorganizations in decades.

• · The Department of Homeland Security was created, bringing 22 agencies and offices together under a single Cabinet department.

• · Intelligence agencies were reorganized and pushed to share information more effectively.

• · Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act only weeks after the attacks, expanding the government’s investigative and surveillance powers.

• The reasons were understandable. The United States had just suffered the deadliest foreign terrorist attack on American soil, killing 2,977 people. Americans wanted their government to make sure it never happened again.

But many of the measures adopted after 9/11 also raised questions about privacy and civil liberties that we are still debating 25 years later.

The fundamental question hasn’t changed: How much freedom and privacy are we willing to give up in exchange for greater security?

We Went to War

Less than a month after September 11, the United States went to war in Afghanistan.

The immediate objective was understandable: destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government that had provided it sanctuary.

What followed became America’s longest war. Two years later, the United States invaded Iraq.

Twenty years after American troops entered Afghanistan, they left and the Taliban returned to power.

The human and financial cost of the post-9/11 wars has been enormous.

Thousands of American service members died. Many more returned home carrying physical and psychological wounds. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed directly in the wars overseas, and millions were displaced.

Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that the United States spent or obligated more than $8 trillion through 2021 on post-9/11 wars and related costs.

We should always honor the extraordinary service and sacrifice of the Americans who served.

But 25 years later, we should also be willing to ask a difficult question: Did every decision we made in response to September 11 make us safer?

Fear Changed Us

Maybe the biggest changes are the hardest ones to measure.

Before 9/11, terrorism seemed distant to many Americans. It was something that happened somewhere else. September 11 destroyed that illusion.

Suddenly we thought differently about airplanes, bridges, tunnels, stadiums, government buildings and unattended packages. We learned phrases like homeland security and terror alert. Security became part of everyday American life.

Fear has consequences

Muslim Americans, Arab Americans and people perceived to be Middle Eastern sometimes became targets of suspicion, discrimination and harassment.

Fear can also cause us to treat innocent people as though they are responsible for the actions of others.

Are We Safer?

I think the answer has to be yes—in some important ways. We haven’t experienced another foreign terrorist attack approaching the scale of September 11. Airplanes are more difficult to hijack, intelligence agencies communicate differently, airport security is far more sophisticated, and the government devotes enormous resources to identifying terrorist threats before they reach us.

But greater security came at a price: two decades of war, trillions of dollars, expanded government surveillance and a greater willingness to allow fear to influence public policy.

And Then There Was Unity

There is one other change I’ve been thinking about as this anniversary approaches. It isn’t something 9/11 caused. It’s something that happened afterward.

Twenty-five years ago, Americans who disagreed about almost everything discovered that they still had something important in common. Their country.

Unfortunately, that unity didn’t last. Maybe unity created by tragedy never does. Today, we disagree over politics, immigration, elections, race, the media, foreign policy and sometimes even basic facts. We too often treat Americans who disagree with us politically not simply as people who are wrong, but as enemies. I don’t want another national tragedy to remind us that we belong to the same country. Surely there must be a better way.

For a Generation 9/11 is Only History

Twenty-five years later there is now an entire generation of Americans who weren’t alive on September 11, 2001. For them, 9/11 is history.

For those of us who watched it happen, it is something different. It is part of who we are. It is sitting in that meeting when the first report arrived, realizing after the second airplane hit that we were under attack, the people standing silently in the hospital admitting area staring at the television, Katy sitting in front of our television at home, airplanes disappearing from the sky for four days, Americans coming together.

Today we should remember:

• · the 2,977 people who went about an ordinary Tuesday morning and never came home.

• · the firefighters, police officers and other first responders who ran toward danger while everyone else was trying to escape it.

• · the passengers and crew of Flight 93 who fought back.

• · the Americans who served our country in the 25 years that followed.

But remembering should involve more than looking backward.

September 11 taught us that America wasn’t invulnerable. It also taught us that how a country responds to fear can change it almost as profoundly as the event that frightened it.

Perhaps the challenge for the next 25 years is figuring out how to keep ourselves safe without allowing fear—or our differences—to define who we are.

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What Is a Life Worth?

I read a fascinating article in The New York Times this morning about another part of the 9/11 story I hadn’t thought much about.

How do you put a dollar value on a human life?

That was the almost impossible assignment given to Kenneth Feinberg after September 11.

Congress created the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund less than two weeks after the attacks. Feinberg, a lawyer and experienced mediator, was selected to administer it. The idea was unusual.

Instead of forcing victims and their families into years of litigation, the federal government would compensate them. In return, those accepting compensation generally gave up their right to sue the airlines and others involved.

Feinberg recalled one grieving husband essentially telling him that the money didn’t matter. What he really wanted was his wife back.

The compensation formula considered such things as what the victim probably would have earned over a lifetime. A highly paid Wall Street executive might receive considerably more than a firefighter, restaurant worker or administrative assistant.

Was the executive’s life really worth more? Of course not. But how else do you calculate the economic loss suffered by a family?

Feinberg discovered very quickly that this wasn’t simply a financial or legal problem. It was a human one.

He met personally with hundreds of grieving families. Some were angry. Some couldn’t understand why the government was talking about money when they hadn’t even recovered the body of their husband, wife, son or daughter.

Feinberg recalled one husband reacting to a multimillion-dollar award with essentially a much different proposition: Forget the money. Give me my wife back. There was no answer to that.

Eventually, Feinberg says he learned one of the most important lessons of the entire experience. He needed to talk less. And listen more.

Ultimately, the fund distributed more than $7 billion, and about 97 percent of the families of those killed participated.

But 25 years later, Feinberg says the experience changed him permanently. After spending nearly three years listening to people whose lives had been destroyed by something completely unexpected, he became acutely aware of how unpredictable life really is.

Someone stops for another cup of coffee and arrives at work a few minutes later. Someone else doesn’t. One lives. One dies.

We spend an enormous amount of time planning tomorrow, next month and next year as though those days have somehow been guaranteed to us.

They haven’t. That may be one more lesson worth remembering on this 25th anniversary.

Money can compensate for lost income. It cannot compensate for a lost life. And perhaps Feinberg’s experience leaves us with an even simpler lesson:

Listen more. Appreciate the people around you. And don’t assume tomorrow is guaranteed.

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Quote of the Day: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time.” — Virgil

Those words are inscribed at the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

Orchid of the Day: The first responders of September 11, 2001. Firefighters, police officers, emergency medical personnel and countless ordinary people ran toward danger when every instinct must have told them to run away.

Three hundred forty-three FDNY firefighters, 37 Port Authority police officers and 23 NYPD officers were among those killed that day. Twenty-five years later, their courage remains one of the most enduring memories of September 11.

Second Orchid of the Day: Kenneth Feinberg, who took on the nearly impossible job of administering the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund. Feinberg spent nearly three years listening to grieving families while trying to determine fair compensation for losses that couldn’t possibly be measured in dollars. The fund ultimately distributed more than $7 billion. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment wasn’t figuring out what to say to those families. It was learning when to stop talking and simply listen.

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Onion of the Day: Al-Qaeda and the 19 terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks. They murdered 2,977 innocent people from more than 90 countries.

They wanted to terrorize America. They succeeded in changing our country. But they failed in their larger objective. Twenty-five years later, Americans are still here—and we are still remembering those they tried to erase.

Questions of the Day: Twenty-five years after 9/11, are Americans safer because of the changes we made—or did we surrender more privacy and freedom than was necessary?

And perhaps the harder question: What happened to the sense of national unity we experienced after September 11, and is it possible to find some of it again without first experiencing another tragedy?

Lyrics of the Day: “Come on up for the rising.”

If you know the song and artist, please leave your answer in the comments below.

Answer to Wednesday’s Lyrics of the Day

“The Times They Are A-Changin’” — Bob Dylan

Video of the Day: September 11, 2001

https://apnews.com/video/911-how-the-day-unfolded-a53cf4e5d42f4174b0812f3e175757e8?user_email=66638a9f5fcf9fe898cb0cce378694af7571c36f91c178717622377c0906f3e9&utm_medium=Morning_Wire&utm_source=Sailthru_AP&utm_campaign=Morning%20Wire%20Friday%2C%20Sep%2011%2C%202026&utm_term=Morning%20Wire%20Subscribers

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About That One Second...

On Monday, I wrote about the controversial ending of the Michigan-Western Michigan football game and what it told us about technology and instant replay in sports.

Well, the story isn’t over. And, neither was the controversy over that one second.

My conclusion on Monday was that while Western Michigan deserved to win, the officials had followed the replay protocol. The Big Ten’s replay system showed one second remaining when Western Michigan’s Micah Davis touched the football while out of bounds. Officials restored the second, Michigan got another play, and Bryce Underwood threw the game-winning Hail Mary. Now the Mid-American Conference says the officials didn’t follow the proper replay protocol after all.

After what it described as further study and investigation, the MAC concluded that the established replay procedure required officials to use the clock displayed on the program feed when determining whether time remained. That clock showed 0:00.

According to the MAC, the Big Ten replay crew relied on a different clock feed embedded in its replay system—the one that showed a second remaining. MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher made an important distinction.

The conference isn’t necessarily arguing about whether that embedded clock accurately showed one second. It’s arguing that the officials weren’t supposed to use it.

Had they followed the established protocol, Steinbrecher says, no second would have been restored. No additional play. No Hail Mary. Western Michigan wins 12-7.

The MAC has now formally appealed to the NCAA and College Football Playoff, asking that Western Michigan be recognized as the winner for ranking and postseason-evaluation purposes.

The NCAA has already said it cannot overturn the official result. Its rules provide no mechanism for doing so after the game has ended. So Michigan remains the official winner, 13-12.

The College Football Playoff has received the MAC’s request and says it is reviewing it.

There’s one more interesting development. The NCAA has now issued guidance intended to establish a consistent timing protocol for future games. The controversy itself may change how replay is handled going forward. And today, the Big Ten announced another change. Beginning this Saturday, television broadcasts will have expanded access to the replay process, including live audio between referees and replay officials and a view inside the Big Ten Replay Center. One controversial second has already changed how college football handles replay. Which brings me back to what I wrote Monday.

I argued that technology has changed our expectations of sports officials. We no longer simply ask them to make the best judgment they can with their own eyes. They must also operate within an increasingly complicated system of cameras, clocks, replay systems and protocols.

Saturday’s controversy now illustrates that point. The technology may have worked perfectly. The problem may have been that the humans used the wrong part of it.

And there’s an irony in all of this. Instant replay was created to correct human error. In this case, according to the MAC, human error occurred in deciding how to use instant replay.

Maybe technology hasn’t removed the human element from officiating after all. It has simply moved it upstairs to the replay booth.

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How Does Trump Find the Time?

Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American on September 7, 2026, reminded me of something I have wondered about for a long time. Richardson documented an extraordinary burst of Trump social-media activity, including AI-generated images, attacks on opponents and numerous posts about politics, foreign affairs and his own accomplishments.

How does Donald Trump find the time to do all the things he does while also serving as President of the United States?

I don’t pretend to know how Trump spends every hour of his day. A president’s public schedule is not a timecard. I don’t know how much time he spends reading reports, talking with advisers, making phone calls or dealing with issues behind closed doors.

Still, from the outside looking in Trump use of his time is totally different than what I understood other presidents in my lifetime spent their time. My understanding was that other presidents spent their time focusing on the serious issues facing a president. My understanding of the presidency was that much of a president's time was consumed by intelligence briefings, Cabinet meetings, congressional negotiations, foreign leaders, legislation, speeches and the endless responsibilities of running the federal government.

Trump still does many of those things. But his public presidency also includes an extraordinary amount of social-media activity, political combat, attention to his properties, golf and an unusual personal interest in reshaping Washington—from the White House ballroom and Kennedy Center to his proposed monumental arch. All of this is occurring while Trump deals with the enormous responsibilities of the presidency:

• · the economy

• · tariffs

• · immigration

• · Congress

• · national security

• · war with Iran.

There are still only 24 hours in Trump’s Day. So how does he do it? How does he have so much time available for activities that previous presidents did not seem to make nearly as central to their presidencies?

Trump hasn’t found more time. I believe he has a different view on what the president’s job is. I believe this view is a direct result of the frustrations and bottlenecks Trump encountered in his first term. My theory is that Trump approaches the presidency more like the CEO of a privately owned company than the head of one branch of a constitutional government.

His second administration appears deliberately staffed with people more aligned with his objectives than many of those who served during his first term. That potentially allows Trump to operate more like an executive who says, Here’s what I want. Figure out how to make it happen.

The work doesn’t disappear. Much of it moves down the organizational chart.

That leaves the president considerably more freedom to determine where he personally wants to spend his time. It frees up his time for things that are personally important to him.

This may make Trump efficient, but the United States government isn’t a privately owned corporation, and the president isn’t its owner.

Presidential decisions involve war and peace, constitutional rights, trillions of taxpayer dollars and the lives of more than 340 million Americans.

The president needs to hear something he doesn’t want to hear. Sometimes an expert needs to point out something he hasn’t considered. Sometimes another cabinet secretary needs to explain the unintended consequences. And sometimes taking longer to make a decision isn’t bureaucratic inefficiency.

Sometimes deliberation prevents mistakes.

Donald Trump hasn’t figured out how to put more than 24 hours into a day. He may simply have redefined what he believes a president should do with those 24 hours.

I don’t want a president who thinks of his job as the CEO of a privately owned company. The president doesn’t own the government. He leads one of three coequal branches of it.

Efficiency matters. But so do deliberation, expertise, dissent and constitutional checks and balances.

Maybe the more important question isn’t how Donald Trump finds the time.

It’s whether he is permanently changing our expectations of what a president is supposed to do with it.

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Two Old People on Bikes

Leah and I are in Empire, Michigan. Monday we rode a very difficult 10-mile stretch of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail. Tuesday we rode more than 16 miles, biking from the Dune Climb to Glen Arbor and beyond—and back. As we head home to Petoskey Thursday, we’re planning another 10 miles on the Leelanau Trail.

In addition to some great exercise, we’ve found some great places to eat and a quaint little motel, the Empire Lakeshore Inn.

Not bad for a 75 and 74 year-old

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Question of the Day: Has Donald Trump found a more efficient way to run the presidency—or has he changed the job in ways that should concern us?

Orchid of the Day: Mid-American Conference Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher for continuing to investigate the ending of the Western Michigan-Michigan game even after Western Michigan initially accepted the Big Ten’s explanation. The easiest thing would have been to move on.

Instead, the MAC investigated further, concluded the replay protocol hadn’t been properly followed and publicly acknowledged what it believes should have happened: Western Michigan should have won 12-7.

Onion of the Day: The replay process at the end of the Western Michigan-Michigan game. Not necessarily because the technology failed.

According to the MAC, it didn’t. The Onion goes to a system sophisticated enough to synchronize multiple clocks and video feeds—but apparently not clear enough to ensure that everyone knew which clock they were supposed to use.

Questions of the Day: Should the College Football Playoff treat Western Michigan as the winner even though the NCAA record book says Michigan won the game?

And: Has Donald Trump changed the presidency temporarily—or has he permanently changed what Americans will accept as presidential behavior?

Lyrics of the Day: “The times they are a-changing.”

If you know the song and artist, please provide your answer in the comments section below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day September 7 2026: The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel

Video of the Day: Disturbed - The Sound of Silence feat. Myles Kennedy [Live in Houston]

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When Did We Start Expecting Referees to Be Perfect?

Yesterday, my sister-in-law Jan asked what I thought about the controversial ending of Saturday’s Michigan-Western Michigan football game.

My answer was pretty simple: Western deserved to win. Michigan didn’t. But the officials followed the replay process, Michigan was given one more second, and Michigan took advantage of it.

It also got me thinking about something bigger.

If you watched the end of the game, you saw one of the strangest finishes I can remember.

Western Michigan appeared to have pulled off a stunning upset at Michigan Stadium. Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood threw a Hail Mary into the end zone. It fell incomplete. The television clock showed 0:00.

Game over. Except it wasn’t. The officials went to instant replay.

After reviewing the play, Big Ten replay officials determined that Western Michigan defensive back Micah Davis had established himself out of bounds before touching the football. Under NCAA rules, that made the ball dead when he touched it. More importantly, the Big Ten’s synchronized replay system showed that contact occurring with one second remaining. The officials put one second back on the clock.

Michigan got one more play. Underwood threw another Hail Mary, JJ Buchanan caught it for a 47-yard touchdown, and Michigan won 13-12. Western Michigan went from celebrating perhaps the biggest victory in its football history to losing the game—all because of one second discovered by technology.

Whether the Big Ten ultimately got that second right is still being debated. NBC’s broadcast clock appeared to tell a different story, and NBC’s rules analyst questioned how the replay system and television pictures could produce different results.

But I’m interested in a different question.

Would any of this have happened 20 years ago?

I don’t think so.

Before sophisticated instant replay, the official would have watched the play, seen the clock reach zero and declared the game over.

Maybe television would have shown a replay afterward suggesting there should have been one second remaining. Fans would have complained. Michigan fans would have argued about the officiating. But Western Michigan would have won the game.

Instead, technology has fundamentally changed what we expect from sports officials.

From Getting It Right to Getting It Perfect

Instant replay was introduced for a perfectly understandable reason. We wanted to correct obvious mistakes.

A receiver catches a pass but the official rules it incomplete. A runner’s knee hits the ground before he fumbles. Technology gives us the ability to look again.

And when millions of dollars, championships and careers can depend upon one call, why wouldn’t we want to get it right?

The problem is that somewhere along the way, “get it right” became “get it perfect.”

We freeze video frame by frame. We magnify whether a toe touched a white line. We determine whether a runner’s hand reached a base a fraction of a second before a tag.

And Saturday at Michigan Stadium, we tried to determine whether a football touched a player’s hand while he was out of bounds with one second remaining on a synchronized clock.

That isn’t officiating the way I grew up watching sports. It isn’t like the sports officiating I did for over 50 years. It’s forensic science.

Technology Has Changed the Official’s Job

There’s another part of this we don’t talk about enough.

Officials today aren’t simply judged on what they see on the field. They’re also judged on whether they properly use technology.

There are replay protocols, command centers, synchronized cameras and procedures determining which plays can be reviewed and what evidence is necessary to overturn a call.

The Big Ten says that before Saturday’s game, the cameras used by the replay system—including a camera focused directly on the stadium clock—were synchronized using a strobe system. Think about that.

We have reached the point where officiating a college football game requires a technological infrastructure capable of synchronizing multiple video cameras with a game clock so officials can determine what happened within fractions of a second.

And yet we’re still arguing about the call.

Technology Solved One Problem and Created Another

Instant replay unquestionably corrects mistakes. It shouldn’t be eliminated. But it has created something we probably didn’t anticipate. It has changed our tolerance for human error.

When officials had only their eyes, we understood that they would occasionally miss something.

Today we have dozens of cameras, slow motion, high-definition video, computer synchronization and replay command centers. So when officials still get something wrong—or when two technologies appear to tell us different things—we become even more frustrated.

We expect perfection because technology has convinced us perfection is possible.

Saturday’s Michigan-Western Michigan ending may be the perfect example. Without replay, Western Michigan almost certainly leaves Michigan Stadium winning 12-7.

Instead, technology found one second. Michigan used it. And the Wolverines won 13-12.

Maybe the officials got it exactly right. Maybe they didn’t. But one thing seems certain: The technology that was supposed to end arguments about officiating has instead given us entirely new things to argue about.

And perhaps the real question isn’t whether instant replay is good or bad. It’s this: How much precision do we really want from a game played—and officiated—by human beings?

When Everyone Knows Who Did It—but the Jury Still Can’t Decide

I’ve been following the Lindsay Clancy murder trial with a perspective that I suspect most people watching the case don’t have.

Nearly 50 years ago, I sat on a jury in a murder trial that presented us with essentially the same fundamental question.

There was no question who killed the victim.

The question was whether the person who killed him should be held criminally responsible because of his mental state at the time.

I learned during those two weeks—and especially during three difficult days of jury deliberations—just how complicated that question can become.

The Case I Still Remember

It was the late 1970s.

A father had gotten into an argument with his daughter’s boyfriend. During the confrontation, the boyfriend beat him up and then left the house.

The father followed him.

What the boyfriend didn’t know was that the father had a three-inch pocketknife.

The two men confronted one another again. During that argument, the father stabbed the boyfriend once.

One stab wound.

Unfortunately, the knife entered his heart.

The boyfriend died.

There was no mystery about who had done it. Our job wasn’t to determine whether the defendant had stabbed and killed the young man. He had.

Our job was much more difficult. What was going on in his mind when he did it?

The prosecution presented evidence that the defendant was legally responsible for killing another human being.

The defense presented compelling evidence that the defendant’s mental state at that moment made him legally not responsible for what he had done.

We listened. We debated.

And we couldn’t agree.

After three days of deliberations, our jury was divided 11-1.

Eleven jurors believed the defendant should be found not guilty because of temporary insanity. One juror believed he was guilty but mentally ill.

We couldn’t convince her. She couldn’t convince us. The result was a hung jury.

Nearly half a century later, I still remember those deliberations.

Which Brings Me to Lindsay Clancy

That’s one reason I’ve followed the Lindsay Clancy case so closely.

Clancy was charged with murdering her three young children in their Massachusetts home in January 2023. There was no dispute that she killed them.

The central question was whether she was criminally responsible when she did it.

Her defense argued that Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis and lacked the ability required under Massachusetts law to be held criminally responsible.

Prosecutors presented a very different picture. They argued that her actions demonstrated planning and that she understood what she was doing and knew it was wrong.

The trial lasted nearly six weeks. More than 80 witnesses testified.

Then twelve ordinary citizens were sent into a room and asked to answer a question that psychiatrists, lawyers and other experts had spent weeks arguing about:

What was happening inside Lindsay Clancy’s mind when she killed her children?

After nearly 40 hours of deliberations over seven days, the jurors couldn’t agree.

The apparent split was 11-1, with eleven jurors reportedly prepared to find Clancy not criminally responsible and one juror holding out.

The judge eventually declared a mistrial.

When I read that, I immediately thought back to that jury room almost 50 years ago.

I understood.

What People Outside the Jury Room Don’t See

It’s easy to watch a trial on television, read newspaper accounts or follow social media and decide what the verdict should be.

Guilty. Not guilty. Case closed.

It is very different when you’re sitting in the jury box.

You see the defendant every day. You see the victim’s family. You listen to witnesses. You hear experts offer completely different interpretations of the same person’s behavior.

Then the judge explains that your responsibility isn’t necessarily to decide what you personally believe is morally right.

Your responsibility is to apply the law.

The courtroom doors close. The lawyers disappear. The judge disappears.

And twelve ordinary people sit around a table trying to make one of the most consequential decisions they will ever make about another human being.

How Do You Determine Someone’s State of Mind?

That’s what makes cases involving mental illness particularly difficult.

Physical evidence can sometimes be relatively straightforward. A fingerprint exists or it doesn’t. DNA matches or it doesn’t.

But how do you prove what was happening inside someone’s mind at a particular moment?

Psychiatrists can evaluate a defendant. Medical records can document previous behavior. Family members can describe what they witnessed.

Prosecutors can point to evidence of planning and purposeful behavior. Defense attorneys can point to evidence of psychosis and irrational behavior.

But ultimately twelve people who aren’t psychiatrists have to take all that evidence and answer a legal question about someone’s mental state.

Sometimes reasonable people reach different conclusions.

The Holdout Juror

I also understand something else about the Clancy case.

It’s tempting to criticize the lone juror.

I remember the frustration in our jury room when eleven of us believed one thing and one person believed another.

After three days, we wanted a verdict. But unanimity means unanimity.

Eleven people don’t get to overrule the twelfth simply because they’re tired of deliberating.

The holdout juror has the same responsibility as every other juror: listen to the evidence, follow the judge’s instructions and reach the conclusion his or her conscience and understanding of the law require.

That’s sometimes frustrating. It’s also an important protection built into our criminal justice system.

Almost 50 Years Later

I don’t remember every detail of the murder trial I sat through in the late 1970s. But I remember the weight of the responsibility.

A young man was dead. His family deserved justice. A man’s future was partly in our hands. And the defendant was entitled to the protections provided by our legal system.

Twelve ordinary people had to decide what justice meant. We couldn’t reach a verdict.

The Lindsay Clancy jury couldn’t either.

That doesn’t necessarily mean either jury failed.

Sometimes a hung jury reflects something uncomfortable but important about our justice system:

The evidence can be compelling on both sides.

Reasonable people can listen to the same testimony and reach different conclusions.

Certainty can be extraordinarily difficult to find when the question isn’t what happened, but rather what was happening inside that person’s mind when they did it?

I learned that sitting in a jury room almost 50 years ago. The Lindsay Clancy jury has just been reminded of it.

Quote of the Day: “Ultimately, the refs did not cost us this game.” — Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor

Taylor said making excuses would allow his team to become bitter rather than better.

Orchid of the Day: Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor, athletic director Dan Bartholomae and president Russ Kavalhuna for their gracious reaction following the controversial ending of the football game.

Onion of the Day: Pathetic. Michigan’s performance between the first drive and the final play in its game against Western Michigan.

Questions of the Day: Was Western Michigan robbed? And perhaps the more important question: Has technology fundamentally changed sports officiating—and have we reached the point where we expect technology to make officials perfect?

Lyrics of the Day: “Still, a man hears what he wants to hear…but disregards the rest”

Answer to Lyrics of the Day, September 4, 2026: People Have the Power — Patti Smith

Video of the Day: : Bryce Underwood, Michigan beat Western Michigan on last-second Hail Mary | Big Ten on NBC Sports

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Whatever Happened to College Football?

College football begins in earnest this weekend, and I’ll be watching. But as someone who has been watching college football for more than 60 years, I sometimes wonder whether what we’re watching should still be called college football.

For decades, universities, conferences, television networks and coaches made enormous amounts of money while the athletes playing the games were prohibited from sharing the money. The NCAA took the approach that no financial benefit should be provided to college athletes that wasn’t available to the entire student body. There was something fundamentally unfair about that.

I have always believed college athletes deserved a portion of the revenue their sport brought to the university. As a parent of a successful college student athlete, I saw the additional burden, physical and mental, college sports put on the student athlete.

In the last five years, things have changed drastically.

Name, Image and Likeness—or NIL—opened the door for athletes to earn money from endorsements and other commercial arrangements.

Then came the transfer portal.

Players can now change schools much more easily, and the annual ritual of building a college football roster increasingly resembles professional free agency.

And then came revenue sharing.

Following the House v. NCAA settlement, major Division I schools can now pay athletes directly from athletic-department revenues. In the first year, participating schools were permitted to share approximately $20.5 million annually with their athletes.

Think about how extraordinary that would have sounded when many of us were growing up.

And this week college football crossed another line I never imagined seeing.

On Thursday a Louisiana judge issued a preliminary injunction that allows LSU to put former NFL players back on a college football roster. Among them are former Cleveland Browns tight end Dae’Quan Wright and former New Orleans Saints defensive lineman Zxavian Harris.

The circumstances are complicated. The players argue that NCAA eligibility rules changed after they decided to leave college and pursue professional football and that they shouldn’t be penalized for decisions made under the old rules.

The NCAA and Southeastern Conference disagree. The SEC argues that allowing professional athletes to return threatens one of the remaining distinctions between college and professional sports.

That argument is now being fought in court.

Here’s the part that tells you everything about how strange college football has become.

· Harris testified that he received only $190 in travel expenses during his time with the New Orleans Saints.

· He also testified that he made approximately $1 million playing college football.

Think about it. He made considerably more money playing college football than he did during his brief stint with an NFL organization. His case may be unusual, but the larger transformation of college athletics is not limited to football.

If that doesn’t tell us that the old definition of “amateur college athletics” is dead, I’m not sure what does.

I don’t begrudge student-athletes getting as much as they can. If universities and television networks are making billions from college football, the young men putting their bodies at risk deserve to share in the money they generate. But something has been lost along the way.

When I grew up watching college football, players were identified with their schools. You watched them develop over three or four years. Rivalries weren’t simply television programming. Michigan-Ohio State, Alabama-Auburn and Notre Dame-USC represented generations of history.

In the last five years things have changed.

· Today a quarterback can play against a school one year and play for that school the next.

· Coaches recruit their own rosters every offseason to keep players from transferring.

· Boosters and collectives help finance NIL deals.

· Schools directly share millions of dollars with athletes.

· Conference realignment is increasingly driven by television revenue rather than geography or tradition.

And now we are debating whether someone who signed with an NFL team can come back and play college football.

Maybe we should simply acknowledge what college football has become.

It is professional football played by athletes who happen to attend universities. That doesn’t necessarily make it bad.

The games will still be exciting. Michigan Stadium will still have more than 100,000 people on Saturday afternoons. We’ll still argue about rankings, complain about officials and celebrate beating our rivals.

I’ll still watch. But I won’t pretend it’s the same game I grew up with.

Perhaps the challenge now isn’t figuring out how to restore the old model. That model is gone. The challenge is figuring out how to build a new one that compensates athletes fairly while preserving enough of the traditions, rivalries and connection to universities that made college football special in the first place.

Because if we lose those things, college football may eventually discover that the word college was one of the most valuable things it had.

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Election Security or a Solution in Search of a Problem?

For the past week, I’ve been writing about election fraud.

I’ve tried to approach the issue from a fairly simple premise: Election fraud exists. When someone votes illegally, we should investigate it and prosecute it. But before changing the rules governing how millions of Americans vote, shouldn’t we first determine how large the problem actually is?

Two developments this week make that question even more important.

Michigan recently completed an independent audit of its voter rolls.

The state’s nonpartisan Office of the Auditor General examined Michigan’s Qualified Voter File, which contains approximately 8.3 million voter records.

The finding that jumped out at me was this: 99.99% of those records contained complete and valid personal information as required by state law.

The audit identified registrations that had been canceled or rejected for citizenship-related reasons, questionable birthdates and records involving people who had died. But when you dig into the numbers, they tell a more complicated—and considerably less alarming—story.

· Auditors found 2,582 ballots associated with people whose death records indicated they died before Election Day. That sounds terrible until you discover that 2,561 were early or absentee ballots cast by people who died within 40 days of the election. In other words, most were ballots cast by voters who were alive when they completed them but died shortly before Election Day. Michigan law generally requires those absentee ballots to be rejected if election officials learn of the death in time, but delays in death reporting can prevent officials from identifying them before the ballots are processed.”

· The audit also found 653 registered voters with birthdates suggesting they were more than 122 years old. Some apparently resulted from old paper voter records being transferred into a computer system that required birthdate, with 1900 sometimes used as a placeholder year.

· Most importantly, Michigan election officials canceled nearly one million registrations between January 2022 and March 2026 for legitimate reasons such as voters dying or moving.

The evidence supports that voter-roll maintenance is working in Michigan.

Now Look at What Washington Wants to Do

President Trump has issued an executive order that, if implemented, would fundamentally change how mail ballots are handled by the United States Postal Service

Under the new USPS rule, states would have to provide information about mail-ballot voters through a federal system and use specially designed ballot envelopes containing unique barcodes. The Postal Service could refuse to transmit ballots that don’t satisfy the new requirements. That alone would represent a significant change in the federal government’s role in elections.

This week it became known that a whistleblower inside the Postal Service has raised an additional concern. According to the disclosure, the system has been developed on an extraordinarily compressed timetable. Under what the whistleblower describes as a “zero percent failure” standard, a problem with one sampled barcode could potentially cause an entire batch of ballots—possibly thousands of them—to be rejected and returned for correction.

These aren’t necessarily fraudulent ballots. These are ballots being sent to eligible voters so they can vote.

Harry Litman’s Warning

Former federal prosecutor Harry Litman has been following this legal battle closely. His argument gets to the constitutional heart of the issue.

The Constitution gives states the primary responsibility for conducting elections and gives Congress certain authority to regulate federal elections. What it does not do is give the president general authority to rewrite election procedures by executive order.

Litman also identified a procedural problem several weeks ago that now looks remarkably important.

The Trump administration initially argued that challenges to its mail-voting executive order were premature because USPS hadn’t yet completed the regulations necessary to implement it.

The Supreme Court agreed that the earlier challenge had come too soon.

Then USPS issued the final rule.

The challengers immediately went back to court.

And now we’re finding ourselves racing against the election calendar.

What Happened This Week

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani held a hearing to determine whether she should extend her temporary order blocking implementation of the USPS rule.

One exchange was remarkable.

The judge repeatedly asked the government’s lawyer how the Postal Service’s new system would actually work. Judge Talwani said:

“I don’t even have a declaration from the Postal Service: ‘This is how it will work.’ I don’t have it. I have nothing.”

Judge Talwani then asked:

“As you sit here today, you can’t tell me the government has a program ready to go?”

That was an extraordinary question to be asking less than 70 days before a national election. A USPS official acknowledged in a court filing that the online portal states would use to upload voter information was not yet operational.

Then today, Judge Talwani extended her order blocking the new USPS requirements.

Her ruling came on the same day North Carolina became the first state to begin mailing ballots for the November election.

The Trump administration argues that USPS has authority to establish what it describes as modest requirements for ballot-mail design and that state election officials would continue to decide who is eligible to vote by mail.

The states and voting-rights organizations challenging the rule argue that the changes could disenfranchise legitimate voters and improperly insert the federal government into election administration traditionally handled by the states.

But the legal battle isn’t over.

On Thursday, the Trump administration asked the United States Supreme Court to intervene and allow the USPS rule to take effect. That emergency request remains pending.

So, we now have an unusual situation:

Ballots are being mailed. A federal judge has blocked the new rules. And the administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow those rules to take effect while the election is already underway.

Which Brings Me Back to the Original Question

This entire debate would look different if we had evidence that our elections were overwhelmed by fraudulent voting. But that’s not what the evidence we’ve examined over the past week shows.

The Heritage Foundation has documented roughly 1,600 proven instances of various forms of election fraud over several decades.

Michigan’s independent audit just found that 99.99% of 8.3 million voter records contained the complete and valid personal information required by state law.

None of that means fraud doesn’t happen. It does.

None of it means Michigan’s voter rolls are perfect. They aren’t.

And none of it means we shouldn’t continually improve election security. We should.

But it brings me back to the question I’ve been asking all week: Is the remedy proportional to the problem?

We are now considering fundamentally changing the way the United States Postal Service handles millions of mail ballots, immediately before a national election, using a computer system that a federal judge was told today may not even be ready.

That’s a very large remedy. The evidence of widespread illegal voting remains very small.

Perhaps the most important principle here shouldn’t be Republican or Democratic. It should be caution.

If we can make elections more secure without making it harder for legitimate voters to vote, let’s do it. But if we’re going to change the machinery of an election while that election is already beginning, the government should have an extraordinarily compelling reason—and an extraordinarily well-tested system—for doing it.

Right now, serious questions remain about both.

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Quote of the Day: “The right to vote is preservative of all rights.” — Justice Hugo Black, Oregon v. Mitchell (1970)

Orchid of the Day: Michigan’s state and local election workers.

Michigan’s independent audit found problems in the voter rolls that need correcting. But it also found that 99.99% of the state’s 8.3 million voter records contained complete and valid personal information and that nearly one million outdated registrations had been canceled since 2022. Maintaining voter rolls isn’t glamorous work. When it is done correctly, we rarely hear about it.

Onion of the Day: The U.S. Postal Service and the Trump administration, for attempting to introduce a fundamentally different system for handling millions of mail ballots immediately before a national election—while serious questions remain about whether the system has been adequately tested or is even ready to operate.

Question of the Day: If an election system is already identifying improper registrations, removing ineligible voters and prosecuting people who vote illegally, how much additional risk should we impose on millions of legitimate voters to prevent a relatively small number of illegal votes?

Lyrics of the Day: That the people have the power To redeem the work of fools
Upon the meek the graces shower It’s decreed: the people rule

If you know the title and/or author, let me know in the comment section below.

Answer to Lyrics of the Day September 2, 2026: For What it’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield

Video of the Day: USPS Video on Voting by Mail.

https://about.usps.com/video/EM_CONSUMER_y25.mp4

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Iran: Waging War in Secret

Dan Rather raised an important question this week: How can Americans judge a war when their government tells them so little about it?

The United States has now been at war with Iran for six months. American service members are risking their lives, billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent, and the Strait of Hormuz remains severely restricted. Yet Americans have remarkably little independent information about what is actually happening.

Rather points out that there appear to be no American journalists embedded with U.S. forces in the region. That is striking. Reporters accompanied American forces during Iraq and Afghanistan and, in one form or another, have reported alongside American troops going back generations.

Instead, much of what Americans see today comes from Pentagon-produced material, administration statements, satellite imagery, anonymous sources and information coming from Iran—which itself can be difficult to verify. That becomes especially troubling when the administration escalates the war as has happened in the last two days as Trump ordered renewed strikes against Iran over the weekend. Iran retaliated, reportedly striking a U.S. base in Jordan. But Americans still don’t know the full extent of the damage.

There are also questions about whether six months of combat are straining America’s stockpile of weapons and potentially reducing our ability to respond to another international crisis. The Pentagon says our military remains prepared. Yet The Washington Post reported on a classified Pentagon assessment warning that prolonged operations against Iran could weaken America’s ability to respond to future threats.

Rather’s larger point is one worth remembering regardless of who occupies the White House: A democracy should not wage war in the dark.

There are obviously military secrets that cannot be made public. But secrecy necessary to protect American troops is very different from secrecy designed to protect political leaders from scrutiny. Americans should know why we are fighting, what our objectives are, what the war is costing, what progress we are making and—perhaps most importantly—what victory is supposed to look like.

Six months into this war, those questions are becoming more important, not less. American men and women are being asked to fight it. American taxpayers are paying for it. We have a right to know how it is going.

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The Abdication Caucus

Mary Geddry wrote a powerful piece this week entitled The Abdication Caucus. Her central argument is one we should all think about: Donald Trump’s expansion of presidential power isn’t simply about a president taking power. It is also about Congress failing to exercise the power the Constitution already gives it. As Geddry puts it, the Constitution can give Congress power, but it cannot make Congress use it.

Nowhere is that more important than with the war in Iran.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall recently described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the most dysfunctional defense secretary he encountered during a career spanning roughly a dozen Pentagon chiefs. Kendall says the removal of senior military officers has created a “climate of fear” in which people are reluctant to give leaders advice they don’t want to hear. Other retired military leaders have raised similar concerns about the loss of experienced officers, military readiness, depleted munitions, strained logistics and resources being diverted from other parts of the world to sustain the Iran war. Those aren’t partisan questions. They’re questions Congress is supposed to be asking.

The Constitution gives Congress enormous authority over the military. Congress controls appropriations. The Senate confirms senior officials. Congressional committees can investigate government operations, demand documents and call officials to testify. Yet six months into the Iran war, Congress largely watches.

Meanwhile, President Trump presents an increasingly sanitized picture of the conflict. Over the weekend he posted an AI-generated video appearing to show Iran’s Kharg Island being destroyed and declared Iran “DEAD.”

But an AI-generated video isn’t a war.

The real war involves exhausted military personnel, damaged bases, dwindling munitions, difficult supply lines, adversaries adapting to American strategy and civilians being killed.

Geddry points to another troubling example of executive power—the Postal Service ballot system I discuss elsewhere in today’s blog. A whistleblower says a hastily developed federal system could potentially prevent entire batches of mail ballots from being processed because of a single discrepancy. Again, the issue is larger than the individual policy.

The executive branch acts. Courts sometimes intervene. Individual members of Congress write letters, appear on television and complain. But Congress as an institution too often does very little.

Our founders divided government power among three branches for a reason. They understood that concentrated political power is dangerous regardless of who exercises it. Separation of powers, however, doesn’t operate automatically. Congress has to defend its authority. That means conducting serious oversight, demanding documents, compelling testimony, controlling spending and—when necessary—telling a president no.

And this isn’t just about Donald Trump.

Every time Congress allows a president to exercise authority that traditionally belonged to the legislative branch, it potentially hands that same authority to every president who follows.

Republicans should ask themselves whether they would be comfortable with a future Democratic president exercising these same powers. Democrats should ask themselves the same question when their party controls the White House.

Geddry closes with an observation that may be the most important sentence in her piece: Power left unused doesn’t stay in storage. Eventually, somebody else picks it up.

The Constitution gave Congress enormous power to check a president. The question is whether Congress has the courage to use it.

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When Criticizing the Press Becomes Trying to Punish the Press

Presidents have complained about the press since the beginning of our country. Thomas Jefferson did it. Abraham Lincoln did it. Richard Nixon did it. Barack Obama did it. Joe Biden did it. And Donald Trump certainly has every right to do it.

But there is an important difference between a president criticizing the press and a president using the power of the federal government to punish journalists and news organizations whose reporting he doesn’t like.

That is the concern raised by David A. Graham in The Atlantic.

Over the weekend, Trump became angry with NBC’s Kristen Welker after she described the results of his recent political endorsements as a “mixed bag.” Trump responded by saying she would be reported to the Federal Communications Commission for “rebuke or punishment.” He separately called upon the FCC to do something about what he called “fake polls” published by the media.

There is a rather fundamental problem with that idea. The FCC is not supposed to determine whether a journalist’s reporting is sufficiently favorable to the president. In fact, the FCC itself has said that substituting government judgment for the editorial decisions of broadcasters would be inconsistent with the First Amendment.

Trump has sued or threatened numerous news organizations and journalists. His administration has restricted the access of certain reporters. The Pentagon has dramatically reduced press access and has been engaged in its own battle with journalists reporting information the Defense Department would prefer remain secret. ABC and Disney are now suing the FCC, arguing that the administration’s unusual early review of eight ABC television-station licenses amounts to retaliation for the network’s speech.

President Trump has every right to call a reporter unfair. He can criticize NBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN or this blog if he wants to. But the First Amendment also protects the people criticizing him.

The press certainly makes mistakes. Journalists deserve criticism when they get stories wrong, and Americans have every right to distrust a newspaper, television network or reporter they believe is biased. But the remedy for bad journalism in a free society is better journalism—not government punishment. Republicans should be particularly sensitive to this principle. Conservatives spent years arguing that government officials should not pressure private companies to silence political speech.

That principle shouldn’t change depending upon who occupies the White House. Imagine a future Democratic president ordering federal regulators to investigate Fox News because she didn’t like its coverage. Conservatives would be outraged. They would also be right.

The First Amendment was not written to protect Republicans from Democrats or Democrats from Republicans. It was written to protect all of us from the government.

And that’s why threats to use government power against journalists—even journalists we dislike—should concern every American.

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If Voter Fraud Is So Rare, Why Risk Disrupting Millions of Legal Votes?

On Monday I wrote about election fraud and questioned whether the problem is remotely as widespread as President Trump and many Republicans would have us believe.

I pointed out that the Heritage Foundation—the conservative organization frequently cited by Republicans on election integrity—has documented roughly 1,600 proven cases involving various forms of election fraud over several decades. When the issue is narrowed specifically to noncitizens voting, the number becomes dramatically smaller.

Now comes a story that makes that discussion even more important.

On Tuesday, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal all reported on a whistleblower inside the U.S. Postal Service who has raised serious concerns about a new system being developed to implement President Trump’s restrictions on voting by mail.

The proposal represents a significant change in the Postal Service’s traditional role. Historically, state and local election officials determine who should receive a mail ballot, and the Postal Service delivers it. Under the new system, election officials would upload voter information into a new Federal Ballot Mail Portal, and specially barcoded ballot envelopes would be checked before the Postal Service accepted them for delivery.

According to the whistleblower, the computer system behind that process has been built on an extraordinarily compressed timetable.

The whistleblower says development began around June 15, with a planned September 1, 2026, launch. Work was interrupted because of litigation, leaving even less time for development and testing. According to the disclosure, a system of this complexity would ordinarily require substantially more time, yet normal testing and debugging procedures were compressed or eliminated.

Perhaps the most troubling allegation involves what the whistleblower describes as a “zero percent failure” policy.

Election officials would submit batches of ballot envelopes to the Postal Service. Workers would scan a sample of those envelopes and compare their barcodes with information in the new federal portal. According to the whistleblower, if even one sampled barcode failed to match, the entire batch could be rejected and returned for correction.

A batch could contain thousands—or potentially tens of thousands—of ballots.

That doesn’t mean thousands of votes have already been rejected. They haven’t. The system is not currently operating because a federal judge has temporarily blocked important portions of the rule. The Trump administration is appealing that decision.

And this is where I come back to Monday’s discussion.

There is nothing wrong with trying to make our elections secure. Only eligible voters should vote. Fraud should be investigated, and people who knowingly cast illegal ballots should be prosecuted.

However, election laws should also be proportional to the problem they are designed to solve. If widespread illegal voting were occurring, imposing major new safeguards might be an understandable response. But the evidence we looked at Monday showed something quite different: documented illegal voting—particularly voting by noncitizens—is exceedingly uncommon.

So, we should ask another question: Could the cure become more damaging than the disease? A system intended to prevent an illegal ballot from being mailed should not inadvertently prevent thousands of legitimate voters from receiving theirs.

The Trump administration argues that the new requirements will strengthen election security. The Postal Service’s published rule says the changes are intended to ensure compliance with federal election law and establish standardized procedures for federal ballot mail.

That argument deserves to be heard but so does the warning from the people charged with making the system work. Election security and voting access should not be opposing goals. We should be able to do both: make it difficult to vote illegally while making it straightforward for every eligible American to cast a legal ballot.

The real test of an election law shouldn’t be whether it helps Republicans or Democrats. It should be much simpler: Does it solve a demonstrated problem without preventing legitimate Americans from voting?

Right now, there are legitimate reasons to question whether this new Postal Service system passes that test.

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What Happened to the Detroit Tigers?

Less than three weeks ago, the Detroit Tigers were one game under .500 and still very much alive in the playoff race. Today they are 12 games under .500 and, their season is essentially over. In their last two games against the Twins, the Tigers were outscored 26-3. What happened to the Tigers?

In early August, the Tigers were only 2½ games out of the final Wild Card spot when management traded Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize. The logic was understandable. Both pitchers were approaching free agency, and the Tigers decided their long-term value as trade assets outweighed keeping them for a playoff run.

But there was a price. Detroit traded away its two best starting pitchers—including Skubal, the two-time defending Cy Young Award winner—while the team was still playing meaningful baseball. Surprisingly, the Tigers initially responded by winning. They climbed back to within one game of .500 and remained in the playoff race.

Then reality caught up with them. The starting rotation became thinner. An already questionable bullpen was asked to do more. And perhaps most importantly, the hitting disappeared. When you’re consistently scoring only one or two runs, there is very little margin for error.

Last Friday, there was something painfully symbolic about Skubal’s return to Comerica Park. Wearing a Dodgers uniform, he held his former teammates to one run over six innings as the Tigers lost 2-1.

I don’t blame A.J. Hinch, nor am I ready to declare that Scott Harris made terrible trades. The prospects Detroit received may eventually become very good major-league players. But the collapse raises a larger question:

At what point does a rebuilding baseball team decide it is time to win? The Tigers made the playoffs in 2024 and 2025. The Tiger’s leadership thought they had made the moves at the beginning of the season to prepare the team for a strong run in 2026. However, they didn’t strengthen the bullpen and that was their undoing as the Tigers have lost 28 games when leading after the sixth inning. At the trade deadline, the Tigers waived the white flag and decided to build for the future. At some point, constantly building for the future becomes frustrating when the future is supposed to have already arrived.

We’ll never know what would have happened had Detroit kept Skubal and Mize for two more months. Watching the Tigers fall out of contention makes it awfully difficult not to wonder what might have happened.

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Quote of the Day: “Power left unused doesn’t stay in storage. Eventually, somebody else picks it up.” — Mary Geddry

Orchid of the Day: To the military officers, government whistleblowers and journalists who continue to tell us things people in power would sometimes prefer we didn’t know. Democracy requires people willing to ask difficult questions—and people willing to answer them.

Onion of the Day: President Trump, for posting an AI-generated video depicting Iran’s Kharg Island being destroyed and announcing it was being “blown to smithereens,” when there was no evidence such an attack had occurred. A president can argue his case for a war. He shouldn’t need artificial intelligence to manufacture pictures of victories that didn’t happen.

Question of the Day: If Congress won’t exercise its constitutional powers when the president belongs to its own party, does the separation of powers really work?

Lyrics of the Day: There’s something happening here
But what it is ain’t exactly clear…I think it’s time we stop
Children, what’s that sound? Everybody look, what’s going down?

Lyrics of the Day August 31, 2026: I Will Always Love You, by Dolly Parton

Video of the Day: Freedom of the Press: Crash Course Government and Politics #26

On the six month anniversary of the start of the War with Iran, Iran retains the ability to severely restrict shipping through the Strait.

From Heather Cox Richardson: Foreign policy scholar and diplomat Philip Gordon, who served in the Biden White House, wrote: “U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”

He suggested that “in other circumstances Iran’s closure of [the] Strait by brazenly attacking maritime traffic and neighbors’ civilian infrastructure would likely have justified and led to a united, global response—like the U.S.-led naval escort mission during the Iran-Iraq war, the global coalition that reversed Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the multinational naval force enforcing UN sanctions in the Gulf in the 1990s, or the UN Security Council sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program in the 2010s—that led to the JCPOA.”

“Instead,” he wrote, “[the] US and other countries are now being forced to accept an outcome that would have been unthinkable before the war but seems to have become unavoidable because of it.”

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The National Debt Hit $40 Trillion. Why Should You Care?

The United States crossed another financial milestone that should concern every American: our national debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time. Earlier this year, federal debt held by the public reached roughly the size of our entire annual economy—more than 100% of GDP.

Why should the average American care? After all, nobody is going to send you a bill for your share of the national debt. Unfortunately, we pay for it in other ways.

Interest Is Eating Up Our Federal Budget: Just like a family with too much credit-card debt, the federal government must pay interest on what it borrows. As the debt grows, so does that interest expense.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that net federal interest costs will reach $2.1 trillion annually by 2036 if current policies remain largely unchanged. That is money that cannot be used for roads, defense, education, healthcare, scientific research or other national priorities.

We are increasingly borrowing money simply to pay the interest on money we previously borrowed.

It Can Make Your Own Borrowing More Expensive: When Washington borrows enormous amounts of money year after year, it competes for capital with businesses and individuals. Over time, heavy government borrowing puts upward pressure on interest rates. That can translate into higher rates for mortgages, auto loans and business loans.

So while you may never receive a bill marked “national debt,” you may experience its consequences when you finance a house, buy a car or when a business decides whether it can afford to expand and hire more employees.

It Can Reduce Economic Growth and Wages: There is another consequence that is less obvious.

When more of the nation’s available capital goes toward financing government debt, less is available for businesses to invest in factories, equipment, technology and expansion.

The Congressional Budget Office warns that high and rising federal debt eventually reduces private investment, productivity and economic growth. Lower productivity ultimately means lower wages and a lower standard of living than we otherwise might have enjoyed.That is particularly important for our children and grandchildren. They will inherit not only the debt, but also the economic consequences of servicing it.

It Leaves Us Less Prepared for the Next Crisis: The most overlooked danger is what happens when the next emergency arrives.

We borrowed heavily to fight the financial crisis in 2008 and again during COVID. There may someday be another recession, pandemic, war or financial crisis requiring extraordinary federal spending. The greater our debt before the crisis begins, the fewer financial options we have when we desperately need them. The CBO has repeatedly warned that growing debt reduces the government’s ability to respond to unforeseen events and increases the risk of a fiscal crisis.

This Isn’t a Republican or Democratic Problem: Perhaps most frustrating is that both political parties have contributed to the problem.

Republicans frequently talk about controlling spending but have supported large deficits through tax cuts without corresponding spending reductions. Democrats have defended or expanded expensive government programs without generating enough revenue to pay for them.

Americans want government services but don’t want either the spending cuts or tax increases necessary to pay for them. Politicians have learned that borrowing the difference is easier than telling voters the truth.

$40 Trillion Should Be a Wake-Up Call: There is nothing magical about $40 trillion. The country isn’t going bankrupt tomorrow because we crossed that number which is what makes the situation so dangerous.

The consequences of excessive debt generally develop gradually—higher interest costs, higher borrowing costs, reduced investment and fewer choices for future generations. By the time a genuine crisis develops, the solutions may be far more painful. It is like putting off changing your car’s oil. Eventually, we will pay dearly for our continued delay.

The Congressional Budget Office now projects debt held by the public will climb from roughly 101% of GDP today to 120% by 2036 if current laws remain largely unchanged.

We cannot solve this problem simply by cutting “waste,” nor can we tax a handful of billionaires enough to make it disappear. The numbers are simply too large.

Eventually, a serious solution will require Americans—and our elected officials—to have an uncomfortable conversation about spending cuts and tax increases. That conversation won’t be politically easy. But $40 trillion ought to remind us of something our parents taught many of us a long time ago: Eventually, somebody has to pay the bills.

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Election fraud is not the problem President Trump, and most Republicans are making it out to be.

Let me start with something on which I hope everyone can agree: Only American citizens should vote in American elections.

If someone knowingly votes illegally, that person should be prosecuted.

But that raises an important question. How big is the problem we are trying to solve?

President Trump and many Republicans have spent years warning Americans about widespread voter fraud, particularly voting by noncitizens. The argument is now being used to justify major changes in how Americans register and vote.

The evidence simply does not support the claim that noncitizen voting is a significant problem.

Consider a source Republicans should have difficulty dismissing: The Heritage Foundation, one of the country’s most influential conservative organizations. From 1982 through 2025, Heritage documented 100 cases of noncitizens voting of the 1,600 voting fraud cases that were documented.

During roughly that same period, Americans cast more than 1.3 billion votes in presidential elections alone. That works out to approximately 0.000008 percent.

Not satisfied with the Heritage Foundation information, the Trump administration decided to look for fraud. According to an August investigation by ProPublica, federal investigators generated tens of thousands of leads involving possible illegal voting. Homeland Security Investigations agents were dispatched around the country to investigate them.

What happened? Between January 2025 and May 2026, fewer than 150 alleged noncitizen voters were referred for prosecution. Just 41 people were charged with voting illegally or related election crimes, and through May prosecutors had obtained convictions or guilty pleas in 14 cases.

This confirms what most of us already knew, the evidence tells us something very different from the rhetoric, just like the 62 of 63 lawsuits that Trump filed following the 2020 presidential election that were dismissed by federal judges, many of whom he appointed.

We are talking about an extraordinarily small number of illegal votes in a country where more than 150 million Americans vote in a presidential election. So why does this matter?

Because the proposed solution could affect millions of perfectly legal American voters.

The SAVE America Act would require documentary proof of citizenship when registering or updating a voter registration. For many people that means producing a passport or an acceptable birth certificate along with government-issued identification. A 2023 national survey found that about 9% of adult American citizens cannot readily access documentary proof of citizenship. Think about that tradeoff.

We would potentially make voting more difficult for millions of eligible American citizens to address a form of illegal voting that the available evidence shows occurs extraordinarily rarely.

That is where election security can become voter suppression.

There is nothing wrong with wanting secure elections. We should maintain accurate voter rolls. We should verify eligibility. We should prosecute people who deliberately vote illegally. And we should continually improve the security of our election systems. But our laws should be based upon the size of the actual problem—not the size of the political rhetoric surrounding it.

Democracy depends on two things at the same time: Only eligible citizens should vote, and every eligible citizen should have a reasonable opportunity to vote.

We don’t strengthen democracy by protecting one of those principles while ignoring the other. The greater danger is convincing millions of Americans that our elections are riddled with fraud when the evidence says otherwise—and then using that fear to make voting harder for legitimate American citizens.

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Why was Dolly Parton loved by everyone?

There are very few public figures who were loved and respected like Dolly Parton. In all the articles I have read and all the videos I have watched in the last week, I did not find or hear one bad or controversial word about Dolly. She transcended everything and everybody.

Why?

Part of it was her extraordinary talent. She wrote Jolene, Coat of Many Colors, 9 to 5 and I Will Always Love You. She became a country music superstar, movie star and successful businesswoman. But lots of people are talented. Lots of people become rich and famous. Very few become almost universally loved.

I think Dolly’s secret was that she never seemed to forget who she was.

She grew up dirt poor in the mountains of East Tennessee, one of twelve children. She eventually became wealthy beyond anything that little girl could possibly have imagined. Yet somehow the rhinestones, wigs, fame and money never seemed to change the person underneath. She had a wonderful ability to laugh at herself. Nobody could make fun of Dolly Parton better than Dolly Parton but, there was something more important underneath all that humor.

She was kind.

Her father could not read or write, and Dolly never forgot the effect that had on him. So, in 1995 she created the Imagination Library, initially to provide free books to children in her home county in Tennessee. By the time of her death, the program had distributed more than 300 million free books to children around the world.

When wildfires devastated her home region in 2016, she helped provide $1,000 a month for six months to hundreds of families who had lost their homes. She donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for COVID research that contributed to development of the Moderna vaccine. She supported children’s healthcare, education, disaster relief and countless other causes.

Perhaps most remarkably, she managed to live in an increasingly divided America without allowing herself to become another symbol of that division.

People on the political left loved Dolly Parton. People on the political right loved Dolly Parton. Country music fans loved her. Rock musicians loved her. The LGBTQ community loved her. Christians loved her. Working-class people loved her. Hollywood loved her. She didn’t accomplish that by having no beliefs. She accomplished it by treating people with dignity even when they were different from her.

Dolly Parton reminded us that you can have strong beliefs without hating people who don’t share them.

· You can become enormously successful without forgetting where you come from.

· You can be rich without being selfish.

· You can laugh at yourself.

· You can help people without first asking how they vote.

· And you can disagree with somebody and still treat them with kindness.

She gave us permission to like one another. Maybe that is why her death feels like more than the loss.

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Quote of the Day:

“If you see someone without a smile, give ‘em yours!” — Dolly Parton

Orchid of the Day: To Dolly Parton—not simply for the music she gave us, but for the millions of children who opened a book because she decided that the little girl who grew up poor in the Tennessee mountains could help other children dream bigger. More than 300 million books later, that is one hell of a legacy.

Onion of the Day: To politicians of either party who knowingly exaggerate the threat of election fraud because frightening voters is politically more useful than telling them the truth. Election fraud should be prosecuted whenever it occurs. But Americans deserve election laws based on evidence, not fear.

Second Onion of the Day: To every member of Congress—Republican or Democrat—who complains about our $40 trillion national debt while refusing to tell voters the uncomfortable truth: balancing our nation’s finances eventually requires some combination of spending restraint and additional revenue. There isn’t a magic third choice.

Question of the Day: If noncitizen voting is so widespread that America needs sweeping new voting restrictions, why has an intensive federal effort to find it produced so few prosecutions?

Lyrics of the Day:

If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I’ll go, but I know
I’ll think of you each step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
Bitter-sweet memories
That’s all I am taking with me
Good-bye, please don’t cry
We both know that I’m not
What you need

Video of the Day:

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Iran: Now What?

· Axios reported on Sunday that Adm Bradley Cooper, the top US military commander in the region, had told Trump the US military campaign had reached the limits of its effectiveness. There is tremendous concern within U.S. government that if the Iran war picks up precipitously, which it easily could, this strain could become even more acute. That’s why, with the U.S. at a new inflection point in the Iran standoff, officials are wrestling with how to proceed, even if they won’t reveal the specific numbers underlying this tension.

· Last week, the Pentagon quietly lowered the death toll of the war with Iran from 18 to 14. This wasn’t happy news about an initial miscount but a sketchy accounting trick. Although the Defense Department at first blamed a data issue, military sources told The New York Times that the Trump administration had removed four recently killed service members from its count “because their deaths occurred after President Trump declared a cease-fire in the war in April.”

· On Monday, the government website that tracks U.S. military casualties was updated again, this time to include the four people, but placing them in a new category: “Overseas operations casualties starting July 7th 2026” is now listed separately from Operation Epic Fury—the military code name for the Iran war. July 7 is the day that the administration restarted strikes against Iran, acknowledging that the April cease-fire had definitively failed. What’s going on here is more than an effort to merely reduce the war’s death toll: The administration is trying to hide a war and ended up hiding the deaths of American service members along the way. Instead of admitting that this is a return to the original conflict, the White House now says it’s an entirely different clash—which means that Congress won’t have any role until early September, 60 days from July 10, the day the White House delivered formal notification of the conflict.

· For more than four years, a fragile truce prevailed in Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition and the Iran-backed Houthi militia had fought a war that pushed the country to the brink of famine. The U.S. war with Iran happened.. Over the past few weeks, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia have rapidly spiraled into a conflict that could expand into a full-blown war.

· Speaking in the Oval Office just now, Trump reiterated his threat that ⁠the ⁠United States ​would hit Iran very ⁠hard. He said ​he was ​briefed ​on a ​drone ‌attack on ​tankers off ​Egypt. “It’s a little more of the same, but it’s going to be straightening out,” Trump said. “In the meantime, we’re going to be hitting them very hard, because it’s our turn to hit them,” Trump told reporters. “They know it’s coming.” He said Washington would see if ‌there was an agreement at ​some point, “but we’re going to hit them very ⁠hard”.

A sign of the times

The Democratic Party is so short on cash that leaders at its headquarters have undertaken a new gambit to mask the severity of the problems: asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterm elections.

The bookkeeping maneuver, which was described by three people briefed on it, is the latest sign of financial duress for the Democratic National Committee and its embattled leader as money troubles threaten to undercut Democratic momentum with 100 days until the midterms.

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Gordie Howe Bridge Opens

Per the Detroit Free Press. The world’s newest international crossing, the Gordie Howe International Bridge over the Detroit River between the United States and Canada, is now open to public motorists.

One of the most appealing features of the new bridge for international commerce is its direct highway-to-highway connections. The bridge can be reached on the U.S. side via a 1.8-mile interchange on Interstate 75 between Springwells Street and Clark Avenue in Detroit. Connecting ramps lead straight from I-75 to the new U.S. Port of Entry.

On the Windsor, Ontario, side, the bridge is approached via Highway 401, the E.C. Row Expressway, and Ojibway Parkway. These major routes feed directly into the Canadian port of entry and the toll infrastructure for the crossing.

See my Video of the Day

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The Detroit Tigers are Dead

In the last week the Detroit Tigers lost three games when they were leading entering the seventh inning. They lost two to Kansas City over the weekend, but the one they lost today was the worst. In today’s game the Tigers were ahead 7-0 heading into the seventh inning of their game with Baltimore, with ace Tarik Skubal on the mound. With two outs Skubal gave up his first run on a single. Skubal had thrown less than 90 pitches, but manager, A.J. Hinch took Skubal out of the game and brought in Kyle Finnegan who allowed four more runs to score. Baltimore tied the game 7-7 in the eighth inning and went on to win in the 12th inning. Today’s game was the 18^th time the Tigers lost this season when leading going into the seventh inning. The Tigers’ bullpen gets my Onion of the Day. A.J. Hinch gets a Second Onion of the Day for not allowing Skubal to finish the seventh inning. A tired Skubal is better than anyone the Hinch can bring in from the bullpen.

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Contact your Congressperson

Contact your congressman by following these easy steps This can be done in a few easy steps

Step 1: find your congressman by clicking on this link, Find Your Representative | house.gov

Step 2: Put your zip code in the proper space.

Step 3: Click the button “find your representative””

Step 4: In the new page that comes up you will see a picture of your congressman. Click on your congressman’s name under the picture.

Step 5: In the new page that comes up, Click on Contact Me at the top of the page and then click on Email me.

Step 6: Fill out the information as required.

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Quote of the Day: “It was incredible,” said Howe’s grandson, who is also named Gordie. “It just (made) me think about all of the people who have worked on this bridge . . . how happy everyone must be that this bridge has come to fruition. It’s an honour to have been the first to cross.” With his grandfather’s name attached to the new international crossing, Howe said he hopes those who travel across think about the values the hockey legend represented. “He was such a people person, and I hope that they (travelers) just feel that sense of something grounded, something very humanistic,” Howe told reporters.

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Orchid of the Day: The Gordie Howe Bridge.

Onion of the Day: The Detroit Tiger bullpen for blowing three games when the Tigers were winning going into the seventh inning. Today they blue a 7-1 lead.

Second Onion of the Day: A.J. Hinch for not allowing Skubal to finish the seventh inning today when the Tigers were leading 7-1. A tired Skubal is better than anyone Hinch can bring in from the bullpen.

Question of the Day: Is the war in Iran going to expand to include other mid-eastern countries?

Lyrics of the Day: Well, there’s a young man in a T-shirt

Listen to a rockin’.rollin’ station

He’s got greasy hair and greasy smile

He says, “Lord, this must be my destination.”

Lyrics of the Day for July 22, 2026. We Didn’t Start the Fire by Billy Joel

Video of the Day: Traversing the Gordie Howe Bridge

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Heather Cox Richardson Hits a Home Run

Excerpts from Heather Cox Richardson Today: The front page of yesterday’s New York Times featured some of the 440,000 Americans from Arizona alone who have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits since the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act made the deepest cuts to SNAP in its history, expanded work rules, and shifted costs to the states even as cuts to federal grant programs have forced Arizona to lay off a third of its caseworkers.

Those Arizona residents include Dee McDonald, a 65-year-old cancer survivor who weighs 69 pounds and skips meals to feed her three teenaged grandsons.

In the Denver Post today, Executive Director of the Association of National Park Rangers Bill Wade wrote that during his years as the son of a park ranger, and then as a park ranger himself, “I learned that these extraordinary parks belong to every American and that the people entrusted to care for them carry a sacred responsibility to protect our country’s breathtaking natural resources and key elements of our nation’s history.”

“But never—not once in decades—have I witnessed such systematic degradation, disrespect and dismantling of the National Park Service as I see today under the thumb of the President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum,” Wade continued. Budgets go up and down and policies change as administrations turn over, but “what is happening now is an assault on the people, the mission and the values that have made the National Park Service one of America’s most valued institutions.”

The Trump administration has slashed staff, starved the service of funds, and imposed a political narrative on historical interpretation. “Recovery from these losses is likely to take years, if not decades,” Wade wrote.

While administration officials are slashing government programs that protect ordinary Americans, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine appeared on Capitol Hill today before the Senate Appropriations Committee to explain why the Pentagon is urgently in need of an injection of $67 billion to tide it over until the end of the fiscal year on September 30. The Pentagon has sunk billions into the war in Iran. Hegseth told senators the war had cost $37.5 billion, but independent analysts estimate the true number is significantly higher.

Two congressional aides told Noah Robertson, Riley Beggin, and Jarrell Dillard of the Washington Post that both the Navy and the Air Force will run out of money provided for ongoing military operations in 2026 at the end of this month. The Pentagon is already moving money around to bridge the gap, diverting money budgeted for equipment and maintenance and limiting or canceling military exercises and training.

Yesterday Rose L. Thayer of Stars and Stripes reported on one such diversion: The Army is reducing the legal resources available to soldiers being evaluated for disability “as review boards determine whether they are fit to serve or should receive medical retirement benefits.” In the past, the Office of Soldiers’ Counsel has provided those services, but dramatic cuts have left personnel available only for an initial evaluation, rather than throughout the three-stage process. After the initial evaluation, soldiers must either represent themselves or hire private attorneys.

At today’s hearing, Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) grilled Hegseth. “Mr. Secretary, early in the conflict, day three, you said one of those core objectives was to, quote, destroy the missile threat, and as you restated it on day five to, quote, obliterate Iran’s missiles and drones. Those were clearly and repeatedly stated core objectives of the campaign, which four months ago you declared had been completed victoriously with every single objective achieved. Were those objectives achieved four months ago?”

Hegseth answered: “No one ever stated that every single missile was gone. Ultimately, combat ineffective means they’re not able to dig them out of their UGFs [underground facilities] and shoot at us.”

Ossoff: “Had the missile threat been defeated four months ago?”

Hegseth continued over Ossoff: “It doesn’t mean they don’t have underground facilities where they put missiles in them and hold onto them because they’re the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. So we never expected they would stop having capabilities to shoot. The question is, at scale, against an opponent like the United States of America, which went toe to toe with them in Iran, couldn’t….”

Ossoff continued: “You stated on March 8th, day nine of the war, on 60 Minutes, you assured the American people of Iranian surrender. Does that remain your prediction?”

Hegseth: “Ultimately, Iran will never have a nuclear weapon to threaten the United States of America. That has been the objective, and it remains so.”

Ossoff: “So, just to review, you will not answer whether your statement made on the fourteenth day of the war that Iran’s military had been, quote, destroyed and made combat ineffective was a truthful statement to the American people, as you sit here and ask for tens of billions more for the conflict.”

The second Trump administration is forcing the American people to define how they think the United States government should spend their tax dollars.

Quick Thoughts:

The departure of Warde Manuel as Michigan’s athletic director at the end of the year was overdue. The national championships and B1G championships were great, but they could not offset the ongoing scandals that plagued Manuel’s time as AD. If the scandals were limited to just one sport he might have survived. For me, he needed to be fired when he did not fire Juwan Howard when Howard slapped a Wisconsin assistant coach following a game in Wisconsin. U of M’s policy is clear on physical abuse and Manual did not follow the policy.

The World Cup was a great success. By all accounts the USA as well as Canada and Mexico were great host. Nearly everything I read about the USA as hosts was extremely positive. It is a credit to the people of this country. Hopefully, the fans will spread the word that the USA remains a great country.

I understand the emotions that go along with competitive athletics. Losing is tough especially after a grueling competition like the World Cup. However, it is not an excuse for the behavior of a few of the Argentina soccer players immediately following the championship game against Spain. Those Argentina players get my Onion of the Day

The Iran war continues. The U.S. continues to punch and Iran counter punches. No matter how much Trump threatens Iran, Iran does not give in. It appears we are close to a stalemate, and the thing Trump campaigned against is becoming a reality. The U.S. is getting into another “Forever War”. Will we ever learn? I highly recommend that Trump rewatch the Foreman/Ali fight from the 70’s when the power of Foreman could not outlast the defense and patience of Ali.

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River Rouge High School Class of 1969 75^th Birthday Party

I attended the River Rouge High School Class of 1969 75^th Birthday party on Saturday July 18 at Crystal Gardens in Southgate. Thirty classmates, friends and family members attended the event. The event was the brainchild of fellow classmate Diana Minor Wilkerson who decided we were getting too old to wait for our 60^th reunion in 2029. She was right. We had classmates come from all over the country to attend. Although I stay in touch with some of my classmates on a weekly basis, it was great to catch up with other classmates who were close friends in high school. I hope to reestablish those relationships.

For me, this class was special. Despite the racial tension that existed at the time throughout the country, our class never let it get in the way of how we interacted with each other. We won the Class B state championship in boys’ basketball; we were undefeated and top-ranked in football, we had all state football players and all-state basketball players, as well as the Willie Heston award winner as the best scholar-athlete in SE Michigan. We had a very large national honor society membership with many classmates having outstanding professional careers. Most of all we had good people.

I had the privilege of working with nine other classmates to plan the event. We started 15 months ago with everyone doing their part. The way we worked together on the event and the way the event took place was reminiscent of how we worked together in 1969. I was fortunate that Diana asked me to be on the planning committee. It was time well spent. The event gets my Orchid of the Day.

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Contact your Congressperson

Contact your congressman by following these easy steps This can be done in a few easy steps

Step 1: find your congressman by clicking on this link, Find Your Representative | house.gov

Step 2: Put your zip code in the proper space.

Step 3: Click the button “find your representative””

Step 4: In the new page that comes up you will see a picture of your congressman. Click on your congressman’s name under the picture.

Step 5: In the new page that comes up, Click on Contact Me at the top of the page and then click on Email me.

Step 6: Fill out the information as required.

*********************************************************************************************************

Quote of the Day: “I learned that these extraordinary parks belong to every American and that the people entrusted to care for them carry a sacred responsibility to protect our country’s breathtaking natural resources and key elements of our nation’s history.,,“But never—not once in decades—have I witnessed such systematic degradation, disrespect and dismantling of the National Park Service as I see today under the thumb of the President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum,” Executive Director of the Association of National Park Rangers Bill Wade

Orchid of the Day: The River Rouge Class of 1969 75^th Birthday Party at Crystal Gardens in Southgate, Michigan. Thirty classmates, their friends and family had a great night of reminiscing, good food, great music, and fun. It was an honor to be the MC for the event.

Onion of the Day: The few players on the Argentina soccer team for their unsportsmanlike behavior following their loss to Spain in the World Cup championship game.

Question of the Day: Will we ever learn about conducting war on foreign lands?

Lyrics of the Day: Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson
Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British politician sex
JFK, blown away, what else do I have to say?

Lyrics of the Day for July 15, 2026. Love the One You’re With by Stephen Stills

Video of the Day: Try not to laugh too hard. Think about the gold medal hockey game in February vs the World Cup

Soccer vs Hockey