Thoughts for the Day, April 15, 2026: Tax Day and Jackie Robinson Day

It’s Tax Day

This should make you feel good about paying your taxes today.

Per the Guardian: The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from leading intelligence provider Rystad Energy, analyzed by Global Witness.

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It’s also Jackie Robinson Day

Today the MLB honors Jackie Robinson who broke the color barrier this day in 1947. Today, every player wears number 42 in honor of Robinson, whose number has now been retired by the MLB so no one will where the number in the future. Here are excerpts from ESPN.

When Robinson walked out on that field for the first time with the Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he was called everything other than what my late mother would say -- a child of God. When he came to the plate, they knocked him down continuously. Sometimes opposing pitchers would get fined if they didn’t knock him down. When he would slide into second base, he would oftentimes come up wet, from where the opposition had spit on him; when opponents came into second base, they’d do so spikes high, trying to cut him. They did everything imaginable to break Jackie, but Jackie would not break.

Rickey picked the right guy, because failure was not an option -- on either side of the situation. How much longer would it have been for another Black man to get the opportunity to play in the major leagues? It could’ve been five, 10, 15, 20 years or more for that to happen again. If that had happened, think about the stars we would’ve missed -- Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Monte Irvin, Bob Gibson, Roberto Clemente. Can you imagine our sport without those great stars?

Jackie wasn’t playing only for Jackie. He was carrying the weight of 21 million Black folks when he walked across those lines, and if he failed -- in a game that is predicated on failure -- then an entire race of people would’ve failed. We were counting on him, and he couldn’t fail. I tell people all the time that the level of euphoria in the Black community was like when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Robinson was our Neil Armstrong.

See my Video of the Day

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Flooding in Northern Michigan

I am getting a lot of inquiries from friends about the flooding in Northern Michigan. Leah and I are not directly affected, but the City of Petoskey on Tuesday morning was gridlock with some of the main roads heading in and out of town affected by the flooding. Getting from one side of town to the other was an adventure.

Our condo complex is nearly 300 feet above the shore of Little Traverse Bay, is 200 feet above U.S. 31, and we are not near any rivers or streams, so we are dry compared to many others.

Once again, it seems like we were hit by the perfect storm. The ground is still frozen, 36 inches of snow is melting, and a major thunderstorm dumps heavy rain in a short period of time. The water only has one way to go, which is downhill. It is a quick reminder of how the rivers and creeks were formed a long time ago.

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Tax Day-Paying their way

Undocumented immigrants are major contributors to the economy and to the U.S. government revenue. This is contrary to what the current White House administration is saying. See the article below in the NY Times today.

Today, many undocumented immigrants are debating whether to file their taxes.

That may — or may not — come as a surprise to you. To some, undocumented immigrants are scofflaws, people who come here and leech off the system. “Many, many illegal aliens do not pay taxes,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Politico last year.

Except most do pay taxes, according to researchers. The Internal Revenue Service lets anyone file, whether they have a Social Security number or not. Undocumented workers in the United States pay roughly $20 billion in income taxes each year.

As today’s tax-day loomed, many of those immigrants worried. Under the Trump administration, the I.R.S. shared some of their addresses with immigration officials — something it had never done before. They fear that federal agents might scoop them up, should they send in their tax forms.

“I don’t know if we can trust this government not to come after us,” one woman told The Times. She and her husband, also undocumented, have paid federal taxes every year for more than a decade. He described their thinking to my colleague Miriam Jordan, who covers immigration: “If one day there’s immigration reform and the chance to legalize our status, we can show that we file our taxes, are not a burden — that we do the right thing,” he said.

The Treasury will collect a lot less money if undocumented workers skip filing season this year. Many have taxes withheld in their paychecks.

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Two Paths

The following are excerpts from an article by Elliot Kirschner that was posted on Saturday. It is worth the time.

At first glance, the two biggest stories of the past week, the mission of the Artemis spacecraft and the war in Iran, seem to have little in common beyond the fact that both were launched by the United States government.

One is a stirring success. The other a metastasizing failure.

One inspires the world with awe and wonder. The other leaves it reeling from death and chaos.

One celebrates the human instinct to push beyond horizons in search of knowledge and insight. The other feeds a darker impulse for violence and destruction.

…But we can learn a great deal from contrast and comparison. That is why these two events should be viewed in tandem. Because in doing so, we can see both the rot of this regime and the capacity of this nation to produce something far beyond what these destructive fools could ever imagine.

In the dissonance between lunar exploration and an insane war of choice, we can see what truly makes America great, and the petty vindictiveness that drives those currently misleading the nation.

We can see why expertise is essential. Why you must plan and prepare for the unknown. Why you must approach challenges with humility. Why you should seek out collaboration. And why you must be willing to learn from your mistakes.

In short, one path is the path of progress, uplift, and hope. It is built on strategic thinking, iteration, and science, the striving to reach for precarious possibilities through ingenuity, grit, and perseverance. The other path is one of folly,…unchecked biases, bad assumptions, inconsistencies… that characterize so much of this….regime’s approach to governance...and the way it inflicts its stupidity on the world.

Let us be very clear: the leaders of this regime do not have the temperament,…or creativity to achieve great things such as space exploration. they feed off the strength of what those who came before them built, using traits they do not possess….They gamble away the professionalism of our military on a conflict they brashly believed would be easy, and that is now leaving us profoundly weakened.

Watching the Artemis II astronauts splash down in the Pacific Ocean after their trip to the moon gave those of us who were not around, or too young for the Apollo missions, our own album of mental images, images that in many ways mirrored that bygone era. The capsule descending beneath its parachutes. Bobbing in the ocean with its flotation devices. Navy helicopters circling, retrieving the astronauts. The unmistakable sense of a remarkable accomplishment.

It was a turning back of the clock to another difficult era in our nation’s history, another time of war and division, when we needed to remember what greatness could be and the power of unity and our common humanity.

The fact that we hadn’t gone back (to the moon) in 50 years, and that when we did we returned in a way so similar to that distant time… it also reveals an invariable spirit, one that drives us forward and cannot be quenched.

Life is about the unknowable. It is about challenges and unanticipated consequences. It encompasses our own frailties.

The intervening decades of space exploration brought remarkable achievements, the Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station, the courage of the astronauts who flew aboard the Space Shuttle. But they also brought tragedy, and lessons in our own hubris and blindness.

In 1986, in the wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, just 73 seconds into flight, which killed seven astronauts, the Reagan administration launched a commission to investigate. One of its members was the legendary physicist Richard Feynman, who identified a fatal flaw in the design of the shuttle’s booster O-rings. Just as importantly, he exposed a systemic failure within NASA’s culture to recognize the danger and operate safely.

In the final line of his conclusion to the report, Feynman wrote words that became famous and speak directly to our time: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” This is my Quote of the Day

Reality must take precedence. We cannot turn our decision-making over to public relations or propaganda. Nature cannot be fooled, because we cannot hide from the truth forever. These are the principles that can guide us to greatness, and we ignore them at our peril.

…Feynman’s lessons are not only about the negative. He reminds us that technology can be successful, that humans have the capacity not only to create, but to learn from nature and experience, to improve, to tinker, and to build something better and more robust. Evidence of this is found throughout history, just as evidence of human hubris is everywhere as well.

The enduring strength of a democracy is that we have the power to choose. And in this past week, we have seen clearly where choosing well and choosing poorly can lead.

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Question of the Day

I have been contemplating this question for a few weeks. Do you feel our country and our citizens are safer now than we were prior to the start of the war with Iran? I don’t.

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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: “For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” legendary physicist Richard Feynman

Orchid of the Day: Detroit Tiger Javy Baez. In tonight’s game against the Royals, Javy had the greatest slide I have ever seen as he scored the first run of tonight’s game. I wish I had a video of the slide to share with you.

Onion of the Day: We the consumers who are paying higher prices for gasoline because of a unnecessary war started by Trump, while the Oil companies benefit with inflated profits.

Question of the Day: Do you feel our country and our citizens are safer now than we were prior to the start of the war with Iran?

Lyrics of the Day: Who knows what tomorrow brings? In a world, few hearts survive. All I know is the way I feel when it’s real, I keep it alive

The road is long There are mountains in our way, but we climb a step every day

Love lifts us up where we belong Where the eagles cry, on a mountain high
Far from the world below Up where the clear winds blow

Lyrics of the Day for April 13, 2026. Rocket Man by Elton John

Video of the Day: Examining Jackie stealing home

I write reflective, opinionated essays on leadership, politics, sports, and life—grounded in experience rather than ideology. If this perspective resonates with you, you can subscribe here for free.