Sure, many of President Trump's executive orders are leading us to a constitutional crisis.  But what is the worst case scenario?  We lose Democracy and become a Dictatorship.  Terrible, but most of us will carry on with our lives, and so will the rest of the world. Other Trump edicts will hurt the poor, middle class and elderly.  There will be serious reductions in social benefits, especially in medicine,  public welfare, education and the like.  But many of those hurt should have anticipated this course of action if they voted for Trump, or not.   Social Security will fade and become unavailable for most, and those already on it, will see payments decline over time.  But again, they will survive, only not so well.  The rich?  They will do better, probably muchly so. The most damaging of all Trump acts is in the remediation of global warming.  This could be so serious as to lead to billions of human deaths, and perhaps trigger...

I yesterday expounded on social welfare.  Let me add a final editorial, the matter of the   child tax credit , which will be excised when Biden and Manchin next year agree on the  Build Back Better Act that will end up being close to $1.8 trillion .  I don't want to go into the details of that child tax credit, which you can read here.   But is basically a transfer of money from the rich to the masses.  I think we need to adjust our charitable and social welfare programs to consider family well-being.  With aid to parents should be some compelling motivational incentive.  The whole matter of  entitlements  is at the foundation of what has to be re-thought out. Finally, unmentioned is that this type of government aid only further exacerbates  population growth , which will more and more strain the resource limits available in the world. Compound this factor with the contribution to poverty for families who can't afford children....

I've long debated addressing the matter of social welfare in the United States.  Well, Senator Joe Manchin's NO to the White House about the Build Back Better Act could well be a wake up call for the nation. First, Manchin left the  door wide open for some compromise next month.  He blamed the White House staff and not the President.  So something less than $2 trillion will get through by reconciliation. But the larger point that I'll address today is:  can we build a society to motivate people?  We need to get to the root cause of what ails America.  Homelessness, poverty, racial strife...things seem to be getting worse rather than better. Starting with  homelessness , here are some numbers that will surprise, if not shock, you.  In terms of homeless/100,000 population: Syria  3753 Nigeria  1658 Somalia  1867 Central African Republic  1421 South Sudan  1378 Grenada  1300 Yemen  1294 Honduras  1235 Egyp...