Tag Archives: Trump Administration

Education on the Brink. Transparency Too.

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  MAR 17, 2025 

Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, who reigned during much of the period from 1940-1961, famously said that, “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”

There are other pithy Rayburnisms: “Drudgery, darkness, and muddy roads are not conducive to anything that is good.”

They are apropos today, while President Donald Trump and his liquidator, Elon Musk, dismantle or downsize Federal agencies. They are not using a magnifying glass to assess the damage. They are not using a surgical scalpel to operate, careful to not fix what is not broken. They have even abandoned the meat-axe approach. They’ve revved up the bulldozer, without defining or explaining what they are doing. Continue reading →

The US and Ukraine and A Blow to Democratic Rule

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 24, 2025 

I have this rule.

When something is said or done that hurts or angers, I hold off any response for 24 hours, knowing full well that I probably don’t have enough information or the placidity to make a reasoned judgment. It’s tough. In this day and age, it is a rule that begs to be broken.

I invoked the rule last week when President Donald Trump let loose on Ukraine and looked like he was gift-wrapping the country for his friend Russian President Vladimir Putin’s birthday. I couldn’t believe my ears, so I waited not 24 hours but 48. In the meantime, I read a variety of perspectives from right to left. I researched Ukrainian history and slowly replaced emotion with reason. But it didn’t change my mind.

Trump’s actions on Ukraine are unnerving and to some extent just plain scary, made more so by the disturbing trends taking place on the domestic front in just the first weeks of the second Trump term.

A case in point: Trump recently said that his swordsman, Elon Musk, isn’t aggressive enough. I hope that was in jest.

It is often hard to discern if the President’s bluster is just a bluff or his real intent, damn the consequences. He doesn’t seem to be bluffing or engaging in his brand of transaction diplomacy with Ukraine. Continue reading →

Civility Is a Path Out of Desolation

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 28, 2021

“If we do not join now, to save the good old ship of the union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage.”
— President-Elect Abraham Lincoln February 15, 1861

It is probably not ‘woke’ to quote Lincoln.

San Franciscans are still thinking about scouring his name from schools. Elsewhere his statues are being pulled down like Hussein’s were in Baghdad.

The rail-splitter’s name and legacy are being purged from history by pseudo-progressives who prefer their own version of antebellum and Native American history without the benefit of pertinent facts or an ounce of reason. They’ve concluded Lincoln must go.

Those of Us—also a great band once upon a time in the Great Plains—who came of age in the 60s and 70s try to keep an open mind, but it’s tough. We recall how our elders damned Elvis and his gyrating hips (under their breath, of course) and how we thought they were so out of touch glued to the black and white watching Lawrence Welk. What was with the bubbles? Continue reading →

Institutions and Values Part II: The Pyrite Rule

BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  JUL 16, 2018

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Bible, (Matt. 7:12)

It was taught to my siblings and me by my mother back in the 1950s, but the Golden Rule or versions of it have been a lantern for life’s journey for 2000 years or more, a version of which was propounded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, according to an Internet search. I am not sure if my mother read Aristotle. She was probably introduced to the Rule by Catholic nuns who schooled generations of us back in South Dakota, but who often let it lapse in their own behavior in the classroom where weapons-grade yardsticks were always close at hand. Continue reading →