Among President Trump’s salvo of purposefully disruptive, power-grabbing and sometimes illegal and unconstitutional executive orders is one aimed at federal government workers who either work from home (telework) or have “hybrid” arrangements where they combine telework with coming into the office a few days each week. While this one has been largely lost in the explosion of Trump’s bumbling and chaotic output, it is important because it will have an adverse impact on more than a million federal employees, many government agencies and soon, the general public. The order mandates that all federal workers must be in their offices every day. Like so many of his edicts, this one neglects to consider the adverse consequences of his action. Not that he or his accomplices care. All that matters is the malice aforethought.
 
Telework arrangements, some of which date back a quarter century (see below), have produced very positive results:

• Morale. While unmeasurable, anecdotal evidence indicates that telework opportunities have greatly increased employee enthusiasm for their jobs and agencies.
• Talent attraction and retention. Employee quality improved and staff turnover rates declined.
• Productivity. Studies show productivity increases throughout agencies that offer telework options. One agency where productivity can be measured by the number of actions handled per individual per year witnessed a 25 percent increase in the first three years of its telework program.
• Cost of living. Many teleworkers were able to move farther out from their offices in expensive central cities and realize lower housing costs.
• Pollution. Fewer cars commuting meant lower emissions, with resulting health benefits.
• Agency costs. Less office space translated to reduced government real estate expenses.

 
The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) originated telework options in the first years of the 21st century. Other government agencies observed what happened at PTO and subsequently launched similar programs. However, the majority of remote work schedule plans emerged during the pandemic. In some agencies, collective bargaining agreements with federal employee unions locked in telework options.
 
For most federal workers, the new requirement to show up in the office every day means getting into their cars every morning and commuting. But for others, it means a major upheaval and a costly one. It also presents a number of federal agencies with a huge real estate challenge.
 
PTO exemplifies both problems:
 
In 2002, PTO’s adoption of telework proved immediately successful. Productivity skyrocketed. Employees were happier. And the agency began considering how it might reduce real estate costs by downsizing the space required to perform its functions.
 
Several years into the program, PTO began allowing many employees to work from wherever their homes might be, no longer limiting them to the Washington, DC area. Over time, many PTO workers moved out of the DC region and relocated all over the U.S.
 
At the same time, the agency terminated its headquarters building lease in Arlington, Virginia and moved to a much smaller and less expensive space in Alexandria, Virginia.
 
It was a win-win for all concerned.
 
Trump’s executive order presents PTO and its workforce with huge problems. Unless given an exemption from it, employees must uproot themselves and their families and move back to the much more expensive Washington, DC area. Moreover, PTO must find space to accommodate its hundreds of teleworkers, an expensive proposition.
 
As is always the case with Trump, governing by impulse and whim overrides thoughtful consideration of any downsides. The only litmus test appears to be whether a policy passes the cruelty and meanness standard. Poking a finger in someone’s eyes is the thrill.
 
Dick Hermann
January 31, 2025

​“Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled even as it happens before their eyes.”
― Steven Levitsky

Donald Trump’s first day back in office presages the end of the rule of law in America. He has come full circle, pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists, rioters, traitors all who, four years ago, were incited by him to attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power from the loser to the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election and overthrow the government he headed.
 
January 6, 2021 was the worst day in the history of the United States, a day that will forever live in infamy. Until January 20, 2025, that is, when a blanket amnesty absolved a bunch of lawless extremists who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol intent on harming the Vice President and members of Congress, and attacked law enforcement officers, injuring 140 and causing the deaths of five of them. At least 174 of these convicted lawbreakers carried deadly weapons with them into the Capitol. All who were found guilty after either pleading guilty or receiving their Constitutional right to a fair trial conducted in accordance with due process of law are now free to foment whatever further mayhem and illegality Trump demands.
 
A precedent has been established that anything goes in the former beacon of democracy and citadel of justice and the rule of law. No conduct, no matter how reprehensible or evil, is off-limits in Trump’s America.
 
Because the presidential pardon power is unrestricted, it relies on the exerciser’s self-discipline and respect for law to be applied judiciously. Presidents have, from time-to-time, gone beyond this self-restraint and exceeded what should have been norms and good judgment: President Clinton when he pardoned corrupt financier Marc Rich. President Biden when he pardoned his son and members of his family. Trump in his first term when he pardoned cronies charged with or convicted of crimes carried out to advance his interests. And now Trump 2.0, when on his first day back in the White House, he went beyond the pale and abused this authority with reckless abandon and total contempt for the foundational principles that underlie the American system.
 
Those bedrock principles are gone now. He has shown us that he will not be constrained by anything and that anything goes. He said he would be a dictator on day one and he was. He will also be a dictator every day he continues to occupy the office that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln so revered and respected. It won’t be long before America as we knew it for more than two centuries will only be a memory.
 
The mainstream media (what’s left of it) is already covering this as merely one of the barrage of executive orders turning the nation inside out that Trump signed on his first day back in the Oval Office. They have thus far failed to give it the star billing it deserves. The questions are (1)  whether the American public will even realize what Trump has done? and (2) whether they care enough to be deeply troubled by it?
 
Another disturbing problem with Trump’s blanket amnesty for this particular cohort of convicted criminals: The possibility that some of them will seek violent retribution against the investigators, prosecutors and judges who handled their cases. These are not people who forgive and forget.
 
When my father’s ship transporting him from Nazi-occupied Europe and a terrible near-term future crossed the bar into New York harbor in 1938, he stood on deck weeping tears of joy, relief and gratitude when he saw the Statue of Liberty. I’m glad he is not alive today to see what this land of freedom and liberty he so venerated is becoming.
 
Dick Hermann
January 24, 2025

Second presidential terms never go well. This may have all begun with Grover Cleveland’s second term which, like Trump’s, was interrupted by another President’s single term. Almost as soon as Cleveland returned to the White House in 1893, the U.S. economy collapsed into what amounted to a depression, labeled by historians as the “Panic of 1893.” Cleveland never recovered from that and his second term was uneventful, bereft of accomplishments.
 
Since then, every single two-term President has suffered the same bad fortune. Woodrow Wilson’s second term was marked by U.S. entry into World War I, his Senate League of Nations defeat, high inflation and a stroke that rendered him unable to govern. Even an overall hugely successful President like Franklin D. Roosevelt had a disastrous second term (the “court-packing” debacle being paramount). Dwight Eisenhower (the U-2 embarrassment), Richard Nixon (the Watergate cover-up), Ronald Reagan (Iran Contra, perhaps early onset Alzheimers), Bill Clinton (impeachment), George W. Bush (Iraq WMD, Katrina, the Great Recession), and Barack Obama (gun legislation failure, Edward Snowden, ACA exchange roll-out) followed suit. The smart money is on Donald Trump to experience the same fate.
 
Trump has over-promised the world to voters. His hyperbole will be the measuring stick of his success or failure. What follows is a short list of select promises that will be very difficult for Trump to fulfill:
 

• “We will end inflation and make America affordable again.”

 
Inflation is already down close to the pre-pandemic two percent level. Biden has left Trump a thriving economy. Lowering prices would be a Herculean task for even a competent President. Under any circumstances, presidents have little influence on prices.
 

• “We will pass massive tax cuts for workers.”

 
Trump wants to extend his 2017 tax cuts which are scheduled to expire soon. That bill had little in it for workers; most of its benefits going to billionaires and the one percent. Ending taxes on Social Security income, which he has specifically promised, would put the survival of the program, already experiencing a $23.2 trillion cash shortfall, into crisis territory.
 

• “We’re going to have 10 to 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years… I do like the 10% [tariff] for everybody…The higher the tariff, the more likely it is that the company will come into the United States, and build a factory in the United States so it doesn’t have to pay the tariff.”

 
Virtually every economist predicts that Trump’s tariffs will amount to a heavy tax on American consumers, offsetting by far any tax cuts they might receive. Moreover, they are likely to accelerate inflation. It will also prompt our trading partners to retaliate, which will cause exports to plummet and American jobs to disappear. Here’s how many Chinese companies built U.S. factories after Trump imposed his original 25 percent tariffs: NONE. Here’s how many U.S. manufacturing jobs resulted from the tariffs; MINUS 250,000.
 

• “I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled … quickly.” He went on to promise that he would end the war in 24 hours.

 
Easier said than done. Should negotiations come to pass, they are likely to last a very long time and not necessarily succeed. The “X” factor is whether U.S. support for Ukraine will continue once Trump assumes office. The worst case is that he will stop arming Ukraine and effectively gift-wrap the country to Putin.
 

• On Day 1, “we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.”

 
He claims that he will deport at least 11 million undocumented immigrants, which would, among other negative effects, cause numerous industries like construction and meatpacking to suffer along with various “low-end” jobs that American citizens won’t do. Speaking of construction, at this writing the Los Angeles area has lost more than 12,000 structures. It will be impossible to rebuild them without any workers. We will also lose the entrepreneurial energy and work ethic that these immigrants bring to this country.
 

• “I will end birthright citizenship.”

 
The Fourteenth Amendment begins: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Repeal advocates argue that the children of undocumented aliens are not covered by this language because they are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction, but of course they are. Not only the text of this Amendment, but also the long history of judicial, executive branch and congressional interpretation underscores this. Thus, terminating birthright citizenship requires a constitutional amendment. However, given that the Supreme Court has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump Republican Party, one never knows.
 
Trump really has only two years to implement his latest round of extreme policies. There is no assurance that members of Congress worried about re-election will go along with every bit of the insanity. The key question is: will the MAGA faithful countenance his failures to keep his promises? Or will they forgive him his trespasses?
 
I don’t have much faith in Democrats’ ability to communicate Trump’s fiascos to voters given the Biden administration’s inability to get its economic message across to the public and the Harris campaign’s similar problems during the 2024 elections.
 
Dick Hermann
January 17, 2025

​Japan’s Nippon Steel wants to buy U.S. Steel, once an iconic American company, but for years now a mere shadow of its former self. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump oppose the sale. The interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) deadlocked on an approach to the deal and kicked it up to Biden, who then formally banned it from going forward. Members of Congress from both parties agree with his decision. U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel have filed a lawsuit in federal court that is destined to go nowhere.
 
Opposing this sale is a big mistake.
 
U.S. Steel’s 50-year decline into decrepitude and insignificance is the result of monumental mismanagement, beginning in the 1970s when the company fell behind its foreign competitors. U.S. Steel then compounded this failure by neglecting to upgrade its machinery and processes to keep pace with the competition. Then, in a move that was inexplicable to industry experts and economists, U.S. Steel purchased Marathon Oil. Hubris prevailed over logic and this peculiar marriage proved disastrous. Less than 20 years later, Marathon Oil was spun off into a separate corporation.
 
But that was not the end of the company’s myopic moves. In 2003, U.S. Steel bought the largest Serbian steelmaker out of bankruptcy for the bargain basement price of $23 million. It proceeded to run the Balkan firm into the ground and, in 2012, sold the money-hemorrhaging steel company to the Serbian government for $1.00.
 
Today, the once global megafirm is not even the largest U.S. steelmaker and ranks 24th in the world.  It produces just over a tenth of the steel manufactured by the number one global firm.
 
U.S. Steel is highly unlikely to ever recover on its own and is more likely to just keep on declining to the point where it could disappear completely, putting thousands of jobs at risk. Biden and Trump’s “America First” zealotry may get some political mileage, but that’s it. At this stage of U.S. Steel’s history of ineptitude, their primary concern should be what’s best for the employees.
 
Nippon has committed to invest $2.7 billion in addition to the $14.9 billion purchase price should it be allowed to go ahead with the deal, and also pledged to pay a $5,000 bonus to every U.S. Steel employee once the deal closes.
 
The United Steelworkers Union national leadership also opposes the sale, claiming that Nippon will move jobs to Arkansas, a right-to-work state when the current labor contract ends in 2026. However, the union locals in three plants where U.S Steel does most of its manufacturing (Gary, IN, Pittsburgh and Birmingham, AL) are strongly in favor of the deal, as are leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus (a large percentage of U.S. Steel’s workforce is black).
 
The national security argument advanced by opponents of the purchase is a lame non-issue. Materials for defense are currently produced by several U.S.-based, foreign-owned steel plants in addition to U.S. steel. Moreover, this would not be the first time CFIUS and prior administrations have approved the sale of critical U.S. defense firms to foreign owners. And no one views Japan as a threat.
 
Moreover, by disallowing this deal and disrespecting our critically important Japanese ally, the U.S. is playing directly into China’s hands. We are confusing our Asian allies whom we want to form a unified, anti-China bloc. At the very time when we need sophisticated and nuanced leadership in order to compete effectively with China in Cold War 2.0, we are doing the opposite.
 
In sum, this is a deal that is a win-win for all the parties and for the nation. A badly mis-managed firm would finally be in a position to reverse 50 years of woeful leadership. Employee jobs would be saved. And we would bond more strongly with a reliable, long-time Asian ally (Japan).
 
Instead, for the sake of meaningless “America First” jingoism, Biden is signing on to Trump’s disastrous trade policies and shooting America in the foot. As a parting gesture, this leaves a lot to be desired.
 
Dick Hermann
January 12, 2025

Jimmy Carter, who died this past week, age 100, was quite probably the smartest person ever to serve as President of the United States. At least that is the case if you go by academic intelligence alone. He was also possessed of a high dose of creative intelligence. As for situational intelligence, social-emotional intelligence, and any of the other intelligences conjured up by the shrinks and other analysts who think about these things, those are another story.
 
You did not get a job with Admiral Hyman Rickover’s nuclear naval staff unless you were at least a borderline genius. Jimmy Carter was and did.
 
He was also a man of high integrity, something that we don’t often see in our political leaders. When he said to the American people upon assuming office, “I will never lie to you,” he meant it…and he didn’t.
 
He had the supremely bad luck of having thrust upon him the highest inflation since World War II. He did, however, do one very important thing to combat it: appointing Paul Volcker to chair the Federal Reserve. Eventually, Volcker squeezed inflation out of the economy, for which Ronald Reagan got the credit. The inflation was not Carter’s fault, but rather the result of his predecessors’ (LBJ and Nixon) refusal to “pay-as-they-went” for the Vietnam War. Nevertheless, presidents invariably get blamed for high prices regardless of culpability. Life is unfair.
 
The gas lines that made the public irate derived from the mullahs in Tehran turning off the spigot to punish America for allowing the deposed Shah to be treated for his cancer in the U.S. The hostage crisis was also mullah-generated.
 
However, Carter did have substantial accomplishments, many of which still resonate today:
 
Foreign Policy

• His Camp David Accords brought 30 years of war between Israel and Egypt to an end, an enormous achievement, one of the greatest foreign policy triumphs in American history.
• Carter signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II)  with the Soviet Union, the platform for all subsequent nuclear arms reduction agreements.
• He increased defense spending, green-lighted the MX missile and Stealth bomber programs, introduced intermediate-range nuclear missiles into Europe to counter Soviet threats, and resisted the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
• He normalized relations with China upon the visit to the White House of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping.
• He signed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
• He nurtured the transformation of a number of Latin American autocracies into democracies.
• He injected a human rights component into American foreign policy that, among other things, encouraged the Eastern European liberation movements that, soon after, led to the demise of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War.
• He negotiated the Panama Canal treaty, thus avoiding an almost certain destabilizing and bloody guerilla war in Central America.

 
Domestic Policy

• He continued and improved on the environmental records of his two immediate predecessors, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, and was the first president to voice concern about climate change and try to do something about it. His installation of solar panels on the White House roof was an important symbol of that. Ronald Reagan had them removed.
• He mandated strong new pollution controls and launched the concept of toxic waste cleanup.
• He instituted fuel efficiency standards for automobiles.
• He deregulated the airline, trucking, railroad and utilities industries and began the restructuring of the financial services and communications sectors.
• He banned “red-lining” by banks and required them to invest in low-income communities.
• He cut the deficit.
• He created the Departments of Education and Energy.
• He formulated the nation’s first wide-ranging energy policy, pushing three major energy bills through Congress that changed the course of U.S. energy production, conservation, and renewables.
• He set aside more land for national parks than any President since Teddy Roosevelt.
• He was in the forefront of civil service reform and government ethics initiatives.
• He gave more authority to his Vice President than any prior chief executive.

 
Note the many items above for which Ronald Reagan got the credit!
 
Above all, Jimmy Carter was an honest and decent human being. He went about his business with dignity and a certain humility that also is not a trait normally associated with presidents. In 2025, that should make us all nostalgic.
 
Carter made his share of mistakes. He boycotted the 1980 Olympics, ruining the opportunities for thousands of athletes who had worked hard all their lives for their chance at glory. His relations with Congress were generally frosty. He did not know how to capitalize his successes.
 
His presidential term received a bad rap from pundits, but he was arguably the most consequential and successful one-term president in history up to that time.
 
Finally, he had unquestionably the greatest post-presidential run of any commander-in-chief. He participated in the construction of thousands of homes for Habitat for Humanity. His Carter Center has monitored elections all over the planet for fairness. Under his leadership, the Carter Center has virtually eradicated Guinea Worm, a tropical disease that infected 3.5 million people a year, and in 2023 infected just 11 individuals. It has also tackled River Blindness, another parasitic disease that affected millions, and now has been virtually eliminated.
 
He did not cash in, like almost all of his predecessors and successors. His life came full circle when he went home to Plains, Georgia and taught Sunday school well into his nineties. He was the epitome of a mensch.
 
Jimmy Carter had a great run. He came up from nothing, roots so humble he grew up in a home that lacked electricity, running water and indoor plumbing. He was Horatio Alger in the flesh. He had a 75-year love affair with only one woman. Scandal was not a word with which he was familiar.
 
History has already begun to reassess and revise the snap judgments of the Carter presidency that dismissed him as a failure. He was anything but. Looking back, we wish leaders like him were around today. We should honor and appreciate such a life.
 
Dick Hermann
January 4, 2025