Ferri Tales

I'm not a lawyer, but if Donald Trump, his staff, and Republican members of Congress can pretend to protect the Constitution, I can opine on the law. As a judge has ruled, Trump's executive order to change the 14th Amendment is “blatantly unconstitutional”.  If our laws were actually just, Trump would be indicted for this action. Instead, more judges rule and waste time to eventually conclude that Congress and the States are required to make this change. It is obvious that Trump can't change the Constitution with an executive order. Yet, our legal system plods along glacially pretending to be just, while allowing criminals to remain free to break more laws.  Our “laws” allowed Trump to regain power where a just system would have locked him up for his attempted takeover of the government when he lost the 2020 election. Our “laws” protect the rich and powerful because they were written and enacted by the rich and powerful. Our system needs major changes to hold criminals like...

On the first day of his 2nd term, Donald J. Trump showed that he cares little for the rule of law, and nothing for the U.S. Constitution.   He pardoned over 1500 convicted criminals who invaded and desecrated the Capitol on January 6 while chanting "Hang Pence." Five of those pardoned physically assaulted officers and one helped plan the attack. Trump referred to them as hostages.   They were not hostages. They were tried and convicted under the rule of law.   He issued an executive order to end birth-right citizenship -- a right given in the 14 Amendment to the Constitution. His action is an illegal order, yet will require the courts to strike it down, wasting time and resources better used elsewhere.   Trump and his enablers are showing that they do not support the police, nor do they intend to protect them, regardless of their claims otherwise. They also are again showing complete contempt for the Constitution, treating it as something to circumvent rath...

Joe Biden will become president on January 20th regardless of what Trump, his enablers, his supporters, and Bradford county (PA) commissioner Doug McLinko believe. How did this happen? There are two scenarios. The first is that Democrats rigged the election. The brilliant plot even sacrificed some down-ballot elections to divert suspicion. The plot even survived scrutiny of Republican led states who certified Biden as the winner because they could find no valid reason to do otherwise. The second scenario is that tens of millions of people already knew or finally realized that Trump is a lousy president who is not interested in doing his job. He golfs obsessively. He has done almost nothing to slow or stop the pandemic and has actively exacerbated its spread. He is a white supremacist with no impulse control who denies science. Democrats merely convinced 81 million people to vote. After losing, he is whining and grifting his supporters for money that he will use personally. Trump's ...

Donald Trump has been attempting to reduce the reported covid-19 deaths with outright lies. His latest con is that the U.S. deaths are overstated by a factor of 16. He claims that the number of deaths are only 6% of the reported numbers. According to the CDC, covid-19 was listed as the only cause of death in 6% of the cases and that, on average, for the remaining deaths, "there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death." By Trump's logic, if he shot a man in the middle of Fifth Avenue and then the man had a heart attack and died, the cause of death would not be the gun shot.   He conveniently ignores that the 7 day averages for U.S. death rates of approximately 2% from covid-19 is consistent with that of other countries. None report death rates 16 times lower. The CDC also reports that U.S. excess deaths from covid-19 since February 1st range from approximately 202,000 to 263,000. These figures are in direct conflict with Trump's lies and agree with rea...

During his first run for president, Donald Trump implied that he could fix what Obama had done. Here are a few of Obama's accomplishments: he fixed the economy that tanked while G.W. Bush was busy fighting a war of choice that killed almost 4500 American soldiers and maimed tens of thousands more; he successfully stopped several potential epidemics by listening to experts; and he passed a well liked health care program that covers per-existing conditions. Trump did "fix" some of Obama's successes: he has repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with nothing, even during a pandemic; he failed to follow the pandemic response playbook Obama created and let a deadly pandemic infect over 6 million Americans, killing 180,000 with more to come; and his choice to ignore the pandemic has destroyed the U.S. economy and his chance for valid re-election. After WWI, Hitler became dictator of a Germany destroyed by a war they started by promising t...

In an ongoing attempt to reopen schools before the coronavirus pandemic is under control, Trump claimed that children are "almost immune from the disease…. They just don't have a problem." He also claimed that the reason we have so many cases is because we test so much, and that the virus will "go away like things go away." His comments were removed from Twitter and Facebook because they are factually wrong and ignore all of the evidence that has been collected since the beginning of the pandemic. Children should be able to return to school. It's the best place for learning, and not only of academic subjects. They also learn to socialize and interact with their peers and with teachers. They learn that hard work has benefits. It also allows parents or guardians to work while children are in school. But the reopening of schools should happen only if it is safe to do so. School children have been the most quarantined group in the country because of ...

Walmart Corporation recently instituted a policy that will mandate facial masks in all of their stores beginning on Monday, July 20. They weren't clear about exceptions or how they will enforce their mandate. I was at Walmart, Sayre, PA for about an hour on Thursday, July 16. Mask compliance was about 75%. I spoke with a manager, Lisa Barnes, and wished her luck for Monday. I asked how they intended to enforce mask compliance. She said that incidents would be reported to managers and they would respond. She didn't elaborate. Walmart should not require their already underpaid workers to be the enforcers. Stores in the Elmira and Horseheads areas of New York including a Walmart and Sam's Club have mandated masks for months. Customers wear them because it is enforced. There are no exceptions. No mask, no service. Also, breaking with Trump, these Republican governors have mandated masks in their states: Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Kay Ivey of Alabama, and Jim Justice of W...

At the beginning of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, the number of cases started rising in mid-March and eventually leveled off in early April at around 30,000 cases of covid-19 per day. It stayed at that level through April and started to decrease to approx. 20,000 cases per day until the middle of June when the daily number of cases started rising again. The early cases were from the northeast section of the country. The latest new cases are coming from different areas, primarily the southeast through to the southwest. Daily cases are currently approaching 60,000 per day. The daily rate of infection is twice that of the previous peak. Trump said it's going to disappear, and Pence says things are fine. It's not going to disappear. Things are not fine.  Wishful thinking is not going to solve this growing emergency. The situation is worse than it was before, and the economic consequences we have already paid were wasted because of Trump's gross incomp...

George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, who pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for almost 9 minutes, the last two being after Floyd stopped responding. Three other officers at the scene either held Floyd down or prevented any intervention from onlookers. It was a cold-blooded execution -- a modern day equivalent of a lynching. If the murder hadn't been recorded, the false report filed by the officers would have ended the incident as "a black man killed for resisting arrest." All four officers were fired from the police force the next day. A few days later, Chauvin was charged with 3rd degree murder. This was subsequently changed to 2nd degree murder and included charges of being complicit to 2nd degree murder for the other three former officers. As has happened many times in the past, peaceful protests and demonstrations were accompanied by riots, property destruction, and looting. Demonstrations spread acros...