My “New” Wall Calendar

Because it’s March 31, I began thinking about changing the month on the calendar hanging on my wall. Last year, I didn’t find a calendar that excited me, so I settled for a free AARP calendar with pleasant nature pictures and large, easily read dates. It was not a calendar that excited me, but it seemed adequate. Unfortunately, the paper on which it is printed is thin, and the top edges tend to curl.

For many years. I purchased railroad-themed calendars. Occasionally, I bought a calendar with another theme, such as my 2019 “Dance: The Art of Movement” calendar. I had kept more than a dozen such calendars with particularly attractive pictures. I decided to remove my calendar collection from its bookshelf and search for a calendar that would work for 2025.

I discovered two calendars with days numbered as my AARP calendar: a 1986 “Those Magnificent Trains” calendar and a 2003 “Ted Rose: Images of Railroading” calendar. I chose the Ted Rose calendar as my AARP replacement. (Ted Rose, 1940–2002, painted beautiful watercolor railroad-related scenes.) The year “2003” appears each month in relatively small type. Unlike my 1986 calendar, this one does not indicate moon phases, which I assume are different in 2025 from 1986. Many significant dates, such as St. Patrick’s Day, are properly marked in the 2003 calendar. I was surprised to see that the date of Easter is the same in 2003 and 2025. The date of the transition to Daylight Saving Time, which is noted on the Ted Rose calendar) occurred much later in 2003. The calendar, like all my purchased calendars, is printed on heavy paper.

I look forward to the month of April, in which a beautiful watercolor of an N&W Y6—probably a Y6b—will be staring down at my desk.

A Third Trump Term?

I was distressed, but not surprised, when I read the AP headline “Trump says he’s considering ways to serve a third term as president.” Donald Trump is quoted by the AP as saying, “There are methods which you could do it [sic].”

Actually, Trump will be lucky to complete his second term. He could be impeached, assassinated, or die from eating too many Big Macs. Moreover, it is increasingly unlikely that he could be elected again in a free and fair election. (Barring a free and fair election, who knows what could happen!) We should, in any case, take his declaration seriously.

The Twenty-second Amendment, enacted in 1951, clearly intends to prevent anyone from holding the office of president for three terms. Arguably, however, the wording of the amendment is less than air-tight. It prohibits anyone from being elected president more than twice. Section 1 of the amendment begins:

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.

The amendment does not explicitly prevent someone who has served two terms as president from becoming president by means other than election, thereby becoming a three-term president. For example, Trump could run as a vice-presidential candidate, say with JD Vance running for the top spot. After the inauguration, Vance could resign, and the vice president, Trump, would become president for virtually an entire third term.

This may or may not be Trump’s plan. My suggestion, while contrary to the intent of the Twenty-second Amendment, is not clearly unconstitutional. Of course, Trump has shown little concern for acting within the restrictions of the Constitution, so he may have a different plan.

Replacing the Frances Scott Key Bridge

The state of Maryland has announced plans to build a bridge to replace the Francis Scott Key Bridge destroyed by a cargo ship a year ago. It is gratifying that plans to replace that vital span are moving along. Any new bridge will take years to put in place.

The proposed replacement bridge is to be a cable-stayed affair with a main span of at least 1600 feet. The main span of the former bridge was only about 1200 feet. Clearly, having a ship channel 400 feet wider would be a significant improvement. Whatever bridge is built, I assume its piers will be protected by substantial dolphins (no, not the marine mammals) and fenders.

After the Key Bridge fell, I suggested that a replacement bridge should be a suspension bridge. As fond as I am of cable-stayed bridges, both from an engineering and aesthetic point of view, a suspension bridge would allow an even wider channel for the ships of the next century. (Maryland wants a bridge with a 100-year lifespan.) A suspension bridge with a main span of 1600 feet would be considered short. In fact, a suspension bridge with towers on dry land would not be unreasonable. (Recall that the Golden Gate Bridge has a 4200-foot span, and newer bridges are being built with towers even farther apart.)

I suspect that cost was a major factor in the Maryland decision. I sincerely hope that the chosen alternative will prove to be an adequate one.

Direction of the Country

A common question on public-opinion surveys is something like: Is the country moving in the right direction or not? For example, for more than 40 years, Gallup has been asking:

In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?

 Fewer that 50% of respondents have given a positive answer most of the time. The last time half the respondents answered yes was in January 2004. The fewest people answered yes in October 2008. Both these extremes were during the George W. Bush presidency. Apparently, Americans have not been sanguine about their country for more than two decades.

I have always found this question difficult to answer. In recent years, I was mostly satisfied with the Biden administration but was alarmed about the right-wing MAGA crowd. Today, I would assuredly answer no to the right-direction question. The Trump/Musk administration is rapidly destroying both democracy and prosperity. I suspect that my answer is not going to change anytime soon. The Gallup poll my soon hit a historic low.

Observations on DOGE

Elon Musk’s DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is misnamed, misconceived, or purposely deceptive. Rather than rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, it is creating chaos and gratuitously ruining lives.

DOGE (and, presumably, the president) confuses “efficient” with “cheap.” Efficiency is a measure of resources required to accomplish a task; it is not a measure of resources expended. For example, boiling a saucepan of water on top of the range is more efficient than boiling that water in the oven. The range-top technique is faster (uses less time) and uses less gas or electricity than the oven method, which heats the water less directly and wastes energy by needlessly heating air. Not heating the water at all would use fewer resources, but it would fail to accomplish anything. The resulting efficiency would be zero. Excising government functionality does not intrinsically increase efficiency and likely eliminates operations mandated by Congress.

Of course, if Musk and his twerp minions believe that a particular governmental function, whether required by Congress or not, has no value yet still uses resources, especially human ones, then firing people reduces spending without diminishing government utility. In this demented calculus, DOGE can be seen as increasing government efficiency. I suspect that Musk is reluctant to make this argument in the general case. Apparently, however, this logic led to the carnage DOGE visited upon USAID, a government agency that provided humanitarian aid to other nations and both humanitarian and diplomatic benefits to the United States, benefits seemingly imperceptible to Elon Musk.

Elon Musk wants you to believe that firing government workers is making the government more efficient in the conventional sense. This would be true if the remaining workers could do the same amount of work in the same amount of time as before the firings. There is no reason to believe that this is true. Since DOGE has cut the government workforce with—as he has reminded us—a chainsaw, he has done so without any analysis of what the consequences of the cuts would be other than, at least in the short run, reducing labor costs. The cuts surely eliminate excellent workers as easily as poor ones. However, if you believe that all government workers are useless drones, then firing one has the same benign effect as eliminating another. In fact, the DOGE firings are terrifying all government employees, which will certainly not increase their efficiency.

As it happens, labor costs are a relatively small part of the government budget anyway, so firings, even of substantial numbers of federal workers, will not greatly affect the budget. Apparent savings in the government’s labor costs lead to higher costs elsewhere—in unemployment benefits, in former employees being forced into jobs in which their contribution to the economy is reduced, and to damages to families and family budgets. If your wealth is billions and billions of dollars, as Musk’s is, your concern for the little guy or the needs of citizens generally may be less than compelling.

If DOGE has actually identified and eliminated waste, fraud, and abuse, it has failed to communicate and justify its findings to the public (or to anyone else, for that matter).

DOGE’s actions do not represent scientific management but a kind of right-wing religious fervor. In her March 12 “Letter from America,” Heather Cox Richardson suggests the nature of the Musk philosophy regarding the government:

In place of the system that has created relative stability for almost a century, Republicans under President Donald Trump and his sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk, are imposing a government that is based on the idea that a government that works to make people safe, prosperous, and healthy is simply ripping off wealthy people.

To which I say, “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

DEI

Dictionary.com provides the following definition for DEI:

  Abbreviation for 

diversity, equity, and inclusion: a conceptual framework that promotes the fair treatment and full participation of all people, especially in the workplace, including populations who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination because of their background, identity, disability, etc.

How can anyone not be for that?

How a Bill Becomes Law—2025