John Turcotte

Retired Director of MS, FL and NC Legislative Program Evaluation. Supports watchdogs & non-partisanship. Satirist. 50 years pent up watchdog anger. #DefendWatch

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@elonmuskOmof 5284

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@Gracezirn Her life.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@Kashpa65 D. 0%

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@0laratrumpRv2 Trump

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@FoxNews So this means no more Iranian drone or Missle attacks to the U.S. allies in the Gulf—threat removed? All ships in the region including American are now safe from attack? I don’t think so.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@BlackDoag1 @TristanSnell Bill Clinton was President when we had the last surplus. There was a plan that would have eliminated the national debt in a decade or two. Then came the Republicans who cut taxes and started the Iraq war. You know the rest.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@plotweaver @TristanSnell This writer, a well-informed, advanced degree holder, 50 years of hard work, fiscal conservative independent does not.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

@SenThomTillis Senator, you were a Price Waterhouse consultant and IBM executive. Could Hedgseth run a major consulting firm or be CEO of IBM?

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

To protect against fraud, waste, and abuse, Congress mandated an independent inspector general in each agency who could not be fired without 30 days notice to Congress. Last night, without notifying Congress, Trump fired twelve of them. All right, Trump apologists, defend this.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Forbes reported 813 billionaires in the US, 78 more than 2023, with a 2024 collective net worth of $5.7 TRILLION. A one-time donation of 3% would yield $171 Billion, more than enough to cover damages from the LA fires. Elon Musk’s share would be $7.2 Billion.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

And by threatening territorial expansion, Trump will try to get concessions from the three countries and if he fails, will threaten to withdraw military bases from California or some other nutty play.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Trump Smokescreen. Typical. Damned crazy. Threaten Greenland, Canada and Panama to dominate news cycle, diminish coverage of President Carter’s services, and his criminal sentencing.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Trumpism. Exploit Democrat naïveté. Fool the MAGA crowd. Sing Jesus Loves Me. Shamelessly merchandise. Create chaos. Undermine experts. Buy Republican servility. Act or fail. Upon outrage—deny or blame shift. Use selective enforcement (e.g tariffs) as muscle.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

For the folks pushing elimination of the polio vaccine, please reconsider and don’t push policies that might paralyze or kill you.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Milton Friedman, a conservative Nobel prize economist strongly opposed tariffs, but Trump doesn’t heed experts and apparently has no common sense either. Friedman: “Tariffs are a tax on consumers. They are a tax on people who buy the product that the tariffs are placed on.”

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Milton Friedman: “If you impose tariffs on goods coming into the country, that raises the price of those goods in the country, it encourages other countries to retaliate, and all of this results in a restriction of the level of trade.”

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Milton Friedman “The great danger in tariffs is not in the foreigners. The great danger is in ourselves. What they do is deprive us of the benefits of buying goods from abroad—it’s a curious thing that people always regard it as a punishment if we don’t buy goods from abroad.”

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

I suggest post 2020 US inflation resulted from $5 trillion in Pandemic relief funded by Congress without a corresponding increase in production of goods and services—$3.1 trillion by Trump’s proposed 2020 CARES and Appropriations Acts and Biden’s $1.9 trillion Rescue Plan.

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Sources:
World Bank, International Monetary Fund, US Bur. of Labor Stats, Organization for Economic Co-operation &Dev, European Central Bank, National Bur. of Stats of China, National Banks of India, Japan, Canada, & Brazilian Institute of Geography and Stats

[John Turcotte @zephyrroad]

Do Presidents cause inflation? Trump left office January 2021, so who “caused” the 7% inflation in 2021? Who was President when inflation went down from 7% to 3.7%? Did our Presidents cause higher world inflation in the past three years?