Fixing Up the Reflecting Pool Leading up to the Lincoln Memorial
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| View from the Lincoln Memorial steps toward the Washington Monument |
Wihout comptitive bidding, President Trump had announced that this job would cost a reassuring $1.8 million. It now looks like the bottom line will be about $13.8 million, a number that was available from the start, if anyone had bothered to look according to a New York Times article on May 11.
Why the rush? Well, the President wanted the job done by the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That’s a fine idea, so long as taxpayers are willing to go along with a deal that evaded competitive bidding and includes a 20% profit for the company doing the work, an outfit that had done some work in the past on one of the golf courses the Trump family owns. But really, I believe that we should not be willing to go along with this latest bit of presidential thievery.
Work should be stopped on the project immediately and competitive bids requested. If that isn’t done, how about going for a $11.3 million lien on the property and/or estate of the President, a convicted felon, who continues his career of lying about any business deals in which he is involved. If the Deparatment of Justice truly represents the people, and not the president, that's what they should do. Yeah.
The President doesn’t know the difference between his failed casinos, his failed real estate developments, his failed airline, his failed university, etc., etc., and property belonging to the United States of America that its voters were sufficiently gullible to entust to him during his term of office. (Same goes for his demolishing the White House’s East Wing, something else that doesn’t personally belong to him.)
JL
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Feeling Exhausted by the Issues Facing America?
It’s not an accident that the President is putting so much on his critics’ plates so that they don’t know where to turn first, and as a result, do little to conteract his breaking of laws and defiance of the Constitution. But please, hang in there.
UCSD’s Professor Barbara Walter tells you why in her ‘Here Be Dragons’ posting dated May 13. Click here or copy and paste https://barbarafwalter.substack.com/ on your browser line to learn more about what you can do.
JL
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And the Rich Get Richer
In his May 11 posting (a free one), economist Paul Krugman wrote that income disparities in the United States continue, with the very wealthy becoming richer and richer. He touches on how enormous amounts of that money is being used to fund conservative political candidates. For example, without Peter Thiel’s money, JD Vance wouldn’t have been a Senator and certainly not our Vice President.
Many modern plutocrats show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune and have little inclination to give back to society by devoting a significant part of their wealth to good works as even the ‘robber barons’ did in the late Nineteenth century. (Bill Gates might be an exception.) They would rather spend their money on buying politicians and securing access to the White House to pursue their goals. Click here or copy and paste paulkrugman@substack.com on your browser line for details
JL
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Florida Voting Information for You, Not the Other Guy
VotePalmBeach.gov is the online place to go for Palm Beach County voters to check their voting status, request a vote-by-mail ballot or otherwise renew their voting registration. Don’t trust your memory. The first thing to do is to check your voting status at VotePalmBeach.gov. (Other Florida counties have similar websites and phone numbers. In Broward County, https://browardvotes.gov/ is a good place to start.)
Florida State law requires voters to submit a new Vote-by-Mail request after each General Election. If you have not renewed your Vote-by-Mail status since the November, 2024 General Election, you must submit a new request in order to vote by mail in the vitally important 2026 elections. Maybe you have. Maybe you haven’t. Are you sure?
And even if you’ve done that, remember that Vote-by-Mail requests for the 2026 election cycle (Primaries on August 18, the General Election on November 3) will expire after that 2026 General Election., with a new request required for future elections in 2027 and 2028. It is no longer automatic as once it was.
Confused? If a visit to VotePalmBeach.gov doesn’t answer your questions, you can reach the Supervisor of Election’s office at (561) 656-6200.
Carrying out the will of the majority requires that everyone votes and make sure that their vote counts. Make sure that your vote will count! Don’t forget that there are some in State government who prefer that it not be counted, or even cast; that’s why they’ve made voting by mail, which many Democrats and independents do, more difficult.
JL
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Read How Florida Republicans Work Hard to Disenfranchise Democratic Voters
Regardless of whether you vote in person at a polling place, vote early, or vote by mail, it is vitally important that you vote in the General Election on November 3, 2026. An editorial in the May 12 South Florida SunSentinel makes it clear why. To read it, click here or copy and paste https://enewspaper.sun-sentinel.com/shortcode/SUN315/edition/ef1a7f3f-3db7-4bfa-ab1d-f7cb48e8cb0c?page=bc289e0e-3cd4-4b6b-a448-2ad6f420d79d& on the browser line of your device. Please find a way to read this editorial.
JL
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‘8647’ Just Won’t Go Away
Still on that ‘8647’ kick, I note that there have been reports of many online messages involving removal of the President from office in a violent, if not life-ending, manner.
No sane person should support actions to proceed in that manner.
If Trump is to be ‘eighty-sixed’ out of office it must be done legally.
Despite flaws in its laws, the United States still must follow the rule of those laws, and that is what the Constitution is all about! Law!
Even though four presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy) have been shot and killed while in office, I still believe violence should play no part in removing an elected president. But there are those today who would not object to that happening. We seem to be a violent country, and that is not something good …. but that is another challenge we face.
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Back in April of 2025, I came up with an Idea for removing ‘47’ from office. It involved the alliance of many sources of power in the United States. How it would happen legally was described in the Jackspotpourri posting dated April 17 of last year, 2025, and in other April 2025 postings. primarily but not entirely based on his illegal use of tariffs. Go back and read that posting and the other Jackspotpourri postings during April 2025 using the archive off to the right.
What I wrote then is still true today, added to by Trump’s illegal military ‘excursions’ into Venezuela and currently in the Middle East defying the limits of presidential power as defined in the Constitution, as well as his illegal use of armed personnel to discourage and prevent legitimate protest by American citizens. Either of these avenues can and should lead to his legal removal from office.
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But here’s the bad news:
In retrospect, the solution I suggested on April 17, 2025, now seems overly optimistic in view of the tight control already in the President’s hands over those who would be involved in carrying out that suggested solution. I think he saw what was on the horizon for him and has prepared for it.
In order to battle the ‘rule of law,’
The President seems to have built up protective federal walls and similar barriers in the States controlled by Republicans consisting of:
(1) appointees who put loyalty to him above loyalty to the Constitution and the nation,
(2) the firing or convenient early ‘retirement’ of those less loyal to him, particularly in the armed forces,
(3) rewarding those who succeed in breaking Federal and State laws he doesn’t like, and
(4) those totally dependant on his support if they must face the public by having to run for office.
Despite the Republican-dominated Supreme Court and State governments too often siding with President Trump, something within the laws of our country must be done if the representative democracy written about in the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, and finally accomplished in its 1789 Constitution is to survive.
Please go back and read what Jackspotpourri was saying back in April, 2025, especially the posting of April 17 of that year, and of course, the voting information provided above in this posting.
JL
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Final Thought – Online Gambling
Do you approve of the gambling (masquerading as 'gaming') sites available to all on the internet? They serve to instill bad lifetime habits in teenagers and retirees, many of whom can not afford the financial losses all gamblers ... or 'gamers'... eventually experience, and to whom these sites are directed. Write to you Representatives in Congress!
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Your comments on this ‘blog’ would be appreciated. My Email address is jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it (Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.) If you want to send someone the blog, you can just tell them to check it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or you can provide a link to that address in your email to them.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a brief comment from you. Each will receive a link to click on that will directly connect them to the blog. Either way will work, sending them the link to https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com , or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting.
Email Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email at jacklippman18@gmail.com
More on the Sources of Information in Jackspotpourri: The sources of information used by Jackspotpourri include a delivered local daily ‘printed’ newspaper (now the South Florida Sun Sentinel. I've given up on the Palm Beach Post) and what appears in my daily email; that includes the views of many contributors, including the New York Times and other respected journals.
Be aware that when I open that email, I first quickly glance at and screen out those sent to my very old former email address and those considered ‘promotional’ by Gmail’s system as no more than advertisements or requests for donations.
Besides these sources, I also utilize the Google search engine where I can look up any subject I want. Lately, these search results have been headed by a very generalized summary clearly labeled as being developed by AI (Artificial Intelligence). On occasion I might use such search results, but when I do, I will say that I am doing so. Generally, however, I try not to use such summaries in preparing Jackspotpourri.
Following such ‘AI’ search results, there follows the other results of my search. Unlike the anonymous AI-generated summaries, the sources of these results are clearly indicated, giving them a greater credibility than any AI summary.
It comes down to who YOU want to be in the driver’s seat in seeking information: yourself or something else (Artificial Intelligence), the structure of which somewhere along the way had to have been created by others, with whose identity I am neither familiar nor comfortable. At least when I read a column by Timothy Snyder, for example, I know from where it comes, and to some extent, what to expect.
Caution should be exercised in using Artificial Intelligence. Always!
JL
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