January 16, 2019 -- Day 26 Of The Shelosi-Trump Partial Government Shutdown

Fantastic! I was wondering how President Trump would handle this situation -- the state of the union address while there is a partial government shutdown. Sometime ago I mentioned that there were several key dates with regard to the shutdown. One of the key dates was the date of the SOTU address. It was hard to say what Trump would do; it's still hard to say. But now that he has Shelosi lecturing him on when to give the SOTU address (or how to deliver it) it now puts the whole thing into Shelosi's lap. She has said she is now an equal to the president. Now she is afraid to meet him one-on-one in her own home, the US House of Representatives. Not a good host. LOL. The (classical) Greeks would not have understood. Nor would the nomadic Arabs. Being a gracious and good host was paramount in "classical" history. By the way, her statements now assume/assure the partial shutdown will continue at least through January 22.

Let them eat cake! I wonder how this would have played out under an Obama/Clinton presidency. We will never know. But apparently $6 billion in Puerto Rico bonds could soon become (relatively) worthless. I don't follow this story at all. The link is here.

The partial government shutdown. Most concerning? Until yesterday, the Drudge headlines on the shutdown were starting to disappear. Then, late yesterday/this morning, sides seem farther apart than ever. No headlines are much, much more concerning than headlines. Once the headlines start disappearing, it means folks have grown tired/lost interest in the subject. Or so it would seem. We'll see.

IRS agents being recalled. Not-ready-for-prime-time --

They say the logjam created by the southern border issues will put the immigration services and courts four or five years behind in keeping up with citizenship applications.

So all those folks who followed the law, and patiently went through the citizenship process -- generally takes a decade -- are now looking at an even longer wait -- another four or five years on top of the original ten. If Congress doesn't work with the President on the "Dreamers" this year, one can pretty much assume the "Dreamers" issue is dead. Time alone would kill any prospects of a path to citizenship.

I remember my first experience with the federal government -- graduate school scholarship. The process hit an obstacle early on causing a four-month delay. A full-year delay and my life would have been completely different. Perhaps better; perhaps worse; I will never know.

But for the "Dreamers" -- already living with an undetermined timeline -- it seems the southern border issue can only prolong the pain. Ironically, the "Dreamers" are for the most part college educated and likely to be US taxpayers (anecdotal/some will disagree) whereas the illegal immigrants? Perhaps not so much.

I think the IRS was worried about the same problem: the logjam. The vast majority of returns come in well before April, and if the IRS started to get behind, it would have been overwhelming. Something tells me the IRS is not going to have a lot of time to do audits for the next few years.

Quiet secession. The US Civil War was fought over the secession of the "southern states." That was a "hard" secession. Likewise, Brexit would be a "hard" secession from the EU. It looks like California will do a "soft" secession. It will take the US Supreme Court to intervene to keep California from seceding from the Union.