Dear John: Why don’t we do away with self-serve gasoline in the states where you can pump your own?
It would cause employment to go way up and unemployment to go down. It would make jobs for many teenagers and seniors. And it would get many people into the working world, and hopefully into a work routine. A.R.
Dear A.R.: You are from New Jersey, where you can’t pump your own gas.
Personally, I hate gas stations where I have to pump. I smell like gas the whole day when I do. On my clothes, my hands or maybe it’s just up my nose.
I’m not sure that these are the types of jobs that people will gravitate toward, although I honestly haven’t thought about this much.
The argument is that pumping your own lowers prices. But I don’t think that’s really true.
I’d be OK with this if the attendant would also clean my windshield and check the oil. Ah, and while you’re at it, bring back dollar-a-gallon gas.
Dear John: The same day you write a column about events that could ambush the stock market, Trump gives a speech in Arizona saying that if the border wall is not funded, he will shut down the government.
It’s normally the president who goes to Congress and tries to broker a deal to keep the government operating.
You also mentioned the “resistance” as a potential problem for Wall Street investors.
The Democrats don’t control anything in Washington, it’s the establishment Republicans that want Trump gone. They have a traditional conservative in Mike Pence waiting in the wings. Trump will be out before the 2018 midterms. H.H.
Dear H.H.: Getting Trump “out” will create a crisis like no other faced by the US since the Civil War.
But I think Congress might try.
I wrote this before, but it only ran in an online column. Back before Trump picked his vice president, he and I spoke. I’ve known Trump for some 30 years, but I have never socialized with him or anything like that. We would talk once in a while.
Anyway, Trump asked me whom he should pick as VP, and I warned him that “if you pick someone the Republicans like too much, they [the Republicans] will get rid of you.”
Trump mumbled something like “we have smart people working for us, too.” Then he picked Pence.
Here’s the freakiest thing that might happen.
The Republicans might want to get rid of Trump, but they will need the Democrats’ cooperation to gin up a case against him. Maybe the Democrats won’t help, figuring that they have a good chance of beating the president in 2020. Democrats might not like their chances against Pence.
So the Democrats could turn out to be Trump’s allies and the Republicans, his enemies.
How’s this for a plot twist: Fed up with the Republicans, Trump runs as a Democrat in 2020.
I call dibs on the movie rights to that one.