“Taxation with representation” isn’t working so well, either!

January 14, 2025

These days, there are few things that Americans agree on. If there is one that has broad agreement, it is that we feel pretty much the same about taxes. Nobody likes paying taxes, although people do it with the understanding that it is necessary for the nation to survive.

Taxation has been around about as long as civilizations have existed. We know that taxation existed in Mesopotamia more than 4,500 years ago. And taxes here in the U.S. go all the way back to the colonies, when Great Britain taxed about everything that existed. The colonists objected, eventually creating the now well-known phrase "no taxation without representation." But the English king ignored them and this led to protests, the best known of them being the Boston Tea Party.

Even after the revolution and the creation of the United States of America taxes have been an important part of the lives of Americans. 

While understanding that they are necessary, there always has been much controversy about the system of taxation. One major issue is the length and complexity of the current tax code.

The tax code’s growth over the last century or so is hard to swallow. In 1913 the tax code was a relatively tiny 400 pages. Today, it is about 6,000 pages. But when you add in the IRS guidelines, with its nearly 10,000 sections it is 75,000 pages of regulations, instructions and guidance. Someone estimated that in order to read the entire code, it would take nine days of 24-hour reading. 

As explained by eFile.com, the code includes “categories for employment taxes, financing of election campaigns, coal industry health benefits, and the trust fund code. This incredible growth can be attributed to both expansions and revisions that are made to patch up tax loopholes. Over the past 10 years, it is estimated that the tax code has been amended or revised over 4,000 times.”

In the not so distant past, several changes were made to the tax code. President Ronald Reagan made two reforms, in 1981 and 1986, including the largest tax cut in our history, at the time. President Bill Clinton lowered taxes on the middle class in the 1990s, and President George W. Bush also cut taxes substantially in 2001.

President Donald Trump put forth the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, which helped people with lower incomes and it also lowered the corporate tax rate. His efforts are regarded as the largest overhaul of taxes in the 30 years prior to its passage.

Even so, these actions did not actually make the tax code any shorter or easier to understand and deal with.

Our tax code is so large and complex that the Tax Foundation estimates that 6.5 billion hours are needed each year to get all the tax work done. That works out to the equivalent of 3.1 million full-time workers. And the wages of these folks total $313 billion. In addition, there are 83,190 people working as tax preparers, as estimated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

And then there is the issue of tax rates. If there is to be a tax on personal income, why should there be different tax rates depending upon how much you make? The old saw that “the rich ought to pay more” works with everyone paying the same rate. At 10 percent of wages, earnings of $30,000 = $3,000; $75,000 = $7,500; $500,000 = $50,000; $1,000,000 = $100,000.

Why do higher income earners have to pay a higher tax rate? When wealthier people pay higher tax rates, they have less money to spend on the things they need and want, like homes and things in them, autos and other personal items, investments, donations to charity, etc. 

Lower rates give them more money to spend. Having more of their money in the economy is a very good thing. It increases sales of items and services, and that creates jobs and prosperity. Lower tax rates also reduce or eliminate the need for tax loopholes.

People with incomes at or below a certain point cannot afford to pay taxes on their income, so they should continue to get a break. And those in the income area just above that point might need a lower tax rate than others. But we shouldn’t need more than two rates.

Taxes must be sufficient to pay for the actions of government. But the actions of government must for this and other reasons be only as expensive as is absolutely necessary to provide for the safety and well-being of the people. A smaller, more efficient government would require less income from taxation to pay the bills.

The tax code should not be thousands of pages long. And it should not be so complicated that the average American cannot understand it and comply with it without having to seek help from professionals.

Increasing government efficiency at the same time as we are reducing excessive regulations, eliminating unnecessary or unconstitutional departments and agencies, and establishing sensible and fair income tax rates is long overdue.

Hopefully, the incoming Trump administration will address these problems and take steps to fix them.

Political considerations still control how our government works

January 7, 2025

As we watch Joe Biden’s presidency ending and prepare for President-elect Donald Trump to take office, some notable things have occurred.

First, Biden continued his questionable behavior by killing the sale of the troubled U.S. Steel company to Japan’s Nippon Steel. This transaction, had it been completed, would have been for more than $14 billion. 

In doing this, Biden said it was his “responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company” as “this acquisition would…create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”

There is little evidence to support that. However, had the purchaser been our most significant adversary, Communist China, those who condemn Biden’s action would have celebrated it.

U.S. Steel was founded 1901 by Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Charles Schwab. It is the first U.S. company to achieve a worth of at least $1 billion not long after its creation. However, during the 20th century the company had serious problems, which brought about trying to sell it.

Japan is a strong ally of the U.S. and would have been a good owner of the company, keeping it alive. U.S. Steel had warned that, “without Nippon Steel’s cash, it will shift production away from its aging blast furnaces to cheaper non-union electric arc furnaces and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh,” as reported by the Associated Press.

Biden, who prides himself as the most pro-union president ever, seemed to not notice that possibility.

Also, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 people at a White House ceremony. The Medal is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, and is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the United States, to world peace, or other significant endeavors.

Prior to giving the awards Biden noted that the recipients are “a collection of people, with different backgrounds, beliefs, talents, generations, and agendas, using their remarkable gifts and unwavering passion to strengthen our resolve as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Among those receiving this special award were some well-known people, including Robert F. Kennedy (posthumous), Michael J. Fox, Denzel Washington, Lionel Messi, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Ashton B. Carter (posthumous), Bill Nye, and Ralph Lauren.

However, there were two others who are well known, and controversial: former Secretary of State and former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and notorious philanthropist George Soros.

As Secretary of State, Clinton was lackluster. Her time as a senator and first lady were no better. She is best known for her erroneous claims, such as that as first lady she traveled to Bosnia, and “landed under sniper fire.”

More recently, she said that “If you’re just catching up: The Republican Party, taking orders from the world’s richest man, is on course to shut down the government over the holidays, stopping paychecks for our troops and nutrition benefits for low-income families just in time for Christmas.” Really?

George Soros is a strong supporter of progressive projects, and has poured billions of dollars into them through his Open Society Foundations. He funded groups supporting anti-Israel protests on college campuses.

Worse, he has invested heavily in political campaigns of far-left, progressive — read “pro-criminal” — district attorneys in major cities. Two of these are Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. These two prefer pursuing criminal justice reform over finding and prosecuting criminals.

Just last week as the 119th Congress prepares to begin working, the House of Representatives addressed its first step, which is electing its Speaker. The Republican candidate, who was depending on a very narrow majority, was former-Speaker Mike Johnson, and the Democrat candidate was Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The House can do nothing until it elects the Speaker, and a vote to certify the election of the next President is at the top of the list, right after members of the House are sworn in. So, a smooth and quick Speaker election is critical.

What should have been a simple task of taking an hour to count the votes and complete the election was thrown into chaos by a few Republicans who did not want Johnson in the position.

Of the 219 House Republicans all but three understood the importance of getting Johnson elected quickly so they could get on with the important work of the House did vote for Johnson. He then fell short of the needed 218 votes, which was the majority of those voting.

The three who wanted to play games with this important action were Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Rep. Keith Self of Texas. It would have made more sense to elect Johnson and get to work, and if there was strong enough support to replace him, wait until the House was up and running. 

It appeared initially like a second vote would be needed. Johnson talked with each of the three to try and work things out. But ultimately, what did the trick was a phone call from Trump.

So, the efforts of three Republicans to continue the insanity that began with the ouster of former-Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 did not succeed. And now the House can focus on passing legislation that will help restore America. 

2025 can be the year to get America back on the right track

December 31, 2024

Last November’s election has given many Americans reason to be optimistic about the future. This feeling is amplified virtually day-by-day as President Joe Biden continues adding items to the long Biden’s Worst Actions List.

Even some on the left have been shocked into reality, understanding that the Democrats’ radical “progressive” movement is well beyond what a substantial majority of Americans can stomach.

Things like open borders and the horrors that result; ridiculous level of inflation and the high costs of wants and needs; government agencies and departments straying from their duty and unelected bureaucrats making rules and punishments with the force of law; government spending well beyond income levels; important areas like education being infected by socialistic goals; the military adopting the idiotic concept of diversity, equity and inclusion; out of control and harmful mandates during the COVID pandemic; a high level of regulation that makes it more difficult for businesses to operate profitably; government propping up people who don’t want to work; and trying to relieve education loan debts in order to buy votes. 

While some of this has been going on for many years, the Biden-Harris administration has jammed the accelerator to the floor and removed protections that prevented or slowed problems from developing. They have done more damage than the guy who started all this, former President Barack Obama.

How will this next presidential transition go? Will the Democrats in Congress stick to their “oppose Trump on everything because he is Trump” behavior, opposing his nominations for key government positions? Or, will they return to the idea of being an American and make sensible decisions on these nominations, doing what Congress is supposed to do by approving a president’s nominees unless there are real and significant problems? We must hope for the latter choice.

One of the United States most serious problems is an enormous national debt caused by foolish spending levels by a government that is too big and too broad in its reach.

The federal government does not need to be controlling every aspect of our lives, or even be involved in many of the things over which it now has control or affects strongly.

Under our system of “federalism,” the federal government has limited powers, which are outlined in the U.S. Constitution, and the states are left with control of many aspects of daily life that are not given to the federal government, as per the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This sensible concept has been diluted over the past decades, and needs to be re-established.

Our federal government is too big and too powerful. It employs too many people, and has too many departments and agencies, and it exerts power over the people in far too many areas of their lives.

Back in 2011, Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-SC, was concerned with federal agencies that he said are not constitutional. He specifically mentioned the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the National Labor Relations Board. If his was an accurate evaluation, then these departments should be eliminated, along with any others that may also be outside the limits of the Constitution.

According to a Gallop poll in 2022, “a 54 percent majority of Americans say the federal government has too much power, while 39 percent say it has about the right amount of power and 6 percent say too little. … Since 2005, no less than 50 percent of Americans have said they believe the federal government is too powerful, with some of those readings reaching 60 percent.”

As for the number of employees, USA Facts tells us that “as of November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people. … Federal government employees work at departments or agencies housed under one of the three branches of government — executive, legislative, or judicial, though most federal agencies are under the federal executive branch. Across all US industries, it’s the15th-largest workforce overall.”

Trump has expressed his intention to address this situation. One beneficial idea for his presidency is the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, called DOGE. This proposed presidential advisory commission will work to identify areas of inefficiency and over-reach, remove harmful and invasive regulations, identify wasteful spending and other similar things. Trump has nominated Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to run this operation.

All one has to do to understand that changes must be made is to look at the National Debt of $35 trillion, and the interest on that enormous amount of $1.2 trillion in 2023. 

We have to get the size, cost, and over-regulation of the federal government down; re-establish our energy superiority; and get inflation under control, among other important things.

We have seen so much domestic production and so many jobs in those production areas moved out of the U.S. and into foreign countries. America needs to be the primary provider of the products we need and want, and Americans should be the ones who produce them. We need to begin to bring those back.

Donald Trump intends to address these problems, but we must remember that it will take more than one year or four years to complete this gargantuan project.

The Earth’s history is extremely long and very complicated

December 24, 2024

Estimates of Earth’s age and how long homo sapiens have been around vary somewhat. Numbers like three-to-four billion years are offered as Earth’s age, and our “ancestors” are estimated to have been here for six million years. However, our form of humans has been around for only about 200,000 years.

Over those countless centuries Earth has experienced many changes, and temperature fluctuations are among them. We have had both warm periods and cold periods along the way, and they have alternated back and forth many times.

Smithsonian Magazine explains that “Our planet’s average surface temperature did not stick close to a central point but instead has swung into very hot and very cold periods through the past 485 million years.”

“Earth has experienced cold periods (informally referred to as ‘ice ages,’ or ‘glacials’) and warm periods (‘interglacials’) on roughly 100,000-year cycles for at least the last 1 million years,” according to climate.gov. “The last of these ice age glaciations peaked around 20,000 years ago.” During these cycles, global average temperatures warmed or cooled anywhere from 5-15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Moving from an ice age to a warm period, and vice versa, is a slow, lengthy process, taking tens of thousands of years. And we are currently in a warming period.

Currently, there is an energetic debate over Earth’s increasing temperatures, with scientists and others on one side expressing a fear of temperatures warming to a dangerous level due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. 

The scientists and others on the opposing side say that this carbon dioxide level is not dangerous, and in fact that double the amount of it would actually be a good thing, spurring more and stronger plant life. Plants absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen into the atmosphere, and that is a good thing.

The climate alarmist side has predicted several catastrophes over the last 50 years, none of which actually occurred:

* In the 1970s we were warned of global cooling and a descent into a new ice age. 

* Paul Erlich claimed worldwide famine by 1975.

* It was claimed several times since 1988 that “we only have ten years left to save the planet.”

* Global warming “creator” Jim Hanson, predicted that lower Manhattan would be underwater by 2009. It isn’t.

* Al Gore predicted that the Arctic ice cap would be gone by 2015. It isn’t.

*We were told that polar bears were going to be extinct by now, but they are still around in large numbers.

*More droughts were predicted, but there have actually been fewer droughts.

* We were warned of more frequent and more intense hurricanes and tornadoes, but they have actually decreased in numbers and severity.

* Polar ice caps melting due to global warming was going to flood island nations. They are still here.

And now there is another study with a similar message. This one, conducted by the University of Bristol, also focuses on carbon dioxide/greenhouse gasses as the culprit: we must stop burning fossil fuels now, it warns.

As reported by the UK based LADbible Group, “The report suggests that Earth will cease to have any mammal inhabitants that cannot adjust to living with temperatures of between 104 to 158 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Their research showed “all mammals will die … [and] that humans are likely to go extinct in 250 million years,” unless we stop burning fossil fuels and increasing greenhouse gas emissions now.

Obviously, 250 million years is a long way off, so we have a good bit of time to both observe what is happening and adjust if needed.

Science tells us that Earth has experienced much warmer periods in its geological history. It is said that 2023 was the warmest year on record since recordkeeping began in the late 19th century. The warming theorists say this means the Earth is warmer now than at any point in recent history.

But these temperature records only go back about 150 years, and that is a miniscule part of a warming or cooling period.

Furthermore, there are questions about the accuracy of the temperature records. Three scientists from the CERES environmental nonprofit organization — Willie Soon, Ronan Connolly, and Michael Connolly — believe that there is not a strong enough argument for the choice of the available global temperature trends used in these predictions.

In an article on The Heritage Foundation website, they commented that, “The scientific debate is still ongoing, and the scientific community is not yet in a position to establish whether the observed temperature changes since the 1800s are mostly natural, mostly human-caused, or a mixture of both.”

Another article on the Heritage site titled “Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models,” author Roy Spencer — Visiting Fellow in Heritage’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment — notes that “Warming of the global climate system over the past half-century has averaged 43 percent less than that produced by computerized climate models used to promote changes in energy policy.”

The evidence does not support the United States making radical changes in the way we want to live, and the things we prefer to have. Especially when other countries are unconcerned about it. 

Only days left in Biden’s presidency. The end of an error.

December 17, 2024

As Joe Biden’s disastrous tenure in the White House nears its end, he has apparently taken something to stimulate his penchant for preferring law breakers to the citizens he has sworn to protect.

He demonstrated his preference for law breakers with his dangerous and foolish policy on border security, which has seen thousands of deaths of Americans through fentanyl illegally brought in, and from violent criminals among the millions of illegal aliens who were allowed in.

And now he’s issued 39 pardons and granted clemency to nearly 1,500 convicted criminals, in what the White House said was “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.” The list includes drug traffickers, crack dealers, cartel leaders and fraudsters, according to court records, and also includes some high-profile criminals.

In announcing this move, Biden said, “I am also commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who are serving long prison sentences — many of whom would receive lower sentences if charged under today’s laws, policies, and practices. These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance.”

Several of them were involved in crimes affecting thousands of Americans. And the reactions to these actions by people affected by the crimes of some of these people are anything but supportive.

One beneficiary was Rita Crundwell, who as comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, stole $53.7 million from residents of the city over a 20-year period, beginning in 1990. For this she was sentenced to 19 years and 7 months in prison in 2013.

Crundwell blamed the lack of city funds caused by her criminal behavior on the economy and the state of Illinois for failing to adequately fund the city.

In response to this sentence commutation former Dixon Mayor Li Arellano, Jr. said, “I am very disappointed … angry. Are we really going through this again?”

And city Councilman Mike Venier noted that “It was really just another gut punch to the city of Dixon.”

Another commutation raised the ire of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Addressing the commuting of the sentence of former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, Shapiro said that Biden “got it absolutely wrong.”

Interestingly, this criticism was given in Biden’s childhood hometown of Scranton, and in a building on Biden Street.

Conahan was found guilty in 2011 of collecting millions of dollars in kickbacks for sending children to prison in private, for-profit jails. This criminal exploit became known as “kids-for-cash.”

Shapiro, a Democrat, added, “Governors and presidents have unique power to grant pardons and clemency and commute sentences. … It is an absolute power that should be used incredibly carefully.” He concluded his remarks by saying, “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania.”

A drug smuggler was also among the lucky ones. Francesk Shkambi, received a sentence of 27 years in prison for heading a criminal organization that smuggled drugs from Albania into the United States.

Specifically, Shkambi trafficked large quantities of cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and Ecstasy into the US. The Federal Bureau of Prisons said he was due to be released in 2029.

There are many other examples of similar circumstances where the criminal acts of those receiving clemency did significant harm to the citizenry. The only people apparently concerned with this are the citizens, not the President.

Before this move, Biden gave his son Hunter a full, unconditional pardon, breaking his previous promises not to use the extraordinary powers of the presidency for the benefit of his family members.

The pardon occurred about a month before Hunter was set to face sentencing, and clears him in both of his federal cases of three felony charges for purchasing and possession of a gun in 2018, violating a law by concealing drug use, and for which he was found guilty. He avoided a trial on nine federal tax charges by entering a guilty plea. The pardon also covers years prior to the times Hunter was charged with a crime, going all the way back to 2014.

After breaking his promise, Biden attempted to defend the move by blaming politics. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong,” he said.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said. “Then, a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room — with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process.”

So, political activists use the law against their opponents? Didn’t Donald Trump say something about that?

Many of the things attributed to Biden of late have been suspected of being planned by others in the administration, citing his recent mental decline. Regardless of who is making these decisions, they are clearly not using the best of thoughtful reasoning, and not protecting the interests of the American people.

Trump faces many serious problems, and tremendous obstacles

December 10,2024

As January 20, 2025 — the day of inauguration — approaches there is much talk about what things Donald Trump will do as the new President.

Among the serious problems facing the country and the Trump administration are: the federal government’s size and exorbitant operation; straightening out the military; and the National Debt.

The federal government has become a place where unelected bureaucrats make decisions with the force of law and impose penalties and fines without congressional approval.

Back in June the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision that addressed this problem. Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer, Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, issued this statement about this decision.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision stops the unelected, unaccountable federal bureaucracy’s aggressive regulatory overreach. This is a win for the American people, small businesses, and our Constitutional Republic. For far too long, the administrative state has been able to wield unchecked power and act as legislators by issuing major regulations that have driven up costs for Americans, stifled innovation, and micromanaged nearly every aspect of Americans’ lives. This decision rightfully hands the power back to Americans’ elected representatives in Congress to write our nation’s laws and to the courts to interpret them.”

This is a good development, but more can and must be done. 

There is a crisis within our military. Some in its leadership have become terribly confused in terms of understanding the requirements for and critical job of the military. Foolish and non-productive ideas like DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) have replaced merit in determining job assignments, recruitment processes and promotions. 

Last year the Army, Navy, and Air Force failed to reach their recruiting goals by 41,000 recruits. That means that in 2023 we had the smallest active-duty force since 1940. 

Some other factors in this recruitment failure are: a smaller eligible population, Gen Z has a low trust in institutions, and follows traditional life and career paths much less than previous generations. Another factor is that the military, due to recent changes in operations and philosophy, does not have the strong appeal it once had.

The military’s role is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, and maintain, by timely and effective military action, the security of the United States, its possessions and areas vital to its interest.

We need to increase funding for defense to strengthen and grow our military forces.

The National Debt has grown beyond all reason and is dangerously high. This problem has been going on for many years and has increased recently, as the following data shows: 1974 - $475 billion; 1995 - $4.9 trillion; 2005 - $7.9 trillion; 2015 - $18.2 trillion; 2020 - $26.9 trillion; 2024 - $36.2 trillion.

The current total works out to $107,169 for every person in the country.

Decades ago our largest budget deficits were brought on by national emergencies like the Great Depression and World War II. More recently, the government has simply spent more money than taxation provides, and on inappropriate things. This causes huge deficits, and huge interest payments on our debt.

In 2023, the federal government spent $658 billion on interest costs. That was 2.4 percent of the GDP (gross domestic product). 

While the June Supreme Court decision was a step in the right direction, the federal government still needs much corrective work. There are several departments, agencies, offices, etc. that are not necessary or useful.

Government employees are often not living up to their duties. Many of them work remotely, not at their duty station, a situation that evolved during the COVID pandemic, and which has not been remedied. 

A report found that only 6 percent of federal workers report in-person on a full-time basis. And, almost one-third of federal workers are remote full-time, which is a big difference from before the pandemic when only 3 percent worked remotely. This negatively affects the efficient and proper functioning of many areas of government.

There are at least three federal departments that need to be eliminated: The Departments of Commerce, Education, and Energy. These are among the most frequently mentioned for elimination, with the Department of Education leading the list. 

Having only been around since President Jimmy Carter signed it into law in 1979, the Education Department unnecessarily interferes with the efforts of the individual states to serve their citizens’ needs, a federal department which states did without for two hundred years.

And, as these items are addressed, other critical problems exist. We must repair the open borders of the Biden administration and get control of the illegal aliens now in the country, restore our position of energy independence, and fix the horrible Biden inflation that has made life so difficult for so many.

The Trump administration has a wonderful opportunity to begin to restore the federal government to a reasonable size and reach, to get government spending under control and make some headway toward reducing the National Debt.

That is a substantial challenge under the best of circumstances. And with the Democrat/liberal mindset that is so subversive to the American ideals our Founders established, it will be much more difficult. 

America’s strengths are being weakened from the inside and dying

December 3, 2024

A major problem in America today is the abandonment of its traditions. The two-parent family is no longer the dominant feature it once was. The idea of citizenship, love of country, is less obvious these days. So many things have changed, as the culture of America devolves.

And one of the greatest of those is the honor and integrity that once accompanied some of our professions.

People in education too often no longer embrace and abide by traditional concepts and values. They often change what is done in classrooms without notifying parents, or going through official processes. Too often, schools teach what to think, rather than how to think, pushing certain concepts while hiding others.

News journalism once was a clear-cut process of reporting to the public what actually happened in news-worthy events. It didn’t hide relevant information. When reporting on a political topic, it did not take sides. And opinions were not expressed in news stories. The ideals of free speech and objectivity were respected and obeyed.

Yes, there is a place for opinions in journalism, but opinions must be clearly labeled, and not sneaked into news reporting to advance a particular point of view.

That sensible, honorable rule no longer exists for far too many people claiming to be journalists. News is largely no longer the process of keeping the people informed. Far too often news organizations are not providers of needed information, but sources of inducement to a particular way of thinking.

During the COVID frenzy lots of things were labeled as misinformation or false information, and were hidden from the public. However, many things that were labeled and withheld proved to be true and beneficial, and things presented as truth were found to be false.

Among topics where the opinions were hidden from the public were problems with the mRNA vaccine, the source of the COVID virus, and the issue of facemask use and uselessness.

The greatest and most harmful journalistic failures were in the realm of politics. Among those items, in addition to COVID censorship, were opposition to the Hunter Biden laptop story, the Steele dossier fiasco, and the Russian disinformation mess known as Russia Gate.

Social media sites also frequently banned certain pieces of information, claiming they were false. Sometimes this action, even though improper in a nation supporting free speech, was due to honest beliefs that the information was truly harmful. Other times — likely in the majority of cases — it was a politically motivated action, designed to prevent the spread of information contrary to the preferred narrative.

Neither of those are justification for the denial and restriction of the free expression of ideas guaranteed to us by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Even unpopular speech is defended by the free speech guarantee.

Workers at newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations and networks were also guilty of banning certain ideas.

Individuals yielding to political philosophy was often the problem. But there is a much deeper problem. Whereas some so-called journalists allowed political ideals into their work, because they hoped to convince the public more than they wanted to hold to their career integrity, others did the same thing for a different reason: they were trained that way, and believed they were acting appropriately.

There is a broad movement in academia away from the notion of objectivity. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University Law School and legal authority, addressed this in his new book, The Indispensable Right, dealing with the right to free speech guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution.

Turley wrote, “In journalism schools, professors now denounce objectivity’s place as the ‘supreme deity’ of American journalism.” One professor, Stanford’s Ted Glasser “has called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking ‘social justice,’” he wrote.

This infection has spread from the classroom into the newsroom, as graduates enter the workforce, and join in with those who prefer political success to professional honor and personal integrity.

Speaking of this new view of journalism Turley wrote: “Reporters must serve as active interpreters in framing the news to convey what they view as the truth, including the suppression of opposing views on issues like climate change, the pandemic, or gender identity.” 

“In 2023, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, Jr. and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward released the results of their interviews with over seventy-five media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and harmful,” Turley wrote, adding that “Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor in chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: ‘Objectivity has got to go.’” 

In his book, Turley follows up the discussion of the infection of journalistic principles with a similar infection of the field of law and interpretation of the Constitution and legal concepts.

In this context, the ideas and circumstances that brought about legal principles based upon the forces at work at the time they were implemented can now be ignored because “things have changed.” Laws and Constitutional principles can be changed at the whim of individuals rather than through established and necessary processes.

This line of thinking will not protect the freedoms Americans treasure and depend upon.

A loud and clear message was sent by voters on November 5th

November 26, 2024

The people spoke on November 5th, voting to make Donald Trump and J.D. Vance our next President and Vice President, and to give both houses of Congress a Republican majority.

And now, even after the disastrous message provided by the election results, the political left still is committed to divisiveness, unpopular attitudes and even illegal activities.

The election was a mandate from the people. The policies and realities of the last four years are highly unpopular, and voters want to restore the nation to the condition of the four years before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office in 2021, and to continue policies of that nature.

The election was a thumbs-down message about the absurd and dangerous virtual “open-border” policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to enter the country at will. The Biden administration even secretly flew thousands of illegals into the country, avoiding the border altogether. 

These illegal aliens are people with a variety of motives for coming here. Some are coming for the right reasons, even if their method of entering is a crime. But many, many others are drug dealers, women traffickers, child traffickers, robbers, rapists, murderers and other types of criminals. And some of them are on the terror watch list.

While many of them have been charged with crimes, the recent guilty verdict in the trial of the illegal alien with a heavily checkered criminal past who was accused of murdering 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley is indisputable proof that this and other crimes have occurred because the border security measures that were in place when Biden and Harris took office were cancelled in what looked like a 5-year-old’s temper tantrum on Biden’s part.

None of this seemed to even attract the interest of the Biden administration, which attempted unsuccessfully to blame the problem they created on the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans voted down a bad bill that supposedly was to address the situation, but wasn’t available until early 2024.

Biden’s reversing of Trump policies that were working pretty well also threw the country into four years of exceedingly high inflation. The war on domestic oil is responsible for the high gasoline and diesel prices, and shattered America’s energy independent status. It forced us to import oil and gas from other countries instead of using our own resources.

Under the Biden economic policies, people can’t afford things that had previously been affordable. Prices rose by more than 20 percent, a 40-year high. The average family of four was paying an additional $17,080 per year. The goods and services they could afford before January 2021, had risen to $1,423 per month more than before.

Businesses are caught in the middle of this mess. They have to deal with higher prices for the goods they market, and the components of the goods and services they produce. Increased costs lead to increased prices. And increased prices lead to unhappy customers and fewer customers who can afford the higher prices.

This affects small businesses greatly, as they are less able to deal with higher operational costs than the large companies. Some of them are forced to close down, putting workers on the unemployment line.

The public complaints of price increases on needed items led presidential candidate Harris to play politics with the inflation caused by the Biden/Harris administration.

Harris threatened to introduce a national ban on price gouging, if elected. She told an audience that her plan would “stop companies taking advantage of the desperation and need of the American consumer and jacking up prices without any consequences.”

These so-called “progressive” policies so badly affected the American people that they voted against them, and said a very loud “Stop it!” They don’t want open borders. They don’t like the much higher prices. It was a definite “No” to the exceedingly foolish Biden policies.

The country now looks ahead to next year when the Trump administration can begin to address the problem of millions of illegal aliens in the country and the costs in dollars and lives they bring. But blue state governors and blue city mayors have publicly announced their intention to fight the administration’s efforts to deport the millions of illegals who were happily, but illegally, welcomed into sanctuary states and cities.

For example, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has said that he would “fight to the death” against the Trump administration if it acted against New Jersey’s “values.” And Matt Platkin, New Jersey’s Attorney General, commented on X (formerly Twitter) that while he respects the electoral process and trusts in the peaceful transition of power, he will resist what he termed Trump’s unlawful attack on the “rights” of New Jersey residents to be in the country illegally.

But a majority of the country’s voters has said loudly that they are fed up with the dangers and expense of millions of illegal aliens being here, and with the unnecessarily high prices on everything they need and want.

They want an end to the foolish policies that brought these problems to us. The question now is, will the Democrats get the message and give up their radical un-American impulses?

Coal is still a valuable asset with many beneficial uses

November 19, 2024

Over recent years the amount of coal used in the US for producing electricity has dropped dramatically. This same decline can be seen across the globe, with 100 countries that have either gone coal-free or have set 2040 as a phase-out date.

The environmental movement is responsible for most of this, prompted by the Paris Agreement in 2015, where 75 nations focused on doing away with coal use by 2050. The environmental faction tells the story that burning coal is a major factor in what they say is the dangerous over-abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere.

To correct this problem, we must stop using fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to produce electricity, power vehicles or other uses. Even if it is true that we have too much CO2 in the atmosphere — and more than a few scientists argue that position isn’t true — this perspective ignores that fossil fuels contribute to our lives in other ways that are quite useful in addition to producing the power on which we rely so heavily.

And let’s not ignore the idea of many scientists that the level of CO2 in our atmosphere not only should not be reduced, but should be doubled to promote the growth of plant life. Plants and trees consume CO2 and release oxygen, which is critical to human life, into the atmosphere.

On this topic, Mining Digital tells us that “The demise of steam coal — also known as thermal coal — has been well documented, as investors shy away from the fossil fuel that fired the Industrial Revolution and has been an energy mainstay pretty much ever since, save for the past decade or so. Yet one corner of the coal market is thriving: metallurgical coal, otherwise known as coking coal, and vital for making steel.”

Coal is a critical part of steel, and steel is a huge factor in so many things, such as in buildings, as reinforcing rods in concrete, in bridges, tools, ships, trains, cars, bicycles, machines, electrical appliances, furniture, and weapons.

Oil is also used in many things, like plastics, fertilizers, petrochemicals crayons, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, tires, ammonia, lubricants, coolants and paints.

So, you see, these fossil fuels have other uses as well as their contribution to electricity production and propelling vehicles and other devices of various descriptions. But the Biden/Harris administration, with its myopic view of reality and the manic anti-fossil fuel attitude of the left, wants to destroy fossil fuels, and especially coal, which has been, and can still be, so valuable to our region.

While coal use is still declining, and coal-fired power plants are fewer and fewer, the rate of that decline has slowed recently, as power demand is rising for datacenters and manufacturing entities.

And a forecast from S&P Global Commodity Insights points to this as a lifeline for coal power. “But tech companies are building power-hungry datacenters to support new artificial intelligence applications. Additional demand from new datacenters will double in just a year, to 47,448 GWh (Gigawatt hours) between 2024 and 2025, and rise more than eightfold by 2030 to 199,982 GWh.”

President-elect Donald Trump named former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is thought that the EPA will ease regulations affecting fossil fuel-fired power plants.

Trump said of Zeldin, who served in the House from 2015 to 2023, that he will ensure “fair and swift” deregulatory decisions. The result of this will be a boon to American businesses and still maintain the highest environmental standards.

Zeldin said in a recent statement that, “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

E&E News offered this idea of what will happen. “Some of the most stringent rules enacted by the Biden administration will likely end up in the dust bin, such as the agency’s regulations to reduce climate pollution from power plants, according to analysts. Other standards may survive in a weakened form, like the administration’s rules to lower methane emissions.”

“I think the power plant rule is pretty easy for them to revoke,” said Jeff Holmstead, who served as EPA’s air chief under President George W. Bush. “There’s really no one in industry who supports that rule. People just think that EPA was entirely unrealistic.”

Fortunately for those businesses and individuals who support the continued use of coal, not only for power production, but also for the other uses it has, the onset of the Trump/Vance administration is a breath of fresh air. 

Reversing the Biden administration’s mindless restrictions on coal, oil and other fossil fuels will allow the US to regain its position as energy independent, bring back to our country the sale of coal and gas that was sent to other countries by Biden’s orders, and bring down the needlessly high prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.

These changes will not restore the thriving coal industry of a few decades ago, but will allow its use for energy production as well as other positive purposes that have recently come to light.

What is happening in the aftermath of the 2024 election

November 12, 2024

“A relatively trouble-free presidential election was good news for those working to restore faith in the system,” the Associated Press (AP) reported last week. “Less encouraging was a flood of misinformation that sought to undermine trust in voting and sow chaos, something experts say is likely to get worse in the years ahead.”

So far, not many problems have been reported, but the AP did note that “The most significant test for officials on Election Day was a series of bomb threats reported in five battleground states, some of which forced polling places to be evacuated temporarily.”

Early voting saw more than 84 million people who voted either in person or by mail. Together with votes from polling places, former President Donald Trump won the popular vote with 74,783,561 votes and the Electoral College with 312 votes. Vice President Kamala Harris received 71,187,165 votes and 226 Electoral College votes, as the AP reported Sunday. 

Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 704,468 votes, and Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. received 681,096, even though he had withdrawn from the contest, and despite his efforts was left on the ballot in some states.

Now that this much-anticipated election of the next President, members of Congress and various state and local races is over, people might expect things to settle down.

But no, there is still a very lively atmosphere in the country. Of course, Trump followers are pretty happy with the results. They are now concerned with the transfer of power and seeing who Trump will put in the important positions of the new administration.

But those on the other side are having serious problems dealing with what happened. A lot of comments were focused on Donald Trump and all of the reasons why he shouldn’t have won, rather than on why Harris didn’t win.

Some serious and sensible observers, however, have focused on problems with the Harris campaign, generally giving her accolades, but also mentioning things she didn’t do that would have helped her, and things she did that didn’t help.

In a column in The Washington Post contributing columnist Matt Bai said this: “But you must admit that Harris, like Hillary Clinton then, was not a perfect candidate with a clear message. I think the most stunning numbers in some of the state exit polling are those that show Trump winning significant shares of union voters, Black voters and Latino voters. To me, that sort of confirms my instinct that it was risky, if not negligent, for Harris to run a campaign that was almost entirely about how awful her opponent is.”

And comedian Bill Maher, a self-described liberal who often says some very wise things, called the Democratic party “losers” and suggested that they “look in the mirror” following the election. “We had an election,” he said during a “Real Time” monologue on HBO Friday night. “I did not vote for the winner, we’ll see what the winners do now. They won, now they have reality they have to deal with. We’ll see what they do.”

But not everyone is so calm and sensible. We find the common idea of some celebrities threatening to move out of the country, while others refuse to perform in red states. There have also been videos made by disenchanted Harris followers screaming at the top of their lungs about their plight.

They are predicting that there will be no more elections, and that Trump will go after his political enemies, just as the DOJ and the left has done to him. 

“I think that we also have to deal with the issue of race and gender. There was a lot of gender bias in this,” said Al Sharpton. “There was a lot of race bias in this and I think that we thought a lot of voters were more progressive in those areas than they were.”

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin was "profoundly disturbed by the results." She feels for the working class, the elderly and her own daughter, claiming she "now has less rights than I have." She worries that Trump will establish "internment camps." And she also said that "sexism and misogyny" were how Trump won the Latino vote in a Texas county that Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Other Harris supporters made these comments: “I might wake up a slave.” “I’m in Texas and I am so afraid.” “If you’re a black man and you voted for Trump … I hope that cop beats you so good.” “Trying not to worry too much but I’ve been up since 3 crying and panicking.” “I feel like i’ll [sic] be going 6ft under.” “I’m panicking [for real.] We need a proper evacuation plan.”

Fortunately for us all, we did not elect a candidate because of their race or gender, or because they refused press conferences and answering questions in a serious manner. And we did not fail to elect a candidate because of their personality, the baseless and silly references to Hitler and fascism, and because they are a lawfare victim. 

Instead, we elected a candidate based on policies proven far better than what the American people and the nation have suffered under for the last four years.

Is our election system secure enough to produce the true result?

November 5, 2024

Today is election day. Voting is a sacred right and a critical duty of eligible voters. And although this is the day that Americans traditionally have gone to the polls to cast their ballots, tens of millions have already voted, either through early voting, or by mail-in ballots.

This election is a critical one. It will determine who our next president will be, how the two houses of Congress will be controlled, who the governors in many states will be and which party will control state legislatures, and many municipal and county leadership positions will be decided. It is a very important day.

The country is more politically and ideologically divided than it has been in many, many years. That divide will not be significantly changed by the election results.

And while most of us are hoping for a clean, secure election with few problems, the nature of the current election processes virtually guarantees that there will be some potentially serious problems of errors, ballot tampering and fraud.

Mailing ballots to voters, no matter how valid the reasons are for doing it, provides opportunities for problems. Delays in the postal system may cause deadlines to be missed. Ballots can be stolen on their way to and from voters. And drop boxes placed on streets for voters to return ballots after voting are targets for mischief.

Already in Washington state hundreds of ballots were recently destroyed by fire in one drop box. And, a drop box in Oregon was also set afire, although the loss of ballots there was small. Still, hundreds of voters’ choices were lost.

The Associated Press reported that “[s]ix states have banned ballot drop boxes since 2020: Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina and South Dakota, according to research by the Voting Rights Lab, which advocates for expanded voting access. Other states have restricted their use, including Ohio and Iowa, which now permits only one drop box per county, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.”

Other election problems have accompanied the introduction of computer voting devices, which can be, and have been, hacked when connected to the Internet. These devices also may have been programmed by the people that produced or installed them to make changes to election numbers as ballots are counted.

In the 2020 election, there were allegations supported by evidence that people who delivered ballots to voters who were in care facilities or who were cognitively impaired coached the voters on how to vote, or actually marked the ballots themselves and managed to get voter signatures on them before submitting them.

And 26 states and Washington, DC allow military personnel to vote by email or an online portal, and seven states allow voting via fax. Some states allow voters with disabilities to use some of those options to vote.

On the latter topic, National Public Radio warned late last year that “advice from cybersecurity experts is clear: Widespread internet voting at this point is a bad idea.”

Clearly, the variety of voting options available presents many opportunities for election tampering and fraud. Our elections are too important to allow the sorts of insecurities present in the current voting methods.

University of Michigan computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on election security. He offers tips that can help us ensure that votes are recorded accurately and securely, among which are these: 
* Avoid voting methods that don’t have a paper trail.
* If you use a ballot-marking device at the polls, review your printout.
* Don’t vote online.
* Encourage your state to do a risk-limiting audit in future elections.

Digicert, a company that refers to itself as “The global leader in digital trust,” recommends three requirements of a trustworthy voting method:
* Fraud prevention: Ensuring every vote is legitimate.
* Privacy: Protecting voters' choices from prying eyes.
* Cost-effectiveness: Making elections affordable for everyone.

And Bloomberg online offered the following advice prior to the 2020 election: “Election voting is the cybersecurity industry’s most difficult challenge, and casting ballots on paper is the safest option against any digital disruptions, says CrowdStrike Holdings co-founder and former Chief Technology Officer Dmitri Alperovitch.”

“Voting is the hardest thing to secure when it comes to cybersecurity,” Alperovitch said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “The only way we know how to do it well and safely is by using paper.” He also said that in-person voting and ballots that are either mailed in or dropped off at collection sites are the best ways to ensure that a digital hack won’t happen.

Secure elections are a requirement. However, many of the aspects of our elections today are to make registering to vote easier and voting more convenient. 

But election security must not be weakened just to make it easier for people. Other things can be done to improve the election process without opening it up to tampering and fraud.

Every voter must have proved eligibility and produce a photo ID or other form of proof of identity, and have paper ballots that can be kept on file and referred to when needed. If these security measures cause problems, then we must just buckle up and deal with them.

“Our democracy” works well as it was designed. Leave it alone!

October 29, 2024

The liberal faction in America has an annoying tendency to want to change everything that gets in the way of its drive for total control of the country that will last forever. 

This tendency includes such radical actions as packing the Supreme Court with liberal justices who will essentially ignore the basis for our laws and Constitution and ignore existing laws and the terms of the Constitution and substitute their political preferences, without going through required processes to make such changes.

They also would like to abolish the Senate filibuster that has played such an important part in preventing bad measures from getting easily passed in that body. 

The filibuster promotes compromise and protects the minority party’s voice and function. It also protects purposeful debate, which is the intended purpose of the Senate. And it provides a safeguard against political extremism and corporate influence.

And they want to abolish the Electoral College. Criticism of this element of the government includes that it is not a mechanism of direct democracy, or as a voice of the people, since it replaces the popular vote result with a different process. But the United States of America is not, and has never been a direct democracy. It is also called a weapon of slavery. But that has been effectively proven wrong. 

The Founders deliberately created the Electoral College as a mechanism of federalism. Federalism recognizes the states as important elements of the nation with a degree of control over what does and does not happen.

“Doing away with the Electoral College would breach our fidelity to the spirit of the Constitution, a document expressly written to thwart the excesses of majoritarianism,” in the opinion of John Samples, Vice President of the Cato Institute.

“First, we must keep in mind the likely effects of direct popular election of the president,” Samples wrote. “We would probably see elections dominated by the most populous regions of the country or by several large metropolitan areas.”

“Second, the Electoral College makes sure that the states count in presidential elections. As such, it is an important part of our federalist system — a system worth preserving. Historically, federalism is central to our grand constitutional effort to restrain power,” he wrote, “but even in our own time we have found that devolving power to the states leads to important policy innovations,” such as welfare reform.

Another opinion on the Electoral College’s importance comes from Allen Guelzo and James Hulme in, of all places, The Washington Post. “Abolishing the electoral college now might satisfy an irritated yearning for direct democracy, but it would also mean dismantling federalism. After that, there would be no sense in having a Senate (which, after all, represents the interests of the states), and further along, no sense even in having states, except as administrative departments of the central government. 

“Those who wish to abolish the electoral college ought to go the distance, and do away with the entire federal system and perhaps even retire the Constitution, since the federalism it was designed to embody would have disappeared.”

By the way, replacing the Constitution is a goal of more than a few of the political left in the country.

“Without the electoral college, there would be no effective brake on the number of ‘viable’ presidential candidates,” Guelzo and Hulme add. “Abolish it, and it would not be difficult to imagine a scenario where, in a field of a dozen micro-candidates, the ‘winner’ only needs 10 percent of the vote, and represents less than 5 percent of the electorate. And presidents elected with smaller and smaller pluralities will only aggravate the sense that an elected president is governing without a real electoral mandate.”

The number of people who do not understand the function of the Electoral College and its value to the nation is shockingly enormous. It has provided a high degree of stability in our presidential elections, and therefore must be left alone.

Guelzo and Hulme added that while the Electoral College appears to be an inefficient process to many, “the Founders were not interested in efficiency; they were interested in securing ‘the blessings of liberty.’ The Electoral College is, in the end, not a bad device for securing that.”

Recently, there has been much attention focused on and many references to “our democracy.” And there is so much finger-pointing at former President Donald Trump, and other Republicans and conservatives, accusing them of trying to harm or destroy the democracy. 

What is truly interesting, however, is how determined the liberal Democrats and Marxists are to dismantle our democratic processes piece by piece. A bright future for them is a country which they will control in perpetuity.

The references listed earlier — stacking the Supreme Court, ending the Senate filibuster, and abolishing the Electoral College — as well as making the District of Columbia and some US territories into states, are nothing more than mechanisms to alter our democratic republic, with its guarantees of personal freedom and high degree of state independence, and turn it into a direct democracy.

Converting our current very successful system into one where government has absolute control is not an improvement for the people. Only for some people.

Too much government control negatively affects the people

October 22, 2024

We have all probably noticed that over the last few decades, and likely almost as long as the country has existed, the federal government has been growing and has gotten much bigger, much more powerful, and mind-bogglingly expensive.

While the addition of new government departments, agencies, offices, etc., and their increases in size, may have been intended to improve government functioning, and were done for the best of reasons, that has often not been the result.

While the elements of government are constitutionally under the control of the administration and Congress, that leadership changes fairly often, and with those changes come different ideas about how government should work. But most of the personnel in the various administrative departments and agencies stay in their positions for years or decades, and while they are there they develop their own ideas about how their part of government should work.

These concepts frequently are at odds with what is expected by the people, and what best serves their interests. As a result, terms like “deep state” and “administrative state” have arisen to describe them.

Complaints about this troubling problem are not unusual, and quite often highlight true problems caused by a particular area of government. But the complaints quite often fall on deaf ears, or do not have needed support to change things. A recent correspondence from the CEO of a South Carolina electric cooperative to its customers is a good example.

Palmetto Electric Cooperative President and CEO, A. Berl Davis Jr., identified and explained one such problem brought on by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Davis began by discussing referees in a football game, who he said often operate as if they are more important than the game itself. “I think of the Environmental Protection Agency the same way,” he wrote. “The role they fill is a critical one, but their recent set of regulations on power plants is a bad call. Unfortunately, the consequences will be much worse than merely losing a ballgame. The EPA’s latest interference in the energy industry threatens our access to reliable, affordable electricity. It’s one more reason our cooperative’s energy costs are rising, along with inflation and the increasing price of wholesale power from one of our primary power sources, Santee Cooper.”

EPA’s recent rule aimed at existing coal and new natural gas power plants requires them to either greatly reduce their output or install carbon capture and storage. “In theory, carbon capture and storage, or CCS, might sound like a neat idea. A power plant’s carbon emissions could be injected deep underground rather than released into the atmosphere,” Davis wrote. “But in practice, CCS is unproven and unbelievably expensive. No utility in the country has successfully pulled off CCS at the level the EPA is requiring for America’s fleet of power plants.”

This action’s expense results in higher prices for consumers, and also puts power suppliers in a crisis. As he explains it, “South Carolina urgently needs more power supply, not greater restrictions on our existing power plants or the ones our state needs to build. Our state has already struggled to supply sufficient electricity during the coldest hours of the winter, such as when freezing weather led to rolling blackouts in parts of South Carolina during Christmas 2022. And South Carolina’s power needs are only increasing amid the state’s rapid population and economic growth.”

Some help can come from solar farms, he notes, but also recognizing that solar power is not always there when it is needed, like on cold winter mornings and at night when the sun isn’t shining.

“To keep up, we will need to be able to rely on 24/7 energy sources including natural gas and, at least for now, coal. Yet the EPA seems intent on throwing its yellow flag and ejecting those reliable power plants from the game,” Davis wrote. “The job of keeping the lights on is hard enough during a challenging time for the energy industry. We don’t need the government making it any harder or more expensive for you.” And this problem affects other states, too.

He said further that Palmetto Electric Cooperative is joining other organizations to fight the EPA’s dangerous rules in court and in the Congress.

Decisions like this one are made by bureaucrats in government offices, not by the one law-making body that we have: Congress. Where the environment is concerned, decisions like this one are often the result of political positions and ideals, not on actual problems and needs, and the effects they will have on the people that the bureaucrats exist to properly serve.

The “administrative state” must be brought under control. Our government needs to be reduced in its degree of control, its size and its cost. Its focus must be restored so that it works for the good of all of the people, not just the political faction that most government employees favor, whatever that may be.

In the election next month there is the opportunity to do one of two things: either continue the current trend and increase the size, cost and control of government by electing radical Democrat liberals/socialists, or say a loud “no” to that.

Are they defending democracy? Or, eliminating democratic principles?

October 8, 2024

Many of those on the left have been observed using the term “democracy” when talking about the United States of America. And some activities, and some individuals are often termed “threats to our democracy.”

Of course, our nation does operate on democratic principles. Our Founding Fathers came here from other countries, and were familiar with how things were done in other countries. Some countries may have been democracies while others may not have been. They developed our system to avoid the problems they witnessed in other countries. 

The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution — the Bill of Rights — exist for that very purpose. And, notably, the first of those amendments is the one guaranteeing us freedom of speech and other things. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Despite this very clear statement, from day one of our republic there have been efforts to limit free speech, and many of those actions were exercised by those in the federal government.

And that effort continues today, as those who are objective and have been paying attention have witnessed. During COVID, and on controversial subjects, speech is frequently limited by the news media and social media, and yet again, by some of those working in and for our government.

When you are trying to control a nation, people being able to say whatever they are thinking is not a good thing. Some ideas that do not agree with the status quo are out there for the public to consider. And the controllers cannot prosper under those conditions.

To combat these alternative ideas, they are labeled as false, misleading, disinformation, misinformation, etc., and are removed, or requested to be removed, from communication vehicles and thrown into the trashcan.

Last month John Kerry, former Secretary of State and former Special Presidential Envoy for Climate in the Biden administration, took part in a World Economic Forum panel discussion on Green Energy. Near the end of the event an audience member asked what could be done about the disinformation being heard surrounding the climate change fracas.

"You know there's a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you're going to have some accountability on facts, etc.,” Kerry said. “But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence,” he continued.  

“So, what we need is to win the ground, win the right to govern, by hopefully winning enough votes that you're free to be able to implement change."

"The dislike of and anguish over social media is just growing and growing. It is part of our problem, particularly in democracies, in terms of building consensus around any issue. It's really hard to govern today. The referees we used to have to determine what is a fact and what isn't a fact have kind of been eviscerated, to a certain degree. And people go and self-select where they go for their news, for their information. And then you get into a vicious cycle," Kerry said.

In another comment, Kerry remarked, "Democracies around the world now are struggling with the absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are."

So, our First Amendment gets in the way of people like Kerry being able to easily shove their ideas down our throats with no opposition. It is a major block to combating other ideas, which they label as “misinformation.”

They want the government to be the “truth arbiter” and define what the facts are. And they need the Democrats/socialists to win the presidency and both houses of Congress so that they will have the power to rid the nation of the First Amendment that allows challenges to their chosen course of action.

The reason for this is that Kerry and his comrades believe they know all that is needed, and that climate change is going to end humanity and all plant and animal life on Earth. And they know exactly what is needed to prevent that. 

Other opinions — even those of scientists or science professors — are “disinformation,” and must be prevented from becoming public knowledge.

However, it ought to be obvious to any thinking individual that what Kerry and others are trying to do is precisely why there is a First Amendment, and why that amendment is the very first one in our guaranteed Bill of Rights. 

Without free speech government can do whatever it pleases, and anyone expressing a contrary opinion is subject to criminal charges, even death.

The Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution are designed to limit what the government can do, so that the United States of America will not become just one more oppressive totalitarian state.