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?

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.

America’s election system has serious security issues

April 2, 2024

One of the great things about being a citizen of the United States of America is being able to participate in determining who will serve us in important governmental positions.

The right to select our governments’ public servants from a list of candidates selected by the people through a voting process is a highly valued one, and governments at all levels have a solemn duty to protect that right, and assure us that the voting process is as safe and secure as possible.

That means using only those elements of voting that are the least likely to be misused.

We were assured that the 2020 election was very safe, and that may be true. But we also have seen evidence of irregularities and illegalities, some of which were implemented due to the COVID virus, and may have been done with the best of intentions. However, in some states, changes were made to the election process without the direction of the state legislature, which is required by the U.S. Constitution.

Plus, we know from history and human nature that there are people who will do anything to win elections, and there are problems and actual improprieties in many elections. 

The question is: To what extent do these problems and improprieties affect the outcome of local, state and national elections?

Where the 2020 election is concerned, there are two opposing storylines on that question.  The purpose here is not to argue for or against one or the other of those storylines. Election integrity is the focus.

The first step in securing elections is making sure that only eligible people can vote. The best way for doing that is a system in which voters prove their eligibility to election officials, and then have a photo ID that must be used when voting.

At one time many years ago, votes were cast on a paper ballot at a polling place by eligible voters who could prove their identity on election day. Ballots were hand counted and kept on file.

Since that time, that secure system has been weakened by the addition of elements that are more easily corrupted. One aspect of that is the idea of making voting easier or more convenient, which has increased the opportunities for problems. 

But voting is a critical element of our constitutional republic, so keeping the process secure is much more important than making it easier or more convenient.  

Voting by mail/absentee voting, and machine voting have entered the process with both positive and negative results.

The idea of absentee voting is beneficial for voters who have a very good reason for not being able to get to the polling place. Perhaps they serve in the military and are stationed away from their permanent address, or are attending school away from home. Perhaps they are elderly, ill, or disabled and unable to move about. 

But sending thousands or millions of ballots out in the mail to all voters to be returned by mail is begging for trouble. Likewise, having ballots returned by placing them in unsecured bins is dangerous, as is ballot harvesting.

Some voting machines do not use or produce paper ballots that can be checked. Machines used in ballot counting or voting can be hacked or programmed to affect vote totals. 

The Associated Press website warned that “Election officials face a long list of challenges this year, including potential cyberattacks waged by foreign governments [and] criminal ransomware gangs attacking computer systems.”

And a discussion on the National Public Radio website added this: “Basically, every election security expert agrees that we should not have lots of people voting over the internet. The DHS, FBI, the National Academies of Sciences - they've all agreed on this point. And there's really more agreement on this point than almost anything else in election security.”

According to the Brookings Institution, a paper trail is necessary. “Election security experts from Harvard, Stanford and the Brennan Center for Justice all recommend the phasing out of paperless voting, and twelve of the thirteen Democratic candidates who have declared a position on election security support mandating the use of paper ballots,” an article on the Brookings website states.

The idea of every eligible voter having to show a photo ID to vote garners complaints that this is discriminatory. But consider the long, long list of everyday things that require a photo ID. Things like buying alcohol, applying for a job, renting or buying a house, renting a car, applying for government assistance like welfare or unemployment, getting on an airplane. This is a precaution that must be taken.

Questioning election results is an American tradition, with many elections having seen challenges. The more election security is the focus, and the more limits we have on the election process to make it more secure, the fewer opportunities for irregularities and problems there will be, and hopefully fewer challenges to the results.

Any process that puts voted ballots at risk of being stolen or changed, or ballots falsely created, must not be allowed. We cannot make voting easier and more convenient if doing that weakens the security of the election process.

Securing elections is a goal we must achieve before 2024

November 22, 2022

"Some of you probably remember the hotly contested and controversial 2000 presidential election that was highlighted by arguments about vote fraud; voter suppression; hanging, dimpled and pregnant chads; changes in who led in vote totals throughout election night; and legal challenges that delayed the decision for over a month. 

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, called a halt to the craziness, leaving Republican George W. Bush, with his 537-vote margin, the winner of Florida’s 25 Electoral Votes, and the victory over Democrat Al Gore.

In 2002, Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to address the wide range of issues brought to its attention by state and local officials and others throughout the country. 

Two years later, it was evident that HAVA had not resolved the arguments over state laws requiring voters to provide photo identification that were generating backlash amid claims of disenfranchisement, new concerns about new voting technology that led to fears of counting errors, and worries about growing numbers of absentee and mail ballots that raised concerns about the possibility of fraud.

"In response to these concerns, former President Jimmy Carter [a Democrat] and former Secretary of State James A. Baker, III, [a Republican] agreed to co-chair a bipartisan commission, housed at Washington D.C.’s American University, to examine these and other outstanding election reform issues. The final report, titled ‘Building Confidence in U.S. Elections,’ stressed the important role of elections in the nation’s democracy,” according to the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. 

The report made 87 recommendations, including:
o A national system to connect state and local voter registration lists
o Voter identification based on a universally available REAL ID card
o Policies to improve voter access for all communities, as well as innovations like vote centers and voter information lookup sites
o Stronger efforts to combat fraud, especially in absentee voting
o Auditable paper backups for all voting technology

Of the recommendations, the Daily Signal commented: “They called on states to increase voter ID requirements; to be leery of mail-in voting; to halt ballot harvesting; to maintain voter lists, in part to ensure dead people are promptly removed from them; to allow election observers to monitor ballot counting; and to make sure voting machines are working properly. They also wanted the media to refrain from calling elections too early and from touting exit polls.”

“Had Congress and state governments adopted many of the panel’s recommendations, the 2020 post-election mess between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden might have been avoided,” said Carter-Baker Commission member Kay C. James, now the president of The Heritage Foundation, in the Daily Signal report. 

“So many of the problems we’re now hearing about in the aftermath of the 2020 election could have been avoided had states heeded the advice of the Commission on Federal Election Reform,” James continued. “Simple protections against fraud, like voter ID and updated voter registration lists, make perfect sense if we truly believe that every vote must count. Election officials should take another look at the commission’s recommendations and make sure they’re doing everything possible to protect the integrity of our elections,” she said.

Organizations concerned with election security have suggested many ideas for secure voting, which include:
o Voter rolls must be updated and accurate prior to every election.
o Photo IDs will be required, and assistance must be provided to those with difficulties getting IDs made.

o Voting will be in person on Election Day, except when voters will be away on Election Day, or are physically unable to vote in person. In these cases, ballots will be requested and furnished to registered voters, will be signed and verified by signature matching and returned to the designated location. 
o Election Days should be named as holidays, or voting should be accommodated by employers.
o There will be no ballot harvesting.
o Votes are to be made on paper ballots; may be counted by machines that are not online; must be verified by hand-counting done with transparency.
o Post-election audits will be conducted that can verify that outcomes are correct.

The National Election Defense Coalition makes the case for using paper ballots: “Hand Counted Paper Ballots are considered the "Gold Standard" of democratic elections. Only paper ballots provide physical proof of the voter's intent. Paper ballots can be safely recounted in case of a contested result. Counting paper ballots in public provides 100% oversight and transparency. Unlike computer voting systems paper ballots can't break down or malfunction; are not programmed secretly by unaccountable private corporations; and cannot be hacked or rigged.”

We are reminded that every registered citizen has the right to vote, and therefore it should be made convenient and easy. Yes, voting is a right. But it is also extremely important in our country. 

And because of its tremendous importance, convenience in voting must yield to procedures that provide the highest level of security we can achieve. Some inconvenience is a small price to pay for being able to trust that the election process and procedures are as secure as possible, and that every legitimate vote is properly counted.

Our states must secure their elections.

As they say, elections have consequences, but offer opportunities

October 18, 2022

Voting in the midterm election of November 8th has already started, with early voting underway in some states. Exactly how the election will turn out is being debated, with predictions of Republican gains in Congress and statehouses, but is truly unknown at this point.

There are several issues that command the interest of voters. Those include the economy/inflation, the rising crime problem, abortion, education, immigration and voting policy.

A survey by the Pew Research Center in August placed the economy at the top of the list, with 77 percent of the registered voters polled ranking it first. Coming in fifth was voting policies, ranked first by 59 percent of those polled.

We all remember the chaos over the security of the 2020 election, but that one was not the only election that has been questioned. Four previous presidential elections have been seriously questioned, dating back to 1876 when Samuel Tilden ran against Rutherford B. Hayes. Amid much controversy, Hayes squeaked out a 185-184 majority in the Electoral College.

A bribery scandal marred the 1888 election between Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland. Ultimately, Cleveland lost the race. More recently, the 1960 election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon had some of the closest results in presidential politics. Kennedy won by just 100,000 votes.

And then there was the election of George W. Bush over Al Gore in 2000. With Bush receiving just 527 more votes than Gore, a U.S. Supreme Court decision ultimately led Gore to concede the race to Bush.

There was also a lot of chatter about the 2016 election between Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton, with many Democrats, including Clinton, complaining about the outcome. Many of these same Democrats were highly critical of Trump’s complaints about the 2020 election, which put Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in the White House.

The complaints by Trump and his supporters did not produce a change in the results of the election. And there is not going to be a discussion of that election here today.

However, it is appropriate to note that in many, if not most, elections, there are those who question the results, and there is the fact that in most elections voter fraud does exist, as well as other irregularities. The real issue is, to what extent do fraud and irregularities influence the outcome?

A very important issue in any election is the security of the process. 

Every eligible voter’s vote must be counted, and no ineligible votes can be counted. And while removing obstacles that make it a little inconvenient for people to vote is important, that is far less important than making the process as secure as possible. A little inconvenience in return for vote security is a small, but necessary price to pay.

In-person voting, where prospective voters go to the polling place, show their photo ID and are verified, and vote on paper ballots that are counted by honest poll workers, is generally considered the most secure method. Voting by mail is considered the most vulnerable to fraud, because the ballots are sent out and returned through the mail or in special ballot return boxes. This process makes the ballots available to being intercepted from home mailboxes and the boxes set up for ballots to be returned, and fraudulently used by those wanting to control the outcome.

And, states must insure that voting procedures are not changed by election officials or poll workers, etc. Only action by the state legislature may legally change election procedures. In 2020, five states did not abide by this requirement, perhaps for the best of reasons during the pandemic. But the law is the law, and it must be followed.

The country is in far worse condition than when Biden took office, and the problems that have resulted are causing much discomfort among Americans, both voters and non-voters.

Inflation has surged by double digits — 13 percent — since Biden first entered the White House. Higher prices of products like gasoline and food have put thousands or millions in financial distress.

Illegal immigration has killed people trying to cross the Rio Grande, thousands more who have mistakenly taken fentanyl brought across the border by illegals have died, as have others at the hands of illegal aliens who crossed the border, which is, for all intents and purposes, wide open.

Crime in many U.S. cities has spiraled out of control, as “progressive” prosecutors, judges, and others have eased up on punishing criminal behavior, refusing to prosecute some crimes and to jail criminals for some violent crimes, and generally catering to criminals, to the detriment of their victims.

This election and the 2024 General Election offer opportunities to reject the incompetence of the Biden administration, and to return life in America to where it was only a short time ago. Elect people who want to restore common sense to government, to use America’s resources to benefit Americans and the world, and move toward cleaner energy at a sensible, normal pace.

The policies of the radical left Democrats have created chaos, and put the lives of Americans at greater risk than ever before in our lifetime. It’s time to put a stop to that.

Federal control of elections, and getting the filibuster out of the way

Good Congressional legislation that benefits the country and its citizens will have broad bi-partisan support. If a bill has strong support from one side, but little or no support from the other, it likely is good for the majority and/or bad for the minority.

Many bills, perhaps most, have only one party supporting them, the party in the majority, and are hotly contested.

A bill currently with this partisan split is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, named for the late Georgia congressman and civil rights leader. The “voting rights” bill has strong support from Democrat majority, but strong opposition from the Republican minority.

As reported by Politifact, “Supporters say the bill would renew the power of the federal government to oversee state voting laws and protect minority voters at a time when more GOP-led states have passed new restrictions. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-VT., who introduced the bill, said it would ‘ensure that the Voting Rights Act continues to have the effect long intended: to protect the right to vote.’”

The report continues, “But Republicans say the John Lewis bill is federal overreach and would make it too easy for plaintiffs to challenge state election laws that Republicans say are designed to prevent fraud. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has called it ‘unnecessary’ and said that ‘it's against the law to discriminate in voting on the basis of race already.’”

Republicans view their election laws as mechanisms to reduce fraud, and Democrats view them as efforts to restrict voting to certain groups. Democrats see their election laws as making it easy for people to vote, while Republicans view them as mechanisms that make fraud and cheating easier.

The Democrat bill will transfer much of the control over elections that now resides with the states to the federal government. The system of federalism under which the United States was formed left much power to the states, deliberately not giving the federal government total control. The control of election procedures resides with state legislatures.

In addition to trying to federalize control over elections, Democrats also are now talking about eliminating the Senate filibuster, or eliminating certain of its uses. The filibuster, however, is a mechanism that both protects the Senate minority from being run over by the majority, and also helps to encourage the introduction of bills that will have bi-partisan support, which do not encourage a filibuster. 

Some Democrats now favoring the changing or elimination of the filibuster have done an about face from just a few years ago.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, who in 2017 as Minority Leader spoke to the Senate, saying there should be a "firewall" around the legislative filibuster. "Let us go no further down this road," he said. "I hope the Republican Leader and I can, in the coming months, find a way to build a firewall around the legislative filibuster, which is the most important distinction between the Senate and the House."

He and other Democrats condemned efforts by Republicans to challenge the filibuster back then. Here are some of their comments:

From Schumer: 

• “They want to make this country into a banana republic where if you don’t get your way you change the rules.”
• “Change the rules in midstream to wash away 200 years of history.
• “Ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the founding fathers called the cooling saucer of democracy into the rubber stamp of dictatorship.”
• “It’ll be a doomsday for democracy.”

President Joe Biden, D-DE, when he was in the Senate: 

• “It raises problems that are more damaging than the problem that exists.”
• “You’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done.”
• “Nothing at all will get done.”
• “It is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.”
• “Ending the filibuster is a very dangerous thing to do.”
• “It is a fundamental power grab.”

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL: 

• “That would be the end of the Senate.”
• “You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game.”
• “Preserve checks and balances so that no one party can do whatever it wants.”

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-NJ: 

• “You cannot change the rules in the middle of the game because you do not like the outcome.”
• “Partisan power grab that will stomp on the rights of the minority and leave fundamentally changed for the worse.”
• “I will not stand by when a party drunk with power tries to overturn 200 years of precedent.”

Sen. Chis Coons, D-DE: 

• “I’m committed to never voting to change the legislative filibuster.” 
• “The one most important rule that requires compromise requires working across the aisle.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ: “The legislative filibuster should stay there and I will personally resist efforts to get rid of it.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA: “I don’t think that we ought to be coming in willy-nilly and changing the rules.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY: “If you don’t have 60 votes yet, it just means you haven’t done enough advocacy and you need to work a lot harder.”

Isn’t it interesting how politicians forego their support of important things when they get in the way?

How is Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan working out for us?

Joe Biden’s been in office almost one year. How is his “Build Back Better” plan working? How long should it take to make a pretty good situation better?

Inflation is skyrocketing. “Prices for U.S. consumers jumped 6.8 percent in November compared with a year earlier as surging costs for food, energy, housing and other items left Americans enduring their highest annual inflation rate in 39 years.” So said the Associated Press earlier this month. Prices of some products have doubled, and others have more than doubled. 

Among reasons, the AP said, are that “Employers, struggling with worker shortages, have also been raising pay, and many of them have boosted prices to offset their higher labor costs, thereby adding to inflation.” And, while many workers have gotten raises, inflated prices often negate the higher wages they now have.

A CNN report in December said that “Biden now sports the lowest net economic rating of any president at this point through their first term since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977.”

“In the latest CNN/SSRS poll, Biden comes in with a 44 percent approval rating to 55 percent disapproval rating among registered voters on his economic performance.”

One bright spot, however, is that jobs are being added at a high level, despite all the negatives in the economic data.

Many goods are in short supply, as ships sit off the coast waiting to unload for many days longer than normal. Yes, other ports have expanded or opened up to assist with the problem, but a long and broad list of supplies are still backlogged, including some foods, baby supplies, men’s and women’s products, and other things people need. This is a good reason to start again producing many goods in the U.S.

While lower taxes and government spending support a strong, positive economy, we are seeing both higher taxes and more government spending being enacted and proposed. Biden and Congress had their way on two spending bills, adding more than $3 trillion to the National Debt.

And legislation that Biden supports will move control over elections to the federal government, changing a process that was initially controlled by the states by design of our Founders.  This will eliminate “the most popular and proven safeguards that preserve Americans’ confidence in democracy,” according to Real Clear Politics.    

How are Biden’s plan for ending the pandemic going? "I am not going to shut down the economy, period," Biden said. "I'm going to shut down the virus; that's what I'm going to shut down." Yet, there have been more Covid deaths in 2021 than there were when he criticized how the pandemic was being handled in 2020. And this after he inherited Covid vaccines produced in record time.

Gasoline prices, which were under $2.00 in most places last year, are now near or above $3.00 everywhere, and as high as $5.00 a gallon in some places in California. 

Biden shut down the XL Pipeline here at home that would have moved oil more safely, quickly and less expensively than trucks, but he approved a pipeline that benefits Russia. In addition to negatively affecting US oil production and distribution, shutting down the XL Pipeline also put many Americans out of work.

Crime has gone through the roof in several cities/states. Is that Biden’s fault? No, he didn’t start it, but he hasn’t done much if anything to stop the crime wave. 

His Attorney General, Justice Department and the FBI, instead of focusing on the factors that lead to increased crime, are focused elsewhere: replacing state and local law enforcement in watching parents who are complaining about schools and school systems that indoctrinate their children. And, yes, indoctrination in schools does happen.

The federal governments involvement in keeping an eye on parents, and agents presence outside of school board meetings, serves as intimidation to parents, who are now afraid to speak out on a subject they have every right to speak on.

The debacle in rushing out of Afghanistan left 183 people dead, including 13 American military personnel. In the rush to leave, we abandoned thousands of Afghani allies and Americans trapped there, and a fortune in military equipment, which is now in the hands of the Taliban.

The New York Post reported, “The Taliban has seized US weapons left in Afghanistan worth billions — possibly including 600,000 assault rifles, some 2,000 armored vehicles, and 40 aircraft, including Black Hawks, according to reports.” A more sensible plan for leaving without chaos was ignored.

The southern border is essentially non-existent. The border catastrophe has allowed tens of thousands of illegal aliens to cross the southern border easily, without being controlled by authorities, without anyone knowing whether they are vaccinated, or if they are drug dealers, gang members or child smugglers, etc. 

And while people are allowed to enter the country illegally without being checked for vaccinations, American citizens cannot go do many things, like get on an airliner, without showing evidence of up-to-date vaccinations!!!

All of this bad news in his first year in office calls for Biden’s three-B plan to be renamed: “Biden Blunders Bigly,” or “Building Backward Better” are two possibilities.

Our elections must be made more secure ahead of the mid-terms

An Associated Press review of potential cases of voter fraud in the six battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — found fewer than 475 cases. That number would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election, according to an article on apnews.com.

The review was directed toward the six states that were disputed by former President Donald Trump.

Most Americans will likely be pleased with this determination. And while this review found a tiny fraction of the vote fraud needed to prove a stolen election, it also reminds us that the election systems in the 50 states are not fraud-proof, and with the mid-term election coming up in less than a year, we would be smart to examine our election procedures and methods and make them more secure.

By contrast, The Lincoln Institute published a report saying, “the fact of the matter is that the 2020 election had hundreds of thousands of votes counted that should not have been, and the distribution of those votes could have affected the outcome in several closely-decided states.

Many will choose to believe one; many will choose to believe the other. Which one is more accurate?

With tens of millions of people voting in thousands of polling places, and with tens of thousands of election workers in those polling places, it would be a miracle of epic proportions if there weren’t any problems or crimes. Therefore, we can acknowledge, without calling an election stolen, that there is fraud, abuse and carelessness in every election. The only question is, how much?

The AP review focused on only six states and found an average of 79 issues in each state. How many other examples of fraud existed, but were not discovered?

Here are some methods of cheating in elections, according to The Heritage Foundation:

• Forging voter signatures on candidate ballot qualification petitions.

• Voting in someone else’s name in person or through absentee ballots.

• Registering and voting under a false identity or in a district where the individual does not actually reside.

• Submitting fraudulent, altered, or forged absentee ballots.

• Registering in multiple locations within a state or in different states to vote multiple times in the same election.

• People voting even though they’re not eligible because they’re felons or noncitizens.

• Paying, coercing, or intimidating people to vote for certain candidates.

In addition, the U.S. Constitution mandates that election procedures are to be controlled by state legislatures. Officials in four of the battleground states mentioned previously — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — changed election procedures in the 2020 election by circumventing legislative action. Assuming the best of intentions on the part of the wrongdoers, these changes were nonetheless illegal/unconstitutional. Were any election results — local, state or national — affected by these actions?

In a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 where the Court upheld Indiana’s voter-ID law by a 6-3 margin, Justice John Paul Stevens, who is not a conservative justice, said in the majority opinion that “flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists … that demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”

“Absentee ballots are the tools of choice of vote thieves,” Heritage noted, “because they are the only ballots cast outside the supervision of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers, destroying the transparency of the election process that is a fundamental hallmark of a healthy democracy.”

Heritage produced the “Election Integrity Scorecard — Assessing the Status of State Election Fairness and Security.” Here are some of the results. Finishing in first place, with a score of 83, is Georgia. Coming in last, with a score of 26, is Hawaii. Virginia scored 67, and placed 15th, while West Virginia placed 30th, with a score of 54.

In its discussion of the condition of our elections, Heritage reported, “In 2012, the Pew Foundation released a report on the voter registration systems maintained by the states. The report found that:

• Approximately 24 million — one in every eight — voter registrations were either no longer valid or significantly inaccurate.

• More than 1.8 million deceased individuals were listed as voters.

• Approximately 2.75 million individuals were registered in more than one state.”

These weaknesses invite fraud, and must be corrected. 

The list of things one cannot do in America without a valid photo-ID is long, and includes: buying alcohol or cigarettes; opening a bank account; applying for food stamps, social security, and many jobs; and get on an airliner. Photo IDs are generally pretty easy to acquire, and every voter should be required to have one.

Elections are too important to have security methods weakened, for example, just to make voting easy. The easier it is to vote, the easier it is to cheat. If Americans have to sacrifice a little convenience in the name of election security, so be it.

Our elections must be made more secure. That is fundamental in a democratic republic like the United States, where the people select those who serve them in all levels of government. We cannot depend upon an honor system to guarantee free and fair elections.

Democrats want to control how the states manage their own elections

 

Hurricane Ida’s destruction and the colossal Biden Afghanistan blunder dominate the news. And given the enormous impact of these two catastrophes, that is entirely appropriate. Yet, there are other things of importance that continue to move forward, that are covered up by the “big news” of the day.

One of those other things is alive and well in Congress. H.R. 4, the illegitimate offspring of H.R.1 and S.1 — known inappropriately as the “For the People Act of 2021” — moves in the same direction: aiding the federal government in taking control of election procedures that belong to the states, and weakening the election system.

The Heritage Foundation, hated by many on the left for its accurate perspective, had this to say about the “For the People Act of 2021”: “H.R. 1 would federalize and micromanage the election process administered by the states, imposing unnecessary, unwise, and unconstitutional mandates on the states and reversing the decentralization of the American election process —which is essential to the protection of our liberty and freedom,” the summary began. 

“It would (among other things) implement nationwide the worst changes in election rules that occurred during the 2020 election; go even further in eroding and eliminating basic security protocols that states have in place; and interfere with the ability of states and their citizens to determine the qualifications and eligibility of voters, ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, secure the fairness and integrity of elections, and participate and speak freely in the political process.”

Since H.R. 1 and S. 1 were not passed by Congress, this new effort to destroy our election security — H.R. 4 — is now alive and well. It has been named the “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021.” Naming it after a deceased and respected gentleman is a good thing to do, and has the added advantage of helping to disguise its true purpose.

“H.R. 4’s goal is to eviscerate the right of states to manage their own elections with appropriate transparency and ballot-security safeguards. It will attempt to misuse the 1965 Voting Rights Act to achieve this goal,” the Real Clear Politics (RCP) evaluation begins. 

“’Preclearance’ is central to H.R. 4 — this plank of the law would require every state election official to submit any election law changes to the Department of Justice for approval. In short, Democrats want states to ask Washington, D.C., for permission to pass local laws that would, for example, require voter ID — a policy that polls consistently find roughly 80% of Americans in support,” RCP continues. 

“Joe Biden and Democrats want their politicized Department of Justice to control how states manage their own elections,” RCP wrote, adding that the “Department of Justice is currently trying to strong-arm states into making their elections less secure and transparent, and Joe Biden wants to expand its mandate to control every aspect of state-level elections.”  

The U.S. Constitution, which controls how our government operates, very deliberately, and wisely, leaves much authority to the states. A country where everything is controlled by the federal government is not what America is or was ever supposed to be. In fact, without the necessary support from the individual states, there would be no federal government for the likes of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the rest to try to commandeer, by hook or by crook. 

Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 of U.S. Constitution states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.”

While the Elections Clause does give the Congress the authority to “make or alter such Regulations,” that does not mean that Congress actually has the authority to replace all state legislatures’ decisions on how their state will hold elections. If the Clause was actually intended to empower Congress to change all election laws nationwide to suit its desires, the Founders would not have written the first half of the Clause that gives that authority to state legislatures.

We have been taught — through outright lessons of failure, or by our elders, if we had sense enough to listen to them — that we must protect the things that are most valuable to us. One of those things is the right and duty to vote. Through voting, American citizens steer their country forward.

Yet, despite that voting is one of the most sacred, most valuable of our rights, there are those who would subvert that process for their own selfish, political purposes.

Mailing out thousands or millions of unrequested election ballots, and not absolutely verifying voter’s identification are just stupid, and put election security at risk. And there are other actions that Congressional Democrats favor that weaken ballot security and invite fraud.

Common sense, which unfortunately is a tool too often not used, dictates making sure that every vote is cast by an eligible voter in that voter’s proper precinct. Yes, that sometimes causes inconvenience. But that is a small price to pay for a secure election system that our nation depends upon. 

It’s Election Day. And it’s true: elections have consequences

 

The idea that America is dead, or dying, has been on my mind for quite a while. It is a steadily emerging reality.

And recently, that same idea was expressed by none other than Joe Biden. The former vice president and current Democrat presidential nominee announced last Friday in Iowa that the country is dying, at one of his few, and brief, campaign appearances.

“More than 200 [thousand] -- and now I think it’s up to 30,000 -- people have died. America’s dead! Because of COVID-19,” he railed.

No, America isn’t dead because of the virus. It’s just another desperate attempt by Biden to try to build on negative sentiment against President Donald Trump, whose early moves against the virus Biden criticized. And now his “plan” to control the virus is a rehash of what the administration has already done. More plagiarism by Biden.

Yes, millions have been affected by it: millions of positive tests; many getting sick and many dying; others not being able to work or go to school, or to open their businesses in a reasonable way. 

But the virus is just one factor in America’s downfall. The death rattle is mostly from other things. Things that Americans themselves have wrought. 

We have allowed our education system to fail to properly assist the younger generations in learning about their country, and explaining why it was designed as it was. And why it was so much better than other designs.

Those in control of our schools, especially at the college level, have allowed teaching to devolve into indoctrination in many instances, teaching “what you should think” instead of teaching “how to think.” Political correctness is now the reigning philosophy, rather than education.

Likewise, the solemn duty of journalists to report the news -- all the news -- objectively and fairly has been abandoned by many news organizations at the highest levels. 

One political party has some members that want to reverse recent tax cuts to raise trillions of dollars to make government even larger. But Biden says he will increase taxes only on those making $400,000 or more a year. A fairy tale. Everyone’s taxes will have to rise to reach that goal.

They want to do away with fossil fuels in only a few years. These fuels account for 84 percent of the world’s energy, and 80 percent of US energy. And they intend to go ahead with this plan without reliable replacement fuels or storage capabilities that can furnish energy when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. This will affect jobs and the US economy substantially, without making any significant reduction in world-wide CO2 emissions.

They want to open borders to make it easier for illegals to enter the country, and also to give them taxpayer money in welfare payments and for free college.

The list goes on.

And then there are our courts. Our laws and the US Constitution should be interpreted to mean what they meant when they were written. If desired, they can be changed through appropriate legal processes. But this group prefers to make those changes using judges who think they can change these meanings at their whim, and make law from the bench.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del, wants to revamp the court system. “We’ve got to have a wide-open conversation about how do we rebalance our courts,” he said. 

He then made a completely foolish statement: “Yes, the two Supreme Court cases that have been stolen, where these processes that are just wildly hypocritical have been used to jam through partisan nominees.” 

Perhaps a lesson in the US Constitution is in order. Both Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Justice Amy Coney Barrett were confirmed as specified by the Constitution, despite the dreams of Democrats. And neither of them has been shown to be partisan. Both follow the laws and the Constitution, as written.

“But we’ve got to look at our federal courts as a whole,” he continued. “In many cases, [judges are] too young, too unqualified and too far right to be allowed to sit peaceably [emphasis added] without our reexamining the process, the results and the consequences.”

Another lesson is in order: A judge or justice that follows laws and the Constitution as written and understood when they were approved is not a partisan. It is the correct way to interpret the laws and the Constitution.

Some Democrats want to pack the Supreme Court with additional judges who are liberals, transforming the only non-political branch of our government into an un-elected political law-making body. 

They also want to eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote rule, perhaps make DC and Puerto Rico new states, and do away with the Electoral College system.

These acts are both dangerous and irrational.

They would transform the United States from a unique and superior form of government to just one more majority-rule country that tramples on the rights of the minority. The Electoral College and other Constitutional provisions were designed specifically to prevent that. 

If the Democrats sweep the election and control Congress and the administration, and implement the changes to which many of them subscribe, it will kill the United States of America.

Secure elections are imperative for a free and honest society

The stay-at-home orders, the business and school closures, certainly have introduced a lot of changes to our daily lives. These changes have interfered with some of the spring elections across the land, and created questions about what to do on Election Day in November. That has spawned a movement to use voting by mail as the way to resolve fears and possible problems that voters may encounter by going to their local polling places.

Voter convenience and safety from the COVID-19 virus are cited as reasons for mail-in voting. And we are told that voter fraud does not make a difference in any given election.

But voters in parts of Florida, Missouri, New York, and North Carolina have reasons to disagree, based on what has occurred in recent years.

Voter fraud in these states resulted in overturning elections. The Daily Caller listed 15 state and local election results over the last few years that were overturned due to mail-in voter fraud. Guilty parties were removed from office, fined, or sentenced to community service, probation, or jail time.

The ballot crimes involved bribery, vote buying, ballots stolen from mail boxes, absentee ballots asked for or purchased from valid recipients, voter assistance involving filling out an absentee ballot in a way other than how the voter directed or without direction from the voter, the casting of absentee ballots by persons who did not receive absentee ballots, ballots with forged or not properly witnessed signatures on them, illegally applying for absentee ballots and voting them, racially motivated manipulation of ballots, and obtained and improperly counted defective absentee ballots.

Things were bad enough in Florida that the state Department of Law Enforcement concluded: “The absentee ballot is the ‘tool of choice’ for those who are engaging in election fraud.” 

Things in Texas were no better. An assistant attorney general with the Criminal Prosecutions division in the Attorney General’s Office, Jonathan White, testified that mail ballot fraud “is by far the biggest problem that we see across the state ... It’s the wild West of voter fraud.”

And, highlighting the larger scale problem mail-in voting could cause is this: "A significant increase in mail-in voting this fall could greatly incentivize 'ballot harvesting,' where third parties collect mail-in ballots on behalf of voters and deliver them to election officials," Real Clear Politics reported. "There’s long been a consensus that such a practice incentivizes fraud ..."

To illustrate the risk, Logan Churchwell, a spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), notes that in 2016 Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by garnering over 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump. But nearly 6 million unaccounted for mail-in ballots were never counted in 2016, more than twice her margin in the popular vote. Based upon this, Clinton may have won the popular vote by a wider margin, or maybe have lost.

Concerns about fraud in mail-in ballots were serious enough that a 2008 report produced by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project recommended that states “restrict or abolish on-demand absentee voting in favor of in-person early voting.”

The convenience that on-demand absentees produce “is bought at a significant cost to the real and perceived integrity of the voting process,” the report added.

But the PILF obtained voter data from Oregon, the first state to adopt voting by mail exclusively, for the 2012 and 2018 elections and checked it against census data. Of the 7,000,000 ballots the state sent out in those two elections, some 871,000 ballots were totally unaccounted for.

The U.S. Census Bureau data show that 11 percent of Americans move every year. And it further shows that lower income voters are much more likely to move around. This makes it difficult or impossible to reliably get ballots to the mobile population without lots and lots of ballots going to the wrong address, where they may be illegally marked and submitted.

And the federal Election Assistance Commission reports that between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for. The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.

From 2004 to 2016 the number of mail-in ballots more than doubled, from 24.9 million to 57.2 million, and roughly 40 percent of U.S. voting is done by mail.

Yet this huge increase in mail-in ballot use has been accompanied by little if any additional research on the risks of voting by mail, or improved methods to secure the process. And the methods of fraud mentioned could dramatically increase if more than 200 million ballots are mailed out for the November general election.

Every American voter should be concerned about the security of the election process. No election, at any level, can be decided by cheaters who want to overrule the decision of the citizenry for cheap political purposes. State and local governments must insure an honest and fair election process.

If we can go to big box stores, grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and other such places safely by employing safe distancing and other sensible measures, we can safely go to polling places and vote in a more secure process.

Elections and voting are important and demand effort and honesty

Elections are one of the most important rights and sacred duties of American citizens. Therefore, the nation must do whatever is necessary to assure that elections are free of fraud and abuse. 

Accusations of fraudulent activity are common. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people are on voter rolls who have passed away, moved to another jurisdiction, or who are not eligible voters. Elections must be limited to citizens who are legal voters and registered in the states and localities in which they live.

Some elected officials keep trying to make everything related to voting, from registration to actual ballot-casting, easier. Many believe these efforts are beneficial, and to an extent, they are. But we must work hard to protect the rights we have, and that includes our right — and our duty — to vote for those who will serve us in public office. We must not allow convenience to become the enemy of a fair and just election.

We should not mind putting forth the effort needed to get ourselves properly registered to vote, and get to the polls on election day to cast our ballots. We should not mind spending the necessary time studying those running for office so that we make educated choices. Important things deserve our putting out some effort for them.

Some people, however, cannot negotiate the rigors of registration and voting, so most states have mechanisms to help those people, and some private organizations also assist them.

Some of the “conveniences” created to make voting easier weaken the system. Early voting, for example, is a loser, as many Democrats learned recently. Three candidates dropped out before voting on Super Tuesday, meaning those who voted early for those three wasted their votes. 

Absentee ballots for people who are away from their voting district on election day are a reasonable option, but that idea, too, may result in wasted votes if the ballots are submitted too early.

And we see several other truly bad ideas for the election process that are currently being pushed. Among them are:

* All mail-in ballots - All ballots will be distributed and returned by mail

* Ballot harvesting - Permits individuals to collect ballots and supposedly return them to a sanctioned voting office to be counted

* Automatic voter registration - People are automatically registered to vote when they register a vehicle at the DMV, and must “opt out” if they are not eligible to vote

* Abolishing voter ID requirements - Show up at the polls and vote; no ID of any kind required

* Abolish voter residency requirements - Normally, name, birthdate and residential address are required, but this would do away with the residential address requirement

* Same-day voter registration - Show up at the polls and vote, and if you are not registered when you get to the polling place, you register, then vote

* Out-of-precinct voting - A variation of same-day registration

These measures are a flashing neon sign inviting election fraud, taking the control of election results out of the hands of election officials, and delivering it into the hands of cheaters, who do not want an honest system, and therefore look for weaknesses to exploit. 

And here are two more foolish ideas being floated by those wishing to weaken the election system:

* Lax enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act - Discouraging the cleaning of dead or ineligible persons from voter rolls 

* Doing away with the Electoral College - Making the popular vote determine who will be president, which allows a few high-population areas to make the decision and the rest of us are at the mercy of their choice

These ideas are, generally speaking, being advanced by individuals and organizations on the left, and more specifically by Open Society Foundations (OSF), which are organizations that have contributed $1.5 billion to 199 other organizations in the U.S. Formed in 1979 by billionaire George Soros, OSF received $18 billion from Soros in 2017, which was more than 70 percent of his total wealth of $25.2 billion, as estimated by Forbes Magazine.

During the 2004 election cycle when George W. Bush was seeking reelection, Soros contributed some $25 million to liberal and Democrat groups working to defeat Bush, according to Judicial Watch.

Since that time, he has supported Democrat candidates for national office, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Of course, Soros is not the only one seeking to influence our elections.

Campaigns cost too much, these days, and the more money that is in the system, the more likely it is that mischief will occur. Former President Barack Obama warned Americans of the perils of “dark money” in elections, saying it “pulls us into the gutter” as a nation.

Why should any person or organization be allowed to contribute to any political campaign they choose, anywhere in the country? Why should someone in one state be able to contribute to campaigns of people seeking office in other states? If someone has no direct interest in who wins or loses a particular election, why should they be able to support those candidates?

Let us all want and work for clean, fair and just elections.