Trump’s efforts to downsize government has Democrats going crazy

March 4, 2025

The left’s attitude toward President Donald Trump is — unsurprisingly — unchanged since he won reelection last November. In fact, a recent Pew Research Center poll shows Democrats dislike everything Trump does. Imagine that! 

It seems that anything that can be said regarding Trump to make him or his actions look bad is approved and encouraged.

Here is one example: “President Donald Trump announced late Sunday that he was naming former Fox News personality Dan Bongino as deputy FBI director, the latest in a series of controversial picks for high-profile law enforcement positions,” as reported by Politico. And, another source referred to Bongino merely as a podcaster.

However, these sources of important information that people depend upon neglected to tell the public that Bongino had served 4 years as a New York police officer and 11 years as a U.S. Secret Service agent during the tenure of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He has much more substantive law enforcement credentials than a Fox News personality or a podcaster. 

This is a good example how the left “sort of” reports things, using negative and/or derogatory information while leaving out relevant information in reporting on the Trump administration, its personnel, and its actions.

And it’s not just the news media that are indulging in this behavior.

The left likes to think of itself as open-minded, inclusive, tolerant and peace-loving. However, the extreme portion of the left pursues hatred and intolerance as normal elements in its dealings with, and references to Trump supporters and Trump administration officials. And since voters voted against the radical left last November, this behavior is becoming more mainstream.

Down in Louisiana an LSU law professor criticized both Trump and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry using vulgar language in class. A few days later, in response to student complaints, the professor was suspended by LSU pending an investigation into the complaints.

At a recent meeting of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Florida Democrat Rep. Maxwell Frost called President Trump “the grifter in chief,” and referred to Elon Musk as “President Musk.” 

At a town hall held by a Republican Congressman near Atlanta, Georgia recently, he was repeatedly interrupted with shouts and jeers. A similar result was found in a town hall in La Grande, Ore., where the audience booed and yelled. A Wisconsin Republican Congressman was booed after saying that Trump has done “some very good things.” 

In response to the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one person said, “this is all a horror show,” and another person said that “Democrats should treat this as a war.” And California Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters screamed, “We have got to tell Elon Musk that nobody elected your [expletive deleted].”

Continuing her rant, Waters added, “We’re in a crisis in this country because Trump and Elon Musk and the billionaires have decided they’re going to put us all in our place. They’re going to run this country. They’re going to make sure that they take over everything.”

"This is what the start of dictatorship looks like," Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar said. "When you gut the U.S. Constitution and you install yourself as the sole power, that is how dictators are made."

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is trying to protect illegal aliens from being deported. This is a high priority for the Trump administration, especially for the violent criminals among the millions of illegals. “Believe it or not, in America EVERYONE has rights,” AOC wrote. “Citizen or not, we all should know our rights to protect ourselves and others from illegal search & seizure.” Even she ought to understand that the one right they do not have is to be here illegally.

Whether these Democrats actually do not know what they are talking about, or are deliberately distorting the truth for political gain, is an open question. Nothing seems to be more important to them than damaging Trump and his policies, the things that tens of millions of Americans support. Trump collected 77 million votes and 312 Electoral votes, when only 270 are required to be elected.

Doesn’t it seem odd that the Democrats who constantly complain about how “our democracy” is being treated, loudly demonstrate how little they understand about how “our democracy” — our constitutional republic — is supposed to work?

It seems to puzzle them, and in fact, set off their alarms, that by the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States of America, who was elected by a majority of the voters in the nation, controls the Administrative Branch. All of the people in the Administrative Branch work for the President, and they do not require Congressional approval or any approval outside that of the President.

A new Gallup poll shows that Democrats want their party to moderate their positions. And for the good of the people that those in Congress are elected to serve, this is a sensible idea.

The problem is that by moderating their talk and behavior they must abandon their political goals, which are more important to them than restoring and maintaining the nation as created by the Founders.

That is what Trump, Musk and the rest of the administration is working toward.

Annual budget deficits must end, and the debt must be reduced

May 30, 2023

The National Debt is a monstrous cloud hanging over the United States. It is money owed that is not being repaid, but growing each year.

As of May 25, the National Debt stood at $31,800,000,000,000 ($31.8 trillion). That is a number so huge that it is difficult to understand.

The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that as of July 1, 2022 there were 333,287,557 U.S. citizens. That means that for each citizen — man, woman and child — there is about $94.00 of debt, and about $430.00 per person 18 years-old and older.

Having a National Debt is not new. Its history is a fascinating thing to study.

There was a National Debt when President George Washington, took office in 1789. It was slightly more than $71 million. And, it increased by 11 million during his term that ended in 1797. 

Most of our presidents have seen the Debt increase during their terms in office, although 12 had a decrease in the Debt when they left office: Thomas Jefferson in 1809; James Monroe in 1825; John Adams in 1829; Andrew Jackson in 1837; Millard Fillmore in 1853; Franklin Pierce in 1857; Andrew Johnson in 1869; Ulysses S. Grant in 1877; Rutherford B Hayes in 1881; Chester Arthur in 1885; Grover Cleveland in 1889; Benjamin Harrison in 1893; Warren Harding in 1923; and Calvin Coolidge in 1929. 

Two presidents saw no change. James Garfield was assassinated during his first term after only 200 days in office. And after only 31 days in office, William Henry Harrison died.

It has been more than 90 years since the Debt was lowered under Coolidge. The reduction was $5.4 trillion for a total Debt of $16.9 trillion, slightly more than half of today’s Debt.

Since then, every president — 16 of them — has seen an increase during their time in office.

While things that a president does can affect the Debt, sometimes things beyond his control cause an increase. Factors like wars, recessions and national crises can affect the Debt. A recent crisis was the Covid pandemic. Another was the 9-11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon that led to spending that was not planned.

Also, because the U.S. fiscal year begins in October and ends the following September, and presidents take office on January 21, during most of a president’s first year in office, he is at the mercy of his predecessor’s budget.

The Debt Ceiling is the limit on borrowing that can be done, and Congress has control of it. It is part of a law (Title 31 USC, section 3101) that sets a legislative limit on the amount of national debt that can be incurred by the U.S. Treasury. 

When the debt ceiling is reached, as it often is, these days, the President and Congress must work toward an agreement on raising it. If they succeed, the government can borrow more money to meet its obligations. If not, a government shutdown occurs until an agreement is reached. The latter option is not really a viable one.

For the last nine decades the National Debt has continued to rise.  The smallest increases since Coolidge’s lowering of the Debt in 1929 are from three consecutive presidents who served from 1981 to 2001: Ronald Reagan at $1.86 trillion; George H.W. Bush at $1.55 trillion; and Bill Clinton at $1.4 trillion.

Since Clinton’s tenure, the next three presidents have seen larger increases: George W. Bush at $6.1 trillion; Barack Obama at $8.3 trillion, and Donald Trump at $8.2 trillion. Joseph Biden has seen the Debt increase by $2.5 trillion in his two-plus years in office.

In December of 2022, interest on the National Debt — which at that time was $31.4 trillion — was $210 billion, roughly 15 percent of total government spending for the year, according to Visual Capitalist online.

“The current revenue of the federal government is approximately $4.6 trillion while spending exceeds $6.0 trillion,” Forbes online reported in April. “Thus, the current budget deficit is over $1.4 trillion. It’s clear that members of Congress are spending like drunken sailors and like the Titanic, the U.S. is on a collision course with a financial iceberg.” 

The article goes on to say that high interest rates make this situation worse for the government to meet its financial obligations. Meanwhile, politicians seeking reelection prefer to keep spending.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a measure to raise the Debt Ceiling, but also to make significant spending cuts. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, and President Joe Biden have been meeting trying to reach an agreement.

Hopefully, by the time this column is published, an agreement will have been reached.

At some point, elected members of Congress and the President of the United States must recognize that this unconscionable spending must stop, and the country must trim down, and develop a budget that pays current obligations and begins to pay down this humongous debt.

Our country was designed to be small, efficient, and non-intrusive. A government that protects the freedoms of its people, would not intrude on their good lives, and would not grow into the gargantuan monstrosity it has become. That is what the government needs to again become.

Many people are now questioning how we dealt with the pandemic

Andrew Napolitano is a former New Jersey Superior Court judge who has authored nine books on legal and political topics, is a syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate, Inc., and senior judicial analyst for the Fox News Channel. A recent column titled “I have a great many questions, but what are the answers?” gives us a lot to consider.

Here are some questions to think about:

* What if the government has it wrong — on the medicine and the law?

* What if face masks can't stop the COVID-19 virus?

* What if quarantining the healthy makes no medical sense, and if staying at home for months reduces immunity?

* What if more people have been infected with the virus in their homes than outside them?

* What if the government wants to stoke fear in the populace because mass fear produces mass compliance?

* What if individual fear reduces individual immunity, and if a “healthy immunity” gets stronger when challenged, and a “pampered immunity” gets weaker when challenged?

* What if we all pass germs and viruses — that we don't even know we have — on to others all the time, but their immune systems repel what we pass on to them?

* What if we never elected a government to keep us free from all viruses, but we did elect it to keep us free from all tyrants?

* What if the government — which can't deliver the mail, fill potholes, stop robocalls, or spend within its income — is the last entity on earth into whose hands we would voluntarily repose our health for safekeeping?

Have we not all seen at least a few actions by government officials and police that cause us to question what is really happening?

Here are a few examples of over-the-top state and local government actions:

* Michigan took away the business license of a 77-year-old barber who, after two months of being shut down, opened his business so he could feed his family. In addition, the state may possibly fine him $1,000 a day and jail him.

* A woman at a New York City subway station was roughly subdued by several police officers, handcuffed in front of her toddler, and hauled away to jail. What was her crime? Robbery? Assault? Insulting Mayor De Blasio or Governor Cuomo? Not wearing a mask in public? “No,” to all of those. She was wearing a mask, just not wearing it “properly,” according to New York’s Finest.

* A woman in Miami was sitting alone on a deserted beach when police officers approached and arrested her. Her crime? Sitting on a beach holding a sign that read, “We Are Free.”

* Businesses in some states and cities — Pennsylvania; Fresno, California; Castle Rock, Colorado, to name just three — have had their business licenses revoked, and/or fines imposed, and sometimes patrons jailed for opening against their rulers’ commands.

* A high school student in Marquette County, Wisconsin who had a scare with COVID-19 posted about her experience on Instagram, and a few days later, a deputy sheriff showed up at her home and demanded that she remove her post or be cited for disorderly conduct, arrested, and jailed.

God Bless America, the land of the free!

More of Napolitano’s questions:

* What if the government gave itself the power to interfere with our personal choices?

* What if that self-imposed power violates the basic constitutional principle that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed?

Once again, that adage offered by former President Barack Obama’s wingman, Rahm Emanuel, who took it from the Saul Alinski playbook, comes to our attention: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

A crisis presents an opportunity; a chance to get something done. It may be something good, or it may be something bad. During this pandemic it has been used as an opportunity to assert control over people, an opportunity gladly utilized by far too many governors and mayors.

Some of the restrictions imposed may have been done with the best of intentions, but with far less than the best of common sense. Broad one-size-fits-all restrictions imposed on the entire nation and some states that have dramatic regional differences, are foolish and harmful.

Like Virginia, for example. What is needed or works best for Richmond, the DC area and Tidewater may be wrong for southwest Virginia. And as demonstrated by the governors of Florida and Georgia, not all states need the same treatment as New York, California and New Jersey.

Other restrictions seem to have been done with a political goal in mind. “Do as I say, because I said so,” is the dominant attitude, and some guidelines are backed up by arrests, fines and jail time. These authoritarian officials arrogantly thumb their nose at their constituents and trample on the individual freedom principles upon which the United States of America was established.

People are tiring of being controlled when the controls are worse than that which spawned them. They are ready to go back to work, to enjoy life, even if that means continuing some of the guidelines imposed on them weeks ago, but now doing it voluntarily.

The national debt is one big problem nobody’s doing anything about

The national debt currently is more than $22,000,000,000,000 – that’s 22 trillion dollars – and growing by the minute. No one in Washington seems very concerned about it. What’s worse is that this situation has existed for decades.

Data from the Office of Management and Budget shows that of the ten presidents who were in office when the debt grew the most, all but two were 1970 and after. In case you can’t call them to mind, they are, in order: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.

The four who ran the highest deficits, as reported by Kimberly Amadeo, writing in The Balance, are, from worst to least bad:

* Barack Obama, leading the pack with $6.785 trillion. 

* President George W. Bush is next, racking up $3.293 trillion.

* President Ronald Reagan added $1.412 trillion.

* President George H.W. Bush created a $1.03 trillion deficit in one term. 

However, Amedeo explains, blaming the president is too easy because other factors play a role. She listed the following:

1. The president has no control over the mandatory budget or its deficit. That includes Social Security and Medicare benefits. These are the two biggest expenses any president has. 

2. The Constitution gave Congress, not the president, the power to control spending. The president’s budget is just a starting point. Each house of Congress prepares a discretionary spending budget. They combine them into the final budget that the president reviews and signs. 

3. Each president inherits many of his predecessors' policies. For example, every president suffered from lower revenue.

4. Some presidents have to deal with catastrophic events. President Obama responded to the worst recession since the Great Depression. President Bush reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina. Their required responses came with economic price tags.

The point here is that every year since Nixon was elected president, except for four, there has been a budget deficit, and that is a serious problem that is not being addressed. The national debt is more than six times the annual federal revenues of recent years.

Justin Bogie, Senior Policy Analyst in Fiscal Affairs at The Heritage Foundation, addressed this problem in an article last month. “Despite the strong economy, the nation remains in a precarious and unsustainable budget position, just as it was last year,” he wrote. “Debt held by the public is set to rise to nearly one and a half times the size of the economy in the coming decades.”

Some want to blame the Trump tax cuts for causing the problem, or if not causing it, making it worse. Actually, despite the tax cuts, or as a result of the tax cuts, federal revenues have risen since 2017. 

The Congressional Budget Office shows that for 2017, before the tax cuts took effect, federal revenue totaled $3.316 trillion. After the tax cuts took effect revenue rose by $14 billion to $3.330 trillion in 2018, and the CBO projects revenue of nearly $200 billion more than 2017 at $3.511 trillion for 2019.

Federal tax collections were the highest in history in 2018 and 2019. So, the problem is not a revenue problem, because with sensible policies revenue can increase even beyond 2018 and 2019 levels. 

What we have is a problem of spending, further complicated by some slight of hand by Congress.

“Congress utilizes a wide variety of gimmicks and accounting tricks to hide the true costs of legislation,” Bogie writes in another Heritage article. “This allows Congress to spend more and more — evading fiscal discipline and adding billions of additional dollars to the federal debt each year.”

Such tricks include: Timing Shifts - shifting in what year revenues or expenses may be reported; using Disaster and Emergency Spending to circumvent budget caps; double counting Federal Trust Fund savings; not accounting for interest costs in Legislative Cost Estimates, and other such deceptions.

Obviously, closing these loopholes should be a first step in restoring fiscal sanity to the budget process. But closing and/or consolidating government agencies to remove duplication of services; eliminating wasteful policies and programs, as well as ending overreaching and underperforming government programs; and general belt-tightening, not unlike businesses utilize, to stay in business can make a substantial difference.

These are common sense steps. But they go by the wayside in our gargantuan government that is infected by self-interest and political motivations, things elected officials and bureaucrats often put ahead of what’s best for the country and the citizens whose taxes pay their salaries, and fund this malfeasance.

The Government Accountability Office’s “Annual Report” lists steps to reduce costs, reduce fragmentation, overlap, and duplication within federal agencies and programs. When followed, they produced positive change in the past.

And, The Heritage Foundation has produced a report titled “Blueprint for Balance,” that “presents a holistic vision for how to rein in out-of-control government spending, create a more accountable and effective budget process, and balance the budget in 10 years.”

The Heritage blueprint outlines how government can cut $10.8 trillion over 10 years, extend the tax cuts, and eliminate deficits by 2029. 

It’s time to focus on this problem.

Trump moves to correct weaknesses in federal employment situation

American workers have the option to belong to a labor union if they so choose. A spirited debate exists over the good and bad things that result from union activity, and there are valid arguments on each side.

One area where the bad side of labor unions can be seen is in the poor performance of some federal employees, who are protected from disciplinary action or discharge from employment by their union. This essentially makes it easy for federal workers to behave contrary to the best interests of their employers – the American people – with impunity. The difficulty and length of time required to dismiss a federal employee is the stuff of legend.

“While the original civil service reforms in the late 19th century were meant to increase merit hiring and move away from the politicized ‘spoils system’ of earlier eras,” Jarrett Stepman writes in The Daily Signal, “the current system locks workers into government jobs for life, regardless of merit.”

Such a system is inexcusable for people working at taxpayer expense, and given the size of the federal workforce of nearly 3 million public servants, this has widespread effects. Stepman asserts “unaccountable agencies guided by a permanent class of federal workers have been given free rein in this country.”

One of a basket of deplorable performance examples is Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service employee who, as director of the Exempt Organizations Unit, allowed her political bias to control how she ran her unit, resulting in the inappropriate over-scrutinizing of tea party and conservative groups applying for tax exempt status, and ridiculously long delays in their approval. 

A probe conducted by the Department of Justice found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia leading to the belief by many tax-exempt applicants that the IRS targeted them based on their political viewpoints,” according to then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik. “But poor management is not a crime," he concluded, inasmuch saying, “so what,” and allowing Lerner to retire with full benefits and no punishment for her misfeasance. Actually, this story demonstrates two examples of poor performance.

But this is about to change.

President Donald Trump has adjusted rules governing federal employees that will make holding them accountable for misbehaving easier, so federal employment will be more like that of non-government employees. This will enable federal departments and agencies to fire bad employees more quickly and with less red tape. It will also limit the time employees may engage in union organizing while at work.

Predictably, the unions, whose members now have the ability to gum up the wheels of government, oppose these improvements. “This is more than union busting — It’s democracy busting,” said J. David Cox, head of the largest federal employee union, the American Federation of Government Employees.

Unions cite three areas where Trump’s action goes awry:

1. Making it easier to fire bad workers is an attack on democracy

2. Federal employees are ‘nonpartisan’

3. Federal employees acting badly is uncommon

Please recall the description of the civil service system and the non-partisan behavior of Lois Lerner. And, Lerner is not nearly alone in her misbehavior.

Stepman notes that in the 2016 presidential race, the non-partisan federal workforce gave 95 percent of its donations to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Addressing Trump’s proposed changes, Clinton said: “If [Democrats] can take back one or both houses of Congress in 2018, you will have people you can talk to again.”

No supporter of President Trump, The Washington Post published a story on how “nonpartisan” civil servants colluded with former Obama staffers to thwart the new president’s agenda: “Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives.

“Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make,” The Post reported, and said they used encrypted messaging apps to hide their activities from the administration.

Stepman also reported “many clearly criminal acts go unpunished,” and said that workers who would have been fired in most workplaces only received a slap on the wrist for their behavior. He cites a 2017 NBC News story saying “hundreds of federal employees were caught watching porn for hours a day while on the job, but few paid serious consequences.”

Another instance tells of a post office employee convicted of using cocaine on a lunch break who had her firing reversed by the Merit Systems Protection Board, the internal judicial power in the federal bureaucracy, and wound up with only a 90-day suspension.

Add to all of this the treasonous behavior of some high-level employees in the FBI working against Donald Trump during and after the election.

Such is the nature of employment in the swamp for some number of public servants.

No government employee should be given what too often is a job for life with little or no accountability. American taxpayers deserve nothing less than the best and most efficient government workers possible, and Trump is trying to move in that direction.

Will forces from within bring about the demise of America?

In this time when virtually all our standards and traditions are falling away or being scrapped, we should be concerned about what America will look like in another generation. Will America even be recognizable?

School-age kids aren’t being taught to write or read cursive. Like the kids in the UK, 80 percent of Oklahoma kids 6 to 12 years old also are having trouble telling time on an analog clock.

Much of public education seems to be in a crisis.

Columnist and economics professor Walter Williams wrote recently about the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is often referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card,” showing disturbing results.

“Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math.”

He went on to report that America’s high school graduation rate is over 80 percent, which indicates that graduates’ math and reading skills are at a 12th-grade level. How can that be, he asks, when 63 percent are not proficient in reading and 75 percent are not proficient in math?

Combine that with the changes to the curriculum, where many schools no longer teach civics or properly emphasize American history, and we appear to be deliberately creating a generation of young people who are seriously under-educated, in general, and about their country in particular.

College once was a place where young people went to advance their education, prepare for their future work life, and evolve from a teenager into a mature adult. Now, many campuses are places where free speech, once strongly emphasized on campuses, is dead or dying, and instead of learning to cope with adverse realities, they are provided protection from them.

The successful imposition of political correctness and the over-the-top behavior of some people to push PC on the public have turned things upside-down. This may pose one of the most serious societal problems we will face, as so many people want to magnify tiny little “discomforts” into Earth-shattering events, and condemn those who are responsible for these minor “offenses” to a living hell.

Among the abundant examples of this silliness is the recent episode where an American high school girl chose as her attire for the high school prom a dress with a Chinese theme. The PC police quickly hopped aboard the Knee-jerk Band Wagon to label her a “racist” and scream that she was guilty of “cultural appropriation.”

The young lady brushed off the nutty criticism, and the Chinese reacted positively to her. But the PC crowd apparently believes that only Asians can enjoy sushi, and only Italians can order spaghetti, or go to Pasquales’ restaurant.

The profound goofiness of such ideas apparently escapes the understanding of the disciples of political correctness. Many of these folks are from the younger generations, thus this way of thinking does not bode well for America’s future, unless they experience an intellectual  renaissance.

America – the land of the free – a place where government was designed to serve the people, now has important agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) straying from their constitutional roles and being run by people who are motivated by narrow political goals rather than their sworn duty to honorably serve Americans.

IRS employee Lois Lerner delayed applications and hassled applicants for non-profit status because they were conservative organizations. FBI agent Peter Strozk and his lover, agency attorney Lisa Page, used FBI email for partisan messages against Donald Trump’s candidacy. And then we have former FBI Director Jim Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and their numerous misdeeds. The list goes on.

The now notorious and fraudulent Trump dossier was used as evidence to get a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Trump officials Carter Page and Michael Flynn. And the FBI and Department of Justice are withholding documents legally subpoenaed by a congressional committee with oversight authority.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation to find a crime in the Trump campaign in the 2016 election had cost taxpayers nearly $7 million as of last December, producing only meager results, thus far.

One year on, two people associated with Trump have been charged: Former campaign chief Paul Manafort, over alleged bank fraud many years ago, and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI, after FBI officials said that he was not suspected of lying. Flynn plead guilty to the charge, apparently to end the crippling legal fees that drove him to near bankruptcy.

And then there’s the $20 trillion national debt – $62,500 per American – that no one seems serious about reducing, that threatens the nation’s future.

Young people who are inadequately prepared through their education to understand America and the realities of life, and people both inside and outside the government, and in the news media, who are willing and eager to cheat to achieve their political goals may bring about the demise of the country.

Are Abraham Lincoln’s words coming true? “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

We need some of the things from “the good old days” back again

Some of us seasoned citizens look out across the social landscape and are aghast at what we see. Our relatively stable culture of a few decades ago has certainly changed. And not for the better.

Many people in the U.S. have come to a point where for them reality has degenerated into a matter of “whatever I think it is.” And an associated mentality is that whatever someone or some group of people thinks is important must be treated not only with respect but even acceptance, no matter how silly or irrelevant it seems to others. Kid gloves are the new fashion trend, lest someone’s tender feelings be affected.

Of course, only certain types of things qualify for this special treatment, and other things are automatically disqualified, and by golly, you had best know the difference.

If you are not hip to Political Correctness (PC), you are likely to run afoul of the PC Police, and be labeled any of the fashionable “ists,” like racist, chauvinist, sexist, or one of the “phobes,” like xenophobe, transphobe or homophobe, but not Anglophobe.

For example, it was once considered inarguable that men and women are different. Then came the women’s movement, and after many years of that, a famous magazine of the day published an edition with its groundbreaking discovery that “Men and Women are Different!” emblazoned on the cover.

Our society is plagued with problems that many of us could never have predicted, and have trouble accepting, or even believing. Among these are the younger generation’s penchant for ingesting Tide pods, the idea that the Christmas song “Jingle Bells” or bulletproof glass in certain crime-ridden business areas are somehow racist, or that any word containing the syllable “man” that has been part of the vocabulary for centuries now needs to be changed because it is sexist.

On the subject of sex/gender, in our time it was uncommon or non-existent for someong born with the physical plumbing of a male who thought they should be a female, or vice versa. In those days sex and gender were the same; if you were born a female, you exhibited female characteristics of behavior, and vice versa. While it was true that some females might demonstrate less feminine/more masculine traits than most, and some males might demonstrate less masculine/more feminine traits than most, the differences between one’s biological sex and preferred gender did include people actually trying to switch genders, as is being done today.

These days many people react emotionally, believing those reactions are the solution to many problems. Finding causes through logical analysis has become a foreign concept. The horrific tragedy of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida is a recent case in point.

Many people automatically returned to banning weapons like the one used by the mentally ill shooter used as the solution. Yes, some of those do so out of ideological impulse, but others are unable to see past the knee-jerk reaction of blaming the gun rather than the perp. And it is increasingly the case where mere disagreement with these emotional responses produces insults rather than productive discussion.

Also these same people want to blame an organization for the tragedy, for the same reasons. The National Rifle Association (NRA) and its five or so million law abiding members through some illogical magic have become the reason this young cretin killed 17 students and teachers at his former school.

Some questions for these folks:

Did the NRA fail to follow up on multiple warnings about the shooter’s mental state and criminal activities?

Did it prevent the school from installing security measures that could have kept him out of the buildings?

Did it tell the deputies who were on site not to go in and confront the shooter?

Did it persuade local authorities to stop arresting young wrongdoers and instead send them to counseling so the area’s profile would look better?

Did it whisper in the ear of this mentally ill fool that he should go to the school and kill people?

Was the shooter one of its members?

The answer to each of these questions is, of course, a loud and definite “no!” Further, as time passes, we learn more about what actually happened, and what didn’t happen that should have happened, which should reiterate the wisdom against reacting too strongly, too quickly.

These things demonstrate that America isn’t America anymore. And they outline the problems facing the country. How do we start from this crazy situation and restore the nation to the America that was the most free and stable yet imagined by humans?

Americans have done a lousy job teaching the younger generations the history of America and the traditions that evolved as a result of its creation. Too many of us do not know those traditions, and more than a few do not appreciate them. Consequently they do not honor them. The current culture is one that has few strong, unwavering principles, and those that remain are under attack.

How long can America survive floating aimlessly along, having abandoned the very traditions and values that made it the great nation it once was?

We have to stop deficit spending and lower the national debt

The national debt virtually doubled in the 8 years of President Barack Obama. From the $10.6 trillion debt when he took office in 2009 that was created by all the presidents before him, until the end of his terms in 2017, the debt grew to nearly $20 trillion. That was, of course, the largest increase under any president in history.

President Donald Trump claimed that in his first month in office he actually saved money, reducing the national debt by $12 billion. That is true, but is a mere pittance compared to the $20 trillion total. It was a baby step in the right direction, but it was also only a moment in time for a number that rises and falls month-to-month.

Campaigning in 2016, Trump promised voters he would balance the budget. His first budget does not accomplish that difficult task, and in fact, the budget for fiscal year 2019 is projected to add another trillion to the existing debt, contrary to his promise to voters.

Trump’s proposed spending plan is a $4.4 trillion monster for fiscal year 2019 that some describe as dangerously unbalanced. He still has some time to balance the budget, but what a great thing it would be if his first budget actually moved decidedly in that direction.

Everyone who manages a business or organization, or a home budget understands the situation: ideally, income exceeds expense. Historically, the federal government achieves surpluses only rarely, and a properly operated government shouldn’t produce large surpluses, or large deficits.

Our gargantuan national debt is the result of gross budgetary malfeasance, and it is at crisis proportions. The nation’s debt now exceeds its GDP, and net interest payments on the debt are estimated to be 6.8 percent of all federal outlays at $276.2 billion this fiscal year. That is enough to pay for all administrative office employees for this year.

A comparison of what the government is doing with what it is allowed to do by the U.S. Constitution needs to happen.

The Preamble to the Constitution lays out its purpose, in broad terms: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

James Madison, one of the Constitution’s creators, certainly can be cited as an expert on the document. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined,” he wrote in Federalist No. 45, in 1788. “Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

But in direct opposition to this founding principle, phrases such as “promote the general Welfare,” have been expanded well beyond what the Founders intended, and contribute greatly to a government that has grown in size, control and cost beyond all reason.

The federal government has its nose and fingers in far too many areas of our lives. It should not regulate mud puddles or control education. It should not use its power against some legal businesses or organizations to the benefit of others. The federal government owns and controls 640 million acres of America’s land, about 28 percent of its total surface, the majority of it in western states. The list goes on.

Given the degree to which these improper activities have grown and are so much a part of life, it may not be possible to completely eliminate them, but there are certainly areas ripe for reduction.

As designed, the federal government should not require much money from citizens to operate, and the tax cuts that finally made it through Congress have been a boon to taxpayers and businesses. Businesses can expand, replace equipment, hire new workers and/or increase wages, and taxpayers will have more of their earnings at their disposal to buy things they need and want, which will increase spending in the private sector and increase tax collections.

And government positions left unfilled by the administration will provide some reduction in government spending. But even under the best of circumstances, these factors will not make a large dent in the deficit.

According to downsizinggovernment.org, “The federal government employs 2.1 million civilian workers in hundreds of agencies at offices across the nation. The federal workforce imposes a substantial burden on America’s taxpayers. In 2017 wages and benefits for executive branch civilian workers cost $276 billion.” And that does not count the courts, the Congress or postal workers.

Getting federal spending down to the balanced budget level requires drastic cuts in government, and will require closing some unnecessary administrative agencies, and reducing the number of federal workers in the remaining agencies. As Madison reminds us, the powers delegated to the federal government are few and defined, and the rest of the things needed are to remain the responsibility of the state governments.

One of Trump’s favored phrases in the campaign was “draining the swamp.” Getting government under control and reduced to its proper size and function has never been more important than it is today.

Duty, honor, country? Government employee misbehavior on the rise

Over the last couple of years we have seen the Internal Revenue Service target conservative organizations seeking 501(c)(3) status, and heap time delays and over-the-top demands for information on them to delay or deny granting that status. We have seen the Department of Education sneakily change Common Core from guidelines to policy.

These things make one wonder whether those working in the American government understand the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and that they are obligated to obey them and honorably serve the American people.

The answer seems to be, “yes,” as long as it suits their purposes.

The current furor over getting permission for the government to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign appears to be a continuation of these questionable, and possibly illegal, activities.

A CNN host has come forth to defend this activity, citing “very real fears” of “something very suspicious” in the campaign. And he justified the surveillance activities with the question, “don’t you want to know” if something illegal was going on?

Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” told Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy in an interview earlier this month that there was a willingness to collude with the Russians that needed to be investigated. He apparently believes that this perceived willingness justified taking away the Fourth Amendment protections against “unreasonable searches and seizures” from some 100 people who were associated with Donald Trump in some way or another, according to the House Intelligence Committee.

Since taking away one citizen’s privacy is a serious matter, and taking privacy from a hundred is substantially more so, there must be a procedure the government must first go through to protect citizens’ rights. And there is. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires a court ruling to permit such invasions of privacy.

How does this procedure work? Well, here is Connecticut Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s description, via Politico: “On any given day in Washington, 11 judges — all designated by Chief Justice John Roberts, without congressional advice or consent — convene to hear surveillance applications from the United States government. Behind closed doors and without checks or scrutiny, they balance the threats of espionage and terrorism with Fourth Amendment protections from unreasonable searches and seizures.”

And what is the record of performance by the FISA court in protecting Fourth Amendment rights? Blumenthal notes, “the odds are stacked strongly in favor of the federal government. Last year alone, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court … heard nearly 1,800 such applications from the U.S. government; not a single request was denied. In its entire 33-year history, the FISA court has rejected just 11 of 34,000 requests.”

For the non-mathematicians out there, the approval rate of applications to the FISA court is astounding. Only .00032 percent of the applications are not approved.

But then again, these are one-sided proceedings, with only government accusations and evidence allowed. It’s just like hearings before a grand jury, about which it has been famously said that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It’s like when your favorite sports team wins a game against … no one.

Obviously, it is critically important that the government be allowed to pursue legitimate potential espionage and terrorism threats, but it is equally important to protect the Fourth Amendment rights of American citizens.

It may be the case that the government has always acted appropriately. Or, maybe it has fudged its case before the court successfully, on occasion. But the accusation of collusion by the Trump campaign and the resulting court ruling clearly raises serious questions about this process.

The FBI’s “evidence” provided to the FISA court in support of permission to spy on 100 associates of Donald Trump contains the now-infamous and fraudulent Trump dossier. It is a document compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and political opposition research group Fusion GPS on behalf of, and partially funded by, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign through a third party.

The FISA warrant application failed to disclose to the court exactly who had financed the dossier – a Trump political opponent – information that should have been included in the application.

Defenders of the action against these 100 individuals claim that the dossier was not a primary piece of evidence in the application. Okay, fine. Then, given its scurrilous and fraudulent background, and the at-best questionable behavior of some of the FBI’s upper management, why was it included in the application at all?

Wouldn’t it be helpful – in recognition of the popular concept of the day: transparency – to have access to the FISA application, so that the American people can see what the FISA court saw?

“Created in the wake of Watergate-era revelations about executive-branch spying on domestic dissidents, the FISA court today operates in the shadows without public oversight,” and “the executive branch almost never loses,” Blumenthal wrote.

He believes this broken system must be repaired, and is working on legislation to fix it. It “deprives the entire system of trust and credibility in the eyes of the American people,” he wrote.

Whether Surveillancegate can be reversed and confidence in the system restored only time will tell. But we must try.