Last year saw many positive things happen in our country

January 20, 2026

Well, the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has now been completed. Yes, the United States of America still has problems. It always has had, and it always will have. But some improvements have been recorded.

Let’s be clear, Trump is not perfect; he has his problems. But the same is true of Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Adam Schiff, Elizabeth Warren, Maxine Waters, Hakeem Jeffries, Hillary Clinton, Jasmine Crockett, Eric Swalwell, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and every other human being.

But Trump may be the most heavily criticized POTUS ever, or at least he is in recent memory. 

It truly appears that some people oppose what Trump does because of how much they dislike him, irrespective of what he is doing that may be is good for the country.

Michigan Republican Congresswoman Lisa McClain gave an example of just how wild and crazy the dislike of Trump is, saying, “President Trump could have the cure for cancer and the Democrats would still be upset."

But despite the fog that interferes with how some folks view things, the economy has some positive aspects, and some other factors will likely improve as time passes. The following information was provided by WhiteHouse.gov.

Egg prices are down 84 percent; gas is less than $3.00 per gallon for the first time in four years; the federal deficit is down 40 percent, the lowest since 2019; we have global contracts of $170 billion, which is 14 times as much as in the Biden administration.

Michael & Susan Dell donated $6.25 billion to fund Trump Accounts for 25 million children; Black Friday showed a record-breaking $11.8 billion in online spending; we have $12 billion in aid for American farmers; the trade deficit fell to $52.8 billion, down 35 percent, year-over-year; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent projects 3 percent GDP growth this year, despite the shutdown.

Eli Lilly will build a $6.5 billion Texas plant; tariffs will bring Volvo XC60 production to the US.

On the foreign policy front, there has also been some positive movement. According to the U.S. State Department, “Under the first year of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s leadership, the State Department has implemented a bold America First foreign policy focused on making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.

“Since January, the State Department has helped stop the flow of deadly drugs into the United States, created American jobs by advancing commercial interests abroad, secured additional defense investments from our allies, streamlined foreign assistance programs, and ushered in a new era of peace through strength, all while slashing waste and reorganizing the agency to ensure that our government serves the American people as efficiently and as effectively as possible.”

The State Department has also done some house-cleaning. It “secured cost savings of $270,860,693 via 659 descoped contracts and 533 contracts that were terminated or not renewed, as reflected in the Federal Procurement Data System. The Department trimmed travel budgets, spending $100 million less on travel than last year.”

The Cato Institute reports that the number of federal employees has dropped from about 3,000,000 at the beginning of 2025 to less than 2,750,000, a reduction of approximately 250,000 as of early December. Fewer federal employees require less tax money for their salaries, lowering federal spending a bit.

One of the areas drawing the most anti-Trump opposition is the effort to remove illegal aliens from the country, focusing primarily on those with criminal records or criminal charges. Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, and illegal reentry is a felony.

Numbers from December show that more than 2.5 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 1.9 million self-deportations and more than 622,000 deportations, as reported on the DHS website.

Last year, between Jan. 20 and Dec. 11, about 595,000 illegal aliens had been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Department of Homeland Security reported that 70 percent, or approximately 416,000 illegals, had "criminal convictions or pending criminal charges" in the United States.

While so many Democrats/leftists/progressives condemn the actions of ICE to remove illegal and often criminal aliens from blue cities and states, the number of that group who have expressed sorrow or horror because of the many Americans who have been murdered or otherwise attack by illegal aliens remains quite small.

 The Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) posted a list of hundreds of Americans who were murdered by illegal aliens, or were died from actions such as vehicle wrecks.

In comments prior to the list of those killed, ALIPAC noted the following: “We did not include our thousands of documented cases of illegals raping, robbing, assaulting, and harming Americans in other ways to focus this section on those who lost their lives due to our government's failure to protect our states and citizens from invaders.”

The Trump administration has a long way to go to get things where Trump wants them to be, and where the 77 million Americans who voted for him want them to be. But many of these items take time to evolve, and things are moving in the right direction.

What happens when professional ethics are replaced by politics

December 19, 2023

Over the last few years, we have heard from federal government agency employees, former and current, telling about their experiences doing and/or witnessing improper things in dealing with serious and sensitive matters.

These whistleblower’s allegations, if true, paint a troubling picture of how federal government agencies often work to the benefit of one group at the expense of another group.

These alleged activities are the epitome of what our government is not supposed to be. The government must be a fair, balanced and just organization that serves the interests all of the people.

Like the government, the news media is expected to perform its duties in a fair and balanced manner, and make certain that opinion and news reporting are clearly separate.

The Founders of this nation thought that a free press was so critical that they granted protection to do its job properly in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, along with the guarantee of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble, and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

But as with so many of our noble and cherished traditions, the honesty and integrity of the nation’s news media has been abandoned by far too many of its practitioners.

Recently, a news story broke regarding the New York Times. The Times once was regarded as the greatest newspaper in the world. It had become known as the Gray Lady. It has since become regarded as politically biased, and a weapon of the left.

The internal workings of the Times was the topic of a cover story published in The Economist by senior editor James Bennet titled, "When The New York Times Lost Its Way."

Bennet worked at the Times for many years, most recently as its editorial page editor. He was forced to resign in 2020 after he published an article written by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. The article stirred a great deal of emotion among the Times’ staff, due to its non-left content, prompting the paper’s publisher asking him to resign. 

Cotton, who had served in the U.S. Army, had suggested using military troops to protect businesses under assault by Black Lives Matter rioters following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

In the story in The Economist, Bennet described how as the Times moved leftward, he was encouraged to attach “trigger warnings” to conservative opinion pieces to alert the paper’s leftist readers about material that may offend them.

"It was a frenzied time in America," Bennet wrote. "It was the kind of crisis in which journalism could fulfill its highest ambitions of helping readers understand the world, in order to fix it, and in the Times’s Opinion section, which I oversaw, we were pursuing our role of presenting debate from all sides."

Comparing the current attitude of Times’ reporters to that of his time as a reporter, Bennet commented that today’s reporters "may know a lot about television, or real estate, or how to edit audio files ... many Times staff have little idea how closed their world has become, or how far they are from fulfilling their compact with readers to show the world ‘without fear or favor.’”

And in citing his former paper’s increasing bias he called attention to the Wall Street Journal, saying that the Times could “learn something” from its rival.

The Journal, he wrote, “has maintained a stricter separation between its news and opinion journalism, including its cultural criticism, and that has protected the integrity of its work," concluding his cover story.

Although the Times’ leftist orientation has been well recognized and discussed for many years, the actual experience of a long-time and ranking former employee adds much credibility to that belief.

It is a further sad commentary on the condition of many of our news media that an editor of a major newspaper lost his job for actually doing his job: presenting all sides of an issue so that readers would be equipped to make sensible, informed judgements about that issue.

Deliberately burying opinions that differ from the chosen narrative, fearing that those opinions will be accepted by your readers, is cowardly. And, it is un-American.

Back in 1997 the Carnegie-Knight Task Force began a national conversation to identify and clarify the principles of proper journalism. After four years of research, a Statement of Shared Purpose that identified nine principles was released. The sixth principle is: It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise.

It reads: “The news media are the common carriers of public discussion, and this responsibility forms a basis for our special privileges. This discussion serves society best when it is informed by facts rather than prejudice and supposition. It also should strive to fairly represent the varied viewpoints and interests in society, and to place them in context rather than highlight only the conflicting fringes of debate. Accuracy and truthfulness require that as framers of the public discussion we not neglect the points of common ground where problem solving occurs.”

How wonderful it would be if the instructors, students, and practitioners of journalism would adopt this concept.

Our government has grown beyond what it was intended to be

December 12, 2023

After the Revolutionary War when the Founders were working on a governing document, they worked hard to not only develop a good design, but a design that protected the people from a government that could control everything they did and thought.

The design they came up with was spectacular, creating a nation governed by a philosophy of limited government and individual freedom. It had three co-equal branches: the legislative branch to pass needed and beneficial laws; an administrative branch to run the country and enforce the laws; and a judicial branch decides the constitutionality of federal laws and resolves other disputes about federal laws.

The design was not perfect, but included a mechanism to amend the Constitution to make it better. Of course, the success of the design depended upon those working in government: the employees and appointed and elected officials. It was expected that everyone involved would understand and support the design.

But, as fate would have it, some politicians and bureaucrats have their own ideas about what should be done, and how. Consequently, the government has grown in size and power, well beyond what the Founders imagined. Still, despite the excesses of the politicians and bureaucrats, many of whom were honestly trying to make things better, the government has grown too big and too powerful.

Columnist George Will in a recent column provided some insight into where we are, discussing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court that could be a start to changing things back toward the original design. The column started with a quote from James Madison in Federalist 47. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

He then went on to discuss the case, but used an example of bureaucratic/administrative overreach, and how such behavior weakens what was and could again be the best governmental design ever.

The example he used describes the typical enforcement activities of some federal agencies, in this case the Federal Trade Commission, as published in the Harvard Law Review.

“The Commission promulgates substantive rules of conduct. The Commission then considers whether to authorize investigations into whether the Commission’s rules have been violated. If the Commission authorizes an investigation, the investigation is conducted by the Commission, which reports its findings to the Commission. 

“If the Commission thinks that the Commission’s findings warrant an enforcement action, the Commission issues a complaint. The Commission’s complaint that a Commission rule has been violated is then prosecuted by the Commission and adjudicated by the Commission. This Commission adjudication can either take place before the full Commission or before a semiautonomous Commission administrative law judge. 

“If the Commission chooses to adjudicate before an administrative law judge rather than before the Commission and the decision is adverse to the Commission, the Commission can appeal to the Commission. If the Commission ultimately finds a violation, then, and only then, the affected private party can appeal to an Article III court. 

“But the agency decision, even before the bona fide Article III tribunal, possesses a very strong presumption of correctness on matters both of fact and of law.”

In this case, and many other similar instances, even if the rules in force have been assumed to be appropriate, or found to be appropriate by the courts, the behavior of the government agency in being the only party prosecuting the rule breaking, and deciding whether things are right or not, is more than just a little heavy-handed.

This is precisely what Madison was referring to in the Federalist article. When the government makes the rules, adjudicates the rules, decides the outcome and also the penalties, the people are not being fairly or constitutionally dealt with. 

In a government set up to be fair in its dealings with the people, it is clearly not in the best interest of the people when the politicians and bureaucrats work under the table to increase their power over the people, the very people they are elected and hired to serve.

In the example cited, and likely many others we may not have heard about, what is the difference between life in the United States, and in some third world or authoritarian regime? Realistically, we are not there yet, but have been walking in that direction.

What we find and have observed for a long time is a strong effort on the part of politicians and bureaucrats to engage in what former President Barack Obama promised during his 2008 campaign: “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” 

There have been efforts to pack the Supreme Court; do away with the Electoral College; replace the local and state government control of elections with federal control of elections; move away from dependable energy sources; end our energy independent status; heavily restrict or ban citizen gun ownership; dictate what type of light bulbs and other conveniences and appliances we may have; and effectively open our southern border to all who want to enter, for whatever ends they may seek.

Our country is weaker and further from its original design than in many decades. Or, perhaps, ever.

Our government needs to be reined in, restored to its original intent

April 18, 2023

In November of 1863, a few months after the Union defeated the Confederates in the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech now known as the Gettysburg Address. “Four score and seven years ago,” he began, referring to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was an historic speech, despite its mere 271-word length.

But at the end of the speech he referred to the U.S. government as “that government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

Looking at what our once limited government has grown into, it seems more like the government is by some people and for some people. So much of what happens today is less “for the people,” meaning the U.S. citizenry as a whole, than for some people, and for the government people.

The federal government is too big, too expensive, and too powerful. 

In September of 2021, federal civilian employees numbered about 2.85 million. The U.S. population in 2021 was approximately 333 million. This means that there was one federal civilian employee for every 118 persons.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, “the federal budget for fiscal 2022 was $6.3 trillion. The federal deficit in 2022 was $1.4 trillion, equal to 5.5 percent of gross domestic product, almost 2 percentage points greater than the average over the past 50 years.”

USA Facts provides this information:

* The federal government collected $5.0 trillion in revenue in fiscal year 2022 (FY 2022) — or $15,098 per person. 

* The federal government spent $6.5 trillion in FY 2022 — or $19,434 per person — including funds distributed to states. 

* Federal revenue increased 14.3% in FY 2022 after collecting more personal income taxes, social security taxes, and auctioning spectrum for commercial wireless and broadcast use. 

* Federal spending decreased 12.4% in FY 2022 after remaining relatively flat in FY 2021. 

* The federal government spent 28.7% more than it collected in FY 2022, resulting in a $1.45 trillion deficit. 

* The national debt hit $30.9 trillion last fiscal year. That is $931,000 per person.

“In today’s world, it’s rare for the federal government to balance its budget, meaning revenue is higher than expenditures,” Politifact reported. “Since the 1960s, only five years have had balanced federal budgets: 1969 under President Richard Nixon; 1998, 1999 and 2000 under Bill Clinton; and 2001 under George W. Bush.” 

A balanced budget does not mean that there was no national debt. Andrew Jackson, who served from 1829-37, “is the only president to preside over a total elimination of all remaining debt while having a balanced budget,” according to Politifact.

A 2022 Gallop poll found that 54% of Americans feel our government holds too much power. That figure is comprised of 74% of Republicans, 32% of Democrats and 54% of independents.

The feds rule through laws, rules and regulations. Quora.com tells us that there “are thousands of federal laws in the United States. The exact number can vary depending on how one defines a ‘law,’ as there are also regulations and executive orders that have the force of law. Additionally, new laws are constantly being proposed and passed by Congress.”

In 2017, Forbes.com said, “Let's look at year-end 2016 for starters. Federal departments, agencies, and commissions issued 3,853 rules in 2016, while Congress passed and the president signed 214 bills into law — a ratio of 18 rules for every law. The average has been 27 rules for every law over the past decade.”

“How did it get this way,” the Convention of States online (COS) asks, “Slowly but surely, we allowed D.C. bureaucrats to take over our way of living and push connived agendas in our faces.”

“Since the COVID crisis ensued in early 2020, every day has only allowed for the people to recognize how power abuses in the government are not just possible but extremely common.”

This needs to be fixed. But how? Well, one way is by electing people to the White House and Congress who will restore the republic’s intended limited government status. That, however, is a slow, and very iffy process.

Another possibility is a “Convention of States to rein in the powers of the federal government,” COS states. The states have the ability to call a convention to meet and discuss limiting its size and jurisdiction, adding term limits to federal officials, and writing a permanent budget plan.

“The good news is that already, 19 out of the required 34-state threshold has officially passed the COS Resolution.” Seven other states have passed the Resolution in one house of their government, and 12 others are going to consider the Resolution. “The people are looking for a real solution, not just another temporary fix,” COS added.

This would be a quicker solution than through elections, but it might not produce the desired result.

Clearly, the United States government’s size, cost, and power is a serious problem. And the wandering away from the ideal of government “for the people” — meaning all of the people, not just some of them — that has occurred over recent decades needs to be reversed.

Draining the swamp: restoring proper operation to federal agencies

It is a difficult task trying to determine which federal agency has done the most damage to the country and its citizens. A very strong candidate for this dishonor, if not a shoo-in for it, is the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA.

The EPA’s sins run from declaring mud puddles on private property to be under federal control through the Waters of the United States rule to picking winners and losers and deciding to shut down an entire industry based upon a manic fear of CO2, a compound that is essential for animal and plant life.

A good rule for all of us to remember is, “all things in moderation.” If that is a good rule for CO2, as the EPA asserts, it is also a necessary rule for regulations. Too many regulations really gum things up, stunt our economy, punish taxpayers and businesses, create uncertainty, and the EPA may well be the king in that regard, although the IRS is a strong contender.

President Donald Trump’s EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has been charged with corralling that agency, and he sat down with The Heritage Foundation’s Rob Bluey at Heritage’s President’s Club meeting to discuss that process.

First up, the topic of “sue and settle” and how that process amounts to backdoor rulemaking.  An article on Forbes online describes the process as follows: “’Sue and Settle’ practices, sometimes referred to as ‘friendly lawsuits,’ are cozy deals through which far-left radical environmental groups file lawsuits against federal agencies wherein court-ordered ‘consent decrees’ are issued based upon a prearranged settlement agreement they collaboratively craft together in advance behind closed doors.” Read that again, carefully.

“Then, rather than allowing the entire process to play out, the agency being sued settles the lawsuit by agreeing to move forward with the requested action they and the litigants both want.”

Pruitt noted an additional irregularity. “But then here’s the kicker: They (the agency) would pay attorneys fees to the group that sued them.” So the group is effectively making “comfortable” rules and the government pays for their lawyers.

Acknowledging the fraudulent nature and duplicity of this process, Pruitt said, “My job is to enforce the laws as passed by whom? Congress. They give me my authority. That’s the jurisdictional responsibilities that I have, and when litigation is used to regulate … that’s abusive. That’s wrong.”

A bit later Bluey asked about the Waters of the United States rule. “[P]eople all over the country have no idea today where federal jurisdiction begins and ends under that 2015 rule,” Pruitt responded. He was in Salt Lake City with Utah Gov. Gary Herbert and an Army Corps of Engineers representative about two months ago when the representative pointed to a thermal drainage ditch and said, “Scott, that is a water of the United States.”

“It’s not going to be anymore,” Pruitt said. “That’s really the challenge here—that you had so much confusion and uncertainty about what waters were in [and] what waters were out.”

Next, Bluey turned to the Clean Power Plan, asking Pruitt where he sees the EPA going with this regulation.

“It’s not the job of the EPA to say to the utility company in any state of the country, you should choose renewables over natural gas or coal,” he answered. “We need fuel diversity in the general electricity. We need more choices, not less.”

And then the common sense answer that has been absent for eight or more years: “No agency at the federal level should use their coercive power to force business utility companies to take those fuel sources away. They should be making it on cost, stability, and I would say resiliency of the grid.”

Hallelujah!

Turning to the day-to-day operation of the agency, Pruitt talked about the advisory bodies that provide input into decisions and policy. “The scientists who make up these bodies, and there are dozens and dozens of these folks, over the years those individuals as they’ve served those capacities, guess what has also happened? They’ve received moneys through grants, and sometimes substantial moneys through grants,” he said.

“I think what’s most important at the agencies,” he continued, “is to have scientific advisers who are objective, independent minded, providing transparent recommendations to me as the administrator and to our office on the decisions that we’re making on the efficacy of rules that we’re passing to address environmental issues.

“If we have individuals that are on those boards that are receiving money from the agency, sometimes going back years and years to the tune of literally tens of millions of dollars, over time,” he said, “that to me causes questions on the independence and the veracity of the transparency of the recommendations that are coming our way.”

This pro-Constitution, commonsense rule of law perspective is one that all heads of federal agencies ought to share, and what the concept of constitutional government demands.

After many years of bureaucratic excesses, frequently spurred by political bias, it is refreshing and it inspires confidence to see Scott Pruitt and other administration officials at last focusing on proper management of the government we pay for, but which has so often gone off the rails into ideological self-service.

America now being challenged by a crisis of integrity

 Integrity is defined as adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty. As a society we have moral values, professional ethics and other rules that we are expected to uphold at all times and under all circumstances. When we adhere to professional ethics, the rules of life, and the body of laws, we have a desirable society that is principled, and functions smoothly and efficiently.

In today’s America, evidence of lost integrity is all around us: millions of out-of-wedlock children, people who are not needy collecting welfare benefits, frivolous or questionable lawsuits, and a long list of crimes.

And in the political realm we witness inflammatory language, protests shutting down protected free speech, media taking sides, mob violence and other outrages that have grown to epidemic proportions. These activities are strong evidence of the abandonment of basic human integrity as well as professional integrity.

An immediate danger to the nation and its people is the insanity that has evolved since the election of Donald Trump as president. Lots of people – Republicans, Democrats and the politically unaffiliated – show signs of hysteria. Many are dedicated to bringing Trump down, and seem to be devoted to a “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” philosophy, giving little thought to the repercussions this ill-advised path may likely produce.

Trump’s enemies say that he lit the fuse, and he undoubtedly contributed to the current atmosphere. But just because you dislike or hate Trump and his policies, does not entitle you to lie, cheat, commit acts of violence, and behave in a manner that subverts America. If you didn’t support Trump in the election there is only one sensible and honorable path for you to take: Get over it. And remember that you are an American and he legitimately is America’s president.

Three areas are very dangerous for integrity failure: News journalism, the federal judiciary and government bureaucracies.

Last week The New York Times published an editorial stating as fact that when a gunman shot Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011, he was reacting to a political map created by Sarah Palin showing areas that were “targeted” in the coming election. That was untrue, discredited years ago, and The Times corrected its humiliating blunder. But doesn’t journalistic integrity demand that such known details be found before publication? Clearly, integrity sometimes takes a holiday at The Times.

It is very common these days for a news organization to attribute information to an “anonymous” or “unnamed” source. Sometimes, of course, a legitimate source needs the protection of anonymity. But the downside is that this tool can be overused, can be used to cover a non-credible source, or even used when there is no source at all. Add to this the tendency to exaggerate, and even create false stories, and the information upon which we all rely becomes unreliable.

If you’ve ever worked with an attorney you probably noticed how detailed legal language is, so that the exact intent of a document is clear. Yet, we find judges today who abandon the plain language of an Executive Order in favor of what they imagine was in the mind of its author in ruling in favor of a challenge to the Order. It looks as if political desire replaced judicial integrity.

And what about administrative agency employees who abandon their duty to their country, the American people they are paid to serve, and their ultimate boss, to play politics, leaking sensitive information, and even classified information in a cheap and disgusting ploy to damage a duly elected president?

Those who foolishly undermine national security because of their emotional inability to adapt to reality may someday wonder what exactly their behavior has done to their once free and wonderful country.

A lot of political hay can be made in such an atmosphere, and the beneficiaries of this are some elected public servants as well as appointed bureaucrats. Such behavior is the stuff of third-world hellholes, and the abandonment of professional and personal integrity moves America ever closer to becoming one of those.

On the one hand anti-Trumpers denigrate and belittle Trump, and on the other hand they raise him to a high level, one so great that they use it to justify abandoning near-sacred elements of their professions and common decency. It is Trump’s fault, they assert, that they indulged in behavior that is dangerous and often illegal.

Commentator Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News recently, “When you say ‘unless we stop Donald Trump, the republic will not survive,’ then that justifies anything. That’s the language, the ideology, the rationale of terrorists...” And, it produces behavior that will destroy the republic.

We cannot and must not excuse criminal behavior, like the shooting at a Republican Congressional baseball game practice earlier this month, or even the mob violence of late, as the result of foolish and inflammatory language. But it does not help diffuse the raw craving of those who consider resorting to violence when politicians speak rashly, the news media takes a partisan position, the judiciary abandons plain language in favor of political expediency, and other examples of acting outside the narrow path dictated by integrity and moral character.

Trump's choices for administrative positions confound the left

The fact that Donald Trump, the President-Elect of the United States, is following an unconventional path toward assembling his administration is precisely what anyone who has paid attention to the campaign and election process should expect. And yet, more than a year after he started down the path to become president, the left still seemingly can’t quite figure out Donald Trump. Failing to exercise caution about what to do when they find themselves in unfamiliar territory, the left doles out generous criticism of that which they so poorly understand. Clearly, desperation, and more than a little hysteria, rules the left these days.

Most everyone else gets it: Trump does not think like, act like or speak like a typical politician, because he isn’t a politician.

Coming from the world of business, Trump selects his team like a CEO, using not political considerations, but focusing on competence in management: top retired military people and successful business people, people who have proved themselves in endeavors other than as a long-time or lifetime government functionary.

And that is really why the left is horrified. It’s not that they don’t understand Trump, it is that they are offended and in disbelief that the voters have given them and their idea of government a big thumbs down, and they simply cannot, and will not adapt to this reality.

The narrow view that you have to be a career bureaucrat or politician, or a manic ideologue in order to successfully handle an important government position is the height of arrogance. It ignores reality, the fact that there are tens of thousands of successful people outside government that are every bit as qualified and competent as is a career politician or bureaucrat, and it certainly is possible that such a person might actually be better at it, because they will bring a vastly different approach to the job. In business and the military, efficiency is a fundamental element for success, but in government, efficiency is not common.

They have forgotten, never knew, or perhaps have just ignored the fact that the first Americans to serve in executive or legislative positions were common people, business people: farmers, bankers, blacksmiths, lawyers, surveyors, printers, merchants, etc. And in the early decades they served their country in office part of the time, and plied their private sector trade at home the rest of the time. Given the generally below-par performance of the federal government, restoring this characteristic to government service is one of the better changes we can make.

President Obama used political and ideological factors to make his selections; relying on people he knew who shared his leftist viewpoint.

Contrast that with Trump’s approach, which is selecting people for important positions from a practicality standpoint: Who can do this job well? Who will follow the rules, appreciate and abide by Constitutional limits on government? Transition insiders suggest that he will carefully select these leaders, and then leave them to run their departments, and not micro-manage them.

Trump has named four retired military general officers for positions in his administration, so far. The left finds this to be a very scary exercise, given that our government is supposed to be a civilian government. It seems unpersuasive to the critics on the left that these four talented and successful gentlemen are – as required – civilians, given that their military careers ended with their retirement. Obama named three generals to his cabinet without so much as a peep from the lefties. And, of course, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34^th President of the United States, was a retired 5-star General of the Army.

Critics say that Trump’s choices to head massive federal agencies and departments fail the competency test because they have never run anything with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, as federal agencies have today. While the size of an operation is certainly a factor, the skill of management is not necessarily defined by how large the organization or department is. Further, this criticism rests on the absurd idea that the only person with input into the operation of a department is its director. This is one area where long-term government employees can be very useful, providing important guidance and input.

Obama’s disastrous 8-year presidency has been defined by ideological and political considerations. Remember the “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal that cost the life of a Border Patrol agent? Lois Learner using the IRS against conservative applicants for tax-exempt status? The EPA’s unilateral creation of rules with the force of law that pitted the federal government against an American industry, and put tens of thousands of Americans working in and with the coal industry out of work? Jamming Obamacare down the throats of Americans, and preventing participation in that process by Congressional Republicans?

The different approach of a Trump presidency might shock people simply because it is not the same old process that we now have. However, “different” does not automatically mean “not as good,” and may very well be much better. Despite the damage to the nation of the Obama years, the nation survived. The chances that Trump’s approach to governing will be worse than that are highly unlikely.

The Trump transition is well underway, despite his enemies’ wishes

Two weeks after the presidential election, things are moving forward for President-Elect Donald Trump, who is busy selecting individuals for administration posts.

Last week, Trump’s first two appointments were Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus as chief of staff and former head of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon, as chief strategist.

Amid assessments of the transition’s first few days as chaotic and on the cusp of failure, Bannon’s choice drew sharp criticism from the leftist Trump opponents and the major media, who are determined to criticize most everything Trump’s team does or says.

Next came the choice of retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn as national security adviser, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) as director of the CIA, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.) for Attorney General, subject to Senate approval, and meetings Saturday with 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, thought to be a candidate for secretary of state, and with retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, who is said to be a potential contender for defense secretary.

Meetings with potential selectees continued through the weekend, stoking the fires of speculation about who might go where and, of course, the predictable Democrat opposition’s criticism of people under consideration, as well as those already chosen.

As bad a choice as media and political enemies believe Trump to be, so far his transition is right on schedule.

Saturday, Trump took action to remove what likely would have become a big distraction to organizing his administration, doing so prior to being sworn in, and which likely would have continued at least into the early months of his presidency. Agreeing to a settlement of $25 million, three lawsuits aimed at Trump University have been resolved. The agreement also includes $1 million in penalties to the state of New York.

Former students of the school claimed that they paid thousands of dollars to learn Trump’s real estate success secrets, but contended that they were lured into paying up to $35,000 to learn from instructors hand-picked by Trump, which they claim did not happen.

The settlement was negotiated between Trump’s lawyers and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the law firm that brought the suit against the now closed school. The settlement does not require an admission of guilt from Trump, but Trump’s organization issued a statement that said, "We are pleased to announce the complete resolution of all litigation involving Trump University. While we have no doubt that Trump University would have prevailed at trial based on the merits of this case, resolution of these matters allows President-Elect Trump to devote his full attention to the important issues facing our great nation."

If there is a downside to settling the lawsuits, it is that we may never know which side is right. Did Trump defraud the students, or is it merely an opportunity seized upon by students and lawyers hoping for a big payout?

Removing what would have become a huge distraction enables Trump to get on with the business of organizing his presidency, even as his political enemies occupy themselves with petty criticisms about appointments and who he is talking with, suggestions of who he should be talking with, and arguing about whether it was FBI Director James Comey’s handling of the email investigation or the Electoral College that defeated Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump.

Democrats have begun a move to have the Electoral College, the Constitutional mechanism to determine who becomes president, replaced by the popular vote. At the Constitutional Convention, several methods of electing a president were considered, but the Founders well knew the dangers of consolidated power. After much debate and compromise they devised a system that instead distributed power more broadly, balancing federal powers with those of the states, and providing a voice to all states, not just the most populous. 

As Heritage Foundation legal expert Hans von Spakovsky noted: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

And the result has been that the Electoral College has provided stability to the process of picking presidents. Though the national popular vote winner typically wins the presidency, that vote failed to determine the winner in four previous elections: 1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000, and the republic survived quite well, thank you.

And the wisdom of the Founders has once again been proven in the 2016 election where the least desirable candidate, Hillary Clinton, wound up with a comparatively thin popular vote margin of 50.6 percent of the vote to Trump’s 49.4 percent; 1.4 million votes out of 124.7 million, meaning that Clinton got 1.15 more votes per hundred voters than Trump did.

A margin this thin is well within the margin of error of political polling, and hardly worthy of the hysteria that has been demonstrated by this miniscule difference in vote totals.

What this effort does best is illustrate the level of desperation, disbelief and unwillingness to accept the outcome that is so firmly ingrained into the political left and their sub-faction, the major national media.

But as before, the republic will endure and thrive.

The Transportation Security Administration is failing the public

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been in the news a lot lately, and not because of the number of terrorists that it has caught trying to board domestic and international flights originating in the U.S.

The most flagrant set of problems occurred primarily at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, where waits of up to three hours to get through the security check occurred, and the more serious situation where travelers had to spend the night in the O’Hare terminal on cots furnished by the airport because the long wait caused them to miss their flights. It is estimated that as many as 4,000 travelers have missed flights at O’Hare since February due to slow security checks. These are a painful testimony to just how badly the security check problems have become.

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) predicts a long, hot summer, blaming the TSA’s inept bureaucracy for being unable to provide an efficient security check process at American airports. CAGW blames the TSA directly, rather than other things, like budget cuts or a smaller workforce, which are offered up as excuses.

“This blame shifting simply does not stand up to scrutiny for TSA, whose fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget of $7.3 billion is one billion dollars and 16 percent higher than in FY 2007,” CAGW notes.  “TSA’s full-time workforce rose by 4.3 percent over the last decade, even as air travel at major airports decreased. To date, 22 airports have dropped TSA and switched to more cost-effective, flexible, and efficient private alternatives.  The massive lines of outraged passengers have caused airports in Atlanta, New York, and Seattle to announce they would like to privatize security as well.”

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has said that passengers must accept the new reality of “increased wait times as you travel,” but assured air travelers that TSA would be asking airports for help with “nonsecurity” activities, speeding the process. And he said that the number of carry-ons "has a lot to do with the wait time." Airlines have begun charging for extra bags being checked through, which encourages passengers to carry more bags with them into the passenger cabin, slowing the security check process.

These problems will likely increase as air travel picks up in the summer tourist season.

Underscoring CAGW’s accusation of incompetence is this from the New York Daily News: “The Transportation Security Administration assistant administrator who received $90,000 bonuses despite failed security tests at U.S. airports has been replaced, a government agency said Monday.” Kelly Hoggan, who testified before Congress about multiple TSA problems earlier this month, has been reassigned within the TSA.

Last week The Daily Signal proposed three steps to improve the TSA’s performance:

1. Expand the Screening Partnership Program - The Screening Partnership Program’s ability to take advantage of private security companies is one way the TSA can meet high passenger demand without sacrificing security.

2. Enlarge and Strengthen TSA PreCheck - TSA PreCheck is a trusted traveler program that allows members to expedite the security process after going through a background check and vetting process. The program allows TSA to move its resources towards a more risk-based approach by focusing less time on low-risk travelers.

3. Ensure Airport Screening is Subject to Risk Assessments and Red Team Tests - Waiting in TSA lines is partially alleviated because the TSA is supposedly providing extra security. That’s why it’s important to continue assessing the effectiveness of the TSA’s security measures. Red Teams, or undercover agents are one way to test that TSA security measures are working. In the meantime, it’s up to passengers to also take personal responsibility in preparing themselves for security checkpoints.

But perhaps the answer lies not in how to repair a broken and dysfunctional federal bureaucracy, but in replacing it with a private sector solution.

Like Postal Service workers who are frequently friendly, courteous and competent, TSA workers also display these qualities. But like the Postal Service, the TSA is a broken and largely failing agency.

Government agencies operate in a system that provides guaranteed clients, guaranteed revenue, and no competition, hence there is little incentive to be effective. This is why few of the multitudinous activities of the federal government are successful.

Our government keeps growing, finding ever more things that it believes need federal attention, all the while adding bodies to the federal payroll, increasing costs and delivering less than we deserve.

Airport/airline security really is mostly the concern of the individual airlines and airports – after all, they have the most to lose from a security failure and more to gain from being recognized for security successes. Why, then, should the federal government attempt this important mission with its history of ineffective bureaucratic methods?

Private businesses have not only the pride factor in their operation, but also the profit motive. If they fail to do the job satisfactorily, they will be replaced, and that adds an incentive to preform well that government agencies simply do not have. Competition drives success.

The big government mentality sees all problems as federal problems and big government solutions as the only means of salvation. Bureaucracies are self-sustaining parasites living off citizens, and mostly failing them.

What useful purpose does the State of the Union address really serve?

Every January after the new Congressional session has begun, we are treated, or subjected, to a formal statement by the President of the United States in the State of the Union address (SOTU).

It is the only time when all three branches of government gather in a common place, in the House of Representatives chamber, where senators, representatives, Supreme Court justices and cabinet secretaries jointly participate in an event.

Each year, one cabinet secretary is appointed to be at a physically distant, secure, and undisclosed location during the SOTU so that if there was an attack on the Capital during the address killing the president and many of the top officials, someone in the line of succession to the president would survive.

The reason there is a SOTU address is constitutional. Article II, Section 3, Clause 1, states that the President “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient” in an “Annual Message.”

According to house.gov, through the years the presidential address has gone through a series of changes, both in name and in content. For the first century and a half it was called the “Annual Message,” but in 1947 it became known officially as the State of the Union message/address. Notably, from Thomas Jefferson’s presidency up to Woodrow Wilson’s, the state of the union was a written communication.

In prior incarnations the event “included agency budget requests and general reports on the health of the economy. During the 20th century, Congress required more-specialized reports on these two aspects, separate from the Annual Message.”

Other changes occurred, and with the advent of radio, which first broadcast the SOTU in 1923, then television, which first televised the address in 1965, house.gov tells us that these technologies helped “the State of the Union [evolve] into a forum for the President to speak directly to the American people.”

The new technologies allowed the SOTU to be transformed from a vehicle to inform the Congress of the condition of the nation into something very different. What we have today is a grand spectacle staged for the primary benefit of the person who is the President of the United States and the political party to which he belongs. A theatrical coup of proportions only dreamed of by PR folks that is covered on radio, television and the Internet, the State of the Union Show has devolved into a grandiose occasion for advancing the president’s political ideas; essentially a highly over-promoted campaign speech.

In this forum the president can say whatever he or (someday) she wants to without opposition. There’s no truth-detector, as former President Bill Clinton once complained about talk radio.

After the speech is over, we are treated to the predictable fawning by the president’s fans and carping by his political opponents for days, accompanied by pro and con analysis from pundits, dutifully covered by the national media, ad nauseam.

Now, it is true that since 1966 the opposition party has been given the opportunity to respond, but that is for only several minutes to counter the president’s hour-long speech. This year, the opposition response lasted less than 10 minutes. But if the SOTU message really were a non-political assessment of the state of the union, there would be no need for an opposition response.

The fact that there has been an opposition response for nearly 50 years further underscores the heavily political nature of the address, and the pointlessness of it as a vehicle that imparts important information. It is now merely a political event glorifying the sitting president, who in this setting more resembles a monarch than an elected public servant.

The Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano, writing for The Daily Signal, commented on the content of this year’s SOTU address, and defended the event as a still useful feature of our country’s government. “The State of the Union address shows not just Americans, but the entire world, that America is still an exceptional nation—one that believes in the rule ‘by the people for the people.’”

That is one perspective. A different perspective is that the many hours, security costs and other assets that are utilized to stage this once-important event would be better spent on some productive endeavor.

It is impossible to completely remove political components and policy disagreements from the SOTU, as at least some of what a president says will necessarily have political implications and will not be agreeable to the opposition party. However, there seems lately to have been little if any effort to provide a politically neutral analysis of the national status, but instead the presidents have focused on scoring political points against an effectively disarmed opponent.

Since the usefulness of the SOTU in the functioning of our government has been reduced to nearly nothing, should it be done away with? Perhaps it can again become relevant and useful if we return to having the president communicate to Congress through a written message. Or at the very least, stop broadcasting it, and restore decorum to the event.

The new Congress needs to focus on a few really important issues

Last November’s electoral tide gave Republicans control of both houses of the 114^th Congress, which officially began January 3^rd.

In the House of Representatives, the GOP increased its majority to nearly 57 percent, holding 247 seats to the Democrat’s 188, and captured the majority in the Senate from the Democrats, and now holds a 54 to 44 edge, with Independents holding the other two seats.

During the 113^th Congress President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats called for Republicans to cooperate with them to pass legislation, calling Republicans “the Party of No” because they did not support Democrat legislation, as if the GOP’s job is to do what they want. Republicans didn’t just sit on their hands, however.

What you didn’t hear was much if anything at all about the hundreds of bills that were passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the great majority of which had bi-partisan support, and were forwarded to the Senate where they died of neglect on the desk of Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who refused to bring them before the Senate. Following the reasoning of Congressional Democrats, Sen. Reid therefore must be “the Majority Leader of No.”

Some believe Sen. Reid was preserving the ink in President Obama’s much-advertised veto pen, keeping the bills from passing so the president wouldn’t have to use his pen to veto them.

The notion that opposing parties should cooperate runs counter to the ideals of the Founders, who in the Declaration of Independence stated that the people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The government resulting from their efforts was designed to secure those rights, not to unnecessarily limit them by producing mountains of paper each year that tell the people all of the thousands of things they cannot do.

The Federal Register for 2013 contained 80,000 pages of rules and regulations created by the Democrat administration, and it is disturbingly true that nobody truly knows how many thousands of federal laws exist.

In a country with limited government like the United States, it naturally follows that generally the less the Congress and administrative agencies do in passing laws and generating rules, the better. Looking at the economy-crippling, job-killing, price-raising policies and rules of the EPA, and the gross malfeasance of the IRS, it is clear that limited government has been a forgotten priority in Washington for quite a while.

While most Democrats and too many Republicans encourage more cooperation to pass even more laws, The Hill lamented that “only about 280 bills will have become law in the last two years,” that the 113th Congress sent the fewest bills to a president in 20 years, which is why some call it a “do-nothing Congress.”

In our system, political parties hold a set of ideas about government. Members of the parties advance their ideas in the effort to win election to Congress. Last election America chose Republican ideas overwhelmingly.

Republicans will now put their ideas up against the ideas of Democrats, and those ideas able to attract enough support in both houses of Congress will become law, unless the president exercises his veto power and Congress cannot override it.

There is no compelling reason why Republicans should support the ideas of Democrats, short of there being actual agreement on the value of those ideas.

The Founders understood that in a country based upon liberty it should not be too easy to pass laws, particularly ones that would injudiciously limit that liberty, so they deliberately created a difficult legislative process to prevent tyranny by the majority.

Unfortunately, the majority party sometimes outsmarts the Founders, as the Democrats did in 2010 when they jammed the Affordable Care Act through Congress and down the throats of the people. That 2,700-page bill had no Republican input and got no Republican votes, and nobody actually knew what was in it when they voted on it. Certainly, this was not the proudest moment for lawmaking in American history. And it probably epitomizes why the Founders preferred gridlock to easy law-making.

Therefore, it is not important that Republicans work to support the president’s ideas, it is important that they and the Democrats work in the best interest of all the American people. If those ideas happen to line up with Mr. Obama’s initiatives, so much the better.

Legislators legislate and regulators regulate, but in America the success of those activities is measured not in the number of laws that are passed or rules that are created, but in the benefits that those activities produce for the people who employ the legislators and regulators.

In recent decades our government has failed that test.

There is much work to be done. For starters, the national debt is dangerously high and we spend way too much each year on a government that is far too big and far too powerful. The security of the southern border is a joke, and the immigration system and tax code both need overhauling,

Those problems are more than enough to keep Congress busy for more than two years. Let’s insist that Congress focuses on these issues.