Biden yields to party’s demands and withdraws from the race

July 30, 2024

In convincing President Joe Biden to abandon his fierce determination to run for a second term, the Democrats demonstrated how they work to “save our democracy” by using a highly undemocratic method to persuade him to step aside, and to choose his replacement. This left Democrat voters wondering what happened to their ability to select who will be their party’s candidate.

This action prompted many to say that if the party believes Biden cannot adequately serve another term, he is therefore fit to complete his current term. And the idea of replacing him as president is still being bandied about.

After convincing Biden to step aside, they next undemocratically anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new candidate, at Biden’s urging.

And now Harris has her honeymoon period to see if she can sway the voters to her side. Early indications are that she is successfully proceeding down that path. Time will tell, as the anti-Harris movement gears up.

Vowing to work his final few months as the president, Biden outlines his effort to make changes affecting the U.S. Supreme Court through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment is a serious matter, as it makes significant changes to the Court as originally established. Biden’s plan includes proposals for legislation to impose term limits for the justices and an ethics code with an enforcement feature, according to sources.

He is also reportedly considering calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, which could have a negative effect on how people perform in those positions, knowing that their best efforts may not be protected.

In considering Harris for this critically important job, her performance in previous positions is important. 

“When she ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, she beat incumbent Terence Hallinan in a nonpartisan runoff by running to his right, attacking Hallinan for not being tough enough on crime, while also courting the police union, with whom Hallinan had run afoul,” Politico reported.

“Yet when the Los Angeles Times profiled her a year into her term it referred to Harris not as a tough-on-crime crusader but as being “in the vanguard of progressive reformers who say that California’s criminal justice system is in dire need of drastic change,” the Politico story continued. Her desires at the time included defunding the police. As a prosecutor, she was criminal friendly, and unconcerned about their victims.

Having served as San Francisco's district attorney, and then as California's attorney general, Harris opposed the death penalty for harsh crimes, but took a hard line against banks over home foreclosures. She also prosecuted parents of children who skipped school, but declined the death penalty of a man who had killed a police officer.

While her record in California has earned her the “soft on crime” descriptor, she prefers “smart on crime.” Apparently, this has to do with her penchant for politically motivated policies. Citing her policy contradictions, some critics call her a “shapeshifter” whose ideology is flexible. They say she is someone willing to change her mind quickly as the political moment requires.

Seeking the presidential nomination in 2020, she supported two major progressive legislative building blocks: the radical Green New Deal and the tremendously expensive and socialistic Medicare for All. 

She is somewhat wishy-washy in supporting Israel in the war in Gaza. Harris has been “pushing for a more sympathetic policy toward Palestinians,” according to Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).

Harris has few if any restrictions on abortion rights. “She has been the most effective voice when it comes to abortion justice … health-care justice, student debt cancellation, the racial wealth gap,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).

And as a U.S. Senator she is regarded as the most left-radical of all, even more so than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.

Her most notable and most catastrophic role is as our “Border Czar.” Suddenly, Democrats and the liberal media are jumping up and down in denial of her having that title.

However, Biden said that Harris was “leading the effort to coordinate with Mexico and other Northern Triangle nations to address issues such as the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border” in a March 24, 2021 video.

According to Politico, Biden had made Harris the "point person on immigration issues." 

"Biden tasks Harris with 'stemming the migration' on southern border," NBC News reported. A headline from the Associated Press read, "Biden taps VP Harris to lead response to border challenges."

While her official title regarding her responsibilities at the border may not have been “Border Czar,” she was clearly placed in charge of the border and its issues. And the millions who have crossed into the country illegally, and the deaths and other harm done to Americans are certainly connected directly to her.

Other favorites ideas of hers are: eliminate fracking, decriminalize illegal immigration, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, student loan cancellation, eliminate private healthcare, infanticide, oppose school choice, oppose Title IX, defund the police, dismantle ICE, support sanctuary cities, nationwide gun registration, and oppose parental rights.

Harris remains relatively unknown to most Americans.  However, if elected she will be a worse president than Joe Biden.

The dangers originating at the southern border are growing

April 16,2024

Not so long ago those in positions of authority and leadership understood the importance of controlling who may enter our country.

In 2012, after winning election to his second term, then-President Barack Obama commented, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the President, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that.” 

Another comment he made was: “Now I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.” Responding to what he termed the temptation to do that, he said, “But that’s not how our system works … That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

Several years prior to Obama’s comments, then-Sen. Joe Biden took a similar position. “It makes sense that no great nation can be in a position where they can’t control their borders. It matters how you control your borders. Not just for immigration. But it matters for drugs, terror [and] a whole range of other things.”

However, not long after expressing his true and important position on enforcing the law, Obama did what he said he was not permitted to do: he issued an executive branch memorandum titled “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA). This declaration provided amnesty for young illegal aliens, and also provided other benefits to them. All of that was un-Constitutional and illegal.

A couple of years later, Obama expanded this illegal declaration and added Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).  These two actions provided provisional amnesty to more than 4.5 million illegal aliens, and encouraged cartels to traffic illegal aliens into the country.

Statistics reported in 2015 showed that while illegal aliens constituted only about 3 percent of the U.S. population, they represented nearly 14 percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed here. That included 12 percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnappers, and 16 percent of drug offenders. Those statistics also showed percentages ranging from 40 percent to 75 percent of the most wanted criminals in border states to be illegal aliens.

A Government Accountability Office study found that between 2011 and 2016, more than 730,000 illegals were in federal, state and local prisons and jails, and accounted for 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses, including drug crimes, assaults, sex offenses, kidnappings, homicide-related offenses, and terrorism-related offenses.

Then came the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016, and his ideas about the border and actions he took were very much the same as the prior rhetoric of Obama and Biden.

Trump’s policies were aimed at reducing the numbers of illegals trying to come in, and were successful. And despite the opposition of Democrats, who claimed Trump had no mandate for the actions he took, the number of those apprehended while attempting to cross the border decreased by 88 percent from the peak under Obama. And that wasn’t because border security was weakened, but because the numbers of those trying to get in dropped substantially, due to the new level border security that was in effect.

But then in the 2020 election voters decided that they wanted Joe Biden as President. And Biden wasted no time in reversing the successful policies Trump had implemented.

The number of apprehensions of illegal aliens at the border in October prior to the election of 2020 was right around 69,000. Interestingly, by February of 2021, just one month after Biden was sworn in, that number was 100,441. That trend continued to increase, reaching 212, 672 in July. And the invasion has continued unabated since.

During Biden’s catastrophic tenure, as of February 2024 more than 7 million illegals have entered the country. Worse than that, if you can imagine anything worse than this deliberate trashing of laws and common sense, Biden has reportedly flown nearly 400,000 illegals into the country, bringing them in without having to cross the Rio Grande and battle the razor wire in Texas, and interact with the border authorities.

After cancelling Trump’s border policies, which dramatically reduced the number of illegals coming in, by executive fiat, Biden has consistently said he does not have the power that Trump had, and cannot close the border. Actually, all he has to do is reinstate Trump’s policies, and things will improve almost immediately. 

As pressure has mounted, he has changed his tune just a little, now saying he is investigating whether or not he can close the border. This “investigation” has gone on for weeks without an answer. Biden and the Democrats apparently are the only ones who do not know the answer: Yes, you can close the border.

Meanwhile, the crimes against Americans continue to rise, and deaths to Americans by drugs illegally brought in, and by criminal illegals who have walked in undisturbed. None of this seems to bother Biden. Or, maybe no one has explained this to him.

But Biden knows exactly what is going on. It’s part of the Obama/Biden plan to fundamentally transform the United States of America into another Venezuela. And the plan is working.

The introduction of wokeness into our military weakens it

August 29, 2023

Last July a retired U.S. Army general spoke to an audience on the state of the nation’s military forces. Thomas Spoehr attained the rank of Lt. General in his career spanning more than 36 years in uniform. During that time, he served in positions in the Pentagon, with the 82nd Airborne Division, the 1st Armored Division, and as Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq.

Spoehr was concerned with some things that had transpired that worked against the efficiency and strength of our military, and shared his concerns with the audience at the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series at Hillsdale College. Following are some of his concerns. 

In 2015, a U.S. Marine Corps study concluded that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries. The study was rejected by then-Secretary of the Navy, Ray Maybus.

Later, the Department of Defense under Secretary Ashton Carter opened all military combat jobs to women, committing to “gender-neutral standards” that ensured that female service members would meet the requirements. The Army began to put in place the gender-neutral test promised by Carter. 

However, after finding that women were not scoring as highly as men, the Army threw out the test. Now there is no test to determine whether any soldier can meet the fitness requirements for combat specialties.

Also, that year, President Barack Obama initiated a change to the Pentagon’s longstanding policy on transgender individuals in the military. But after he was elected President, Donald Trump put that change on hold. His Defense Secretary, James Mattis, had information showing, among other things, that transgender individuals suffering from gender dysphoria attempted suicide and experienced severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population.

The Trump administration then imposed restrictions on military service personnel suffering from gender dysphoria. However, as one of his first actions, newly elected President Joe Biden signed an executive order that cancelled those restrictions and allowed all transgender individuals to participate in our military services. Later, Biden’s administration allowed active duty military personnel to take time off from their duties to have sex-change surgery, related hormones and drugs, which would be paid for by taxpayers.

The Biden administration has also removed a policy that prohibited personnel with HIV from serving in combat zones, due to the need for special medications and the danger of transmission through shared blood. 

And in recent years, our military’s strenuous physical fitness standard has been weakened, with the goal of “leveling the playing field.” This allows people previously not up to the physical standard to now serve.

In July of last year, a drag queen story hour was scheduled at the base library of Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A drag queen was going to read to children of Air Force personnel stationed there. However, when this news reached lawmakers in the U.S., who complained to the Secretary of the Air Force, the event was cancelled.

Also, in 2021, the Navy released a video instructing Navy personnel that they need to create a “safe space for everybody.” This includes using “inclusive language,” such as saying “hey everybody,” instead of “hey guys.” Spoehr wondered what other “woke” changes might follow. 

Taking things a few steps further down the path, Biden required through an executive order that all organizations in the military services must create Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices, and to produce DEI plans and track the progress toward those goals. The purpose of this is to advance “equity for all.”

Spoehr also mentioned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the idea that capitalism is racist are also being used to indoctrinate personnel. The charge of CRT being used was denied by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, but Spoehr said much evidence contradicts Austin’s denial. 

Legislation introduced this year in Congress would halt the use of CRT, the creation of diversity offices, and the easing of physical requirements. Whether this legislation will pass is an open question.

In a write-up of Spoehr’s address printed in Hillsdale’s publication, “Imprimis,” is this: “Wokeness also comes in the form of conflating the mission of the military with environmental ideology. A year ago, President Biden told a group of overseas Air Force airmen that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that the greatest threat facing America was global warming—a claim the Joint Chiefs had to walk back. 

“In the same vein, Biden signed an executive order imposing a massive regime of environmental goals and requirements for the Department of Defense. These goals included transitioning to all electric non-tactical vehicles by 2035, carbon-free electricity for military installations by that same year, and net zero emissions from those installations by 2050. As a result, the Pentagon recently announced it will devote over $3 billion of its already stretched-thin military budget to climate-related initiatives in 2023 alone.”

The job and responsibility of the U.S. military is to protect and defend the United States. Social experimentation and political ideology weaken its ability. The military must have at every position the best qualified and capable person possible, regardless of race or gender.

The fundamental transformation of the United States is well underway

August 22, 2023

Way back when Barack Obama was campaigning for President of the United States he famously said, “we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

Years later, in an interview with then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, then-President Obama somewhat walked back his statement. But looking at what has happened between Obama’s original statement and today, it is pretty obvious that the Democrats are indeed working to fundamentally transform the country.

Democrats are increasingly comfortable attacking foundational principles and elements of American governance. Here are some of the efforts now underway.

They want to enlarge the U.S. Supreme Court by adding Democrat appointees to it. Unhappy with recent rulings, they want to add more liberal justices to the Court. 

This idea ignores the reality that the judicially conservative justices they want to put in the minority make rulings based upon existing law and constitutional principles that are understood today as when they were enacted. They are “originalists.” 

Democrats prefer instead to change these principles using a liberal majority on the Court. They want to pack it with justices who will reinterpret laws, not support them as intended.

They favor doing away with the Electoral College. One point made to support this transformation is that in a democracy, the winner of the popular vote should be President. However, as has been said here and elsewhere before, the United States is not a pure democracy; it is a republic. Thus, by design, not all decisions are to be made by 50 percent-plus-one vote.

And, only four times in the election of 46 Presidents in over 240 years has the Electoral College been in conflict with the popular vote. 

However, without the balancing of the varied interests of Americans provided by the Electoral College, every Presidential election would be decided by the big states and big cities. The rest of the country would be at their mercy. It is not what the Founders believed was best, nor is it in the best interest of all Americans for Presidents to be forever selected by a few states.

“Democrats in the Senate have introduced legislation to make Washington, DC a state, and they’re seeing overwhelming support,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote in an email. More than 40 Senators support this idea, including Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, but not West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin.

“Democrats know they can’t win with standard tactics,” McCaarthy wrote, “so they’re making a power play by trying to flip the game board to their advantage!” 

But here is why it can’t happen: Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides explicitly for a national capital that would not be part of a state nor treated as a state. It is a neutral district where representatives of all the states can meet on an equal footing to conduct the nation’s business. DC as a state, or any state, would carry too much power.

Federal regulations — both existing and planned — are limiting Americans’ ability to choose items they want and need, and making many things more difficult and expensive to produce.

Gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles are discouraged in favor of electric vehicles. Many household appliances that work on natural gas or other fuels are targeted for replacement, as are incandescent lightbulbs.

The massive set of federal regulations tell Americans things they can no longer do, and things they can no longer purchase. 

All of this is done under the premise of making things better. But ultimately, they increase the control that the federal government, under Democrat control, will hold over the people, and reduce our freedoms.

Biden’s failure to adequately secure the southern border, as required by the Constitution and laws, has allowed a huge increase in illegals entering the country.

“According to Customs and Border Protection, since January 2021 when Biden took the oath of office, there have been 5,118,661 encounters with illegal immigrants along the southern border,” as reported by Townhall.com. “Add to that the number of known ‘gotaways,’” which are illegal immigrants who were not apprehended.

“Through the first half of Biden's term from January 2021 through January 2023, Customs and Border Protection reported 1.2 million ‘gotaways.’”

While most of these people may be good people looking for a better life, others carry disease, are criminals or drug or child traffickers. The negative effects of illegals on cities and states is enormous, and the number of drug deaths has climbed.

Further, these illegal “residents” may eventually be given citizen status by the Democrat administration, without earning it, as in the past. This is both foolish and dangerous.

The ideas of Democrats/liberals/socialists are unable to win among all Americans on their merit. So, they want to gain control over the rest of us, and will do nearly anything to gain that position, and fundamental transformation is their number one tool.

And in the pure democracy into which they want to transform America, on a vote to end all fossil fuel uses, ban guns, limit free speech, have abortion after birth, or any wild idea, all it will take is a 50 percent-plus-one vote to accomplish that, or a Supreme Court with “law makers” instead of “law interpreters.”

U.S. military below acceptable standards, according to analysis

Among the numerous troublesome topics bedeviling our lives today is this: “The U.S. military is only ‘marginally’ prepared to defend America’s interests at a time when adversaries are ramping up military capabilities.” This dose of reality comes from the 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength, an annual 600-page look at our armed forces, started in 2015 by The Heritage Foundation. This edition was released earlier this month.

Of late, the concern for national security has transitioned toward cultural, social and political issues. And “military unreadiness” is the direction our armed forces leadership has moved over the last decade or so.

The military has a very narrow, critical mission. Its overriding concern is national security, and when it comes down to it, effectively fighting and winning against armed enemies. The vision held by any and all nations that might dream of defeating the United States must be that such actions will be met with overwhelming force by what is known worldwide as the most powerful and adept military on Earth. 

That is the goal that must never be sacrificed for political correctness, or social justice distractions.

Throughout history presidents have removed military commanders they viewed as inadequate or insubordinate, based upon the philosophy of the individual president. But that action must never result in weakening our national security.

President Barack Obama, tenure 2009 to 2017, declared at a political rally prior to his election that “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Among other things, Obama worked to transform the U.S. military, including imposing significant budget cuts.

An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily in October of 2013 noted that since his inauguration, Obama had purged at least 197 military officers. And that included nine senior commanding generals in 2013.

A senior retired general told The Blaze — on the condition of anonymity, because he provided services to the government and feared retribution — that "they're using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don't agree with them or do not toe the party line.” 

“For President Obama, the military of a once-feared superpower is an anachronistic vestige of an America whose exceptionalism and world leadership require repeated apologies,” the editorial stated. “It must be gutted and fundamentally transformed into a force wearing gender-neutral headgear only useful for holding the presidential umbrella when it rains. It is to be ‘his’ military and used only for ‘his’ purposes.”

As a result, the highest levels of military leadership became dysfunctional.

“The Index of U.S. Military Strength assesses the ease or difficulty of operating in key regions based on existing alliances, regional political stability, the presence of U.S. military forces, and the condition of key infrastructure,” states the executive summary of the Index. “Threats are assessed based on the behavior and physical capabilities of actors that pose challenges to vital U.S. national interests. The condition of America’s military power is measured in terms of its capability or modernity, capacity for operations, and readiness to handle assigned missions.”

The Index’s aggregate rating for all military branches is “marginal.” The individual rankings are as follows: 

Army: Marginal. A force only about 62 percent the size it should be earns the service a “weak” rating for capacity. However, 58 percent (18) of its 31 regular brigade combat teams are at the highest state of readiness, thus earning the Army a score of “very strong” on readiness and conveying the sense that the service knows what it needs to do to prepare for the next major conflict.

Navy: Marginal. The Navy is rated “marginal” on a downward slope to “weak” in readiness. It desperately needs a larger fleet of 400 ships, but current and forecasted levels of funding will prevent this from occurring for the foreseeable future.

Marine Corps: Strong. The score rose from “marginal” for two reasons: 1) The 2021 Index changed the threshold for capacity, lowering it from 36 infantry battalions to 30 in acknowledgment of the Corps’ argument that it is a one-war force that also stands ready for a broad range of smaller crisis-response tasks, and 2) because of the Corps’ extraordinary efforts to modernize and enhance its readiness during the assessed year.

Air Force: Weak, down from “marginal.” Though the Air Force possesses 86 percent of the recommended combat aircraft, public reporting of the mission readiness and physical location of these planes indicates difficulty to respond rapidly to a crisis. Its ability to recruit and retain pilots adds to its challenges.

Dismissal of senior officers that didn’t fit the president’s desires — admirals and generals, primarily — and budget cuts have reduced military readiness.

Retired Marine Lt. Col.Dakota Wood, senior research fellow with Heritage, said “This is not an indictment in any way of the men and women who serve in the military.”

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, touted former President Donald Trump’s foreign policy accomplishments, including the rebuilding of the U.S. military after nearly a decade of decline under the Obama administration.

This is yet one more area of governing that President Joe Biden would be well advised to continue. But that doesn’t fit into the Democrat’s play book.

Once upon a time, U.S. border security was an important concern!

The disgraceful chaos at the southern border is a topic of great concern to sensible Americans. It is a given that nations need secure and impenetrable borders, and levelheaded people understand that. And sometimes border policies and practices need reworking, such as after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Unbelievable as it may seem to us today, it was only 15 years ago — with the 9/11 terrorist attacks still fresh in our minds — when Congress came together in a bipartisan effort to pass the Secure Fence Act of 2006.” That comment came from Mark Morgan, in a speech delivered this past July at Hillsdale College. 

Morgan served as acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Trump administration, and as chief of U.S. Border Patrol in the Obama administration, and provided details on this action. “The Secure Fence Act directed the Department of Homeland Security to take appropriate actions to achieve ‘operational control’ over U.S. land and maritime borders to ‘prevent unlawful entry.’” The measure had the support of 80 of the 100 U.S. Senators.

“It defined operational control as the prevention of all unlawful entries into the U.S., including terrorists, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband,” he continued. “And it specifically set the goal of providing ‘at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors.’ It added thousands of Border Patrol personnel, mandated the acquisition of new technologies, and resulted in the construction of more than 650 miles of physical barrier along the southern border of the U.S. between 2006 and 2011.”

With those actions, the southern border became even more secure than it had been, sparked by concerns of additional terrorist efforts to kill Americans. And Morgan noted that there was substantial support for this action in the Congress before and after those actions were taken. 

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama said: “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.” 

And Senator Chuck Schumer said in 2009: “Illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple … People who enter the United States without permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S. legally.”

And then there was this comment: “Let me tell you something, folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons — hear me, tons — of everything from byproducts from methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin, and it’s all coming up through corrupt Mexico.” That comment was voiced by then-Senator, and current President, Joe Biden, in 2006.

But since that time, something has happened. Congressional Democrats seemingly no longer care about security at the southern border. “Some attribute the breakdown of the bipartisan consensus on securing the border to the fact that Democrats came to look on illegal immigrants as much-needed Democrat voters,” Morgan said. “For whatever reason, a decade later these same Democratic leaders were lambasting President Trump’s border wall policy as ‘immoral and ineffective,’ even ‘racist,’ and fiercely opposing any and every serious proposal aimed at enforcing immigration law.”

“One of the most ridiculous criticisms I’ve heard.” Morgan noted, “is that the wall is ‘a fourteenth century solution for a twenty-first century problem.’ The same could be said of the wheel, which also still works pretty well.” 

In the minds of at least some of today’s Congressional Democrats, the tighter and more successful border security methods of the recent past are immoral and ineffective, and trying to prevent drug dealers, child traffickers, and terrorists from entering the country is racist. Brilliant!

One of the most effective and sensible programs dealing with illegal aliens crossing the border was called the Remain in Mexico Program. It required people illegally entering or being smuggled into the country with a minor to be returned to Mexico as opposed to being released into the U.S. with only a date for a hearing that most ignore.

Joe Biden, almost as soon as he drew a breath after being sworn in, canceled the Remain in Mexico Program, replacing it with the senseless “catch and release” method that existed prior to the Trump administration’s successful alternative.

Now, however, according to Morgan, “In response to a lawsuit brought by the Texas Attorney General, a federal judge has recently ruled that the Remain in Mexico Program must be reinstated, and the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to overturn that ruling.”

This may be the best thing to occur in the Biden administration’s brief but catastrophic tenure, and Biden had nothing to do with it, other than to have cancelled it early on, and opposed its reinstatement.

It is projected that 1.7 million illegal aliens will enter the U.S. in 2021. Border Patrol documents show that more than160,000 illegal aliens have been released into the U.S. since March, often with little to no supervision.

These illegal aliens have not been vaccinated, and they have not been vetted. What could possibly go wrong? 

Need we even ask that question?

Clean Water Rule gets its long overdue and well-deserved repeal

President Donald Trump began an effort to relieve the country of an unnecessary and harmful regulation by signing an executive order in February of 2017. The order began the roll-back of the Clean Water Rule put in place by the Obama administration in 2015. The Rule was a regulation published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to clarify water resource management in the United States under a provision of the Clean Water Act of 1972. 

That action to repeal the Rule has now been finalized. It has been termed a major win for the rule of law, property rights, and the environment. It was heavily criticized for making it difficult for people to farm or even build a home on their own property.

What it did was to alter the meaning of the phrase “waters of the United States” — those waters under the control of the federal government — to include waters so small that they couldn’t even be seen by the naked eye.

Here is the way the American Farm Bureau Federation explained things: “…distant regulators using ‘desktop tools’ can conclusively establish the presence of a ‘tributary’ on private lands, even where the human eye can’t see water or any physical channel or evidence of water flow. 

“That’s right — invisible tributaries! 

“The agencies even claim ‘tributaries’ exist where remote sensing and other desktop tools indicate a prior existence of bed, banks, and [ordinary high-water marks], where these features are no longer present on the landscape today.”

That definition of what regulated “waters” were literally made it impossible for property owners to know what on their property is or might be covered by the Rule, but subjected them to heavy civil and/or criminal penalties for breaking the Rule.

It would therefore have been possible for dry land that holds water for a few days after heavy rain to be ruled a “water” under the Rule. That meant a mud puddle could have fallen under federal control.

The result was that some perfectly good lands were judged improper for projects their owners intended to use them for, and in the worst cases, land owners were punished for what were otherwise normal, acceptable land uses.

The vagueness of the rule, and thus the danger it imposed on property owners who want to use their property for their chosen purposes, such as to farm it or to develop it, was substantial enough to have drawn criticism from then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy back in 2016: “[T]he Clean Water Act is unique in both being quite vague in its reach, arguably unconstitutionally vague, and certainly harsh in the civil and criminal sanctions it puts into practice.”

Its reach also encroached on states’ rights, the ability of the individual states to have much to say about properties within their own borders, an important element of the restrictions imposed on the federal government by the U.S. Constitution.

Such examples of overreaching by the federal government are not difficult to find. They have been growing, as legislators have enacted overreaching laws, and bureaucrats have implemented regulations with the force of law. All of which puts regular citizens at risk of breaking one of the thousands of federal no-nos.

On that topic, Townhall.com said the following in 2016: “There are at least 5,000 federal criminal laws, with 10,000-300,000 regulations that can be enforced criminally. In fact, our entire criminal code has become a leviathan unto itself. In 2003, there were only 4,000 offenses that carried criminal penalties. By 2013, that number had grown by 21 percent to 4,850. The code has become so big, that the Congressional Research Service and the American Bar Association simply do not have enough staff to adequately categorize every law we have on the books.”

This information becomes even more important when considering what might happen after November of 2020 when the nation elects its president for the next four years.

This land, built on the principals of personal freedoms and limited government, has already seen exponential growth in the size and reach of the federal government. The more laws, regulations and rules we have on the books, the less freedom the people have. The number of decrees is unfathomably large and therefore the average person, or even those knowledgeable about laws, cannot possibly know everything for which we citizens can be criminally or civilly punished.

While President Trump believes in removing regulations that needlessly or improperly interfere with normal activities — like the Clean Water Rule — and reducing taxes that allow Americans to keep more of their hard-earned income, the socialistic promises offered by Democrat hopefuls will do a sharp 180 on both of those things.

With a compliant Congress and like-thinking, over-zealous bureaucrats, if one of the more radical folks running for the Democrat nomination gets elected, they could initiate scores of new mandates and prohibitions, further limiting the freedoms of law-abiding Americans.

Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke gave a hint to the thinking of some of these people: “Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47."

This is precisely the opposite of the attitude we need in the White House.

Do Republicans realize that this is a pivotal time for America?

 

One thing most of us likely can agree on is that this has been a season of tragedy in the United States, most recently with the California wine country wild fires, and before that the Las Vegas shooting, and the hurricanes. Where disagreement thrives is on how we should respond to them.

During the presidency of Barack Obama our government took a sharp turn to the left, a dramatic increase in the much more gentle leftward drift it has been in for a long time. The election of Donald Trump was in large measure a backlash against Obama’s socialistic ideas, the Democrats’ abandonment of many of the values normal Americans observe, and the prospect of more of the same from Hillary Clinton.

So the voter’s said a loud “No!” to continuing the leftist governance of the Democrats by electing a Republican president and giving the GOP control of both houses of Congress. Unfortunately, what should have been a concentrated effort to start restoring Constitutional government has been put on hold by an obstinate faction of Republicans, some of whom have fallen victim to their own liberal impulses, and others who have let their egos overpower their sense of duty to their constituents, and have given in to hurt feelings in reaction to Donald Trump’s tweeting addiction, which too often gets personal.

If there is good news in this scenario for traditional Americans it is that the Trump presidency is not quite a year old, and there is time for both Trump and many Congressional Republicans to put these personal feelings behind them and get important things done.

But a sense of urgency about the Republican failures is certainly justified. A recent poll shows that a disturbing percentage of millennials would support an openly socialist candidate who follows in the misguided footsteps of Obama and company, precisely the opposite of what our country needs. If their voter participation rate increases, they could add significant support for socialist government, so Republicans had better get busy undoing the socialist initiatives and returning our government to its traditional, constitutional orientation.

Perhaps a lesson in what happens to good people when they are forced to live under the leftist, socialist prescription for governance will help, and there is probably no better example than that of Venezuela.

“As with all socialist systems, present-day Venezuela is marked by vicious poverty and a parasitical yet gilded ruling class,” wrote the President of The Mises Institute, Jeff Deist. In “The Austrian,” the Institute’s bi-monthly periodical, he wrote, “Sold to gullible Westerners as egalitarianism and concern for average people, socialism always makes ordinary citizens far worse off while destroying any hope for upward mobility. It is truly the ideology of the 1 percent.”

Economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises, after whom the Institute is named, said this about socialism in his treatise “Human Action”: “In a socialist economy it is only the government’s value judgments that count, and the people are deprived of any means of making their own value judgments prevail.”

Raphael A. Acevedo and Luis B. Cirocco are Venezuelans who participated in this year’s Mises University at the Institute as presenters on the subject of socialism’s impact on the lives of their country’s citizens. They wrote an account of Venezuela’s slide from relative freedom to a socialist hellhole for the current issue of “The Austrian.”

A hundred years ago the country began a lucrative period when it entered the international oil race, Acevedo and Cirocco write, and things were pretty good for a while, with not much government control of economic interests. It even overthrew a dictator and became a democracy in 1958.

However, the first democratically elected president, Romulo Betancourt, was a communist-turned-social democrat, and “he started destroying the economic institutions we had by implementing price controls, rent controls and other regulations we hadn’t had before,” they said, and then he created a new constitution hostile to private property.

Betancourt’s successors continued his socialist tendencies, and then in 1998 Hugo Chavez won election, promising to replace the country’s light socialism with more radical socialism. After Chavez’s death in 2013, Nicholas Maduro followed, and introduced a new constitution, which almost totally abolished private property.

“So, socialism is the cause of the Venezuelan misery,” Acevedo and Cirocco write. “Venezuelans are starving, eating garbage, losing weight. Children are malnourished. Anyone in Venezuela would be happy to eat out of America’s trashcans. It would be considered gourmet.”

And their summary of the country’s downfall: “As Venezuelans, our poor understanding of the importance of freedom and free markets has created our current disaster.”

We Americans have lost much of our freedom to government over the decades, and that increased substantially during the tragic Obama years.

Today we find that heavy federal intrusions in the area of healthcare through regulation and Obamacare raise prices and reduce access; the EPA’s regulatory over-reach aimed at killing the coal industry put thousands out of work; abundant welfare programs dampen the normal tendency of people to take care of themselves; the federal government controls much of K-12 education through financial “incentives” and Common Core requirements.

Republicans can and must address and reverse these trends. So get busy.

Some good news for local economies battered by the War on Coal

It is a common idea among many Americans that coal as a major industrial fuel is dead, or at least dying, and cleaner fuels, like wind and solar energy, and natural gas, are taking over. There is some truth there; but there are other influences on coal’s recent decline.

Less costly natural gas has become the fuel of choice in power plants and for other industrial uses, not because of the natural relative price of the fuels, but because of the cost of regulatory demands on mining and burning coal that require enormous investments that have priced coal higher than natural gas. Remember former President Barack Obama’s prediction: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them.”

These regulations produced the closing of more than 400 coal-burning power plants, which dropped the demand for coal, and altogether put 63,000 people in the coal industry, electric production industry and related support industries out of work in just the last few years.

At just the right time hydraulic fracturing (fracking) became popular, after lying mostly dormant since its first commercial application in 1957, and that produced a boom in natural gas production at attractive prices to compete with coal.

Many think burning less coal is a great thing, because burning coal fouls the air and is dangerous to our health, a “truth” which loses importance when you know the actual infinitesimal improvement in air quality derived from burning less coal.

However, considering all those factors, and paraphrasing a famous quote attributed to Mark Twain, the rumors of coal’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Of course, coal will never regain its former dominance among industrial fuels; time and technological/industrial evolution would just as certainly, although much more gradually, have eaten into coal’s popularity without the help of the Obama War on Coal.

But the regulatory adjustments of the Trump administration, the growing acceptance of the idea that the climate change/global warming mania is dramatically overstated, the reality that coal is still the best fuel for many things, the fact that many countries that do not have domestic coal supplies depend upon it for fuel, and the improvement in coal-burning technology all point to a continued market for American coal.

And let’s not forget that fossil fuels made up 81 percent of the fuels used to produce electricity in 2016, and coal is still the primary fossil fuel in electricity production.

Industry insiders, like Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray, see a partial resurgence in coal. “Coal will grow back,” he told Fox Business Network’s Stuart Varney. “But we’re in a decline right now.”

He went on to say that Trump “can bring back at least half of those [63,000 lost] jobs as the economy grows and as he ends the regulations on coal.” He noted that we have not had a level playing field in coal; “the government has been picking winners and losers.”

And he told Maria Bartiromo, also on Fox Business Network, former President Obama closed 411 coal-fired plants, and that the Clean Power Plan which Trump ended recently, would have closed 56 more plants. That, he said, would have caused a steep spike in electric rates.

“As [Trump] grows the economy [and] brings jobs back to America, coal will participate in that growth because we are one-sixth the cost of a windmill and one-fourth the cost of natural gas,” Murray said.

Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio, said, “The coal industry knows and understands how to mine coal … and protect our environment. We don’t do it the way it was done 50, 60 years ago.”

Here are a few pieces of evidence:

* Reports from the Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia coalfield regions say that mines are cranking back up and miners are being rehired. Train yards are seeing cars filled with coal moving through them in greater numbers.

* Bluefield State College recently held a Job Fair to immediately fill 85 open coal positions at Wyoming and McDowell county mines that mine coal used in making steel.

* Fox News reports that in Wise County, Virginia, a “long-awaited revival is under way in this beleaguered Central Appalachia community where residents see coal as the once and future king. Trucks are running again. Miners working seven days a week cannot keep up with current demand.”

* Coal exports through Hampton Roads last month rose more than 50 percent from last year's level, led by a nearly five-fold increase at Newport News' Pier IX, according to the most recent Virginia Maritime Association statistics. "A lot of mines are open again," said Harry Childress, president of the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance."

Few if any argue that the coal industry will return to its former greatness, but it will certainly endure for many years at a lower level if natural forces are allowed to work, free of politically correct environmental engineering.

When you replace regulations resulting from selfish ideological goals with a business regulatory level based upon common sense, good things can happen.

And for areas of the country like ours, that have suffered so greatly from Obama’s over-zealous EPA, this is good news.

As Obama exits the White House, a look at some of his presidency

 

Back in 2007, a candidate for president named Barack Obama arose from near obscurity to seek the Democrat Party nomination for the 2008 election. He won the nomination, defeating a well-known opponent, and then won the election to become the first black/African-American President of the United States, and would serve two full terms.

So much promise surrounded this event that even before his inauguration he was being spoken of in glowing terms because he was the first of his race and for all the great and wonderful things that would occur, based on his campaign messages.

The respected Nobel Committee even awarded him its Peace Prize in December of 2009," only several months after he was sworn in, for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The stage was set for great things; a barrier had been breached. At last America had its first black president. But, alas, so much good that could have happened, didn’t.

Obama doesn’t understand or appreciate the nation he was elected to lead, so his goal wasn’t to honor and advance America’s traditional principles and standards, but to “fundamentally transform” it, as he said repeatedly. That transformation hasn’t been especially attractive.

He promised to have the most transparent administration in history. Yet so much of Obama’s personal background documentation, like his college records, has been safely hidden away from the people he serves. A Townhall.com article says “a new report out finds that he hasn't even run the most transparent administration since the previous one.”

Quoting an analysis of federal data produced by the Associated Press, the Townhall article continues: “More often than ever, the administration censored government files or outright denied access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, cited more legal exceptions it said justified withholding materials and refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be especially newsworthy.”

Taking office on the downside of a significant recession, eight years later the economy has still not fully regained its former strength. He touts the U-3 unemployment rate as proof that the Obama recovery was successful, but tens of millions who couldn’t find a job dropped out of the workforce, thereby producing an unemployment rate in the respectable range near 5 percent.

The U-6 rate, which counts those discouraged workers that the U-3 ignores – the more accurate figure – sits at approximately twice the U-3 rate, and the Labor Force Participation Rate, which shows what portion of eligible workers are working or looking for a job, is at its lowest point since the late 1970s.

The nation’s productivity has been handcuffed by over-regulation and punishing tax rates, which encourage businesses to move jobs and factories to other nations where the business environment is friendlier. A healthy GDP rate is above the 3 percent mark, but Real Clear Politics (RCP) reports, “Under President Obama, annual economic growth from 2010 through the first three quarters of 2016 averaged 2.1 percent, which RCP termed “subpar.”

Where domestic policy is concerned, The Daily Signal provided these tidbits from The Heritage Foundation last week:

·         In 2009 when Obama took office the National Debt was $10.6 trillion; today it is $19.5 trillion, and counting; nearly twice the rate he inherited.

·         200 new regulations have increased the regulatory burden by $108 billion annually, a burden on the shoulders of everyday Americans. Regulations aimed at climate change will kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and increase what American households spend on electricity by 13 to 20 percent over the next 20 years.

·         The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. Many Americans have not been able to keep their doctors; 12 of the 23 co-ops have failed, costing taxpayers $1.2 billion, and forcing 740 thousand to scramble to try to find health insurance.

·         Food stamp claimants rose from fewer than 30 million in 2008 to 46.5 million by 2014.

·         Obama’s imperial presidency granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and mandated transgender bathroom policies for public schools by using executive orders to circumnavigate Congress to get his way.

Obama claims that 75 consecutive months of positive job creation during his term is the best ever, which is true. However, this stretch produced 11.3 million new jobs, which is less than two of the last five presidents, according to a report by Business Insider, which says, “Obama ranks third among the past five presidents in total job creation over the length of his presidency — in front of both George H.W. and George W. Bush, but behind Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan,” with Clinton creating about 23 million and Reagan creating about 16 million.

Under Barack Obama’s heavily ideological presidency America is weaker, more divided, less trusted by its allies, and suffers other ill effects. Voters regarded his leadership as poor enough to cause them to abandon the Democrat Party, producing heavy losses at the federal and state levels.

Despite all of this, in Obama’s highly narcissistic perspective, his was a wonderfully successful presidency. But by American standards, his presidency represents a clear and dramatic failure of leadership, and it will take years to repair the damage his presidency has produced.