How to hold elections during the age of the coronavirus pandemic?

Every true American understands the importance of her/his right to vote and the importance of secure national, state and local election systems that allow us to express our preferences for elected officials.

Elections must be conducted in a secure, fair and sensible manner. Only eligible voters — which, in most every case, involves only citizens — must cast ballots in our elections. And measures are required to assure, to the greatest possible extent, that only eligible voters vote.

Conveniences have been made a part of the election system to make voting easier. But elections are far too important to allow measures to weaken the systems for no better reason than for a little voter convenience. Having to endure a little inconvenience in order to secure this vital process is a small price to pay.

In certain circumstances, absentee ballots may be allowed. Military personnel and others who must be away from their voting district on Election Day, as well as seniors and others who are unable to get to the polls, are legitimate candidates for mail-in ballots. But we must recognize that voting by mail is an insecure process — one with great opportunity for fraud.

And can you guess which voting convenience has the most support among those who wish to transform the country?

Absentee voter fraud — voting by mail — was so great a problem in Florida, Missouri, New York and North Carolina that some elections in those states were overturned.

The case in North Carolina involved the 9^th Congressional District race, which the state election board overturned due to illegal vote harvesting, including forging and altering absentee ballots.

Under present circumstances, tens of millions of eligible American voters are under restrictions, including no gatherings of more than 10 at a time, social distancing, masks, gloves, stay-at-home orders or recommendations, etc. The primary elections are upon us and Election Day, 2020 is a bit more than six months away.

Some opportunists want existing election system weaknesses to remain in place into the future, and for the upcoming elections to be carried out by mail. All in the name of safety, they say. As genuine as these concerns may be for some of them, this suggestion is a prescription for voter fraud at a previously unimagined level.

And with the help of absentee voting the evil orange man, if he has his way, will easily win reelection.

Or, perhaps the other side will do the better job of “getting out the vote,” particularly since it is the liberals/Democrats that are campaigning for voting by mail.

Currently, millions of those whose names are on voter rolls are deceased, have moved, or are ineligible for various reasons. Automatically mailing ballots to these people does not merely allow for the ballots to be stolen, marked, and returned, it invites that result.

If you are still not convinced that voting by mail is fertile ground for fraud, consider this: a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch against the city of Los Angeles and the state of California alleging failure to maintain accurate voter registration rolls has been settled.

California and Los Angeles agreed to remove 1.5 million individuals who were not removed when they became ineligible to vote. It is fair to wonder what might happen to 1.5 million ballots mailed to people who are ineligible to vote, many of whom no longer reside at the address on their registration.

Naysayers contend that there is no real voter fraud threat. And those in the “nothing to see here; just move along” faction prefer a system that can be manipulated for political gain.

But even if the contention is true that no real threat exists, what harm is there in continually examining election systems, and strengthening them to prevent fraud?

However, voter fraud is a true threat. More than 1,200 instances of proven fraud can be found in The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database. These cases include absentee ballot fraud.

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law, saying, “flagrant examples of such fraud … have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists [including] Indiana’s own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor … [and] demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real, but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.”

The most secure voting procedure is when poll workers are presented required evidence by potential voters proving they are who they say they are, and that the person is properly documented as being an eligible voter. That evidence is a valid photo ID.

Accurate voter rolls, and eligible voters with a photo ID appearing at the appropriate polling place, staffed by people dedicated to allowing only eligible voters to vote are essential elements in a secure system.

Even if the COVID-19 virus has not completely run its course before Election Day, or if it reappears during flu season, as has been suggested, polling places can be operated safely. Voters and poll workers must conduct themselves appropriately.

Under such circumstances voting in person at polling places is safe, and is also the most secure method of holding elections.

Coronavirus developments: radical restrictions, and a new wrinkle

There is a lot of concern about the on-going restrictions on activities to prevent spreading the coronavirus.

National, state and local leaders must walk a fine line between restrictions for safety and not infringing unnecessarily on their citizens’ freedoms. People are beginning to object to some of the restrictions. And a look at the things some state and local governments are doing reveals just how far over the line some have gone.

One episode in Baltimore reportedly appeared to be a drug raid, as police surrounded the building. It was Sunday, and the building was a church, in which fewer than 10 people had gathered, appropriately spaced, as per instructions. In fact, there were more police present than worshipers.

At a drive-in service in Mississippi, attendees were fined $500, even though they did not leave their cars. And in Kentucky on Easter weekend, police were dispatched to churches to record the license numbers of cars in the parking lots. Three Massachusetts men were arrested, and faced the possibility of 90 days in jail, for crossing state lines and … playing golf.

In some states, citizens are urged to snitch on their neighbors who do not obey the strict stay-at-home edicts. Hardened criminals are being released from prison so they won’t catch the virus, while stores that sell guns to people for their protection are closed. However, pot and booze stores remain open.

In Brighton, Colorado, a family was in an empty park, with the father and daughter playing softball, when police showed up. Officers alleged that the father and daughter had violated the social distancing guidelines. But none of the officers obeyed the social distancing rules they were enforcing.

The father, believing he had done nothing wrong, refused to show the police his ID, and was summarily handcuffed right in front of his wife and daughter and put in the back seat of a police car. Later, the father said, “During the contact, none of the officers had masks on, none of them had gloves on, and they’re in my face handcuffing me, they’re touching me.”

He was released from custody after several minutes, and later was issued an apology from the City. Better late than never.

Not all restrictions are so wildly radical, but citizens in at least six states have started protests over what they see as unreasonable restrictions.

Michigan bans “all public and private gatherings,” but still allows in-person lottery sales. Residents and citizens who own homes in the state in addition to their primary residence may not access their second homes.

A Facebook post declared, “Dope stores? Open. Abortion clinics? Open. Churches? Shut down. Local businesses? Going broke!” At a large protest rally in the Michigan state capitol, protesters carried signs that read, “tyranny worse than the virus” and “honk if you love liberty.”

People in stores that sell both food and other materials were able to buy food, but were prohibited from buying other products, such as hardware supplies and gardening seeds, which were deemed “non-essential.”

Michigan House speaker, Lee Chatfield, posted on Twitter: “Non-essential in Michigan: Lawn care, construction, fishing if boating with a motor, realtors, buying seeds, home improvement equipment and gardening supplies. Essential in Michigan: Marijuana, lottery and alcohol. Let’s be safe and reasonable. Right now, we’re not!”

In too many cases, efforts at imposing safe behaviors have turned into authoritarian malfeasance.

As the struggles against COVID-19 continue, a professor at Tel Aviv University has discovered a new feature of the virus. Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel has determined from analyzing data from nine countries where the virus infected thousands — U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain —that regardless of how the country reacted to the virus, all countries experienced common infection patterns.

“His graphs show that all countries experienced seemingly identical coronavirus infection patterns, with the number of infected peaking in the sixth week and rapidly subsiding by the eighth week,” the Townhall.com story reported.

“There is a decline in the number of infections even [in countries] without closures, and it is similar to the countries with closures,” Ben Israel stated in his report.

Addressing Israel’s extremely strict quarantine and closure restrictions, he told the Israeli news agency Mako, “I think it's mass hysteria. I have no other way to describe it. 4,500 people die each year from the flu in Israel because of complications, so close the country because of that? No. I don't see a reason to do it because of a lower-risk epidemic.” 

The US response is less drastic than Israel’s response. But if the professor’s conclusion is correct, the US also has over-reacted, and is still doing so. The frighteningly high predictions of deaths and infections in the models followed by the administration’s virus task force have been greatly lowered. But the restrictions based on those incorrect models remain in place.

Each day those restrictions are in place, our economy incurs further damage, more businesses are on the edge of permanent closure, and people suffer even more of the dangers of isolation, including death.

We need to begin restoring normalcy to the country, and in doing so we must use common sense and practice responsible socializing.

Opportunism is alive and thriving among Democrat politicians

“Some things never change” is a comment we hear when something negative occurs, yet again. The onset of the coronavirus has turned the country upside down, put millions in jeopardy of one sort or another, and created a situation where national, state and local officials felt the need to enforce behavioral restrictions on citizens.

With that tumult, perhaps that phrase was brought to mind from the fact Congressional Democrats remain undeterred by the pandemic, and are dutifully pursuing their regressive goal of “progressivism.”

Senate Democrats on Thursday stalled the passage of a $250 billion relief package designed to aid small businesses. Trying to speed up the passage of the needed funding, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, called for a vote by unanimous consent.

But rather than pass a measure nearly all senators supported, Democrats requested protections for minority-owned businesses and additional aid to local health care providers, blocking the measure that was intended as an addition to the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which gives forgivable loans to small businesses.

McConnell had said to the Senate Thursday morning, “Do not block emergency aid you do not oppose just because you want something more.” His words fell on deaf ears.

Following the failed vote, McConnell said he did not oppose the Democrats’ requests on principle, but that the Paycheck Protection Program needed urgent relief.

This effort to foul up the legislative process was not the first time Democrats had tried to force unrelated measures into a time-sensitive coronavirus support bill.

On Sunday, March 22, as the bipartisan agreement between the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate reached over the weekend was about to come to a vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, showed up with a wish list of “progressive” goodies, among which were:

1. Union Giveaways:

• Nullifies the White House executive orders on federal collective bargaining and codifies taxpayer-funded union official time.

• Requires a labor union representative on every airline’s board of directors.

• Multiemployer pension bailout lacking needed reforms.

• Permanently raises the minimum wage to $15 for any business that receives federal aid for COVID-19.

• Cancels all debt owed by the U.S. Postal Service to the Treasury.

2. Green New Deal priorities:

• Requires all airlines that receive assistance to offset carbon emissions for domestic flights by 2025.

• Includes a $1 billion “cash for clunkers” airplane program where the Transportation Department buys fuel-inefficient planes from airlines in exchange for agreeing to buy new ones.

• Includes expansive new tax-credit for solar and wind energy.

3. Student Loan Forgiveness:

• $10,000 blanket loan forgiveness.

4. Federalizing Elections:

• Mandates how states must run elections, including the nationalization of ballot harvesting, requiring early voting, same day registration, and no-excuse vote by mail.

• Puts states at risk of costly litigation if they are unable to implement these stringent mandates ahead of the 2020 election.

Fearing they might again lose an election to Donald Trump, presented with the opportunity provided by the coronavirus crisis, and bringing back the elements that didn’t get through in the stimulus bill to change the existing election process, House Democrats have created a measure mis-labeled as the “Take Responsibility Act.”

This recipe for Democrat victory calls for legislative changes to remove the ability of states to manage the “Times, Places, and Manner” of elections as called for in the Constitution’s Article I provisions.

Changes include:

• states must allow 15 consecutive days of early voting

• makes absentee voting universal

• prohibits “requiring identification to obtain an absentee ballot”

• allows “another person” to drop off absentee ballots and removes limits on how many can be delivered by one person

• ensures provisional ballots are always counted (rendering them no longer “provisional”) and provides “blank” (no printed name) absentee ballots to citizens and service members overseas 

Anyone see opportunities for fraud here?

In signing gun control bills into law last week, Virginia’s Democrat Governor Ralph Northam said, “We lose too many Virginians to gun violence.” Notice he didn’t say we lose too many Virginians to “guns,” he said, we lose too many Virginians to gun “violence.”

It is violence that costs too many Virginians their lives, so instead of laws against guns, why doesn’t the General Assembly pass, and the governor sign, laws against violence?

Oh, that’s right. We already have laws against violence, but those laws don’t encroach on citizens’ Second Amendment rights. But the new laws do. And anything Virginia Democrats can do to interfere with the Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, they will do.

And to make the fairy tale complete, still seeking the dreamt of, and so-far elusive coup de grace: yet another investigation into Trump.

Pelosi made it official last week: House Democrats are opening yet another inquisition against Trump. The last dismal failure actually did accomplish something, however. It distracted the Congress and administration from the developing crisis of the Wuhan virus, which they then could — and did — twist into the charge that Trump did not act swiftly enough to protect the country, and now by golly, that needs to be investigated.

You have to admire the Democrats’ devotion to bring Trump down, so strong as to eclipse any other consideration, like the welfare of the country and their constituents.

Fear, questions and rumors complicate the coronavirus situation

The thought of being infected by the COVID-19 virus is truly scary. The numbers are big. On Monday, the number of Americans infected was 337,933, and the number of Americans who have succumbed to the disease was 9,653. The number of deaths after the virus has run its course is predicted to be 200,000 or more, according to some models.

A new model predicts coronavirus deaths will peak in the United States on April 16, though the research is a preprint, which means it has not yet been peer reviewed. The peer review process is a vital part of assessing new medical research and identifies weaknesses in its assumptions, methods and conclusions. This prediction could very well change.

Accompanying the actual news about the virus are rumors about the pandemic. One says it did not come from a wet market in Wuhan, China as is commonly believed, but from a biological laboratory located there. Another said that the lab developed the virus and purposely released it as a biological weapon against China’s enemies.

In another storyline, a guy claiming to have been employed in a management position in a high-tech firm, and therefore possessing special “inside” information, said that the pandemic isn’t a virus at all, but the effects of radiation poisoning from 5G technology. And it’s all part of a plot by a select few individuals who are determined to wipe out much of human life and take control of Earth.

If the latter theory were true, we might as well go back to work and forget about social distancing and hand-washing; we are all at great risk from 5G, no matter what we do.

As the coronavirus rages, we don’t need bright, happy fairy tales. We also don’t need dark, misery-laced horror stories. We need factual information, the good and the bad, absent emotional baggage. On this point, both President Donald Trump and the news media need to sharpen up.

Trump often puts things in a good light, sometimes in words that are much too positive. Embellishing is a common practice among people trying to persuade. The media, on the other hand, often reports things with a negative tone, frequently more negative than reality requires.

When Trump speaks in traditional Trump-speak, the media accuses him of lying. When the media accuses Trump of lying, he accuses the media of “fake news.”

The news business involves telling people the facts of a story. Report what Trump said, his actual words. Don’t tell us what some reporter or editor thinks he meant. If his meaning is unclear, ask for clarification.

An example, cited in a previous column: Trump said, “And this is their new hoax,” referring to the way Democrats were treating the administration’s response to the virus. This statement was misreported in reports from several respected media sources as Trump calling the virus a hoax. Is that incompetence, or politics?

Our lives have been substantially affected by COVID-19.  The tragedy and pain of suffering and death from it are enormous. And fear is at epidemic levels. Our lives have been turned upside-down, with businesses and schools closed, jobs lost and people told to stay home.

However, some more positive aspects of the pandemic can give some relief to the sometimes-overwhelming negative aspects. While America has recorded 9,653 deaths as of Monday, 17,582 infected people had recovered. And that does not count those who didn’t know they were infected and suffered no symptoms.

And the roughly 338,000 Americans who had been confirmed as infected as of yesterday is only about one percent of the nation’s 330,000,000 total residents.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) produced a model of the virus, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This model has been widely cited as what to expect.

Writing for Townhall.com, Derek Hunter looked at the model’s projections compared to reality. He wrote, “While the reporting data from some states are lagging, others have provided information that calls into question the validity of the whole model, and with it, all the actions taken by government.”

Citing the IHME model he noted that on April 4th, from 120,963 to 203,436 Americans would require hospitalization, but only 18,998 actually were hospitalized.

Given that not all states had reported complete statistics when the count was taken, Hunter notes that those whose report was incomplete were smaller states with less serious effects. Therefore, even if the reported number was doubled, it was still far below the projection.

Models are informed guesses based upon a data set. The problem is which one is selected, and how much damage will be done if it turns out to be the wrong.

As of April 6, worldometer.info reported the following worldwide statistics: Of the 1,287,284 confirmed cases, 70,540, or 5.5 percent of the total, have died; and 271,950, or 21.1 percent, recovered or were discharged.

In the U.S. there are as of yesterday 337,933 identified positive cases, according to dailyrecord.com, and 9,653, or 2.9 percent have died, and 17,582, or 5.2 percent have recovered.

This isn’t good news, but it demonstrates that reality isn’t as bad as we may think.

The coronavirus COVID-19 problems are not limited to illness

The coronavirus COVID-19 situation threatens both the health of the people and nation’s economic health. And efforts to protect either side of that coin can endanger the other side.

Keeping Americans safe from the virus and possible death is of greatest importance, but when the virus crisis is over, we don’t want to find a decimated American economy, with hundreds or thousands of businesses permanently shuttered, and thousands or millions of previously employed Americans on the unemployment line.

These are the two serious challenges from the virus, and negotiating the proper balance between them is a tricky task. We want to keep people separated from others to reduce the spread of the virus, but we can’t keep the economy in this heavily shut-down state for so long that it does serious damage.

The White House Coronavirus Task Force is staffed with medical professionals and scientists who are advising President Donald Trump on how the country should respond to this crisis.

The actions that have been taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 were based on the Imperial College London Model developed by Professor Neil Ferguson. The Imperial model predicted that up to 2.2 million Americans could die from the virus if nothing is done to stop it, and that it would peak in June. The recommended social distancing and self-isolation policies were put in place in response to that study.

Then last week Oxford University epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta published an article on another model of the virus developed at her university. The Oxford model suggests that the virus had been in the UK for at least a month earlier than originally thought, and if so, then perhaps as much as half the population had already been exposed to it, and most cases resolved themselves without any medical issues, and without an awareness that a new virus was present.

“I am surprised that there has been such unqualified acceptance of the Imperial model,” Gupta commented, arguing that the model is highly flawed.

The same condition that Gupta’s model suggests occurred in the UK may also have existed in the U.S. People with the same symptoms as with COVID-19 infection would not have been diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection, since we had little or no information on the virus, or didn’t know it was present in the country at that time. Ferguson has now revised his initial predictions downward, but believes the Oxford model is too optimistic.

The economy is struggling, and the longer these measures are in place, the worse it will get. Many businesses have closed or are working on reduced hours, and many workers have been laid off, schools are closed and children are at home. 

The longer businesses are closed or experiencing substantially lower revenue, the greater the chances that many will die and be unable to reopen, millions will be unemployed, due to the resulting job shortage. And then there is the shortage of goods and services these closed businesses are no longer producing.

Economist Thomas Friedman addresses the situation that the coronavirus taskforce faces in an op-ed in The New York Times. “Our leaders are not flying completely blind: They are working off the advice of serious epidemiologists and public health experts,” he wrote. “Yet we still need to be careful about ‘group think,’ which is a natural but dangerous reaction when responding to a national and global crisis. We’re making decisions that affect the whole country and our entire economy — therefore, small errors in navigation could have huge consequences.”

Acknowledging the seriousness of the virus and the critical need for doctors and nurses, hospital beds, critical care beds and medical equipment for those who are suffering, Friedman calls for rapid, and widespread testing to “surgically minimize the threat of this virus to those most vulnerable while we maximize the chances for as many Americans as possible to safely go back to work as soon as possible.” He then cited an unnamed expert who thinks that “could happen in as early as a few weeks.”

It is imperative that businesses should reopen as soon as they can do so safely, so that people can get back on the job. Business that are closed cannot produce the goods and services that the nation and its people rely on, and the longer the halt in production lasts, the more serious the shortages become. 

The stimulus package that Congress passed will help people cope by giving them money, but it will not address the problem of the insufficient supply of needed goods and services, such as producing and delivering food and medicines throughout the country. 

The number of Americans suffering from the COVID-19 virus is large, but it is a very small percentage of the population. On Sunday, 138,879 people were confirmed to have the virus. That is a tiny fraction of 1.0 percent of the 330,000,000 people in the country.

That number will continue to rise until we get control of the virus, and we must work hard to keep it as small as possible.

But we must also act to protect the economy from collapse. If we don’t, economic circumstances will add to the number of deaths the virus itself is causing.

The coronavirus COVID-19 is not the only threat China represents

Many years ago, there was a very popular movie, “The China Syndrome.” It was a thriller about a potential cataclysmic event that could possibly destroy China, due to a problem in an American nuclear power plant. We now face another sort of China Syndrome.

This one originated in China, and has already killed thousands, and will likely kill thousands more around the globe. It was in China where the novel coronavirus COVID-19 first appeared and eventually was made public.

It angers many people when this disease is identified by its country of origin as the “Chinese virus,” or the “China virus.” But doing so is not racist. And it is not xenophobic.

It is no more so than “Chinese food,” “Chinese Communists,” or “Chinese checkers.” Many other diseases have likewise been named after their countries of origin: German measles, Spanish flu, Japanese encephalitis, Ebola virus, West Nile virus, and MERS (the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome). These names merely accurately identify the diseases’ origin; they reflect reality. Nothing more.

Carelessly slinging around epithets, like calling the use of the term “Chinese virus” racist, and mis-labeling people as racist, xenophobes, etc., devalues those terms. Where Donald Trump is concerned, this happens often. Such usage gives credibility to the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” It may be as real as the China virus.

That China is no friend of the United States is a story with a long, long history. In recent history, its tariffs on American products have worked against us for many, many years, reaching a record $375 billion in 20l7. Its penchant for intellectual property theft, stealing American technology through the work of spies acting as workers or associates, and often requiring companies to voluntarily share new technology with the Chinese Communist Party in return for being allowed to market products to China, also severely damage the U.S.

The onset of the coronavirus has thrown spotlights on the dangerous degree to which pharmaceuticals are now made in, and controlled by, China. Irresistible incentives offered to American drug companies resulted in the transfer of production of drugs from America to China.

“Multinational drug companies, many of them headquartered in the United States, began buying ingredients for critical drugs in China after the U.S.-China Fair Trade Agreement passed nearly two decades ago,” notes an article in U.S. News. “State-owned Chinese companies, buoyed by heavy government subsidies, set their prices so low that they were able to undercut established manufacturers in the U.S. and elsewhere, prompting them to shut down their plants and move their operations to China,” the article continued. 

China’s “Thousand Talents program tries to recruit experts from Western universities to work in China and ramp up its progress in science and technology,” reported NBC News in January. An FBI complaint charges that the program has “rewarded individuals for stealing proprietary information and violating export controls.”

NBC also reported on the arrest of Charles M. Lieber, the chair of Harvard's Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Lieber is alleged to have failed to disclose his involvement in the Thousand Talents program to the Department of Defense.

Lieber was allegedly paid $50,000 monthly by China's Wuhan University of Technology, and also received $158,000 in living expenses, and a $1.74 million award to set up a research lab at the Wuhan University.

Knox News, the online presence of the Knoxville News Sentinel, reported in February that “Anming Hu, an associate professor in [the University of Tennessee’s] Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, faces three counts of wire fraud and three counts of making false statements, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Hu allegedly neglected to make UT aware of an affiliation with a university run by the Chinese government, which then resulted in UT falsely certifying to NASA that it complied with the appropriate laws.

President Donald Trump has begun fighting back against China’s outrageous tariffs, by putting tariffs on Chinese products. As with everything Trump does, this, too, has drawn much criticism. But Trump notes that after years of sitting mildly by while China hurts American business interests and strengthens itself, it is time to fight back.

The country has been gradually coming on board with Trump’s plan. The latest ABC News/IPSOS poll shows that 55 percent of Americans now favor his actions, while 43 percent still oppose his handling of this crisis.

Addressing the threat posed by China today, historian and former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich notes, “Now we face the fifth great challenge to our survival as a free country (following the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War II, and the rise of the Soviet Union).”

In his new book, “Trump vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat,” in which he tracks China’s centuries-long development up to today, he describes the situation. “The Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian system is big, and getting bigger, getting richer, and becoming more sophisticated. It is the greatest competitor that America has faced in our history.”

The COVID-19 threat that originated in China will most likely be defeated in time. The greater threat posed by China, however, will still exist, and must be addressed.

What, exactly, is a right, and which ones are free for everyone?

We hear a lot about “rights” in these days and nights of political jockeying. What does it mean when someone says that you, or I, or we “have a right” to something? And what, exactly, is a right? 

A right is a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something, or to act in a certain way.

That the people are guaranteed certain rights is a major benefit of the United States of America that nearly everyone understands. That was affirmed in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Later, when the U.S. Constitution was written and passed, Americans were guaranteed certain rights by the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights. Some of these are: the right of freedom of speech, of religion, of the press, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to a speedy and public trial for alleged crimes, and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Other rights are assumed, but not specifically guaranteed by the Constitution. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "a right is not something that somebody gives you; it is something that nobody can take away."

Thus, having a right to something guarantees only that it cannot be taken away, not that it is automatically delivered to you without you doing anything to realize it. The Declaration mandates that one may pursue Happiness, but it does not automatically deliver it.

And some things claimed as a “right” are merely desires, and can be nothing more than outrageous cravings. 

Two perfect examples of such things are: Haagen-Dazs, an American ice cream brand, whose name consists of made-up Scandinavian words, insisted that it owns the rights to all fake Scandinavian words. And this: Spike Lee claimed that only he had the right to call things “Spike,” after The Nashville Network/TNN changed its name to "Spike TV."

Yes, those examples are absurd. However, the modern American Left supports a list of things that, while not absurd like the previous two examples, are things that it believes we Americans have a “right” to, like a college education, health care, child care, and housing. 

They further believe that they should be provided to everyone, for free. Yes, we all do have a right to pursue these things, but not a right to have them given to us.

Democrat nomination candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said on ABC's “This Week” recently, “The United States must ‘end the international embarrassment’ of not guaranteeing health care as a right. We need more changes in our health care system, you talk about a public option, many people will not be able to afford a public option," he said. "What the American people have got to decide is one simple question: 'Do we create a health care system, guaranteeing health care for all people without insurance companies and drug companies making huge profits and distorting health care in America?' That is the issue.”

All of us have a right to get healthcare, of course, but no one has a right to be given health care that is paid for by the rest of us. Some Americans get health care as the result of the government’s Medicaid program for the needy. Others get care through Medicare as a result of having contributed their money to the Social Security program. But no one has a right to free health care, or any of the other freebies that Democrats campaign on.

The idea of “free stuff for all” carries real problems with it. Cost is a serious consideration. What will/can a government do to pay for the “free” services?

The gargantuan and Democrat-favorite “Medicare for All” would cost $32 trillion or more over 10 years, according to research from the Mercatus Center’s Charles Blahous.

The proposed FY 2021 federal budget is a record $4.829 trillion. The Blahous estimate of $3.2 trillion a year represents increasing government spending by nearly 67 percent.

And Blahous noted that his estimate is probably low. Free stuff tends to attract more users than stuff with a price tag. People will head for the doctor’s office or hospital with every sniffle or stubbed toe. Shortages of care would inevitably result, meaning that government would then decide who gets treatment, and who doesn’t.

Democrat candidate Mike Bloomberg has a solution: "If you show up with prostate cancer, you're 95-years-old, we should say, 'Go and enjoy. Have [a] nice – live a long life.' There's no cure and there's nothing we can do."

For less serious circumstances, you might get treated in a timely fashion. Or, you may have to wait a few weeks, or months. A Fraser Institute study released last December showed the median wait time for medically necessary treatment in Canada’s free system in 2019 was 20.9 weeks.

An article in HuffPost noted that Canada’s health care system lacks medical technology and demands high taxation to pay for it.

Rights are ours to be had, and some are guaranteed. But free stuff isn’t free.

Elections and voting are important and demand effort and honesty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A truly serious health situation becomes a political football

Candidates working for a primary or a general election victory in the presidential race naturally chop each other down, and they also highlight what they see as the incumbent’s weaknesses and mistakes. This has reached new heights with President Donald Trump as the “enemy.” Everything he does, from relevant topics to the inane, is targeted by Democrats and their media friends. 

The only thing Trump could do that these folks would approve of would be to resign, or perhaps to drop out of the November election. And then he would be criticized for not doing that the “right way,” either.

Cutting taxes, getting rid of needless and harmful regulations, taking out terrorists who murder American military personnel, and strengthening the position of the United States on the international stage are among the things he’s been recently criticized for. And soon we will likely hear that he wears the wrong color socks and eats too much beef.

The emergence of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, has gotten the attention of nearly everybody in the United States and, of course, that includes those running for the Democrat nomination for president.

And not surprisingly, they criticize Trump’s official reaction to the threat of the coronavirus in the U.S. When Democrats claimed that his administration was doing a poor job in addressing the threat, Trump declared those criticisms a “hoax.” Not the virus itself, mind you, but the criticism of his handling of it.

The media then took his comment out of contest and ran off the rails. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote: “Remember this moment: Trump, in South Carolina, just called the coronavirus a ‘hoax.’”

Another media mis-statement, by Politico: “President Donald Trump on Friday night tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term, lumping it alongside impeachment and the Mueller investigation.”

Both NBC and CBS ran similar misrepresentations of Trump’s comment.

Most Americans do not factcheck what they read and hear from news outlets. They trust them to be accurate and objective. As these examples illustrate, the media often fall short of that expected and needed purpose. Whether by shoddy work or deliberate intent, the result is the same: mis-information gets passed on as accurate news, which many automatically believe. Is that “fake news?”

As previously illustrated, this happens too frequently. Therefore, is the President’s charge that some in the media are “the enemy of the people” really so far-fetched?

And it’s not only the news media that gets things wrong. Candidates for the Democrat nomination also got it wrong. Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said, “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need. This is a very serious thing.”

“We increased the budget of the CDC,” former Vice President Joe Biden said. “We increased the NIH (National Institutes of Health) budget. … He’s wiped all that out. … He cut the funding for the entire effort.”

But dang the luck, both are wrong. Trump is trying to reduce government spending to deal with the budget deficits and the huge national debt, which is badly needed. However, none of the cuts he has called for have been enacted; Congress did not pass them.

The Associated Press factchecked these criticisms, and defended Trump: “He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect.”

And just because budget cuts were proposed does not by itself indicate that they would have affected fighting the coronavirus. Further, there is an existing fund that was created specifically for health emergencies.

Trump also has asked for additional funding for fighting the coronavirus, but Congress did not grant the request, saying that more money is needed. If so, would it not make sense to grant the initial request and then pass additional funding, rather than turning down what the loyal opposition claims is critical funding?

As for who is on the job, overseeing the work, which Democrat hopefuls also criticized, the major players are Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC’s principal deputy director, and a respected veteran of previous outbreaks, Dr. Anthony Fauci, NIH’s infectious disease chief who has advised six presidents. 

These doctors provide the medical knowledge needed to protect Americans from this serious threat. And Trump has formed an administrative coronavirus task force to manage the government’s actions.

Trump has assigned Vice President Mike Pence to head the task force, which includes Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, national security adviser Robert O'Brien, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, Department of Homeland Security acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and Domestic Policy Council Director Joseph Grogan. 

Weaponizing the coronavirus threat into a political issue is both a cheap shot and dangerous. It unnecessarily raises fears among the public where good sense is needed, and it shifts the focus of the Democrat campaign away from the radical political positions the Democrats propose.