Big Brother Has Finally Arrived thumbnail

Big Brother Has Finally Arrived

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By Bruce Bialosky

Absence of Malice is a 1981 Sydney Pollack film starring Paul Newman that I recently rewatched.  If you have not seen it — or have not recently — it is timeless. Newman’s character is accused of killing a union boss and he asserts he is innocent of the charge. Sally Field plays a reporter who writes a story “accusing him” of the crime. During one encounter, Newman says “I gotta know where that story came from. ‘Knowledgeable sources,’ you said. You write what they say and then you help them hide. You say you have a right to do that, and I got no right to know who they are.” Fields says “If they clear you. I’ll write about that too.” Newman replies. “What page?”

Matters have not changed much when it comes to the press except they now attribute most claims to “experts say” and we are supposed to drop to our knees and thank them. Yet this kind of behavior has spread throughout our society. You are aware of it – “it” is called cancel culture. People express something on social media, and they are harassed for being a bigot, etc., etc., etc. We now have advanced past cancel culture as proceedings have gotten even worse and this needs to end.

My friend Mike is someone I have known for about 30 years. There are good people in your life and then there are people you are thankful for having in your life. Mike is one of those quality people that is a rare gem in our culture today. We have worked together on mortgage loans for years. He is someone I trust totally with my personal matters and those of my clients. He always does the right thing in all aspects of his life.

A few years back Mike decided to leave his job at a mortgage bank to move to Wells Fargo. He thought the banks had put a stranglehold on jumbo loans and he was on the outside looking in. He needed to be on the inside. He made a very successful transition. Everything was peachy until one day.

He was on his cell phone when he received another call. He put the person on hold and went to the second call.  It quickly became clear what the person was calling about and Mike asked him, “Are you a headhunter?”  The caller avoided the question and went on. Mike reminded him he was on another call and asked him again about being a headhunter. After the third request to determine if the caller was a recruiter, the recruiter stated, in an offended tone of voice “I guess you have more important things to do than speak with me” and he hung up the phone on Mike.

After the call ended, Mike saw he had the telephone number of the caller and texted him his thoughts about the person’s behavior. He invoked a word that is akin to calling the person a less than worthy human. Mike did not use one of George Carlin’s seven dirty words. He was communicating in a text from his personal phone between two people.

The Caller complained to Mike’s boss. Mike’s boss spoke to him. The boss did not react to the Caller and let Mike know he had received the report. The vindictive Caller did not stop there, he went further in the organization. The next thing Mike knows he was fired. He was not given an opportunity to explain his actions.

This is a person who had a spotless record with the company. This is a person who had a private interaction. The person with whom he had the interaction was neither an employee, a customer nor a vendor of Wells Fargo. The communication did not appear in social media – not Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok. It was a private communication between one person and another. The Caller — who had been rude and invasive had now become — the Victim. 

The news was stunning, to say the least. Mike did not act as an employee of Wells Fargo.  He was a private individual. This is no longer just an issue of “cancel culture.” We could have anticipated this. Now if you are an employee of a company, your comments to a random store clerk can jeopardize your job. If you do not like the job your auto mechanic has done, and you give him a “piece of your mind,” you can lose your job.

It is unclear where all this ends. I can tell you that I am extremely thankful I started my own business years ago and am beholden to no one except the Beautiful Wife. We used to live in a free country where freedom of speech meant freedom of speech. Soon every word you say will be under a microscope and Big Business will be cowering to every perceived offense. 

Shame on you Wells Fargo.

*****

This article was published in Flash Report and is reprinted with permission from the author.

Taxpayer-funded Middle East Studies Centers at U.S. Universities Promote Anti-U.S. Propaganda and ‘Islamophobia’ Myths thumbnail

Taxpayer-funded Middle East Studies Centers at U.S. Universities Promote Anti-U.S. Propaganda and ‘Islamophobia’ Myths

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By Jihad Watch

It’s good to see the National Association of Scholars acknowledging this and documenting it in detail. Jihad Watch has been warning about and documenting it for years, and as a result has been one of the targets of the scurrilous pro-jihad, pro-Sharia propaganda mills that operate out of these compromised universities today. A whole generation has now been propagandized with the “Islamophobia” myth and much more.

U.S. gives $2.9m to Universities that promote anti-West ideologies

Open The Books, November 14, 2022:

While there are more than 50 Middle East Studies Centers at American universities, training students in the culture and languages of the region, 11 are designated National Resource Centers, which provides federal funds.

According to a new report by the National Association of Scholars, the 11 centers each get $260,000 in Title VI funding through the Department of Education to the tune of $2.9 million a year.

They are at Columbia University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, Indiana University, New York University, University of Arizona, UCLA, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, UNC/Duke University partnership.

The report, Hijacked: The Capture of America’s Middle East Studies Centers, says the centers have veered far afield their purpose, now pushing overtly anti-West ideologies focusing on social issues such as Islamophobia and immigration at the university level, and even push critical race theory to K–12 educators….

Yale University courses are frequently rife with progressive dogmas, including requiring students to read such as, “Islam Today: Jihad and Fundamentalism,” which attempts to reframe the most dangerous aspects of Islam as a “reactive force to Western colonialism,” according to the report.

“By only presenting students with books that advance a pro-immigration agenda, educators sidestep meaningful debate on the issue and bias students toward their own progressive views,” Arnold wrote in the report. “The bias of these centers has been documented for years. It’s time for taxpayers to be taken off the hook for these activist centers.”…

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

RELATED ARTICLES:

Afghanistan: Supreme leader orders full implementation of Sharia, including public executions, stonings, amputations

Austria: Muslim migrant forces his wife to wear hijab, stabs her 11 times, says ‘I just wanted to scare her’

Australia: Teen converts to Islam, plots jihad massacre at home, opts instead to blow himself up in Iraq

Italy: Muslim arrested for torture and abuse of two people, including a teenager, who refused to fight for ISIS

Morocco: Muslims chase and brutally beat LGBT person

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The GOP’s Problems Are Far Deeper Than One Election Cycle thumbnail

The GOP’s Problems Are Far Deeper Than One Election Cycle

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By Bob Barr

As much trouble as Republican leaders in the Congress might have accepting the brutal fact of their candidates’ poor performances in last week’s mid-term elections, “fixing” the problem will take more than post-election tinkering.

Sure, there were major problems affecting the outcomes of last week’s results that were unique to this cycle – foremost among them, the quality of several Republican Senate candidates, and the barrage of early votes by Democrats – but there are far more consequential problems facing the GOP.

Even accounting for such problems as candidate quality, uneven funding, and questionable polling, the failure of the Republican Party to develop and communicate a coherent and positive message to the electorate stands as a major shortcoming now and moving forward. History shows it need not be that way.

In the 1994 mid-term election, the White House occupant was the widely unpopular President Bill Clinton. The House of Representatives had been under Democrat control  for 40 years. The stage was set for change. To take advantage of that momentum, then-Minority Whip (and future Speaker) Newt Gingrich broke with Republican tradition, and articulated a substantive, specific, and positive message to the electorate.

The 1994 Contract With America did not mention, much less attack Bill Clinton, though he was vulnerable to such charges. That would have been the politically easier course.

Instead, the Contract listed ten pieces of legislation the GOP promised to bring to the floor of the House for a vote within the first 100 days of being awarded a majority. Importantly, it did not overpromise. The widely publicized document promised only what we could guarantee. It worked.

By running on a program of specific, positive issues — each of which was in accord with basic, widely accepted principles of the Republican Party and a majority of voters – the field of GOP challengers broke the mold of generic, feel-good campaign talking points and presented to the voters an actual agenda. The voters responded by giving the Republicans their first House majority in four decades.

Contrast that experience with the less-than-inspirational Commitment to America presented publicly to the electorate in late September 2022 by the current Republican leadership. The document articulated “themes” that could provide an election agenda for the GOP in any year — 2022, 2024, 1994, or whenever. Such “evergreen” ideas have a place in a political Party’s agenda, perhaps as a convention platform, but as a vehicle with which to win a hard-fought mid-term election, unsurprisingly it proved virtually worthless.

The GOP’s Commitment reflects a problem beyond a missed opportunity. It suggests that the Party remains unsure of itself, has become overly dependent on polling rather than substance, and fails to understand the contemporary American electorate.

Poll after poll taken in the weeks leading to November 8th showed the electorate in a sour mood and a country led by a highly unpopular president. Apparently deciding that these polls provided a roadmap for victory, the GOP message became simply, “Biden and the Democrats are bad, so vote for us.” By implication, it deferred the details until after the voters would give Republicans majorities in both houses. Voters declined the invitation.

The results – a net loss of at least one Senate seat, and a far slimmer House majority than polling “promised” – speaks volumes about whether it is better to present voters with a positive, substantive plan or a campaign devoid of real substance but long on negativity.

Unfortunately, the GOP has been presented with this lesson in the not-distant past, but has failed to learn it.

Beyond the lack of a coherent, consistent message, the Party seems not to have yet grasped that the American electorate has changed dramatically over recent cycles. Gone are the days when we could count on an informed and morally cognizant majority of voters. Today, a majority of voters in all age groups, some by nearly 75%, consider abortion a “right” to be protected by law.  A majority of voters support the “right” to health care. At the same time, Americans are increasingly ignorant about our country and its history.

Threading that needle takes more than well-worn talking points.

The Republican Party had best do a far better job than in the recent past of presenting a coherent platform to voters if it hopes to achieve better results in 2024 and beyond.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

Don’t Blame Trump thumbnail

Don’t Blame Trump

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By J.D. Vance

Something odd happened on Election Day. In the morning, we were confident of my victory in Ohio and cautiously optimistic about the rest of the country. By the time the polls closed, that optimism had turned to jubilance—and lobbying.

Every consultant and personality I encountered during my campaign claimed credit for their own faction. The victory was a testament to Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), one person told me. Another argued instead that SLF had actually bungled the race, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)—chaired by Rick Scott—deserved the credit. (Full disclosure: both the NRSC and SLF helped my race in Ohio, for which I’m grateful.)

But then the results rolled in, and it was clear the outcome was far more disappointing than hoped. And every person claiming victory on Tuesday morning knew exactly who to blame on Tuesday night: Donald J. Trump.

Of course, no man is above criticism. But the quick turn from gobbling up credit to vomiting blame suggests there is very little analysis at work. So let’s try some of that.

Let’s start with an obvious caveat: there is a lot we don’t know. Precinct level data is still outstanding in most states, and exit polls are notoriously finicky. Votes are still being counted out west. We’re still ignorant about a lot. But any effort to blame Trump—or McConnell for that matter—ignores a major structural advantage for Democrats: money. Money is how candidates fund the all-important advertising that reaches swing voters, and it’s how candidates fund turnout operations. And in every marquee national race, Republicans got crushed financially.

The reason is ActBlue. ActBlue is the Democrats’ national fundraising platform, where 21 million individual donors shovel small donations into every marquee national race. ActBlue is why my opponent ran nonstop ads about how much he “agreed with Trump” during the summer. It is why John Fetterman was able to raise $75 million for his election.

Republican small dollar fundraising efforts are paltry by comparison, and Republican fundraising efforts suffer from high consultant and “list building” fees—where Republicans pay a lot to acquire small-dollar donors. This is why incumbents have such massive advantages: much of the small-dollar fundraising my own campaign did went to fundraising and list-building expenses. If and when I run for reelection, almost all of it will go directly to my campaign. Democrats don’t have this problem. They raise more money from more donors, with lower overhead.

Outside groups, like SLF, try to close this gap. But it is a losing proposition. Under federal elections law, campaigns pay way less for advertising than outside “Super PACs.” In some states, $10 million from an outside group is less efficient than $2 million spent by a campaign. So long as Republicans lose so badly in the small dollar fundraising game, Democrats will have a massive structural advantage.

Importantly, because ActBlue diverts resources to competitive races, this structural advantage can be magnified. Let’s look at how this played out specifically. At first blush, Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp are similar figures: they both won close elections in 2018, and both cruised to reelection in 2022. They are both popular, effective governors from the South. But one won by over 20, and one by 8 (still an impressive margin). What explains this? Money. Look at the fundraising totals: Ron DeSantis outraised Charlie Crist about 7:1. Kemp was actually outraised, albeit barely, by Stacey Abrams. Money, of course, is not dispositive—Kemp won convincingly—but it has a major effect.

In both cases, incumbency provided a major advantage, in part because it’s easier to raise money when you’ve already won. But incumbency is also powerful in and of itself. Just look to Iowa, where incumbent governor Kim Reynolds cruised to reelection by a 20 point-margin, while newcomer Republican A.G. candidate Brenna Bird won by less than one point against twenty-eight-year incumbent Democrat Tom Miller.

This brings us to the Senate. In competitive states, every non-incumbent candidate was swamped with cash by national Democrats. This is true for Trump-aligned candidates (like me), anti-Trump candidates (like Joe O’Dea in Colorado), and those who straddled both camps. The house tells a similar story. Every person blaming Donald Trump, or bad candidates endorsed by Trump, ought to show a single national marquee race where a non-incumbent beat a well-funded opponent. The few exceptions—New York among them—don’t tell an easy anti-Trump story.

In Ohio, for example, Republican candidates ran against extremely well-funded Democrat opposition. Some of them were MAGA. Some establishment. Almost all of them lost. The only exception was Max Miller in Northeast Ohio, one of Trump’s early endorsements.

There is a related structural problem, which is that higher propensity voters (suburban whites, especially) are just more and more Democratic. Meanwhile, a lot of the Trump base just doesn’t turn out in midterm elections. Again, this is not unique to Trump: these voters have always had substandard turnout numbers. But 20 years ago, when most of them voted for Democrats, that meant Republicans had a structural advantage in midterms. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. This problem is exacerbated by Democrats’ strong advantages in states that have expanded vote by mail.

In the short term, as illustrated last week, those advantages serve as a reminder of the need for voting reform in this country, modeled on success in states like Ohio at running clean, fair elections: establishing fair but appropriately narrow windows to return ballots; implementing signature verification; conducting all pre-election work necessary to facilitate rapid tabulation of early votes when polls close; and implementing national photo ID requirements to ensure elections are secure.

In the long term, the way to solve this is to build a turnout machine, not gripe at the former president. But building a turnout machine without organized labor and amid declining church attendance is no small thing. Our party has one major asset, contra conventional wisdom, to rally these voters: President Donald Trump. Now, more than ever, our party needs President Trump’s leadership to turn these voters out and suffers for his absence from the stage.

The point is not that Trump is perfect. I personally would have preferred an endorsement of Lou Barletta over Mastriano in the Pennsylvania governor’s race, for example. But any effort to pin blame on Trump, and not on money and turnout, isn’t just wrong. It distracts from the actual issues we need to solve as a party over the long term. Indeed, one of the biggest changes I would like to see from Trump’s political organization—whether he runs for president or not—is to use their incredible small dollar fundraising machine for Trump-aligned candidates, which it appears he has begun doing to assist Herschel Walker in his Senate runoff.

Blaming Trump isn’t just wrong on the facts, it is counterproductive. Any autopsy of Republican underperformance ought to focus on how to close the national money gap, and how to turn out less engaged Republicans during midterm elections. These are the problems we have, and rather than blaming everyone else, it’s time for party leaders to admit we have these problems and work to solve them.

*****

This article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

President Donald J. Trump: ‘We will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable’ thumbnail

President Donald J. Trump: ‘We will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable’

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By Dr. Rich Swier

At his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida President Donald J. Trump announced on Tuesday, November 15th, 2022, that he will again run to become the President of the United States.

Watch:

President Trump unequivocally stated,

“Together we will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable. Our country is in a horrible state. We’re in grave trouble.”

No truer words have ever been spoken.

The choices are clear:

  • No inflation, or rampant inflation under Democrats.
  • Secure borders, or open borders under Democrats.
  • Growth and prosperity, or dependence and poverty under Democrats.
  • A nation in Ascent, or a nation in Decline under Democrats.
  • Energy independence, or energy poor under Democrats.
  • Peace, or constant war under Democrats.
  • Law and order, or rampant crime under Democrats.
  • Low taxes, or more taxes under Democrats.
  • Less federal spending, or more federal spending under Democrats.
  • Pro-parent, or parents as domestic terrorists under Democrats.
  • Less federal debt, or unending federal debt under Democrats.
  • Fewer regulations, or more regulations under Democrats.
  • America first, or America last under Democrats.
  • Defend the police, or defund the police under Democrats.
  • American families first, or American families last under Democrats.
  • Alpha males and females, or beta males and females under Democrats.
  • Honesty and openness, versus corruption under Democrats.
  • Protecting innocent girls and boys, or rampant human trafficking by Democrats.
  • Drug free American, or drug addicted America under Democrats.
  • Peace in the Middle East, the Abraham Accords, or violence and war in the Middle East.
  • Freedom, or slavery under Democrats.
  • Pro-life, or pro-death of the unborn under Democrats.
  • Economic security, or economic dependency on other under Democrats.
  • Military strength, or military weakness under Democrats.
  • Marriage between one man and one women, or marriage defined as anything and everything under Democrats.
  • Happiness, or human pain and suffering under Democrats.
  • Conservationism, or radical environmentalism under Democrats.
  • Faith, family and liberty, or godlessness, destruction of the traditional family and tyranny under the Democrats
  • A Constitutional Republic, or Communism under Democrats.
  • Free and fair elections, or cheating and stealing under Democrats
  • God loving, or God and Godliness under attack by the Democrats.

As we have written it is time to fight like we have never fought before to save America.

The Bottom Line

Remember what Donald J. Trump said at his inaugural address,

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs, and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes, starting right here and right now, because this moment is your moment — it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today, and everyone watching, all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration, and this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country, will be forgotten no longer. Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before. At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction, that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public, but for too many of our citizens a different reality exists. Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones across the across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge, and the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

This says it all. Power to the people.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Trump is not doing this because he’s a power hungry politician climbing the ladder.

Trump is doing this because he loves his country and wants to save it.

— Brigitte Gabriel (@ACTBrigitte) November 16, 2022

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Conservative Senators Defy McConnell, Want to Delay GOP Leadership Elections thumbnail

Conservative Senators Defy McConnell, Want to Delay GOP Leadership Elections

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By Robert Bluey

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is facing a rebellion in his own conference just days after Republicans underperformed in key races across the country.

A growing number of conservative senators want the GOP leadership elections postponed until after the December runoff in Georgia, where Republican Herschel Walker is facing Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock after neither won a majority on Election Day.

Republican leaders typically hold internal party elections quickly after Election Day to prevent conservatives from organizing opposition—and Conference Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wyo., affirmed Friday that Senate Republicans would do the same again this year. But with frustration already building before Tuesday’s disappointing results, there’s a desire among some to delay the vote.

“It makes no sense for Senate to have leadership elections before GA runoff,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wrote on Twitter. “We don’t yet know whether we’ll have a majority & Herschel Walker deserves a say in our leadership. Critically, we need to hear a specific plan for the next 2 yrs from any candidate for leadership.”

“The Senate GOP leadership vote next week should be postponed,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said earlier Friday on Twitter. “First we need to make sure that those who want to lead us are genuinely committed to fighting for the priorities & values of the working Americans (of every background) who gave us big wins in states like Florida.”

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., added her support.

In addition, Politico reported Friday that three GOP senators are circulating a letter to their colleagues requesting a delay. The effort is being led by Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rick Scott, R-Fla.

“We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not,” the senators wrote. “We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., stated his opposition to McConnell earlier this week. Sen.-elect Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., vowed to oppose McConnell’s re-election as Senate GOP leader in July.

“I’m not sure if any other senator will run or not. Nobody’s indicated they would. But my view is that we need new leadership in that position,” Hawley said Monday.

In July, Schmitt floated two other possible leaders: Sens. Cruz or Lee. “Mitch McConnell hasn’t endorsed me and I don’t endorse him for leadership,” Schmitt said at the time.

Asked this week if he remains opposed to McConnell, Schmitt said, “I said what I said, and I stand by those comments.”

Seeking to quell the uprising, Barrasso assured his colleagues that next week’s Republican conference meeting would afford every senator “a chance to be heard,” according to a letter obtained by Politico.

“After presentations from candidates, and there is every opportunity to address questions from every member, we will complete leadership elections,” Barrasso wrote.

McConnell was first elected Senate minority leader in November 2006 after previously serving as GOP whip. He is the longest-serving Republican leader ever—spanning four presidents and stints in the Senate minority and majority.

Scott, who leads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was asked Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about potentially challenging McConnell. At the time and in the days that followed, Scott refused to rule out the idea.

McConnell’s former chief of staff, Josh Holmes, attacked Scott for even considering a leadership challenge.

“If this is true, most of our voters will be very disappointed to learn that while they were focused on winning elections, their campaign chairman was plotting an ill-fated career advancement,” Holmes told Politico.

Throughout the campaign, Scott urged Republicans to put forward a positive agenda for America and released his own 12-point plan. McConnell instead preferred to focus on President Joe Biden’s failures.

When asked about Scott’s plan in March, McConnell said: “If we’re fortunate enough to have the majority next year, I’ll be the majority leader. I’ll decide in consultation with my members what to put on the floor.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, in a commentary for Fox News published Friday, criticized Republican leaders for failing to offer a policy agenda.

“Scott’s agenda was detailed, comprehensive, courageous, and almost unanimously attacked by Senate Republican leaders,” Roberts wrote. “Tellingly, his colleagues did not take issue with this or that specific policy in his agenda. They slammed Scott for offering a plan at all. This is how Washington works today. Leaders hide bills from members; members hide their priorities from their constituents; candidates hide their agendas from voters.”

Roberts said the one key takeaway from Election Day is that “the American people want new leadership in Washington, D.C.”

In addition to McConnell, Barrasso, and Scott, the current Senate GOP leadership team includes Whip John Thune, R-S.D., Policy Chairman Roy Blunt, R-Mo. (who is retiring), and Conference Vice Chairman Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.

*****

This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

4 Realities Conservatives Must Swallow In The Wake Of The 2022 Midterms thumbnail

4 Realities Conservatives Must Swallow In The Wake Of The 2022 Midterms

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By Peter Burfeind

The electorate has crossed a point of no return, shattering previous assumptions conservatives had baked in.

Unlike the left, the stunning under-performance of Republicans on Tuesday should not be an opportunity for screaming at the cosmos. It’s a reality check, and the sooner we adapt to reality, the sooner we can be optimistic about the future.

So what are the realities conservatives must face based on Tuesday’s shock? I see four things.

Donald Trump Has Jumped the Shark

Donald Trump was a great president who did conventional Republican things conservatives dreamed about for decades. He’s absolutely responsible for 10,000 fewer babies being aborted due to his conservative appointments to the Supreme Court and their role in overturning Roe v. Wade. He kept us out of war. He kept Russia at bay. He brought up Chinese aggression as an issue. He kept North Korea silent. He fixed NAFTA. I could go on.

But he will never win the presidency again, and the candidates he endorses do not do well. Given the fundamentals of this election cycle, the open seats in Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada should have been easy wins. Instead, they were weighed down by the Trump name and the stupid Jan. 6 incident that everyone wants to forget about except Donald Trump and those who leverage his obsession with it into a leftist passion.

Trump’s recent putdowns of Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbing him “DeSanctimonious” and telling him to back off a presidential run, were the last straw for me and many conservatives. We need to be done with him.

Two years ago, I wrote an article in these pages comparing Trump’s 2020 loss to Obi-Wan Kenobi’s death, arguing his loss will make his movement more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine. I still believe that. He’s brought new constituencies into the GOP. But a key implicit point of that argument is, Obi-Wan Kenobi died. He didn’t get in the way of Luke Skywalker’s (ahem, DeSantis’s, ahem!) rise.

‘Democrat’ Is Shorthand for ‘I Gotta Get Mine!’

The electorate has crossed a point of no return, shattering previous assumptions. Everyone predicted the fundamentals of the economy would determine harsh losses for Democrats. Yet here we are. A frighteningly close majority of voters don’t care how massive government spending combined with strangling our oil production has led to economic decline.

Clearly, a sizeable part of the electorate has baked into it a transactional relationship with the Democrat brand that gives the party a reliable handicap regardless of what’s happening in the real world. “Democrat” is now shorthand for livelihood security, essentially for one’s career in the bureaucracy or one’s government entitlements.

The Republican brand is more about principles and ideas that in the long run perform better in the aggregate. This is a hard sell among an electorate, especially among younger voters, who have not been trained to think critically about second- and third-order effects, for instance, with Biden’s student loan bailout program.

Republicans will not do well simply being against what Democrats are for. They will need to figure out a way to frame their goals in big-time, tangible ways that have a direct effect on voters and overwhelm their natural adherence to the government party.

Examples of this would be an overhaul of the public education system to a system of vouchers, constitutional amendments clarifying deployment of the armed forces, or policy positions on climate change based not on stopping it, but adapting to it through free-market forces, working with and not against the fossil fuel industry.

The GOP Must Adapt to Snowflake America

The Arizona governor race should have been an easy win for the GOP. I loved Kari Lake’s spunky, confident, in-your-face style, but she got beat by a timid snowflake who was afraid to debate her and came off as kind of mousy.

However, to many Arizona voters, Lake seems grating while something appeals to them in Hobbs. The “own the libs” tone that so many conservatives expect and love probably doesn’t work in the suburbs or college towns.

I remember a few years back, conservatives had a sporting time with “pajama boy,” the pajama-wearing millennial Obama used to market the Affordable Care Act. I thought at the time, “Who on earth is this marketing ploy appealing to?” I was troubled by voices in the conservative wilderness crying out, “Pajama boy is the future. Ignore him to your peril.”

They are right. The “pajama boy” ethos is a symptom of the new “safetyism” that’s enabled the “coddling of America.” A Hobbs “literally shaking” from a mean Lake trying to own her resonates with that safety-seeking swath of the electorate.

Adjusting to that reality doesn’t mean giving up the rugged individualism, rough-and-tumble ethos marking conservativism, but it does mean perhaps framing our goals differently. Aren’t conservatives ultimately about being the watchdogs of culture, protecting (not scaring off) the little lambs?

GOP Must Adapt to How Elections Are Run

Early voting and voting by mail completely changed how elections are run. The exciting news about polls moving favorably toward the GOP didn’t matter if much of the electorate had already voted. Democrats did not seem interested in late-October debates or even winning the argument; what do they know that we don’t know?

What they know is that elections are not about “winning votes” or even “getting out to vote” so much as they are about gathering ballots. (Read this very carefully.)

The Democrats have breached the chasm between “registered voter” and “likely voter.” That chasm used to favor the GOP. It suggested there was a part of the liberal caucus who would only vote Democratic if they had the energy to get to a voting booth. That “if” was always a big “if.”   That’s one reason why midterm elections were seasons of GOP success.

No more. Through mail-in voting and early voting, the Democrats can connect an awful lot of bodies to an awful lot of “D”-marked ballots, demanding little energy at all to do so. They understand that this is where elections are won.

Conservatives can scream at the cosmos all they want about this new reality. It’s not going away. Adapt or die. Start building an army of volunteers to guide the hands of senile rural folk, shut-ins, and off-the-radar types to the “R” box, en masse.

Conservatives Can Still Be Optimistic

There are solutions to every one of these realities, so while disappointed, I’m not as despairing as many others are. Conservatives should not be despairing. Why?  Because (1) politics is not our religion, so we’ve got other sources of optimism in our families, churches, and jobs; and (2) Horace’s dictum endures — you can chase out nature with a pitchfork, but it will always come running back.

The fundamentals of reality remain in play. As long as leftism means a compulsion toward magical thinking on the laws of nature, we will always have an ally in the natural order. But far be it from conservatives to fall for magical thinking about their future.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

Don’t Crash My Party thumbnail

Don’t Crash My Party

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By Conservative Guy

Today’s Republican Party demonstrates the problem of putting new wine into old bottles.

Those who occupy the commanding heights of established authority are usually boring personalities by necessity, institutional design, and supporting culture. Mediocrity is the rule for the gatekeepers of established power.

Think of onetime RNC chairman Reince Priebus—with his Pee Wee Herman good looks, wit, and charm—fielding candidates like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, trying to appeal to just enough rank-and-file Republicans in the primary and then general election voters in November to win.

My position on the idea animating this symposium is the following: it’s to be expected that the RNC, like any established, institutional political player, will try to exclude folks whom it doesn’t like and who threaten its enduring interests. To do so is to fulfill its cornerstone, self-preservative function. It’s even a term of political science: “The Law of Conservative Exclusion.” (Pure Theory of Politics, Bertrand De Jouvenel, Part IV, Chapter 2, Liberty Fund Press.)

The basic idea is that political entrepreneurs—dynamic personalities with a public design and purpose—give rise to movements that eventually transform into established institutions, eventually to be guided by folks like Reince Priebus. A modern party competing at all levels of government to run something as complex and powerful as the United States of America needs binders full of predictable, qualified, company men and women. The type of candidate who can satisfy the diverse and often warring internal interests that rage within a major political party is very rarely an exciting personality.

Think of the retail political skill set required to found the Republican Party itself. It’s populist to the core. It takes a pretty dynamic and dangerous, “Here I stand and can do no other” type to found a new party, or a social or economic power. Men like Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Gompers, Martin Luther King, and Steve Jobs all hailed from the tribe of disrupters—better to meet them in history books than to have to deal with them when they manifest themselves in the flesh.

Such characters are always resisted by the establishment. And the disrupters understand this. They know who they are. They expect those being overturned to fight for their status. Most disrupters fail. The establishment wins more then it loses. Those few who do succeed, and help build or rebuild institutions in their name, are always outnumbered by lesser types like Mitt Romney, Al Sharpton, and Tim Cook. This is a datum of politics.

There is a tragedy in the Law of Conservative Exclusion. It can be too successful in keeping out the new blood—the dynamism—that it requires to fulfill its charge of maintaining institutional continuity and vitality in the face of change.

The Kristol family offers an instructive example of how movements are born, and, when poorly managed, die. Irving Kristol was an intellectual entrepreneur who created first a neo-conservative persuasion and then a movement. Bill, his son, was not a creator like his father but a mandarin. His judgment was consistently poor up until Donald Trump forced himself upon the Republican Party, at which point things went terribly for Bill. He did everything in his power to deny Trump the Republican nomination, and, when beaten, shifted allegiance and made common cause with Democrats to purge Trump and his MAGA ilk. Sadly, the neoconservatives of days gone by are now neoliberals. There exists no circumstance under which they will be allowed to return to the Republican fold, let alone to leadership.

Trump is presently knee-deep in trench warfare to remake the Republican Party into a populist party—an effort being resisted internally, though to little public note. After Trump won the White House, many of the establishment folks who opposed his hostile takeover became more open to the Republican populism. Trump saw cracks in the Democratic Party’s working-class blue wall and gave a Republican voice to their concerns with his candidacy, and later with his presidency and policies. He brought new life into the Republican Party—a popular energy and rootedness— that could transform it into a genuine rival to the Our Democracy Party and its progressive arc-of-history claim.

My sense is that Ronna Romney McDaniel sees the enduring value of opening the Republican Party’s vision to more populist expressions. She is a respectful niece of a Republican aristocratic family, but at the same time she seems to understand that the future of the Republican Party is in becoming more populist.

My two cents on the midterms.

If you want to know what happened on a candidate level, follow the money. We are all talking about “candidate quality” as the reason behind the trickle instead of the wave. But it’s hard to accept the candidate-quality mantra, particularly when the only example that we can hang on is Dr. Oz. Fact: the Democrats got behind John Fetterman and outspent Oz, and won. Fetterman was certainly not a better candidate than Oz. Yes, Oz was a carpet bagger. In contrast, Fetterman is a Carhartt bagger—a trustafarian with a series of numbers on his arms that I believe is a running IOU list to his rich daddy. When a renowned heart surgeon and TV doctor does not win against a disabled stroke victim, it’s about money and organization, not candidate quality.

I’d like to see a number on how much Republicans spent compared to the Democrats on the races that mattered. Mitch McConnell managed his chip count as you would expect, spending just enough to keep the narrative going on Donald Trump’s inability as party leader and stock picker of talent, and sowing a post-midterm division between Trump and Ron DeSantis. And, in Mitch’s defense, if Trump’s picks had won, he would be out of a job.

Trump lacked the discipline to put his own sizable war chest where his mind, reputation, and populist future were on the line. It appears that Trump doesn’t know what he is up against, which does not inspire confidence.

If the Republican Party allows itself to be outspent in Georgia for the December 6 run-off, then the message is clear: its leadership has its own priorities, and needs suffer some conservative exclusion at the top. The Left wins because it networks; the Right loses because it competes against itself. Unless that changes and shows itself in Georgia, the Republican Party deserves to go the way of the Whig Party, and to be replaced by something more deserving of the American people and this House Divided Moment. But it’s easier to reform than replace.

*****

This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

Red Tsunami Was Stopped by Massive, Widespread, Ongoing Election Fraud thumbnail

Red Tsunami Was Stopped by Massive, Widespread, Ongoing Election Fraud

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By The Geller Report

The take-away from the mid-terms is that Trump was right about the 2020 elections. The braying mob that kept telling him (and us) to “move on” never understood or worse – was complicit – was aiding and abetting corrupt election systems rendering them nothing more than a Democrat rubber stamp for one party rule.

Without legitimate elections, we are done. Finished.

Election fraud is the cause of this nation’s ills.  We will never move on again. 2022 midterm was stolen. Just like 2020. Without election reform, none of this matters. We will never take any chamber of power again. It’s a one party state like the all the terror regimes in history.

The Red Tsunami Was Stopped by Massive, Widespread, Ongoing Voter Fraud

It’s surprisingly hard for many to believe what is blatantly obvious to some of us.

By: JD Rucker, November 14, 2022:

It appears Democrats are going to not only retain control of the Senate, but may pick up a seat and potentially have the power to take out the filibuster. The House, which was all but assured for Republican majorities for weeks before the election, appears to be heading toward giving razor-thin control to the GOP… and it still has a chance of remaining in Democrats’ hands.

The red tsunami didn’t materialize. Or, to be more accurate, it was stolen. That seems to be hard for many to accept as even some of the most outspoken conservative and alternative news outlets following the 2020 theft have gone silent on 2022. They’re blaming everything other than voter fraud for some reason. I’ve seen far too few outside of The Gateway Pundit, Wayne Allyn Root, and a few others in media who are discussing in public what seems to be blatantly clear, at least to me.

I posted a thread of Gab, Gettr, and Twitter explaining briefly why I am certain the 2022 election was stolen. I fought and continue to fight for the truth about the 2020 election to come out and I’m even more certain that 2022 was stolen. Yet, it appears those of us who believe that are a very tiny minority. Here’s my thread:

Why are so many people who were absolutely certain the 2020 election was stolen suddenly blind to the fact that 2022 voter fraud was even worse? Only a precious few conservative and alternative media voices are even mentioning the notion of massive, widespread voter fraud.

The gaslighting isn’t just coming from the left. It’s coming even harder from the Republican Establishment that wants to blame Trump, abortion, “bad” candidates, or anything other than a coordinated attack on our nation and our Constitution.

Florida was NOT the outlier. Florida is what happens when voter fraud is quashed and actual voters got to have their say at the ballot box without late night dumps, computer “malfunctions,” and ballot harvesting schemes at nursing homes and cemeteries.

The polls are always wrong… in favor of Democrats. This is the first time in modern history when the polls, corporate media, and everyone else predicted a red wave and it didn’t materialize. It wasn’t that everyone was wrong. It was and continues to be outright theft.

I know there’s a lot of coping involved. Believing the 2022 election was stolen would be admitting that we no longer have a say in our government. Our voices are being quashed and there are no apparent avenues of recourse. But truth is truth. Stop coping. We MUST address this.

If you truly believe Pennsylvanians are so masochistic that they’d elect a guy who can’t form a sentence to the Senate, an Attorney General who promotes crime as Governor, and a dead guy to the state legislature, then you believe Pennsylvanians are absolute morons. They are not.

“It’s the economy, stupid.”

These words have always rang true. We are in the midst of the worst economic crisis of our lives and there’s ZERO chance America rewarded the Democrats with two more years of Senate control. ZERO. They stole it and so few are uttering those words.

They called us racists so we did backflips to prove otherwise. They called us terrorists so we stopped going to school board meetings. They called us insurrectionists so we stopped going to protests. Now they call us election deniers so we’re accepting these results. I won’t.

It feels like only a tiny portion of Americans are lucid and courageous enough to acknowledge the red tsunami was stopped by ongoing voter fraud. That means a majority of people are gullible, feckless, stupid, or a combination of the three. If that offends you, I’m not sorry.

The only for this nation, Lord willing, is that the same thing that happened with the jabs happens with voter fraud. It took far too long but people are finally waking up to the risks of the jabs. Maybe someday they’ll wake up and realize elections are being stolen from us too.

We are already being told to “move on” and the votes haven’t even been fully counted yet. This is worse than the 2020 steal because it affected dozens of states, not just 7 or 8 swing states. I won’t be moving on anytime soon.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘So Pissed Off, I Cannot Even See Straight’ — Ted Cruz Blames Mitch McConnell For GOP Midterm Losses thumbnail

‘So Pissed Off, I Cannot Even See Straight’ — Ted Cruz Blames Mitch McConnell For GOP Midterm Losses

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By The Daily Caller

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz slammed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a Monday podcast, saying the GOP should have won the majority of the upper chamber and blamed McConnell for not supporting Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters.

Cruz released an episode of his podcast, titled Verdict with Ted Cruz, where he and co-host Ben Ferguson discussed the midterm elections and the GOP’s failure to recapture the Senate. Cruz mentioned his frustration, saying there was no excuse for McConnell to abandon Masters, calling it “indefensible.”

“Well, Ben, let me start off by saying I am so pissed off, I cannot even see straight,” Cruz said.

“We had an extraordinary opportunity. We had a generational opportunity. This should have been a fundamental landslide election. We should have won the House and the Senate. We should have a 30, 40, 50 vote majority in the House. We should have 53, 54, 55 Republicans in the Senate,” Cruz continued.

McConnell’s PAC reportedly yanked $8 million in campaign spending from Arizona after Masters won his primary election, according to Fox News.

Cruz was also asked if McConnell would donate to Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign in a run-off. Cruz replied he likely will, but said he believes the GOP could have won Arizona.

“Oh, look, I’m sure he will raise money and invest in the race … But if you look at this last cycle, Mitch McConnell pulled the money out of Arizona. We could have won — won Arizona. We nearly won Arizona and abandoning Blake Masters was indefensible,” Cruz said.

“Explain to me, Senator, why in a race where the polling showed that we had a legitimate chance of winning there. Why did he pull out that money from Masters who desperately needed it?” Ferguson asked Cruz.

“Because Masters said he would vote against Mitch McConnell, and so Mitch would rather be leader than have a Republican majority. If there’s a Republican who can win, who’s not gonna support Mitch, the truth of the matter is he’d rather the Democrat win. So he pulled all the money out of Arizona,” Cruz responded.

Cruz also said that “the country is screwed for the next four years” due to the GOP’s failure to regain the majority, saying “because of this, we’re gonna see horrible Left-wing judges confirmed for the next two years, because of this. We’re gonna see judges taking away our free speech rights, our religious liberty rights, our Second Amendment rights. It is an enormous missed opportunity. And I gotta say, it is hard to describe my feelings as anything other than rage,” Cruz concluded.

Cruz’s criticisms follow former President Donald Trump’s criticisms of McConnell over the Blake Masters campaign. Trump’s critics have responded that the former president did not use the $100 million his PAC has collected to support GOP candidates in the midterms.

“McConnell allied groups spent $13.1M in Arizona,” a One Nation spokesperson told the Caller.

“During the summer, Steven Law, the head of a McConnell-aligned super PAC, told the financier Peter Thiel, who had spent millions supporting Mr. Masters, that Mr. Masters had scored the worst focus group results of any candidate he had ever seen,” The New York Times reported.

The Daily Caller contacted McConnell’s office about Cruz’s comments.

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Senior Congressional correspondent. 

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘We Didn’t Pick Up A Single Seat?’: Watters Blasts Trump, McConnell Over Campaign Spending In Senate Races

Blake Masters: Mitch McConnell ‘Doesn’t Deserve’ Leadership Post

ANALYSIS: Election Night Was Good For Conservatives. They Just Don’t Know It Yet

Rep. Bob Good Says Republicans ‘Got Rolled’ In Midterms, Blames Kevin McCarthy At Conference Meeting

Fox News Hires Tulsi Gabbard

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Foreign-owned Farms in the Southwest Taking Precious Water to Feed Overseas Livestock

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By David Kelly

The severe drought that has impacted the Southwest for nearly 20 years has made conservation of precious water resources a top priority for states and the federal government. Agricultural farming in the arid region has always relied on using both underground aquifers and Colorado River water to feed crops. This includes foreign-owned farms that grow crops in the United States.

In Wenden, Arizona, water district workers saw “something remarkable last year as they slowly lowered a camera into the drought-stricken town’s well: The water was moving.”

“But the aquifer which sits below the small desert town in the southwestern part of the state is not a river; it’s a massive, underground reservoir which stores water built up over thousands of years. And that water is almost always still,” CNN recently reported:

Gary Saiter, a longtime resident and head of the Wenden Water Improvement District, said the water was moving because it was being pumped rapidly out of the ground by a neighboring well belonging to Al Dahra, a United Arab Emirates-based company farming alfalfa in the Southwest….

“The well guys and I have never seen anything like this before,” Saiter told CNN. The farm was “pumping and it was sucking the water through the aquifer.”

Aquifers have been used to support water needs in the Southwest for generations, but the ongoing drought is rapidly drawing them down.

In La Paz County in Arizona, some shallower wells are running dry due not only to the drought but to the large, foreign-owned farms that grow water-intensive crops like alfalfa and ultimately ship it overseas to feed cattle and other livestock.

Geohydrologist and well-drilling expert Marvin Glotfelty told CNN that there are laws prohibiting exporting water out of the state, but these farms are exporting “virtual” water via the crops — alfalfa and cotton — they export.

In Wenden, the town well-water level has dropped from about 100 feet in the late 1950s to about 540 feet in 2022, which is already far beyond what an average residential well can reach. In fact, the large farms’ overuse of water could push the water table too low for the town well to draw from.

La Paz County Supervisor Holly Irwin told CNN that Middle East agriculture companies “have depleted their [water], that’s why they are here. That’s what angers people the most. We should be taking care of our own, and we just allow them to come in, purchase property and continue to punch holes in the ground.”

Saudi Arabia banned growing thirsty crops like alfalfa and hay to feed livestock and cattle in 2018. With vast dairy operations a point of national pride in the Middle East, according to Eckart Woertz, director of the Germany-based GIGA Institute for Middle East Studies, they needed to find water somewhere else. Thus, the rapid growth of foreign-owned farms in the United States.

Farm Action shared that “as of late 2019, foreign investors have held an interest in almost 35.2 million acres of U.S. farmland. That’s an area larger than the state of New York. In the past 17 years alone, foreign farmland holdings have doubled in the U.S. and the trend is showing no signs of slowing.”

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has been fighting to stop foreign buyers, especially those backed by government regimes, from buying up prime farmland in America. To Grassley, “Food security is national security.”

Current federal law imposes no restrictions on the amount of U.S. agricultural land that can be foreign-owned. The Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, however, does require disclosure to the USDA of information related to foreign investment and ownership of U.S. agricultural land.

According to the Congressional Research Service, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin have instituted some restrictions, but do not significantly inhibit foreign farmland ownership.

Several bills before Congress seek to increase oversight of foreign investment and ownership of U.S. agricultural land. In the meantime, though, as residents and domestic farmers deal with their limited water resources, foreign-owned farms continue to overuse the groundwater aquifers in the Southwest. Action from lawmakers is needed now to help Americans access the water that they so desperately need. Will the next Congress make protecting the Southwest’s precious water resources from foreign use a priority?

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reproduced with permission

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

PREDICTION: Donald J. Trump wins in 2024—Ron Desantis wins in 2028 and 2032 thumbnail

PREDICTION: Donald J. Trump wins in 2024—Ron Desantis wins in 2028 and 2032

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By Dr. Rich Swier

“My prayer is that Trumps runs in 2024 and wins, serving the second term that was stolen from him and then, let DeSantis run in 2028 and 2032 — giving the republicans the White House for an amazing 12 years!” — Willy Guardiola, Christian on a Mission, Pro-Lifers 4 Trump and Diehard DeSantis Deplorable. 

After Florida’s massive red wave the question is: Will Governor Ron DeSantis run for president of the United States of America?

Our answer is yes!

The second question is when will Governor DeSantis run?

Our answer is in 2028 and for reelection in 2032.

Watch and listen carefully to what Glen Beck has to say about President Donald J. Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis.

President Donald J. Trump 45 & 47

President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to make a major announcement on November 15th, 2022. We predict that he will announce that he is running for reelection as the 47th president.

Why is this important. As Glen Beck said America is at a tipping point. Only Trump can bring the nation back to it rightful place as the shining city on the hill and restore power back to the states and the people.

In a November 10th, 2022 The National Pulse article  reported,

Trump’s 93% Endorsement Success Rate.

Not only did President Trump win 219 of his 235 endorsed [2022 midterm election] races (that’s a 93 percent success rate at last count), but the Democrats just guaranteed themselves Joe Biden as their nominee for 2024.

[ … ]

Perception is Reality.

For example, the establishment GOP in Pennsylvania was dead set against Colonel Doug Mastriano, and they worked hand-in-hand with Democrats to defeat him. When your gubernatorial candidate is being attacked from all sides, including your own, your Senate candidate will also be dragged down, along with congressional candidates on the ballot.

If the GOP had actually rallied around the top of the ticket – Mastriano and Oz – they could have won together and delivered a down-ticket boost. But not only did the GOP establishment in that state lose the governor and the U.S. Senate race, they lost congressional races that should have been pickups. The blame lies with them, and they know it. Hence their projection – as always – onto Trump.

Donald J. Trump at the top of the GOP ticket will do what he did during the 2022 midterm elections, have an over 90% down the ticket success rate with candidates at the local, state and national levels.

Think about that for a moment.

MAGA is Trump and Trump is MAGA!

This is what must happen to save America from the subhuman ‘abort them all’ Democrats!

Want to Save America—Elect Donald J. Trump!

We believe that Trump, regardless of how hard Democrats lie, cheat and steal, will win. A Trump win sets up a win for Ron DeSantis

President Ron DeSantis 48 & 49

After Donald J. Trump drains the swamp it will then be time for a man like DeSantis to turn America red as he did Florida.

Deep blue counties like Palm Beach and Miami-Dade went red for the first time in a very long time. But that isn’t all.

Governor Ron DeSantis also has a high rate of success for those he endorsed. DeSantis focused on electing conservative school board candidates and did extremely well. DeSantis needs to do the same to insure President Trump is reelected in 2024.

In our column Governors who care about freedom must adopt the ‘DeSantis Model’ before 2024 we wrote,

After the 2022 midterm elections is has become clear that there is a winning model for elections at the state level. This model is based upon understanding what people really want and then giving it to them. What people want the most is freedom. Freedom to make their personal decisions when it comes to healthcare, education, the economy, careers, investments and who represents them.

The who represents them is key in that it demands that elections from the school house to the White House be both free and fair.

QUESTION: How do we get there?

ANSWER: The DeSantis Model!

We call this back to the future model the “DeSantis Model” because it fully implements the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Ron DeSantis must complete his full term as governor which ends in 2026. Governor DeSantis then can insure his successor has his values and morals. Then Governor DeSantis must become candidate for the President of these United States and win the GOP nomination in 2028 and also win the White House.

This will ensure eight years of a new and different president, who like Donald J. Trump, is focused on faith, family and freedom.

This is our prediction and we hope you will join us in praying that, with God’s help, it comes to be.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEET:

This is one of those headlines you have to read a few times bc it doesn’t seem possible and yet here we are

Maricopa election officials launched PAC in 2021 to stop MAGA candidateshttps://t.co/j4E2Wr9129

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 14, 2022

Elon Musk Connects the Dots on the FTX Ponzi Scheme thumbnail

Elon Musk Connects the Dots on the FTX Ponzi Scheme

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By Dr. Rich Swier

FTX was created as a Ponzi scheme to launder American taxpayer money through the Ukraine in order to fund the campaigns of Democrat politicians. FTX CEO became the second largest donor to Democrats and the Democrat Party.

https://t.co/P0piGwEkmG

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

FTX, having served its political purpose, is now bankrupt and “under investigation.”

Well, Elon Musk began tweeting about the links between Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of FTX, Gary Gensler the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a former MIT professor, Glen Ellison a Professor of Economics and the former boss of Gary Gensler at MIT and Caroline Ellison the CEO of Alameda Research the trading arm of FTX, who is the daughter of Glen Ellison and dated Bankman-Fried.

🤔 pic.twitter.com/XpH56PxLgm

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2022

Here is a video and tweet with information about Caroline Ellison the CEO of Alameda Research thru which FTX laundered money from the Ukraine.

CEO of FTX is Daughter of SEC Head’s Former Boss

(Catalyst for government regulation of crypto) pic.twitter.com/j6oAbvACZL

— Grant Taylor (@grantltaylor) November 13, 2022

The tweet below, in reply to Elon’s tweet, gives readers an understanding of the timeline of the creation of FTX. It also shows links between Sam Bankman-Fried and his mother Barbara Fried who happens to head two Democrat Party political fundraising organizations: the left-wing super PAC Mind the Gap and the non-profit Center for Voter Information.

🤔 pic.twitter.com/S3k2ounNUK

— Sir Doge of the Coin ⚔️ (@dogeofficialceo) November 13, 2022

Here is another tweet in response to Elon’s tweet,

FTX was a scam prepared for this moment …

They knew the economical disruption that is coming pic.twitter.com/z80HKCL6AX

— Francisco de MirandaⓂ️ 🇺🇸🇪🇸🇵🇦🇻🇪 (@Ernestonewage) November 13, 2022

Influence Watch’s review of Mind the Gap reported,

In 2018, the PAC created a statistical model which attempted to score the impact each dollar donated would have on Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives. The group ultimately raised more than 20 million dollars in its successful attempt to win back control of the House for Democrats.

MTG is known for its secretive operations where it attempts to quickly gather and coordinate donations over a short time to prevent Republicans from mobilizing donors in response. The PAC is managed by Stanford Law professors Barbara Fried, Paul Brest, and researcher Graham Gottlieb. Of the three, only Gottlieb has political experience, having served former President Barack Obama as a staffer during his 2012 re-election campaign and in the White House.

Read more about Mind the Gap.

Influence Watch has this on the Center for Voter Information (CVI)

The Center for Voter Information (CVI) is a left-of-center voter registration and outreach group that is permitted to take positions on candidates that works alongside its nominally nonpartisan and charitable “sister,” the Voter Participation Center (VPC). While both organizations run general get-out-the-vote campaigns, the CVI runs targeted voter outreach campaigns for candidates. Both organizations are left-of-center, and the VPC’s political spending exclusively goes to supporting Democratic candidates or opposing Republicans. CVI shares its 501(c)(4) tax status with another voter registration activist group, Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF), which the organizations treat as separate groups but are a single entity.

As of September 2020, CVI and VPC have generated 939,000 registration applications and 2 million vote-by-mail applications for the 2020 election. [1] These applications are generally targeted towards demographic groups which tend to support the Democratic Party, and have been extensively criticized by state-level officials.

All three organizations share a common founder, liberal activist Page Gardner.

[ … ]

As of October 23, 2020, CVI had committed to sending 340 million pieces of mail leading up to the 2020 general election. This included sending ballot applications as well as voter registration forms. The initiative focused on over 20 battleground states. Critics argued that some of the forms contain errors or prefilled information, preventing individuals from successfully registering and influencing votes. Additionally, the mail was not always understood to be from a non-government organization and confused voters. [3]

Read more.

This is an evolving story with many, many dots to connect.

Stay tuned for more information as we seek the truth about the 2022 midterm elections and how Democrats used FTX to launder money which ended up in the political coffers of Democrat campaigns.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED TWEETS:

Facts:

Biden funded Ukraine.

Ukraine funded FTX.

FTX funded Democrats with millions.

This is known as “money laundering 101.”

— James Bradley (@JamesBradleyCA) November 14, 2022

REPORT: FTX CEO detained by authorities in Bahamas https://t.co/R60NeWQeb5

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 13, 2022

AZ Election Official Stephen Richer Ran On Election Integrity, Now He’s Accused Of Law-Breaking And Politicking thumbnail

AZ Election Official Stephen Richer Ran On Election Integrity, Now He’s Accused Of Law-Breaking And Politicking

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By Mollie Hemingway

Stephen Richer campaigned in Maricopa County, Arizona, in 2020 on the slogan that he would “make the Recorder’s Office boring again.” By any measure, he’s failed.

The self-styled “hardcore libertarian” was elected as a Republican after he drafted a blistering 228-page review of Maricopa County’s 2018 election administration as well as a 48-page audit lambasting the Democrat running the county’s elections. His pledge to be less political than his predecessor Adrian Fontes and restore confidence in elections generated support from Republicans eager to improve election administration in the populous county where more than 60 percent of Arizonans live.

Upon election to the county recorder seat, however, Richer abruptly and completely rejected his previous rhetoric and claims, even defending the integrity of Fontes, the man he said was so important to defeat. He now uses his perch as an opportunity to regularly defend the Democrat-run 2020 election in Maricopa County, write op-eds at CNN against the type of election audits he conducted to gain power, draft lengthy screeds lambasting Republican leaders and voters for their election integrity concerns, and push ranked-choice voting and other efforts critics say are disastrous for voter confidence in elections.

He even set up a Democrat-funded political action committee to support Arizona candidates who share his views, a move strongly rejected as unethical by ethical election officials. The Republican National Committee and Republican Party of Arizona just sued him for packing polls with Democrat workers and seeking to bury the paper trail.

And now he is alleged to have broken the law by using taxpayer resources to advocate against a ballot measure in Arizona that would improve voter identification methods for both unsupervised and in-person voters.

“Usually it takes a while for people to become co-opted by the system and reverse the positions they ran on. With Richer, it seemed to happen immediately,” said Gina Swoboda, executive director at the Voter Reference Foundation.

Illegal Lobbying Against Voter ID

The latest drama from the man who once pledged to support election integrity is his lobbying [lobbied] against Arizona’s Proposition 309, which would strengthen the state’s existing voter-ID laws. Current law requires only the signature of the voter. Under the proposal, however, voters casting an unsupervised mail-in ballot would be required to add two new pieces of identification: their date of birth and a voter ID number (usually found on a driver’s license or government-issued ID or the last four digits of a social security number). For voters casting a ballot in person, they can no longer present an alternative to a photo ID at the polls, such as a utility bill, but must present a government-issued ID.

The vast majority of Americans — a whopping 8 in 10 Americans, according to a new Gallup poll — support voter identification for balloting. This ballot measure is supported by the state’s major conservative groups and all Republican lawmakers, who passed the bill that sent this measure to the ballot. Left-wing groups and Democratic state lawmakers are opposed to the measure.

Joining the Democrats is Richer, who heads the lobbying group Arizona Association of County Recorders. He pushed through a vote opposing the ballot measure — for a while, falsely claiming he had the unanimous support of other recorders — and then posted on the county website a political message telling people how to vote on the ballot measure.

That’s where he got in trouble.

“[T]he County Recorder’s website is a publicly funded website, and using it as a vehicle to promote Mr. Richer’s political agenda is not only inappropriate, it is illegal,” a complaint filed with Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said. “This website is not at Mr. Richer’s disposal to use as a campaign website for his favored political causes.”

Richer took down his political ad against the bill, but not before observers noted the document was created by Maricopa County Recorder’s Office employee Cassidy Claridge during work hours, in alleged violation of the same laws.

“[P]lacing his thumb on the scale illegally in this context [does] not auger well for maintaining a professional perception in other realms,” said Republican lawyer Timothy La Sota, who filed the complaint.

“It is quite concerning that he can’t even follow basic election law and yet we’re trusting him to administer our elections,” added Amy Yentes of the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.

Richer admitted he was wrong to use county resources to lobby for his preferred political outcome but suggested it was a minor issue. His former supporters aren’t so sure.

“As someone who was a staunch supporter of Richer, distributed his campaign literature in my neighborhood, and convinced as many people as I could to vote for him, I find his latest actions to be not only disappointing but deserving of scrutiny on multiple levels,” Jose Borrajero said in a letter to the editor.

Other Politicking

That was not the first time election integrity experts have worried about Richer’s inappropriate political activity. Less than a year after his election, Richer took the extremely unusual step of setting up an actual political action committee to run independent expenditure campaigns on behalf of candidates who joined him in refusing to acknowledge any problem with election administration. The Democrat-funded PAC was given the name “Pro-Democracy Republicans.”

The first donor, according to records filed with the Arizona secretary of state, was Mindy Finn Feinberg. If you remember the name, it’s because she and Evan McMullin ran a well-funded “Never Trump” campaign. She now operates a group that helps left-wing organizations with their plans to take over election administration.

The second donor was Sarah Longwell, a Bill Kristol acolyte who, like many other professional grifters in Washington, has spent her career loudly proclaiming herself to be Republican while receiving money to advocate for a wide variety of leftist policies and politicians. The other donors were Democrat supporters as well.

Longtime Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell, a Republican who held the position for nearly 30 years, told an Arizona paper that Richer’s political activity was extremely unwise. Voters question results if election officials participate politically in elections, she said. “People are too skeptical about our election process. So, stay above that fray so you don’t have any questions,” she told the Arizona Mirror. Richer’s response was that because he didn’t personally tabulate all the ballots, voters shouldn’t worry about his activism on behalf of preferred candidates and issues.

Newfound Opposition to Audits

Richer worked for the libertarian CATO Institute and the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., before working as a lawyer and beginning his political career in Arizona. When he set about launching his political run, he drafted a 228-page report that cataloged problems with election systems in Arizona. He had no previous experience with election audits or reviews. In his report, he discussed problems with voting machines and printers, delays in voting, mysterious post-Election Day switches in vote totals, and problems with the delivery of mail-out ballots. The report read like many other reports from Republicans who grew concerned about radical changes to election processes pushed through by Democrat election officials in recent years.

Richer appeared to understand the partisan effects of many of these changes that moved recorder offices from the place where votes are recorded to places that ran Get Out The Vote efforts in ways that prejudicially favored Democrats.

He told the story about seeing Maricopa County election officials doing community outreach at the Women’s March but not the March For Life. He reviewed records that showed the office doing outreach at 56 explicitly Democrat Party events but only six Republican Party events. He saw many events with AZ Resist, Global Justice, and Teamsters, but few with conservative groups. He noted that all four community relations officers for Maricopa County were Democrats, some with lengthy employment histories with the Democrat Party.

“Again, these community relations personnel are tax-payer funded public employees. By using them in a statistically-convincing biased manner, Fontes showed that he is not a neutral umpire ‘calling balls and strikes.’ Instead he — for the first time in the county’s history — created a de facto partisan voter registration drive using public dollars,” Richer wrote. This is the exact type of complaint made by election integrity advocates across the country.

It was particularly impressive that Richer understood these problems even before the highly publicized takeover of government election systems was enabled by Democrat donor Mark Zuckerberg in 2020. Maricopa County received millions from Zuckerberg-funded entities, and the county flipped from Republican to Democrat in the 2020 election.

Even though the problems in 2020 were magnitudes greater than what Richer cataloged from the 2018 election, however, he abruptly changed his tune.

The ‘F’ Word for Me but Not for Thee

In Richer’s report, he noted that former Recorder Helen Purcell was “never at the front of the partisan battle; she never publicly campaigned for candidates appearing on her ballot; and she never publicly denigrated candidates appearing on her ballot. Quite the opposite for Fontes.”

It’s also the opposite of Richer, who literally set up a political action committee to support candidates who share his rejection of Republicans concerned about election integrity.

Richer also complained about his predecessor’s attacks on political opponents, a favorite pastime of Richer now that he holds the office. He specifically chastised Fontes for using the “F” word and for his hyperbolic attacks on Republicans he opposed. Richer now employs both of these practices.

In his audit, Richer made a big deal about how uncivil and political Fontes was, particularly compared to their predecessor Purcell.

“Never once did former Recorder Helen Purcell mistreat a voter or fellow public official,” Richer wrote. He quoted a political activist who said, “Helen Purcell never told a constituent to go ‘F’ themselves. She sat in a hearing room with constituents screaming in her face louder than I’ve ever seen it. And she reacted with grace and professionalism.”

By contrast, Richer wrote, Fontes had “fallen to new lows in civility and decorum.” When a Democrat constituent complained that a ballot designed by Fontes was confusing, Fontes responded, “How about you go F-yourself. If you can’t handle a little social media heat, then don’t criticize. By the way, is your Mom also running your campaign? She seems to solve all your problems.” Richer complained at length about Fontes’ rude and coarse remarks, which, he said, could “undermine public confidence in the election process.”

But a few weeks ago, Richer sent the unsolicited text “Are you f-cking kidding me?” to La Sota, after he had given a benign quote to a newspaper about an election-related court case. “If you really believe half the [expletive redacted] that is in this then I’m embarrassed for you,” he added. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” La Sota responded, to which Richer shot back, “I’m sorry to learn that you’re either a moron or immoral.” Told his comments were unbecoming of an elected official, Richer ranted, “Only one of us is lying before a court of law and prostituting ourselves at the expense of democracy.”

Other Maricopa County voters report similar temper tantrums and heated exchanges from Richer. Fontes was also reported to have a temper.

Arizona elections are ongoing, with unsupervised mail-in ballots being the predominant voting method. At least 1,000 of those ballots were delivered with only federal races listed, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced yesterday. Now campaigning against Kari Lake to be governor, Hobbs has denied the existence of election integrity problems in her state.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

The Coming Diesel Shortage Made Worse by Biden Energy Policies thumbnail

The Coming Diesel Shortage Made Worse by Biden Energy Policies

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By Adam Houser

Halloween is over. And whether you’re one of those people who can’t stand that Christmas overtakes Thanksgiving, or whether you’ve already hung your stockings with care, from a retail and shipping perspective, the holiday shopping season has already begun.

This happens every year. Yet something else is happening this year that has not happened before.

America is entering a severe diesel shortage – just in time for everyone to start ordering their holiday packages. If there’s no diesel, there’s no fuel for the trucks that bring everything we take for granted to stores and our homes. A severe shortage in diesel could mean an eventual severe shortage in groceries and other goods (or a severe increase in the price of everything else).

The Energy Information Administration reports that inventories for diesel have not been this low since 1982 (which is when they started tracking the data). There are only 25 days of supply left.

Mansfield Energy, a fuel supply and logistics company, announced that this shortage would affect the southeastern United States particularly hard, including Virginia and Maryland.

But why is this happening?

Some would have you believe that the main and only reason is the war in Ukraine. This is only partially correct.

While yes, the war in Ukraine, and the subsequent ban on Russian oil imports, have played a role, it is not the whole story.

President Joe Biden has eliminated new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, killed the Keystone Pipeline, closed the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to energy exploration, and pursued myriad regulations to increase the cost of energy and energy production (social cost of carbon, new methane rule, and the Paris Climate Accord to name a few).

All of these policies increase risk and cost to energy companies. It makes it less profitable and secure to invest in new energy development.

Europe, meanwhile, has gone even further on green policies than the United States, and is now reaping the supposed “benefits.” Europe has forced itself to rely on Russian gas to fulfill its own green goals. Now, as winter approaches, it is said wood is the new gold in Europe because it is so valuable for home heating with the gas shortages.

What’s worse, is that the Biden Administration doesn’t seem to have any plan for fixing it. Here’s what White House spokesman John Kirby had to say when asked about it:

“I’ll take the question on the diesel, because I just don’t have the data on that in front me. So let me take that and we’ll get back to you on that, but writ large, the president has been working very, very hard to make sure that we’re, that not only are we ready for fluctuations that could come and of course, the prices are going down and we think that’s important, but that we are also doing what we can to help our European friends and partners who are also going to be facing a long, cold winter. We have doubled our commitment, the commitment he made in March, for natural gas exports to Europe.”

So, the administration’s answer to America’s diesel shortage is to ship natural gas to Europe?

And I’m not sure what Kirby is referring to by “prices are going down.” Diesel prices are up more than $5 per gallon nationwide according to Forbes.

The Biden Administration did not directly cause the coming diesel shortage, but it has done everything in its power to make America very susceptible to any global supply disruption.

Without the Biden Administration’s anti-energy policies, America could have weathered the coming diesel shortage storm.

This article was originally published in the Fairfax County Times.

*****

This article was published by CFACT and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

As Murders Soar, FBI Buries the Data thumbnail

As Murders Soar, FBI Buries the Data

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By James D. Agresti

Overview

Based on a misunderstanding of new FBI data, NewsNation is reporting that 14,677 murders occurred in the U.S. during 2021, a supposedly large decline from 2020. In reality, that figure is far from complete, and comprehensive records from death certificates show that about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about:


  • 1,000 more murders than in 2020.
  • 6,000 more murders than in 2019.
  • 10,000 more murders than NewsNation reported.

Murders have become so common over the past two years that if the murder rate remains at the 2021 level, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be murdered. Yet, certain politicians and media outlets are downplaying this bloodshed, while others are blaming it on Covid—a claim at odds with the facts.

A major source of confusion about this issue is the FBI, which is releasing fragmentary and inaccessible data on murders and other crimes. The FBI is part of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is under the authority of President Biden.

Burying Crime Data

In 2021, the year Joe Biden became president, the FBI began making it far more difficult to access national estimates of murders and other crimes. The agency did this by dramatically changing the manner in which it reports such data.

Every year for more than eight decades, the FBI has published a report titled “Crime in the United States” which contains national crime estimates for the previous year. Before 2021, the FBI published this report with a simple overview page containing links like “Violent Crime,” “Property Crime,” and “Homicide.” These led to webpages with clear summaries and straightforward datasets for such crimes.

Since 2021, the FBI has published those reports only via a “Crime Data Explorer” which contains a maze of vaguely worded links, drop down menus, and acronyms. To locate the FBI’s estimate of murders for 2021 with this system, readers must:

  • go to the Crime Data Explorer home page and scroll past three prominent links named “Crime Data Explorer,” “Law Enforcement Explorer,” and “Documents and Downloads” which lead to webpages with scores of menus and files that don’t contain the data.
  • scroll to a section of the webpage titled “Explore by Location and Dataset: State participation depicts current year.”
  • click on a dropdown menu under a header named “Dataset” and select the menu item that says “NIBRS Estimation Data,” which leads to another webpage.
  • scroll to a section of the webpage called “NIBRS Estimation Viewer” and read the report that contains the data via a file viewer that sometimes fails to display the report or click on a link that says “Download NIBRS Trend Analysis Report.”

Nevertheless, the FBI claims that its Crime Data Explorer enables “law enforcement and the general public to more easily use and understand the massive amounts” of crime data it collects. Belying that statement, Google shows that only five news outlets have reported the fact that the FBI’s 2021 estimate for murders ranges from 21,300 to 24,600. Moreover, two of the outlets obtained these figures from two of the other outlets, not from the FBI. The sole place where the FBI reveals these figures is in the above-mentioned buried report.

So where did NewsNation obtain the much lower figure of 14,677 murders in 2021? From an easy-to-access webpage on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. Specifically, NewsNation linked to a page that can be accessed by clicking the first prominent link on the home page of the Crime Data Explorer and then clicking on “Expanded Homicide Data.” This leads to a webpage with a chart showing 14,677 murders in 2021, a large decline from 2020, just as NewsNation reported:

The FBI’s webpage contains two notes above the chart indicating that it shows incomplete data, but these caveats may not have been direct enough for NewsNation to fully grasp them:

  • “In 2021, the FBI expanded homicide crime statistics for the nation are based on 11,794 of 18,806 law enforcement agencies in the country that year who elected to submit an expanded homicide report.”
  • “2021 Expanded Homicide Data includes fewer homicides due to an overall decrease in participation from agencies that are not yet reporting via NIBRS.”

The fact that this incomplete data can be accessed so easily may have also led NewsNation to assume it was complete.

Supposedly, “No One Knows”

Compounding the confusion, the FBI switched to a new crime measurement system in 2021 which is leading journalists to report that there is no way to know if murders increased from 2020 to 2021. This new system is reliant upon electronic submissions from local and state law enforcement agencies, and many of them are not using it yet.

Non-reporting agencies cover 35% of the U.S. population, including the nation’s largest cities—New York and Los Angeles. Thus, the FBI explains that its crime estimates for 2021 are based on a “complex estimation process to account for unreported data” to “bridge this gap.”

That is why the FBI’s murder estimate for 2021 ranges from 21,300 to 24,600, an enormous uncertainty of 3,300 murders. Without quantifying this margin of error, the FBI issued a press release in October 2022 that provides a mid-point estimate for murders near the bottom of the release. There, the FBI states that:

  • “the estimated number of murders increased from 22,000 in 2020 to 22,900 in 2021.”
  • “it is important to note that these estimated trends are not considered statistically significant” by the FBI’s “estimation methods.”
  • “the nonsignificant nature of the observed trends is why, despite these described changes, the overall message is that crime remained consistent.”
  • “the complete analysis is located on the UCR’s Crime Data Explorer.”

The FBI published a similarly worded crime summary in the same month, buried in an accordion menu of its Crime Data Explorer.

As a result of this uncertainty, news outlets that have managed to find the FBI’s homicide estimates for 2021 have made statements like these:

  • “Good luck figuring out what happened with crime in 2021.” Vox
  • “Did Murders Rise in 2021? No One Knows.” Reason

In reality, however, we do know that murders rose because there is a more reliable source for this data than the FBI.

Murder Data and Trends

The broadest measure of homicides in the U.S. is death certificates, which are commonly completed by medical examiners or coroners. As explained by the Department of Justice in a 2014 report, death certificates provide “more accurate homicide trends at the national level than” FBI data because:

  • the reporting of death certificates is “mandatory,” while the FBI relies on “voluntary” reports “from individual law enforcement agencies that are compiled monthly by state-level agencies.”
  • death certificates include homicides that “occur in federal jurisdictions,” while the FBI rarely counts “homicides occurring in federal prisons, on military bases, and on Indian reservations.”
  • death certificates include homicides caused by the deliberate “crashing of a motor vehicle, but this category generally accounts for less than 100 deaths per year.”

The report concludes that the death certificates “consistently” show “a higher number and rate of homicides in the United States compared” to the FBI data, “likely due to the differences in coverage and scope and the voluntary versus mandatory nature of the data collection as described above.”

The FBI tries to account for incomplete coverage by estimating the number of murders that aren’t reported to the FBI, but over the past decades, this process has yielded about 1,500–2,700 less murders per year than homicides listed on death certificates:

On the other hand, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders. Such cases amounted to about 2.5% of homicides in 2015–2019.

Death certificates also include some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides. A study of 16 states during 2005–2012 suggests that such miscoded cases accounted for roughly 1.7% of homicides.

If the two rates above are currently applicable to the nation as a whole, the actual number of murders is about 4.2% less than the number of homicides recorded on death certificates.

Homicide counts from death certificates are published by the CDC via two online data extraction portals. Both of these report 24,576 homicides in 2020, but they don’t yet present data for 2021. However, another CDC portal provides provisional homicide rates through 2021, reporting 7.5 homicides per 100,000 people in 2020 and 7.8 in 2021. Combining these three figures yields 25,559 homicides in 2021.

Removing justifiable homicides to obtain an estimate of actual murders, about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. This is about 1,000 more murders than in 2020, a 5% increase on top of a 28% increase the year before that.

To provide a sense of scale for this bloodshed, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be slain if murders remain at the same rate as 2021.

Even in previous years when murders were much less common, the lifetime likelihood of murder was so shocking to some people that they sent repeated emails to Just Facts insisting it was wrong. Yet, the methodology used by Just Facts to compute this figure was developed by a licensed actuary, double-checked by a Ph.D. mathematician, and triple-checked by a Ph.D. biostatistician.

In other words, the numbers are correct, but some people’s perception of the problem is disconnected from reality. Beyond NewsNation, others who have recently downplayed the severity of crime in the U.S. include but are not limited to President Biden, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joy Behar of ABC’s The View, and the New York Times (Hat Tip: Tim Graham).

All of those individuals and organizations are proponents of the notion that the U.S. doesn’t have a severe crime problem but is simply too hard on crime. Hence, they argue that reducing arrests, eliminating bail, and lessening jail terms will make America more just without making it less safe.

That agenda has been rapidly advanced by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement since the death of George Floyd in May 2020, and murders have soared. In 2021, the U.S. murder rate was even worse than in 2001 when America was attacked by terrorists who slaughtered 2,977 people:

Historical FBI data that stretches back to 1960 shows that the current murder rate is still far below the U.S. murder peak of 1980. Still, the rapid increases since 2019 translate to 11,000 more lost lives, including 5,000 more in 2020 and 6,000 more in 2021.

Because correlation does not prove causation, one cannot assume the BLM movement is the cause of these increased murders. However, other facts detailed below reveal that this is a distinct possibility—and far more likely than the common journalistic explanations for this carnage.

What’s Causing The Bloodshed?

Many media outlets have implied or explicitly reported that the massive increase in murders over the past two years is largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A small sample includes the New York Times, Politico, Axios, CBS News, and CNN. This claim, however, is at odds with two key facts.

First, it is based on the childish notion that correlation proves causation, a fallacy that high schoolers are taught to avoid. This is because the occurrence of two events in the same year can be a mere coincidence or caused by numerous other factors. A failure to recognize this reality is a common feature of junk science and political propaganda. In the words of an academic textbook about analyzing data:

Association is not the same as causation. This issue is a persistent problem in empirical analysis in the social sciences. Often the investigator will plot two variables and use the tight relationship obtained to draw absolutely ridiculous or completely erroneous conclusions. Because we so often confuse association and causation, it is extremely easy to be convinced that a tight relationship between two variables means that one is causing the other. This is simply not true.

Second, there isn’t even a correlation between the Covid-19 pandemic and murders. This is evidenced by:

  • a study in the journal Crime Science, which found that despite over one million reported Covid cases and 80,000 Covid-related deaths in the U.S. during the first two months of the pandemic, “there were no significant changes in the frequency of serious assaults in public” or “serious assaults in residences.”
  • murder rates in England, which actually declined in 2020 and 2021, even though the nation is demographically similar to the U.S. and had slightly higher Covid death rates throughout this period.
  • a study published by the University of California Press, which documents that the recent rise of murders does not accord chronologically or geographically with the onset of the pandemic.

In stark contrast, the same study found that the timing of the 2020 murder surge in multiple major U.S. cities can be pinpointed to “the death of George Floyd” and the “subsequent antipolice protests,” which “likely led to declines in law enforcement.” Floyd died on May 25, 2020, but the pandemic began more than two months earlier on March 11.

The study’s author, criminal law professor Paul G. Cassell, summarizes the evidence as follows:

  • “Social science research can rarely provide unequivocal answers to complex criminal justice issues,” but “my view is that the best available evidence points to de-policing as the dominant (but not necessarily exclusive) factor in the ongoing surge in gun violence.”
  • “While these estimates are stated in the cold precision of an economic calculation, it must be remembered that behind these grim numbers lies a tremendous toll in human suffering—lives lost, futures destroyed, and families left grieving.”

Similar results have been found by other studies which have examined murder increases in the wake of analogous events like the protests and riots that occurred over the police killing of Michael Brown in 2015.

One of the most telling of these studies was conducted by Ph.D. sociologist Richard Rosenfeld, former president of the American Society of Criminology. An article in The Guardian explains the implications:

For nearly a year, Richard Rosenfeld’s research on crime trends has been used to debunk the existence of a “Ferguson effect,” a suggested link between protests over police killings of black Americans and an increase in crime and murder. Now, the St. Louis criminologist says, a deeper analysis of the increase in homicides in 2015 has convinced him that “some version” of the Ferguson effect may be real.

Looking at data from 56 large cities across the country, Rosenfeld found a 17% increase in homicide in 2015. Much of that increase came from only 10 cities, which saw an average 33% increase in homicide. …

“The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis.”

Another common explanation for the murder increase is recent rises in gun sales, but this notion doesn’t hold water. Cassel’s study examined this possibility and found that the increases in firearm purchases don’t accord with the murder surges in time or place. He also notes that:

the United States already has a huge number of firearms in private hands—about 400 million by some measures. Against this backdrop, a recent increase of 2 million gun sales (about 0.5% of the total) seems like a poor candidate for explaining sudden and dramatic changes in homicides.

Summary

Murders in the United States have soared by 34% over the past few years—growing from about 18,342 victims in 2019 to 24,493 in 2021. Yet, certain Democratic politicians and media outlets are downplaying this problem.

If the murder rate remains at the 2021 level, one out of every 179 people in the U.S. will eventually be murdered.

As murders have skyrocketed, the FBI has made it far more difficult to access its national estimates of murders and other crimes. The FBI has also switched to a new crime measurement system which currently has a large degree of uncertainty. As such, FBI data cannot resolve whether murders rose or fell from 2020 to 2021.

For decades, the FBI has undercounted murders, while death certificates have overcounted them. Starting with data from death certificates and removing justifiable homicides provides a more reliable estimate of murders.

Identifying the cause (or causes) of the recent rise in murders is complicated by the fact that correlation does not prove causation. Paying no heed to this reality, many media outlets have pinned the blame on Covid-19 and gun sales. However, the data are more consistent with the possibility that the BLM movement is responsible.

*****

This article was published by Just Facts and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

The Skunk at the Grand Old Party (GOP) thumbnail

The Skunk at the Grand Old Party (GOP)

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By Craig J. Cantoni

Editors’ Note: Several fault lines have been present in the Republican Party and some new ones are forming. They have become wide enough that both sides are blaming each other for the poor performance during the recent mid-term elections. And, each has a point. The most obvious is the rift between the party establishment and Trump, who came from outside the party, had never held office, and was never really accepted into the fold. The behavior of Mitch McConnell, who spent enormously in primary fights for his candidates, then was selectively parsimonious during the general election (like with Blake Masters), was not helpful for victory.  Trump did similar things. He is sitting on a large war chest but did little monetarily for his selected candidates. RNC chair is held by Mitt Romney’s niece and she did not do a great job. And at the state level, many are unimpressed by Kellie Ward. In terms of electoral success, she is not posting a lot of victories, is she? There remains tension between the McCain wing of the party and the Trumpists. But as we indicated in a previous article, there is also a growing consensus among people who have supported Trump, that his behavior and ego (witness the attacks on Ron DeSantis) are now becoming increasingly destructive. Trump was always abrasive but managed to be elected after bruising many Republican egos in the primaries. And, we will never know what more he could have accomplished as President had he not from the get-go been subject to subversion by the FBI and the DOJ, and the constant attacks by Democrats and the press. However, that tragic history cannot be changed at this juncture. But a new fault line is developing among folks who are neither for the establishment nor for Trump. They endorse most of the MAGA positions, and want a greater emphasis on fiscal sanity, but want a candidate less abrasive and ego-driven than Trump. To be sure, they don’t want a John McCain or Mitt Romney either. Our readers seem to be mostly in this camp. As mentioned before, the polls we have conducted among readers are about 2:1 in favor of DeSantis. We suspect if he was the candidate, most Trump supporters would find him satisfactory. We don’t have a magic wand to bring these warring factions together. But we need a leader who can do that because we face a very well-funded and clever opponent in the Democrat Party, and they seem able to bury their differences to win, while we are not. That said, our chances are better if we can be united and we need a candidate who can accomplish this admittedly difficult task. What is clear is that Trump does not seem to have the temperament to bring the party together. Do Republicans want to win, or not? And as for Trump, this should not be just about him. If we cannot stop the Democrat Party and its socialist/woke agenda, the nation may not be able to recover. The stakes are too high to be petty.

On the morning after the mid-term election, my wife and I were walking in the dark with a flashlight on our daily morning walk, in our neighborhood in the Foothills of Tucson, where there aren’t any street lights.  I glanced up, saw a skunk heading our way, and exclaimed, “A SKUNK! TURN AROUND!”

I’ve been saying something similar for four years, but in reference to Donald Trump.  As a product of the working-class, it pained me to warn working stiffs, who felt they had no one else to fight on their behalf, that Trump was loyal to himself and not to them.  Accordingly, I predicted, he was severely damaging the GOP and thus would leave them even more defenseless than they were before against a Democrat Party that had forsaken them.

When Trump behaved like a bully and jerk in his first debate with Joe Biden on September 29, 2020, he confirmed how an increasing number of independents saw him. It was my belief at the time that had just lost his chance for reelection.

Two years later, on November 5, 2022, Trump appeared at a campaign rally in my wife’s home state of Penn., ostensibly on behalf of Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, but actually on behalf of himself. As usual, it was all about Donald J. Trump. He even went so far as to ridicule Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and to strongly indicate that he was going to soon announce a run for reelection. Upon seeing a replay of the rally, I turned to my wife and said, “He just turned a possible red wave into a torrent of blood from a wounded GOP.”

Here in Arizona, where votes are still being counted, the skunk stunk up the state, regardless of the final tally.  Governor Doug Ducey, who, by law, couldn’t run for a third consecutive term, did not run for the US Senate, because he knew that Trump loyalists wouldn’t vote for him in a primary, because Trump wouldn’t endorse him, because he wouldn’t embrace the skunk.

As a classical liberal, I’m mostly disenfranchised by today’s politics. But I have to admit that Ducey was a good governor, one of the best in the nation. Under him, Arizona became a leader in school choice and in tax reduction.  A state that ranked near the middle in total tax burden is set to become one of ten states with the lowest total tax burden—assuming that Democrats don’t prevail in the state and reverse course.

Ducey would’ve been a far, far better senator than the Democrat incumbent Mark Kelly, whom Ducey would’ve beaten handily if it had not been for the skunk spraying Ducey and keeping him from running for the Senate. Ducey would’ve attracted votes from independents and carried other GOP candidates on his coattails.

At the same time, Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake might lose to one of the most lackluster politicians in the nation, because Lake was endorsed by Trump.

Campaign signs for Lake and Senate candidate Blake Masters are still on roadsides, with some of them saying, “Endorsed by Trump.”

They might as well have said, “Endorsed by Skunk.”

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

Demand They Strike Their Colors thumbnail

Demand They Strike Their Colors

/in , , , /by

By Michael Watson

Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University, caused a stir with an opinion piece in The Atlantic, the venerable magazine now owned by liberal mega-donor Laurene Powell Jobs through her Emerson Collective. In it, Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” for those who encouraged ultimately pointless intrusions on life amid COVID-19.

This was seized upon by one of the worst actors of the crisis, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, with a simple Twitter statement: “I agree.” To those who endured the school closures in states institutionally loyal to Weingarten and her fellow teachers’ unionists, this is like seeing a warship’s ensign flying: a sign that the adversary, whatever the reality of the situation, does not believe itself defeated.

In Denial

First, one must remember Weingarten has attempted to obscure her role in extended school closures, which are increasingly proven to have been utterly destructive to American students. Weingarten has affirmed that she and her union “wanted kids in school,” a claim that is “true” only in the most technical sense and contrary to the reality that teachers unions lobbied the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to issue the most restrictive “reopening” guidance possible. It is also inconsistent with the reality in states most loyal to the teachers union agenda, which saw the most extended closures long beyond the point at which a reasonable person could assume them to be necessary for public health.

Second, one looks with concern upon teachers unionists’ unwillingness to admit the costs of school closures. Consistent with her support for “amnesty,” Weingarten has attempted to deflect criticism of school closures by claiming that all students, in-person and remote alike, suffered learning loss. Unless those who discouraged school openings acknowledge the harm done by the policy, it remains “on the table” if the political winds shift again. And then there are those in Weingarten’s AFT who are more openly radical, like United Teachers Los Angeles president Cecily Mayart-Cruz, who told a journalist in 2021, “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables” in response to questions about Los Angeles’s school closures. That does not sound like a leader prepared to accept responsibility for her atrocious public policy demands.

No Surrender

Finally, one must ask if the ultra-restrictionists to whom Oster would give amnesty have in fact struck their colors and ended hostile action. Bethany Mandel—the conservative writer and children’s book editor who was famously tarred as “grandma killer” for advocating the reopening the National Zoo in Washington, DC, among other things—notes,

Even now, at the end of 2022, children who are speech-delayed—thanks to being surrounded by masked caregivers during a critical developmental stage—are, in some areas, expected to do speech therapy while wearing a mask, with a masked therapist.

Like the crew of a stricken warship that “has not yet begun to fight,” the forces of pandemic theater have not demonstrated surrender. They are suing in courts to retain their powers to force masking and even proposing new federal pandemic powers, with blame only for the supposed “tsunami of misinformation” that led “rural and conservative areas” to doubt their diktats. (For her part Mandel was proved prescient. The Friends of the National Zoo, a private nonprofit that had supported programming at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo since 1958, dissolved its partnership with the Zoo “following the debilitating financial impact of COVID-19 on both organizations” in 2021.)

There cannot be amnesty; there cannot be ceasefire, in the COVID-19 response debate until the side that engaged in hostile actions ceases those actions and gives up. Oster is in no position to offer such surrender: By the standards of her professional managerial class, she was remarkably lenient, advocating for school reopenings before they became politically necessary. The side that followed the teachers unions’ demands must strike its flag and vow never to carry out hostile action again.

Until then, alas, the fight continues.

****

This article was published by Capital Research Center and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

Today’s Inflation Surge Should Discredit Modern Monetary Theory Forever thumbnail

Today’s Inflation Surge Should Discredit Modern Monetary Theory Forever

/in , , , /by

By Connor O’Keeffe

It’s been a rough year for advocates of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). After nearly two years with all the budget deficits and money printing MMTers could have wanted, the doctrine’s popularity seems to have faded now that we’re well passed the honeymoon phase. 2022 has clearly demonstrated that creating a lot of new money and running massive government deficits does, in fact, come at a cost. We should let this theory die before it causes any more destruction.

MMT is a school of thought born and raised on the internet during a thirty-year period of low price inflation with constant debate over government budgets. Advocates argue that because the U.S. government is a currency issuer, we can drop all the talk about finding money for government programs. All that is needed is the political will to fund things with newly printed money. Suddenly in early 2020, that political will appeared overnight at a scale no one could have imagined even weeks before.

The Federal Government embraced deficit spending to prop up the economy amidst imposed lockdowns and trade restrictions. Now, 31 months later, the National Debt has increased by almost $8 trillion. At the same time, the money supply, as measured by M2, grew by $6 trillion, an increase of nearly 40%. Most critics of the free market would probably classify this historic level of money printing and debt as an unfortunate but necessary response to unprecedented circumstances. But not advocates of MMT. This is what they’ve been wanting all along.

According to MMT, having concerns about the national debt is antiquated and childish. In fact, they argue that the total national debt is nothing more than a record of how many dollars there are in the pockets of private citizens. A higher national debt is not a consequence of MMT; it’s the entire point. The pandemic was, in many ways, MMT’s moment.

Predictably, the historic level of monetary inflation paired with the government-imposed production slowdown has resulted in levels of consumer price inflation not seen in 40 years. The rate appears to have peaked in June 2022, with prices on average 9.1% higher than the year prior. Producer price inflation also peaked in June at 11.3%. Although most MMT advocates had been dismissive of inflation, that’s not something they would have said was impossible. The problem for them is what they think needs to be done about it.

Just as MMT sees the national debt as a measurement of all the dollars the government created and put into people’s pockets, taxes are the tools for the government to take money back out of the economy if inflation gets too high. Setting aside how economically flawed this characterization is, a government following the MMT playbook will run into a political problem at this point in the cycle.

It is relatively easy to convince politicians and everyday people that the government programs they dream about can be funded by creating new money. And the true cost of this method—currency devaluation—is not felt or seen immediately. That adds to the illusion that something can be had for nothing. But taxes are the opposite. Everyone can see the line on their receipt, the amount withheld on payday, and the check they have to send to the IRS each April. The economic pain is felt without any clear, immediate benefit.

During periods of high inflation, there is a general sense amongst everyday people that the same amount of money isn’t cutting it. Sure, the initial cause may be a higher money supply, but any given person will feel like possessing more money is the key to getting by. After all, prices keep going up. They’re not going to react as well to the argument that Uncle Sam should confiscate even more of their dollars. If MMTers thought it was difficult to cultivate the political will to inflate, they clearly haven’t been thinking further down the road.

Interestingly, we’re not hearing much about raising taxes from MMT advocates these days. Or at least, their claims haven’t been amplified by Democrats and progressives as much as earlier arguments to print more money were. Just as they have done with Keynesianism for decades, politicians will grab any economic theory that justifies what they want and drop it when it prescribes something they don’t. And thank goodness for that. The last thing we need is more taxes.

This year has demonstrated that printing vast quantities of money is costly. And that the political will to even stick with MMT breaks down when the going gets tough. That should be enough to completely discredit this ridiculous theory.

*****

This article was published by Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

How Not to Vote in Arizona

Election Day is tomorrow – Tuesday, November 8th. The system for voting in Arizona is predominantly by mail-in ballots (around 80% of all ballots – 90% in Maricopa County).

If you have not submitted your mail-in ballot yet, DO NOT MAIL IT IN OR ‘DROP IT OFF’  ON TUESDAY AT YOUR POLLING STATION. It won’t be counted on Tuesday and may not be counted for many days or at all. 

If you have failed to ‘mail-in’ your ballot yet, surrender the ballot at the polling station on Tuesday, show your driver’s license and actually fill out a new ballot and vote in person. Your vote will be tabulated and counted for the evening announcement of election results.

America Desperately Needs Donald J. Trump Back in the White House thumbnail

America Desperately Needs Donald J. Trump Back in the White House

/in , , , /by

By Dr. Rich Swier

The 2024 Presidential election has now officially started. Americans must choose who will lead this nation.

General Ulysses S. Grant said,

“There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots.”

His words ring true today.

Two Americas

Americans tend to see our nation divided into red states and blue states. They see political parties like: Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, No-Party Affiliation and Republican. This has fundamentally changed since January 20th, 2021.

Those with vision and wisdom see America divided into two distinctly different political parties, one is made up of traitors, the other of patriots.

The traitors hate America, the patriots love America, it’s as simple as that.

One party believes the U.S. Constitution is racist and was written by white supremacists. The other party is dedicated to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

One identifies with Antifa and BLM. The second with MAGA.

Actions of the Traitor’s Party

Here is a list of actions taken by the Traitor Party members at every level:

  • Replace God with government.
  • Kneel when the National Anthem is played.
  • Stomp on, desecrate or burn the American flag.
  • Tear down historical monuments.
  • Rewrite history.
  • Put selfishness above selflessness. Better to give than to receive.
  • Seek power and control.
  • Demand compliance.
  • Use force and violence.
  • Loot, burn, ransack and create havoc in communities.
  • Bully others to achieve their goals.
  • Label, name call and defame their political opponents.
  • Produce propaganda.
  • Judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.
  • Tell the Big Lies and repeat them over and over again.
  • Deny that they lie.
  • Create myths.
  • Cheat and steal.
  • Create the conditions that lead to public discord.
  • Use all means available to denigrate the many into submission.
  • Use pejoratives like: racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, white supremacist, semi-fascist, fascist, etc.
  • Use the law against their enemies.
  • Use disorder in their communities.
  • Divide rather than unite.
  • Hate all things American.

Actions of the Patriot’s Party

Here is a list of actions taken by the Patriot Party members at every level:

  • Place God above government.
  • Stand, put their hand over their heart and, if a veteran, salute when the National Anthem is played.
  • Display, embrace or wave the American flag proudly.
  • Build and restore historical monuments.
  • Study history and philosophy.
  • Put selflessness above oneself.
  • Seek love and affection.
  • Embrace individual freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
  • Use passion and compassion with others.
  • Build, restore, expand and create loving communities.
  • Honestly debate others to achieve mutual understanding.
  • Embrace political opponents as part of this nation but agree to disagree.
  • Tell the truth in all things.
  • Judge people by the content of their character not by the color of their skin.
  • Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and repeat it over and over again.
  • Never lie, cheat or steal.
  • Embrace reality and scientific truth.
  • Create the conditions that lead to prosperity for all.
  • Use all means available to love one another in order to move forward.
  • Use words like: God, life, love, truth, chastity, equal justice under the law and one nation under God.
  • Use the law against the criminal elements.
  • Create order in their communities.
  • Unite rather than divide.
  • Love all things American.

To answer the question: Is America on the verge of a second Civil War? For the Traitor Party the answer is yes, they are at war with the patriots. The Traitor Party pulled out all stops during the 2022 midterm elections. As we write this on November 12th, 2022 there are still votes being counted in states like Arizona and Nevada. There is a run off election in Georgia to determine who has a majority in the U.S. Senate.

The objectives of the Traitor Party are clear as stated in this tweet:

Congratulations to President Biden? His raid on Trump’s home, the arrest of pro-lifers, his illegal intimidation campaign against the Supreme Court, his censorship of opponents, and threats to jail and harassment of anyone who questioned his election helped stave off “Red Wave”!

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 11, 2022

Why MAGA and Donald J. Trump?

In a November 10th, 2022 The National Pulse article reported,

The Make America Great Again movement needs a long line of successors to Trump. DeSantis could absolutely be one if he can just be patient. But to try and crown him king of the GOP one day after several of his endorsed candidates lost (and where Trump won 219 out of 235 endorsements) doesn’t really work in America First’s favor.

In potential 2024 presidential polling, DeSantis polls at just 10 percent compared to Trump’s 70+ percent.

[ … ]

Trump’s 93% Endorsement Success Rate.

Not only did President Trump win 219 of his 235 endorsed races (that’s a 93 percent success rate at last count), but the Democrats just guaranteed themselves Joe Biden as their nominee for 2024.

[ … ]

Perception is Reality.

For example, the establishment GOP in Pennsylvania was dead set against Colonel Doug Mastriano, and they worked hand-in-hand with Democrats to defeat him. When your gubernatorial candidate is being attacked from all sides, including your own, your Senate candidate will also be dragged down, along with congressional candidates on the ballot.

If the GOP had actually rallied around the top of the ticket – Mastriano and Oz – they could have won together and delivered a down-ticket boost. But not only did the GOP establishment in that state lose the governor and the U.S. Senate race, they lost congressional races that should have been pickups. The blame lies with them, and they know it. Hence their projection – as always – onto Trump.

Read the full article here.

Many are asking is America on the verge of a second Civil War?

For the Traitor Party the answer is yes, they are at war with the patriots. For the patriots the answer is no, the patriots just want to live in peace, raise their families, do well in their chosen profession and job and keep America great!

The 2022 midterm elections proved that America wants MAGA back.

The midterm results show that America is hungry for President Trump to return.

There is literally no other rational way to interpret these results.

We need Trump back!

— Nick Adams (Alpha Male) (@NickAdamsinUSA) November 11, 2022

Acclaimed life, business and corporate coach Rasheed Ogunlaru said,

“In leadership, life and all things it’s far wiser to judge people by their deeds than their speech – their track record rather than their talk.”

MATT GAETZ: America Needs Trump Back In The White Househttps://t.co/Is1PWki5yZ

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 11, 2022

Elise Stefanik endorses Trump for 2024 presidential runhttps://t.co/mOdz9OuIj9

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 11, 2022

It is time for Donald J. Trump to take back the reigns of power in Washington, D.C. in order to release the reigns of power back to the people and the states.

The Traitor Party lies, cheats and steals. The Patriot Party wants free and fair elections.

Gird your loins, we the people are in for a rough ride indeed.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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