It has always been antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution to require a license to own a firearm

As of September 1, you no longer have to pay the government to carry a gun in Texas.

Most people think of Texas as the Wild West and may be surprised this was ever the case in the Lonestar State. But, Texas previously required a license to carry a gun, a restriction on citizens’ rights you’ll still find in 31 other states. Most of the time, that means citizens can keep guns in their homes or cars, but to carry on their person they must complete a class and then pay the government a recurring fee to obtain their permit. This could cost hundreds of dollars.

To address this, the Texas state legislature passed a “constitutional carry” bill during their last session, and Governor Gregg Abbott signed it into law in June. The bill doesn’t actually change the eligibility for purchasing or owning a gun. The state still blocks anyone under the age of 21 from gun ownership, as well as many people with criminal records. And those who wish to purchase a gun must of course still go through a background check as well.

Constitutional carry merely means that citizens no longer have to pay the government, or jump through hoops, to legally exercise their right to bear arms.

But be that as it may, it has not stopped the hand-wringing over the new law by many progressives, firearms instructors (who profit greatly off of licensing mandates), and police — all of whom are now spending considerable time warning the public that this will lead to an increase in gun crime and violence.

“New gun laws in Texas will surely lead to more gun violence,” read a headline in the San Antonio Report.

“New Texas law allowing people to carry handguns without permits stirs mix of fear, concern among law enforcement,” said the Texas Tribune.

And Moms Demand Action, a progressive anti-gun group, is offering to help businesses block consumers who carry.

Candidly, these talking points are tired, and they don’t stand up to reality.

First and foremost, it has always been antithetical to the spirit of the Constitution to require a license to exercise a right clearly defined in the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. For no other right do we demand that citizens jump through hoops or pay the government to use them. Imagine if similar requirements were implemented for free speech or freedom of religion. It would be a gross injustice, as are gun permits.

Additionally, making people pay to take a class and then pay to obtain a license from the government does little more than block poor people from exercising their rights. Some of these requirements were put in place to intentionally block people of color from accessing guns in the past—laws that continue to reverberate today—making these measures even more unjust.

There is nothing about paying the government that makes a person less or more likely to be violent. In fact, those who intend to commit violence already intend to break the law, and will not be bothered with a permitting process in the first place. Arguments to the contrary are totally detached from reason, the nature of crime, and everything we know about violence.

Lastly, and without getting too into the weeds, it’s important to point out that the way the vast majority of gun violence and gun deaths are tracked and reported is… deeply problematic to say the least, if not downright disingenuous.

Mass shootings include any incident where four or more people are killed in a general area. That means even when the shooter is known to the victims, they are in their own home, or a crime is gang-related, they all get lumped into this arbitrary category that makes gun violence by strangers seem more prevalent than it is. Suicides are lumped in with homicides, which also leads the public to think there’s more gun crime than there is. And the number of times a year guns save lives is usually overlooked altogether. For the record, estimates show at least 162,000 lives are saved by gun ownership a year and millions of crimes are prevented.

Furthermore, we have strong data that show ownership of guns actually correlates with less violence, not more. Statistics from the US Department of Justice show that “U.S. gun-related homicides dropped 39 percent over the course of 18 years, from 18,253 during 1993, to 11,101 in 2011. During the same period, non-fatal firearm crimes decreased even more, a whopping 69 percent.” During that same time period, gun ownership increased significantly, even breaking records in 2012.

On the other hand, we continue to see states with the strictest gun laws lead the nation in actual gun crimes and homicides. California and Illinois, which all but block residents from gun ownership altogether, lead the nation in mass shootings. And New York, which has similar laws in the city, recently experienced a 166 percent increase in gun violence during the pandemic.

The Texas law does not necessarily mean more people will carry guns; it just means they don’t have to pay the state before they do so. But if the new law does lead to more people exercising their rights, it would be a positive story either way.

*****

This article was published on September 2, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from FEE, Foundation for Economic Education.

Review of “Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns”

Decades of political mail from nearly every serious candidate and committee have consisted of full-color brochures sporting high-quality ink on expensive paper. The professional production value often looks sharper than the stuff sent from the local Lincoln dealership. For a campaign to mail anything less would portray an image akin to that of a job applicant wearing pajamas to the interview.

Or so the thinking goes.

A lot of popular wisdom about what influences the outcome of elections should have been upended back in 2012 with the publication of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. Written by journalist Sasha Issenberg, the book described the evolution of voter microtargeting and behavioral science research tactics, and the arms race between high-level Democratic and Republican campaigns to invent new weaponry. The lessons from this important book remain unlearned by nearly all voters, much of the media, and even many candidates.

With a resume that includes a fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and political reporter gigs at the Boston Globe and Slate, Issenberg’s professional pedigree rests comfortably within the traditional media establishment. His book was showered with compliments from these peers when it was released nearly nine years ago. In a Washington Post review, grizzled veteran political reporter Jeff Greenfield called it “indispensable” and a “magical mystery tour of contemporary campaigns.” Issenberg also made the broadcast interview rounds, including at snooty state-funded media programs such as NewsHour on PBS and Weekend Edition on NPR.

So, this was not the work of a right-of-center political operative intending to sound the alarm—eight years in advance—about the machinery deployed by the Left in 2020 to put Joe Biden in the White House. Yet still, Victory Lab repeatedly dropped hints that voter engagement/registration programs, supposedly nonpartisan and nonprofit (i.e.: charitable) operations under the law, are in fact funded and run by ruthlessly partisan appendages of the Democratic-left machine.

This newsworthy revelation didn’t tickle the curiosity of the supposed news organizations heaping well-deserved praise on Issenberg’s book. They weren’t reading closely.

Winning Ugly

Fast forward to the fall of 2020, when mailboxes in swing states were carpet-bombed more than once per week with cheap, photocopied, 8.5 x 11 sheets of plain white paper, printed with simple black ink script. The clever strategy behind these ugly mailings would have been familiar to anyone who had read Victory Lab back in 2012.

Some of the crude mailings promoted partisan messages regarding where the presidential candidates supposedly stood on hot button issues. Others provided absentee ballot applications and encouragements to vote early. “Lowering Prescription Drug Prices” was written in bold lettering on one: Joe Biden’s position was identified with a boldface “Yes” and Donald Trump with an equally bold “No.”

Anyone with access to a personal computer from the early 1980s or a hand-cranked mimeograph machine from the late 1950s could have quickly produced hundreds of these mailings in their basement. It looked like the work of amateurs. It was everything but that.

The organization at the center of the story was Women’s Voices Women Vote, a supposedly nonpartisan organization dedicated to increasing voter participation. But back in 2012 Issenberg outed their real agenda: “Even though the group was officially nonpartisan, for tax purposes, there was no secret that the goal of all its efforts was to generate new votes for Democrats.”

The book reports on research explored in 2011 by a Women’s Voices consultant affiliated with the Analyst Institute, a for-profit political message testing firm for Democrats. Organizations working with Analyst began exploring the effectiveness of sending primitive political mailings resembling (according to Issenberg) a letter from “the homeowner’s association announcing a policy change.”

The tests revealed that ugly mailings dramatically outperformed pretty ones. In one example a left-leaning ballot committee in Oregon sent traditional “glossy” mail promotions to some precincts, but to others the pretty stuff was replaced with “voter guides” that consisted of “text heavy” cut-rate flyers. The Oregonians found they could boost their vote tally by 5 percentage points with the dull-looking voter guides.

The same Women’s Voices profiled by Issenberg in 2012 is the parent organization responsible for the plain black and white, cheap paper mailers that hit swing state voters in 2020. The subsidiaries sending the 2020 mailings were the Voter Participation Center (VPC), a 501(c)(4) nonprofit political organization that is legally required to be nonpartisan, and the Center for Voter Information (CVI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is also supposed to be nonpartisan.

The not-so-nonpartisan CVI was responsible for the “prescription drug prices” mailing noted above. FoundationSearch, a recordkeeping service for charitable donations, lists several large left-leaning foundations and left-wing environmental organizations as past supporters of CVI, including the Sierra Club, the Tides Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. A comprehensive and up-to-date profile of its support is not available: The Center for Responsive Politics (OpenSecrets.org) describes CVI as an “outside spending group” that “does NOT disclose its donors to the FEC.”

Although organizationally a sibling of CVI, the VPC’s 501(c)(3) tax status requires it to steer clear of partisan attempts to influence elections. But as Issenberg reported, this group is happy to skirt the law as it works to “generate new votes for Democrats.”

According to FoundationSearch, since 2018, VPC has received its largest identifiable donations from foundations with a history of funding left-of-center causes, such as the Enlight Foundation ($1.5 million) and the Proteus Fund ($900,000). Singer and film star Barbara Streisand has also made VPC part of her act: Her foundation gave a $15,000 grant in 2018.

The grant description from the famously partisan Hollywood Democrat’s foundation said the 15 large was to be used to “promote free and equal opportunities to voting for all.”

In a February 2021 postmortem on the 2020 election, Time magazine credited VPC with sending 15 million vote-by-mail ballot applications to “people in key states.” The Time account didn’t specify what was meant by the revealing phrase “key states,” nor mention at all the partisan agenda of VPC supporters.

Instead, praising VPC for its election work during the pandemic, Time stated blandly that “in a normal year” the VPC “would have supported local groups deploying canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote.” The accidentally ironic headline of the Time article was: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.

But readers of Victory Lab knew the secret Time was keeping in the shadows from its readers: No matter the year, VPC’s agenda has always been to use its supposedly nonpartisan, nonprofit status to increase the number of partisan Democratic voters in states key to winning the White House.

Barbara Streisand may have claimed her money would “promote free and equal opportunities to voting for all,” but the webpage of the VPC repeatedly announces its intent to mobilize only voters in a “new American majority.” This is very narrowly defined as “people of color, unmarried women, and young voting eligible Americans.”

If you think—for example—that a rarely voting rural gun enthusiast who attends the local Protestant megachurch is a target of VPC’s “new American majority” outreach, then you are probably still sending your holiday wish lists to the North Pole.

Or believing what you read in Time magazine.

*****

This article was published on July 23, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from Capital Research Center.

Inflation can be considered a tax, an especially regressive one, falling harder on those with lower income and/or assets.

As we’ve noted previously, the Federal Reserve’s “M2” monetary aggregate began growing significantly faster than the “GDP” measure of economic output in the United States beginning around 2008, amidst the 2007-2009 financial and economic crisis.

With the federal government’s massive fiscal and economic “stimulus” policies arriving together with a pandemic and government lockdowns, M2 growth has recently risen dramatically higher than GDP growth.

Earlier this week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (within the U.S. Department of Labor) reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose in June at one of its fastest growing rates in more than a decade. Some people have been pointing to the fact that year-over-year changes in the CPI may be high recently in part because the comparisons to last year’s levels were amidst the onset of the pandemic. But in the second quarter of 2021, compared to the first quarter of 2021 and on a seasonally adjusted basis, the CPI rose at an annualized rate of more than 8 percent, which is the highest quarterly growth rate since the third quarter of 1981.

It’s always worthwhile to keep an eye on alternative inflation measures, given the estimation issues associated with government statistics, and considering the source of those statistics.

Along those lines, a recent survey of small businesses by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) returned a result for prices that hasn’t been reached since 1981.

And the prices component of the monthly Institute for Supply Management survey of business purchasing managers rose in June 2021 to its highest reading since July 1979.

Inflation can be considered as a tax, and an especially regressive one, falling harder on those with lower income and/or assets. Inflation can be considered one cost of government.

*****

Continue reader this article at Wolf Street.

“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.”

Those were the words of White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki last week, and they should send chills up and down your spine. It’s bad enough that we already have Big Tech playing speech police on a daily basis. Now, the federal government is flagging “problematic posts” FOR Facebook?!?

But this level of government censorship and collusion doesn’t stop with Facebook. Psaki turned around the next day to say that if you’re banned from one social media platform, you should be banned from them all. And she admits that the White House hasn’t taken any options off the table when it comes to exercising more control over social media platforms. For the record, that also appears to include censorship of your text messages. (That’s right. They’re even trying to get your phone carrier involved).

So, just to recap. The federal government, which is supposed to uphold the U.S. Constitution, is actively aiding social media companies in censoring and banning Americans. Has anyone in the Biden administration read the First Amendment?

Surely President Biden must have at some point. After all, he’s been in public office since the 1970s. But Biden took it a to a whole other level, accusing Facebook of “killing people” for allowing “COVID misinformation.” That’s certainly an interesting attack considering Facebook has been a willing partner in censoring people. But apparently, the social media giant hasn’t gone far enough for President Biden’s tastes.

So, what exactly do the Democrats mean by “misinformation”? And what posts have the Biden administration flagged as such? Predictably, Psaki would not commit an answer, maneuvering around the question like a skilled tap dancer.

But Jen Psaki doesn’t have to say it for us. The reality is that this has nothing to do with COVID. Democrats and Big Tech have one goal in mind. They want to silence conservatives like you. Just look at what’s taken place this past year:

Google-owned YouTube de-platformed the pro-life group LifeSiteNews without explanation.
YouTube demonetized The Epoch Times, an independent news media that doesn’t claim a party affiliation.
Facebook deleted conservative actor Kevin Sorbo’s page without telling him why.
Twitter shut down MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell
Google, Apple, and Amazon teamed up to remove the Parler app from the internet for a period of time.
And Twitter banned President Trump while he was still the President of the United States with Facebook extending its ban of Trump to at least two more years this past June.

The list could go even further. But one thing is clear. The Biden administration isn’t even pretending anymore. They want an internet crack down on people they don’t agree with, and they’re using COVID as their excuse.

This is outrageous, and it’s incredibly dangerous.

If the government is allowed to decide who is banned from the public square today, what does that look like tomorrow? Or four years from now? Or a decade from now?

And what does it look like if your preferred party isn’t in power?

This should not only concern Republicans, but Democrats, Independents, and anyone who values free speech. Because if the Biden administration get its way, criminalizing speech could be next.

*****

This article was published on July 22, 2021 at the Arizona Free Enterprise Club.

Anyone who looked at the events of 2020 and projected a coup attempt onto Donald Trump has no place in senior government leadership, let alone a Dairy Queen serving Blizzards.

What better way to know the U.S. military is compromised—aside from racially extremist training and leftist propaganda videos—than when its top officer ignores widespread violence from one political faction while calling isolated violence from another a “coup”?

CNN, an outlet we know from sinking ratings is having an identity crisis post-Trump, published a preview last week of a new book titled “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. The 2,300-word piece declares as follows about Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley.

The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation’s top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election …The authors explain Milley’s growing concerns that personnel moves that put Trump acolytes in positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, were the sign of something sinister to come.

I am sure these Pulitzer-Prize winning writers might even strike up a film deal with their 592-page Trump Derangement Syndrome manual. Anyone who looked at the events of 2020 and projected a coup attempt onto Donald Trump has no place in senior government leadership, let alone a Dairy Queen serving Blizzards.

“They may try, but they’re not going to f-cking succeed,” Milley is quoted as telling his deputies, according to Leonnig and Rucker. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.” He also reportedly told his aides, “This is a Reichstag moment. The gospel of the Führer.”

Yes, this is Milley juxtaposing elected oversight of the U.S. military with the government of Adolf Hitler. What sound military leadership and strategic guidance can a general provide if he has determined that the president of the United States is comparable to a dictator who killed approximately 6 million people?

Let’s not forget who Milley is. This is the same left-wing media darling who said unironically in congressional testimony that “white rage” was behind the Capitol breach, deflecting on the military’s relationship with critical race theory (CRT). “White rage” was coined in Emory University professor Carol Anderson’s 2016 book “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” as “the operational function of white supremacy” that “undermine[s] African American achievement and advancement.”

Let that sink in. The highest-ranking and most senior official in the U.S. military not only believes in white privilege but also that such privilege could lead to the president coordinating a coup upon losing the election. Notwithstanding that the breach began 20 minutes before Trump even finished speaking that Wednesday afternoon, it is vital that we clarify one fact.

January 6 was not an insurrection, nor a coup. According to eyewitnesses and visual evidence such as live streamed videos, the Capitol breach was a riot perpetrated by a small minority of a large crowd of mostly peaceful demonstrators.

Whereas the Capitol breach was a largely disorganized meandering of MAGA-hat flag-wavers taking pictures in Democrat offices, a coup is an attempt to violently overthrow the government. No serious person can say, based on the available evidence, that the individuals in the Capitol that day aimed to destroy our republic, or even to harm public officials. The only person purposefully killed that day was an unarmed civilian shot by security forces. Jan. 6 was a stupid stunt, not a coup.

Milley’s characterization of this event, according to the book, tells a different story. Speaking to senior leaders in preparation for President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, he once more compared his fellow countrymen to Nazis.

“Here’s the deal guys: These guys are Nazis,” he said, “they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II. We’re going to put a ring of steel around this city and the Nazis aren’t getting in.”

They put a ring of steel around the city alright. It took six months for the government to take down the metal fencing around the Capitol, and the left still mendaciously seeks a 9/11-style commission. The FBI claimed to strike gold when they confiscated a riot suspect’s LEGO set three weeks ago.

It’s long past time to tell it like it is. The U.S. military, illustrated by Milley’s testimony likening national security threats from China and Russia to “climate change” and “infrastructure,” has mangled priorities. Milley is a symptom of institutional decay. 

*****

This article was published on July 19, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from The Federalist.

Senate Democrats took their push to nullify state election laws on the road Monday, holding a “field hearing” in Atlanta to attack Georgia’s recent election reforms and promote their bill to eliminate voter ID and other requirements.

Only Democrat members of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee showed up to question witnesses, also all Democrats.

Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Republicans had the opportunity to call a witness to defend the Georgia law, but didn’t request one. A spokesperson for the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., didn’t respond Monday to The Daily Signal’s emails and phone inquiries on this point.

The hearing, held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, included numerous assertions, some true, but others debunked in previous fact checks.

Here’s a look at six big claims from the hearing in Atlanta, which Democrats titled “Protecting the Vote.”

1. ‘Hurdles’ to Ballot Drop Boxes

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., isn’t a member of the Rules and Administration Committee, but was the first witness in his home state. Warnock, who took office in January, criticized Georgia’s election reform law for “reducing the number of drop boxes where voters can return those ballots.”

Klobuchar jumped in later to say, “If you’re looking for evil, you can find it pretty easily” in the Georgia law.

“Drop-off boxes cannot stay open beyond the time of the early voting,” Klobuchar said, adding, “Some of these voters were working day and night, several jobs, then they can’t go to a drop-off box.”

The fact is that ballot drop boxes weren’t used in Georgia nor in most other states before the 2020 election, which took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Georgia election officials provided drop boxes to collect voters’ ballots based on Gov. Brian Kemp’s emergency order to address voting concerns during the pandemic.

But for Senate Bill 202, passed by Georgia lawmakers, officials wouldn’t have to provide drop boxes in future elections. That said, fewer drop boxes will be available as those elections presumably take place without a pandemic.

Also, the new law restricts voting by drop box to hours when early in-person voting is available.

Each county in Georgia must provide at least one drop box under the law. But boxes will have to be located near early-voting sites and be accessible for dropping off absentee ballots when those polling locations are open.

2. ‘Big Lie’

Democrat senators and witnesses argued that the law in Georgia and other election reforms across the United States were prompted by former President Donald Trump’s claim that his election loss in November to President Joe Biden was fraudulent.

“We saw record-breaking voter turnout in our last elections—participation that should have been celebrated—get attacked by craven politicians, and, spurred on by the big lie, these same actors are now rolling back voting rights in a way that is unprecedented in size and scope since the Jim Crow era,” Warnock said.

Biden beat Trump by about 12,000 votes out of 4.9 million cast, according to official final results, to win Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.

Georgia state Rep. Bill Mitchell, a Democrat and president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, called the November election a major success.

“I define its success not by our candidates’ winning their elections, but by the fact that when you have as many people vote as we did in the 2020 election cycle, with as few problems, with all challenges being dismissed—you have to consider that to be successful,” Mitchell said.

Mitchell later said “The Heritage Foundation and others” were pushing election reform legislation.

The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank, is the parent organization of The Daily Signal.

“When you have the highest levels of voter participation, combined with the lowest levels of challenges, why would you want to change that?” Mitchell said.

However, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week reported that digital ballot images show that Fulton County election officials scanned about 200 ballots two times in the November election. Skeptics of the election results argue that apparent double counting is evidence of a need for a closer examination of ballots in Georgia. 

The newspaper noted that the discovery was unlikely to change the election results in Georgia. But some conservative commentators, such as Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, expressed concern about the finding.

The duplication of at least 200 ballots is evidence of problems with tallying votes in Georgia, but far from proof that the state’s election results were affected in Biden’s favor. 

3. ‘Adequate Polling Locations’

One of the more compelling witnesses was neither a lawmaker nor an activist, but a voter named Jose Segarra. The Air Force veteran told his story of waiting in line for hours.

“I, along with thousands of Georgians, had to wait for hours in order to cast my vote in the 2020 general election,” he said.

“Our government needs to ensure that we have adequate systems and processes in place to allow every eligible voter to cast their ballot without such undue burdens,” Segarra said without specifying federal or state government, adding:

To do this, we need to have an adequate number of polling locations and these locations to be properly resourced and open for as expansive a period as possible. Voters should have the opportunity to vote on Saturdays and Sundays. Lots of people work on Saturdays, so Sundays need to be an option. It would also make it much easier for some people to vote if Election Day were a federal holiday.

Georgia’s new election law does provide “additional voting equipment or poll workers to precincts containing more than 2,000 electors.”

The law added early voting on two Saturdays and one Sunday that previously were not available to Georgians, stating:

Requiring two Saturday voting days and two optional Sunday voting days will dramatically increase the total voting hours for voters across the state of Georgia, and all electors in Georgia will have access to multiple opportunities to vote in person on the weekend for the first time.

Under the new law, counties in Georgia have flexibility to open early voting for as long as from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., or from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at minimum.

Previously, some rural counties didn’t provide for early voting for eight hours on a workday, The Washington Post reported.

Thus, the law actually expanded hours for early voting. 

4. ‘Mass Challenges’

Warnock announced new legislation he is co-sponsoring with fellow Senate Democrats Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Jon Ossoff of Georgia. Ossoff, like Warnock, took office in January after defeating a Republican incumbent in a special election.

The legislation, called the Preventing Election Subversion Act, seeks to prevent the overturning of elections based on mass challenges or by legislators controlling the makeup of a state board of elections.

The proposal is tied directly to provisions that Warnock said are in SB 202, the basis of Georgia’s new law.

Warnock said Georgia’s law would let “a single person make unlimited, mass challenges to the ability of other Georgians to vote, clearing the way for baseless accusations.”

The language of the law does make it more difficult for government officials to outright dismiss a complaint about election procedures and ballots. Specifically, it says:

Any elector [voter] of a county or municipality may challenge the qualifications of any person applying to register to vote in the county or municipality and may challenge the qualifications of any elector of the county or municipality whose name appears on the list of electors. Such challenges shall be in writing and shall specify distinctly the grounds of the challenge.

There shall not be a limit on the number of persons whose qualifications such elector may challenge. Upon such challenge being filed with the [local] board of registrars, the registrars shall set a hearing on such challenge within ten business days after serving notice of the challenge.

As another justification for his legislation, Warnock argued that Georgia’s new law “allows partisan officials in the state Legislature to control our state board of elections and take over local election administrators, and it allows them to engage in these takeovers even as the votes are still being cast.”

The Associated Press reported in March that under the new law, the Legislature does indeed have an increased role in the State Election Board, but it can’t overturn elections at a whim, as Warnock seemed to suggest. 

Georgia’s elected secretary of state has a diminished role in elections under the new law. This is the basis for Democrats’ claim that partisan politics could play a role.

“The secretary of state will no longer chair the State Election Board, becoming instead a non-voting ex-officio member,” Georgia Public Broadcasting explained in a report. “The new chair would be nonpartisan but appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate. The chair would not be allowed to have been a candidate, participate in a political party organization or campaign or [have] made campaign contributions for two years prior to being appointed.”

5. ‘Rushed Through’

Georgia state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Dunwoody, said the Republican-sponsored law lacked adequate input from Democrats in the state Legislature.

“Election bills were rushed through without public input and voted out along party lines,” Harrell said. “Questions addressed to bill authors by minority members were frequently answered dishonestly and disrespectfully. … In the nine years I have served in the [Georgia] General Assembly, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with the passage of SB 202.”

Previous media reporting shows the legislation moved quickly through the Legislature to Kemp’s desk. Questioning this speed has been a consistent line among critics, including the U.S. Justice Department.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is leading the federal lawsuit against Georgia’s voting law, has said the bill was “a rushed process that departed from normal practice and procedure.”

“The version of the bill that passed the state Senate … was three pages long,” Clarke said in June during a press conference announcing the litigation. “Days later, the bill ballooned into over 90 pages in the House. The House held less than two hours of floor debate on the newly inflated SB 202 before Gov. Kemp signed it into law the same day.”

6.  Water Bottles, Ballot Harvesting

Warnock also complained that Georgia’s election law is “making it harder for community organizations to assist voters, whether from requesting a ballot to just handing out a bottle of water.”

The law prohibits campaign workers from distributing food, drink, or anything else of value to waiting voters, and from setting up a table within 150 feet of the building or 25 feet of a voter.

However, the law specifically allows official poll workers, as opposed to campaign workers, to provide water to voters. 

As for the “community organizations” Warnock cited, the law prohibits ballot harvesting, a controversial practice in which  political operatives obtain large numbers of ballots from election officials and then deliver the ballots to those officials once they’ve been voted.

The practice has been used to achieve fraud in several elections, among them a North Carolina congressional race later overturned in court and a Texas mayor’s race that led to multiple indictments.

*****

This article was published on July 19, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from Daily Signal.

This proposal… amounts to “abolishing the suburbs” by making them more like cities.
Apartment buildings…. could be built in the middle of any suburban neighborhood, and there is nothing you could do to stop it. A housing project could be built next door to your home. One-acre lots could be subdivided to cram in as many houses as possible.
They claim that cities are undesirable places to live because they are crowded, hot, and lack nature, so it is unfair that people have to live there. Ironically, their solution seems to be to make more of them….
Worse, local governments presumably know what is best for their communities. That is why communities have local governments rather than a federal government deciding everything for everyone. If residents desired different zoning, their officials would have already made those changes on their own…..That is probably why it is being hidden within a massive bill and not talked about.
The federal government has no power to force this change, but the president has floated withholding federal money that towns rely on for things like roads unless the towns comply…. What town can afford to lose all federal transportation dollars — funded with taxes that they pay?..,, Basically, it is not far from extortion.
Most cities, and most low-income people, vote for Democrats. For politicians, this means that if you can make the countryside into cities, in 10 years, everyone will be voting for only one party.
Many counties will find it hard to resist the temptation to take the cash. But in the long-term they are saddling themselves with a huge influx of poverty whose financial effects will outweigh any grants. Of course, they will also completely change the aesthetics and culture of the neighborhood — and irrevocably alter its political makeup.

Interview with Luke Rosiak, an investigative reporter with The Daily Wire. He warns of a little-noticed provision in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal that could have major consequences for how people will be forced to live — and for a political power-grab in the country.

Gatestone Institute: President Joe Biden’s “infrastructure” proposal says that money granted to towns and counties will come with a condition: eliminating “prohibitions on multifamily housing” and zoning restrictions such as “minimum lot sizes.” This proposal, it has been said, amounts to “abolishing the suburbs” by making them more like cities.

Rosiak: Yes. Apartment buildings as well as duplexes — essentially carving up suburban homes into multiple apartment units — could be built in the middle of any suburban neighborhood, and there is nothing you could do to stop it. A housing project could be built next door to your home. One-acre lots could be subdivided to cram in as many houses as possible. If you bought into a neighborhood of one-acre lots and enjoy a bit of privacy, your neighbor could soon be able to sell his acre to a real estate developer who could put eight buildings on it.

GI: What is the purpose of this?

Rosiak: As USA Today put it: “A house with a white picket fence and a big backyard for a Fourth of July barbecue may be a staple of the American dream, but experts and local politicians say multifamily zoning is key to combating climate change, racial injustice, and the nation’s growing affordable housing crisis.” As part of the administration’s desired $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, “cities would allow… apartment buildings with fewer than six units to be built next to a traditional house….”

Part of the “purpose” is the claim that we need to spread out poverty to make things more “equitable.” They claim that cities are undesirable places to live because they are crowded, hot, and lack nature, so it is unfair that people have to live there. Ironically, their solution seems to be to make more of them by cutting down trees in the suburbs and putting up tall buildings. They also claim it will help the environment because if Americans live more densely, they are more likely to take mass transit and use fewer cars.

GI: Is this what Americans want? More poverty and increased population density in their suburbs?

Rosiak: Plenty of Americans love the big-city lifestyle; but they are already living in cities. Many other Americans have chosen big backyards for their kids to play in and to have some privacy. If you moved into a neighborhood based on certain expectations – whether it was one house on each quarter-acre, half-acre, or acre – you likely do not want that thrown out the window. With rising crime rates and remote work, people’s preferences have actually been shifting to moving even further out in the country, to have even more space than before.

Worse, local governments presumably know what is best for their communities.

That is why communities have local governments rather than a federal government deciding everything for everyone. If residents desired different zoning, their officials would have already made those changes on their own. This tells you that the move will most likely be horrifically unpopular among voters of both parties. That is probably why it is being hidden within a massive bill and not talked about.

The federal government has no power to force this change, but the president has floated withholding federal money that towns rely on for things like roads unless the towns comply.

President Biden’s campaign platform called to “Eliminate local and state housing regulations that perpetuate discrimination” through a bill called the HOME Act. It would make “surface transportation funding and community development block grants contingent on” eliminating policies such as “ordinances that ban apartment buildings from certain residential areas or set a minimum lot size for a single-family home.’” What town can afford to lose all federal transportation dollars — funded with taxes that they pay?

Since the infrastructure bill is sending billions of dollars to local governments, the administration appears to be using it for the same purpose, saying that local governments will not be eligible for some of this money unless they make zoning changes. Basically, it is not far from extortion.

GI: So the administration wants to turn the suburbs into cities? Why would a political party want to do that?

Rosiak: Most cities, and most low-income people, vote for Democrats. For politicians, this means that if you can make the countryside into cities, in 10 years, everyone will be voting for only one party. In fact, one of the best predictors of how a person will vote is population density. If you live on an acre or more, you are probably a Republican, and if you live in a high-density area, there is a good chance you are a Democrat.

Politically, control of America comes down to the suburbs. Right now, they are the only areas that are “purple.” If you can move residents of the suburbs to the “left” by 10 points by adding high-density housing, then you have secured permanent political control.

Many voters will be furious, but to the politicians, that will not matter: the new residents are sure to give one party the majority it wants. That is what the infrastructure bill conditions are really about: securing a one-party control of government. Who’s in charge of your county or town is incredibly important: it determines criminal justice policy, school boards, and spending. The population shift could also tip congressional seats and impact the electoral college. And of course, added high-density housing could also come with traffic, never-ending construction, crime, and gangs.

GI: Is this infrastructure bill a done deal?

Rosiak: It is still in the negotiations stage, and details have so far been essentially secret. But the current administration has repeatedly said it intends to include zoning provisions along these lines, and other politicians have not given any indication that they understand the significance of what is being done or that they intend to fight it.

If a bill passes with these strings attached, suburbs are likely to go the way of Loudoun County, Virginia. Loudoun was a semi-rural community until a few years ago, when its local representatives permitted the construction of thousands of townhouses. The first thing the new residents did was to vote those representatives out and their representatives in. Now Loudoun County is more like San Francisco on the Potomac.

Many counties will find it hard to resist the temptation to take the cash. But in the long-term they are saddling themselves with a huge influx of poverty whose financial effects will outweigh any grants. Of course, they will also completely change the aesthetics and culture of the neighborhood — and irrevocably alter its political makeup.

The infrastructure provisions are not the only way the current administration is methodically seeking to increase the population density and poverty rate of suburbs. In June, the president signed an executive order affecting Department of Housing and Urban Development money, “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” with similar goals.

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This article/interview was conducted on July 15, 2021 and is reproduced with permission from Gatestone Institute.