Article by J.B. Shurk in The American Thinker

 

Time for a New Declaration?

Here's a serious question.  Have we passed that Rubicon in America beyond which it is no longer possible to pretend the American government is legitimately representing the people?  I know that question is on a lot of Americans' minds these days, and I think it speaks volumes about our brewing crisis that none of our elected leaders has even attempted to acknowledge, let alone address, the growing unease outside the capital.  People are arming up right now in record numbers not because of hunting season; they're buying weapons because their instincts tell them America is on the brink.  But if America is on the brink, the D.C. Leviathan seems unsympathetic or unaware.  That makes for an awfully dangerous situation.  

Doesn't it feel as though we've been here before?  An out-of-touch capital far removed from American life starts imposing its will on ordinary folk until enough Americans who desire only to be left alone finally dig in their heels, embrace their independent spirits, and refuse to be subjects of an unjust government any longer.  The British Parliament gave us the Stamp Act in 1765 and the Townshend Acts in '67, and after the Boston Massacre in '70, the Tea Party in '73, and the Intolerable Acts of '74, the tinderbox finally exploded at Lexington and Concord in April of '75.  Revolution began.  A decade is all it took.  

Ten years ago, millions of furious Americans began protesting the federal government's suicide pact forced upon the states in the forms of our untenable national debt and the Democrats' insistence on burdening future generations with even more unfunded liabilities arising from government-run health care and other new entitlements.  "Tea Parties" sprang up across the country to draw attention to the ticking financial time bomb hanging over us all.  Obama mocked them.  The media pretended they were dangerous.  Nobody listened to their pleas.  So they set to work flipping first the House and then the Senate for the Republicans.  When that didn't work, they voted in an "outsider" president who took both parties by surprise.  

Instead of learning from the moment and recognizing that a significant portion of the electorate had become so fed up with the federal government that it essentially decided to call in a Wild West sheriff to clean house, the self-installed and self-replicating bureaucracy chose instead to sabotage the elected president every step of the way.  Now those same fed up Americans are told they must accept the results of a highly suspicious national election in which the incumbent president won a record number of votes and almost all traditional bellwether counties but came up short against the unprecedented use of mail-in balloting from a handful of Democrat-controlled counties to capture battleground states well after Election Day. 

Americans worked within the system for change, and the system changed the rules under the pretext of a health emergency.  When those Americans protest, their voices are censored, and their livelihoods are threatened.  There is a presumption among Obama Democrats and Big Government Republicans that Americans who take their freedoms seriously will simply roll over and obey if they are increasingly attacked, punished, and ignored.

If "taxation without representation" was enough to boil the blood of American patriots two hundred and fifty years ago, I have my doubts that "socialism without representation" will fare much better with their descendants.

It is the height of irony that an American system of government that arose from rebellion against the unchecked demands of an insular ruling class seems intent on planting the seeds for rebellion once again.  How else can one describe this moment in history when the American government and the American people are heading in different directions?  

According to some polling, less than half the country believes that the election for president was "free and fair."  Democrat mayors and governors have once again begun flexing powers they do not possess in order to shutter businesses and trample civil liberties in ways that would have seemed unfathomable to Americans not long ago.  And elected Democrats and their supporters in the media and business communities openly make lists of ordinary Americans they deem worthy of harassment and persecution.  These threats to liberty should shock the consciences of true friends of freedom everywhere.

Twenty-five years ago, the witty and prescient Claire Wolfe offered some wisdom that resonated with a lot of people: "America is at that awkward stage," she wrote.  "It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."  I'm sure you've seen those words, and I'm sure you laughed, but I bet you also wondered when the shooting would actually begin.  An awful lot has happened since then.  Matt Drudge burst onto the scene, shattered the left's monopoly over journalism for a time, and then joined forces with the left himself.  Republican honchos like Michael Steele and Bill Kristol decided that the best way to protect Republican voters from themselves was to repeatedly stab them in the back, and Fox News created an unbridled outlet for conservative points of view before taking a hard turn toward bend-the-knee, kiss-the-ring champagne socialism.  The great majority of Americans have pleaded for sensible immigration reforms, trade policies that benefit workers at home, and an end to "endless wars," but the American government has pursued the opposite agenda.  American technology giants emerged to expand the flow of information and the free expression of ideas before transforming into filters of information and suppressors of ideas.  And Big Media, Big Tech, and Big Government conspired repeatedly for four years to remove an American president because he challenged the establishment status quo.  I wonder what stage Ms. Wolfe thinks we've entered now.

Perhaps it's time to follow in the footsteps of the wise generation of men and women who first fought for our freedoms by setting forth our grievances in the kind of formal writing that might make it clear to those who wish to rule over us that our patience has run its course — a declaration, if you will, that states plainly our belief that just power comes only from the consent of those governed.  A free people should expect nothing less.  A government truly "of the people" should insist upon it.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/time_for_a_new_declaration.html#ixzz6eL43geE2

 

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Article by Tyler Durden in Zero Hedge

 

Argentina approves 'confiscatory' wealth tax on millionaires

In an early glimpse of what wealth redistribution will look among developed nations in coming years, on Wednesday the lower house of Argentina's Congress approved a bill seeking to raise 300 billion pesos ($3.75 billion) through a tax on the ultra rich to finance programs aimed at helping families hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a vote that passed 133 to 115 with two abstentions, people with more than $2.5 million in net worth - over 10,000 individuals - will make an "Extraordinary Solidarity Payment," paying a one-off 2% flat tax. The tax would increase progressively as equity increases, under the proposal.

"The level of concentration of wealth, in a few hands, is so strong that this contribution falls on less than 0.02 percent of the population," said government deputy Fernanda Vallejos during debate. "About half of what is collected will be contributed by only 252 people, those who are at the top of the pyramid."

Government supporters took to the streets on Tuesday to show their support for the bill, with militant Peronist groups leading caravans of vehicles and marches on foot to Congress

The so-called "wealth tax" or "millionaire’s tax" bill – which the opposition slammed as "confiscatory" – may face a tougher time in the Senate, which will likely consider it before the end of the month, with the Frente de Todos coalition needing allies to support it.

The one-time (for now) tax will apply to individuals whose declared assets exceed 200 million pesos (US$2.35 million), with a progressive rate of up to 3.5% for assets in Argentina and up to 5.25% on goods outside the country. According to AFP, between 9,000 and 12,000 people fall into that bracket in Argentina, a country with 40.9% of its 44 million inhabitants currently living in poverty. Unemployment stands at just over 10%, with the economy still yet to overcome a recession that began in 2018. Things have only worsened after the coronavirus pandemic, and the IMF estimates GDP will contract by 11% this year.

The bill lays out that the "extraordinary contribution" will be a one-time measure and it indicates where the funds will be sent and what they will be used for. For example, it names development and production programmes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), education projects and student scholarships, as well as the purchase of medical equipment.

It establishes that 20 percent of what is raised from the levy will be used for medical supplies to attend the Covid-19 health emergency, with another 20 percent designated for SMEs, 15 percent for social development programmes, 20 percent for student scholarships and 25 percent for development programmes related to natural gas.

President Alberto Fernández, who took office in December amid a recession that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, has sharply increased public spending to protect hard-hit families over recent months. More than 36,106 Argentines have died of COVID-19 so far, according to official data.

The government hopes that the levy on large fortunes will help strengthen its fiscal outlook. Over the past eight months, the Fernández administration has allocated millions of dollars in aid to the private sector to alleviate the economic impact of the lockdown imposed to tackle the advance of the coronavirus, while raising social support payments for workers in the informal economy.

The law provides for higher rates for assets located abroad, but offers relief for those who decide to repatriate them in whole or in part.

Meanwhile, the opposition Juntos por el Cambio says it rejects the initiative, describing the idea as "confiscatory." As debate got underway on Tuesday, deputies from the opposition coalition called on their peers to vote it down.

"Argentina already has many taxes and very high tax evasion. Instead of creating new taxes, what must be done is the efficient collection for those that exist," said opposition lawmaker Álvaro González.

"The opposition is looking for arguments that go against the objective of this bill,” countered Peronist deputy José Luis Ramón. “They say that it is a tax but it is an extraordinary contribution and only this one time, due to the pandemic."

The business sector is also divided against the law. Generally, chamber groups and large firms reject the initiative, while small- and medium-sized businesses are more likely to back it.

"The bill will end up decapitalising companies that invest, produce and sustain employment in a health emergency context," complained the powerful Argentine Industrial Union. The contribution is for individuals with large fortunes and will not be imposed on companies.

Argentina is hardly the first country to impose mandatory wealth taxes, with at least three European countries already levying a net wealth tax: Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands levy wealth taxes on selected assets, but not on an individual’s net wealth per se according to the Tax Foundation.

• Norway levies a net wealth tax of 0.85 percent on wealth stocks exceeding NOK1.5 million (€150,000 or US $164,000), with 0.7 percent going to municipalities and 0.15 percent to the central government. Norway’s net wealth tax constitutes around 1.1 percent of its total tax revenues and dates to 1892.
• Spain’s net wealth tax is a progressive tax ranging from 0.2 percent to 2.5 percent on wealth stocks above €700,000 ($775,000), with rates varying substantially across Spain’s autonomous regions (Madrid offers a 100 percent relief). Spanish residents are subject to the tax on a worldwide basis while non-residents pay the tax only on assets located in Spain. The net wealth tax makes up only 0.5 percent of total tax revenues.
• Switzerland levies its net wealth tax at the cantonal level and covers worldwide assets (except real estate and permanent establishments located abroad). The tax rates and allowances vary significantly across cantons. First implemented in 1840, the tax now constitutes around 3.6 percent of total tax revenue.

Yet the success of wealth taxes is mixed at best, and as the next chart below shows, government revenue raised from wealth taxes is a tiny fraction of other tax revenues.

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Article by Robert A. Hahn in RedState

 

Don't Run, You'll Fall

This isn’t the same country I grew up in. When did Americans start expecting the government — not their Mommy, the damned government — to keep them safe from everything?

I live in Florida. Last week we had a hurricane. As hurricanes go, it wasn’t a particularly bad one. Here at Our House World Headquarters, we measured a mere seven inches of rain. Which is gracious plenty for a single day.

Among their other virtues, hurricanes spew tornadoes. And that is how it came to pass that I found myself standing in the porch doorway, railing at the elements, daring them to come and kill me.

Like everyone else, I’ve been hearing about the Wuhan Death Virus for months. It’s coming. It’s gonna get me. And when it does get me it’s going to kill me good. We had the lockdown. We were told to Stay In Our Homes. “Your attention please: The virus is out there and it is going to get you and kill you.” For months, this thing has been out there ready to pounce on me if I disobey my keepers in the local government. I got so tired of hearing about it that I unsubscribed from the local newspaper’s daily headline spam… it was All Virus, every day. We still can’t go to the grocery store or get a haircut without wearing a mask.

Into this environment comes the hurricane. I don’t know if you followed the path of this latest one, but it did boomerang turns, loop-de-loops, and every other goofy thing to keep the humans from guessing what it might do next. After ravaging Guatemala and Honduras, it drove over the top of Cuba, hooked left, and then came up the Gulf of Mexico alongside the Florida coast. Which means that for an entire week, the TV and the government here — via phone alerts — had the opportunity to tell us all, “It’s coming. The storm is coming. It’ll be here soon. It’s only a tropical storm now, but just you wait, it’s going to be a hurricane and then it is going to come and get you and kill you. Booga! Booga!” For a whole week we heard this.

Thankfully, the hurricane finally did arrive. Which meant that we could Stay In Our Homes. Which we had already been doing because the virus was out there hoping to kill us, only now we had to Double Secret Stay In Our Homes because it was raining buckets and the wind was blowing so hard that if you stepped outside you could be struck by a wind-borne motorcycle, or a Smart Car, or some other piece of flying debris.

So here we are, hunkered down in our governmentally-designated prison, hiding from the hurricane and the Virus Of Doom, hoping that the electricity doesn’t fail, when all of a sudden my phone makes this horrible buzzing noise. It’s the government again. Now there’s a tornado and it’s headed right for the house and we must — and in a big hurry — run and hide in our Safe Room. For those of you unfamiliar with Florida, that’s the bathroom. It doesn’t have any windows that can turn into shards of flying glass and there are lots of pipes and stuff to hold the walls up. (Nobody in Florida has a basement because the water table is about eight inches underground).

I dunno, when I read that alert, something snapped. How much government finger-wagging are we supposed to take? “Stay in your homes. Wear a mask. Don’t eat this, eat that instead. Don’t run with the scissors.” And now the two of us are supposed to grab the two dogs and the two cats, and everybody scrunches into the bathroom and hides because The Wind is coming to kill us.

Umm… no. What I did instead was go out to the porch and watch the wind and the rain do their worst while peering out through the mists in the direction that this tornado was supposedly coming from. “Bring it!” I’m thinking.

My colleague Brandon Morse wrote yesterday about the growing division in our country between what I call self-actualized adults who wish to live their own lives, make their own decisions, and enjoy or suffer the consequences… and those who refuse to grow up; who want a Big Mommy to provide for them and take care of them and tell them what to do. In many places we already have a voting majority of the Perpetual Infants, and they are slowly dragging the country toward totalitarianism.

https://redstate.com/robert_a_hahn/2020/11/20/dont-run-youll-fall-n282116 

 

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Fundamental Chains…

posted by sundance at conservative treehouse

REPOSTED BY REQUEST – Understanding the bigger picture is to understand how the “fundamental change” issues are not directly connected to the ongoing 2020 debate challenges, ballot issues, election outcome, etc; yet, the “fundamental change” issues required a Biden election.

Why is COVID-19 so important politically? This discussion thread explains why…

Many Americans buy into the narrative that COVID-19 is a grave health threat to the nation. When common sense people engage with the COVID fear community you often hear the masked herd say: if COVID is a conspiracy of sorts, then why is the entire world involved; and what would be the purpose. What follows below is the purpose.

There is a COVID-19 virus; however, COVID is not more dangerous than all other flu-like viruses that impact the respiratory system. COVID-19 is very manageable and doesn’t carry a higher fatality rate.

Why is COVID-19 being disproportionately hyped as such a dangerous threat, when the reality of the statistical danger is much less than the intense level of hype?… That is the key question.

The answer is… social changes under the guise of COVID-19 mitigation, are the entry point for the goals and aspirations of the political left on a national and global scale. COVID-19 is a virus, but also a very important political weapon, and we are about to discover exactly what the purpose of the hype is all about. What follows will help understand; and when you encounter the fear it will help to reconcile what people cannot figure out.

Joe Biden is an avatar; a political pawn; a cognitively declining guy who has no idea what is happening around him. The people behind the Biden campaign, those in real control of what this is about, have not hidden their goals and aspirations. These are not stupid people. They are scheming, conniving, ever-planning, ever-manipulating & Machiavellian types within the political system; lusting for power, influence and affluence.

What they are planning to do is weaponize COVID-19 to attain ideological objectives. This is why they hyped the fear within it for almost a year. Nothing within their plan requires the approval or consent of any representative body in Washington DC. COVID is the tool to “fundamentally change” the way the United States exists.

On October 23rd, those behind the Biden campaign dropped all pretense, openly having their candidate state publicly his intention to control the lives of all Americans using the authority of a weaponized federal government to advance national COVID-19 regulations.

As you watch this video from Biden’s campaign it is important to remember state government officials have already moved to define “essential businesses” and “essential workers” during the forced shut-downs. That is going to become a bigger issue downstream; however, for now just watch closely what Joe Biden is saying here:

The Dept of Transportation would be the agency enforcing a national interstate transit mask requirement. However, don’t focus on the DoT part of what he was saying… that’s only one creek… Instead focus on the downstream use of all federal regulatory agencies and how they align within a Federal COVID compliance network… that’s the river.

Think about the Dept of Agriculture (SNAP/food stamps), the Dept. of Labor, the Dept of Education, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Dept of Labor, Dept of Energy and how they would join with the DoT to create the aggregate raging river of regulation.

Think about the federal government using mandates for enforced national COVID-19 compliance rules. Think about USDA (Dept of Agriculture) and OSHA federal inspections for social distancing (etc) in all businesses, not just restaurants.

Think about the COVID-19 regulatory and compliance system and what political beneficiaries stand to gain.

Think about the Dept of Education using COVID to restructure the way education is taught and the downstream regulations on charter schools and non-compliant educational systems that do not meet the ideological objectives of the master control plan.

Think about how the Dept. of Labor (complaint division) can be weaponized against political opposition based on arbitrary inspections under the guise of employee health and safety…. using federal COVID compliance rules.

Think about required days off for the entire employee base if a single infection is identified in the workplace. Paid days off…. funded by Federal Government. Think about how that changes the income dependency dynamic.

Think about the larger Green New Deal (goals and objectives), and then contrast those objectives while aligning an overlay map of how federal COVID mitigation rules can be applied as a back door to the EXACT SAME objective.

Far, far, far, beyond masks…. Workspaces being forced to be redesigned. New rules on labor density. New rules on labor/manufacturing and office proximity. New rules on uniforms. New rules on hand-washing stations. New rules on sick pay, shift hours, time-off when a COVID infection is detected in the workplace.

Think about everything from rules on surfaces, to rules on packaging, to rules on ALL business operations as an outcome of federal regulatory policy under the guise of CVOID-19 mitigation. OSHA, Labor, Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Education, Housing, Health and Human Services, and even federal building permits… the entire regulatory system and compliance network.

Think about Housing and Urban Development (HUD) having new rules about dwellings and complexes for housing grants. Population density; the need to move into the suburbs and the confiscation of private property to “ensure the common safety” of the citizens.

If you think this is fear-mongering, I want to to evaluate that cynicism while contemplating this recent example from California:

Think about those types of business regulations applied on a National level…. and then, as seen in prior Democrat administrations with IRS etc, think about them also being enforced through the prism of political affiliation.

Think about how states that refuse to participate will be cut off from federal grants and funding for college tuition, Medicare and/or medicaid reimbursement, etc. etc.

Think about what happens to Main Street USA?

Think about companies on the NASDAQ or national companies on the stock-market?

Think about how those USA-specific federal COVID compliance regulations apply when considering U.S. business operations -vs- just taking operations overseas without those worries.

Think about who in Washington DC then takes control of what types of business interests are allowed to operation…. who determines the winning and losing.

Think about how Federal COVID-19 regulations can be used to put the multinational corporate world back (the globalists) on their former financial pathways, even without TPP and TTIP trade deals.

[Every domestic regulation weaponized against Main Street USA is a win for the Wall Street multinationals.]

Think about how much China and Europe would love to see our economy knee-capped in a Biden regulatory stranglehold; essentially achieving the same objectives as the Paris Climate Treaty.

Think long and hard about how far the tentacles of achieving the Green New Deal can extend under the auspices of federal COVID-19 mitigation.

Remember, those who are working on this don’t care about the middle-class and they have not for decades. The visibility of the ‘rust belt’ is the reference. This is about government bureaucrats using their DC power-base to control trillions in economic value and sell their ability to influence the winners and losers to the highest foreign bidder.

Look at what blue states have already done to seize power and control. Now think about that same manipulative intent spread throughout the entire country by weaponizing federal agencies with advanced regulation.

That should start to frame the reference point going forward. Remember, within totalitarian states religion is a risk… the assembly for religious worship is always considered a risk to by those who demand control over free-thought and lives.

The national legislative priority will be entirely focused on retention of that power system by generating an entirely new form of congressional representation. New states, new senators, new election systems, and funding for the needs of the executive…. that will be the focus of the facilitating legislative branch.

Those behind the executive branch; those controlling Joe Biden; will harness and weaponize the power. The legislative leftists will attempt to ensure the new systems they create under the guise of COVID-19 are never in a position to be withdrawn.

Those are the stakes.

 

Article by Deana Chadwick in The American Thinker

 

The Left's Utter Nonsense

I’m at the end of my cooperative, benefit-of-the-doubt tether. I “officially” declare a monstrous national misstep and hereby refuse to believe or accept anything coming out of any anti-Trump, anti-American mouth. That means everyone from the mainstream media (including Fox News), anyone from the Democrat party, anyone who worries about this dratted virus, anyone who thinks he or she can tell me with whom and with how many I can associate, what holidays I can celebrate, and which businesses I can frequent. I have been asked to accept one too many ridiculous things.

We are being asked to believe that a miniscule speck of protein, just because it has the audacity to set up temporary housekeeping in the human body, can determine whether or not I get to see my children and grandchildren at Thanksgiving. We are supposed to believe that a mask can keep such a critter away from us when we know that it’s too small to be dissuaded by mere cloth. We’re expected to buy into the idea that six feet of separation will thwart this shred of RNA. Why not five and half feet? Why not 12 feet? Do we have any clear idea how far this thing can travel? No. And even worse, we’re supposed to accept without question any statistics spouted by any government mouthpiece as if statistics can’t be used to tell damnable lies.

Enough.

Even worse, we’re not to make any connection at all between the timing of this virus’ arrival and this election. Good grief.

Furthermore, we’re expected to believe that a basement-dwelling, muddle-minded plagiarist collected more real votes for president than a wildly popular (note his rallies), highly successful incumbent. We’re to believe that a man who didn’t, nay, couldn’t campaign, could amass more votes than any other presidential candidate before him. Really? A man who has accomplished nothing in almost a half-century of public office? A man we know has enriched himself and his family by selling out America and her interests to enemy countries? We’re supposed to just go home and carry on as if nothing really important has happened?

We’re evidently supposed be okay with battleground states just arbitrarily stopping the vote count and then later on resuming. What possible, viable excuse can there be for such a procedure? And why do you suppose it happened right when Trump was pulling ahead of the pretender? And why, when the counting resumed, were the votes almost totally for Biden? If that doesn’t sound fishy, I have a bridge to sell.  

We’re supposed to accept that dead people vote, that illegals vote, that some people manage to vote over and over again. But that is pretty small potatoes compared to the Dominion mess. We are, of course, expected to just believe the company itself when it says it’s on the up and up. Well, all righty then. No problem here.

I gather that we’re also to be just fine with the fact that the Dominion voting hardware was designed in Venezuela for the purpose of controlling election results. We should be just fine with the Canadian ownership of its mother company, Smartmatic, and we should not be so terribly xenophobic as to object to our vote counting being shipped off to Spain and to Germany. In fact, we’re supposed to not even notice that to do so would require Internet access and therefore access to hackers from anywhere. What the heck; it’s just a presidential election, and we should know from the last four years that a presidential election doesn’t mean much to the deep state. What’s another president, more or less? And we’re not supposed to be irritated that the left, that has spent the last four years yipping about “Russian collusion” when none existed, now, with evidence galore to prove the involvement of at least four foreign entities, bats not an eye.  And none of that counts the puppet-strings that connect Biden to China. That’s another flabbergasting outrage -- Biden and China, but we’re not supposed to find his massive wealth and his acceptance of foreign money problematic. What?!

In fact, this presidential wannabe will not even be president for more than a few weeks if he were to be inaugurated. We’re all supposed to think that’s just fine. We’re not even supposed to notice that this person the left has put forward is physically and mentally so substandard that it’s doubtful he could handle a part time job at Burger King, let alone a 24/7 uber-stress position like leader of the Free World. We’re to concede that his VP will in fact be the president. Nuts to that. She got nowhere in the Democrat primary -- why should she be president now?

What’s more, we’re supposed to pay no attention to our common sense. I know that common sense went out of style back in the Clinton years, but a lot of us still practice that dark art. We can compare a candidate who can draw crowds -- happy, thrilled, enthusiastic crowds -- of between 10 and 50 thousand people in the midst of a pandemic, and the other can’t get 25 in one place at one time, and we can conclude from that that the first candidate will win. We can look back over presidential history and see the statistical likelihood of a successful incumbent easily winning -- especially when the usurper never even attempted to campaign, and especially when said candidate has absolutely no record of accomplishments to run on, so we can deduce that the incumbent is a shoe-in.

Of course, our common sense also dictates that we recognize three major advantages that the left’s candidate has going for him:

1. The educational system, K-college, has been prepping American children to hate our Constitution, our values, our traditions, our goals and accomplishments, and they’ve been doing so for at least three generations. That would skew the vote, I’ll admit.
2. The media has been co-opted by the left and has become alarmingly willing to and adept at flat-out lying. And, since journalists are educated in the system mentioned above, when they lie, they lie left, way left.
3. The left has no respect for truth and therefore is very comfortable with cheating their way to victory. They believe their selfish, power-driven ends justify the most despicable means.

So they have that going for them.

But those of us who can still think know that what we have going for us is superior. We still, in spite of the schools’ best efforts, believe in freedom, in happiness, in success for all, in goodness, and truth, and decency, and God. We still believe in our country and we love it dearly. This is the most important of Donald Trump’s accomplishments: he has made it once again socially acceptable to be openly, enthusiastically, intensely patriotic. I don’t think America is going to give that up easily; it feels too good, too right, too honest. We are Americans and Americans do not put up with such nonsense.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/the_lefts_utter_nonsense.html 

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State Legislatures Must Investigate Fraud And Choose Electors Accordingly

Margot Cleveland writing for The Federalist

Since Election Day, three distinct concerns have called into question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election: fraud, the security of voting machines and software, and violations of state election codes. A series of court cases filed by President Donald Trump and his voters seek judicial intervention to true the vote, but with limited success.

Republican legislators in several swing states have also requested the secretary of state audit the results before they are certified. As the recount in Georgia is proving, however, allowing election officials to oversee the process is providing no more confidence in the outcome. 

There is a solution to this mess, but it requires state legislators to remember that we are a republic and that, under our constitutional system, they have the ultimate and exclusive authority to appoint electors however they best see fit. The plain language of the so-called Electors Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, establishes this authority by providing: “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress.”

While all state legislatures have currently opted to appoint electors based on the popular vote of the state (or districts in the case of Nebraska and Maine), the Constitution does not provide for the appointment of elector by popular vote, leaving instead the manner of selection to the legislatures of each state.

The Supreme Court stressed this fundamental of our constitutional republic more than a century ago in McPherson v. Blacker, writing: “The question before us is not one of policy but of power, and while public opinion had gradually brought all the States as matter of fact to the pursuit of a uniform system of popular election by general ticket, that fact does not tend to weaken” the reality that previously, state legislatures chose electors by a variety of methods, including appointment by legislative vote.

For instance, as McPherson summarized, “At the first presidential election, the appointment of electors was made by the legislatures of Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, New Jersey, and South Carolina.” State legislatures also chose electors in the second presidential election. Over the years, the McPherson court explained, the states moved to the selection of electors by popular vote, and by 1832, electors were “chosen by general ticket in all the states excepting South Carolina, where the legislature chose them up to and including 1860.”

This Year, Legislators Should Choose the Electors 

Another 100-plus years have passed since McPherson, but as the Supreme Court stressed then, “the prescription of the written law cannot be overthrown because the States have latterly exercised in a particular way a power which they might have exercised in some other way.” Or, more simply stated, the states’ use of popular vote to select electors in recent years does not alter the plain meaning of the Electors Clause, which grants the state legislature the exclusive authority to select electors.

That is exactly what the state legislatures should do this year in those several states with serious issues of voting integrity — not based on the partisan control of the legislative branch, however, but based on the legislators’ considered judgment after they conduct an independent investigation into the claims of fraud, computer hardware and software malfeasance, and violations of the state election code.

While claimed violations of the state election code seem the most vanilla of the attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election, they are but cheating by another name. Further, state legislatures should care deeply if election officials — whether at the local levels or as high as the secretary of state — ignored the mandates the lawmaking arm of government established to ensure the legitimacy of elections.

Election Officials Ignored State Laws

The situation in Pennsylvania provides a perfect example of election officials blatantly ignoring the statutes passed by the legislature. Section 13808(g)(1.1) of the Pennsylvania Election Code prohibits the inspection of absentee and mail-in ballots before 7:00 a.m. on Election Day. Election officials in Philadelphia and elsewhere, however, inspected the ballots early to determine if voters had included the interior secrecy sleeve required under state law. 

The election code likewise provided that “no person observing, attending or participating in a pre-canvass meeting may disclose the results of any portion of any pre-canvass meeting prior to the close of the polls.” Yet at 8:38 p.m. on the eve of Election Day, the deputy secretary for elections and commissions emailed county election directors “guidance” to “provide information to party and candidate representatives during the pre-canvass that identifies the voters whose ballots have been rejected,” to allow those voters to “cure” the mistakes. Significantly, the election code also does not provide for the curing of absentee and mail-in ballots.

Notwithstanding the guidance from the Pennsylvania deputy secretary, some local election officials stayed true to the mandates of the Election Code, refusing to inspect the mail-in ballots prior to Election Day and refusing to share voters’ information with party representatives. As a result, voters in Pennsylvania faced disparate rules, with some votes counting and other not, implicating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution as well as the Electors Clause.

While federal courts have the authority to adjudicate violations of Article II, Section 1, Clause 2, as well as the Equal Protection Clause, Pennsylvania’s legislature should not leave the matter to the courts but take ownership of the issue. After all, it was the legislature that passed the election code that election officials ignored. Let the legislators demand an accounting to assess how the disregard for their rules affected the popular vote.

States Should Check Ballot Rejection Rates

Similarly, in other states where officials have ignored the election code by allowing the unauthorized curing of ballots, failing to enforce statutes requiring verification of signatures, or excluding poll watchers during the counting process, the legislative branch should intervene and determine the effect — if any — the election-code violations had on the results. 

One angle here for legislators to consider is whether 2020 presented an anomaly in the number of rejected ballots, as that would indicate local election officials ignored the mandates of the election code. Rep. Doug Collins, the Georgia Republican who is leading the Trump recount effort in his home state, highlighted just such a disparity in rejection rates, from 3.5 percent in 2018 to 0.3 percent in 2020.

This significant decrease in rejection rates caused Collins to question in a letter to the secretary of state whether an adequate (or any) signature verification, as required by Georgia law, occurred. It shouldn’t be Trump or Collins to whom the secretary of state must answer, however, but to the Georgia legislature.

A similar disparity exists in Pennsylvania, according to a court filing in Trump’s lawsuit there. The rejection rate for mail-in ballots in 2018 was 4.4 percent but only .04 percent for the 2020 general election, and that difference alone could change the outcome of the Pennsylvania race, according to the expert’s declaration. While a court is considering these claims, the legislative branch holds a higher authority and should question whether election officials followed the mandates of the election code.

Likewise, the Michigan legislature should question whether rejection rates of the mail-in ballots matched the trend of past years or even the presidential primary. In Michigan, 10,694 votes were disqualified from the primary, and at the time, Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson predicted that number could double in the general election. Whether it did and how it compares to 2016 will provide the legislative branch some sense of the seriousness election officials held in applying the election code.

State legislatures should likewise investigate claims of fraud, such as in Michigan where witnesses have made two distinct allegations of fraud, both involving the TCF Center in downtown Detroit where mail-in ballots were processed.

The first report is that in the wee hours of the night, unknown sources dropped off ballots, suggesting illegal ballot harvesting had occurred. While it might be difficult for the legislative branch to assess the validity of this charge, it has the power and resources necessary to investigate, including by, if available, obtaining security-camera footage of the area. The public has a right to know whether these claims are spurious or genuine, and if the legislative branch is unable to answer the question, it needs to confess that fact to Michiganders and enact safeguards for future elections.

The second charge of fraud comes in the form of a sworn affidavit from IT contractor Melissa Carone, who worked at the TCF Center on Election Day. According to Carone, multiple times throughout the day she observed election workers at the Detroit location scan the same 50-ballot batches of votes, resulting in the same ballots being counted four or five times. Unlike the claims of a late-night ballot drop, Carone’s sworn statement can be easily proved or disproved with a hand recount of ballots from the TCF Center. The Michigan legislature should demand such a recount take place and oversee the process.

We Must Ensure Election Integrity

A more thorough audit of the voting tallies by the legislatures in Michigan and other states is also warranted, given the growing concerns about the security of the hardware and software used to determine the winner of the 2020 election. While since Election Day, the mainstream media has portrayed concerns over the security of computers systems as conspiracy-theorizing, many of the same outlets had previously done in-depth reporting on the vulnerabilities of the system.

We now have an affidavit filed in court proceedings by attorney Sidney Powell of an individual claiming to be a “direct witness to the creation and operation of an electronic voting system,” called Smartmatic, that “could change the votes in elections.” We also have an affidavit attesting that in Pennsylvania, the data on a live feed for each county revealed an update that reported an increase of 90,022 absentee votes, but total votes increased by only 9,534. “That means in-person votes had to have declined by 80,488,” which is impossible.

These claims might seem unbelievable, but they become more plausible with every proved instance of computer “glitches.” In Michigan, for instance, the failure of one county to update software caused approximately 6,500 Trump votes to be tallied to Biden until the error was discovered. While the secretary of state claims the mistake was a one-off, the citizens of the Midwest battleground state deserve assurances that that is true. Similarly, a hand-count in one Georgia county revealed a computer problem that cost Trump a net 800 votes.

The state legislatures should not leave these concerns to the secretary of state but should instead initiate and oversee their own audit of the election hardware and software, along with a probe of election-law violations and other claims of fraud. Anything less will leave half of America questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

Following an investigation of these concerns, the state legislatures should vote to directly appoint electors as they see fit. That vote might, or might not, coincide with the preferred outcome of those seeking an audit of the election.

Given that the Founding Fathers granted the state legislatures the ultimate authority to appoint electors, however, by directly appointing the electors, the legislatures will render either outcome constitutionally legitimate. Then when those legislators are up for reelection, we will have a feel for the true will of the people.