Culture and Politics – Page 9

2020 federal dossier: Second Amendment

This is the second part of a multi-part series taking a deeper dive into various important topics in the 2020 election. On the 100-point scale I am using to grade candidates, the Second Amendment is worth 6 points.

This section of the dossier has been revised and updated to reflect the general election field.

We can almost recite this from memory: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” But what are we defining as infringements, and how do Delaware’s candidates look at the issue?

To a person, they will tell you they support the Second Amendment but what do they really mean? Hopefully I will bring a little bit of clarity to this with my post. As I did with education, the following is a summary of their published platforms, their social media comments, and their direct answers. In this case I am going by party beginning with the Republicans for House and Senate, respectively, then proceeding through the Libertarians, Independent Party of Delaware candidates, and finally the incumbent Democrats Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons for House and Senate, respectively.

With the exception of the incumbents who have a voting record to compare, each of them available to me via social media was asked: Since we all want “common sense gun laws,” what would you change about federal gun laws to make them “common sense?” The best answers would get all six points available to them.

Lee Murphy (R) (House)

Murphy agrees with the platitudes previously expressed regarding protection of the Second Amendment. But he also adds an interesting wrinkle in that, “we should address the root causes of violence and crime in our communities.” I’m not sure if there’s not a troubling implication here that the guns are part of the problem.

A gun is an inanimate tool until someone loads it, picks it up, points it at someone, and fires. All these steps must be followed for criminal gun violence. I think the old adage that “an armed society is a polite society” comes into play here since the vast majority of gun owners have probably never fired their weapon outside of a range and those who have were likely hunting. 2.5 points out of 6.

Lauren Witzke (R) (Senate)

Witzke is very expressive about 2A rights, and has a photo on her social media posing with what I’m assuming is an AR-15 or similar weapon. Moreover, she thunders, “The Second Amendment is not up for negotiation. It’s not a bargaining chip to be used by lawmakers to cut deals.” She also correctly states that thanks to the Second Amendment, “our citizenry has the tools to defend itself against rogue tyrants or an overbearing government.”

Unlike her cohorts, she has a strict pledge that she “will vote against every measure that seeks to restrict the Second Amendment, and will pass legislation to take back Americans’ gun rights that have already been usurped by feckless lawmakers of the past.” The second part is really the phrase that pays, although right now she probably doesn’t have enough help to play along in the Senate. A full 6 points.

David Rogers (L) (House)

Rogers makes a point that crime is higher and criminals more aggressive in nations where gun ownership is forbidden, such as Great Britain. That’s a good reason to protect our rights, but it’s not the full reason. 2 points out of 6.

Nadine Frost (L) (Senate)

Sadly, she has not yet addressed the subject on social media or when asked. No points.

Catherine Stonestreet Purcell (IPoD) (House)

The same holds true for CSP, which is really surprising to me given the length with which she has elaborated other positions. No points.

Mark Turley (IPoD) (Senate)

Like his IPoD cohort, Turley has not discussed the issue in a venue where I have discerned his position. No points.

I don’t think any of these fine folks will be the same sort of gun grabber that seems to incessantly populate the Democrat side of the aisle. What I’m still seeking clarity on, though, is how well they will fight to regain what we’ve already lost. Speaking of Democrats:

Lisa Blunt Rochester (incumbent D) (House)

Despite her lack of an issues page, I only had to go back to 2016 to find this nugget:

“We need to figure out long-term solutions to this problem by putting much tougher restrictions on who can own a gun and what those guns can do…

But, right now, we need to quickly close loopholes that allow criminals to get their hands on guns with ease, increase background checks on everyone who wants to purchase a gun and institute a cooling off period so no one can purchase a gun without being vetted thoroughly.”

Really, no, we don’t. 0 points out of 6.

Chris Coons (incumbent D) (Senate)

He’s just as bad as LBR as he touts his endorsements by the usual cast of gun grabbers and stating he’s “not afraid to stand up to the NRA.” How about standing up for the Constitution like you’re supposed to? You took an oath to defend it, remember?

Anyone who refers to guns as “weapons of war” is automatically disqualified. 0 points out of 6.

Standings:

House: Murphy 6.5, CSP 2, Rogers 2, LBR 1.5.

Senate: Witzke 10.5, Frost 4, Turley 1, Coons 0.

My next part was supposed to consider energy issues, which are something not every candidate features on their website or social media. Because of that, I’ll wait a bit to do that part and instead focus on something our candidates are not shy about: social issues.

Odds and ends number 97

You know, I figured just as soon as I put old number 96 to bed that my e-mail box would fill up with interesting tidbits, so it wouldn’t be nearly as long before I got to number 97. So let’s see what I have here.

A look at theology

People tend to think of Erick Erickson as just a radio personality and pundit, but it’s not as well known that he’s studied divinity. So when he talks about religion it makes my ears perk up, and this recent column of his was one of those times.

Christians need to be preaching Jesus, not Christianity. We need to preach about the end and the return and the world made new. It is fantastical and supernatural and unbelievable for so many. But it is real and right and true and will give the hopeless hope.
Erick Erickson, “Groaning for Justice: The Theology of What is Happening”, June 25, 2020

It sounds a lot like my church. But it’s worth remembering that on one side is the world and on the other side is God, expressed in the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I have a simplistic perspective about it all, but then again I came to the game later in life than a lot of other people so my flaws were more apparent.

I believe that when Jesus said no one comes to the Father but through him that He was absolutely right. There’s nothing wrong with trying to make the world better but there should always be that end goal in mind, too.

Is there any reason for college?

This may seem strange to say as an alumnus of Miami University, but insofar as career preparation I learned as much in a year of work as I did in securing my four-year degree. (However, I did manage to consume many “Gobblers” and adult beverages from various eating and drinking establishments around Oxford, Ohio, and I got to go see Division I sports for free. So there was that.)

By the same token, Victor Davis Hanson has toiled in the academic field for decades – yet he delivers a scathing critique of college life and educational achievement in 2020, 34 years after I walked away from Millett Hall with my diploma case in hand.

31 years later I was witness to a similar scene but under wildly different circumstances, as my wife received her bachelor’s degree from a nationally-recognized college after taking online courses tailored to the working world. For these folks, their campus was the Washington, D.C. area and beyond, and hundreds of them were in what was then the Verizon Center for their big day. They received their degrees after enduring a lifestyle of trying to juggle work, kids, and other responsibilities with their academics as opposed to being cloistered on a campus and shuttling between academic halls, student centers, and their dorms. That was my world in the mid-1980s as a snot-nosed kid from a small Ohio town.

Yet many kids still do the same thing I did four decades ago, and the problem with that approach is that it’s rapidly becoming an information silo. Kids learn a lot about things of little importance in real life then wonder why it bites them in the ass. I remember pounding the pavement for a job right out of college then finally taking something outside my field to tide me over – turns out I was there less than a month before I got the break I needed; then again I was in an avocation where there was demand in the real world so it finally needed my supply.

And my alma mater wonders why I ignore their pleas for alumni donations.

More from smart people

How this guy ever got to be governor of his state – and then re-elected – often mystifies me. IMHO he was really too smart for the job, and the same went for being President. I think Bobby Jindal could have been the next Calvin Coolidge, a President who exhibited admirable restraint of his powers and led the government to do the same.

Recently he penned an op-ed for the Washington Examiner where he focused on some items he saw as long-term trends accelerated by the onset of the Wuhan flu. This one was the one that piqued my interest the most:

De-densification: Elevators, mass transit, and air-conditioned spaces, all critical components of urban living, will be rendered safe again one day. Yet, the nation’s most successful cities were already victims of their own success, with the rising cost of living pushing working families to the suburbs and exurbs. Workers are going to demand more flexible work arrangements and less time wasted commuting. Remote work and virtual meetings will allow many office workers to be productive in the exurbs and in the country. Wealthy families will join them with getaway homes, and companies will require less-dense and smaller offices. Smaller communities near urban centers will benefit and become more economically viable for their permanent residents. The economic efficiencies that have driven urbanization will still continue to be compelling, and first-tier cities especially will reinvent themselves and continue to attract immigrants and new businesses.
“How the COVID-19 pandemic will change us”, Bobby Jindal, Washington Examiner, June 24, 2020.

The initial push to the suburbs in the postwar era was fueled by the surge of new families looking for room to grow, coupled with the inexpensive cost of gasoline and car maintenance and expansion of highway construction allowing commuters to bypass mass transit. Suddenly small towns that were once on the outskirts of metro areas and surrounded by cornfields became the loose center of dozens of subdivisions looped together by beltway interstates surrounding the city core. My parents did this in spades, bypassing suburbia altogether to buy five rural acres for three active boys to play ball on and dealing with a half-hour or more commute.

Being in the design world, I’ve seen the push for a new urbanism. For example, in nearby Salisbury their mayor Jake Day has pushed for a new style of downtown revitalization, attempting to bring in mixed-use development accessible by multiple modes of transportation. Surface parking on city-owned lots downtown is rapidly becoming a thing of the past as lots are sold to developers.

Fortunately for Day, Salisbury is still a small enough city that it doesn’t suffer from the maladies of Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, and others which have seen their urban core rot away from a toxic combination of crime, poverty, and lack of opportunity. It could yet go that way, or it could become a destination precisely because it’s been small enough to escape these issues – the sort of small town Jindal envisions succeeding thanks to the remote technology we now have.

But these urban escapees have another close-by alternative which is also retiree-friendly – if we don’t screw it up.

Picking too many losers

The state of Delaware lags the field in state-level GDP growth these days, one survey placing the First State last in the nation.

Perhaps a reason for this, argues the group A Better Delaware, is that our state government is terrible at determining winners and losers. As it has often turned out, the well-connected are the winners and taxpayers are the losers, and the group goes through some examples in this recent piece.

As I see it, job creation is about filling needs. An entrepreneur sees a market void and figures out a way to fill it, then once that venture is a go he or she may find the work is too much for one person to handle. Suddenly they’re signing the front of a paycheck, and the measure of a business-friendly state is just how easily that employer can get to that point without feeling violated from the anal rape of a corrupt system installed to grease the palms of a thousand bureaucrats. Somehow Delaware seems to believe that making life easier for those who promise scores of jobs without figuring out the market void is a good thing to do. I tend to like my strategy better.

The library

I was recently introduced to an interesting website in a unique way: one of its employees requested to purchase a paper copy of The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party. So I autographed it and sent it to Tennessee for his enjoyment. (By the way, I have several more available.)

So while Ammo.com sells – as you may guess – many different varieties of ammunition, they also feature what’s called the Resistance Library: a collection of articles on many and varied topics. (Actually, the whole site is worth exploring.) The post my newfound friend was dying to share with me, though, was on “Policing for Profit.”

Civil asset forfeiture is a popular concept with the “if you don’t do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” crowd; the same ones who shout “blue lives matter!” (And they do, but so does the law.) In reading this lengthy, well-written treatise on the subject I found out that Delaware is a state which is one of the worst in that regard.

And civil asset forfeiture laws are difficult to change because there are two large lobbies already stacked against these efforts: law enforcement and local government. Imagine what $200,000 seized could do for a local government’s bottom line when they may spend $2 million on a police department annually. Never mind it’s not their property and they have only suspicion that it was gathered illegally. It’s like crack cocaine to an addict: wrongly or not, they can’t pass it up. We need to send our state to a proverbial NA meeting next year when the General Assembly reconvenes.

More bad advice

I like to end on a light-hearted note when I can, and what better way than to poke fun at those who tell me how to run this place?

Hello monoblogue.us team:
As you know because of Global pandemic, the world has shut down and a big question mark on sustainability of business.
We are connecting the business owner to create a high standard for their business website and marketing strategy. To start this, we recommend to upgrade the website to more customer friendly.
If you have same idea in your mind, Let’s discuss about redesign of your website in economic cost.
A really badly written e-mail.

I can’t decide whether this came from China, India, or some other third-world country where English is taught as a second language. (In this case, maybe third.)

Fortunately, I didn’t shut down during the pandemic. Now I won’t say that I was terribly productive during the time span, but the college degree I alluded to way above led me to a job deemed “essential” so I have been working my usual full-time hours. Even so, I sustain into my fifteenth year of this site. (I even outlasted Red Maryland.)

My site is not really a business site, but I do have a marketing strategy: write good sh*t. It’s even customer-friendly because I kept out the offending letter.

And, in case this guy missed it, I redesigned my website a couple years ago, finally retiring old “Black Lucas” after nearly a decade of service. I still miss that theme sometimes but I like the back end that goes with the current “Twenty Sixteen” theme much better.

So I think I have flogged the dead horse of my inbox enough for one visit. I didn’t even get to the silliness that’s the Delaware governor’s race, but maybe I’ll hold onto that for a standalone post after all.

Programming note

Once we clear the filing deadline this coming Tuesday I’m going to add my Delaware political sidebar with all the primary and general election candidates and then the following Monday or Tuesday release the 2019-20 monoblogue Accountability Project – Delaware edition. The delay is because I have to determine whether the legislators involved get a free ride in November or not.

Because the Delaware session was truncated this year, I decided to simply amend the 2019 edition to use four votes this year and drop the least impactful four votes from last year to maintain 25 separate votes. You’ll see what I mean when I put it up later this month.

Worthy of blessing? A redux

Editor’s note: This post initially appeared on July 3, 2016. Back then I generally left the site dark for Independence Day, but I thought in this strangest of years we needed an Independence Day message – so I perused the nearly fifteen years of monoblogue archives and saw this piece.

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.
Proverbs 14:34 (KJV)

As today is Sunday and I have left the site dark on Independence Day in the last few years – so this post will be atop my site for a somewhat extended period – I decided it would be fitting to use the subject of our message today as the subject of mine.

Rather than go through what my pastor said, though, I want to focus on the idea of righteousness. For Christians, the idea of what’s right mainly comes from Scripture, as the passage above clearly illustrates. But in our nation today, too often what is “right” comes from a number of different sources: a majority of nine unelected judges on the Supreme Court, a plethora of faceless bureaucrats toiling in Washington, D.C. or a state capital, or even popular culture itself. It’s said politics is downstream from culture, and I believe this is most true on the perception of what is right.

Obviously I can give a number of examples where these “rights” don’t coincide with the concept of righteousness: the Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade or the Obergefell case, the muddied divide between genders enforced by the standards of the federal Department of Education, or the #lovewins movement for same-sex “marriage” come foremost to mind. With the exception of Roe v. Wade, all of these examples have come during my adult life and there is usually a generational divide between supporters and opponents of these “rights.”

It’s not my intention to be bogged down in the minutia of these issues because I’m shooting for a fairly short post suitable for a holiday weekend when people are truly thinking more about the beach, fireworks, and barbecues, but I think the generational point is worth considering, too. Despite the fact Kim’s daughter goes to a Christian school and belongs to the church youth group, she and her peers aren’t truly insulated from the cultural wasteland we live amongst.

I think it’s worth reminding the Millennials that those of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s had only a limited number of options for cultural awareness and entertainment, such as AM or FM radio, the few cable channels that were around (living in a rural area nowhere near a cable service area, we didn’t even have that), magazines and newspapers, or the local movie theater. I had my roster of favorite TV shows like anyone else and my particular radio stations to listen to, but my listening and viewing was limited to what broadcasters wanted to provide at a time of their choosing. (If I wasn’t home and didn’t remember to tape WKRP in Cincinnati I was out of luck until the rerun came on, or if my radio station ignored Iron Maiden until the program director decided to put it on, I wouldn’t go buy the cassette because I didn’t know about them.) Now we have the technology where anyone can be a video or music producer and have content available anywhere the internet is.

So it’s no surprise that the seductive messages of what is “cool” rarely coincide with what is righteous because “cool” is a construct built to sell products and ideas. As it stands, believing in the tenets of the Bible and living a God-fearing life definitely doesn’t meet the prevailing standard of “cool.”

But it’s my belief that America should make itself worthy of being blessed by God. By no means does this imply being a theocracy: it’s more along the lines of just having a Judeo-Christian based moral compass that most of its citizens willingly follow. The more righteous we are, it follows, the more we should be blessed. It’s worth a shot.

In defense of history, warts and all

The other day I got involved in a social media post where the author crowed about a survey where 5,000 respondents favored by a 60-40 margin the removal of the Talbot Boys statue in Easton. As I noted, I was surprised the margin was so close given the survey was conducted on the page belonging to Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot (a well left-of-center Democrat who is running for Governor in 2022.)

Being one of the 40 percent who believes we should add context rather than remove history, I was taken to task by the allies who seem to believe the Confederate flag is everywhere in rural America. I had written a long rebuttal to their points, but realized that I wanted to do a bit of research first and eventually decided to place it on my turf. For all I know, the statue may be on its way out since Republicans everywhere are caving to the mob, but regardless we have a lot of history to sort through.

According to this Washington Post article, the Talbot Boys statue was erected in 1916, “more than 50 years after the end of the Civil War.” (Bear in mind we didn’t get a federal memorial to World War II until 2004, almost 60 years after its conclusion.) Many decades later, in 2004, the County Council solicited the creation of another statue, this one of Frederick Douglass, who was also born in Talbot County. That statue, intended in part to “balance” the Talbot Boys statue, was finally placed in 2011. In that AP story, local Frederick Douglass Honor Society president Eric Lowery was quoted, “I think it shows how this community has changed from a time when black people weren’t allowed to even be on the courthouse lawn, and now we have a monument to a black man who was one of the most prominent figures of the 19th century.” I agree.

In reading the Post article, I also learned that one reason the statue was kept was a point I made independently: they believed its removal would be disrespectful to the families of those immortalized there. It was also suggested there be a memorial to those who fought and died for the Union cause, which I can support as well.

Here is what I was going to say on social media:

Is there not a saying that those who forget their history ate doomed to repeat it?

There are a number of people who apparently see it my way and either aren’t offended by the Talbot Boys statue or see it as a vital part of the county’s history. Wasn’t the Frederick Douglass statue added years later as “balance”? (Indeed, it was.)

Now I would be interested in the context as to why these men would travel to the CSA and fight for them. Maybe they were the sons of slaveholders who wanted to preserve their way of life. Or perhaps they were offended that the “Northern scum” of former state song lore were going to such lengths as to deny Maryland its self-determination. We don’t know and probably never will. What we do know is that our part of the state was regarded as a hotbed of Confederate support.

Someone is going to be angry whatever the outcome because I see passionate people on both sides. As I noted earlier (in the social media thread) I was surprised it was 60-40 – given the sponsor of the poll I suspect the true feelings are more like 50-50 since Peter Franchot is likely followed by more Ds than Rs. (Just my gut instinct.)

But to add context to how this is playing out, up in Wilmington they took down statues of Christopher Columbus and Caesar Rodney – neither of whom fought in the Civil War since they were long since dead – ostensibly for their “protection” and a “discussion” of their historic role. Unfortunately, ignorance of history is such that figures who had nothing to do with the Civil War are being targeted in this sad era.

I think, though, that in the world that we are presently living in all that taking the Talbot Boys statue down will accomplish is to transfer anger and bitterness from one small aggrieved group to a larger group. Perhaps we should add a plaque someplace on or near the Talbot Boys, which reads something like this:

“On this site sits a divisive relic of history erected in 1916. The ‘Talbot Boys’ statue commemorates men who took up arms against their nation.

Only God knows the reason those who President Lincoln called ‘rebellious citizens’ would do these acts, ones which most would agree were treasonous. Yet these were our brothers, our ancestors, and it is only to honor their memories in a spirit of forgiveness for their trespasses that we permit this statue to remain.

This reminder of our division remains to warn us that history can, and often does, repeat itself. Let this be the legacy of the Talbot Boys: that we become once again brothers and sisters in liberty and remain on guard against this sort of division.”

Think of Matthew 6:14-15.

So there’s a choice here: we can remove these monuments and deepen the divide, or we can use them as lessons on the road to creating a more perfect Union. The ball is in your court, Talbot County.

Splitting the opposition: securing the coin and what they do with it

Editor’s note: Back in January I promised a multi-part series of posts based on a book I started on the Indivisible movement that, simply put, just wasn’t coming together as I would have liked. So I decided to serialize that beginning of a book draft – with a little more editing as I see fit – and add more writing to make this into a multi-part series of posts.

This is the (long-awaited, as it turned out) third and final part, which will talk about how aggressively Indivisible is seeking its funding and converting it to radical action. You can start this back up with me here.

Money is the mother’s milk of politics.
Former California state treasurer (and Democrat) Jesse Unruh

It’s an unfortunate fact of American political life that organizations require money to get out their message. Even a candidate who received billions of dollars’ worth of “free” media thanks to a measure of celebrity prior to his run needed $68 million in the waning days of the 2016 campaign to succeed. “What if we hadn’t spent that?” asked Brad Parscale, digital media director for Donald Trump’s campaign. “We might not have won.”

Knowing that, imagine having the lofty goal of disrupting the Trump presidency and winning the first midterm elections against him – but beginning from scratch financially. And while the Indivisible movement had a few built-in advantages, such as a sympathetic media and no shortage of progressive groups willing to pass the hat around in order to get them off the ground, that gravy train wasn’t going to last forever given the number of other left-wing advocacy groups standing in line with outstretched hands, begging to save the whales or secure slavery reparations, among thousands of others. Once the e-mail list was created and the contacts were verified, the pitches began.

Anyone who has spent time in the political world – or even donated a few times to a candidate or cause – knows the tenor of a fundraising letter. It always begins in a conversational style, almost apologetic that there’s a problem which needs to be addressed, but eventually insisting that your contribution of $10 to $100 will be VITAL in getting the candidate elected over his unworthy opponent. (Yes, they liberally use the bold fonts, too.)

For all their insistence that they were different and “had a ‘fundraising second’ approach” which made it a secondary concern – in many instances they insisted that, given one’s choice between activism and donation they’d prefer the activism – as the 2020 campaign began to take shape, the tenor of the average Indivisible e-mail changed significantly. While they generally communicated a weekly “to-do” list of five or six items to those on their e-mail list, by the time the middle of 2019 rolled around these missives also just as frequently had the “ask” for contributions, as did several other e-mails each week. Did you really expect grassroots?

For example, in a July 1, 2019 e-mail to supporters, the curtain was opened for a peek at some of the expenses and dollar amounts Indivisible was expecting to attain in 2019:

$275,000 for a mass e-mailing tool
$20,000 for the peer-to-peer texting tool
$15,000 for September “Day of Action” materials – this was representative of the usual “Day of Action” budget, which would be replicated a few more times in 2019.
$20,000 for “bird dogging” materials (“bird dogging” is basically a real live version of online trolling.)
$380,000 for in-person training and other organizing events for groups and group leaders
$350,000 for access to the voter file and other organizing tools for groups

They don’t fail to note that “this doesn’t even include things like salaries and benefits for organizing staff!” But just this budget for a half-year was $1.06 million.

And this isn’t the only time. In fact, practically all of their e-mail missives now have an “ask” for several ongoing organizing projects. But the Wuhan flu – and yes, I use that phrase just to needle them – made necessary a change in tactics as face-to-face meeting was out and virtual strategizing was in. Take this idea for example:

On May 12, Indivisible groups in Tallahassee, Phoenix, and Austin littered the grounds of their statehouses with body bags, representing the 81,000 American lives lost to COVID-19. Lives that could have been saved if not for President Trump and GOP Governors and Senators’ failure to adequately respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
These incredible actions generated national media attention for their destructive responses to the virus, the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans, and dangerous re-open orders in states around the country.
“Indivisibles marked National Hospital Day with Body Bag Protests”, May 15, 2020.

Unfortunately, they seemed to forget the biggest concentrations of those deaths were in progressive-run places like New York City, New Orleans, and Seattle. None of those places have a Republican mayor or governor; meanwhile, Florida, Arizona, and Texas combined (as of this writing) have fewer COVID-19 deaths than Democrat strongholds Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York have by themselves. Hopefully those body bags were sent by Indivisible to the progressive areas which truly needed them.

Of course, the Indivisible folks have also jumped on the George Floyd bandwagon with another ludicrous scheme. This is from policy team member Eli Gerber:

We’re unpacking the racist history of policing, the impact policing has on Black communities, and why taking money out of the multi-million dollar budgets of police forces and using it to fund resources and programs that people really need is so urgently necessary – especially during the COVID-19 outbreak, which has revealed how badly we are failing to meet people’s basic needs.
Policing Black communities and inflicting violence on black people can’t fix the problems that centuries of racist policies have created. It’s time to defund the police and invest in things like schools, clean water, food and housing assistance, social workers, and more.
“Police Violence is its Own Pandemic – Tune into Episode 3 of COVID Corruption”, June 6, 2020.

Honestly, I didn’t sit and watch the latest video after I wasted five minutes of my life watching Gerber whine about the Wisconsin primary being held as scheduled back on April 7 in part 2 of this awful series. I guess the logical question is then just who will enforce the laws in these cities if there is no police department?

If these views are mainstream then we don’t live in a Constitutional republic anymore.

In less than two years the Indivisible movement (Indivisible Project and Indivisible Civics) had garnered over $25 million in contributions, according to these summaries of their IRS 990 forms. And that was only through 2018 – they may have doubled their take again in 2019 and 2020. Moreover, there are only a handful of local Indivisible groups with their own 990 forms, which tells me all their action is inside the Beltway.

On the other hand, looking through that same data source and doing a simple search for “tea” provided 200 results, and many of them were local TEA parties reporting little to no assets. The largest TEA party group spent most of its six figure take on website and media consulting, making it sound like a scam PAC from the get-go. (It was not the Tea Party Patriots, who have even more modest fundraising figures.)

It’s a case of claiming to have a “fundraising second” approach like the national Indivisible movement does versus actually scratching out an existence on a shoestring as most TEA Parties do (and have done since their inception.) This disparity may be part of explaining the success of Indivisible, but it also shows that it’s a far more Astroturf entity than the TEA Party ever was, despite all the accusations otherwise.

So where does all this lead?

Americans who still believe in the ideals of their nation as defined by its Constitution are the majority, but it’s one that’s rapidly dwindling because people believe the Indivisible propaganda echoed all across the media and culture.

“The truth shall set you free” is not just part of a Bible verse (John 8:32) but is more important than ever. Take a look beyond the seductive promises of so-called progressives to the essence of individual freedom and self-governance.

Last year I wrote a book about the TEA Party and closed it by explaining how to renew its tree of liberty. We should get involved in the political process at the local grassroots again and propose real solutions that don’t involve overbearing government and that empower all of us, not just a manipulative elite residing far away. It’s past time to divide Indivisible by beating them at their own organizing game.

Guess I really didn’t need a whole book to tell you that, so my initial instincts have been proven correct. But if you want to start this study from its beginning way back in February, here’s part one.

Odds and ends number 96

It’s been nearly a year since I did one of these, but let me assure you that I’m not digging up a lot of chestnuts from my e-mail bag. There are just a few things which have piqued my interest lately and deserve a mention, whether it be a few sentences to a handful of paragraphs. It’s like riding a bike – you don’t forget how to do it after enough times.

Miss #FliptheFirst almost flips the race

I thought for a bit that, after the winding down of Red Maryland, I might have to step into the breach temporarily with popcorn in hand to witness the glory of having the candidate who won the First District Congressional primary despite withdrawing try to convince the twelve Democrat Central Committees involved to pick the only other candidate who lives in the district – but who finished a distant third – over the second-place finisher.

Alas, the late-arriving mail-in votes vaulted Mia Mason to a narrow victory over Allison Galbraith in the First District Democrat primary. Early on, it appeared the Allison may have won the race despite announcing her withdrawal six weeks ago for personal reasons. Had she not dropped out, it’s clear Allison may have won her primary on a scale comparing with Andy Harris’s 82-18 win in the GOP primary against challenger Jorge Delgado.

(By the way, have you ever noticed that Republicans who say how tired they are of Andy Harris don’t turn out in droves to the primary? Andy has never received less than 75% of the GOP vote since taking office in 2010, although he’s had at least one challenger in each primary election since 2014. I guess you can call it a silent majority.)

Mia is going to have a very reluctant supporter in Allison. On her campaign social media page Galbraith charged that, “Mia, she’s just playing pick a district and hasn’t been filing any of her FEC reports properly. She also called the state party and told blatant lies about me saying I had somehow ‘intimidated’ or ‘pressured’ her by offering her a job because she happens to be good at field. Her ethics, less commendable.”

If it were a more fairly-drawn district I would keep out the popcorn, but to know that Mason could have ran in her own district and has few ties to the Eastern Shore means the local Democrats will have a harder time backing her.

Good reads on energy

I’m going back to the B.C. era (before coronavirus) on this, but over the last few months the folks who write the Energy Tomorrow blog have also linked to some other good pieces which found their way to media.

For example, the good news about natural gas gets very little play as we try and force-feed solar and wind power on the energy market. “It would be hard to find anything NOT to like about this great American success story,” writes Stephen Moore, “(Now we have) energy independence, reliable and inexhaustible supply, low prices, reduced power of the Middle East, Russia, and other OPEC nations, and cleaner air than at any time in at least a century.” But the environmentalists whine because natural gas is “a hurdle” in their zero-carbon goal, which is unattainable until that day we figure out how to make the wind blow constantly at just the right speed and sun shine 24 hours a day – in other words, the twelfth of never.

Yet they talk about a fracking ban on the Left, and despite the fact Joe Biden hasn’t publicly stated he’s for a ban that will change if he wins the election. He’s already promised a de facto ban by pledging he would be, “Requiring aggressive methane pollution limits for new and existing oil and gas operations.” By making compliance expensive and cumbersome it would create the same effect as a ban: imagine you liked ice cream enough to produce it, but the government told you that you had to make sure the cow farts didn’t reach the atmosphere with expensive equipment attached to their behinds to collect their “residue.” That cost has to come from somewhere and reducing profit makes for a lot less incentive to stay in business. (And it’s not like the energy industry doesn’t want to improve its record since methane sent into the atmosphere is methane we can’t use for profitable purposes.) So, yeah, it would cripple our economy and this study documents how much. (Bear in mind it, too, was conducted B.C.)

A voice of reason on Biden

Last summer I did a radio interview with Kansas-based host Andy Hooser, who bills himself as the “Voice of Reason.” Since he has an Ohio connection and is a pretty good self-promoter, I’ve kept following his efforts as he went from terrestrial show to podcast to a bid for a syndicated national show.

But the reason I bring him up now is his long summary of the Joe Biden campaign as it begins in this brave “new normal” world. It’s a rather in-depth opinion from a different kind of pundit and he made a number of good points.

Denied access

In the past I have often voted for Libertarian Party candidates when their views meshed with mine moreso than the ones of the RINO on the ballot. Yet thanks to the reigning D vs. R duopoly, oftentimes the Libertarians and other minor parties – including the Constitution Party, which I’ll get to in a minute – have to waste valuable resources maintaining a ballot position whereas the majors don’t.

Back in March, the two leading minor parties in Maryland realized they would have an issue with petitioning their way onto the ballot thanks to the Wuhan flu; despite being allowed to collect electronic signatures they sued the state last month.

Maryland’s petition law is daunting, and it shouldn’t really be necessary: as of the last report which listed the Greens and Libertarians (january 2019), the LP had over 22,000 registered voters with their party and the Greens 9,262. One would think those should be automatic signatures with their registration, meaning that only the Greens would have to collect 738 signatures from non-party members to qualify. Delaware has a much simpler and fairer system of ballot access based on voter registration numbers, requiring just 1/10 of 1 percent of voters to be listed. (At present there are six ballot-eligible parties in Delaware, the largest besides the two major parties being the Independent Party of Delaware, or IPOD.) Here the Libertarians are in like flint; however, the Green Party is actually about 20 short at the moment. (Besides Rs, Ds, Ls, and IPOD, the other two eligible are the American Delta Party and Nonpartisan.)

Blankenship is their man

Since I voted for and registered with the Constitution Party, I should let you know they selected Don Blankenship as their Presidential nominee. Unfortunately, the problem with smaller parties is that they often pick out self-serving people as their nominee and I get that impression with him. Rather than the issue-based platforms of most political candidates, I see a lot of filler on Blankenship’s website. I don’t know if he really believes the Constitution Party platform or just sees the party as a way to serve his vanity run. But then I wasn’t a delegate to their convention last month and that’s where he was selected.

So, since I’m looking for the best person regardless of party, later this summer I will have to resurrect my issue-based search for the best candidate. I’m not sure this Don is my guy, either. This is especially true when compared to the common sense the CP’s last nominee espoused in response to the coronavirus.

Advice worth taking

Speaking of Presidential candidates and advice, my last Republican choice has written a smart op-ed about the pitfalls of businesses becoming too “woke” and alienating millions of consumers. It’s a shame this Bobby Jindal piece ran before the whole George Floyd episode because we’re seeing that on steroids right now.

Now I know conservative groups have wanted to boycott this or that for the last generation, but that really doesn’t work as a focused campaign. It’s the business side that Jindal appeals to, concluding, “businesses threaten to undermine the very conservative coalition that stands between them and ruinous policies on the Left.” I really don’t want those “ruinous policies,” thank you.

Programming notes

It’s taken a long time and quite a few turns, but I’m going to make an effort to finally finish my Indivisible series as my next or second-to-next post. I need to put it to bed.

In the meantime, I’m adding a personal page to this website. I’ve often referred to my faith in these posts and on social media, but never really detailed how I got there. This new page will serve as my testimony and if it brings even just one reader to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ it’s worth placing.

Maryland gets a little less red

When I moved across the line to Delaware, one thing I noticed about the blogosphere was that there was no active conservative blogging voice in the First State. While the political blogging world has changed significantly in the last decade-plus from the halcyon days where thousands used that medium to express their opinion – as opposed to the rise of Facebook or Twitter – thanks to the traditional media outlets expanding their influence into the online realm there aren’t many independent survivors from that era. And in Maryland, that number will soon decrease further.

Citing burnout and a lack of focus on state politics in this era of Trump, the Red Maryland blog announced it would cease operations on June 4, two days after Maryland’s presidential primary. While I’m among a host of erstwhile contributors (along with a handful of additional voices who currently contribute) the two remaining founding members, Brian Griffiths and Greg Kline, have decided to pull the plug. (The archives will remain at the Red Maryland website.)

While I’m definitely not on either Griffiths’ or Kline’s Christmas card list, there is respect due for having stuck with it so long. If my memory serves me correctly, Red Maryland began in 2007 just after the mid-aughts GOP relevance in the (not so) Free State came to a screeching halt thanks to the defeat of the moderate Governor Bob Ehrlich by popular Baltimore mayor Martin O’Malley. (This post worth mentioning is my first mention of it, back when RedState‘s managing editor streiff was still part of the RM cast.) It’s interesting to note that I cited nine contributors to the site when it was published, but somewhere around 2010 or so many of them were dismissed because they weren’t contributing. (That was about the time the blogging world began to consolidate and Facebook and Twitter were starting their rise.)

The timing of this seems interesting, since RM had branched out over several years from being just a blog. One limb was a long-standing internet (and occasionally terrestrial) radio network that was once live several nights a week but had dwindled down to one flagship show; however, a twig off that branch was Kline’s weekly spot on local station WGMD-FM. On another side: after a few fits and starts into the print medium, including a brief stint with Maryland’s largest newspaper, the Baltimore Sun, Griffiths has settled into a role of writing a weekly column in the Annapolis Capital. And finally, this year was the first (and presumably only) Red Maryland Conference held back in January. It was held in the same venue and timeslot as an event I attended a few years back called Turning the Tides, and attracted much the same audience.

In their FAQ post they put up after the announcement, Griffiths also noted he was moving on to create a new website. My speculation is that it will be more of a general interest website and not focus on Maryland politics. Why continue to beat your head against the wall?

So I’m not sure what conservatives in Maryland are going to do for blog reading, given I’ve left the state and those guys are giving up the ghost. But it was worth mentioning that I came to praise the site, not bury it.

The rearview mirror

This was one of the copies I initially received from the publisher. If it’s copy 1 like I think it is then I believe it’s still in a box someplace from our move. It was the markup I used for the reading last June and the reference copy I kept for doing radio gigs.

I placed this photo on my social media page a year ago today. It was the first book out of the box of copies of my book that I kept for hand sales and promotions. So let me tell you about being an author and what a long, strange trip it’s been since that book came out 366 days ago.

When I put the book out after 2 1/2 years of writing it, I felt reasonably good about its prospects. I thought it was rather topical as it came out a decade after the initial TEA Party protests, and the peer reviews I had on it were positive. And the initial sales were actually encouraging after I did my first radio gig on it a couple days afterward (it was actually 52 weeks ago today, the same day Joe Biden made his formal announcement.) I had a lot of encouragement from friends and supporters, but of course I had no idea what sort of sales to expect.

Well, it’s disappointing to say that I’ve sold 26 copies through Amazon. However, I can at least say that’s more than my previous book has sold in almost eight years (a total of 18 copies.) But that doesn’t count the copies I have hand-sold in person, most of which I autographed as well. Somewhere in our house (or maybe out in the shed, who knows?) I have about 8-10 copies of my first book, which came from an original stock of 20 or 25. This time, though, I started with 25 and bought another 10, leaving me about a dozen remaining. Their disposition is an interesting story.

Out of the original stock of 25, I numbered each book from 1 to 25. I kept number 1 as my copy, tithed 2 through 4 to charity (still have those), and sent most of 5 through 10 to those who contributed to the writing. (I still have one because I’ve never been able to get a contributor’s home address even in several attempts to ask.) Out of 11 through 25 I have just a few remaining – many of them were sold at my reading back in June.

Among the second batch were a few I sent to various radio personalities who requested them. As I recall all but one of those eventually resulted in an interview, and that adds to the story.

Believe it or not, I’m way more comfortable with writing than I am with public speaking, even though I took a class in college to conquer that fear. (Shocker, huh?) I’m sure that comes through over the phone, but I also figured it was a job I had to do in order to try and spread the word given my marketing budget, which was basically zero. (I did find out it costs $3.27 to send my book anywhere from California to across town, not that I had to do the latter.)

So I spoke to various people everywhere from California to Delaware, for anywhere from seven minutes or so to a whole hour. It was a “virtual book tour” which took me from my adopted hometown to my real hometown, and from where I went to school to places I’ve never visited (or, frankly, heard of) before. There were small towns and big cities on the docket, but the last stop was a national one on an internet radio station called Southern Sense Radio. I did find out from doing sixteen or so shows that the longer I knew I had, the better the conversation flowed.

While all this was happening, I went through a move (hence, why I can’t find the spare copies) and went on vacation twice. Could I have been more diligent at marketing? Perhaps, but I also work full-time. (You may gather I’m that diligent at unpacking. But I told my wife we have the rest of our lives.)

A few months after the release, I decided it would be a good idea to follow up on the loose ends I had to leave untied to finish the book by last April. Thus was born the quarterly State of the TEA Party updates, the last of which I did a couple weeks ago – a little early but necessary to be topical. It’s been a concept that’s evolved a little bit and probably will some more before it’s through.

It’s been a tremendous and tumultuous year since I put out this book. It’s interesting to ponder how the release of the book would have gone over had it come out this year, but it’s still out there if you want to read it for the history. I think I’ll go onto Amazon tonight and give you a little incentive by cutting the price. (Hey, I have reached triple digits in royalties, at least.)

As for the next book? Honestly, I can’t say for sure whether I have another one in me. Over the years I have kicked around a couple concepts, and I got as far as a couple chapters on the Indivisible movement. (I still owe you one last part on that story – maybe in the next couple weeks.)

If anything, I have the most desire to write a sequel update to my first book, So We May Breathe Free. Once upon a time I had thought about writing a tome on the struggle between Big Oil and the green energy movement – something more on my radar when I had Marita Noon (now Marita Tedder) as a columnist, but not so much now. (I still keep a few tabs on energy, but to turn a phrase I don’t have as much energy as I used to.)

The other idea I’ve had from time to time is a project I call 600 Words. It’s been over a decade now, but once upon a time I toiled as an (unpaid) columnist for an outfit called Liberty Features Syndicate. (The title refers to their optimum column length.) Most of the time these once- or twice-weekly pieces ended up on the website of a group called Americans for Limited Government, but once in awhile I would find out some small-town newspaper also ran my column. I think it would be an interesting idea to follow up on what happened to the subject of the columns, as history may or may not have been kind to them, and maybe it would have the autobiographical element of perhaps one of the most uncertain times of my life. Between 600 Words and the sequel to So We May Breathe Free, 600 Words is definitely more the vanity project.

I guess that’s the life of a part-time author who’s become a (very) part-time blogger too. If you have pity on me and want to buy the book – or if you like a good read on history (yeah, that’s the ticket!) the link to Rise and Fall remains above the fold on my front page. Let’s see if I can beat my year one sales in year two.

Patriots Day version 2.0?

This has become the season of discontent.

Weary of restrictions spawned by a virus we imported from a nation which has generally meant us harm – one which has continually underperformed extreme expectations insofar as hospitalizations and deaths are concerned – Americans are beginning to bristle at their restrictions as a federally-imposed April 30 restoration date approaches.

While it’s the proper method Constitutionally, states which have clamped down on their populace based on the Wuhan flu’s effect on certain urban areas now exist cheek-by-jowl with states using a more laissez-faire approach. Yet as the pressure mounts to restore liberty, governors in several states have adopted a more regional approach: the three West Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington are planning a more concerted (and more restrictive) reopening, as are governors in seven northeastern states including mine in Delaware – the other states are Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Of that group, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker was the last to join and is the first Republican.

Chances are these ten states will exhibit a slothful, “go-slow” approach designed (at least to the public) to enhance safety. In political terms, some cynics would counter that the slow movement is designed to tank the economy further, extending any possible recovery beyond the November elections. (It’s interesting to note that, of the ten governors involved, only two are on the ballot this year – Jay Inslee in Washington state and John Carney here in Delaware. But both are considered safe Democrat seats nonetheless. I’m not even aware if the GOP has a contender here in Delaware.) On the other side, a handful of non-allied states have never provided more than just limited restrictions and Texas is leading an effort to quickly start things back up from a restrictive state.

At noon today in Annapolis, Marylanders were scheduled to hold a protest imploring Governor Larry Hogan (aka “Lockdown Larry”) to move quickly in bringing Maryland back. The morning’s rain should have cleared out in time, so we will see what develops out of this protest – I expect maybe a couple hundred people will show up. (There are two separate protests planned thus far in Delaware – one on Wednesday and one on May 1.)

But what concerns me are the people I see on social media who have traded their liberty for a security the government can’t assure regardless of whether we have masks on, close all the so-called non-essential businesses, or practice social distancing. (If I never hear that phrase again after this is over, it will be too soon.) When the governor puts cops on the side of the road to pull over cars with out-of-state license plates, they’re the ones who say “go for it, we want more!” I wouldn’t be surprised if those who advocate for this are secure in their jobs – after all, those who aren’t working have the most time to protest.

The other day my friend Bob Densic asked me if this could be the resurrection of the TEA Party movement. After I pondered it a moment, this is what I said:

“You know, that thought DID cross my mind. There are two big differences though. First off, you’re going to have a more “purist” group, although we will see just how well they know the Constitution when it comes to federalism and rule of law. One key thing to watch is the reaction to these compacts between (mostly Democrat) governors, one of which involves us here in Delaware.

The other aspect that I would like to see is the absence of hypocrisy. You would have TP people complain about the stimulus but then turn around and warn, ‘don’t touch my Social Security (and/or Medicare),’ not realizing it was a large component of the problem! This one isn’t so much financial – an argument can be made that the stimulus is, in part, repayment per the Takings Clause since the government shut down – but is more rights-based, sort of like the civil rights movement.”

If it takes a virus to remind us of our rights, so be it. (I’m also heartened by the uptick in Bible reading since this all began.) But it’s time to turn talk into action as we commemorate the first Patriots Day on Sunday.

The state of the TEA Party: spring 2020

Subtitled, the Wuhan coronavirus edition.

I originally intended for this piece to have a completely different look and feel than it will have, not to mention it was moved up in time about two to three weeks from its original intention of coinciding with the anniversary of my book release last year. (Yes, it’s been 12 months since I wrapped up that labor of love.) But the question of just how the TEA Party is reacting to a government stimulus that is over twice again the one it was initially formed in response to was on my heart, so this post is brooming the original concept of answers to a rhetorical question that, frankly, was never asked anyway. Life gets in the way.

This is going to sound completely hypocritical to many, but I sort of expected the one response I found in a local Florida newspaper – the Sunshine State being one of the remaining hotbeds for the movement. One I didn’t expect but am not surprised by is the reaction to a New Mexico businessman apparently best known as a TEA Party leader suing his state government, claiming the disease “is not serious enough for emergency orders, enforcement of restrictions on socializing is impossible, and the orders deny him the right to free assembly and worship.” Aside from the lack of certainty that a mix of commonly available drugs presents a cure (the research on that is promising but ongoing) the complaint is very truthful. Yet it’s going to go nowhere.

(It’s sort of like the Rick Santelli approach that was blown way out of proportion by the Left and media – but I repeat myself.)

On the other hand, while I have been critical at times of the personally opportunistic leadership of Jenny Beth Martin and the Tea Party Patriots, I have to commend both her and the organization for the tone they have struck in their response to this ordeal. Citing Scripture (in this case, 2 Timothy 1:7). Martin writes in part:

(T)he best advice I can give is to take this virus seriously, but don’t panic. Don’t let the bloodthirsty media panic you. But, at the same time, please take appropriate precautions. Follow the recommended guidelines about washing your hands, don’t touch your face, sanitize surfaces, and stay home more. And, if possible, support your local businesses and restaurants – you can order food to go so you aren’t eating in, but still helping them keep their doors open.
Also, please if you are not in an at-risk category and you are able, help your friends, acquaintances or neighbors that are over 60 or already ill. Call them up and find out if they need anything from the store that you could pick up for them, so that they don’t need to risk going out. You can even drop it off on their doorstep so that they can avoid human contact.
“My thoughts regarding the Coronavirus,” Jenny Beth Martin, March 19, 2020.

The TPP also has a nice coronavirus portal on their website, with an editable form letter that’s honestly full of good advice for individual initiative.

But there are a couple questions going forward that those interested in fiscal conservatism and limited government should point out, particularly since those on the Left had their own wishlist that could come in yet another Wuhan virus relief bill. Aside from the non-virus related pork in the bill, another thing to watch for is whether this new, vastly increased amount of spending becomes a new artificial baseline from which the Left will scream about “cuts” if we even level-fund in the next budget year.

And when they are not wailing in their best shrill girly scream about how Donald Trump is “a president who will bear responsibility for the death of many of our neighbors, friends, and loved ones, and for an economic nightmare… an outcome of the right-wing project to undermine and vilify government,” they’re certainly scheming on how to not let this crisis go to waste:

At the end of this pandemic, more Americans will view the government as capable of solving big societal problems, progressives argue. New emergency-aid legislation dramatically expands paid sick and family leave for millions of workers and suspends work requirements for food assistance, two agenda items progressives have long supported. And the $2 trillion stimulus package that the president just signed into law would provide a $1,200 direct payment to most American adults—similar to the Freedom Dividend championed by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang—and another $250 billion in unemployment-insurance benefits. “There’s going to be an amazing shift where we recognize the impact government can have on our lives for the better,” says Charles Chamberlain, the executive director at Democracy for America, a progressive political-action committee.
“What Do Progressives Do Now?”, Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic, March 28, 2020.

Unfortunately, that “amazing shift” isn’t going to come with the economic activity required to create the value to come anywhere close to repaying the debt or preventing a return to rampant Carter-era inflation.

Finally, it’s interesting to me that both of these stimulus programs come in response to government actions perhaps the opposite of what would be expected from the party in charge. The Obama stimulus came after the months of uncertainty that spanned from the tail end of the George W. Bush administration (when he had to destroy the free market to save it, and which briefly took GOP candidate John McCain off the campaign trail) whereas this stimulus came from the unprecedented government action of ordering certain businesses to close to prevent the spread of a virus unknown just six months ago. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the decentralization of the federal response is more or less in line with the philosophy of the Trump administration (hence the whining from the Left.)

Whether I’ll come back to my originally scheduled summer TEA Party update or change up again may depend on circumstances both national and personal. I’m definitely hoping we return to something approaching normal by then, but there’s always the prospect that we are in a new normal – and that’s what’s scary.

I’d love some thoughts from my TEA Party friends on this theory, either here or the places I’ll share.

A business state of emergency

It’s amazing in a way to think that we’ve only gone a week and change since the NBA suspended its season in an effort to stifle the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. Since then we have endured a week of drastic bad news the likes of which we haven’t seen since 9/11 and perhaps longer. What was shaping up to be a pleasant spring routine has now been destroyed, along with the hopes and dreams of anyone who wanted to participate in the NCAA basketball tournament, their senior proms, and graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2020, among countless other annual and special events.

On Tuesday night we resumed our bowling season under different rules, splitting the league squads into two shifts to keep the number in the bowling alley below 50. Unfortunately, that change was short-lived as Governor Carney expanded his previous State of Emergency order the next day to demand the closing of bowling alleys, among other businesses.

While I get the necessity of the closings to “flatten the curve” my problem is the open-endedness of such an order. While there is CDC guidance suggesting this will last about eight weeks, the reality is that many people and businesses can’t survive an eight-week shutdown, at least not without some sort of mitigation. I love how the private sector has moved into action in a lot of cases.

Now let me make a confession: I was sort of stuck as to how to continue this post, at least until I got a comment to Wednesday’s Patriot Post commentary that I shared by Mark Alexander. This response is from a person I’ve known for awhile who is well over on the other side of the political fence, and is quoted verbatim:

Jesus christ ppl are losing jobs, dying, mass hysteria, and hoarding of vital medical supplies. I am working as so many other low paid workers in constant contact with people of high and low risk of severe illness. This is not political. The facts are this we are not prepared and a clown is running the circus. I dont want people to lose their homes, jobs, lives. Or leader need to put their big girl panties on and do what’s right for the millions of Americans and not ask first what party or income bracket they belong in.
Reaction to social media post

This whole situation has been a balancing act I wouldn’t wish on anyone because you have two bad choices: go about normal life, leave the disease essentially unchecked, and overwhelm our health system, OR, shut down everything and place people out of work. President Trump has advised for the latter course but has left enforcement up to state and local officials. To me that’s the proper way to address this because they are more familiar with conditions on the ground, and besides: you can’t completely shut everything down because people have to eat.

And I have to ask: how do you prepare for something like this, a once-in-a-century disease? If we had somehow stocked up on respirators, medicine, and so forth ten years ago, say, as part of the stimulus, wouldn’t someone have complained that we were spending money to store supplies that might have deteriorated to the point of being useless by now anyway? It’s one thing to fill an oil reserve but quite another to stock up on testing kits for a disease that doesn’t exist at the time. Leaders can be prescient but I don’t think they’re often psychic.

So I will grant that we weren’t prepared, but then again that’s the nature of a crisis. We can only prepare ourselves so much for any particular risk so we go with what we know about risks we have experienced at the expense of other ones. (Cases in point: terrorist attacks begat the PATRIOT Act and Department of Homeland Security, both of which have survived nearly two decades now, and school shootings have necessitated upgrades to school buildings which do not necessarily improve the educational process.) After this Chinese virus has run its course we will probably go overboard with products and procedures that will be infringements on our wallets and liberty. (If it brings pharmaceutical manufacturing back from China, though, that would be a benefit.)

On the other hand, I don’t think we have a clown running the circus. A President Hillary Clinton would have dictated a more bureaucratic and more politically correct solution – in my opinion it would have paralleled Italy’s and sadly, that’s been a disaster for the Italian people who are sharing their misery with a huge Chinese national contingent within their nation. The experts have agreed that clamping down on travel from China when President Trump did may have saved thousands from getting the virus and overwhelming the American health care system. And, unfortunately, I don’t think slow Joe Biden would have fared any better than Hillary had this crisis occurred next year after his election. To a greater extent than we are already saddled with, the folks in a Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden administration would have seen this as a crisis they could have used to permanently secure more federal government power.

(That’s not to say those under Trump are immune – I’m somewhat leery of how we will address the financial end by setting a precedent of government payments. One can argue, however, that this direct payment would be compensation for the taking of one’s livelihood since many places of business were forced to close. Perhaps a complementary way to address this, though, would be to bolster state unemployment accounts.)

So thanks to my friend for giving me the inspiration to revise and extend these remarks – I started this on Wednesday but hadn’t felt the need to return to it until that response.

Putting the world on hold

They tell us it’s “flattening the curve.”

However, there are a huge number of economic impacts we will need to go through now that the Wuhan coronavirus escaped its Chinese captivity and has gone global. Let’s just look at one arena of economics for example. (And yes, the pun was intended.)

On Wednesday, just after I put up my previous post, it was announced that the NBA season was “suspended” until further notice. This quickly extended to the NHL and MLB, with the NCAA topping all of them and completely cancelling ALL winter and spring championship events. (In other words, it’s not just March Madness: the College World Series, normally held in late May into June, is off, too.)

I already feel horrible for those seniors who may have been going to The Dance for the first and only time in their college careers, but one also has to consider those people whose livelihood depends in part on these events. It’s two dates that the workers at the Mercedes-Benz arena in Atlanta will now be off, not to mention the host facilities of the other regionals that are held over two nights at various venues. (In the early rounds, this can be a full shift from noon to 9 or 10 at night.) Even worse is the fate of those who work at NBA or NHL host arenas, as their facilities are often used 5 nights a week or more thanks to sports, concerts, and other large gatherings. The same goes for spring training venues, which are used nearly every day during this time of year thanks to teams sharing fields and split-squad games. Now these facilities are closed to the public and these employees are out of work.

Generally these workers are the folks who were barely scraping by, so this pandemic is going to make it more difficult for them to pay their bills. (One exception: those who work for Ilitch Holdings, which owns Little Caesars along with the Detroit Tigers and Detroit Red Wings, among other entertainment properties. They are going to compensate part-timers for games and events they miss thanks to the cancellations, which included the NCAA hockey Frozen Four.)

So there are a number of events which will be lost and never made up; lost opportunities for commerce. Granted, public health is important but my gut feeling is that we’ve overreacted to this epidemic insofar as governmental entities are concerned. It’s one thing for a privately-run league to suspend operations for several weeks, but government declaring a state of emergency and forcing the cancellation of events slated to hold more than a few dozen people may be a little beyond the pale. These things should be decided by organizers, not dictated. Believe it or not – and despite the hoarders who think they need two cases of toilet paper – we have a little common sense left in this world.

I also believe we needed an end date to this state of emergency, or at least a date certain to re-evaluate the situation. Declare a state of emergency through March 31, with an interim deadline of perhaps March 28 to determine further course of action. (The professional baseball world at least knows two weeks’ worth of games will be cancelled, so that alternate planning can take place.) Much of the reason the stock market and oil futures have tanked over the last month is the uncertainty of the situation. Now we can’t predict a virus, but I think we can at least give a firm date for attempting to return to normal.

As I see it, leaving stuff open-ended gives potential for additional mischief from the “never let a crisis go to waste” crowd. We’re already staring a recession dead in the face (unless pent-up demand rescues us in 2020 Q2) and, being an election year, we know what that means. As always, the government has to do something to insure its re-election as opposed to following the Constitution or adhering to limited-government principles that would suggest a more hands-off approach.

We’ve already seen what a media-enhanced panic looks like by checking out the store shelves, so it’s time for vigilance and, once this is over, preparation for the next time. Trust me, it WILL happen again.