CCP virus – monoblogue

Book review: Rigged – How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, by Mollie Hemingway

The latest bestseller from Mollie
Hemingway found its way to me.

Unlike my last book review, I decided to use some of those Amazon dollars I had accrued over the years from various exploits on something useful and informative. Mollie Hemingway’s newest contribution to the discourse scores on both counts, and although I didn’t find a whole lot of new information to me in her book it’s a great one-stop shop in determining how the 2020 election (and, by some extension, the Trump presidency) careened off the rails.

Notice I say I didn’t find a whole lot of new information, and the reason I said that is because I keep an ear to the ground with news from a number of sources I trust to give me the straight skinny. On that count Hemingway is with me as I counted over 1,200 footnotes, and even though many are repeats of the same information source I can’t fault the amount of research on this one.

Mollie takes her time laying out the case, working her way through a number of events that began even before the moment that Donald Trump took office. By the way, I have to ask: have you ever noticed that an election won by a Republican is seldom considered legitimate in the eyes of the Left? Ever since Watergate, there’s almost always been some sort of scandal associated with a GOP victory – accusations of Ronald Reagan sending George H.W. Bush over on an SR-71 spy plane to delay the release of the Iranian hostages until after the 1980 election, the whole Bush v. Gore controversy in 2000, the Diebold scandal in Ohio from 2004, and Russia Russia Russia in 2016. (We got a break for a few years when Reagan was re-elected in enough of a landslide to preclude those questions and Bush followed on his coattails.) Hemingway begins her book talking about the Russia issue but settles in with a look at how election laws were changed in 2020 thanks to the Wuhan flu.

One thing I really liked about Rigged was the setup and layout, as each separate argument group gets its own chapter that’s well-covered. Because of that, it’s not perfectly sequential, but it hits on all the keynotes a reader needs to understand to figure out why the 2020 election went so terribly wrong for Trump. We find out early on, for example, that Democrats were terrified about a second Trump term because the economy was so strong, but got the stroke of luck they needed when COVID-19 (a.k.a. the CCP virus) struck in late 2019 and began to truly affect our nation in the spring of 2020. At the end of the 2020 State of the Union address, with the nation at maximum, triumphant Trump, and where the second chapter comes to an end, Hemingway wrote:

Trump’s opponents would need a miracle to stop him. He was at the peak of his powers and was leading the country to new heights. But Democrats would soon get their lucky break when news of a novel coronavirus reached American shores. It was a crisis they wouldn’t let go to waste.
“Rigged”, p. 60.

Mollie details how things went spiraling downward from there: the rapid spread of COVID and the summer of rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s untimely death put Trump on the defensive, and as the economy tanked thanks to overly restrictive CCP virus mandates it suddenly became virtuous in the eyes of the media to run a campaign from a basement like Joe Biden’s was. She adds in full chapters describing the bizarre influence of “fake news” and, more importantly, the withholding of vital information from the voting public during the Hunter Biden influence scandal. Perhaps the “10 percent for the big guy” was the allotted share from “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization” Biden had – no, wait, that voter fraud organization was bought and paid for by “Zuck bucks,” to which Hemingway also devotes a chapter.

The part where I learned the most was the latter part of the book, which briefly detailed briefly Democrat efforts to clear the field for Joe Biden in certain states – in particular, their shameful effort in Wisconsin to not only successfully kick the Green Party off the ballot, but denying write-in candidate Kanye West a spot because he was fourteen seconds late in having his paperwork accepted – the building was locked due to COVID restrictions and a circuit court ruled against West. (Under normal circumstances, his campaign’s paperwork would have easily made the deadline.) As Hemingway points out, no such efforts were made against the Libertarian Party, whose voters tend to be more right-leaning – and whose Presidential candidate, Jo Jorgensen, received more votes in Wisconsin than Biden’s victory margin there. (Not to say the Republicans aren’t guilty of that at times, too – just ask the Ohio Libertarian Party.)

Overall, Mollie does a fantastic job detailing the voting issues in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. And if that weren’t enough, we are exposed to the folly that was Donald Trump’s post-election campaign for justice – already a long shot thanks to a system corrupted by the Democrats, Hemingway blamed Rudy Giuliani for many of the legal team’s problems.

Giuliani appeared more interested in creating a public relations spectacle than mounting a credible legal challenge. As his questionable legal strategy faltered, many of the big law firms that had signed onto the Trump campaign’s legal effort didn’t quit so much as quietly back away.
“Rigged”, p. 293.

If one were to consider Donald Trump’s biggest mistakes, number one would have been giving Anthony Fauci the time of day. But arguably a close second was entrusting his legal challenge to the 2020 election to Rudy Giuliani, who seemed to be simply the ringmaster of a circus that also included grifters like Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, whose kraken we still await. I don’t think she meant the Seattle hockey team, did she?

As Hemingway writes to conclude the book, in its final chapter, “Consent of the Losers”:

A growing number of Americans are outraged by the way the left seizes and deploys power. They are sick of the lies, manipulation, and distortion that a corrupt ruling class spins on a regular basis. Those courageous citizens, not the decaying establishment, will determine the fate of our nation. Their efforts will ensure that we pass on our beloved republic to future generations.
In the fights to come, those men and women will have the best weapon – truth – on their side. The only question is whether their leaders will have the courage to use it.
“Rigged”, p. 332.

Like I’m sure she did, I got that bile and anger in the back of my throat simply from retyping the sentence for the quote. It’s not so much that I was a Trump fan, but just the way the history we know of shook out showed that there are people who almost literally take the childhood taunt, “who died and made you king?” as a challenge. They don’t need no stinking laws passed by a legislature to seize power; they’ll just executive order it and dare a court to stop them – too often the courts don’t. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Governor Carnage.)

Rigged is not going to make you happier, unless you’re a power-hungry narcissist. I just hope it adds some steel to the spines because come November we may need it. This one was well worth the investment and read.

Square one

As anyone over the age of 30 knows and remembers, it was twenty years ago today that not only did Sgt. Pepper teach the band to play, but a infamous band of homicidal religious fanatics flew jetliners into both towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, not achieving their goal of hitting the Capitol or White House only because of brave, quick-thinking, and doomed passengers aboard Flight 93.

Yet all that seems a history lesson lost on our policy makers who botched the final military campaign of the War on Terror undertaken by President George W. Bush and followed through – if reluctantly – by Presidents Obama and Trump. Joe Biden wanted our troops home from Afghanistan and he got them – never mind the fluctuating number of American and allied civilians remaining in-country, desperately seeking a way out.

It was intended to be perfect theatre: leaving a ostensibly free Afghanistan on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, with a government and army equipped and ready to stave off the Taliban menace without our assistance, sort of like the baby birds pushed out of the nest to fly free and live on their own – instead, the neighborhood predators got them.

As one who lived through 9/11, it’s somewhat ironic that the world we feared at the time has now come true by our own hand. For months we lived in mortal fear of a terrorist attack and our government took advantage of that to pass several heavy-handed restrictions, particularly on our freedom of movement and our privacy, still in place today. Indeed, we are safer from that terrorist threat, but at what cost?

Maybe this sensitivity is why I so clearly see the parallels between our reaction to the 9/11 terrorist attack and the more recent CCP virus terrorist attack. In both cases, the federal government expanded in both size and reach, with our latter-day equivalent to the PATRIOT Act perhaps being the vaccination mandates Joe Biden wants to send our way. (He will have much stiffer opposition from the states on this one than George W. Bush got for the PATRIOT Act, though.)

Yet there is one clear difference between 9/11 and the Wuhan flu, and that’s our lack of being united in the immediate aftermath. Our post-9/11 Era of Good Feelings only lasted a few weeks, but that’s one thing we remember about that time. Unfortunately, we never had that same feeling after we learned we had been exposed to the CCP virus – instead, each side has blamed the other for failures in stopping the spread and treating this deadly virus. Right now the role of Muslims post-9/11 is being played by those who have chosen not to be vaccinated for whatever reason. They have become the modern-day scapegoats.

Because there’s no particular day that can be pinned for the virus breaking loose from the Wuhan lab and eventually making its way to our shores, we won’t have the chance to pick an anniversary to commemorate. Unfortunately, it ended up that we couldn’t wipe out radical Islam in 20 years and it’s looking more and more like that chunk of time won’t be any more effective than 15 days to stop the spread.

Quick fix, simmering realizations…

Every so often I get blog feedback, and generally when I mention it I like to poke fun at it. But in this case it brought back a memory that, upon reading, could really have been written in August 2021 just as easily as it was in May of 2017.

In this case, the feedback was from an outfit that must like to check my links and suggests that I prune dead links and redirect them through their site. I appreciated their advice, but instead I found an archived link for what I needed.

But it gave me the opportunity to do a throwback Thursday on Sunday the other night when I wrote this piece. At that point in life 4 1/2 years ago I was still skeptical of a Trump administration that was just starting out while I was then working a job and a half. And it was this passage that stopped me cold:

I’m no economic genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I would suspect having GDP growth exceed inflation is good, but having government spending (which is a component of GDP) increase more quickly than either is a bad sign. If you take away the government spending component the question is whether GDP growth is still ahead of inflation. Maybe it’s not.
But who profits from that? I will grant there is certain government spending that adds value: if someone in the federal DOT had the gumption to have an interstate highway built between here and I-95 by Wilmington, not only would the money create local construction jobs on Delmarva but the greater ease in access to and from points north like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia would be good for local tourism and industry by making it easier to get here and transport there.
On the other hand, simple wealth transfers from rich to poor (welfare, Medicaid) and young to old (Social Security, Medicare) don’t add much in the way of value except in the sense that their care and feeding keeps a few thousand paper-pushers employed. But they are not creating value as their wages are extracted from those dollars others earn with work that adds value like mining, manufacturing, services like architecture and construction, and so forth. (Did I mention that I’m once again a registered architect in Maryland?)
So if you know this and I know this, why is the system remaining as is? I believe more and more that there is a group of well-connected people and entities who make their fortunes by gaming the system. Instead of government being a neutral arbitrator, they seem to be putting their thumb on the scale to favor those who now participate in an ever-widening vicious cycle of dependency and rent-seeking. To me, things should be fair for everyone with equal treatment in the eyes of the law but greed and lack of respect for one’s fellow man has changed the Golden Rule to “he who has the gold, rules.”
“About my hiatus,” May 5, 2017.

And remember, I wrote this before anyone outside of a Wuhan lab had ever heard of the virus that became the CCP virus and its fourteen variants that seem to come out whenever the news is bad for the Democrats. It was a pandemic where the rich, led by Walmart and Amazon, got richer and the middle-class got pretty much wiped out by unemployment and seeing their businesses die, or both. Remind me again who determined which businesses were deemed “essential” and which were forced to close? And this doesn’t even consider stimulus packages 1-48, which have added trillions to our deficit and debt.

(Side note: I was on a roll back then with my thoughts, because the next piece just nailed health insurance. I even called Andy Harris’s margin of victory eighteen months ahead of time. I really need to write like that more often!)

So, “Ella Miller,” if you are a real person (and I’m guessing by the search engines that you are sending these out under a pseudonym), I want to thank you for bringing the dead link to my attention so I could be reminded of just how consistent I’ve been politically and how I sometimes have the spider sense working just right.

The replacement?

For many years I have been on the e-mail list for a group called the 9/12 Delaware Patriots. From time to time their events and announcements have graced my pages – beginning way back with this notice in 2012, ironically on 12/12/12. According to their social media page, the group began the 9/12 Delaware Patriots page back in August, 2009 – a time when the overall TEA Party movement was at its organizational peak.

Yet over the last year or so it seems like the group has run out of steam, with a little bit of help (or call it bad luck.) For several years, the 9/12 Delaware Patriots would hold two monthly meetings, generally with the same speakers for each: one in Sussex County and the other intended for Kent and New Castle counties. But that was before the pandemic hit and eliminated the prospect for monthly public gatherings at the local restaurants which they generally used.

Back in the Zoom meeting days of last spring, I sat in on one of their monthly meetings only to find fewer than a dozen denizens. It was a bummer because I was looking forward to seeing what they were about as we had just become Delaware residents, three years or so after our original intention. And it’s strange: their social media page remains a hotbed of activity despite the dearth of meetings.

Over the last few months, though, their position seems to have been supplanted by a new group called Patriots for Delaware (P4D.) The upstarts are now boasting a social media membership into five figures, dwarfing the reach of the 9/12 group that remains in the 1,600 range. (Since both are private pages, though, this may be intentional on the part of 9/12.) P4D also claimed that a recent meeting drew 150 attendees, which is a phenomenal turnout for a political event not featuring a candidate. (As a comparison, even in the heady days of the TEA Party a decade ago, meetings of our local Salisbury area Americans for Prosperity or Maryland Society of Patriots groups seldom drew more than about 50, and averaged 25 or so.)

Meanwhile, the last event I heard about that was sponsored by the 9/12 group was the bus trip they took to the Capitol rally on January 6. Since then, it’s been almost three months out of the public eye so I decided to ask them if they had gone on hiatus.

My request for information was answered by their president Karen Gritton, who advised me that, indeed, the group was at something of a crossroads.

Gritton told me that she had gone to a P4D meeting, saying, “they seem to be very similar to the 9/12 and very well attended at present.” Unfortunately, she also confided that she could not continue as 9/12’s president and no one on the board was in a position to take over for Gritton. Their next steps would be considered at an upcoming board meeting. “We may be at a turning point where we will restructure,” she conceded.

Having been in that sort of position a couple times myself, I can feel for Gritton’s plight. So what interested me was why the leadership of P4D didn’t just come in to the existing group, and their co-founder Glenn Watson, Jr. let me know:

9/12 is a group that mostly focuses on 2A issues, whereas our vision was much more broad. At Patriots for Delaware we strive to focus on all Constitutional Values, and attempt to do so in a way that attracts moderates from both side of the aisle. Being a “Patriot” is not limited to those that affiliate with the political right. We felt that having a well organized group was very important and starting from the ground up allowed us to do that. We clearly took inspiration from 9/12 but ultimately, our missions are not identical, so it made sense to start our own organization. We wish 9/12 great success and hope to work with them on issues where we share common ground.
e-mail from Glenn Watson, Jr., March 30, 2021.

I don’t think the 9/12 group was overly focused on the Second Amendment myself, but that’s just me. Among patriots the gun issue tends to be among those they are most passionate about, and ironically there is a sharp focus on the P4D page on 2A issues right now as the Delaware General Assembly debates more useless gun legislation.

Anyway, one other interesting facet of P4D is the organizational chart they’re already come up with, one which features several committees on various topics (member outreach, political action, finance, critical thinking, press/visual arts, and education) and creates a seven-member board of directors who breaks the tie if the two co-founders disagree on a course of action. It’s a rather mature setup for a group that’s less than a year old.

But I want to come back to something Watson said that caught my eye: “Being a ‘Patriot’ is not limited to those that affiliate with the political right.”

Back in the day, probably about the time when I was still sharing a bedroom with a bunk bed and crib for me and my two brothers in the little two-bedroom house that was the starter home for my parents, politics stopped at the water’s edge and everybody loved America. Certainly Republicans and Democrats disagreed on the direction and role of government, but the rank-and-file of both sides pretty much shared the same values insofar as the idea of America being the shining city on the hill that was later publicized by Ronald Reagan (who famously was a Democrat until the party left him.)

The split over Vietnam, where the youth of America became antiwar protestors and dodged the draft, seemed to be the schism that set us on the course to where we are today. Those on the Left who sympathized with the Jane Fondas of the world also began dabbling in a number of other political venues which separated us out: abortion, gay rights, unchecked immigration, and the attitude that America was no better than any other nation regardless of philosophy and how they treated their people. To them, the banana republic with the tinhorn dictator was just as worthy as we were on the world stage.

Of course, I was way too young at the time to really understand at the time what the college kids were upset about. I barely remember Walter Cronkite telling us “that’s the way it is” after my mom and dad watched him and the local 6:00 news. And I’m probably the last generation who went to public school yet was still told of America’s greatness, warts and all. Watergate didn’t bother me because I had no idea what was going on – I was more interested in the ballgame my Little League team would be playing that week.

So I would tend to disagree with their assessment to some extent because few on the political Left subscribe to the notion that America is something to be patriotic about, but that’s just me.

If I were a betting man, I would suspect that the 9/12 Delaware Patriots have run their course – not because it was a bad organization, but it lost members who would become its leaders as they slowly drifted away over the last few years. One thing I’ve noticed about TEA Party groups: we’re not getting any younger. Perhaps this is something that Patriots for Delaware can address while they are the new, hip thing and create a subgroup called Young Patriots for Delaware. (Even better would be a third group: College Patriots for Delaware.)

Say what you will about the party structure, but it works: I wasn’t a College Republican, but I was a Young Republican for several years in the mid- to late 1990s, culminating with being president of the Toledo YRs in 2000. (And I speak from experience: after I left, the group went on a hiatus for a year or two until new young people revitalized it.) But those College Republicans oftentimes become Young Republicans, and the YRs move up to be the leadership and candidates of the party once (or many times before) they age out. The same should hold true of other political groups, and right now we need young conservative Patriot leaders to counter the indoctrination our youth is being disserved.

That’s also why education should become our new pet issue. I’m not sure which committee gets that idea, but it definitely should go in the Patriot hopper.

If the Patriots for Delaware comes Laurel way, I may just stop in and see what the fuss is about. And if the 9/12 Patriots somehow revitalize their group, hopefully it will be when the state opens up so I can enjoy the experience.

The prospects of Trump fatigue

Like a lot of political observers on the right, I was interested enough in what Donald Trump had to say at CPAC on Sunday afternoon to tune in. Because of the social media bans placed on our erstwhile President, we (and the media) haven’t had our daily fix of blurbs, barbs, and braggadocio from old number 45, so those who believed in the man were sure to be checking out what he would have to say about the election and the job his successor is doing.

Sure enough, he had plenty of red meat for the CPAC audience with his criticism of Joe Biden and hints he dropped about making another run for the White House (which wouldn’t really be his third, but his fifth since he briefly sought the Oval Office via the Reform Party ticket in 2000 and had another quick run at it in 2012.) But it’s interesting that Trump only received 55% of the open straw poll vote when everyone at CPAC knew he would be the featured speaker – then again, once we have actual contenders who announce their intentions that 55% would be more than good enough to win (and it’s still a formidable base.)

However, I have become a bit of a Trump skeptic over the last few weeks. It’s certainly not because I approve of Joe Biden’s performance, as the Commander-in-Thief has taken us backwards in so many ways. And you could certainly accuse me here of looking at things through a lens of conventional wisdom when we all know Donald Trump shattered that sucker multiple times from 2016 on, in more ways than one. But there are several reasons I think this way.

First and foremost, having Biden as president right now and watching him stumble through his limited media opportunities reminds us that he is 78 years old – which, as fate would have it, is the age Donald Trump would be should he decide to run in 2024. Trump may look to be the picture of mental acuity right now, but we need only look at the late Rush Limbaugh to know that the guy who looks healthy at a point in time (his 69th birthday last year) could be gone in less than 13 months.

The second issue is what happens to the crowd that considers Trump to be Superman. Indeed, he overcame a lot to stay President for four years – two partisan impeachments, domestic spying on his campaign, a slanted press that rarely said a kind word about him and wouldn’t give him credit for his accomplishments, and the CCP virus that actually infected him. But the combination of these factors and a lot of funny business in the 2020 election (brought on by that same CCP virus) finally put him out of office despite the vain hope of millions who believed in a miracle that did not come.

It’s very possible we saw this effect in the Georgia Senate runoff elections, as those who believed the system was rigged (because Trump and his supporters stated so, on numerous occasions all over conservative media) may have decided not to turn out. As it stands at the moment, 19-plus months out, the betting money believes the GOP takes the House back from the Democrats given the slim margin the Democrats have to work with and the nearly-traditional loss the party in the White House endures during its first midterm. But if the GOP snatches that defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s going to be blamed on Trump supporters who didn’t support the overall Republican party when the need was great.

Still, Donald Trump was the outsider and he’s managed to keep that perception despite the fact he was the incumbent by running against the “Swamp.” It’s not going to get any less murky but there are other candidates who can tout their renegade status thanks to the pandemic response.

And finally, I just think people are ready for something new. Part of Bill Clinton’s charm back in 1992 was his youth, with people believing it was finally time for a Baby Boomer president – a term that describes the quartet of Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. (Three of the four were born within a couple months of each other in 1946.) On a generational scale, Joe Biden actually hearkens back to the Silent Generation as their first (and probably only) President as no other President was born between 1924 and 1946.

By the time we get to the next election, the top end of Generation X will be sixty years old. (By that same token, Baby Boomers will almost all be retirement age and above.) There are a number of great Republican candidates who were born in that era and it should finally get its due next time around. (Assuming Kamala Harris takes over sometime in the next four years, she will actually be the first Generation X president, born in 1964 a month after I was.) Donald Trump is a very popular man, but the generation he’s most popular among is the one that beginning to pass from the scene. That’s not so much Trump fatigue as it is the march of history.

But the American people may be ready for a new flavor in 2024, so don’t assume that Donald Trump will be this century’s Grover Cleveland just yet.

Odds and ends number 100

Hey, a milestone!

The “odds and ends” concept is almost as old as monoblogue itself – my first one, actually called “Odds and year ends,” came back on December 26, 2005. monoblogue was all of 25 days old then, a babe in the woods of the World Wide Web. (It was post #20 on this website; this one will be #5,137.) In re-reading that one after all these years, I found it was a very Maryland-centric post. And what makes it perfectly fitting is that my plan was to make this a Delaware-centric post since I had used most of my other stuff pre-election and held the items for the First State back.

So as has always been the rule, we have things I handle in a couple sentences to a few paragraphs – a series of mini-posts, if you will.

A taxpayer money waste

Did you know the state of Delaware is suing energy companies claiming “Defendants, major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have
known for nearly half a century that unrestricted production and use of fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate.”

(…)

“Defendants have known for decades that climate change impacts could be catastrophic, and that only a narrow window existed to take action before the consequences would be irreversible.”

If you really want to bother reading all 218 pages of the lawsuit be my guest, but the upshot is best described by the Caesar Rodney Institute’s David T. Stevenson, who wrote, “The suit is likely to meet the same fate as a similar lawsuit in New York that simply wasted taxpayer money.” CRI’s Stevenson instead compares the supposed future effects of so-called manmade climate change to the tangible effects of fossil fuels on societal development.

It’s true Delaware is a low-lying state, but it’s also true that sea levels have been rising for several decades, long before the first SUV was sold or widget factory was built. But to demand both compensatory and punitive damages from a host of energy companies – which would cut into their R & D budget and increase consumer costs – is in and of itself a waste of valuable energy and time. If it ever comes to the jury trial they demand, I pray that we get 12 sober-minded people who laugh this suit right out of court.

Robbing the livelihood

It’s been a bone of contention for many: what was originally billed as a state of emergency to “flatten the curve” has now almost become a way of life as our ongoing state of emergency in Delaware was quietly extended yet again on the Friday before Halloween (and the election.)

I did a little bit of traveling around the bottom part of the state this weekend and noticed some of the missing businesses. After a summer tourist season ruined by our reaction to the CCP virus, it may indeed be the winter of our discontent and there’s no better place to spend it than Delaware, right Governor Carney?

Since the Delaware General Assembly will be returning with an even stronger Democrat majority in the Senate, it’s to be expected that employer mandates will be among the items discussed. But as A Better Delaware observes, that can be very counterproductive to businesses already struggling to survive:

The cost of the health care provided to the employee does not result in more productivity or value of that employee at their firm. By adding this cost, it is more likely that incomes will be lowered in order for the total value of the employee to remain the same, even with additional costly mandates. Sometimes, the cost of these mandates results in layoffs so that the company can afford to provide them to the remaining employees.
“Employer mandates: mandating job and income loss,” A Better Delaware, October 2, 2020.

Instead, what they suggest is a private-sector solution: “either establish insurance plans that would cover short-term disability or paid family leave plans or allowing lower-income hourly workers to choose if they would want to convert overtime pay to paid leave.” The flexibility allowed by this would be beneficial, particularly as some may wish to enhance their allotted vacation time in this manner. I made an agreement like that last year with my employer to trade overtime for vacation hours I used later on to extend my year-end holiday by a couple days.

Time for public input

As I noted above, the state’s state of emergency was extended yet again by Governor Carney. But the folks at CRI believe this shouldn’t just be his call.

Instead, they believe what’s necessary is a three-day emergency session of the General Assembly, focused on the following:

Debate and negotiate a time limit for Executive Emergency Power, such as two or three months after which Legislative approval is needed for any extension.
Debate and negotiate specific metrics for re-opening the economy and return to in-person school classes based upon hospitalizations, not cases.

A state of emergency is not meant to be a perpetual grant of power, although politicians of all stripes have been known to abuse the declaration for things that aren’t immediate impediments to public safety, such as the opioid crisis. It’s important, but not to the level of a state of emergency. We flattened the curve and have learned a lot about the CCP virus, and in a cynical way it did its job because otherwise Donald Trump cruises to re-election and China continues to have a worthy adversary instead of a pocketed leader.

(ahem) It’s time for economy to get back to work so we can deal with all the abuse it might be about to take from the incoming Harris/Biden regime.

One last tax question

Should Delaware relent and adopt a sales tax?

This was another item considered by the CRI folks over the last few weeks, and their data bears out my armchair observations as someone who’s lived close by the border for 16 years. Since we don’t collect sales tax, strictly speaking this puts Delaware’s border-area retailers at an advantage. (Technically, residents of Maryland, Pennsylvania, et. al. are supposed to remit the sales tax they would have paid in-state after buying in Delaware but I’ve yet to meet one who does.)

But if you assume that Delaware takes in $2.89 billion from the retail industry, a 3% sales tax would give the state $86.7 million. However, when you compare that to the possible retail jobs and revenue lost by eliminating the state’s “tax-free” status, the net would be much smaller and could become a negative – a negative that increases the closer the state comes to matching its neighbors’ sales tax rates, which range from 6% in Maryland to 6.6% in New Jersey. (By comparison, these rates are among the lowest in the nation, so perhaps Delaware is a tempering factor for those states, too.)

Retail is a tough enough business, though. Why make it harder for those in the First State?

And last…it’s that time of year

Every year it seems I have a post about items made in the USA. Our fine friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing continue to chug along with their list, and they’ve been looking for suggestions over the last month or so. The list usually comes out just in time for Black Friday, although this year may be different. (There’s still time to squeeze in a last-minute idea, I’ll bet.)

Admittedly, sometimes it’s a bit of a reach as last year‘s Delaware item was RAPA scrapple, but previous years they’ve featured Delaware self-employed crafters for baby-related items and unglazed clay bakeware, giving those small businesses a hand. I’d be very curious to see what they come up with this year.

And I’ll be very curious to see what I come up with for items for the next odds and ends, which begins the second hundred if the Good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise.

Never say never…

Life is really funny sometimes. Back in 2016 when I took the exit ramp I was a convicted man, but somehow that road has led me in a strange direction. No, I’m not quite back on that highway but I think I can see it from here.

It didn’t take me all that long to begin shedding the “never” part of a certain term. Taking a hacksaw to regulations was very endearing, and getting a much-needed tax cut was certainly a push in the right direction. But it all began with that deep breath of optimism that came about in the latter days of 2016; the feeling that something better was indeed going to finally come along after years of waiting. And as if a sign from above, I was restored to what I once was: after eight long, disheartening years of being forced out of a good job due to misfortunes and dire economic circumstances, Providence allowed me to get a foot in the door, and a few months later make my full-time return. I wasn’t quite the classic prodigal son, but I almost broke down and wept on the day of my return to full-time work there. Certainly I had been humbled by the previous eight years.

In my lines of work and various side hustles, I depend greatly on a good economy. Over the last four years we have taken the low gear of the last administration – what was then proclaimed as a “new normal” – and turbocharged it so that the new new normal lent itself better to prosperity. And even when we were suddenly thrown into reverse by the CCP virus, allowing the states to govern their response has gotten many of us back on track – particularly those fortunate enough to live in states with traditionally Republican governors. (Our friends in Maryland don’t have one of those. He can vote for whom he wants, but I’m not applauding the stance anymore because it seems now to me more out of spite than anything else. At least in 2016 I voted for a legit write-in.)

But perhaps the biggest factor in steering my response was the absolutely unfair media shake we have seen for our current president. I think back to 2012 and Mitt Romney, and ponder whether we would be electing his replacement if the media had been as curious about scandal back then as they have over the last four years. Imagine if something like Benghazi had happened under the current administration: blaming it on a video would not fly with a persistently questioning and curious media. Having the sandbags placed by constant and phony investigation arguably cost the Republicans the House in 2018; fortunately, they didn’t lose the Senate, which brings up another point.

In the last four years, we have now seen 1/3 of the Supreme Court turn over as well as hundreds of new circuit and district judges installed. While the imprint of these new appointees is still somewhat faint, over time we will begin to see their effect on the judiciary system if the trend is allowed to continue. Jurists who understand the plain meaning of the Constitution as well as the vision of those who wrote it are a significant line of defense against damaging revisions to our government and rescinding of our God-given rights. Perhaps they can also be the impetus to bringing about correction in a positive direction for a change.

To be sure, I don’t agree with the current occupant of the Oval Office on everything, and for that reason I also pondered a couple alternatives. It turns out Tom Hoefling, who I considered last time, is a write-in for Delaware*, but the reason I didn’t vote for him in 2016 was his slight but significant misunderstanding of the role of government. (Sadly, even though I don’t really care for the Constitution Party’s nominee Don Blankenship, feeling that he is a grifter of sorts, his campaign didn’t even bother to become a write-in candidate in Delaware. That’s a post for after the election.)

On the other hand, I was very compelled with Jo Jorgensen’s run as the Libertarian candidate. But when you think about it, there are a number of areas Jorgensen is advocating where the current administration is already moving in that direction, particularly in foreign policy. And when you further think about it, the current system wouldn’t lend itself to policy success for a Jorgensen administration because neither Republicans nor Democrats would have much incentive to assist her. It could be the long-term solution to this is to remove party affiliation from the ballot, but that will not occur without a vast public mandate.

Finally, it occurred to me the other day that 2020 is the first time I have ever blogged about a Republican president seeking re-election. I hadn’t began blogging yet when George W. Bush began his re-election run in 2004; in fact, I hadn’t even moved here. When I arrived in October of that year it was too late to register in Maryland so I voted absentee in Ohio. Obviously the next campaign in 2008 gave us Barack Obama and we kept him for 2012, so the return of the Republicans meant 2020 would be their first crack at re-election in 16 years.

Back in 2016 I gave three options for the election results:

I guess the way I look at it there are three possibilities here: either Trump is going to lose to Hillary, he will beat Hillary and govern exactly as I predict he will, or he will be a great President and I will have assessed him incorrectly. Truly I wouldn’t mind being wrong for the sake of this great nation, but I have no evidence to believe I will be.
“Taking the exit ramp,” August 1, 2016

With the evidence of the last four years, I’m going to do something I rarely have to do: admit I was wrong. It’s precisely why you should never say never, because I painted myself into a #NeverTrump corner and have to get my feet dirty to get out. But I really don’t mind.

Given the record and the horrible alternatives, the time has come to return to my political home for an election. America, we need to re-elect Donald Trump.

*There are over twenty write-in candidates for President recognized by Delaware, but just three have vice-presidential picks listed. So those were the three I looked up, including Hoefling.