Gantz & Lapid’s “Blue and White” — A fragile, directionless, ad hoc political concoction

The purported electoral appeal of the Blue & White line-up is that it includes 3 former IDF Chiefs-of-Staff, yet virtually invariably when top military figures have departed from their field of expertise (security) & ventured into one where they have none (politics), they have been disastrously wrong.

The greatest tragedy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that everyone knows how it will end. We will divide up the region. Israel will return most of the West Bank, and the Palestinian flag will fly on public buildings in east Jerusalem…The only unanswered question is how many more people will have to die along the way. And so we will fight against the extremists on both sides, including our extremists, the settlers. – Yair Lapid, Der Spiegel, May 8, 2008.

We should not be disheartened by AssadIsrael has a strategic interest in disassociating Syria from the extremist axis that Iran is leading. Syria is not lost, Assad is western educated and is not a religious man. He can still join a moderate grouping. – Lt-Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, IDF Chief of Staff, Haaretz, Nov. 13, 2009—the latest recruit for the Gantz-Lapid “Blue & White” front

. …the fact that Gantz feels he needs to join up with Lapid in order to ‘beat’ Netanyahu shows that neither one of them holds a candle to Netanyahu. If you can’t beat Netanyahu on your own, just go home. You can’t just add poll numbers from two parties….this [is a]n admission that Gantz is not confident enough alone to beat Netanyahu… If Gantz can’t face Netanyahu in an election, how will he face the world in diplomacy and Israel’s enemies?A talkback response to the news of the Gantz-Lapid union, Feb. 21, 2019

On Thursday morning (Feb. 21, 2019), Israel awoke to sensational breaking political news—Benny Gantz’s Israeli Resilience and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid parties will run as a united faction, under the name of “Blue & White”.

“Blue & White”: A peculiar political party

Likewise, it was announced that a third former IDF Chief of Staff, Gabi Askenazi, will join Moshe (Bogey) Yaalon and Gantz himself, in the ranks of the newly formed political alliance.

Even a quick glance at the composition of the Gantz-Lapid union reveals it to be a highly anomalous—the less charitable might say “perverse” — political entity.

For rather than being a body that coalesced around some ideo-intellectual credo or some consensus—however remote—on some socio-political or strategic agenda, it would appear that the centripetal forces that brought Blue & White’s disparate components together, comprised little more than an anti-Netanyahu sentiment: Some bear him a grudge because of a past affront they felt he had inflicted on them; others appear to harbor an aversion to him, on a personal basis rather than due to any substantive disagreement over policy.

Thus, within the same political framework, we find a Labor Union leader alongside a champion of free market competition; hardline hawks as well as left-leaning doves. Accordingly, it is not easy to envisage great cohesion and sense of purpose in the party ranks regarding multiple issues that are bound to arise after the elections–whether in the security, diplomatic or socio-economic spheres—and whether the Blue & Whites find themselves in government or opposition.

Comparing combat experience: Netanyahu vs. Lapid

With the establishment of the united Gantz-Lapid front, it was also announced that, should the party head the governing coalition, the premiership will be rotated between Gantz (until Nov. 2021) and Lapid thereafter.

In this regard, Gantz may well come to rue his recent—and rather incongruous—attack on Netanyahu’s military record. After all, Netanyahu served in one of the IDF’s most illustrious special units, the famed Sayeret Matkal, taking part in many daring operations behind enemy lines—even being wounded himself. Unsurprisingly, Netanyahu’s comrades-in-arms, like Avi Dichter, former head of internal security, Shin Bet, who served with Netanyahu in the unit, came his defense, robustly rebuffing Gantz’s inappropriate attempt to malign the Prime Minister.

But perhaps more to the point, given Gantz’s ill-advised derision of Netanyahu’s rich combat history, he has left his appointed successor, Lapid, wide open to far more pertinent censure.

After all, despite being physically fit enough to engage in regular martial arts training, he elected to avoid service in a combat unit, choosing to “share the burden” of military service as a reporter for the IDF journal, “Bamahne”– hardly the most arduous or hazardous “tour of duty”– which laid the foundation, at the taxpayers’ expense, for his subsequent successful journalistic career.

Accordingly, Lapid’s personal history clearly undercuts his moral authority and imparts a rather hollow – some might say, hypocritical – ring to his shrill and ongoing castigation of Haredi avoidance of “sharing the burden”—which has often been his rallying call since entering politics in 2013.

Moreover, in the context of Blue & White’s electoral endeavor, it would make the party’s co-candidate for the post of Prime Minister totally devoid of any experience in military and security matters—and far more vulnerable to the kind of criticism Gantz leveled at Netanyahu.

Complete lack of credibility

However, the equitable sharing of the burden of military service is not the only issue on which Lapid has revealed his total lack of credibility.

For example, consider his diametrically contradictory public positions on Jerusalem. Thus, just prior to his entering politics—while trying to shape his political image and generate a strong Left-wing following,  he expressed categorical support for dividing Jerusalem , predicting approvingly  that, “the Palestinian flag will fly on public buildings in east Jerusalem”- (see opening excerpt).  

However, after entering politics, Lapid found this perspective to be an electoral liability and made strenuous efforts to downplay his Left-wing credential.

Suddenly, his views on Jerusalem underwent a hawkish metamorphosis–with its indivisible unity becoming more important than any resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. Accordingly, several years later, he declared: “Jerusalem is not a place, it is the constitutive concept of Israeli identity and our most fundamental ethos… We will not divide Jerusalem. No matter what happens. If that eventually means there will be no resolution [of the conflict] then there will be no resolution. Countries do not conduct negotiations over their own capital…”

So who are we to trust? Lapid A or Lapid B?

Duplicity and deception

Likewise, Lapid’s attitude to the unilateral Disengagement from Gaza underwent dramatic changes—and on which he unabashedly admitted his own unscrupulous deceit.

Thus, just prior to the 2005 Disengagement, in his widely read Friday column in the mass circulation daily, Yediot Aharonot, the vehicle with which he built much of his political stature, he expressed unbounded enthusiasm for the move. In a piece (24.6.2005) entitled, “To the opponents of Disengagement”, he wrote: “This [the Disengagement] seems the only prospect fora normal life here”, going so far as to brandish the specter of civil war with its opponents, were they to succeed in thwarting it.

But merely a year later (13.10.2006), when the disastrous failure of the unilateral evacuation became appalling apparent, he published “Things that could not be said at the time of the Disengagment”. In it, he admitted –with breath-taking audacity — that what he had written previously was in fact a giant hoax: “[The Disengagement] was never about the Palestinians, demography, the desire for a peace agreement, or the burden on the IDF.”.No! According to Lapid’s revised assessment of the real rationale behind the Disengagement, it was merely a measure designed to put the religious settlers “in their place” and to show that it was the secular population who called the shots in the county.

You have to read to believe!

Generals as an electoral asset?

Of course, the purported electoral appeal of the Blue & White line up is that it included three former IDF Chiefs-of-Staff (Gantz, Yaalon and Ashkenazi). However, there is great doubt as to both how much of a political asset former generals really are; and just how much political acumen they display once elected.

As for being a political asset, the record is at best dubious. Thus, Moshe Yaalon was compelled to join up with Gantz, as his own party Telem was polling consistently under the minimal threshold for election to the Knesset. Moreover, Israel’s political history is replete with former generals who proved to lack any lasting electoral appeal—such as former IDF Chief-of-Staff and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who was forced into humiliating political retirement when it was clear that his Kadima list (once the largest in the Knesset) would not get enough votes to pass the threshold for election, while no other party was prepared to offer him a realistic spot on its list.

Other names that spring to mind in the lengthy list of unimpressive performances by the top brass as effective vote getters include Maj.-Gen. (res.) Danny Yatom, former head of the Mossad; V-Adm. (res.) Ami Ayalon, former commander of the navy and head of the Shin Bet; former Chief-of-Staff, the late Lt.-Gen. (res.) Amnon Lipkin-Shahak; Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amram Mitzna, former head of Central Command; and the hapless Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yitzhak Mordechai, former head of Southern Command and later defense minister.

Generals and political acumen

When it comes to political acumen the historical record is unequivocally clear. Virtually every time top military figures have departed from their field of expertise (security) and ventured into one where they have none (politics); virtually every time they strayed from evaluating the military parameters to speculating as to political outcomes; virtually every time they have subordinated their professional discipline to their political ambitions, they have been disastrously wrong.

Thus, Yitzhak Rabin, despite reported grave misgivings, capitulated to pressures from his party’s Left wing, and ushered in the Oslo Accords, that left Israel’s streets, cafes and buses awash in blood and body parts; allowed the arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat and his cronies to return triumphantly to Gaza; and for hostile armed militias to deploy within mortar range of the nation’s parliament. 

Ariel Sharon abandoned the Gaza Strip, a measure he once vehemently opposed, precipitating all the perils he foresaw and of which he warned, while forcefully expelling thousands of productive, loyal Israeli citizens, and turning their homes over to savage hordes, who ravaged everything and anything left behind.

Then, of course, came Ehud Barak, heralded as the great “white hope” of Israeli politics—a hope that was soon to be dashed. Swept along by the halo of his military glory, Barak was quickly elected prime minister—and disaster soon followed hard on the heels of disaster. Thankfully, he was forced out of office after little more than a year-and-a-half, but not before ordering the ignominious, unilateral flight of the IDF from South Lebanon in 2000; surrendering the area to Hezbollah; consenting – or rather capitulating – to the far-reaching concessions of the Clinton Parameters; and failing to contain the violence of the Second Intifada—that erupted despite his willingness to accept virtually all Palestinian demands.

(Mis) assessing Assad: A somber caveat for the voters?

But, returning to Blue & White and the party’s latest recruit, former IDF Chief of Staff   , Lt.-Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi.

In November 2009, Ashkenazi assessed that by ceding the Golan to Assad, Syria could be coaxed away from its alliance with Iran and affiliate itself with a moderate grouping of nations. He was quoted in Haaretz as stating: “Syria is not lost. Assad is Western educated and is not a religious man. He can still join a moderate grouping.” (See introductory excerpt).

Askhenazi’s appallingly inaccurate assessment of the developments in Syria and its strategic attachment to Iran is particularly disturbing.

After all, before his appointment as Chief-of -Staff, much of his 40-year military career was spent in the IDF’s Northern Command, including a stint as its commander. One must, therefore, presume that a large portion of his time was devoted to evaluating the Syrian threat, and to familiarizing himself with the nature of the Syrian military dictatorship and its ties to Iran.

The fact that his appraisal was so wildly erroneous should serve as a salutary warning to anyone who feels that a military background bestows any inherent advantage in assessing political developments.

Together with preceding analysis of the nature of the party, the credibility of its leadership and its rumored support for the perilous and pernicious plan for unilateral concessions in Judea Samaria, presently being assertively promoted by the copiously funded Institute for National Security Studies , it should also serve as a somber caveat for anyone considering casting their ballot for the brand new phenomenon of Blue & White.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by edu_castro27 on Pixabay.

How The Media Can Fix Itself. And…CNN Is?

I can’t even pretend to know what CNN is really thinking by hiring as political editor for their 2020 election coverage Sarah Isgur Flores, a former spokeswoman for the Trump Department of Justice under Attorney General Jeff Sessions and campaign operative for Carly Fiorina and Ted Cruz.

Of course, the DoJ has been one of the leakier Deep State departments undermining Trump. There is that. So for the conspiracists, she might already have a close relationship there. And if you like your conspiracies really toasty warm, you might suspect that she’s told CNN that she just has a lot of dirt from her time in connection with the Mueller investigation and knows how to get information out of the DoJ.

But I can say that if the media were serious about actually fixing itself, it would be doing a lot more hiring of conservatives. A LOT.

While recently seeing some modest increases, CNN suffered serious, almost debilitating ratings declines in the two years following President Trump’s election. They fell well behind known liberal network MSNBC and out-of-sight behind well-known conservative network Fox News. They had long wanted themselves to be seen as the most trusted name in news, but consistently ranked below Fox News and sometimes behind MSNBC.

Of course, they jettisoned all that talk of being trusted in the age of Trump and went full-bore partisan hack, often sprinting over to outright propaganda machine.

But if they really want to regain broad-based trust, CNN like every other mainstream media organization, needs to trash diversity based on skin color and gender — which leads to a rainbow of RightThink liberals and horribly partisan content — and seek a diversity of worldview.

Here’s how it could work.

First and foremost, approach it at the start like an addiction — in this case, an addiction to one worldview that supposes it is the one really true truth and all others are fake news.

Admit you have a problem.

Between 85-90 percent of the working media admit to being registered Democrat. I suspect the number of left-of-center journalists is actually higher than based on my own 25 years of experience in newspaper newsrooms.

Admit that because of human nature, that reality causes a deep leftist bias in the resulting product. No waving around the magic wand of “we’re professionals” makes that bias go away. Everyone has these biases, which is why diversity of worldview is critical.

Admit also that since Trump’s presidency, the bias has become blatant and damaging to credibility and driven many Americans to turn off the media for good.

In President Trump’s recent State of the Union speech, there was an amazing diversity of coverage and headlines — but one hundred percent predictable if you align them with worldviews and politics. Here are a few next day headlines of the speech that garnered 76 percent positive response from those who watched it:

  • (conservative reporters) Washington Examiner: With pitch for unity, Trump urges Congress to ‘choose greatness’
  • (conservative reporters) NY Post: Congresswomen clad in ‘suffragette white’ give Trump a standing ovation
  • (“mainstream” reporters) Washington Post: In dissonant speech, Trump seeks unity while depicting ruin
  • (“mainstream reporters) New York Times head: Trump Presses Hard Line on Immigration in State of the Union Speech

So the mainstream media, filled with leftists reporters and editors puts out leftist content and everyone not a leftist distrusts them — and they think it is because they get facts wrong, or conservatives just don’t like the truth. This is what they tell themselves.

This is not a new development under Trump; it’s been going on for decades. CNN was referred to as the Clinton News Network in the 1990s because of course its reporters were sympathetic to the Democrat President — because virtually all of them voted for him and supported his agenda.

That completely explains what opened the door for Fox News, which when it launched tapped into the biases obvious by the 1990s. Fox News started with the slogan Fair and Balanced and then moved on to We Report You Decide. Now it runs with Most Watched, Most Trusted — because it is both in many polls.

Meanwhile, oblivious to what they were openly communicating 64 million American who voted Trump into office and saw hope for a brighter America without the Clinton corruption machine in power again, the Washington Post changed their slogan to the dark, ominous and utterly self-absorbed “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Well, they are totally in the dark about their problems, sitting right there in their newsroom. About 90 percent of all news coverage regarding President Trump has been negative. No wonder they are mostly only getting anti-Trump and liberal consumers — and losing everyone else.

But WaPo and CNN are simply representative of virtually all newspapers aside from a few small, newer conservative ones, and all networks except Fox News.

If the media actually wants to reform itself, it must admit to the problem and the solution: fill newsrooms with reporters and editors that mirror the worldview of Americans. This is easily the biggest key to their trustworthiness is journalists, and why so many of us don’t trust them.

They cannot have every shade of only one worldview and expect balance and fairness — or expect that Americans will turn back to them. They will remain discredited and end up just being shrunken leftist silo media organs while the right has its own silo of media organs.

It might be too late. I’ve been blowing this horn for decades to no avail. But it might not be. And if it is not, then what CNN has done by hiring the conservative Flores — not just as a commentator people can ignore but as a news decision-maker — is the only way out of the silo.

It just needs to be repeated dozens, and then hundreds of times, until there is balance among those creating the content.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. The featured image is by mohamed_hassan on Pixabay.

Liberals See Truth as Subservient to Doctrine, Feelings

Truth is not a left-wing value.

I first discovered this as a graduate student studying the Soviet Union and left-wing ideologies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University School of International Affairs. Everything I have learned since has confirmed this view.

Individuals on both the left and right lie. Individuals on both the left and right tell the truth. And liberalism, unlike leftism, does value truth. But the further left one goes, the more one enters the world of the lie.

Why does the left lie?

There are two main reasons.

One is that leftists deem their goals more important than telling the truth. For example, every honest economist knows women do not earn 20 percent less money than men for the same work done for the same amount of hours under the same conditions. Yet leftists repeat the lie that women earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn.

Why any employers would hire men when they could hire women and get the same amount of work done at the same level of excellence for the same number of hours while saving 20 cents on the dollar is a question only God or the sphinx could answer.

So, when New York Times columnists write this nonsense, do they believe it? The answer is they don’t ask themselves, “Is it true?” They ask themselves, “Does the claim help promote the left-wing doctrine that women are oppressed?”

 Whatever serves that end is morally justified.

The second reason is leftism is rooted in feelings, not reason or truth. From Karl Marx to Bernie Sanders, left-wing preference for socialism over capitalism is entirely rooted in emotion. Only capitalism creates wealth. Socialism merely spends what capitalism creates.

Do leftists not know this? Even if they know it, the emotional pull of socialism prevails.

Do leftists believe there are more than two sexes? Of course not. That’s why they renamed “sex” “gender”—and then redefined “gender” to mean whatever one wants it to mean.

So then, on the left, truth is subservient to two higher values: doctrine and emotion.

This leads to the question of this column: Do those on the left believe their lies?

Do leftists believe global warming will destroy the world as we know it in 12 years, as recently suggested by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.? I don’t know. They seem to talk themselves into believing their hysterias. But they don’t act on them.

Here’s a simple proof that the left is lying about the imminent threat of global warming to civilization: Leftists don’t support nuclear power. It is simply not possible to believe fossil fuel emissions will destroy the world and, at the same time, oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean and safe. Sweden, a model country for leftists, meets 40 percent of its energy needs with nuclear power.

If you were certain you were terminally ill yet decline a medicine that is guaranteed to cure you, the rest of us would have every reason to assume you didn’t really believe you were terminally ill.

Here’s more evidence the left doesn’t believe its global warming hysteria: How many leftists with beachfront property anywhere in the world have sold it? If leftists really believe global warming will cause the oceans to rise and soon inundate the world’s coastal areas, why would any leftist not sell his beachfront home while he could not only make all his money back but make a profit as well?

Another example of left-wing rhetoric leftists don’t act on: The left tells us that colleges are permeated by a “rape culture,” yet virtually all left-wing parents send their daughters to college. If you were to believe any place has a culture of rape, where 1 in 4 or 5 women is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, would you send your 18-year-old daughter there? Of course not.

So how do any left-wing mothers or fathers send their daughters to college? The answer would seem to be they know it’s a lie—but that doesn’t matter, since the left views telling the truth as incomparably less significant than combating sexism, sexual assault, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy.

One more example: “Walls don’t work.”

It is inconceivable that people who say this—especially those with walls around their home—believe it. Yet leftists say it with the same degree of ease Stalin labeled Trotsky a fascist, even though Trotsky and Lenin were the fathers of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The question is not whether truth is a left-wing value. The only question is whether leftists believe their lies. And, believe it or not, I still don’t know.

So, conduct the following tests and decide for yourself:

Ask anyone you know who says global warming will destroy most life on Earth in 12 years why they don’t advocate nuclear power. If they tell you it’s too dangerous, you know they are hysterics, not followers of science.

Ask anyone you know who believes the global warming threat is an existential one and owns beachfront property why they aren’t selling their beachfront property.

Ask anyone who believes colleges have rape culture why they sent (or are sending) their daughter to college.

It is possible to love truth and be liberal, conservative, libertarian, an atheist, a believer, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu. But you cannot be a leftist.

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Portrait of Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. Twitter:
@DennisPrager.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal Column with images is republished with permission. The featured image by OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay Pixabay.

It’s Really Not AOC, Amazon Or The Green New Deal; It’s Democrats And Their Media

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez phenomenon in the Democratic Party is both scrumptious and terrifying to watch because it either destroys the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future or it cripples America for good.

It cannot be emphasized enough up front: The media has created the pretty AOC monster with endless lavish and uncritical cover stories, Sunday morning interviews and daily coverage verging on adoration. Talk about a Messiah complex — not AOC’s, but the media and sycophantic Democratic Presidential candidates, which are really the problems.

The Amazon fiasco, which I talked about a week ago on my Salem radio show, displays both her inordinately outsized influence, power, destruction and ongoing, astonishing ignorance. It’s important to keep writing and reminding about her train wrecks of bad ideas because again, you virtually cannot find her almost daily knuckle-headed comments in the MSM. Covering as per usual.

So Amazon pulls out of its New York City deal along with its 25,000 pretty good jobs and all the surrounding development and rollover effect, because of the AOC-led charge opposing giant giveaways to corporations. I’m pretty sympathetic to that in principle. But you have to have a modicum of understanding of how these deals are typically structured nowadays (as opposed to the outright gifts given to, say, major league sports teams. That’s not how Amazon or others work.)

In this case, the generally superficial reporting on Amazon said that NYC was providing $3 billion in “incentives.” Apparently, AOC took that to mean the city was giving Amazon $3 billion from the city’s coffers. Now the projections were that Amazon would have created about $26 billion of economic impact and the taxed portion of that would have more than paid back the incentives in just a few years.

But even that was not the deal. These were only tax breaks provided once Amazon had created those 25,000 jobs. So this was tax revenue — and tax break — that would only be realized if Amazon relocated and if they create all 25,000 jobs. But AOC, in her junior high way, thinks that money is just sitting somewhere. Here’s what she said while virtually dancing a jig in the halls of Congress at the news that Amazon will take their development and 25,000 jobs elsewhere, in response to a reporter’s question:

“The district is now going to lose thousands of jobs that would have come there,” a reporter quietly noted in the middle of Ocasio-Cortez’s celebratory dance. “Well one of those things is, A) we were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “The city was paying for those jobs so frankly if we were willing to give Amazon, so if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to.”

Good golly Miss Molly. The money does not exist without Amazon moving to New York City. Those taxes are not being paid by others. It would have been the taxes due because Amazon was there. Ignorance really does kill — in this case, good jobs and economic development for her own district — but she’s going to totally remake the American economy. Riiiight. She does this almost daily. I won’t regale you with the litany. They are everywhere in the non-MSM sphere, where again her daily ignorance is largely swept away.

But the terrifying part is that because she has been propped up as the fresh new face of the Democratic Party and its future by the utterly compromised, irresponsible and untrustworthy American media, she is dragging the Party in her ignorant, socialist direction. (She is a self-proclaimed Socialist Democrat.)

Her Green New Deal is embarrassingly junior high in its thinking and reality, but it had 60 Democratic members of Congress sign on and most of the front-runners in the Democratic presidential campaign also jumped onboard. Sure it was craven politics without probably vetting it first, but that is part of the problem. There really is no substance in the Democratic Party, and far from enough in the Republican Party.

She cannot just be mocked, easy and fun as that is. See, it’s not just that she released a plan to eliminate all fossil fuel use in 10 years, eliminate all air travel and originally cow emissions. It’s that because of her now gigantic platform — a monstrous creation of the media — she has lured a lot of wet-finger Democrats to her. It’s not just that she led the charge against Amazon with the envy card (rich corporation!) it’s that she managed to destroy a demonstrable increase in prosperity for that part of New York through sheer ignorance.

What she did for New York, she would like to do for the country.

If this is the direction of the Democratic Party, if she is the future, the Party is either doomed to self-immolation, leaving us with one-party rule for a season that will go badly, or the Party is actually successful in taking power with this radical agenda, the nation itself is under grave threat of self-immolation.

You see, there is virtually no check. With craven Democrats and dishonest media colluding against Republicans and President Trump, willing to build up AOC and other radicals in Congress while covering up their idiocy and bigotry (Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib) the American people can be too easily misled.

That makes the threat real.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Left Wants to Transform Our Election System. It’s a Recipe for 1-Party Rule.

Democrats intend to save “democracy” by putting themselves in charge of elections.

As absurd as that sounds, it really is a part of the inappropriately named “For the People Act of 2019,” or H.R. 1, moving through the House of Representatives.

The Heritage Foundation created a list of the law’s provisions, which you can read here. The Conservative Action Project also provided this quick rundown of the bill:

• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.

• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.

• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.

• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.

• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.

• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.

• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to ‘discourage’ someone from voting.

• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.

• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.

• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.

• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.

The bill is more or less a grab bag of progressive priorities, much like the Green New Deal.

Like the misguided movement to abolish the Electoral College, H.R. 1, in the name of democracy, takes a blow torch to the concepts federalism and self-government enshrined in our Constitution.

As the above summary makes clear, H.R. 1 has numerous provisions that would undermine free speech rights, upend the way America conducts elections, encourage voter fraud, and turn election oversight into little more than a partisan weapon to bludgeon foes.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who seems to have positioned herself at the forefront of every piece of radical legislation coming out of the House, dismissed the idea that H.R. 1 is a “power grab” by Democrats.

She had to make an almost immediate correction after that tweet, as the legislation has not yet passed the House. Even if it did, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said it wouldn’t pass in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.

Ocasio-Cortez has a penchant for missteps, but she’s a good barometer for where the progressive base in America is.

In this bill, the left has shown it is willing to make a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” as McConnell noted. But beyond that, H.R. 1 is most concerning for the devastating effect it would have on our federal republic.

National Review’s David French summed it up perfectly:

At its essence, the bill federalizes control over elections to an unprecedented scale, expands government power over political speech, mandates increased disclosures of private citizens’ personal information (down to name and address), places conditions on citizen contact with legislators that inhibits citizens’ freedom of expression, and then places enforcement of most of these measures in the hands of a revamped Federal Election Commission that is far more responsive to presidential influence.

Certainly, the effort to get around the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision through a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is misguided and an assault on free speech. It is at odds with our right to free speech and, in the end, would mostly benefit insiders and incumbents who know how to play the Washington game of navigating arcane campaign finance laws.

Further, it would require donors to disclose their own private information in the name of “transparency.”

This is how democracy descends into mob rule. It’s why the Founders erected barriers to guard against a tyrannical majority. Given the way progressives brazenly attack and shame dissenters on college campuses—and increasingly in public life—it is all the more urgent that individual privacy rights be protected. Privacy is a cornerstone of liberty.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of H.R. 1 is what it would do to American election laws and how it would not just undermine, but bulldoze any semblance of federalism left in our political system.

H.R. 1 would stop state legislatures from drawing up their own congressional districts and would mandate independent commissions in their place.

As I’ve written in the past, getting rid of legislative redistricting, sometimes known as “gerrymandering,” is a “cure” worse than the disease. Redistricting will always be partisan, no matter who does it. Laws to prevent this would simply drive partisan redistricting underground, where it would be done in secret by an unelected, uncountable commission rather than openly by a legislature.

Again, even if this were good policy, it assumes that the federal government has the right to dictate how states run their elections. It would take away the right of the citizens of a state to make their own choices on these issues.

H.R. 1 contains other violations of federalism—and the Constitution—including mandates to restore voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison and stop states from finding and removing ineligible voters.

And it gets worse.

After nationalizing American election laws, H.R. 1 would put them all under the watchful eye of a “revamped” Federal Election Commission. This is perhaps the most brazenly partisan element of the bill.

The Federal Election Commission currently allows six members (though it currently only has four), with a requirement that four members sign on to any decision in order for it to pass. It has an even number of Republican and Democratic appointees—thus, it takes both parties to agree to prosecute a violation of federal law. This prevents the party in control of the White House from enforcing the law in a partisan fashion.

H.R. 1 would change that by making the commission a five-person body comprised of the president’s appointees, with the president’s party able to appoint three of the five. This would make the commission into a partisan body beholden to the president. 

Proponents say this would end the current “deadlock,” but in reality it would turn the commission into a partisan tool to be used by the president. It would be an egregious concentration of power, especially given the way the rest of the bill would nationalize American elections.

While the Framers weren’t unanimous about how much power states should have relative to the federal government, none would have thought it a good idea to give near-tyrannical power to an unelected body of five people, which is what H.R. 1 would essentially do.

The “For the People Act” really is little more than a progressive power grab intended to manipulate election rules to favor liberals, and it is an anti-democratic bill that would upend America’s electoral system.

As with the Green New Deal, it is a vehicle for introducing ideas that would fundamentally transform our republic into something we would not recognize at all.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash.

Beware of Politicians who Covet Your Stuff!

Image may contain: 1 person, suit and text
Image from Facebook.

On Facebook there is a meme (right) based upon what President Donald J. Trump said at his “Choose Greatness” 2019 State of the Union. President Trump said:

America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. 

Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country. 

Coveting

When I saw this meme I posted this:

Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV – “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

A Facebook friend Randy Rioux asked, “What is that for?”

I responded to Randy with, “Communism and Socialism is based upon the core belief of coveting other peoples things. It is a violation of the Tenth Commandment. At some point Communists and Socialists run out of other peoples things.” Randy replied, “Thanks for clarifying.” I believe Randy got it.

Merriam Webster defines coveting as, “to desire (what belongs to another) inordinately or culpably.”

Synonyms for covet include: ache (for)cravedesideratedesiredie (for)hanker (for or after)hunger (for)itch (for)jones (for) [slang], long (for)lust (for or after)pant (after)pine (for)repine (for)salivate (for)sigh (for)thirst (for)wantwish (for)yearn (for)yen (for).

The Individual vs. The Collective

Ayn Rand’s 1946 monograph “Textbook of Americanism” explains in the simplest terms possible what made America unique and great.

Rand opens with an explanation of two starkly contrasting ideas.

What Is the Basic Issue in the World Today?

The basic issue in the world today is between two principles: Individualism and Collectivism. Individualism holds that man has inalienable rights which cannot be taken away from him by any other man, nor by any number, group or collective of other men. Therefore, each man exists by his own right and for his own sake, not for the sake of the group.

Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

These two principles are the roots of two opposite social systems. The basic issue of the world today is between these two systems.

President Trump clearly threw the gauntlet down against the “collective” when he said, “America was founded on liberty and independence, and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free.” 

2020 Presidential Primary

This is what every America should be alert for as we enter the 2020 Presidential primaries. There will be dozens of debates as both political parties field candidates at the national, state and local levels.

The defining issue in 2020 will be coveting.

Coveting takes on many forms. Here are some core coveting issues to watch out for:

  1. Coveting other peoples freedom of speech. There are those politicians who hunger for the power to limit free speech. Many social media giants have become gate keepers and salivate over denying some freedom of expression.
  2. Coveting other peoples ability to defend themselves. This ongoing battle will heat up as politicians use tragedies to yearn for the day that all Americans are disarmed and unable to defend themselves from thieves, criminals and the government.
  3. Coveting other peoples religious beliefs. Some politicians will use hatred of Jews to promote their political agenda.
  4. Coveting other peoples wealth. Taxes is the tool of politicians at every level to take what is not theirs and redistribute it as they wish.
  5. Coveting other peoples individualism. The great battle since the beginning of mankind is the struggle between the individual and the collective (government).
  6. Coveting other peoples children. This is perhaps the most dangerous form of coveting. This form of coveting takes on many forms: the brainwashing of children to turn on their parents, the sexual assaults on children to feed a craving (pedophilia and pederasty) and the using of children for personal gain (human trafficking and prostitution).
  7. Coveting another persons life. The law recently passed in New York and the law proposed in Virginia are the definition of infanticide.

All of these forms of coveting, and many more, will be on full display during the 2020 Presidential primaries.

Coveting leads to worshiping false images (the earth), disrespecting your parents, adultery, stealing, lying (bearing false witness) and even murder.

Watch for them. Beware of them. Vote to end coveting.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Pixabay.

Why Do American Jews Vote Against Their Interests?

Congresswoman IIhan Omar, a Radical Islamist and ardent anti Semite, accuses the Jews in America of paying Congress to support Israel. She particularly accuses AIPAC (American-Israel Affairs Committee) of paying Congressional members money, which is untrue. 

The reason Omar is an anti Semite is obvious. She is a Radical Islamist.  The question is why have the Democrat leadership given her a  coveted position on the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee which deals with U.S.- Israel relations. As a first term Congresswoman she has no foreign policy experience. Her only claim to fame is that she hates Jews and Israel.

So why did the Democrats give her this coveted appointment?

The obvious answer is that the Democrats are trying to coral the Muslim vote.  No one knows how many Muslims reside in the U.S. There are estimates between three and five million or more. This means there are probably as many Muslims as Jews in the U.S. That being the case the question is why elevate a antisemitic Radical Muslim to the Foreign relation Committee against Jewish interests? 

The Jewish Vote is Being Taken For Granted 

The reason that the Democrat leadership feel they can appoint an Anti-Semite to a powerful position is because the Democrats believe Jews based on past history will vote for Democrats no matter what Democrats do to them.   

The Democrats believe they have the Jewish vote in their pocket. 

President Obama  attacked Israel’s Prime Minister and arranged for the entire Black Caucus to walk out of the Congressional Joint Session when Netanyahu raised the issue of the Iran nuclear agreement which we all know is a direct threat to Israel and the U.S.  Obama succeeded in turning millions of Democrats against Israel.

A Pew poll indicated that 73% of Americans (mostly Republicans) while only 27% of Democrats support Israel.

This shift occurred during the Obama administration. Notwithstanding this fact a large majority of Jews continue to vote for Democrats. Sad but true. Perhaps the elevation of anti Semites in the Democrat ranks to high position will change this.

The Progressive Assault on Israel 

By Bret Stephens (New York Times)

  • Last month in Detroit, pro-Palestinian demonstrators seized the stage of the National LGBTQ Task Force conference and demanded a boycott of Israel. Conference organizers did nothing to stop the disruption or disavow the demonstrators, who were met with sustained applause by the audience.
  • What’s unsettling is that anti-Zionism – rejection not just of this or that Israeli policy but also of the idea of a Jewish state itself – is becoming a respectable position among people who would never support the elimination of any other country in any other circumstance. And it is churning up a new wave of anti-Jewish bigotry in its wake.
  • Israel’s enemies were committed to its destruction long before it occupied a single inch of Gaza or the West Bank. In proportion to its size, Israel has voluntarily relinquished more territory taken in war than any state in the world. Israeli prime ministers offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and 2008; they were refused both times. Nearly 1,300 Israeli civilians have been killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in this century: That’s the proportional equivalent of about 16 Sept. 11s in the U.S.
  • Israel is now the home of nearly nine million citizens, with an identity that is as distinctively and proudly Israeli as the Dutch are Dutch or the Danes Danish. Anti-Zionism proposes nothing less than the elimination of that identity and the political dispossession of those who cherish it, with no real thought of what would likely happen to the dispossessed.
  • To say that Jews are “colonizers” in Israel is anti-Semitic because it advances the lie that there is no ancestral or historic Jewish tie to the land. To claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, when manifestly it is not, is anti-Semitic because it’s an attempt to Nazify the Jewish state. To insist that the only state in the world that has forfeited the moral right to exist just happens to be the Jewish state is anti-Semitic, too.
  • But the most toxic assumption is that Jews, whether in Israel or the U.S., can never really be thought of as victims or even as a minority because they are white, wealthy, powerful and “privileged.” Jews in Germany were economically and even politically powerful in the 1920s. And then they were in Buchenwald. Israel appears powerful vis-a-vis the Palestinians, but considerably less so in the context of a broader Middle East saturated with genocidal anti-Semitism.

RELATED VIDEO: Ben Shapiro: Why Jews Vote Leftist?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Pixabay.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says She Opposes Capitalism. A Recently Taken Photo Suggests Otherwise…

There are many who speak loudly against capitalism, all the while still enjoying its benefits. To illustrate this point, just look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez texting from her iPhone, wearing a Movado watch, and drinking a Starbucks coffee. A democratic socialist, who thinks of capitalism as an immoral system, seems to enjoy the goods provided by big corporations. It is not only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however; this is common behavior in Western societies.

This behavior derives from the confusion between political ideology and practical politics. Political ideology is a theoretical framework of how society should work, whereas practical politics is the actual implementation of these ideas in the real world. Because of this confusion, people fall into two fallacies. First, they focus on ideological principles rather than practicalities. Second, they judge policies by their intentions rather than their results.

Starting with the first fallacy, take the example of the term “capitalism.” Countries such as the US, Canada, and Sweden are, in principle, capitalist countries, despite the fact that they differ tremendously in terms of economic and social policies. Nevertheless, people view “capitalism” as something negative and universal in its definition and applications.

The majority thinks of capitalism as it was perceived in the 19th century; a system associated with the unrestrained power of big corporations and the exploitation of the working class. That’s why many free-market advocates, in order to distinguish capitalism from this negative connotation, use other terms, such as free-market capitalism, crony capitalism, etc.

survey conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School showed that most Americans aged 18 to 29 don’t support capitalism while not supporting socialism, either. Specifically, 42 percent of young Americans support capitalism, and 33 percent support socialism.

While, in principle, capitalism is related to private property, voluntary exchange, operation for profit, and free markets, it is not perceived as such. According to another poll, the vast majority of people tend to agree with the statement, “Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor.” Although people disagree with capitalism, they seem to agree with the results it produces.

The second fallacy comes through judging policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. The famous saying “That wasn’t real communism” finds its roots in this particular fallacy. In contrast to Nazism, an ideology associated with racism and hatred, communism was presentedby Marx and Engels as a goal for an ideal society where everyone would be equal. Marx described this society with the famous slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’’ with socialism being the transition to communism.

Based on this premise, the crimes and failures of communist regimes are discarded because they don’t fit with the ideal society Marx described. Political assassinations, forced labor camps, famines, and mass killings are thought of as not real communism and disregarded or overlooked by modern socialists. Once again, political ideology is confused with practical politics.

Political ideologies often lead us to fallacies and false conclusions. I suppose that even if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez read this article, she probably wouldn’t change her views on capitalism. Nonetheless, if someone tells you they don’t like capitalism (and they are not wearing a hammer and sickle cockade), ask them what exactly they disagree with. In the end, they might just agree with you.

This article was reprinted from Speak Freely.

COLUMN BY

Evangelos Andreou

Evangelos Andreou is a student of Political Science at Panteion University and Economics at the American College of Greece. He is also a Local Coordinator at European Students for Liberty.

RELATED ARTICLE: 9 Big Questions About Democratic Socialism

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Evangelos Andreou

Don’t Believe the Fake News. Tax Cuts for Everyday Americans Are Real.

The left-leaning media would have you believe that the 2017 tax cuts were nothing of the sort. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., recently tweeted that average refunds are down, calling the president’s tax cut a “middle-class tax hike.”

This is simply the latest episode in a long-running campaign to demagogue tax cuts that let the vast majority of Americans keep more of their hard-earned money.

Some of the biggest cuts are actually being enjoyed by the lowest-income Americans. A typical family of four got a $2,917 tax cut this year.

So what’s the complaint about?

In an early sample of tax returns, the IRS has reported that average refunds are down $170 from last year and that they hadn’t changed much from 2017, the year before.

But this is not relevant, for two reasons.

First, the sample of tax returns cited by the IRS is very small, and some analysts expect refunds will actually go up this year.

But second, and more importantly, tax refunds have nothing to do with the size of anyone’s tax cut. A refund is what you get back if you’ve paid too much in taxes throughout the year. Your tax cut is the drop in total taxes you owed to Uncle Sam last year. The two are not connected.

Employers across the country already gave us our tax cuts by withholding less money from our paychecks every pay period. Americans saw a bump to their paychecks in February 2018.

Of course, withholding is never perfectly accurate, so your refund or tax payment at the end of the year is simply a last-minute adjustment. But that refund does not cancel out the overall bump in take-home pay due to the tax cut.

Do you remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the tax cuts “monumental, brazen theft,” or when former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers predicted the tax cuts would kill 10,000 people every year? This most recent round of hysteria is just more of the same.

Last year, The Heritage Foundation calculated what Americans across the country can expect from the tax cuts. The average household can expect about $26,000 more in take-home pay over the next 10 years thanks to the tax reform.

Americans benefit twice from the tax cuts—first, by paying less in taxes, and a second time from higher wages generated by a faster-growing economy.

At the end of 2018, workers saw some of the largest wage gains in over 10 years, and unemployment rates remain historically low. Over the next 10 years, because of a larger economy, the typical American will benefit from over $26,000 more in take-home pay, or $44,697 for a family of four.

The average American household can expect to pay about $1,400 less in taxes in 2018. But depending on where you live and how many kids you have, the numbers can look different.

In communities that had high tax bills last year, such as Palo Alto, California’s district (CA-18) represented in the House by Anna Eshoo, or one of New York City’s Manhattan districts (NY-12) represented by Carolyn Maloney, the average tax cut could be as much as $3,000.

Lower-income communities, such as areas near Phoenix, Arizona (AZ-7), represented in the House by Ruben Gallego, as well as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PA-2), will see much larger cuts in their tax bills. In these communities, tax reform brought an average income tax cut of 18 percent or more.

And the tax cuts are especially good news for parents. A married couple filing jointly with two children will see their tax bills fall by $2,917.

In the coming years, the tax cuts will continue to raise wages, increase investment, and expand economic opportunities. They will also continue through 2025. 

Don’t let the misinformation about refunds throw you off. Middle-class and lower-income Americans are the biggest beneficiaries from the tax cuts.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Adam Michel

Adam Michel

Adam Michel focuses on tax policy and the federal budget as a policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: @adamnmichel.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

VIDEO: How Democratic Party Lawyers Win Contested Elections

A fair and trustworthy vote accepted by all citizens is necessary for functioning democratic processes. The actions of the Democratic National Committee, Marc Elias, and George Soros have jeopardized that. What Elias has done in recounts is proof that we need strong election integrity laws, ones that partisans can’t overpower.

Watch our video on partisan election litigation here.

Support Capital Research Center’s award-winning journalism

Donate today to assist in promoting the principles of individual liberty in America. 

EDITORS NOTE: This CRC column with video and images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Democrats Are Experts At Fear & Loathing

I am on the We Train Democrats email list. The National Democratic Training Committee is training their members to loath. They loath Republicans in general and President Donald J. Trump in particular.

Fear & Loathing

How do I know this? Because they are using loathing to fundraise.

National Democratic Training Committee

On Valentine’s Day 2019 I received the following from We Train Democrats in an email titled “💔 I hope you have a TERRIBLE day, from: Me.”

Folks, Valentine’s Day is supposed to be filled with love and affection. It’s a time when we tell those we care about how much they mean to us.

But we are so disgusted by Donald Trump that we decided to send him an Anti-Valentine’s Day card. So we can let him know JUST how much we loathe him.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE AND SIGN OUR ANTI-VALENTINE’S DAY CARD TO DONALD TRUMP >>

Here’s the card:

Mr. President, I wanted you to know that while I spend my Valentine's Day thinking of my loved ones, that America LOATHES you. You are the worst President we have ever had and you have broken the heart of our Nation.  So I'm donating $3 today to send you this ANTI-VALENTINE'S DAY CARD, so you know exactly how real Americans feel about you.

Loathing leads to fear. Loathing is visceral. Loathing leads to hate. Hate can lead to violence. Violence can lead to tyranny. Tyranny can lead to oppression.

The opposite of peace is not war. Rather the opposite of peace is fear.

One cannot be at peace if one is fearful of a person, policy or political party. One cannot be at peace if one fears losing their job, their healthcare, their benefits, their livelihood, their home, car, friends or family. Fear is a powerful force to bring out the best or worst in people. Fear can be good in that one learns to not walk down a dark alley at night for fear of being attacked. One learns fear in not sticking your hand in the jaws of an alligator.

The National Democratic Training Committee is focused on teaching their members to fear President Donald J. Trump. Why? because President Trump does not think like them. It’s not America that loathes the President, it’s the members of the NDTC. The NDTC is teaching fear and loathing.

The National Democratic Training Committee understands this all to well. They consistently use fear and loathing to raise money.

John 14:27 [KJV]

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Happy Valentines Day!

RELATED ARTICLE: HATING VALENTINE’S. Why Islamists and the radical Left loathe the Day of Love.

EDITORS NOTE: The images in this column are courtesy of the NDTC. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Texas: ACLU Using Legal Intimidation Tactics to Stop Voter Roll Purge

As we reported here at the end of January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asserted that as many as 95,000 non-citizens are registered to vote in the state.

voter-fraud

The ACLU is now attempting to stop any purging of the list by filing lawsuits against the Texas Secretary of State, the Director of Elections and county officials!

From the Houston Chronicle,

Several civil rights and voting advocacy groups sued Texas officials and five county elections administrators on Monday over an advisory urging counties to review the citizenship status of thousands of voters flagged as possible non-citizens.

The ACLU of Texas, along with the Texas Civil Rights Project, Demos and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, filed the lawsuit against Texas Secretary of State David Whitley and Director of Elections Keith Ingram, alleging that their recommendations discriminate against naturalized citizens. Also named in the suit are the election administrators in Galveston, Blanco, Fayette, Caldwell, and Washington counties, who sent out notices threatening to cancel voter registrations based on the list. [This is the type of intimidation the ACLU relishes—going after local officials.—-ed]

In a Jan. 25 advisory, Whitley asked local elections offices to look into the citizenship of 95,000 people on the voter rolls. Since then, the list has been cut by nearly 20,000 names — registered voters who were identified as citizens.

This sounds very reasonable to me, but it sent the ACLU around the bend!

The secretary of state can’t remove voters from the rolls, but county elections officials can. Whitley has instead recommended that counties send notices to the people they flagged as possible non-citizens, giving them 30 days to prove they’re eligible to vote by presenting a birth certificate, passport or certificate of naturalization. If they don’t respond, their registrations will be canceled by the county voter registrar.

Whitley’s list drew from documents people submitted to the Department of Public Safety when they were applying for drivers licenses. Non-citizens, such as temporary residents, asylum seekers and refugees, can get a Texas drivers license but can’t register to vote unless they become U.S. citizens.

Whitley said the list includes 58,000 people who have cast ballots in Texas elections.

More here.

As I have said on several previous occasions, if you are looking for something to do, get involved with your local board of elections and see how they are handling this issue of determining who is a citizen eligible to vote.  See if they are working to at least purge the dead people!

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Element5 Digital on Unsplash.

New Study: Voter ID Laws Don’t Deter Turnout or Fraud

Yet another study has found that voter ID laws do not suppress voter turnout, but the study also asserted such laws have no clear effect on stopping voter fraud. 

The study was compiled by two professors, Vincent Pons of Harvard University Business School and Enrico Cantoni of the economics department at the University of Bologna in Italy. It was issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

“For all the heated debates around strict voter ID laws, our analysis of their effects obtains mostly null results,” the study says, adding: 

First, the fears that strict ID requirements would disenfranchise disadvantaged populations have not materialized. Second, contrary to the argument used by the Supreme Court in the 2008 case Crawford v. Marion County to uphold the constitutionality of one of the early strict ID laws, we find no significant impact on fraud or public confidence in election integrity. This result weakens the case for adopting such laws in the first place.

In 2008, the Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law in a 6-3 ruling in the case of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. 

Typically, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed voter ID laws as a measure to prevent voter fraud, while Democratic lawmakers have alleged that such laws are voter suppression. 

Past studies have drawn the same conclusion that voter ID laws do not deter voter turnout, but the new study is “totally wrong” to conclude ID laws don’t prevent voter fraud, said Hans von Spakovsky, manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative at The Heritage Foundation. 

“How would you show it deters fraud if that’s something that didn’t happen because of voter ID laws?” von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal. “You have to look at convictions in absentee ballot fraud cases. In just four states, the voter ID laws apply the same to both in-person and absentee voting. So, it’s difficult to say.”

Currently, 17 states have photo ID laws at the polls, and 18 states have voter ID laws that do not require a photo, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures

Various studies in recent years done by professors at the University of Missouri, the University of Delaware, the University of Nebraska surveying elections from 2000 through 2016 found similar results that voter ID laws do not suppress voter turnout. 

Of those states, the National Conference of State Legislatures classifies 10 states as “strict,” meaning if a voter is without acceptable voter ID under that state’s law, most vote on a provisional ballot. Three of those “strict” states do not require photo ID. 

The National Bureau of Economic Research study’s researchers used data from Catalist, a company that provides data for progressive-leaning groups that target voter turnout. 

It looks at elections from 2008 through 2016 with a sampling across 30 states. 

The study stated: “Measuring voter fraud represents a challenge, as federal and state agencies vary in the extent they collect and share information on it.”

The research cited The Heritage Foundation voter fraud database that includes 1,177 proven cases of voter fraud. Of those, 1,019 cases ended in criminal conviction. 

The study also used data from News21, an investigative project funded by the Carnegie Corp. and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Through research of government documents, the project found 2,068 cases of suspected voter fraud reported from 2000 through 2012. 

The study does not claim to be the last word on the matter. 

“Because states adopted strict ID laws only two to 12 years ago, our results should be interpreted with caution: we find negative participation effects neither in the first election after the adoption of the laws nor in following ones, but cannot rule out that such effects will arise in the future,” the study says. 

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Is the Party over for Dem Extremists?

Rep. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.) isn’t the only one asking himself, “What’s happened to our nation when the president of the United States has to ask legislators to save babies from being murdered?” Overwhelming majorities of pro-choicers are just as startled as he is.

Too often over the past 46 years, the issue of abortion has been reduced to a political issue. Very little thought has gone into the coarsening of America’s collective conscience, which has brought us to this point today — where leaders not only look away, but advocate and defend infanticide. Fortunately, what we’ve seen in the last few weeks is that the hardening of our country’s heart hasn’t extended much beyond the party’s leaders and militant abortion activists.

When AUL and YouGov put the Democrats’ infanticide agenda before the public, Americans were universally horrified. Large majorities in the country already objected to third-trimester abortions (79 percent) and birth day abortions (80 percent) — but it was tough to find anyone who thought leaving newborns on a metal table to die was just another “personal decision” between a woman and her doctor. On the question of legal infanticide, 82 percent said absolutely not.

If those numbers don’t make Democrats cringe, maybe these will. Of “pro-choicers,” 77 percent agree with the Republicans’ push to protect abortion survivors. Another 66 percent percent aren’t on board with abortions in the third trimester, and 68 percent disagree with any law that destroy a baby on its due date. Throw in the taxpayer-funded part of these procedures — another piece of the Democratic platform — and the Left’s abortion agenda is a one-way ticket back to the political minority.

If you think I’m exaggerating, look at Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) most recent approval ratings. After eight years of high marks, the bottom is falling out for the man who made the disastrous decision to put New Yorkers at the tip of the pink spear. In the weeks since he led the charge to kill babies at the moment of birth, Cuomo’s favorability rating has taken a beating, dropping to 43 percent from 50 — the lowest ever recorded since he took office in 2011. He also had an almost double-digit decline in his performance ratings, with only 35 percent now agreeing that he’s doing an “excellent” or “good job.”

Contrast that with President Trump, who, after doubling down on the culture of life, is enjoying the highest approval rating (52 percent) since 2017. One man embraced the outer limits of abortion extremism. The other used his most important speech of the year to passionately reject it. You do the math.

Making matters worse for the Left, every day that a Republican walks to the floor of the House and demands a vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act is a reminder of just how fanatical Democrats are. On Monday, they got another glimpse when Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) took his turn asking for unanimous consent on the bill. He, like three Republicans before him, was denied. And while most liberals aren’t exactly knocking down the doors of the press to talk about their wildly controversial stance, some Democrats are saying enough for everyone.

“There is zero place for politicians to be involved in these very complicated medical decisions, and they should only be made between a woman and her doctor — period, full stop,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) insisted. So that’s what killing is now? A “medical decision?” Listen, if Democrats want to get the government out of the health care business, conservatives are all for it. If there’s “zero place” for Congress in medicine, then by all means — let’s do away with Obamacare, insurance regulation, health care mandates, Medicare, and Medicaid. Personal decisions shouldn’t need public funding. But that’s the hypocrisy of the Left. Democrats don’t want taxpayers to have any input in health care — they just want them to foot the bill.

To her credit, at least Gillibrand will cop to her radicalism. Others in the increasingly crowded 2020 field refuse to even talk about abortion. But they don’t have to. The Democratic platform says it all.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


RELATED ARTICLES:

How House Conservatives Are Planning to Force a Vote on Protecting Abortion Survivors

Fence and Sensibility

2018 Headlines, 2019 High Stakes

EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images is republished with permission.

The Furies in Congress

In ancient Greek mythology the Furies are the three goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger. They are the daughters of Mother Earth Gaia and her son Father Sky Uranus.

The Furies are infamous for taking vengeance on men and punishing all crimes including breaking the rules of society by striking the offenders with madness.

The Furies in ancient mythology dispensed vigilante justice and were the “guardians of the law when the state had not yet intervened or did not exist, or when the crime was a crime of ethics and not actual law.” Here is the problem – we don’t live in ancient Greece and we are not characters in a mythological story. We live in the United States of America, the greatest experiment in liberty and individual freedom the world has ever known.

For 242 years our Constitution has been the supreme law of the land that provides the national frame of government and rules of society to guide American life. Our Founding Fathers envisioned ordered liberty based on individualism, personal responsibility, and the meritocracy. Their economic principles included property rights, free markets, and sound money.

In the last several decades the radical left has engaged in a culture war against the United States that seeks to undermine the Constitution and replace it with a “living document” that would support collectivism aka socialism.

The Furies in Congress Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar are the spawn of the radical leftist narrative that embraces liberalism’s dogmatic tenets of political correctness, moral relativism, and historical revisionism. These three women were elected by a segment of the American electorate who embrace radical leftism’s orthodoxy.

The new secular religion Leftism embraces the antisemitism of Islamic sharia law, the Marxist hatred of American capitalism, and the misandry (hatred of men) of the ancient Greek Furies. The Leftists in Washington have common cause to collapse America’s representative republic but what are they offering to replace it? This is where the Leftist alliance collapses.

The Furies are divided!

The secular radical leftists want to replace our Constitution with socialism. The sharia compliant Muslims want to replace our Constitution with religious sharia law. 

If Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar, the anti-American Furies who represent the leftist Democrat party, successfully implement their anti-American, pro-socialist, antisemitic, pro-Muslim policies what will happen in the future? There is no place for non-Muslim socialists in supremacist Islamic sharia law. The multiculturalism of the Left is pure fiction – the left is a house divided. 

The Leftists and the Islamists are too arrogant to recognize that the globalist elites are pulling their strings and using the Furies and their foolish supporters to create the social chaos necessary to make America ungovernable and to overthrow President Trump. For globalists, socialism is not the endgame – it is a stepping stone toward one world government. Socialism is the necessary transitional infrastructure required to impose an internationalized new world order that the globalist elite intend to rule under the auspices of the corrupt United Nations.

The ancient Greeks understood madness and so do the globalist elites who are doubling down and coordinating their efforts to drive the public toward madness by indoctrinating them to accept the fiction that collectivism will provide the social justice and income equality they promise. 

Only a child or someone completely out of touch with objective reality could continue to believe the disingenuous claims that socialism provides income equality. A rational adult looks at the disaster that is Venezuela.

Only a child or someone completely out of touch with objective reality could continue to believe that sharia law provides social justice. A rational adult looks at the totalitarian regimes that rule Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The Furies in Congress symbolize the effectiveness of the Leftist culture war on America. They are the goddesses of Vengeance, Jealousy, and Anger that provide the foundation for the collectivism that robs the public of its wealth, ordered liberty, and its Constitutional freedoms. Socialism is secular collectivism where the government rejects the meritocracy and has the power to rob some citizens and reward others at will. Islamism is religious totalitarianism – both are a return to feudalism where the government has complete power over its enslaved serfs.

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The radical Left was seriously emboldened by Obama’s two terms in office. His personal assault on the Constitution continues with his seditious resistance movement, the emboldened Furies in Congress, and their aging swamp leader Nancy Pelosi. In a shocking display of female servitude during President Trump’s State of the Union address the white-clad Stepford wives of Nancy Pelosi rose up when she lifted her fingers and sat down when she lowered them.

Is this what Women’s Lib has become? Women zombies who do the bidding of a woman instead of a man?

It was a disgusting demonstration by women who apparently have lost all sense of humanity and do not recognize that late term abortion especially during or after birth is MURDER!! The leftist Dems have redefined infanticide just as they have redefined honor killings – they deny that both are murder. There is no honor in murdering infants or in murdering women who disobey men. Why would any woman in America see these pathetic lackeys as role models?

It is absolute insanity for Americans to relinquish the extraordinary freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution in exchange for the empty promises of Leftism. Free stuff is never free and freedom is not a part of supremacist Islamic sharia law. Equality rejects being a master and being a slave equally.

Equality rejects the madness of the Furies and their Congressional offerings of socialism and sharia law. Equality rejects the vigilante justice offered by radical leftist social justice warriors and sharia police.

Equality demands that America’s silent majority no longer remain silent. The majority of Americans who embrace ordered liberty and the freedoms of our Constitution must protect and defend it so that America never becomes a socialist country or an Islamic republic. 

Let freedom continue to ring!

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Goudsmit Pundicity. The featured image is by Pixabay.