America Used To Be A Serious Country... America Today Is Not

In his brilliant book, The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, Matt Ridley makes the case that coal saved Britain in the 19^th century just as the Industrial Revolution was picking up steam. A similar argument could be made for oil in the United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. At mid century, a time when oil from whales was a significant source of energy, the discovery of seemingly limitless amounts of oil in places like Pennsylvania and Texas provided an energy boom like the world had never seen. In the quarter century between 1864 and 1892 the price of oil dropped by more than 90% while production increased 25 times, providing a boost that turned the American economy into a juggernaut.

Of course from soot in the air to spills in the water to holes in the ground, neither resource is what today one might call “clean” energy. But you know what they were? Inexpensive, efficient and relatively easy to transport. Indeed, by the 1880’s the average family was illuminating their home for a penny an hour while the fuels to do so, oil and kerosene could be delivered right to their doors. From lighting individual homes to powering giant factories – which would have been largely impossible without it – petroleum and its various products gave Americans the energy necessary to grow from an economic also ran to the most robust economy on the planet in less than half a century.

America of the late 19^th century and early 20^th century was a land of giants where anything was possible. During the 60 years between 1865 and 1935 Bell invented the telephone, Ford brought the assembly line to auto manufacturing, and the Wright Brothers took to flight while at the same time the First transcontinental railroad was finished and the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building were built. The United States was growing, both geographically and economically and energy fueled that growth, and increasingly that was oil.

Energy drives modern civilization, whether its gasoline for cars, electricity for countless mobile devices or natural gas and coal fueling generators. Americans used to recognize the fact that without fuel, little functions in America. The lesson was painfully driven home in 1973 with OPEC’s oil embargo.

Today, 50 years later, while less dependent on OPEC for our energy needs, overall we’re far more dependent on energy itself as our much of our lives are driven by transportation, information and consumption. But the funny thing is, the more energy becomes central to our lives, the less serious Americans become about it. Nuclear power, by far the most efficient, cleanest and most abundant of potential sources has basically been sidelined, with not a single new plant being built in a quarter century and 13 plants closed. Coal plants are being regulated out of existence while blue states and the Biden administration are seeking to smother fracking in its bassinette. Not to mention one of Joe Biden’s first acts after taking office… shutting down the Keystone pipeline. At the same time, from the federal government to local governments, billions of dollars are being wasted on the fiction of “green energy”, both in terms of tax incentives, regulatory vices and “investment” boondoggles. These are just the latest examples of the left literally wasting energy and money – and doing much harm in the process – all in the name of the “environment”.

Why does any of this folly matter? Because geopolitics is a messy matter, and everything from money to trade to weapons to war play a central role in it, and energy is central to each of them. More specifically, the United States is in the midst of a pitched battle for prosperity and influence around the world with other players who have decided to not fight that battle with both hands tied behind their backs. On the contrary, not only do China and Russia do essentially whatever they want as it relates to – pretty much everything – but at the same time, both (China, Russia) fund the environmental left in the west, resulting in the ludicrous Paris Climate Agreement. That is the agreement, of course, in which the west – and particularly the United States – willingly put a straightjacket on their economies while the Chinese economy is allowed to operate essentially unfettered for decades while the Russians pay lip service to the agreement.

Both the Chinese and Russians understand that energy is the key to power and are willing to operate on that basis, unburdened by the need to appease the world’s environment scolds. China not only continues to develop and build nuclear capacity – as they literally seek to create an artificial sun – but they have been working to expand their control over the South China Sea for a decade as they look to lock up lucrative deep sea oil deposits – putting them in conflict with many of their neighbors. Russia continues unfettered development of oil and gas and recently restarted work on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline – with the help of Joe Biden – to provide Europe with natural gas. Bewilderingly, the Europeans are purposefully tying their economic fortunes to the very country who threw them into a deep freeze by cutting off their gas supplies in the middle of a winter blast in 2009.

Meanwhile, here in America energy is merely a political football to be played with, regardless of the consequences. California, with the world’s fifth largest economy, last summer experienced third world style rolling blackouts because the state’s “green energy” mandates had crippled the ability of producers to actually… produce energy. In New York, despite high prices and energy disputes wreaking havoc on development, the Governor signed into law a permanent ban fracking while the state regulatory agency killed a proposal to ease constraints by approving the building of another pipeline to bring gas into the state. Not to mention of course the federal subsidies and state mandates for “green cars” “green homes” and a push for battery and windmill development that leave environmental disasters in their wake.

America used to understand that energy powered prosperity, and with prosperity it was possible to a great deal of good for a great number of people. Just ask the Europeans or Asia… In Democrat run America we seem to have lost that understanding. Like history’s loss of the knowledge of how the Egyptians built the great pyramids, Americans seem to have lost the understanding that inexpensive, reliable and widely accessible energy are the keys to prosperity and everything it brings. To face a loss of such empowerment because of the natural vagaries of geology or geography or the result of war is depressing, if somewhat understandable. To face the loss because politicians decided that virtue signaling trumps cost, effectiveness, efficiency and reliability is despairing, infuriating and simply criminal. It’s often said that citizens get the government they vote for, which is often true. What’s also true is that citizens deserve the government they vote for and in the case of voting for Democrats, from New York to Colorado to California Americans are getting exactly what they deserve. Sadly that folly has been fraudulently foisted on the nation. Let’s hope the United States and the allies who depend on us can survive 18 more months of their monolithic, dysfunctional, and patently unserious control.  

What Now - Part 2: Solution to Fraud? Pact of Secession

Earlier in the week I asked the question:  What if Proof of 2020 Presidential Election Fraud Develops? In it I mentioned a number of remedies that have been widely talked about from impeachment to a Pentagon coup to rioting in the streets.

None of those is an ideal solution. Indeed, the first wouldn’t correct the problem, the second would turn the United States into a third world banana republic and the last would bring about a modern version of the bloody chaos that characterized post revolutionary France.  

No, an ideal solution would reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president and do so while maintaining our Constitutional Republic.

As such, there is another option that could theoretically do that, and thanks to TV shows from Perry Mason to Law & Order it’s based on concepts most Americans are familiar with: “fraud vitiates everything” and “fruit of the poison tree”.  The former, based on the Supreme Court ruling UNITED STATES v. THROCKMORTON (98 US 61 – Supreme Court 1878); states that “There is no question of the general doctrine that fraud vitiates the most solemn contracts, documents, and even judgments.” That essentially means that in contracts – and an election is nothing if not a contract – fraud makes them invalid. Everyone knows if you sign a contract based on fraudulent information, that contract is invalid.  Further, from that comes “void ab initio” which means that fraud from the beginning taints everything resulting from it.  No doubt most of us have heard a TV lawyer seeking to throw out evidence against their client because the search itself or the information upon which the warrant was based, was fraudulent.  It’s called the doctrine of “Fruit of a poison tree” from NARDONE V. UNITED STATES, (308 U.S. 338 – Supreme Court 1939) which states that if a tree is poisonous, so too is its fruit. (H/T to Andrea Widburg, Donna Palen and Al Simon)

All of this means that once the fraud is demonstrated, the election is invalid; Joe Biden is legally not president and every action of the Biden administration has undertaken is void as if it never happened.  That of course has never been done in a presidential election but it’s occurred a handful of times in lower elections.  The fly in the ointment of course is that all of this it requires a court, and eventually the Supreme Court to rule that the election was indeed fraudulent.  Given the Supreme Court’s general (but very selective) reluctance to wade into political areas – particularly highly volatile ones – and this particular Court’s demonstrated cowardice, it’s unlikely that they would even consider the matter.

Which I think, leaves us with this:  If the Constitution provides no specific remedy to the bastardization of the Constitution itself, something new must be done.  As the Founding Fathers did in 1776, it may be necessary to rewrite the playbook. And that rewritten playbook, while not a new Declaration of Independence, is a tentative Pact of Secession. This pact would be among the states whose rightful votes should have gone to Donald Trump. These states should make it clear that the rights of their citizens to a Constitutional federal government have been infringed upon and if Congress does not remedy the situation they will, in unison, secede.

This Pact would not literally be secession… it would be the announcement of a proposed action that Congress would have the opportunity to avoid by rectifying the demonstrated Constitutional deficits of the 2020 election.  The reality is there is no blueprint for rectifying those deficits, but that is because Congress, the states and the Supreme Court allowed an unconstitutional inauguration to occur in the first place.  Nonetheless, the theft of the highest office in the land simply cannot stand.  As New York, California and a variety of blue states are seeing play out in their streets today, if you allow thieves to steal with impunity, if you allow thugs to harass and assault with impunity, you get more of each. The same holds true with the fraud of an election and the usurping of the apparatus of government and the coercive powers that come with it. If this theft is allowed to stand then no American can go forward with confidence in the nation’s elections and the system based on them.  Once again, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work. The proof of that can be seen in the fact that the old Soviet Union, Cuba, China and most other dictatorships regularly have constitutions that promise freedoms and rights to their citizens that are rarely actually respected. Words on a paper mean nothing if the government is not bound by them and the citizens have no confidence in them. 

This is, as the British might say, a bloody mess. Indeed the last time secession played a pivotal role in American history that’s exactly what we got.  This however does not have to be that. Spurred by a Pact of Secession, Congress will have an opportunity, in concert with the states themselves, to address the demonstrated fraud and rectify the deficit of the election of 2020 in a cool, logical and peaceful manner.  But they need to understand that once the fire from the smoke of November 4th is demonstrated, the American people will not sit idly by and watch their Constitution shredded.  Too many have paid too high a price so that Americans could live under the umbrella of liberty it provides to allow such a transgression to prevail.  

What Now - Part 1: What if We Find The Fire From the Smoke of Election Fraud?

If the last month has taught us anything, today’s conspiracy theory could easily be tomorrow’s commonsense truth. The speed at which the Wuhan Lab theory as the source of the Covid virus went from “thoroughly debunked” to “Viable” and “Probable” in the media was extraordinary. Indeed, the media scorned the possible source of the most economically destructive virus in history – one that is credited with killing 3 million people – because they didn’t like the then-President of the United States!

Despite the fact that the lab in Wuhan was one of the only places on earth where scientists were studying such viruses, that 3 Wuhan employees went to the hospital in November 2019 with what turned out to be Covid symptoms, that the NIH had actually been funding “gain of function” research in Wuhan focusing specifically on the transmission of such viruses to humans… we were told the Wuhan “China virus” theory was a racist conspiracy theory!

As much damage as Covid did – and far worse, the “lockdowns” used to inflict COVID's damage – that’s nothing compared to the damage another “conspiracy” has done and will do. That, of course, is the “thoroughly debunked” notion that the election of 2020 was stolen, and that Joe Biden is in the Oval Office today because of election fraud. But of course that’s just some tin hat conspiracy theory. We’ve been told that “There’s no evidence of election fraud” and Trump “Lost Nearly 60 Election Fights In Court.” The latter of course is fiction.

Given that we heard similar things for the last year about the origins of Covid, the question is, what happens when proof unequivocally demonstrates that the election was indeed stolen?

The smoke for that conclusion has been around since the wee hours of November 4th. The stopped counting in key states on election night. Mark Zuckerberg’s wholesale purchase of the voting apparatus in key states and counties. The unconstitutional changes to voting laws that crisscrossed the country… many empowered by the politicization of Covid... And then of course there is the TIME magazine piece that laid out in black and white the “inside story of the conspiracy to save the 2020 election”, chronicling widespread coordination of everyone from the Democrat party, Silicon Valley, BLM, unions, the Chamber of Commerce and various other players to get rid of Donald Trump.

All that has been missing has been the CSI level proof of the fire itself. Of course, given the depth and breadth of the Swamp, it may never come to light. But then it might. Currently in Arizona and Wisconsin audits are being done of the 2020 election.

So let’s imagine that somehow, integrity rules the day, and both states under audit produce rock-solid proof that the election in their states was stolen; what then? Technically, nothing. Arizona had 11 electoral votes and Wisconsin had 10. Together they represent 21 electoral votes and Joe Biden was declared the winner by 74 votes. In order for anything to change there must be a difference of at least 38 votes flipped from Biden to Trump.

But let’s say even one of those states produces demonstrable proof of election fraud. At that point the Republican legislatures of other battleground states that exhibited strange activity on election night… Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan would be under a great deal of pressure to look into the integrity of their own elections. Suddenly, with an additional 52 electoral votes in play, things look a bit different.

Let’s further assume that the legislatures of Georgia and Pennsylvania determine that there was sufficient fraud in their states to flip the state’s vote to Donald Trump. With Arizona and Wisconsin, those states would bring the total to 57 electoral votes flipped from Biden to Trump, changing the totals to 249 to 289 and leaving Trump with a majority.

What then? Can a state reverse its electoral vote after certification and counting? Can states recall their electors post-inauguration? Can Congress meet and redo the vote count six months after an inauguration? None has ever been done and there is nothing in the Constitution about doing so. Can the House impeach the President for the fraud? Even if the GOP controlled the Senate a conviction would be unlikely because there’s probably little to connect Joe Biden with the actual fraud done on his behalf.

Can the Supreme Court order a new election? While the Constitution gives the Court no such power, in the Bizarro world of modern America that certainly seems to be no barrier. It is unlikely, however, as the Justices had two clear opportunities to resolve this problem and did nothing. When Pennsylvania Republicans sued seeking to throw out the clearly unconstitutional changes to voting law, the Court demurred. Unconstitutional changes such as these are of course the very basis for the Texas lawsuit that the Supreme Court refused to hear after the election. One state allowing their election to be stolen does indeed negatively impact the rights of citizens of another state if that activity results in a fraudulent president who runs the government of the United States under which all American citizens are governed.

Once the fraud has been demonstrated, America is going to find itself in a situation where it doesn’t appear that there is any Constitutional remedy in place. Are Americans simply supposed to acquiesce to the theft and allow the fraudulent president to be the actual president for the next three years?

No. That would be like a thief stealing your identity and looting your bank account and then once discovered, being allowed to keep it because, as we all remember from elementary school, “possession is 9/10ths of the law.” That was wrong in elementary school and it’s wrong in the Oval Office.

What can be done when the Constitution doesn’t address a bastardization of the constitutional process? Does a military junta take control and put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office? Umm… No! Does the 25th Amendment somehow come into play? No, because that would not remedy the situation. Does Biden resign? Unlikely, and again, it wouldn’t remedy the situation.

A Convention of the States as outlined by Article V of the Constitution? Maybe, but that’s a long process and would likely not occur within the timeframe of the next election.

How about a shadow government? Does Donald Trump build a replica of the Oval Office at Mar-a-Lago and show the world what a real president would do in whatever circumstances the imposter president finds himself in?

Do true patriots take to the streets and use violence and intimidation to wreak havoc from sea to shining sea the way BLM and Antifa did last year, and maintain it until the Democrats capitulate?

None of those ideas is an ideal solution. An ideal solution would essentially reverse the inauguration of Joe Biden and inaugurate Donald Trump as the rightful president.

Many pundits are suggesting that Republicans should dig deep and focus on 2022, both at the local and the state level so that the GOP can take back the House and the Senate. While that’s true, it’s not sufficient because it doesn’t address the fraud in the first place.

If it’s possible to steal the presidency with impunity, what office in the nation is beyond reach? The simple answer is none, and that matters because the government has police power and once the Constitution becomes superfluous, the coercive powers of government suddenly have no limits. And for those who say that the Constitution still stands, the Constitution is nothing more than a piece of paper. It is the citizens’ loyalty to that Constitution and the system built upon it that make it work.