The SAVE Act: Donald Trump's Place in History Will Be Defined by Whether He Saves the Republic, Period.

Recently I wrote a piece that received some pushback.  I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips:  No new taxes” pledge. 

If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom.  It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how good we have things and encourages gratitude for the American entrepreneurs and inventors who made our lives possible. In a universe where most of history was characterized by scarcity, war, slavery and early death, most Americans today have relatively extraordinary lives. 

Everything we have today came about as the result of the hard work of generations of people who left us this legacy.  From the Founding Fathers leaving us the Constitution to Grant defeating the South to Rockefeller rationalizing energy to Jobs putting the Internet in our hands, everything we have in the 21^st century came from the efforts of countless numbers of long dead people, as well as, often, our own efforts.

To the degree that one can identify the elements that made the last 250 years so different from any prior period, it was the combination of the individual freedom, free markets, private property and limited government.  Those elements laid the foundation for a nation to spread across a continent, become an industrial juggernaut and become an economic powerhouse able to promote freedom and prosperity to billions of people around the world.

That anger sometimes reflected in my writing is because the government, over the last 50 years, has done virtually everything it can to undermine that success. On almost every front, government has gotten itself involved in areas where it has no place, no constitutional authority, and regardless of how ineffective, pernicious or downright harmful its actions are, nobody ever does anything about it. The borg like government, with its tentacles attaching to ever more elements of American life, and tightening its grip, is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  Look no farther than GDP growth. Below is a chart of average annual GDP growth by decade since 1950:

1950s: 4.2% 

1960s: 4.5% 

1970s: 3.2% 

1980s: 3.1% 

1990s: 3.2% 

2000s: 1.9% 

2010s: 2.4% 

2020s: 2.4% 

To understand how much of a problem that is, understand that in the 1950s computers were the size of a house and could do 5,000 calculations per second.  Today a computer fits in the palm of your hand and is literally billions of times faster.  Yet our GDP growth is almost half as much, but should be double.

If you want to know why, despite the fact that we are so much more efficient and have far better and more tools at our disposal, our GDP is half what it used to be, the answer is Government. Perhaps the only thing that has grown more than computer power over the last half century is government power. They have intruded on practically every single aspect of our lives, from mandating the ability to remotely turn off our cars to requiring those tags on your mattress to telling you the makeup of your neighborhood. And sadly, while they’re busy promoting the butchering of some children and the trafficking of others, they fail at the basic elements of government such as maintaining law and order, keeping our borders secure and not sending money to dead people. 

The tentacles of Government are everywhere, like a cancer that knows no bounds and for which there is no cure.  Of course, theoretically there is a cure for all of this: elections.  But the government has somehow managed to manipulate them so that regardless of who gets elected in either party, we basically get the same policies.  Sure, some things may change around the edges, but for the most part the Swamp reigns and nobody does anything about it. The budgets basically remain the same, the programs largely stay the same and the controlling elites basically rotate between government, NGOs and corporate boardrooms.    

And here’s where my piece talking about Trump betraying his voters comes into play.  I could spend my time showcasing the great things he has done, and he has done many, but I focus on the fact that if he doesn’t deal with the gun pointed at the head of the Republic, none of that matters. 

For Democrats cheating is simply their MO. Between importing new illegal voters, manipulating the voting apparatus, and fighting Voter ID, Democrats have basically wiped out GOP representation in New England despite the fact that 30-40% of the population in those areas are Republicans.  Democrats will destroy the Republic the next time they get power, and if Donald Trump doesn’t start acting like a leader with something to fight for, there won’t be anything left to fight for.

Once back in power, Democrats will kill that American goose.  They will manipulate voting rules to turn the country writ large into the dysfunctional cesspools they’ve created in Illinois, Maryland, California, etc.  They will expand the problems of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, et. al. into the suburbs and eventually across the country. They will utilize every lever of government power to eviscerate the foundations of freedom that made the country great in the first place.

But it doesn’t have to be.  But unfortunately we’re watching Senate leader John Thune betray Americans on easily the lowest hanging fruit ever in American history, the SAVE act. You can say that Trump doesn’t run Congress or the Senate, which is true, but he is still the president with the largest soapbox on the planet, on an issue so powerful that even a majority of Democrats support it.  Trump should call on and or call out every GOP Senator who is standing in his way.  He should do rallies in their states and encourage citizens to reach out and sway them.  He should utilize every one of the substantial levers of power at his disposal to convince them to pass it. 

The reality is, the SAVE act (which isn’t perfect, as it currently doesn’t outlaw the insane policy of letting illegals have Social Security numbers) and its companion deportations, are where the tire hits the road relative to a free Republic. Literally, if we do not put in place guarantees for honest elections now, the country will be as blue as the California House delegation within a decade. 

The SAVE act is not sufficient to guarantee honest elections, but it’s a first step. As for my regular warnings of doom, I wish I could spend my time commenting on the new arch going up in Arlington or the new White House ballroom, but the reality is, those are of no real consequence.  If Donald Trump doesn’t focus on guaranteeing secure elections, neither will matter because both will end up as symbols not of a great hero who saved the Republic, but rather of the man who failed to save it when he had the chance. 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Obamacare, WW II and how hubris undermines citizen confidence in government

I recently heard a broadcast minute from Neal Boortz. He said the following:

During the 3 1/2 years of U.S. involvement (in WW II), here’s what we manufactured: 8 battleships, 22 aircraft carriers, 48 cruisers, 349 destroyers, 420 destroyer escorts, 203 submarines, 4 million tons of merchant ships, 100,000 fighters, 98,000 bombers, 24,000 transport aircraft, 58,000 training aircraft, 93,000 tanks, 257,000 artillery pieces, 105,000 mortars, 3,000,000 machine guns, 2.5 mil military trucks, 16.1 million men in uniform, and we developed the atomic bomb. Simply astounding.

“During this same period of time, three and a half years, it should be noted that Obama couldn’t put together a functioning website,”

That contrast is simply amazing. The difference between then and today is much greater than the stark numbers might suggest however. Not only did the government of the early 1940s figure out how to harness the productivity of the American economy to build an unprecedented war machine in record time, but at the same time it was able to employ those resources to defeat enemies entrenched on three different continents, each thousands of miles away from home.

As anyone who has even a minor sense of history knows, it takes more than hubris to actually accomplish anything of consequence. In the case of the Roosevelt administration, in terms of domestic policy they were very much full of hubris. It most clearly showed itself in FDR’s legion of domestic programs which not only didn’t end the depression, but prolonged it and kept unemployment in double digits for years.

On the war front however, it was a different story. Not only was there no hubris, there was a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty as to what the prospects were for success. Nonetheless, while partisan divisions persisted – FDR’s Democrats lost 47 Congressional seats in 1942 – the nation was united in its pursuit of victory. Everyone understood that it was all in. As a result, through a combination of government direction, private sector ingenuity and productivity, individual courage and effort, the United States was not only able to develop everything Boortz talks about, but to employ those materials effectively enough to defeat the combined efforts of Hitler and Tojo.

While not perfect, FDR’s execution of its war strategy was successful for a number of reasons. First, the government was operating in an area where it had a unique skillset, one where it had an unambiguous Constitutional role to play, and one where it could focus the resources the energy of the nation on a common goal. Second, there was a finite clear measure of success everyone understood and agreed upon: the defeat of the Germans and the Japanese.

The competence of the various role players and clarity of the objectives allowed the government to lead the country to achieve what some might call its greatest moment. Such triumphs are rare with government action, and it’s no surprise Obamacare is not among them. Obamacare is the polar opposite of WW II in every way, from start to finish… although in Obamacare’s case it’s never finished. Obamacare did not have a Pearl Harbor to unify a nation… it had dubious statistics manipulated by duplicitous politicians seeking to extend government power. Unlike in WW II, with Obamacare the government had no Constitutional foundation for its actions. And finally, there is hubris. At the beginning of WWII nobody, from FDR down to the greenest private in the Army knew how they were going to defeat the Axis powers, and they knew they didn’t know. But they were confident they would find a way. With Obamacare you had exactly the opposite. You had lying, manipulating politicians, power hungry regulators and their legions of ivory tower lackeys telling the country that they knew exactly how the healthcare market worked, exactly what to do to fix it and precisely what the results would be for the American people. They were extraordinarily wrong on all three, and spectacularly so. As Boortz notes, there was the years in the making website debacle. But then there were the promises of “You can keep your doctor” and a $2,500 reduction in healthcare costs that turned out to be actual lies. And perhaps most ominously, the geniuses in the Obama administration so badly misunderstood how markets work that today, fully a quarter of the country’s doctors have opted out of participating in Obamacare exchanges, and more are opting out every day.

And so it goes with hubris and arrogance, emboldened by police power, the government inflicts the consequences of both on the country’s citizens. From Obamacare to green energy debacles to immigration to the disaster of the VA to… pretty much everything else this administration has tackled has been a textbook demonstration as to why government should not reach beyond its powers laid out in the Constitution. If the citizenry’s view on the Constitutionality of a law is murky, perhaps one should tread lightly and not jam it down their throats. If half of the population is viscerally and vociferously opposed to a law, it might be prudent to move slowly rather than rush through a 2,000 page law no one can read. Finally, if there is no endgame, if there is no clear, objective measure by which government action can be determined to be successful or not, then it might be time to go back to the drawing board and reexamine the goals of the law in the first place. Without such clarity laws are either too broadly written or too ambiguously written and either way adds up to too much power in the hands of bureaucrats and not enough in the hands of citizens. And that's how hubris leads to a collapse of citizen confidence in government...

Greedy, racist sons of bitches who want children to starve, grandma to die and women to be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen where they belong... Why I'm a Conservative

Republicans in general, and conservatives in particular, are constantly demonized in the media as greedy, ruthless, heartless, racist sons of bitches who want children to starve, grandma to die and women to be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen where they belong.

That makes for great copy, but it’s about as far from the truth as you can get. While it might be possible to find someone who actually fits that caricature, in reality conservatives are generally just the opposite.

Why I’m a conservative.

Why am I a conservative? For the simple reason that I am an eternal optimist. I believe that mankind is capable spectacular things… both good and bad, but mostly good. I believe that man has within his reach the ability to solve almost any problem that we can imagine, if given the freedom to do so.

Optimism however is not enough to understand why I am a conservative. I am a conservative because I fundamentally believe in the US Constitution and the intent of its framers. Today, 225 years after the Constitution was written we still have what is the single most powerful document ever written by men. Why? Because it provides the best framework yet constructed to provide citizens with the sustainable freedom that is necessary for progress and prosperity.

I’m not conservative because I hate black or brown or gay people. Or women. Just the opposite. I’m conservative because I believe everyone is equal and that no one should get special treatment simply because they belong to a particular group. Laws that seek to target (or protect) particular groups rarely work according to plan. Take the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was begun in 1969 to ensure that 155 rich people who had paid zero taxes in 1967 would have to pay something. Not surprisingly the law’s impact expanded rapidly and today more than 20 million citizens are impacted by the AMT. The government’s record on affirmative action is similarly precise. Treating citizens differently based on arbitrary categories is rarely a recipe for success.

I’m not conservative because I’m greedy and don’t want to share with others. On the contrary. I’m conservative because I believe everyone should have the same opportunity to achieve success. And this is particularly important because the path to success rarely comes through government. Education, healthcare and poverty programs are the three areas of our economy in which government plays the heaviest role. All three could be charitably characterized as inefficient and expensive, but more realistically classified as abysmal failures. The conservative position that government should get out of the education, healthcare and poverty business is not to suggest those are issues that don’t need attention. They do, but the attention should come from organizations closest to the problem and best able to solve it. That might be private companies, community foundations or sometimes even statehouses. Rarely is Washington the correct answer to any problem.

I’m not a conservative because I want companies to be able to work their employees to the bone and pay them a pittance. Actually, conservatives believe in a free market because they understand that free markets are the best way for investors, consumers and yes, employees, to flourish. Three decades ago IBM was set to take over the world. It didn’t… and not because of anything the government did, but rather because of Microsoft, Intel and the PC. Investors got rich, consumers got inexpensive computers and millions of employees got good paying jobs. A decade ago if you had a mobile phone, odds are it was made by Nokia or Motorola. Today Nokia is barely alive and the shadow of Motorola is now owned by Google. Neither came plummeting to earth because of anything the government did, but rather because Apple changed the world. In the process Apple stockholders got rich, consumers got unprecedented computing power at their fingertips and millions of employees across the nation and around the world got good paying jobs. The way for workers to find their fortune, or at least increase their earning power, is not by government intervention or even government sanctioned union thuggery, but rather by honing the skills and acquiring the tools that employers value. Whether those include basic literacy, a knack for app coding, arc welding experience, punctuality, a nursing degree or any of thousands of other characteristics, by increasing their value to potential employers, workers will not have to look to the government or unions to help them find success. Whether someone wants to see their name on the Forbes 400 or simply to work hard and provide for their family, conservatives recognize that when allowed to harness their genius to meet market demands, people of all backgrounds can achieve, and can do so spectacularly. Not sure? How about Oprah Winfrey, Daymond John, Sara Blakely, Ursula Burns, Michael Oher, George Lopez and countless others.

Which brings me back to optimism. Conservatives generally see that there is great potential in their fellow citizens. They also recognize that government has a way of stifling that potential. Whether it’s through a tax code as thick as an encyclopedia, using regulation to stifle small businesses at the behest of big business benefactors, pouring billions of dollars into businesses that deserve to go bankrupt, or redistributing trillions of dollars into pork barrel projects and counterproductive social programs, government inserts its judgments for those of citizens who are actually out in the world living their lives. With ever more frequency our government does what governments always do, it seeks to centralize power. And for each inch of power the government usurps, miles of prosperity are never realized as bureaucrats have little understanding or appreciation for what makes free markets work and why individual responsibility is so empowering. The result is that millions of people who might otherwise draw upon the gifts God gave them to help contribute to the prosperity of a nation find themselves trapped in the quicksand of government largesse and dependency.

Conservatives are often accused of hating all government. That is absolutely false. Conservatives, like the Founding Fathers, understand that a government is essential to maintaining a free society. The reason for the mischaracterization is simple… government today does far more than it was ever intended to do, or is qualified to do, which gives conservatives much to object to. When the Titanic was setting sail from Southampton on April 10th, a party atmosphere pervaded both her deck and the dock from which she was sailing. On April 15th the unsinkable ship was sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. She and the 1,500 people who perished in the freezing water could have used a chorus of discordant voices shouting that there was trouble on the horizon. Just as the Titanic was not “unsinkable”, neither is our Republic. Conservative voices may sound dour, antagonistic or even shrill at times, but that is simply because they recognize the greatness of the Constitutional gift we have been bequeathed, the fragile state in which it stands today and the danger posed by those who continue to undermine its grace. In the face of such danger silence is simply not an option.

For better or worse, that’s why I’m a conservative…

If the government can share your gun permit data with the public, why not your tax and income data too?

In the wake of the tragedy in Connecticut last month a newspaper serving the New York City suburbs, The Journal News, decided to post to its website the names and addresses of all of the legal gun owners in Westchester, Rockland, and Putnam counties. Gun owners were outraged. In response a blogger posted the names and addresses of the key players at the newspaper’s editorial staff. The Journal, a unit of USA Today publisher Gannett, accessed the names and addresses via a Freedom Of Information request which makes most government data available to the public.

This is a blatant misuse of government data and the government is complicit in that misuse. The state of New York requires that all handguns be registered. That means that in order to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, a law abiding citizen must request permission from the state of New York, something they don’t have to do with the freedom of religion, speech or anything else in the Constitution. (This doesn’t apply to owning a rifle, only handguns.) Bad enough that citizens must ask, but what’s worse, New York is a “May issue” state, which means that the state has the right to say “No, you are not allowed to exercise your 2nd Amendment right”. A denial can only be overturned in court if the denial is shown to be arbitrary and capricious. And don’t forget, in the case of New York City, the people making that decision are part of the same government that thinks it’s reasonable to ban large sodas.

If perchance the government deigns to allow you to own a gun in New York, and if you then want to carry that gun outside your home, you’ll now have to request permission for that separately – and that does apply to long guns as well. The state or local authorities then get to decide if you have a good reason to carry one. It doesn’t matter if you believe you need it for self defense, what matters is whether or not you can convince them that you need it for self defense.

So now that the government of New York has forced its citizens to beg for permission in order to exercise their Constitutional right to bear arms, it then keeps all their names and addresses in a database that it then shares with just about anyone who asks.

Of course this is a bonanza for criminals. Now they know where they can go to steal guns. Or they can know in advance which homes will require extra firepower or more men because the owner may be armed. What’s more, criminals are now able to use the database to harass and threaten police and prison guards and their families. At the same time victims who have fled domestic abuse and who have successfully navigated the gun licensing maze now have their names and addresses published for their tormenters to find.

This is a clear example of an abuse of government power. If a citizen is law abiding, and has gone through all of the hoops that government has established in order to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights, (as unconstitutional as they may be) does the government then has the right to provide that citizen’s information to the public? That is a circular argument: The government imposes severe restrictions and registration requirements in order for a citizen to exercise their rights, then because they have collected that data they say their hands are tied and they must provide it to the public.

Well, if that’s the case, then shouldn’t income and tax information be made public? The government forces people to pay taxes and keeps tax information on every person. Shouldn’t the government make that data available to anyone who asks? Of course not. That would be ludicrous. The question is however, what makes tax and income data any more privileged than the notion that someone feels a need to protect their home and family? Losing your personal information is no doubt a bad thing, but worse is losing your life because some newspaper gave a criminal the heads about what to expect when they broke into your house. Just as there is no compelling reason for the government to open up its tax database to the public, there is no compelling reason for the government to open up its gun permit database to the public.

It’s situations like this that make gun owners weary of registering their weapons in the first place. Government collects massive amounts of data on its citizens, from driver’s licenses to arrest records to the medicines you take, the government at all levels has a plethora of information on every citizen. Because the government has that data – often coercing citizens to provide it – does that automatically mean that that information is available to the public? Obviously not. Freedom Of Information Act and government sunshine laws provide an important tool for citizens who seek to monitor government activity. Those laws should not be used to invade the privacy of law abiding citizens, whether it has to do with taxes, gun ownership or any other law abiding activity. As despicable as the Journal’s actions were, they were enabled by a government that misunderstands its responsibilities as they relate to protecting the information it collects on the citizens. Which simply demonstrates that the more power government accumulates the more opportunities it will have to negatively impact the lives of its citizens. Or put another way, small government = big freedom while big government = small freedom.