Tag Archives: culture

The Left’s Assault on the Sanctity of Each American’s Vote

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That assault is embodied in the Progressive-Democratic Party’s HR-1 bill that the House passed on cynical Party lines and sent along to the Senate. The extent of the assault was laid out by Hans von Spakovsky, one-time Federal Election Commission Commissioner ande former counsel to DoJ’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, in a Sunday Fox News editorial.

  1. It would eviscerate state voter ID laws that require a voter to authenticate his identity. Indeed, it would force states to allow anyone to vote who simply signs a form saying that they are who they claim they are.
  2. It would make absentee ballots even more insecure than they already are. Not only could states not apply any ID requirement to absentee ballots, they could not enforce any witness signature or notarization requirement.
  3. It would worsen the problem of inaccurate registration rolls. HR 1 severely restricts the ability of states to take the basic steps necessary to maintain the accuracy of their voter rolls, such as comparing their lists with those of other states or using the US Postal Service’s National Change of Address System to find individuals who have moved.
  4. It would take away your ability to decide whether you want to register to vote. Instead, it requires states to automatically register individuals who interact with state agencies.
  5. It would force states to allow online registration, opening up the voter registration system to massive fraud by hackers and cybercriminals.
  6. It imposes onerous new regulatory restrictions on political speech and activity, including online and policy-related speech, by candidates, citizens, civic groups, unions, corporations and nonprofit organizations.
  7. It would authorize the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions of nonprofit organizations when they apply for tax-exempt status. (Sort of like ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) IRS did.)
  8. It would set up a public funding program for candidates running for Congress. This would force taxpayers to subsidize (by a 6 to 1 ratio of taxpayer dollars per individual dollar) the political campaigns of individuals they may vehemently disagree with and wouldn’t vote for in a million years.

And don’t count on Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) to stand in the way of eliminating the filibuster so the Senate Progressive-Democrats also can pass this on a Party-line vote. We’ve seen the value of his word regarding Republican input.

Panic-Mongering and the Wuhan Virus

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Here are some examples of that panic-mongering. They are far from an exhaustive list, but they are illustrative.

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated that, based on the epidemiological curve at the time, “in 45 days [the state] could have up to an input of people who need 110,000 beds that compares to our current capacity of 53,000 beds, 37,000 ICU units, ventilators, which compares to a capacity currently of 3,000 ventilators.”

Yet,

COVID hospitalizations in the state peaked roughly a month later, coming in at just under 19,000…. Total ICU COVID patients peaked shortly thereafter at 5,225, or at just 13% of the governor’s forecast.

And this one:

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom estimated that, on top of its existing 75,000 hospital beds, the state would require “an additional 50,000 beds in our system.”
“Our new modeling suggests 50,000 is the new target number[.]”

Yet,

California data show that the state’s current peak in hospitalized patients came in early January of this year and totaled just under 23,000….

And this one:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted on March 31 of last year that Michigan would see peak COVID-19 hospital usage on April 10, topping out at about 14,000 COVID patients in beds.

Yet,

Data from the COVID Tracking Project shows that on that date hospitalized patients in the state totaled just over 3,800. That number plummeted in the weeks that followed, and though it rose again during the fall/winter spike, its peak on December 2 was still just 4,300, significantly less than IHME’s springtime projection.

And this one:

[From] New Jersey, an analysis out of Rutgers University in mid-March 2020…determined that, with about 23,000 hospital beds statewide, the state might face a peak shortfall of over 300,000 beds in a worst-case model positing minimal action to curb the spread of COVID.

Yet,

Hospital usage…peaked in the state on April 16 at 8,224 before falling sharply. During the fall spike, the COVID hospital census there plateaued around 3,600.

It’s hard to believe that such learned persons could be so far wrong—and not move quickly to correct their errors.

Maybe it’s time to look at their motives for making those projections. Maybe that time has come, especially, against the naked power grab that is the Progressive-Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which they masqueraded as a Wuhan Virus relief bill, even though less than 10% of that nearly $2 trillion bill has anything even remotely related to the virus.

UK’s Good Faith

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…has been slapped down. Great Britain surrendered Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 on the PRC’s promise to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy for 50 years, a promise the PRC made within the context of its one country/two systems framework, a promise made in the UK-PRC Joint Declaration.

The PRC began welching on its word when it began, in no particular order (because commitment timelines mean nothing to the PRC) denying duly elected city legislators their seats, arresting peaceful protestors—including provoking violence to create excuses for the arrests—enacting mainland laws allowing Hong Kongers to be “extradited” to the mainland for what passes for trials in PRC courts.

And now the latest step in the PRC’s reneging.

The “patriots governing Hong Kong” is a resolution that will allow a pro-Beijing panel to approve some candidates that it deems sufficiently “patriotic,” according to the BBC. The vote was 2,895-0, with one abstention[.]

And

Thursday’s near-unanimous vote by the National People’s Congress paves the way for China’s top lawmaking body to revamp as soon as next month how the former British colony picks its leader and legislators. The overhaul will give Beijing much greater control over local elections that were meant to be partly democratic—thanks to an effective veto against candidates deemed unpatriotic.
…
The resolution mandates the creation of a commission in Hong Kong that ensures that prospective officeholders conform with criteria laid down in the city’s miniconstitution and national-security legislation.

Nearly unanimous. Nothing untoward, or the least bit odd, about that. Nosirree, Bob. Well, maybe not so odd, coming from a tyranny as it does.

An Interesting Court Fight

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…may be in the offing.

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) signed into law a bill that bans all abortions save when the mother’s life is at risk. Even pregnancies resulting from rape or incest are banned from abortion.

The governor also acknowledged the ban is in contradiction of binding precedents of the US Supreme Court, but it is the intent of the legislation to set the stage for the Supreme Court overturning current case law.”

Indeed. Especially since the primary precedent is Roe v Wade, which is, at bottom, a technologically oriented precedent. The Court ruled that States could govern the availability of abortions after the third trimester began—because that was the point at which the fetus became viable outside the womb under the then-extant medical technology.

Today’s medical technology has advanced by orders of magnitude; accordingly, at worst, the Arkansas law provides the Supreme Court the opportunity to adjust its precedent in accordance with modern medical capability, if not to rescind Roe altogether.

Additionally, the ACLU is being its usual cynical self.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas attacked the bill calling it “cruel and unusual[.]”

No, what’s cruel, but sadly entirely too usual, is murdering babies before they’re born.

Censorship

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A collection of Letters in Monday’s Wall Street Journal centered on the Kancel Kulture’s penchant for censorship.

A couple of points regarding that penchant. One letter writer asks,

Why do the canceling elite feel they must protect us from anything that might possibly be upsetting?

The answer is because they assume, since they are so terrified of anything remotely or just potentially a little bit upsetting, and they need desperately to be protected from such, that everyone else must be terrified and so need protection, also.

Another letter writer notes, with reference to censoring Seuss, that

To learn to read is to learn to expand one’s mind and enable critical thinking.

As part of that, those depictions of an earlier age also could be used to illustrate how far we’ve come as a nation. The elitists, the Progressive-Democrats, and the Left generally, however, can’t stand for us to see that progress. It would undermine their narrative.