
Congressman Chabot: Do Not Vote To Overturn The Decision By The States
An open note to my Congressman Rep. Steve Chabot.
2020 was the first year that I have ever voted for you in your entire career. I didn’t vote for you because I admire you (I don’t), I simply voted for you because your Democratic opponent refused to not vote for Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House. Don’t make me your political enemy in 2022 by trying to overturn the essence of federalism and the power of the individual states in their Constitutional role of checks and balances in the selection of our POTUS.
Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden’s victory (whom I did not vote for and do not think will be a good POTUS) strike at the foundation of our republic. It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a federal intervention to overturn the results of state-certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans. The fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy.
I promise that if you vote to not accept the state’s electoral votes, I will actively support your strongest opponent in 2022 and will work to make sure you do not win re-election.
Mr. Biden will be a very poor POTUS, but he won this election. It is now your job to keep him in check using the prescribed Constitutional powers and to recruit and groom a qualified replacement in 2024. It is not your job to be at war with the decision of the various states.

Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy When It Comes To His Taxes
The New York Times has written an article claiming that Donald Trump paid little or no income tax for many years. Mr. Trump denies paying so little but won’t release his returns. The NY Times will not release its data to protect its source.
Voters can decide whom to believe, but one fact to note is that the story doesn’t assert illegal behavior. The IRS presumably signed off on the Trump returns, except in one case in which it is disputing a $72.9 million deduction claimed by Mr. Trump. This is a fight rich people have with the IRS all the time, often ending in Tax Court.
The report makes much of a deduction Mr. Trump took for business consulting fees that match payments his daughter Ivanka reported in separate filings. There may be legitimate reasons for those fee payments, and Ms. Trump ought to clear the matter up. Paying your adult offspring is not illegal – in fact, it is a good practice. This point should probably be dropped on the social media hate frenzy.
Also, it appears to be a big scandal that Trump paid a hairstylist during his reality TV days. Give me a break. Have you seen this guy’s hair? It would take a wizard to make it look decent. BTW, if you are going to make fun of Trump’s hair, please be honest and make fun of “comb over” Joe Biden also – yes, I am old enough to remember him as being bald.
Is it a scandal if Mr. Trump legally exploited the tax code’s treatment of chronic business losses to pay little tax? Hardly. Mr. Trump admitted this himself in a 2016 debate so there is no news in the NYTimes article – he already told us that he didn’t pay much in personal income taxes. Congress littered the code with loopholes aimed at assisting real-estate businesses, among others. Democrat and Republican elected officials write a tax code to please their corporate donors and then selectively attack CEOs or businesses that use the loopholes.
Here is a hint: if you are a business leader that is going to run for office and challenge the elected elite then you are not allowed to use the tax code to your advantage. But it is okay if you are simply going to take that tax-advantaged and donate to the elected elite. This is especially okay if you are donating to Democrat elected officials.
The story also claims that Mr. Trump’s empire is under financial stress and rising debt. This may be true, but the reporters can’t seem to decide if Mr. Trump is a shark exploiting the White House for personal gain or a sap who is bleeding cash while in office. Brilliant or bumpkin? Make up your mind. Many of Trump’s supporters cite his lack of tax burden as part of the reason they support him saying that he has a brilliant business mind. His enemies would do best to stick to one narrative.
The Times says it will have more such stories in the coming days, and who can doubt it? The press and most of official Washington are all-in to defeat Mr. Trump. I wonder if the FBI is doing a repeat and trying to help the Democrats as well.
Trump has made it easier for his opponents, as he often does. He danced his way through the 2016 campaign with promises to release his returns followed by claims that he couldn’t do so because of an audit. Many of his supporters advised him to do it in the public interest, but there’s no legal obligation for a candidate to release his taxes.
Trump could have controlled the political narrative by releasing his tax returns on his terms and timetable. If he would have done it soon after his election, this story would have died a slow death a long time ago. Now his opponents will do it. As in the past, Trump is his own worst adviser.
Many of the ideas in this story were sourced from this WSJ opinion article.

I Agree with T. Friedman – A Geopolitical Earthquake Just Hit the Mideast
I rarely say good things about Thomas Friedman as he is typically too far left, in my opinion. However, I regularly read his columns (when the NYT doesn’t block me) and I think I have read all of his books because it is good to understand all sides of an argument.
This analysis of the recent deal in the Mideast is very well done. Probably the best that I have read. If you are not blocked by the NYT paywall, you should read it.
This deal is amazing. In a normal news cycle, this would be the top headline in every newspaper and every news site (but this isn’t a normal news cycle). This is a deal that no former POTUS has been able to pull off. Is it a Nobel worthy as what James E. Carter or William J. Clinton did? No. But it is a lot better than what George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, or Barack H. Obama did in the Mideast (and Obama received the Nobel prize just for giving good speeches not for actually doing anything). Trump won’t get a Nobel for this because the committee hates Trump. But even if you are a Trump-hater, you have got to give credit for getting this deal done.
Thankfully, Mr. Friedman does that and kudos to him to look past politics and focus on a great result that will make the world a better place. Friedman writes a lot about the Mideast and he knows a massive move forward when he sees it.
To allay the fears of some of you that have read this far, I am still not voting for Trump for re-election even though he accomplished one of the biggest international wins of the 21st century so far. I am still supporting Jo Jorgensen, the Libertarian Party candidate as I feel that her platform is the closest to mine and I think this nation needs a change in the political discussion of something other than Left or Right but instead a focus on personal liberty and personal responsibility. If you believe in personal liberty and personal responsibility, please give an honest look at her platform and then join me in changing the US to be a better place.
Since NYT may block you from reading the article, here are the first couple of paragraphs but will keep it under 300 words to protect NYT copyright. The following are not my words but Mr. Friedman’s:
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a “HUGE breakthrough.”
It is not Anwar el-Sadat going to Jerusalem — nothing could match that first big opening between Arabs and Israelis. It is not Yasir Arafat shaking Yitzhak Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn — nothing could match that first moment of public reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
But it is close. Just go down the scorecard, and you see how this deal affects every major party in the region — with those in the pro-American, pro-moderate Islam, pro-ending-the-conflict-with-Israel-once-and-for-all camp benefiting the most and those in the radical pro-Iran, anti-American, pro-Islamist permanent-struggle-with-Israel camp all becoming more isolated and left behind.
It’s a geopolitical earthquake.
To fully appreciate why, you need to start with the internal dynamics of the deal. It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.

To prepare for this pandemic, our liberal and conservative leaders failed us
A lot of liberals won’t like this post. Please don’t read it if you are a liberal because you will get mad. It hurts when facts smack you in the face, so you should avoid doing that. This article points out that liberals completely failed to help the US prepare for a pandemic.
To be fair, conservatives shouldn’t read this post either because that same brick wall of facts is going to hit you in the face as well. Don’t read it as conservatives haven’t prioritized preparing for a pandemic either.
This is an article from 2009. It is from NPR, so no one is going to say it right-wing bias. Conservatives will say that it is MSM, but the facts on the ground have proven this article to be very accurate.
Here is another article by Sheri Fink that covers the various studies in 2006-2009 about how woefully prepared the US is in handling a pandemic.
In 2007 and 2006, the country did studies that showed that during a pandemic, NYC would be short 15,000 ventilators, and 150K people could die. Sound familiar? There were probably studies since the publication of these articles. So did Bush or Obama do anything? Not much, and I will suggest they did zero. Trump didn’t come into office with any insight and initiative to fix this known problem, so he is just as guilty as Bush and Obama.
There has been a total lack of leadership by Bush, Obama, and Trump on this issue.
And Governor Cuomo? Nope. He didn’t fight for it either—more lack of leadership.
And neither did Pelosi, Reid, McConnell, Ryan, Boehner, Schumer, or any other leader of our Congress. A complete lack of leadership for a situation that everyone knew would eventually happen.
BTW, the current candidates for POTUS in 2020: Biden, Sanders, and Trump – nope. None of them did anything when they were in positions that could have influenced this.
All of our government leaders failed us on both sides of the aisle. They taxed the hell out of us. They whined and complained about other stupid shit. They gave incentives for solar energy, oil production, buying stuff on the internet, buying health insurance, fighting bad guys in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Syria. But prepare the country for a pandemic? Nope.
They all said, “Hopefully, that pandemic will happen when I am not in office, and the next person can worry about that.” Guess what, we are the next person. We are now worrying about it, and our bickering Federal government messed up big time.
The Federal government is really only good at two things
- the infrastructure that hundreds of thousands or millions of people rely on
- the defense of our country and people.
To be honest, the government isn’t all that good at those two things, but it is the only entity that can do them. The government shouldn’t be doing other things. It should focus on doing those two things and do them as well as possible, giving the inefficiencies of an organization that has no competition.
It is woefully incapable of doing anything else well. In just about every case other than the two cited, private industry that competes with others will do a better job. Will the private sector screw something up? Absolutely! But then that private enterprise will be displaced by a competitor that will perform better.
Pandemic relief falls into both categories. It is the defense of our people, and it is the infrastructure to support that defense. We did both poorly for pandemic relief, and it is now costing us dearly.
What is the solution? Throw the bums out. Every damn one of them. They failed us. They screwed up. They should be rewarded with losing their jobs.
We need politicians that are focused on just doing the two things that only the federal government can do. We need politicians to look at a bill and say, “Is this something that ONLY the federal government can do and therefore is in the above two categories?” If the answer to that question is NO, then the politicians need to vote it down. If the answer to that question is YES, then the politicians need to approve it and give it the appropriate funding and oversight that it is done as well as possible.
Header Photo by Parentingupstream (Pixabay)
Many Politicians Are Two-Faced When It Comes To Tariffs
As I write this, POTUS Donald Trump is pledging to begin tariffs on Mexico for its accused lack of assistance in the immigration crisis on the southern border of the US. Here is a quick news account from Politico:
The White House pledged on Thursday to charge ahead on tariffs on Mexico, saying the U.S. position “has not changed” after officials met for a second day to address the steady flow of Central American migrants trying to enter the United States.
Talks between Mexican and U.S. officials at the White House wrapped up without resolution. Several key officials in the administration were unavailable for negotiations. President Donald Trump was in France for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, and both Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were on the road.
Just about every politician is talking out of both sides of their mouth on this issue. This includes a good portion of the Republicans (especially Mr. Trump) and nearly ever Democrat that I can think of.
To be crystal clear, I despise the use of tariffs against another country. I don’t like taxes in general and using taxes as weapon (i.e. tariffs) is simply a bad practice.
Tariffs are taxes. Plain and simple. They are taxes on corporations that import from the punished country, which in this case is Mexico.
The problem with tariffs and corporate taxes is that corporations never pay taxes. They incur costs. They pass those taxes as costs on to their customers in the form of higher prices for the product. They think of taxes as the same as wages, costs of materials, rent on their buildings, etc. It is a separate line item on their financial sheet, but it is deducted from their income the same way when calculating earnings.
It isn’t the corporation that pays the taxes, it is the consumer. Worse, the tax is regressive in that it is applied to all consumers of the product regardless of their ability to afford to pay or their income. Nearly everyone agrees that regressive taxes that take a larger percentage of poor people’s income than the percentage of wealthy people is unfair. But corporate taxes and tariffs are exactly that – a regressive tax on poor people.
Trump and most Republicans want lower corporate taxes. This, in general, is a good thing because as I said above, corporations don’t pay taxes – they only incur costs that are passed to their consumers. Corporate taxes are an evil and regressive tax against consumers.
So it is illegitimate for Trump and these anti-corporate tax Republicans to support the tariff on Mexico (and probably on China, but China is a different problem).
Democrat readers shouldn’t get too excited about the above paragraph, as they are actually worse.
Most of the leaders of the Democrat party are in favor of raising corporate taxes. This is a terrible stance since, as I stated above, corporate taxes are simply a regressive tax against the poor. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the poor worker and yet they support regressively taxing those people. That is incredibly evil and insincere. They only do it because it plays well in political speeches. Democrats don’t really want to help poor people, they just want to be re-elected (which is also the goal of Republicans). They are willing to be for a tax that hurts their constituents rather than be truthful and lead those constituents. This is unbelievably cruel and ruthless.
But then Democrats become even more two-faced. Because they hate Trump so much they oppose the Mexican tariff. This is ridiculous if they were ideologically pure since tariffs (while very bad IMO) are simply what most Democrats espouse – higher corporate taxes.
So what does all of that mean?
Unfortunately, it is simple. Both parties are mostly evil and don’t want to help Americans. They are willing to lie and mislead their constituents simply to retain their individual jobs. The only valid option as voters is to THROW THE BUMS OUT! EVERY LAST SITTING FEDERAL POLITICIAN NEEDS TO LOSE THEIR JOB IN THEIR NEXT ELECTION!