On voting…
Tag: elections
This Election Season, Beware of These False Promises
As elections approach, sweeping generalizations have a certain allure that often energizes the frustrated and captivates the hopeful. However, it’s essential that we as voters remember that things that seem too good to be true typically are. Here are a few warnings.
First, as far as our finances go, beware of politicians promising that they won’t touch Social Security and Medicare. In reality, they’ll have no choice. For one thing, if they keep this hollow promise, Social Security benefits will be cut across the board in 2033 by over 20 percent. According to the Committee for a Responsible Budget, that’s a cut of between $12,000 and $17,000 annually for a traditional retired couple. Medicare faces the same predicament for a variety of reasons.
The only workaround from this reality, which has been known for decades, is for Democrats and Republicans to finally come together for serious reform. That will likely result in a reduction of benefits and an increase in taxes. As unpleasant as it will be, we’d better hope that politicians don’t take the cowardly path and resort to shoving the problem onto Uncle Sam’s proverbial credit card (by paying all benefits that exceed payroll-tax receipts out of general revenues).
As the Manhattan Institute’s Brian Riedl noted recently, “Social Security and Medicare are projected by the CBO to spend $156 trillion in benefits but collect only $87 trillion in payroll taxes and premiums. This $69 trillion cash shortfall will have to be financed by budget deficits, which will in turn be responsible for $47 trillion of interest costs on the national debt.” Who will lend the U.S. government $114 trillion, even at unprecedentedly high interest rates?
That’s a question voters should ask politicians who promise never to touch entitlement programs. Those who claim it’s an easy fix by taxing the rich should be immediately dismissed as unserious. The numbers don’t add up. Any other one-sided ideological answers to an accounting question won’t cut it, either.
Feds charge Virginia sheriff with selling badges for campaign contributions
The sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia faces federal charges in an alleged scheme to hand out deputy badges in exchange for campaign contributions, Reuters reported.
“In an indictment unsealed on Thursday in the Western District of Virginia, Culpeper County Sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins, 51, is accused of abusing his position by engaging in a scheme to appoint volunteers to serve as auxiliary deputy sheriffs in exchange for bribes,” reported Sarah Lynch. “Through this alleged scheme, prosecutors said he accepted at least $72,500. Three of the men who accepted deputy sheriff appointments — Rick Tariq Rahim, 55, of Great Falls; Fredric Gumbinner, 64, of Fairfax; James Metcalf, 60, of Manassas are also charged in the case.”
According to the report, Jenkins also allegedly accepted a bribe from Rahim to approve a petition to restore his right to carry a gun, in violation of the state’s residency requirements.
“The indictment alleges he authorized auxiliary deputy sheriffs to carry concealed firearms in any state without obtaining permits, encouraged them to pay bribes through other individuals, and disguised the payments as firearms purchases,” said the report. “Undercover FBI agents helped investigate the scheme by posing as people who were interested in becoming auxiliary deputy sheriffs, with one of them even pretending to have a criminal record.”
Zelensky Says No Elections In Ukraine Until War Is Over
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told BBC last week that there will be no Ukrainian presidential election in 2024 if martial law is still in effect, The New Voice of Ukraine reported.
Zelensky’s five-year term is due to end in 2024, but his comments suggest that it will be extended indefinitely if the war isn’t over by then. He made similar comments about Ukraine’s parliamentary elections, which are due to be held in October of this year, in an interview with The Washington Post last month.
When asked if parliamentary elections will be held this fall, Zelensky said, “If we have martial law, we cannot have elections. The constitution prohibits any elections during martial law. If there is no martial law, then there will be.”
However, in the latest interview he “expressed hope that there would be peace in Ukraine next year, and life would be returning to normal.”
Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, also said this month that elections can’t happen in Ukraine under martial law, which Zelensky declared when Russia invaded. “Ukrainian legislation stipulates it is impossible to hold any elections during martial law. And this makes sense,” he said.
Stefanchuk added that if elections happen, it could “lead to the rupture of the state, which our enemy is waiting for. That is why I think the most correct and wise decision is to hold elections immediately after the end of martial law.”
A Delaware city is set to give corporations the right to vote in elections
The state of Delaware is famously business-friendly. With more than 1.8 million entities registered in the First State, companies outnumber its human residents by nearly two-to-one.
One city is now moving to raise businesses’ influence in the state even further, with a proposal to grant them the right to vote.
Seaford, a town of about 8,000 on the Nanticoke River, amended its charter in April to allow businesses — including LLCs, corporations, trusts or partnerships — the right to vote in local elections. The law would go into effect once both houses of Delaware’s state legislature approve it.
The proposal has rekindled a debate over how much power corporations should have in local government, with fierce opposition from civic interest groups who say businesses already wield too much influence over politics.
“It was very shocking to see this attempt to have artificial entities have voting rights,” said Claire Snyder-Hall, executive director of Common Cause Delaware, a watchdog group.
“We’re seeing voter suppression all over the county, and this is the flipside,” she added. “It’s not saying the residents of Seaford can’t vote, but it’s diluting their votes by allowing nonresidents to vote.”
Vote harder…
Deja blue: Printer’s flub makes every Nassau County voter a Democrat
An upstate printer has once again screwed up downstate election materials, this time by mailing registration cards to Nassau County’s nearly 1 million voters — identifying them all as Democrats.
“It’s a terrible error. People are upset. People are angry. There is a lot of confusion,” GOP County Executive Bruce Blakeman seethed at a Tuesday press conference.
Democrats make up about 40 percent of the county’s 972,000 voters, according to state Board of Election records from February.
Blakeman ruled out partisanship as a likely cause of the mistake but said the county is investigating what did happen.
This week’s flub by the Rochester-based Phoenix Graphics comes two years after the company messed up absentee ballots for 100,000 Brooklynites shortly before the 2020 election, prompting outrage from voters concerned about whether their votes would count. The mistake extended into Nassau County as well, where nearly 800 people also received botched ballots.
Phoenix will now pay the roughly $300,000 needed to resend a correct registration card to every Nassau voter, Democratic County Election Commissioner Jim Scheuerman told The Post.
9 Ways to Stop Cooperating with the Ruling Elite’s Control System
Done sneakily, or under the illusion of democracy, in recent times more oppressive laws have been made than ever before. Between us being subjected to more and more ordinances, rules, restrictions and outright laws then demonizing our dissension and opinion should we object… It’s as if we can’t do anything right.
How long will it take for the masses to wake up to these grossly restricting laws and realize how un-free they are? The masses’ unchallenging complacency with these laws has been made that much easier through social conditioning engineered over the years by the ruling elite.
In this charade, the power-mad egomaniac manipulating controlling parasitical ruling elite impose themselves on almost everything for their ulterior motives: ownership, power, profit and political gain – and that’s it. It’s that straightforward. It’s that pathetic.
These forever-increasing control mechanisms: regulations, rules, absurd mandates, threats of fines, intimidation, extreme petty police reprisals and imprisonment … are designed to sap the life-force from us while denying our true self-expression as we’re expected to bow down in acquiescence. It’s all designed to erode humanity into a subservient entity.
How do we break this manipulation?
Churches’ role in local election prompts calls for investigations
Voters in West Texas have decisively rejected three conservative Christian candidates who campaigned on infusing religious values into local decision-making. But the support the candidates received from local churches during the race has prompted calls for state and federal investigations and triggered a local political reckoning.
“I think there should definitely be some penalties,” said Weldon Hurt, a two-term Abilene City Council member who won his race for mayor against one of the candidates. “I don’t know how severe it should be, but I think there has to be a way to curtail this from happening again,” he added. “I think there should be some discipline to these churches.”
ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported a day before the May 6 election that three churches had donated a total of $800 to the campaign of Scott Beard, a pastor who was running for City Council. That was a clear violation of the Johnson Amendment, a law passed in 1954 by Congress prohibiting nonprofits from intervening in political campaigns. The IRS can revoke the tax exemption of violators, but there’s only one publicly known example of it doing so, nearly 30 years ago.
Beard, a senior pastor at Fountaingate Fellowship, said the donations were a mistake and that he would be returning the money. But within days after Beard’s defeat to retired Air Force Col. Brian Yates, a national group that espouses the separation of church and state demanded that the IRS revoke the churches’ tax exemptions.
“Beard is insisting that he has returned the donation checks, but his belated attempt at contrition doesn’t mitigate the initial transgressions” of the churches making the donations, the Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote in a news release. The group has sued the IRS in the past “to force it to take steps to enforce the law against tax-exempt entities from engaging in partisan politicking, and is prepared to sue again if necessary.”
Hunter S. Thompson on voters…
Hellbound and Down 
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