Boots & Sabers

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Biden’s Thinking About Gas Gimmicks

by | 1821, 20 Jun 2222 | , | 16 Comments

Our president is trying to replace a coherent American energy policy with gimmicks to ease the political damage to himself. It is also worth noting that he is speaking to reporters about Americans’ pain at the pumps from… the beach. Again.

“I hope to have a decision based on the data I’m looking for by the end the week,” Biden told reporters by the seaside in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, when asked whether he was considering backing a gas tax holiday.

Such a pause in the 18.3-cent-per-gallon federal tax would require Congress to act, and there has been little traction among lawmakers on the idea so far. But the administration is eager to find areas of relief for American consumers contending with skyrocketing gas prices as the summer begins. Monday’s nationwide average for gas was just under $5 per gallon.

Biden said he is also weighing whether to back sending Americans gas rebate cards: “That’s part of what we’re considering, that’s part of the whole operation,” he said.

Fina Issues Rule on Transgender Swimmers

by | 1816, 19 Jun 2222 | | 1 Comment

This seems like a reasonable rule, although, I seriously question the morality of allowing/forcing a child to go through changing their physical gender.

Fina, swimming’s world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women’s elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.

Fina will also aim to establish an ‘open’ category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.

The new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was described as “only a first step towards full inclusion” for transgender athletes.

The 34-page policy document says that male-to-female transgender athletes are still eligible to compete in the women’s category “provided they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 [which marks the start of physical development], or before age 12, whichever is later”.

Wisconsin’s pro-abortion governor

by | 1911, 18 Jun 2222 | | 1 Comment

Here is my full column that ran last week in the Washington County Daily News.

Gov. Tony Evers has issued another executive order calling the Legislature into a special session for something that could have been proposed in the regular session. This time, Evers wants the Legislature to repeal the state law that prohibits all abortions unless the mother’s life is in danger. There are some curious aspects of Evers’ order.

 

The reason that Evers is calling for a special session is because a leaked draft of an opinion of the United States Supreme Court indicated that the high court is going to overturn the terrible Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. The court has not released the opinion and that may not be the case, but it seems likely that the court will finally correct this legal and moral abomination.

 

If that happens, it does not prohibit abortion. It would relegate the legal regulation of abortion to the states. In Wisconsin, state law still prohibits abortions except if the mother’s life is in danger. That state law would be in effect the moment the Supreme Court overrules Roe. Evers has been a longtime supporter of abortion. The only thing that seems to get his gears more than aborting babies is spending money on government education. He has a history of doing everything he can to support abortions, including giving millions of dollars of federal COVID relief money to Planned Parenthood. True to form, Evers is trying to make sure the abortion mill keeps grinding should Roe be overturned. Of course, the Republican-led Legislature is not going to repeal the state’s abortion ban. They know it. Evers knows it. Evers is calling for a special session for the sole political reason of making sure there are a few headlines from a compliant media that he can put in his re-election ads. It won’t sway any votes, but it will reaffirm his pro-abortion bona fides.

 

The language of Evers’ executive order itself is incredibly revealing. Words matter and, presumably, a lifelong educator chose his words with purpose. Let us look at a couple of excerpts. From Executive Order #168: “WHEREAS, licensed healthcare professionals should be able to provide appropriate, evidence-based medical advice to patients making reproductive healthcare decisions without fear of intimidation or criminal prosecution, and politicians should not interfere with the relationship between a patient and their doctor.”

 

Really? I seem to recall that Evers and his fellow Democrats have spent the last three years telling everyone that they must get a COVID vaccine. They have even mandated that people inject a new serum under penalty of law. They have shamed people who declined the vaccines and advocated that they should be shunned and prohibited from work. Forgive me if I roll my eyes at Evers’ protestations about politicians meddling in healthcare decisions.

 

Then there is this form the order: “without swift action, so many people — our neighbors, parents, families, and friends — could soon be unable to access the healthcare they need and deserve … .”

 

Did you notice something? In Evers’ full-throated defense of abortion, he never uses the word “woman” or that denotes that it is women who get pregnant and women who get abortions. In the new leftist orthodoxy, women are being erased with the dogma that anyone can get pregnant and have an abortion. The Democrats’ war on women is in full advance and Evers is merrily playing his fife in the vanguard.

 

Under this new convention, Evers is very specifically not defending women’s rights. He is defending abortions. Evers even calls his proposed law the “Abortion Rights Preservation Act.” Evers isn’t about women or women’s rights. He is about the abortions.

Planned Parenthood Stops Scheduling Abortions in Wisconsin

by | 1631, 17 Jun 2222 | , | 6 Comments

Wonderful news!

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, which operates three clinics that provide abortions in the state, is not scheduling the procedure beyond June 25 as it anticipates a late June decision reversing the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. The organization in recent weeks has dedicated two staff members to help patients book appointments and figure out how to get to clinics.

 

Whether clinics in Wisconsin will be able to provide abortions, though, has turned into a day-to-day question.

Bart Williams Runs for Assembly

by | 0510, 17 Jun 2222 | | 3 Comments

Bart Williams, formerly of the West Bend School Board and a long-time conservative leader, is running for Assembly. He is challenging incumbent Tyler August. Here’s why he says he’s running:

  1. Election integrity: Along with many of you (thank you, by the way), I stood up and tried really hard in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (so far) to stop the criminal theft of the 11/3/2020 elections [and the unnecessary 1/5/2021 Georgia U.S. Senate runoff, which those criminal Democrats involved (plus the organized crime they hired – e.g., 2,000-plus ballot mules to illegally harvest and then use illegal drop boxes to criminally stuff the ballot box for Biden/Harris; see the honest, accurate, excellent documentary, “2000 Mules” for more details) first fraudulently forced and then criminally stole], while Vos and August did nothing to stop this. In fact, Vos illegally (i.e., with no legal authority) and formally (in a 9/25/2020 letter from his attorney) agreed to illegal ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin.  Bottom line: I will ALWAYS stand up for complete election integrity, even if I am the only legislator to do so!

 

  1. Maximize our individual freedoms: Gov. Evers only had the legal authority to lock us down for 60 days, per Wisconsin Statutes, from March to May 2020. After that, the GOP-majority Legislature could have ended the lockdown extensions any time with a simple majority vote of each chamber.  Yet, Vos, August, and the rest refused to for 9 more months, until Feb. 2021. If they were just going to end them then, anyway, they should have ended them 9 months earlier.  Instead, they wrongfully let millions of Wisconsinites suffer for 9 extra months – more closed businesses, churches, schools (kids lost a year of schooling due to ineffective “virtual education”), etc.  Mr. August needs to be held fully accountable for that serious injustice and misery inflicted on all of us.  I won’t let what he did happen.  I will vigorously defend ALL our individual freedoms, including our key Second Amendment gun rights which are under serious attack right now but are truly the “teeth” behind all our other rights and freedoms.

 

  1. Pro-life: I am pro-life.  I always have been, and I always will be.  I testified in Madison in 2015 to ban the sale of aborted fetal baby body parts.  The GOP had the full state government (2011-2019) but refused to pass this bill into law.

 

  1. Education reform: I am all about this.  I recently earned my Ed.D. in Educational Leadership, served three elected public-school board terms, and helped found and start up (and was its first Principal) Lake Country Classical Academy (LCCA), the very first Hillsdale College affiliated classical public charter school in WI.  Please see my attached flyer.  My opponent has done essentially NOTHING to reform public education, but he threw lots of extra taxpayer money at it in 2017 while requiring no improvement in return (e.g., much of that extra $800 million went to Milwaukee Public Schools, which were failing then and have gotten even worse).

 

  1. Term limits: I believe in term limits of no more than 8 years in any one office, except for 12 years for U.S. Senator (i.e., two terms).  George Washington set an excellent example and precedent in this regard.  By contrast, my opponent is going for his SEVENTH TERM now, with no end/limit in sight.  He’s a career politician.

Cornyn Leaves Gun Control Negotiation

by | 2121, 16 Jun 2222 | | 2 Comments

Let’s hope this breaks down further.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a lead GOP bargainer, seemed visibly unhappy as he left Thursday’s closed-door session after nearly two hours, saying he was flying home.

 

“This is the hardest part because at some point, you just got to make a decision. And when people don’t want to make a decision, you can’t accomplish the result. And that’s kind of where we are right now,” Cornyn said.

 

“I’m not frustrated, I’m done,” he added, though he said he was open to continued discussions.

Biden Threatens Oil Companies with Government Interference

by | 1607, 15 Jun 2222 | , | 18 Comments

Even if one supported the federal government forcing private companies to produce a product, Biden’s record of complete failure in everything he touches should scare the hell out of you.

Biden is also threatening to use his ’emergency power’ if oil companies do not take action to lower prices for a gallon of gas.

 

‘Government tools and emergency authorities to increase refinery capacity and output in the near term, and to ensure that every region of this country is appropriately supplied,’ he wrote. ‘Already, I have invoked emergency powers to execute the largest Strategic Petroleum Reserve release in history, expand access to E15 (gasoline with 15% ethanol), and authorize the use of the Defense Production Act to provide reliable inputs into energy production.’

 

‘I am prepared to use all tools at my disposal, as appropriate, to address barriers to providing Americans affordable, secure energy supply,’ he added.

Government Spending is Driving U.S. Inflation

by | 0726, 14 Jun 2222 | | 1 Comment

You have to go to the foreign media to wade through the spin. Of course, this used to be common knowledge… printing a lot of money and dumping it into the economy drives up inflation. It happens every time.

Last year, businesses around the world started raising prices at a pace not seen in decades. Among major economies, one country was hit the worst – the United States.

Prices jumped at an annual rate of 4.7% last year – faster than any other country in the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In the UK, for example, inflation was just 2.5%.

 

Last month, inflation in the US hit 8.6%, one of the highest rates in the world.

 

Many of the forces driving inflation last year – such as supply disruptions from Covid and higher food prices after severe storms and drought hurt harvests – were not unique to the US.

 

The reason the US fared worse? In two words – high demand.

That was driven by the massive $5tn (£4.1tn) in spending the US government approved to shield households and businesses from the economic shock of the pandemic.

 

A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded that pandemic relief packages probably contributed to 3 percentage points of the rise in inflation until the end of 2021 – a factor that goes a long way to explaining why US inflation outpaced the rest of the world.

 

Oscar Jorda, senior policy adviser at the bank and one of the people who worked on the study, cautioned against reading too much into the exact percentages, but said the overall picture is clear.

 

“These programmes… were a considerable infusion of liquidity into consumers’ pockets at a time when perhaps industry wasn’t quite ready to respond to an increase in demand,” he said in an interview in May. They “signified a big push of what I would call demand push inflation”.

Wisconsin’s pro-abortion governor

by | 0719, 14 Jun 2222 | | 0 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

The language of Evers’ executive order itself is incredibly revealing. Words matter and, presumably, a lifelong educator chose his words with purpose. Let us look at a couple of excerpts. From Executive Order #168: “WHEREAS, licensed healthcare professionals should be able to provide appropriate, evidence-based medical advice to patients making reproductive healthcare decisions without fear of intimidation or criminal prosecution, and politicians should not interfere with the relationship between a patient and their doctor.”

 

Really? I seem to recall that Evers and his fellow Democrats have spent the last three years telling everyone that they must get a COVID vaccine. They have even mandated that people inject a new serum under penalty of law. They have shamed people who declined the vaccines and advocated that they should be shunned and prohibited from work. Forgive me if I roll my eyes at Evers’ protestations about politicians meddling in healthcare decisions.

 

Then there is this form the order: “without swift action, so many people — our neighbors, parents, families, and friends — could soon be unable to access the healthcare they need and deserve … .”

 

Did you notice something? In Evers’ full-throated defense of abortion, he never uses the word “woman” or that denotes that it is women who get pregnant and women who get abortions. In the new leftist orthodoxy, women are being erased with the dogma that anyone can get pregnant and have an abortion. The Democrats’ war on women is in full advance and Evers is merrily playing his fife in the vanguard.

White House Praises Biden’s Economic Record

by | 2053, 13 Jun 2222 | , | 2 Comments

So… this is what Biden considers a good economy? I’d hate to see what he think a bad one looks like.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre argued President Biden actually made historic economic gains, which would help the American people go through these economic ‘challenges.’

 

She blamed inflation – prices in May were 8.6% higher than a year earlier – the greatest increase since 1981 – on the covid pandemic and on Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s war in the Ukraine.

 

‘You know, with this price, high inflation coming, coming out every once in a generation, global pandemic, all of those things play a factor,’ Jean-Pierre said.

 

But, she argued, that America would bounce back under Biden.

 

‘The American people are well positioned to face these challenges because of the economic historic gains that we have made under this president in the last six months,’ she noted.

Biden can’t seem to figure out a message and shifts from day to day. First, the economy is bad and it’s Trump’s fault. Then it’s Putin. Then it’s the pandemic. Then it’s corporate greed. Then the economy is actually great. Then the economy is bad, but Biden can’t do anything about it. Then the economy is good again and it’s because of Biden.

Which is it?

Averagen Gas Prices Surge to $5.10 per Gallon

by | 1955, 12 Jun 2222 | , | 39 Comments

But… but… Putin or something.

CAMARILLO, Calif. — The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline spiked 39 cents over the past three weeks to $5.10 per gallon.

 

Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey said Sunday that the price jump comes amid higher crude oil costs and tight gasoline supplies.

 

The average price at the pump is $1.97 higher than it was one year ago.

When can we all admit that Democrats’ policies are crushing our economy? The only real question left is whether their policies are rooted in malice or stupidity.

Vaccines “Appear” to Be Safe for Small Kids

by | 1948, 12 Jun 2222 | | 1 Comment

Yeah… no. The chances of a child under 5 getting very sick or dying from COVID is almost nothing. I’ll take those odds over a vaccine that “appears” to be safe and whose effects are not known after two years.

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials said Sunday that kid-sized doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines appear to be safe and effective for kids under 5, a key step toward a long-awaited decision to begin vaccinating the youngest American children.

 

The Food and Drug Administration posted its analysis of the Pfizer shot ahead of a Wednesday meeting where outside experts will vote on whether the shots are ready for the nation’s 18 million babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Kids under 5 are the only group not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

 

Late last week the FDA posted a similar analysis of Moderna’s shots for children under 6.

Trump’s endorsement changes GOP primary

by | 1750, 10 Jun 2222 | | 3 Comments

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week

The long wait and speculation is over. Donald Trump has weighed in on the Republican primary for governor. Trump endorsed candidate Tim Michels saying, “Tim Michels is the best candidate to deliver meaningful solutions to these problems, and he will produce jobs like no one else can even imagine.” What does Trump’s endorsement mean for the election?

 

There is little doubt that Donald Trump still holds great sway in the Republican Party. Given his tremendous success as president and the legions of voters he attracted to the GOP, there are many Republican candidates who covet Trump’s endorsement. They covet it with good reason. Trump’s endorsement has the power to raise marginal candidates to be viable and to give a candidate enough support to win in a tight race. Trump’s endorsed candidates have a remarkable record of winning, but there are a couple of facts to keep in mind with that record. First, Trump has many positive qualities, but they come with some deep personal flaws. He is as narcissistic as they come and he wants to win. This has led him to endorse several candidates who were already going to win handily. This character flaw has also led him to endorse losing candidates because of personal grudges (Georgia). It also leads him to sometimes endorse the candidate that he thinks is going to win instead of who might actually be the best person for the job.

 

This leads us to the second fact to bear in mind with Trump endorsements. Trump’s passion to win trumps any ideology. His endorsements do not necessarily mean that the endorsee is conservative. For example, Dr. Mehmet Oz has a long-standing history of supporting gun control and big government healthcare, but he squeaked out a win in Pennsylvania over a proven conservative after Trump endorsed him. These are issues that loom large in the next Congress and Oz may prove to be a bad apple in the barrel of conservative policy.

 

With all of that in mind, Trump’s endorsement still matters a great deal in a tightly contested primary race like in Wisconsin. The difference of a few thousand votes could make the difference. Remembering that the Republican primary voter is not the same demographic as a general election voter, the impact of the endorsement in Wisconsin is varied.

 

Candidates Tim Michels, Rebecca Kleefisch, Kevin Nicholson, and Tim Ramthun all wanted Trump’s endorsement, but it mattered differently for each of them. For Ramthun, Trump’s endorsement was his only path to victory, but even had he received the endorsement, he stood little chance of winning. It was a long shot and he has zero chance of winning.

 

Nicholson is in much the same boat as Ramthun. Nicholson is a more viable candidate than Ramthun, but with two heavyweights in the race, he needed Trump’s endorsement to put him back in the ring. Without the endorsement of Trump, Nicholson’s odds are very, very long to edge out a victory.

 

Then there were two. Kleefisch had sought Trump’s endorsement, but receiving it would have likely been a mixed bag for her. It would have made her a more attractive candidate for some of the more Trumpian primary voters, but might have also turned off some of the stalwart conservative base Republicans who handed Senator Ted Cruz the primary victory in 2016 instead of Trump. Kleefisch won 55% of the vote at the state Republican convention a few weeks ago demonstrating that she already enjoys significant support amongst the reliable Republican primary voter.

 

By endorsing Michels, Trump has probably leveraged his greatest possible impact on the race. Coming in late, Michels is blitzing the state with commercials and had already moved to a virtual tie with Kleefisch. Trump’s endorsement gives Michels unlimited free media attention from a mainstream media that still laps up whatever scrap Trump throws in their bowls. The endorsement also likely moves some voters from Nicholson and Ramthun into the Michels camp. Combined, it makes Michels the frontrunner with nine weeks to go until the election.

 

Perhaps endorsing Michels was inevitable for Trump. They share interests as builders and businessmen. Michels was something of an insider during the Trump administration while serving on Trump’s infrastructure task force and as a financial supporter. Michels fits the same mold of the businessman-turned-politician. But Trump is always Trump’s biggest fan and does not endorse candidates who do not demonstrate fealty.

 

My fervent hope remains that the Republicans have a robust debate about the issues that matter to Wisconsinites and how Gov. Tony Evers has failed the people of Wisconsin. Winning on Aug. 9 is important for the candidates. Winning on Nov. 8 is crucial for Wisconsin.

Inflation Continues to Worsen

by | 0750, 10 Jun 2222 | , | 9 Comments

Our economy is collapsing and families are hurting as the politicians and media put on a theater production in D.C.

Inflation accelerated further in May, with prices rising 8.6% from a year ago for the fastest increase since December 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

 

The consumer price index, a wide-ranging measure of goods and services prices, increased even more than the 8.3% Dow Jones estimate. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 6%, slightly higher than the 5.9% estimate.

On a monthly basis, headline CPI was up 1% while core rose 0.6%, compared to respective estimates of 0.7% and 0.5%.

 

Surging shelter, gasoline and food prices all contributed to the increase.

 

Energy prices broadly rose 3.9% from a month ago, bringing the annual gain to 34.6%. Within the category, fuel oil posted a 16.9% monthly gain, pushing the 12-month surge to 106.7%.

 

Shelter costs, which account for about a one-third weighting on the CPI, rose 0.6% for the month and now are 5.5% higher from a year ago.

 

Finally, food costs climbed another 1.2% in May, bringing the year-over-year gain to 10.1%.

Washington County Extends “Temporary” Sales Tax… Again

by | 0732, 9 Jun 2222 | | 1 Comment

I know that I’ve been on this for 20 years, but this is the object lesson for never believing government when they sell a tax as a “temporary” measure for some “emergency.” Come to think of it, that lesson applies to any government program.

WEST BEND — The Washington County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved keeping the county’s 0.5% sales tax in place Wednesday night.

As a reminder, I wrote this is 2006:

In 1998, Washington County was in a bit of a pickle. Several large capital improvement projects, like an expansion of the University of Wisconsin Washington County, the courthouse addition, and new Highway Department facilities, were looming and there wasn’t going to be enough tax revenue to pay for them. In the face of a crisis, the County Board did what governments always do – they raised taxes.

 

In this case, the new tax came in the form of a half penny county sales tax. They also designated part of the sales tax to be used for debt service, but that didn’t kick in until three years ago. Since 1999, the sales tax has removed over $49,400,000 from the pockets of people who choose to spend money in Washington County. Since the new sales tax was primarily for one time expenses, the County Board put in a provision that says that the County Board can vote to stop collecting the tax in 2006 – this year. If no vote is taken to stop the tax, then the tax will continue indefinitely.

A Lefty Explores the Depravity of San Francisco

by | 0632, 8 Jun 2222 | , | 20 Comments

How bad? This bad.

“And quite frankly, what San Francisco’s doing is not a safe consumption site at the Tenderloin Center. For lack of a better term, it’s opium den, where people can sit in Adirondack chairs and shoot dope all day. They’re monitored by a nonprofit worker that was given ten minutes of training on how to administer Narcan.”

 

As for whether addicts are availing themselves of services at Tenderloin Center, Wolf said, they are not.

 

“Forty thousand people have gone to that Tenderloin Center in the last month, and they linked less than half a percent of those people to treatment,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of weird experiment San Francisco is doing right now, but I promise you that that’s not helping anybody find recovery.”

 

Instead of fostering wellness, the center seems to be metastasizing the problem, the addiction spilling into the streets. I am going to do my best to not put too fine a point on this, to not illustrate what is happening within a few feet of Sandberg and me in a way that makes you think I am trying to win you to one side or another, but if you will, here is the scene: A young man stands in front of us babbling for ten minutes, wanting us to buy a vape pen or to have sex, it’s unclear which. A toothless woman screams. A legless man lights a pipe. Tourists photograph each other with City Hall in the middle distance, and a woman with a leg cast encrusted in grime rolls past. It’s not possible to tell how old she is: thirty? Fifty? She has no possessions that I can see, and no destination, rolling in a desultory manner toward and then away from several men also in wheelchairs, one whose foot is so badly infected my groin contracts and feels flash-burned.

Once again, we see a leftist policy that is allegedly based on good intentions (help addicts be safe and give them access to treatment) end up in utter failure and making the problem worse. These policies are rooted in a fantasy version of the human condition instead of the real world.

I’ve known my fair share of addicts. I have lost family members to addiction. Many of us have. And there is a truth to addiction… enablement just makes it worse. They have to hit a bottom before they will seek treatment. Often times that bottom is losing their marriage, job, or home. Sometimes it is going to jail where they have an opportunity to truly detox and get treatment. But offering an addict a “safe place” to indulge their demons with no consequences will always end up just like it did in San Francisco.

It’s cruel. It’s cruel to the addicts and it’s cruel to the people who have to suffer from the crime and disease that radiates out from them.

British Theater Chain Cancels Showings of Movie about Muhammad’s Daughter

by | 0604, 8 Jun 2222 | , | 1 Comment

What a shame for liberal thought.

Cineworld has cancelled all UK screenings of a film about the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, after it prompted protests outside some cinemas.

 

The cinema chain said it made the decision “to ensure the safety of our staff and customers”.

 

More than 120,000 people have signed a petition for The Lady of Heaven film to be pulled from UK cinemas.

 

The Bolton Council of Mosques called the film “blasphemous” and sectarian.

 

But House of Lords peer Baroness Claire Fox called the decision “disastrous for the arts [and] dangerous for free speech”, while Health Secretary Sajid Javid said he was “very concerned about the growing cancel culture” in the UK.

 

In an email to Cineworld, reported by the Bolton News, the chairman of the Bolton Council of Mosques, Asif Patel, said the film was “underpinned with a sectarian ideology” and “misrepresents orthodox historical narratives and disrespects the most esteemed individuals of Islamic history”.

Californian Voters Vote for Anti-Crime Candidates

by | 0601, 8 Jun 2222 | , | 1 Comment

How bad does it have to be for Californians to vote this way?

For months now, voters in San Francisco and Los Angeles have voiced their concerns that daily life in their cities appears to be spiraling out of control. Residents in San Francisco have been contending with a rise in burglaries and car thefts, as well an alarming spate of hate crimes directed against Asian Americans. Los Angeles residents have witnessed a sharp increase in violent crime, while city leaders have been grappling with a homelessness crisis that has led to the proliferation of tents and trash across parks, sidewalks and public spaces, while exposing an untreated mental health emergency on their streets.

On Tuesday, San Francisco voters registered their disquiet by recalling District Attorney Chesa Boudin amid concern that he was advancing progressive policies as a national criminal justice reform advocate at the cost of their safety. It was a move that signaled just how far the political pendulum has swung since the 2020 election cycle when many Democratic voters cited police accountability and criminal justice overhauls among their top concerns – a debate that reached a crescendo following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

On the same night, voters in the overwhelmingly progressive city of Los Angeles signaled their unease with Democrats’ handling of crime and homelessness by elevating billionaire shopping mall magnate Rick Caruso, a former Republican who became a Democrat earlier this year, into a runoff race to replace term-limited Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Trump’s endorsement changes GOP primary

by | 0658, 7 Jun 2222 | | 3 Comments

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

There is little doubt that Donald Trump still holds great sway in the Republican Party. Given his tremendous success as president and the legions of voters he attracted to the GOP, there are many Republican candidates who covet Trump’s endorsement. They covet it with good reason. Trump’s endorsement has the power to raise marginal candidates to be viable and to give a candidate enough support to win in a tight race. Trump’s endorsed candidates have a remarkable record of winning, but there are a couple of facts to keep in mind with that record. First, Trump has many positive qualities, but they come with some deep personal flaws. He is as narcissistic as they come and he wants to win. This has led him to endorse several candidates who were already going to win handily. This character flaw has also led him to endorse losing candidates because of personal grudges (Georgia). It also leads him to sometimes endorse the candidate that he thinks is going to win instead of who might actually be the best person for the job.

 

This leads us to the second fact to bear in mind with Trump endorsements. Trump’s passion to win trumps any ideology. His endorsements do not necessarily mean that the endorsee is conservative. For example, Dr. Mehmet Oz has a long-standing history of supporting gun control and big government healthcare, but he squeaked out a win in Pennsylvania over a proven conservative after Trump endorsed him. These are issues that loom large in the next Congress and Oz may prove to be a bad apple in the barrel of conservative policy.

 

With all of that in mind, Trump’s endorsement still matters a great deal in a tightly contested primary race like in Wisconsin. The difference of a few thousand votes could make the difference. Remembering that the Republican primary voter is not the same demographic as a general election voter, the impact of the endorsement in Wisconsin is varied.

Ancient Politician Heads to Africa During Campaign

by | 1938, 6 Jun 2222 | | 2 Comments

Arrogant or indifferent?

La Follette told The Associated Press that he plans to leave on a trip to Kenya and Zimbabwe on Sunday and doesn’t plan to return to Wisconsin until “early July.” The 81-year-old Democrat said he booked the trip two years ago but had to postpone it due to the COVID-19 pandemic and doesn’t want to lose his down payment.

The trip comes as La Follette faces a challenge within his own party for his job and with Republicans targeting his office.

“It’s probably not the best time, but I had no choice unless I had to forfeit the payment I made for it,” he said. “So I decided that life has to go on.”

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