Not An Exaggeration:
Civilization Itself Is At Risk

By Rob Meyne

  • March 18, 2024
  • 4-min read

If you haven’t read anything by Michael Shellenberger, check him out, and thank me later.

He is one of a very few honest and truly productive journalists around. He is by nature a leftist and award-winning environmentalist. He is anything but a traditional MAGA advocate. He’s never voted for Trump.

Yet, perhaps unlikely, he has become a hero to people who favor free speech and, thus, to many conservatives. It says a lot about the disreputable nature of journalism today that anyone who is objective and fair stands likely to be accused of being a Trump person.

Consider Alan Dershowitz, who is a lifelong liberal and Clinton voter. He is one of the most balanced, knowledgeable, and honest people anywhere in the legal profession (that may not be too high a bar, but still). He still stands up for equal and fair justice. As a result of pointing out the many ways in which Trump has been treated improperly, or just dramatically different than his political opponents, Dershowitz has been chided, criticized, abused, and no longer invited to the cool parties on Martha’s Vineyard. To his credit, Dershowitz laughs at them and says it is their loss.

There is no longer any doubt. If you dare to do anything against the “regime,” the self-appointed elite who want to run your lives, you are putting everything on the line. You will be trashed, threatened, and marginalized just for being objective.

Shellenberger is effective at debunking the climate hysteria. Fortunately, it seems like some of our leaders, companies, and organizations are waking up. We will see if it is too late.

Even if you think carbon emissions are ruining the world, there is no good argument for suddenly dropping fossil fuels and turning to things like wind and solar power that are not capable of meeting our needs, are more expensive, and less reliable.

Without carbon-based fuels, we could not sustain our world’s population, grow, and prosper. We do not currently have technologies that can instantly replace the essential sources on which we depend. The world improved dramatically in the past generation, and it is reflected in higher standards of living around the world. You know what made all that progress possible? Carbon-based fuels.

Plus, we’re already making progress. The EU’s carbon emissions peaked in the 1970s. America’s carbon emissions have declined for years and are now lower than a decade ago. Meanwhile, the two largest nations, China and India, are building coal-fired power plants and producing more CO2 all the time. Yet all you hear from the left is that we need to do OUR part. The focus is entirely on making America the villain.

Why? Because this isn’t really about climate. It is about control. The globalists who run our governments, policy organizations, and the mainstream media use climate as an excuse to restrict your freedom and build their own wealth. If you don’t understand this yet, just look at some photos of John Kerry on his private jet. Or of Barack Obama’s Massachusetts mansion, built in an area he claims will soon be underwater. You must reduce your carbon footprint, according to them, but they can’t be bothered.

The climate scare is being used to undermine western society, subvert our economies, and enrich the global elite. I know that sounds conspiratorial. But it is not a conspiracy, it is just the logical result of giving power to people who benefit from keeping others down.

Perhaps the most under-reported story of our lifetimes is that more than a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the past two decades. The reason? More nations have successfully embraced freedom and capitalism, and nothing reduces poverty like capitalism.

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The Rubicon has Been Crossed – A Long Piece on a Huge Problem

By Rob Meyne

  • Aug. 31, 2023
  • 7-min read

Yet another in a series of important, and tragic, events in American history occurred: the indictment of a former president on federal charges. This is unprecedented. Whatever you may think of former President Donald Trump, it says as much about the forces determined to stop him as it does about Trump himself. In no sense is this a good thing for the country.

It is easier to make decisions on most issues based on emotion and your own biases (factually based or not) than to make them based on facts and objectivity. This is such a case.

While we like to say we are a nation of laws, most decisions regarding who to prosecute involve an overwhelming amount of subjectivity. If you believe most prosecutions are based on facts alone then, with respect, you don’t know much about our system. Nearly all prosecutorial choices involve opinion, bias, and preferences. It is called “prosecutorial discretion.” The DA who indicted Trump in NY, for example, immediately on taking office, reduced the charges against thousands of people accused of violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. The facts had not changed, only the opinion of the DA.

I’ll go further and say that any lawyer who doesn’t recognize the decision to charge Trump is unjustifiable based on past actions in similar cases – and doesn’t say so – is at this point a hypocrite not deserving of membership in the bar. Any political observer who doesn’t admit this is an entirely unjustified prosecution is also either uninformed, corrupt, or lying. If that is too pointed or confrontational for you, my apologies, and maybe this piece isn’t your cup of tea. The stakes are high and the time for timidity is gone.

How is that for direct? 😊 You know who you are! With love and apologies all around, the time for being afraid to express your opinion is gone. We are in many ways losing our country, and if you don’t work to preserve it you are part of the problem.

The decision to charge Trump is politically driven. Period.

From the political side, it is very likely, in my view, that leading Democrats are pushing for prosecution of Trump because the know it will inflame his base and make his nomination more likely. They WANT Trump to be the nominee because they think they can beat him. At the same time, they know moderates and non-partisans will be hesitant to vote for someone under indictment or convicted.

The political ramifications will be interesting, but the legal outline is clear.

Every executive in Washington must follow a complex system of requirements and procedures for record-keeping. It is rare for Washington’s denizens NOT to violate a procedure, either intentionally or inadvertently. In almost all such cases there is either no punishment or only minor fines. That is what makes the Trump indictment indefensible. None of his predecessors has been subject to the same level of investigation, scrutiny, or potential sanctions.

Let’s be clear: The DOJ works for the president and is taking actions to affect his leading opponent and to impact the election. Anyone who doesn’t recognize that should just, candidly, go home and stay there on election day, because they are hopelessly naïve.

Memos and emails have already shown the White House was involved in the decision to search Mar-A-Lago, even though Biden claimed he didn’t even know it was going to happen. This White House spews more lies in a week than Pinocchio did in a lifetime, and they aren’t even particularly clever about it.

Remember: Bill Clinton had classified docs in his sock drawer.

Obama took thousands of docs to Chicago and said “we have thousands of classified documents. We will get them to you eventually.” But to date he has not.

Biden has kept classified documents in several locations, including in his own garage. He even has attorneys reviewing them who are not authorized and don’t have clearance. That act itself – allowing your own attorneys to review classified information – is espionage. Yet in this era of a two-tiered justice system he has faced no charges.

And, of course, the FBI has a report, from one of their trusted sources, that Biden was the recipient of a $5 million bribe, a fact also testified to in a Ukraine court. Yet the FBI fought to keep it secret, and even lied when they said the report did not exist. They’ve known about this for years but have done nothing. They have had evidence of crimes on Hunter’s laptop and have done nothing. Does anyone still really believe the system is fair?

On another side note, the Hildebeast herself did things that could have been prosecuted as espionage and obstruction of justice, if you believe FBI Director Comey, but she was charged with nothing under Obama’s DOJ. Trump’s DOJ could have prosecuted Hillary Clinton for those very crimes, but Trump thought it would be unseemly, and bad precedent, for a president to allow prosecution of a political opponent. Got it? Trump had more respect for the system than to indict an opponent; Biden does not.

Hillary Clinton, while under subpoena, destroyed 33,000 highly classified e-mails on her private server, broke up cell phones with a hammer, had staff cut off “top secret” from documents so they could copy them for her, and communicated regularly with President Obama on a private email (again, that is espionage). Yet she has faced no charges.

Vice President Pence took classified documents home. George W Bush, George H. W .Bush, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, David Petraeus, Dan Quayle, Jimmy Carter – all had classified docs.

Obama’s AG was held in contempt of Congress, Clinton’s national security advisor stole classified documents, took them home, and destroyed them.

ONLY Trump was charged with a crime. Only a couple of the others faced any sanctions at all.

Bottom line: the tradition, the custom, is to give great deference to former office holders and not throw the book at them. None of these people had their homes raided. Only Trump. At the time of the raid, his lawyers were in ongoing, regular discussion about exactly what documents the government wanted returned, and he had already allowed one search of his home and sent at least 18 boxes of docs to the archives. He had not “refused” to comply at all.

There is also the reality that the president has unrestricted authority to declassify anything he wants at any time, and to give people clearance to view them at any time. No one else has that authority. Trump maintains he declassified the documents he took with him. To do so, you do not have to fill out forms, get permission, or check boxes. You can simply do it. Just say it. Just make the decision. That will be an important defense.

IF we are to reach a point where, as a nation, we treat violations of record-keeping rules and classified procedures as prison-worthy offenses, let’s begin applying that new standard in the future. Let’s not retroactively treat conduct as being more egregious than we have traditionally considered it.

The barbaric injustice against Trump is an unprecedented abuse of power directed by Biden & DOJ Merrick Garland. The FBI has interfered in the past two presidential elections and continues to act as a partisan organization today. We are in danger of losing our nation if we allow this two-tiered system to continue. We are running out of time.

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Biden Makes It Clear:
He Doesn’t Like Us

By Rob Meyne

  • March 15, 2024
  • 5-min read

For those keeping score at home… The “success” in Biden’s SOTU speech was that… wait for it… he didn’t fall down, soil himself (maybe he only does that when he is with the Pope), or stand for a half hour frozen without speaking. Those were the highlights.

It was not a presidential speech so much as a campaign event that revealed more than they probably intended. There may never have been a more hate-filled speech given in the well of the House. The loathing of huge swaths of Americans was palpable and hard to miss given that he yelled most of it.

If you want to give the most important and powerful job in the world to the crazy old man who lives down the street and keeps yelling at you to keep your dog off his lawn, you will have your chance this November.

Let’s add this caveat: if certain terms like “hate” offend you, or seem excessive, think of your own term. Whatever is the right word – and hate doesn’t seem too strong to me – it is clear Biden no longer even bothers to pretend he likes many of us. If he doesn’t use the word “hate,” find your own. What do you prefer? Loathes, despises, vilifies? Get out you thesaurus and have at it.

He brags about it. If you are Republican, Independent, Conservative Democrat, corporate leader, or advocate for peace or financial responsibility – just a partial list – he despises you and considers you the enemy.

The field is stripped. It could not be clearer.

It is odd to me, as a lifelong political hack and campaign communications trainer, to see the Dems rejecting a clear component of any effective speech: you want to be likable. This isn’t as sacrosanct, I suppose, as it was at one time. Most people don’t find Trump warm and cuddly. Maybe we are beyond all that. But at least Trump is clearly fond of average, run of the mill Americans. Biden makes it clear he is not.

The Republican nominee is an unlikely hero for those who love freedom. Like the Kennedys or the Roosevelts, he is a wealthy man who somehow still has a link to the common person. Sometimes a lifeline is thrown to us from an unexpected source. President Trump is spectacularly right: they are coming for you and me. They aren’t even subtle about it. Please, please be cognizant enough to realize it before it is too late.

Unless you’re a Democratic Socialist (which is like being a free slave; it isn’t possible) or just a brainless sycophant, you can’t name a major human cohort he didn’t attack. He slammed businesses and their owners, the Supreme Court, and anyone who doesn’t buy into open borders and his brand of bigotry.
Basically, if you like free speech, a secure America, or a society where we know what a woman is, Biden hates you. If you are not willing to support the racist policies they promote in the name of DEI, he hates you. If you aren’t in love with the idea of another long war, he hates you.

He did nothing to build bridges. A man who has claimed he wants to be president of all the people gave most of us a middle finger. Typically, even the most partisan presidents spend quite a bit of their speech claiming they want unity. Several years ago, it was even a key part of Biden’s address. But no more.

Today, he doesn’t even bother to make a pitch for unity. He did claim the border bill, which is dying a well-deserved death, is bipartisan, except that…. Well, it really isn’t. Mitch McConnell, who is thankfully stepping down as leader this year, and his hand-picked stooge agreed to the latest draft. It wasn’t bipartisan in any significant way, and even if it were, so what? It is a bad bill. The border bill doesn’t restrict illegal immigration, it enshrines it into law. The legislation would allow nearly two million illegals to enter the nation each year, without triggering any enforcement at all. If that is your idea of sealing the border, you belong in the open borders party. Maybe you can be the first person in America to put up a Biden sign.

This just in: having one or two GOP senators support a bill does not make it bipartisan in any meaningful sense. Bipartisanship is not a useful adjective unless it represents a sample from both parties that is sufficient to affect the process.

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Welcome to the Biden Police State

By Rob Meyne

  • March 7, 2024
  • 3-min read

If you want to know what it is like to live in a police state, just look around. We’re officially there.

That isn’t to say it can’t get much worse; undoubtedly it can, and it will if Biden’s nascent fascists are given four more years.

Shamefully, there are very few in the media who are willing to stand up for their free speech rights, much less yours. If it were up to the Times, the Post, and CNN, you would be silenced and shuffled off to one of the re-education camps the Hildebeast once suggested we deploy to change the way conservative Republicans think.

It is no longer debatable that our freedoms are being chipped away. The only thing that IS debatable is why don’t more people seem to care? Most people simply don’t know how bad it is; but they will when the state targets THEM.

Most air marshals, according to the Marshal’s Service, were taken off their jobs – providing security on aircraft – and deployed to follow people who just happened to be in Washington on January 6. These people are suspected of being Trump supporters but did not even go to the protest. You read that right. Federal officers are traveling the nation, following people who aren’t even suspected of a crime. If that does not remind you of the Gestapo, I don’t know what would.

One reporter who was in the Capitol, covering the event – the news – has been arrested. Why? What horrible crime did he commit? Assault? Rape? Murder? No. He is essentially charged with trespassing misdemeanors. His real “crime” seems to be that he is an honest and objective reporter trying to find the underlying cause of what happened that day. He is not charged with insurrection, terrorism, or violence of any type. He is targeted only because he was in the building doing his Constitutionally protected job.

His name is Steve Baker. He currently works for the Blaze. He was carried off in handcuffs and leg irons and taken to prison.

Importantly, on January 6, Baker did not protest, interfere with anyone, or do anything even remotely violent. When Capitol police asked him to leave, he left. For that, he is being prosecuted. In the meantime, New York Times reporters who stood at his side have not been prosecuted.

Baker has recently been reporting on the pipe bombs found at the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees. (My old office at the RNC was within 50 feet of where the pipe bomb was found.)

There are a ton of problems with the popular narrative on this. For one thing, the timers used were basic kitchen timers, which can be set for a maximum of one hour. Yet we are told they were placed the night before. What? We are to believe terrorists placed these pipe bombs and then planned on coming back the next day to set the timers. Is anyone that stupid?

Finally, consider that an FBI informant by the name of Smirnoff – not Grey Goose or Tito’s – has been charged with lying to the FBI. He has served as a trusted, paid informant for the FBI for fourteen years. They have come to respect and depend on the intelligence he has provided. So, what happened? Why did they suddenly decide he is a crook?

It is simple. He reported that he was informed by a Ukrainian businessperson that they had paid the Biden’s $10 million, 5 for Hunter and 5 for Joe. The information came from an official at Burisma, the company paying the Bidens, and for which Hunter Biden was paid for a no-show assignment.

What is the message the DOJ and FBI want to send? It is clear. They are attempting to intimidate anyone who may have information that puts Biden in a bad light. If you deliver information that is inconvenient for the fascists of the left, you can go to jail.

Christopher Steele, who was also a paid FBI informant, delivered unverifiable dirt on Trump – all of which turned out to be made up out of whole cloth – and has faced no penalty for it. Steele got secondhand rumors from Russian sources, all untrue, and the FBI used them as an excuse to spy on the Trump presidential campaign.

If liberals did not have double standards, they’d have none at all.

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Pick A Lane:
America is At Risk, and We Can’t Afford the Luxury of Protest Votes

By Rob Meyne

  • Feb. 22, 2024
  • 5-min read

If you’re like us, you’ve probably heard a lot of folks expressing the usual quadrennial complaint that “both candidates suck.” That may be a tad inelegant, but you get the point.

Many surveys show a huge majority of voters wish we had better choices.
You can count me among them. I’d love to be able to pick between Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln. Let me know when we can work that out.

There is, however, this thing called “reality,” and it says that, barring a miracle, one of the two major party candidates will be elected president. The only relevant decision a person needs to make is this: under which of these two candidates can we reasonably expect the nation to be better off?

There is a lot of talk about the “lesser of two evils.” If one wants to look at politics in that way, be our guest. The question we would offer to inform the discussion a bit is this: in what part of life are we not faced with alternatives that are the “lesser of two evils?” Put another way, what part of your life is perfect? (My wife is perfect, and please tell her I said so.)

Most of human existence involves choosing from among two or more options, and they are never perfect. That is the nature of life, and certainly of human beings. As long as politics involves people, our choices among candidates will be imperfect. Get used to it, get over it, and next time support better candidates.

For today, let’s get back to reality.

For those who want to sit this one out – to note vote, or to vote for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning – you need to ask yourself whether the future of the country is more important than casting some kind of protest by way of a wasted vote?

If you don’t vote, no one sits and cries. No one will beg you to reconsider. No one will write it down and say, “Mr. Jones in Topeka didn’t like the candidates, so we need to do better next time.”

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Tucker Carlson’s Bombshell: Election Fraud is Far
Worse than You Think

By J Robert Smith

  • Feb. 18, 2024
  • 2-min read

This weekend, I was drafting a piece for American Thinker. The subject was the lack of adequate election reforms in battleground states, much of that to keep the cheating in place. Per The Epoch Times, Trump may have already lost the autumn presidential contest. That’s sobering in itself.

I took a break to watch Tucker Carlson’s latest podcast on X. After I watched the entire podcast, I dumped the draft I had been working on all day. What I was writing only touched the surface of a far more sophisticated, massive fraud being conducted by elements in the U.S. government. We’ve all heard of the Deep State, but the specifics on how it worked well ahead of the 2020 presidential election to defeat Trump were stunning.

Carlson’s guest was Mike Benz, who leads the Foundation for Freedom Online. Benz’s bio at the group’s website states that he “is a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters.” So, he poses expertise, experience, and insider knowledge about the Deep State’s workings in matters related to communications and the internet.

The tease to Carlson’s interview sums it up powerfully:

“The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. ‘What I’m describing is military rule,’ says Mike Benz. ‘It’s the inversion of democracy.'”

In an interview that ran a little over an hour, Benz skillfully provides loads of detail and a narrative thread that puts meat on the contention that we citizens really aren’t in control of of our government. Our impact on a presidential election – at least starting with the 2020 contest – is minimal if at all.

This isn’t said to dishearten anyone. Knowledge is power, goes the the old saying. Acquiring the knowledge about how elements within “permanent government” are acting in brazenly unconstitutional ways to determine the outcome of presidential and, perhaps, congressional elections is knowledge we must possess in order to defeat this novel form of tyranny. We mustn’t be intimidated by the scope of this attack on our rights and the rule of law. Fighting back isn’t an option.

Carlson’s interview with Benz can be found at here at X (formerly Twitter). You’ll be derelict in your duty as a patriot if you fail to watch this important podcast.

Mike Benz’s X account can be found here. If you have an X account, it will be well worth following Benz for more insights into what appears to be the greatest threat to our liberties in the nation’s long history.

The Foundation for Freedom Online website is located here.

American Thinker’s Andrea Widburg offers an excellent summary of the Carlson-Benz interview here.

American Thinker feature writer Clarice Feldman also offers this in-depth analysis here.

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Racist Leaders Presume You Are, Too

By Rob Meyne

  • Feb. 4, 2024
  • 3-min read

The names of many contemporary movements, organizations, and legislation are focused-grouped tested to ensure they sound as appealing as possible. Nomenclature has a lot to do with the ability to successfully market something.

Terms like Black Lives Matter, or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), or the Inflation Reduction Act are designed to generate support for policies that do not reflect what their name suggests.

No reasonable person questions that black lives matter. Nor do they oppose the ideas of inclusion or inflation reduction. Yet frequently a majority of reasonable people oppose the specific actions being taken in pursuit of those objections. The devil is always in the details.

Years ago, you may recall there was opposition to harvesting tuna, because marine mammals were often killed in the process. Accordingly, there was a suggestion that tuna operators should form an alliance and call it “Friends of the Dolphin.” No doubt you could have generated cash contributions to such a group from a lot of people who would have been horrified to find out what it really was.

If you’ve paid attention to the dumpster fire that is also known as the Biden Administration, you will remember they tried to enact components of the “Green New Deal” (AKA, the Green New Steal). These were radical revisions to the way we use and generate energy, manufacture and distribute products, and to whom we give huge taxpayer-funded subsidies. It was politically unpopular and economically devastating. The bill went nowhere. So, they just called it the Inflation Reduction Act. Members of Congress had only a few days to read the thousand page bill, and team Biden just put most of the elements of the Green New Steal into it.

The voters don’t like it? Simple: change its name and pass it anyway.

If you said you were opposed to the Inflation Reduction Act people thought you were in favor of inflation. Sadly, this kind of disingenuousness, and outright lying, drives much of the political process.

Monikers like DEI are crafted to sound like a commitment to a laudable goal but do nothing to tell you the nuts and bolts of the proposals. You can certainly favor the concepts of DEI without favoring the methods leftist elites use to make them happen. The left routinely disguises their true intentions – their actual policies – by labeling them in a misleading way.

It has often been said the left succeeds when the people are not informed but conservatives succeed when they are.

Consider this: any policy that treats people differently based on their skin color or national heritage is racist. That is the definition of racism; treating people differently because of the amount of melanin in their skin. Yet that is exactly what most DEI programs require.

Equity, in fact, is the polar opposite of equal opportunity. Equity requires the allocation of benefits and opportunities based on race. Management by equity requires that merit be a secondary consideration. That is an uncomfortable reality, but until we come to grips with it, we will continue to struggle to find answers to some of our most important problems.

For as long as I can remember, I have been astonished at how people on the left look at everything through the lens of race. Leftist leaders simply don’t believe race isn’t the first thing conservatives think about when they begin their day. Most Democratic leaders assume we are all obsessed with race because they are.

Perhaps more than anything, solutions to problems of race will elude us as long as half the nation assumes the other half shares their obsession with race. Saying that out loud is not likely to make you friends among Democratic leaders.

More to come.

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If You Trust the Government,
You May Need Therapy

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 27, 2024
  • 4-min read

The portion of Americans who trust the government to do the right thing has plummeted to historic lows. Less than 20% of us trust the government. The other 80% might ask “are you not paying attention?”

It takes a willingness to ignore facts, and reject common sense, to believe much of what the government tells us. This is true for all levels of government, but particularly nationally.

This is not the same thing as saying the government never tells the truth. Sometimes it does. But every sentient creature in America should view governmental messages with skepticism and do their own homework before determining what is true.

Pew comments on the lack of trust in government:

“Public trust in the federal government, which has been low for decades, has returned to near record lows following a modest uptick in 2020 and 2021. Currently, fewer than two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (1%) or “most of the time” (15%). This is among the lowest trust measures in nearly seven decades of polling. Last year, 20% said they trusted the government just about always or most of the time.”

The real question, today, is why WOULD you trust the government?

The Gallup survey shows, unsurprisingly, that Americans trust their local government much more than the federal.

This is a fairly good rule of thumb. If all politicians should be viewed with skepticism – all PEOPLE should be viewed with some healthy skepticism – certainly, it is easier to learn about your local office holders than those who work in area code 202 and spend their nights at places like the Capital Grille.

A related, and hugely important, question is what media should we trust? The quick answer is “not many.” But here is another good rule of thumb: you should put more trust in people who encourage you to personally learn about issues than those who discourage it. You will likely never hear someone from MSNBC or CNN telling you to learn about things for yourself. That is the mark of a news outlet that is more interested in propaganda than truth.

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Kari Lake can’t be bought.
Nikki Haley is.

By J. Robert Smith

  • Jan. 27, 2024
  • 5-min read

In a recorded conversation with Arizona Party chairman Jeff DeWit, Kari Lake is offered money by DeWit to back out of the race for the U.S. Senate. DeWit was playing bagman. He claimed to have gotten a request to approach Lake from “back east.”

“There are very powerful people who are gonna keep you out,” he [DeWit] said. “But they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is in a big way.”

The audio of the conversation was posted at Rumble. On Wednesday, DeWit resigned his position, charging that he was set up by Lake and her campaign. But he wasn’t set up. He incriminated himself. His words are his words. He brokered an offer to Lake. If he hadn’t resigned, he should have been removed by the Arizona GOP’s executive committee.

“Money is the mother’s milk of politics,” said the late Jesse Unruh, who was a Democrat mover-and-shaker in California for years. He coined the phrase.

Money has always made politics go-round. Doesn’t matter. Clean money, dirty money… money to candidates, money to officeholders, their families, friends, and favored interests. Money – and let’s add power, which corrupts plenty of politicians, bureaucrats, and every other suckerfish in the business.

Difference between past generations and today is politics is flush with money. Meaning, seas of bucks. Much of the dough is anonymous. Two Supreme Court rulings made that so.

Citizens United vs. the FEC was the biggie. Per Vox, July 1, 2021:

Citizens United stripped the government of its power to limit the amount of spending on elections, especially by corporations. But the decision also gave the Court’s blessing to nearly all laws requiring campaigns and political organizations to disclose their donors.

Republicans and conservatives (not one in the same) initially cheered the ruling. But what’s happened is that corporations have been taken over by so-called progressives. Corporate money tilts toward Democrat candidates. A lot of it.

Making matters worse, a second SCOTUS ruling (Americans for Prosperity vs. Bonta) struck down most donor disclosure laws. Scads of very wealthy people can give anonymously. It’s called “dark money,” and Democrats and left-wing causes are the greatest beneficiaries.

While most big dollars flow to Democrats and the left, there’s still some big money making its way to Republicans.

Nikki Haley, who’s the establishment’s attempt to foil Trump’s candidacy, is the recipient of some really big money.

Haley’s nonprofit – Stand for America, Inc. – didn’t redact some of donors names from tax forms a couple of years ago.

(From Politico, August 26, 2022):

Many of the GOP’s biggest donors are among those who funneled anonymous contributions to former U.N ambassador Nikki Haley’s nonprofit as she lays the groundwork for a prospective 2024 presidential bid, according to previously unreported tax documents obtained by POLITICO.

Haley’s nonprofit policy advocacy group, Stand For America, Inc., has received major donations from people including New York hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor Stanley Druckenmiller, and Miriam Adelson and her late husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Internal Revenue Service filings reveal.

You can bet that big-dollar donors are calling the shots in Haley’s presidential campaign. In fact…

Bloomberg reported on Jan. 24, 2024 that “Wall Street” donors were keeping Haley’s campaign from sinking.

Simone Levinson, a Haley backer and a co-host for the fundraiser, said she had not seen any donors drop their support of the candidate.

“People don’t just look at numbers, they look at behavior,” Levinson said, referring to Trump’s combative speech Tuesday night, in which he lambasted Haley. “People are now being reminded of this divisive hate-spewing rhetoric of the Donald. Is this really what you want representing our country, as opposed to Nikki?”

Topping things off, Haley has become a rich woman through politics.

Reports Forbes, August 8, 2023:

Since then [resigning as U.N. Ambassador], Haley’s net worth has ballooned from less than $1 million to an estimated $8 million. How did she make so much money in so little time? By following a tried-and-true playbook for politicians looking to cash in on their fame. Speeches to companies like Barclays and organizations such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs provided more money in a day than Haley had previously earned in a year. It’s not clear how many talks she gave from 2019 to 2021, but Haley hauled in $2.3 million from just 11 events in 2022.

Even Haley’s husband is in on the act. It isn’t unusual for family and friends to trade on an officeholder’s (or past officeholder’s) ties to have nice paydays.

Per the Daily Beast, August 12, 2023:

The latest financial disclosures from former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley reveal as much as $500,000 of her husband’s net worth derives from a mysterious “military technical services company”—an apparent shell entity tied to a government contractor seeking tax credits from her successor’s administration.

There is no evidence that Haley or her husband, Michael Haley, have broken any rules. However, the materials suggest the family could benefit financially from state and federal policy, including from the export of military equipment to Taiwan.

Haley isn’t extraordinary. Too many politicians – Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal – have sold themselves for a pound of flesh – or a side of beef or a whole hog, nowadays. And they’re not necessarily violating the law to do it.

Some politicians like Donald Trump and Kari Lake aren’t playing the game. In part, that’s why both catch holy hell. Haley does play the game, and for her, the payoffs are lucrative.

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Equal Opportunity for All Should Be Our Goal

By Rob Meyne

  • Jan. 21, 2024
  • 5-min read

In 2011, Chicago pastor Corey Brooks lived for a while on the roof of an abandoned motel in his South Side neighborhood. He was protesting urban violence and hoping, through contributions, to raise money for a community center.

Brooks is a longtime advocate for people in his neighborhood, a devout Christian, and a respected leader. In the thirteen years since he lived on that roof, Brooks has learned firsthand of the damage being done to young blacks by contemporary Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Brooks has become a vocal and effective opponent of DEI, CRT, and other schools of thought that teach Americans that you’re either a victim or an oppressor based on your skin color. Brooks writes intelligently and clearly in a piece from Tablet Magazine. It is worth the read.

DEI has evolved into a catch-all phrase that leftists use to refer to everything that is good and worthwhile about fighting racism. If DEI a just referred to good faith efforts to lift up people who might need a helping hand, that would be one thing. No serious and sane person would object to that. That is not what DEI is. As is so often the case with the gospel of the left, the reality of their policies is different from their rhetoric.

It is likely that most people who embrace equity – people who run our schools, have jobs in corporate HR, or maybe work for a non-profit – talk about the concept as if it is a general, all-encompassing effort to pursue a fair and equal world. One doubts that most equity devotees can even define what it means. Most such people no doubt mean well. But the problem is they end up giving energy and momentum to a disastrous concept they don’t actually understand.

The people who implement equity as a policy, however, know that it isn’t the same thing as equality of opportunity. Equity demands equal results based on one’s membership in a group; equal opportunity has a goal of a color-blind society, where effort, talent, and merit matter and skin color cannot hold you back.

In practice, as it is actually implemented by government, DEI tells us that wealth, opportunity, rewards, and benefits should be allocated according to race, sex, and national origin, not by merit. It is all about racial quotas and rejects the role of merit in our society. DEI is perfectly suited for a socialist society but is antithetical to our own.

CRT is an intellectually vacuous set of objectives that have their roots in the Frankfurt School of communism. Yes, no one likes to admit that, and it doesn’t make one sound less conspiratorial to point it out, but it is true. Critical theory in general began with Marx and others who saw all of society as a war between the classes.

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