Keep the money rolling in.

 I was disappointed by the results of the 1992 Presidential election (was that 32 years ago already?). George HW Bush was a typical Republican: professing to be against tax increases but agreeing to them anyway. After the election I became involved in the King County (Seattle) Republican Party. In Seattle there was no Republican Precinct Committee Officer in my precinct.

I was elected to that position in 1992. Of course I was, I was the only one on the ballot!

Because I was registered with the Republican National Committee, I often received mail from the RNC. This included questionnaires asking for my opinion on matters of public interest. They offered to let me know the results of these polls if I made a monetary contribution.  No contribution, no poll results. 

Those polls reminded me of an old cartoon where a child received birthday cards. The child was never interested in the cards. He only wanted whatever cash was inside them. Would my answers have counted without a contribution?

I believed, and still believe, that the 2024 Presidential election was of grave importance.  So grave that I contributed to Trump's campaign. A month later I started making monthly contributions.

Money is the lifeblood of political campaigns.  I gave what I could and ceased my monthly contributions after the election. 

 I still receive messages and emails asking for money. Messages that inexplicitly tell me that:

Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk sit around Mar-a-Lago mentioning me by name. 

I have been invited to Mar-a-Lago and will receive VIP treatment.

I am one of the biggest supporters of the President in the State of Texas.

I have also been personally nominated to be on a Presidential Advisory Board.

This is predicated upon me contributing more money which I would if I had it to contribute. The messages that really annoy me are the ones that say they desperately need to know my views on various issues. However, in order to let them know what they say they are so anxious to know, I have to make a contribution. 

Maybe this is the way political fundraising has been done for years. I don't know and I don't believe that any of the people supposedly sending me messages are really involved, even though President Trump's name, or J.D. Vance's name, or Eric Trump's name are on many of the messages. They keep asking for money, and I will do what I can, when I can. 

But please, don't insult my intelligence when asking me.

Please don't audit that man behind the curtain.

OK. I admit that it has been over fifty years since I graduated high school, but as far as I remember there are only three co-equal branches of government; the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial. President Trump, head of the Executive Branch has appointed Elon Musk to lead a Department of Government Efficiency.

Mr. Musk jumped right into the task as soon as the President took office. We all have heard some of the things our tax dollars have been spent on. Maybe we were shocked at where that money went, but we were not surprised at how much. With the deficit being what it is, why are we spending money on programs that not only are of no benefit to the United States, but are wastes of money as well?

One can't help but think that those in government don't really support those programs but rather that they support the, shall we say, "service charges" paid to those in government who facilitate those payments for those programs. And those in government are not happy that a large source of revenue for them has been discovered.

Nobody voted for Elon Musk. We are, however, expected to bow down to unelected bureaucrats anonymously running "Independent Agencies."

Thinking back to my school days, I cannot -- try as I may -- recall any mention of a fourth branch of government in the Constitution, that branch being "Independent Agencies." I do remember, however, Paul Harvey reporting in the 1980's that officials in the State Department saw no reason to act on President Reagan's policies because he was not going to be President after a few years anyway.

The government needs to be brought under control. We need it to be answerable to the citizens. We cannot have a government that feels it can do whatever it wants with no consequences.

Nor can we afford it.

 

 

Where has all the money gone?

 There is a quote attributed to a number of people that says

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Something has become very clear -- President Trump is adept at getting people to remove doubt about themselves by forcing them to commit what in sports is called an "own goal" -- sending the ball or puck into their own goal, thus scoring a point for the other team.

It would be funny were it not so sad to watch Democratic Senators grill Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about his plan to reign in the Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex. Those Senators brought their bank accounts into the spotlight.

Among other things that have come to light is the news that USAID has given more than £2.6 Million to the British Broadcasting Company, the BBC. As part of the effort to reign in wasteful spending, the Trump administration wants these payments suspended.

In a not very-well-thought-out move, "The Beeb" has been reported as saying that if such funding is cut, they will no longer portray President Trump in a positive light. It is hilarious to think the BBC would ever portray Donald Trump in a positive light. The day that happens is the day that most of their staff goes for voluntary root canals.

The more important issue is that the BBC has admitted to the world that they are nothing but prostitutes selling themselves to whomever pays them. I don't think that is the message they wanted to send.

The BBC says those funds supply 8% of the budget of a charity called the BBC Media Action. That agency said this week

A free press is essential to freedom and democracy – and 75% of countries around the world do not have a free press.

BBC  Media Action supports local media around the world to deliver trusted information to people most in need.

Like many international development organisations (sic), BBC Media Action has been affected by the temporary pause in US government funding, which amounts to about 8% of our income in 2023-24.

Even if such efforts are needed -- and are successful -- why does the United States Government need to pay a British agency to spread the money around the world? Any bets that USAID directly sends money to the same places?

At a BBC town hall in Glasgow, the BBC started out by  attacking President Trump, which raised a backlash.

Is a "free press" is really "free" if it is being subsidized by the government? He who pays you, controls you. Just look at the people upset by the auditing of US Government expenditures.

A few days ago I read a comment online that the United States should continue all aid spending because we "have the money." A $36 Trillion deficit says otherwise. How much of that money is being kicked back to those who should be keeping a better eye on things?

It is about time that all government spending be audited.

Reflections

When I woke up Tuesday morning these was a heavy rain falling outside. While I do have religious beliefs I do not wear them on my sleeve, but that rain seemed to me to be a divine sign.

This was the first Presidential election since we moved to Texas. I decided weeks -- if not months -- ago that I was was going to vote in person on election day, dammit! While I could vote while I lived in Canada, obviously I could not do it in person. I have not voted in person for a Presidential election in twenty years.

I have voted in just about every election since moving here. I may have missed one small election that I didn't even know about until a couple of days before. In the grand scheme of things that election was probably less important than voting for Dog Catcher.

As I walked into the polling place I asked the man at the door if it had been busy. He said that by 9:30 they had 126 people vote.

My ballot had 66 things to vote on, all but one a political race. That one was a ballot measure to approve a slight increase in property taxes for flood control measures. The measure was to replace an expiring measure. They were asking for a tax rate increase, presumable because costs have gone up. I understand that costs have gone up, but so have property tax assessments.

I had a printout of what I was voting for. After I voted and printed out my ballot, I studied my ballot to be sure it reflected what I voted for. The sheet had a column listing the candidates' political party. It was easy to see that all was in order.

There were a number of judicial positions that only had a Democrat candidate. After results came in, I noticed that some of single candidate races had fewer votes than the leading candidate in two-candidate races. Perhaps many people, like me, were not going to vote for a Democrat even if they were literally the only candidate in a race. There were four races for Trustees for the local Community College District. I had no idea on those races so I did not vote for them.

There is something I do not understand about elections here. It would probably be easier to find out the Nuclear Code than it is to find out what is going to be on your ballot. That is one thing Washington State, or at least King County, was good at.

When the results came in, the local races were a mixed bag. Sean Teare, the local Soros candidate for District Attorney won. Just as before the Primary, the only legal issue he addressed before the General Elections was to imply -- but not outright say -- that he would not enforce Texas abortion laws. It was as if Harris Country did not have home invasions, robberies, assaults, murders, or any other serious crimes. He ran strictly on a platform of "protecting women's reproductive rights." Cashless bail and no prosecution for shoplifting under $1000 coming soon to a Harris County near you.

Ted Cruz won handily. One of his canvassers came to my door before the election. He asked if I was voting for Cruz. I restrained myself from shouting "Hell yeah!" He asked if he could put a sign up. I said "Sure." I never had a campaign sign in my yard before. 

Dan Crenshaw won as well. Maybe we could get a better candidate at some point, but he was what we had.

The Presidential race came as no surprise to me, not that I thought it was a shoe-in. It amazes me how so many celebrities who claimed they were fighting to protect democracy said they will leave the country if Trump won. Democracy has spoken, but they want to throw temper tantrums because they did not like the results.

The Democrats brought this defeat on themselves. The last figures I saw showed Donald Trump with over 71,800,00 votes -- a bit lower than he did in 2020. But we are still supposed to believe that Joe Biden won  81,000,000. Considering how both sides felt that there was a lot at stake in this election, that would suggest that either we would have similar numbers this year or that Ol' Joe did not do as well in 2020 as we have been told. Between Trump and Biden in 2020 there were 155,507,476 votes. In 2024, there were 138,829,262 between Trump and Harris. Considering all the vitriol on the Democrat side and the attitude of "We're not going to let it happen again" on the Republican side, do they really expect us to believe that there was more than a 10% drop in votes for the two main candidates? Mark Loftus said on Guttfeld Wednesday night, "It's nice to go to sleep and then when you wake up, the same guy is still in the lead." Amen. And that he didn't have fewer votes than he did when you went to sleep.

We can all take a deep breath, but we cannot rest on our laurels. I pray that those who are despondent will start to remember how good things were when 45 was in office, and how they are improving under 47. Maybe they will sit back and realize that Harris had absolutely nothing to offer. They were mad at Brett Baier for asking her tough questions, but they believed she would stand up to the evil in the world?

Maybe we didn't luck out on Tuesday. Perhaps it was divine providence.

Time Connections

I am fascinated by time. I can't tell you what it is. All I know is that the concept of time is perplexingly interesting.

I mentioned one of my favorite movies a couple of times here on The Table, the 1943 MGM release The Human Comedy. It gives a look back at important era in American history. Watching it today gives you a view of how the world was 80 years ago, a connection to another time. One scene is astounding on another level. In that scene, a little boy named Ulysses, the youngest in the family that is central to the film, goes to the library with an older friend, Lionel. While older, Lionel seems to be a bit slow in his metal development, hence his friendship with a boy half his age. While at the library, the boys are approached by the librarian, an elderly lady.

 

 

The boys talk with the librarian.

 

From today's perspective, this  scene provides a very interesting study in time when considering Lionel and the librarian.

The librarian was played by Adeline De Walt Reynolds. Reynolds was born in 1862, during the Civil War. After being widowed in 1905, Mrs. Reynolds survived the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. She lived until 1961.

Lionel was played by Darryl Hickman, older brother of Dwayne Hickman of television's Dobie Gillis fame. Darryl was born in 1931 and by 1943 had been performing in movies for several years.

 

That brings us to the library scene in The Human Comedy. Of the three actors with speaking roles in that scene, two of them are on a time line that connects the Civil War of 1862, through to -- this year. Darryl Hickman passed away in May, 2024. (Butch Jenkins, who played Ulysses, was born in 1937 and died in 2001.)

Between the two of them, those two actors in this scene saw the times of the Spanish-American War, the sinking of the Titanic, the introduction of radio, World War I, Prohibition, the Great Depression, the introduction of television, World War II,  the Civil Rights Movement, Viet Nam, and much more. Two people.

I can't help but be astounded by that.

 

Not another one

 A primary Election is coming to Texas on March 5. Among the many positions up for grabs this year is that of Harris County District Attorney (Houston).

The first I learned of this election was when I started seeing Facebook ads for one of the Democratic candidates, Sean Teare. So far I have seen three ads from him on Facebook and I have seen them repeated. Here are two of the ads.

I downloaded those two ads from my FB feed. It has been a couple of weeks since I saw the third ad. I could not find any of those ads on Mr. Teare's FB page. Similar to the above two ads, the third ad is about how no one should face criminal prosecution for exercising health care rights (spelled a-b-o-r-t-i-o-n). 

There is a funny thing about Leftists. They believe that "the people" should have a say in laws that are passed. That is why they want courts to cram decisions such as Roe v. Wade down the throats of everyone. When the Supreme Court decided that abortion was a matter for individual States to decide, Leftists had a fit. They believe that there is overwhelming support for abortion everywhere. They just don't like it when democratically elected representatives restrict abortion. A Democrat State Legislator wanted a Texas Constitutional Amendment to prohibit the Legislature from passing bills to restrict abortion. A poll taken in 2022 found that only 12% of Texas residents favor unrestricted abortions.

The main thrust of Mr. Teare's campaign seems to be that he will pick and choose what laws he will and will not enforce.

Where have I heard that before? That has worked out so well every place else that has been tried.

None of his ads say "I will fight crime" in unequivocal terms. 

Even if I supported "abortion rights," I would have to question why such a strong, single minded approach to the coming Primary Election. One would think that there are more pressing issues for a District Attorney to concern himself with.

On Mr. Teare's Facebook page, I saw some other things that I have not seen on my feed. Here is a post I found on his FB page.

His list of things he supports boils down to whatever a normal, law-abiding citizen would question. 

Climate Justice? Education Justice? Immigrant Justice? Whenever I see the word "justice" used in such contexts, I can't help but think that justice is the last thing on someone's mind. Health Equity? It seems more like "Let me promise stuff to people who don't have to pay for it in order to get those people to vote for me."

The group mentioned in that last ad, NAKASEC, is the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium. Among their positions is against Governor Abbott and the State of Texas for having the unmitigated gall to defend the border. They claim to be "an organization that champions the civil, immigrant, and human rights of all people."  In other words, let's milk Uncle Sugar for all that he is worth. And by Korean, is that South or North?

One thought came to mind as I thought about Mr. Teare. Oddly enough, I found that same thought addressed on Mr. Teare's Facebook page.

                        

 

II did not dig into that link, but it did show me that I am not the only person with the same idea.

Houston dodged a bullet in December when it did not elect Sheila Jackson Lee as its Mayor. My impression is that greater Harris County is more conservative than is the City of Houston. Hopefully our luck will hold out and we will dodge another bullet.

As of yet, I have seen nothing about the Republican candidate for District Attorney. That might be because he has no opponent. Hopefully we will hear more from him once the campaign for the General Elections begins.