The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime

We tend to say every election is the most important of our lifetime. And truthfully it has probably felt that way every time. This time it is more true than ever—because our country is now a post-constitutional republic, and this may be our only opportunity to turn around on the path back toward our Constitution.

Decisions are state and local, since it’s not a presidential election year. And yet they may add up to a greater impact than anything we’ve seen before. That is, if—we vote for that return toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

image found here

I’ll be looking at Texas and local races today. Principles will apply elsewhere, but you’ll have to do your own research.

The short and simple answer this election is to vote Republican. And vote Republican all the way down the ballot. In Harris County, that’s a long ballot—possibly the longest in the nation. We vote on our judges, and it’s around a hundred races total. I’ll highlight just a few. There is no straight-ticket voting anymore, so it requires tedious individual voting. Note that the Republican candidate is listed first in every race.

 

Governor

The choices are Greg Abbott, our current governor, and Robert (Beto) O’Rourke. Beto had no redeeming qualities when he ran against Ted Cruz for Senate in 2018, but he pulled in a great deal of out-of-state anti-Cruz money, and was a media darling. He failed. He attempted a run for president, without the anti-Cruz enthusiasm and money, and showed himself to be at the bottom of the Democrat heap, only slightly above Kamala Harris. So again he failed. He’s attempting to pretend the multiple failures are a reason to vote for him. He changed from his previous, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take Americans’ guns” (an actual quote) to something more nuanced that he thinks might play better in Texas. He’s pro-abortion without restriction and thinks that’s a winning issue. It isn’t.

So he’s not much of a threat.

As for Governor Abbott, he disappointed many during the pandemic by allowing lockdowns. He lifted statewide mandates pretty quickly, but defending our freedoms against more local tyrants has been piecemeal. He just extended the declaration of emergency for the 31^st time (Houston Chronicle story here). Fact: the pandemic isn’t an emergency and hasn’t been for a very long time. Only 12 states still retain these emergency declarations. We’re hoping the legislature will address that this upcoming session; the people are calling for an automatic requirement for the Texas Legislature to approve emergency orders in order to extend them beyond 30 days.

That being said, he has been mostly conservative, and has been good at growing Texas and our economy here. While we would have preferred some DeSantis-style boldness, we’re better off than most. So, with less enthusiasm than before the pandemic, I am definitely voting for Governor Greg Abbott.

 

US Congress

I’ve been redistricted from CD 2, Dan Crenshaw’s district, to the new CD 38. Our candidate is Wesley Hunt. He’s ex-military and supported by Crenshaw. Those of you who followed this race in the primary know I did not support Hunt. I campaigned for a much better candidate. But Hunt got the big money and pulled off a win without a runoff—despite failing to show at every event I was made aware of. As a precinct chair I have since been invited to an event or two, but at times I was unable to attend. That means I still have not seen him in person since he began his campaign. That is completely opposite of how Dan Crenshaw ran.

Hunt says the right conservative things. My impression of him, in person, when he ran a previous campaign in 2018, was that he wasn’t as clear on the concepts, or as committed to conservative principles as his opponents. But he said the right things then too, and won the primary but not the general.

This time he’s in a district that is designed to trend Republican. As long as he doesn’t blow it, he’ll get elected. Unless I look up the name on the sample ballot, I can’t even remember his Democrat opponent’s name (it's Duncan F. Klussmann). I have seen no campaign signs for the opponent. There seems to be no enthusiasm for him. So Hunt is likely to sail through.

I’ll be voting for Hunt, in hopes that he will live true to the conservative things he says. He will be better to work with than someone who openly opposes conservatives.

 

Harris County Judge

This is possibly the most important race on the ballot for people in Harris County. Again, a brief explanation that HC Judge is an administrative position. It is, in fact, one of the largest administrative jurisdictions in the nation. I think Los Angeles and maybe one other are larger. In smaller, rural counties, some county judges still act as judges, but in the enormous Harris County, that has not been the case for many decades; just the name remains.

It’s a challenge to list the many reasons we need to get rid of our corrupt socialist incumbent. But here are a few:

·       Lina Hidalgo directed $11 million in COVID-19 relief money to a partisan crony. Three of her main staffers were indicted on fraud charges; charges against her may yet come, but not likely before the election.

o   Claims the funds have been returned are not accurate. Stories here and here.

·       Lina Hidalgo and cronies on Commissioners Court changed the structure for voting, after a corrupt Democrat County Clerk stepped down in May of 2020, and called for a new elections administrator to handle elections, rather than the County Clerk. She hired an incompetent crony as EA, who messed up the Primary so badly that even Hidalgo asked for her resignation—although they postponed her leaving until after the runoffs could be mishandled as well.

o   There are ongoing serious chain-of-custody issues related to elections. Story here. 

·       She decided the way to allocate Harvey relief and recovery funds was—not according to who suffered the most damaged, but which ethnicities she wanted to favor.

·       She pushes for higher taxes at every opportunity. The three countywide ballot propositions are an example: totaling $1.2 billion for projects that haven’t even been delineated yet. Just-in-case money, during a recession.

·       She has misallocated money intended for police on the street to social programs. The state has called her to get back in compliance with the law against defunding law enforcement.

·       Even the Democrat District Attorney is at odds with Hidalgo for failing to allow prosecution of violent felons; Hidalgo won’t fund additional prosecutors.

·       Hidalgo supports the practice of letting violent offenders out on personal recognizance bonds; i.e., no bail bonds. Since Hidalgo’s election in 2018, the increase of PR bonds to violent criminals rose from 12 to 1283, including 110 capital murder offenders. 181 have died at the hands of these criminals out on PR bonds. (I wrote about this here.) 

But what about all the things she’s done right? Hmm. I can’t seem to come up with anything to list.

Back in the Primary, the Republicans ran several capable people. But my choice then and now is Alexandra del Moral Mealer. She’s a serious woman. Unlike Hidalgo, who took on this job at age 2;7, as her first job out of graduate school, with no real world experience, Mealer has considerable leadership experience, both in the military (leading bomb squads), and in business. She’s smart, well prepared, and articulate. Doing political schmoozing isn’t really her thing; you can see it’s not natural for her. But she’s likable and real. A telling detail for me was last summer, on my way into the Republican Party of Texas convention, I ran into her in the crosswalk. She remembered my name, my association with the Cypress Texas Tea Party, where we had had her speak, and that I had supported her.

Me with Alexandra del Moral Mealer (right),
at Cypress Texas Tea Party in March 2022

She has garnered quite an army of willing block walkers. Her signs are everywhere around the county. I see almost none for Hidalgo.

Even the Houston Chronicle denied Hidalgo their endorsement and went with Mealer. The editorial board said, "Where it counts, particularly on the issue of crime, Mealer seems to be listening to many in our community who otherwise feel unheard: crime victims and their families." 

If you’re interested in seeing them side by side, there’s this video. 

 

County Commissioner

We’ve had just two of the five members of the Commissioners’ Court siding with the people, and against Hidalgo and those who control her agenda. Redistricting following the census has been used as an attempt to oust one or two of the remaining ones. My commissioner, “Cactus” Jack Cagle, is one of my favorite people in the political world. Cowboy, poet, philosopher—very fun to hear him speak on just about anything. I will definitely be voting for him. If you’re in Tom Ramsey’s district or one of the others, know that you’re doing the world a service by voting Republican in these races.

That's me with the tall guys, Cactus Jack Cagle and Mr. Spherical Model
at Cactus Jack's Campfire (picnic) in 2021

 

County Clerk

Stan Stanart was our County Clerk for eight years. Elections ran so much smoother then. All we had to worry about were the more traditional attempts at voter fraud—not systemic ones implemented by county officials. It would be such a pleasure to have him back. If we can get a Republican County Judge and keep our Republican County Commissioners, we could even do away with the failed attempt at using an Elections Administrator and return that duty to the County Clerk’s office.

We heard from Stan at last Saturday’s Tea Party meeting. Vide here.

 

County Treasurer

This race is even lower on the ballot than County Clerk. Kyle Scott would be such a joy in that position. He understands how the County Treasurer can keep spending under control—by not signing authorization to any spending outside the law. What a concept! He proved his contrarian abilities as a member of the Lone Star Community College board, some years ago (term-limited out). He cheers us up every time he speaks at our Tea Party. Here’s video of him from last Saturday as well.

 

Judges

As I mentioned, we have a l-l-o-o-n-n-g-g ballot, because of all the judges. This year, because of the ridiculous policy of letting violent felons out on personal recognizance bonds, it is especially important to safety in our community to oust those judges and put in judges who abide by the law. I signed on for nearly all of these judges; getting signatures saves them big bucks in filing fees. Many of them have served before but got ousted in the Beto wave or its 2020 echo. The Democrats are both inexperienced and ineffective. And in many cases they have proven dangerous to our communities. An excuse for the PR bonds is that it takes up to three years to bring a case to trial. Wouldn’t the better solution be to get through the docket faster? Managing caseload is something a good judge must do.

A favorite for me this year is Julian Ramirez, running for the 248^th Judicial District; it’s one of those criminal courts. Julian had been in the DA’s office for many years, but because of his support of the previous DA, he got ousted after Kim Ogg’s election. He has been my guy with inside info on judges for close to two decades. I believe I can trust him to do the job to make our streets safer.

 

Propositions

There are three bond propositions on the Harris County ballot. I’m voting against all three. It’s not noral to put forth bond proposals that are not even attached to planned projects, but that’s what our County Judge and her Commissioners Court are doing. During a recession. There’s no good reason.

If you’re in the City of Houston, there are another 7 or so bond proposals. I’d vote against those too. Taxing yourself at higher rates for no good reason just doesn’t make sense.

At the Harris County Republican Party Executive Committee (the precinct chairs) earlier this month, we vote to oppose all three Harris County propositions and all of the Houston propositions.

Vote All the Way Down the Ballot

Republicans tend to hesitate to vote down ballot where they don’t know all the candidates. This year especially, just trust that the Republican candidate will be better than the other guy. And vote every race all the way down the ballot. Plan on taking 20 minutes to vote—after you reach the machine. Good luck finding a place with a short line. The inexperienced Democrats running the election are particularly bad at allocating resources appropriately. In my polling location they have cut the number of machines in half from what we had in the Primary, and have cut our staff—as though we would have fewer voters in a general election than in a Primary. We’ll be adding to our staff with volunteers to make sure we can get the job done. But it appears from Early Voting, which started Monday, that we are having a high turnout. So plan your time accordingly. Paper jams took a lot of time in the Primary. The machines weren't expected to handle two-legal-size pager per voter. They now have installed a guide, which they said makes it almost impossible to jam. Nevertheless, in my training, we had a jam on our first try (not trying to jam, just trying to insert the paper). And then we had a second jam when they were demonstrating the curbside duo-go.

from page 153 of the official manual for this election

Voting in person on Election Day, preferably in your precinct polling location, is the gold standard. But if there’s any chance you can’t do it on Election Day, do Early Voting. (Locations for both here.) I didn't find a place to check for estimated wait times, but that would be handy info to have.

It took until just a couple of weeks ago, but the County’s website finally has its sample ballots up. They can’t seem to find me by name—in this place where I’ve been a registered voter for 24 years. So I use the VUID (voter unique ID) on my voter registration card, and then they recognize me.

Will your vote count? We watch for voter fraud here. There’s an army of people daily looking at the voter list of unqualified voters (dead people, people who have moved away) who have been identified but not removed from the voter rolls as they should have been. If any of those people vote, they’re immediately flagged. Also, there’s an army of trained poll watchers, in addition to the army of trained Presiding Judges, Alternate Judges, and Clerks. If you vote in person, you can believe it will be counted. And if we can get enough of us to vote to exceed their ability to cheat, that’s how we beat them.

So, vote! Vote Republican! Vote all the way down the ballot. This is indeed the most important election of our lifetime.

Public Speaking

I spent last Thursday’s writing time preparing a presentation of the Spherical Model for the local Tea Party meeting. It’s put together now as a video, such as it is, below. I did video, on my phone, of the other speakers at the meeting. But all I could do for myself was press start and go speak. And then we had issues with the projector, which had cycled off during the other speakers. I had to stand on a chair and reach it up near the ceiling—because I’m taller than any of the men who were handy. And then I totally didn’t think about whether I was standing in view of the camera, because I was talking to the audience. So there’s quite a lot of time I totally wander out of view. But no problem; we just use the slides (Mr. Spherical Model helped me edit), which makes them a lot clearer than a video of the screen in the room.

And then we couldn’t get the microphone to work. I don’t have a very loud voice, even though from my perspective I was talking really loud. But the room was small enough that going without a microphone went OK—except I was 15 or so feet from the camera, so not great sound.

Enough apologies. It’s yet another effort to explain these ideas. I hope this is helpful. The presentation is called, "There's No Such Thing as a Right-Wing Extremist."

Our Constitutional Republic Has Suddenly Become a Fascist Tyranny

The other day Glenn Beck had a panel discussion, mainly about midterm elections, and polling, and related things. But in that discussion he asked the question, “Do you believe we are still living in a constitutional republic?” The answer all four gave was "No." Steve Deace added, “The social compact is broken.” 

If we’re no longer a constitutional republic, then our government has been overthrown. How did that coup happen? And when? And a whole lot of other questions. I think the answer is similar to a Hemingway quote about how you go bankrupt: “Gradually, then suddenly.”

We’ve been fighting against tyranny for a long time. We had the best thing going in the history of the world. And yet, almost since the beginning there have been hidden (and not-so-hidden) forces, cabals, groups, ideologies, factions that have wanted to wrest control back from the people and place it in the hands of chosen-behind-the-scenes elites.

Despite our long resistance, we are now a country in which regular citizens can be arrested for disagreeing with the ruling powers. Recently we had two examples of political arrests related to pro-life issues.

In Pennsylvania

On September 23, 2022, the FBI conducted a SWAT raid at the Philadelphia home of Mark Houck, a pro-life activist. (Epoch Times story here.) A year ago, while he was doing his usual sidewalk pro-life work, along with family, a pro-abortion escort (a person who escorts the abortion seeker inside to keep her “safe” from pro-life people) came the 100 or so feet from the facility and zeroed in on Houck’s 12-year-old son, getting in his face and yelling profanity at him. Houck, as a normal father, stepped in to protect his son. In the single shove, the 70-year-old pro-abortionist fell down. Police investigated and found no need for criminal charges. There was a civil suit, but the complainant didn’t show, and the case was dismissed. 

FBI agents arrive at a home,
photo by Robyn Beck/AFP via GettyImages, found here

A year goes by. Then suddenly the feds have 15-20 armed SWAT agents make the arrest at the home, in front of the wife and children. The charging documents—to which Houck has pled not guilty—claim Houck hit the man twice—intending to imply aggravated assault, which the facts of the case do not bear out. They also claim he violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, but if that had been so, the pro-abortionist would not have had to travel 100 feet down the street to accost Houck’s son. By the way, there was no one to escort—or block—during the altercation.

Americans should not feel safer.

In Tennessee

In Tennessee last week, Paul Vaughn was arrested at his home by FBI agents yelling and banging on the door with guns drawn. There were children in the yard, getting ready to get in the car for a ride to school, and other children in the house. Vaughn surrendered, thinking that was the quickest way to de-escalate the situation. His wife, who had been at the back of the house, took video of the officers taking her husband in their vehicle, with arms drawn on him, refusing to give a reason, show a warrant, or provide ID.

They drove Vaughn about an hour’s distance away to process him for the arrest. It took a fair amount of time for his lawyers to even ascertain what the charges were. They were concerning a pro-life sit-in that took place on March 5, 2021, a year and a half ago. Again, the were using the FACE Act law, claiming he had conspired to block the entrance to a facility.

The thing is, he wasn’t even there that day. His role was as mediator between the group and the local police. He informed the police of the planned protest and asked what the group needed to do to make sure it remained as peaceful and legal as possible. He passed the information on to the activists, telling them that they could be arrested on misdemeanor charges, which the eleven protesters decided was worth it, and is what happened. The entire thing remained peaceful. Many of the protestors were elderly and harmless. But the DOJ is now claiming Vaughn was a “conspirator”—as if a peaceful sit-in ages ago is an imminent threat of domestic terror.

They released him after processing, leaving him without a phone or wallet, and no transportation home.

The arrest of this father for a misdemeanor crime in which he did not participate should not make you feel safer.

FBI agents refuse to explain why they were 
arresting Paul Vaughn, from his wife's video

Here is the Epoch Times story, which includes the wife’s video. 

Glenn Beck gives additional details in this video. 

Coincidentally, there have been multiple attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers, churches, and other places—with no charges filed. And of course no SWAT team raids.

New Executive Order to Spy on Americans

I don’t mean for this to be simply about the pro-life issue. It just happens that these two happened one week after the other. Let’s add into the mix the many political prisoners being held, charged, and prosecuted for the dangerous threat to the country of walking through the capitol building when invited in by police. Then add in a number of people who have questioned the 2020 election, such as Mike Lindell, being followed on vacation and arrested and having his phone seized. I’m forgetting the names of others they have done this too. There’s quite a list.

Now let’s add this little detail: Biden this past week quietly gave an executive order granting himself more spy powers.

Here is the executive order. 

title page of the executive order,
image from the White House website

Here’s a worrisome part:

(C) The President may authorize updates to the list of objectives in light of new national security imperatives, such as new or heightened threats to the national security of the United States, for which the President determines that bulk collection may be used.  The Director shall publicly release any updates to the list of objectives authorized by the President, unless the President determines that doing so would pose a risk to the national security of the United States.

What does this mean? The President gets to decide on new reasons for collecting this mass data on citizens. We should feel comforted that the Director of National Intelligence must immediately apprise us of any such updates—unless the President tells him not to. So, everything is at the whim of the dictator/president.

Most of the executive order deals with foreign threats, things we hope our government is staying aware of to keep us safe. It’s just that mixed in there are things like not going along with the government line on elections, for example. Or doing something to government property, which, as we can see from the Jan. 6 ridiculousness, could be construed any way they may choose.

And this executive order comes from the man who was VP during the administration that spied on candidate Donald Trump, and carried the spying over to when he was a sitting president, and used the trumped-up, paid-for fake accusations to try to remove him from office. So that’s who we’re supposed to trust to “minimize any impact on privacy and civil liberties”?

Americans should not feel safer.

Joshua Philipp discusses this on Crossroads. 

At this point we are holding out hope that the November Midterm Elections will be clean enough, so that we have one final chance to recover our constitutional republic from the fascist tyranny it has become—so gradually, and then so suddenly.

How Much Is $31 Trillion?

The national debt just hit a new high of $31 Trillion. Just nine months ago it hit the $30 Trillion mark. Since the numbers are so big, we night need to review ways of getting perspective.

Back in 2014, when we hit the unheard of $18 Trillion mark, I did a post using a children’s book that describes big numbers. There’s this calculation:

If you stood children on one another’s shoulders, a trillion of them would reach to Saturn’s rings during the closer parts of its orbit. The book calculates the average elementary schooler as 4’ 8”, with shoulders approximately at 4’. The column of a trillion would be 758 million miles.

So, just one trillion stacked children would go from earth to beyond Saturn’s rings, assuming all these imaginary children could breathe and keep holding up the others on their shoulders.

page from the book How Much Is a Million? by David M. Schwartz, pictures by Steven Kellogg

For that 2014 exercise, I multiplied that distance by 18, for the $18 Trillion debt to be represented:

Multiply that by 18, and it’s 113,644,000,000 miles (13.6 Billion).

So, today let’s do the math again for our new $31 Trillion number:

758 million miles x 31 = 23,498,000,000 miles (23.5 Billion)

It so happens that 23.5 billion kilometers (not miles, but we can use it to get approximate perspective) is how far Voyager 1 has traveled in 45 years, which isn’t entirely out of the solar system, but approaching that. 

I did a graph back then—hand drew additional years onto an existing graph—to show the exponential increase in the debt up to 2014.

graph of national debt I used in this 2014 post

Let’s update that with the additional 8 years (I entered the data into a spreadsheet this time, so I didn’t have to hand draw). The blue line is at $1 Trillion; we hit that in 1982.

US national debt from 1929 to present; the blue line represents $1T; data from here

For a bit of perspective, it might help to look at debt-to-GDP ratio; that is, what percentage of the nation’s gross domestic product is owed in debt. It looks like this:

US debt-to-GDP ratio from 1929 to 3rd quarter 2022, data from here

It’s not the complete hockey stick graph of the debt, which keeps going up. But it does show that we’ve been at 100% of GDP or more since about 2012. Historically the only other time that high was during WWII, and we dropped back down afterward. High spending now is without an obvious cause.

What does this mean for the future of our country?

There’s an explanation of the historical cycle in an animated video, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio, March 2, 2022. In the upward part of the cycle, at the beginning of a new world order (a takeover of a new monetary system and dominant nation after the demise of the past one) you get this cycle:

·        There is peace, prosperity, and productivity.

·        This leads to a sense that things will always be this way, and that leads to leveraging against the future—borrowing, that is.

·        This creates a financial bubble and big wealth gap.

·        Eventually bubbles pop, and there’s a financial bust and economic downturn.

·        Instead of dealing with this by returning to more production than spending, there’s printing of money and granting of credit. 

·        Lack of trust in the system, and inability to get credit to pay for current living levels, leads to internal and external turmoil, typically in the form of revolutions and wars.

·        Wars are expensive, and in this down cycle, there’s no money to pay for them, and no one willing to risk giving credit.        

·        So then there’s debt and political restructuring, leading to the upcycle of a new dominant power; i.e., a new world order.

the cycle of dominant world powers rising and falling related to economic policies
screenshot from here

The video goes through a fair amount of history in 40 minutes to show this happening. Near the end there’s this summary: 

When those holding the reserve currency and debt of the declining empire lose faith and sell them, that marks the end of its big cycle. Of the roughly 750 currencies that existed since 1700, less than 20% now exist, and all of them have been devalued.

For the Dutch, this happened after their defeat in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, when they weren’t able to repay the massive debts they built up during it. This led to a run on the bank of Amsterdam and a desperate selloff, forcing massive money printing, which devalued the currency and the empire into irrelevance.

For the British, this happened after World War II, when despite their victory, they couldn’t repay the massive debts they borrowed to fund their war effort. This led to a series of money printing, devaluations, and selloffs in the British pound as the US and the dollar emerged dominant and created a new world order.

At the time of this recording, the United States hasn’t yet reached this point. While it has massive debt, spends more than it earns, and funds this deficit with more borrowing and printing huge amounts of new money, the big selloff in dollars and dollar debt hasn’t yet begun. And while there are great internal and external conflicts occurring for all the classic reasons, they’ve not yet crossed the line to become wars. Eventually out of these conflicts, whether they’re violent or not, come new winners who get together and restructure the losers’ debts and political systems and establish the new world order.

Then the old cycle and empire ends, and the new one begins, and they do it all over again.

history repeats in economic cycles
screenshot from here

So where are we? He doesn’t spell it out in the video, but it looks to me like we’re in the massive printing of money and credit stage that comes just before the other unpleasant things that lead to the demise of our dominance and the beginning of another “world order.” Dalio says there are indicators to both predict future longevity and things to work on to improve—as you would do if you’re starting to age and want to improve your health and longevity. The indicators, he says, are:

·        leadership capabilities.

·        education levels.

·        character/determination.

·        rule of law.

·        corruption.

·        resource allocation efficiency.

·        openness to global thinking.

Some of these seem easily measurable—and you can gauge by looking at the country around you. Others I’m not sure how he’s measuring, or what he means by something like “openness to global thinking.” The current “globalists” are the ones calling for a “new world order,” and by that they mean the demise of the United States, both politically and monetarily, and replacement by a global elite, which is made up of those calling for it—regardless of competition they may have from nations like China (and Russia still trying), who want to be the new dominant power. He might just mean being a good global citizen nation to make for good trade and avoid expensive wars and conflicts. Maybe he explains that in his book Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fall, or on his website EconomicPrinciples.org. Much else he has said, however, makes solid sense to me.

Is there a way to stop what looks inevitable? There is. But it takes a strong will. He adds this simplification of steps we need to take:

As for what we need to do, it comes down to just two things: earn more than we spend and treat each other well. All other things I mentioned—strong education, inventiveness, being competitive, and all the rest—are just ways of getting at these two things. It’s easy to measure if we’re doing them. So, like people who want to get fit, let’s get on the program and improve our vitals. Let’s do that individually and collectively.

One thing to understand about what money is: it’s a symbol. As I say in the Economic Sphere part of the Spherical Model website:

Money is a representative, or symbol, of wealth, to make it easier to exchange. Wealth is not created by government; in fact government is incapable of creating wealth and can only spend it.

Government doesn’t create wealth; it only taxes and spends—and wastes and devalues. Each dollar it “gives” to someone, for whatever reason, comes from somebody who performed work to earn that money. And each dollar it “prints” means less value per dollar—a silent tax affecting those with fewer dollars harder than those with plenty.

We are a hardworking people, generally. And creative and inventive. But we have been facing the things that other dominant societies have done before us—leading to their demise: the overspending, the undermining of value, the printing of money, the massive debt. Add to that the corruption and lawlessness.

But I think he’s right—starting with ourselves first, then expanding out to our society and government—we need to earn more than we spend and treat each other well. And then hope and trust that those astronomically huge debt numbers can be overcome, preferably without the demise of our nation.