On a personal note

The Friday Letter/ No. 516 / Nov 4, 2022

Hello readers:

I am taking a part-time break from writing the Friday Letter, my first in more than five years. I will publish occasional letters, possibly only one or two a month, in the near term as I decide how to proceed, both with my medical care and two long-delayed writing projects that need attention. Mostly the purpose is to maintain our status with Substack. Eventually I will decide on a permanent course. This and future letters may include some op-ed pieces. Today's is written by former New Hampshire Senator Jim Rubens.

On his local Birmingham radio program Thursday, Leland Whaley, a recovering attorney and former political operative, noted that voting is not supposed to be necessarily easy. I'll say. Leaving our home suddenly on a medical journey, we requested absentee ballots on Oct. 21. Our county election office mailed them Oct. 22. Twelve days later, on Nov. 3, they had not arrived.

Plan B was Fed Ex, an expensive proposition at best. So far we and the election office are up to about $45. Only one of the ballots arrived, so the election office sent another package. Now were are at $90 and nearly a full day's work sorting out the mess. At one point the USPS tracking system told us the ballots would arrive by mail on Thursday, 13 days after mailing. Nothing. We could have ridden to Florida and back on a bicycle in that time.

But the longer this saga dragged on, the more determined was I to vote. I wasn’t going to give up.

Absentee ballots must arrive at Florida election offices by the close of polls on Election Day, not a week or 10 days later as in Pennsylvania, for example. A wide-open time frame gives Democrats ample time to manufacture the votes need to steal elections. This is how they operate.

I tell this story only to illustrate why the Democrat Party is working so hard to eliminate all validation of registration or any identification. While both parties have lazy voters who vote only when it's convenient, the Democrat Party has a much larger percentage of them than Republicans. But also remember that Democrats continually insult the intelligence of their black constituents because they think they are too stupid to know how to get a photo ID card.

The thought of allowing a general election to go by without my vote for Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio was too much to bear. It's worth the $90.

Election fraud update

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which allowed the commonwealth to ignore its own election laws in handing Biden its 20 electoral votes in 2020, ordered local election officials to reject any mail-in ballots that are either undated or incorrectly dated, American Greatness reports. Republican candidates still face an uphill battle, however, as the Democrat election apparatus sent out 750,000 unsolicited mail ballots, difficult to trace and a major source of election fraud. . .

Recommended reading

“Our Disunity is a National Security Threat”
Christopher Roach at American Greatness

The stipulated penalty for treason is death by hanging. Gen. Mark Milley, who betrayed President Trump by promising to tip off the Communist Chinese of his plans, remains the unindicted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Phake News

Our correspondent Jake Phake, who writes our Phake News column whenever he feels like it, which isn't often, tries to stay non-partisan in his analysis but is having trouble understanding Joe Biden's take on the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi. Sez Joe, responsibility for the attack by a violent, mentally deranged homeless drug-addicted illegal alien drifter with leftist political views lies with – you guessed it – Donald Trump.

A Friday Letter op-ed: As the Founders intended

By Jim Rubens

The founders of our nation were most fearful of concentrated political power and the corruption and tyranny that, history has shown, inevitably follows. For that reason, the Constitution structures our government in multiple ways to divide and check power. Federalism and the Tenth Amendment – reserving unenumerated powers to the states and people – is central among these protections.

Federalism, our protection against a remote one-size-fits-all government, guarantees respect for local preferences, provides political space to test and replicate successful policies, and allows us to live together as one strong nation despite our disagreements.

Today, federalism is under attack by a new aristocracy of billionaires, big corporations, unions, and power bosses from New York, California and Washington, D.C. These power brokers fund and control the billions in out-of-state campaign money that is flooding into swing state and swing district elections nationwide. The sums involved are large enough to determine which candidates are viable and which issues get media attention.

Locally funded, grassroot candidates are drowned out under months of wall-to-wall attack ads and are simply losing control over their own campaigns. As every swing election becomes nationalized, important local and state priorities are being submerged. Consequently, what remains of federalism and our Tenth Amendment protections is in jeopardy.

This unchecked campaign money system is a recent phenomenon, unleashed by a wave of Supreme Court decisions that have stripped our state legislators and Congress of almost any power over campaign money, other than that given directly to candidates. As a result, most campaign money is now “dark,”, a dangerously large, but unknown amount of it coming from foreign sources. This “dark” money is channeled through Super PACs without contribution or spending limits, and it is controlled by a tiny number of individuals associated with each party.

The only real solution to this aristocrat-controlled campaign money system would be to amend the U.S. Constitution. An amendment that would grant state legislators the authority to enact campaign finance laws suited to their own state, restore Congressional power to protect the free speech rights of all Americans, and shut off the national security threat posed by foreign money in U.S. Elections.

The For Our Freedom Amendment gives state legislators the power to write their own campaign finance laws, but dictates nothing, leaving the legislating to legislators. A super majority of voters supports this amendment. Twenty-two states have already adopted resolutions urging Congress to draft this amendment for state ratification. Unfortunately, Congress will not move until more states are united on this front.

It is the fundamental constitutional protections that preserve our freedom and our First Amendment right to influence the outcome of elections in our own states that compels the need for the For Our Freedom Amendment.

Jim Rubens is an American Promise board member, former senator in the New Hampshire Legislature, and a member of the National Association of Former State Legislators. He wrote this piece for the NAFSL monthly newsletter.

The Friday Letter is published at USSA News