Month: August 2022

On 16 August 2022, President Biden signed into law a $740 billion bill that focused on climate, health care and tax increases and was called the Inflation Reduction Act and oh-by-the-way provides an extra $800 billion to the IRS to hire 87,000 new agents. Only in Washington could they product anything that dumb.

The “dumb” part is that this is another one of the mega-bills, 750 pages, that no one read before they voted on it.  If the $80 billion for 87,000 new IRS agents had been a stand-alone bill, it would have had to pass muster in Congressional committees in both the House and the Senate with expert testimony and we-the-people would have known what was coming, been informed of the pros and cons and been able to dial in to our Congressional Delegations. But no, that makes too much sense.  Now it’s the law and I have not heard anyone who believes there is anything positive about adding 87,000 agents to the current IRS force of about 90,000.  “As government expands, liberty contracts.” President Reagan. So, what can we do about it?

First, let’s take a look at how the IRS is doing these days?  The Wall Street Journal and various other open sources recently shed some light on their capabilities or lack thereof:  Here is a summary of some reports from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration: 

Last year the IRS answered only about 10% of taxpayer calls.

There is a backlog of 17 million unprocessed tax returns.

$19 billion, 28%, of earned-income tax credit payments in FY 21 were “improper.”

67,000 claims, $15.6 billion, for low-income housing tax credit from 2015 to 2019 “lacked or did not match supporting documentation due to reporting errors.”

A May 2022, audit found that 26%, $1.9 billion, of its American opportunity tax credits for education expenses were improper in FY 2021.

27%, $541 million, of its net premium tax credits (Obamacare) were improper in FY 2019

May, 2022 audit,13%, $5.2 billion of its enhanced child tax credit payments were improper.

September, 2020, the IRS issued 89,338 notices to taxpayers insisting that balances were owed even though the taxes were not actually due.

February, 2022, audit found the IRS department responsible for ensuring retirement plan tax compliance suffered a 23% decline in the quality of its examinations from 2018 to 2020,

In 2010 the Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act to identify wealthy Americans using undisclosed foreign accounts. The intent was to raise $9 billion in revenue by 2020. An April 2022 audit showed the IRS has spent $574 million to implement the law and had found only $14 million in revenue. STOP, and reread those last two sentences that deal with intent and results. Amazing!

In 2010 the IRS began a program to examine returns from “high income” individuals (those with incomes of over $200,000). But from FY 2015-2017, 73% of the targeted returns were for those earning less than $200,000. Again, intent and results mismatch, aka gross mismanagement with little or no leader oversight.

In the past seven months the Treasury Inspector General has issued damaging reports on IRS mismanagement of its partial-payment program for delinquent taxpayers, for its auditing of partnerships and its struggle to handle internal employee misconduct.

In those twelve short pieces of information, we see a clear picture of an organization in chaos with low standards, ingrained mismanagement and little or no viable leadership. In spite of this reality, Congressional Democrats and the president believe it is a good idea to spend $80 billion, that we don’t have, to double the size and weaponize one of the most inept, inefficient departments in the government.

HAVE WE EVEN PROPERLY DEFINED THE IRS PROBLEM?

The most pathetic issue here is that the IRS’s day-to-day performance standards stem from a big-government, over-regulated, bloated bureaucracy. Is the IRS’s problem that they are short 87,000 employees? Of course not, but the Congress and the president continue to believe that every problem can be solved by throwing thousands of bureaucrats and billions of dollars at it.

What the Congress, at the encouragement of the Executive Branch, needs to do is define the base problem first.  Then, and only then, develop a specific plan to fix the problem. 

THE PROBLEM:

According to the Public Law 117-154 (23 June, 2022), the U.S. Tax Code is 6,871 pages. But when you include the federal tax regulations and the official tax guidance, it rises to approximately 75,000 pages.  That’s the problem.

HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM:

First, how NOT to fix it.  Do not appoint a special commission to “fix” it by working their way through 75,000 pages adding, subtracting and rewording.  Doing so will probably result in an even worse 80,000-page document. 

Instead of trying to fix it, hit the delete button, all 75,000 pages, and start over with a clean sheet of paper.  Start out with a long-range strategic planning maxim; that is, begin at the end.  In this case define the dual end state factors first. After that, plan for the specific issues: how much tax, what types of tax, how are they divided up among taxpayers and who/how it is to be administered (IRS).

Dual end-states:  First is the alignment of overall annual government budgeted requirements with accurately projected revenue. The second is based on the assumption that few, if any, Americans can accurately articulate what the current Tax Code is about.  What we need to end up with is a new Tax Code that can be read in a few minutes and understood by every taxpayer in America.  Both are within the art of the possible as follows:  

NEW TAX CODE, CHAPTER ONE, INDIVIDUAL GROSS INCOME:

All taxes will be based on individual gross income. So. the first thing is to define exactly what constitutes individual gross income, how it is derived, how it is reported and how it can be verified.  Also begin with a threat of very harsh penalties for anyone who is caught hiding or misstating their gross income. Fear of going to jail is a powerful incentive.

CHAPTER TWO, TAX DEDUCTIONS:

The current 75,000 pages of tax Code/regulations undoubtedly contains hundreds of possible deductions. Therein lies a big part of the problem and requirs thousands of IRS employees to deal with it. 

Under this plan there is one and only one authorized deduction from personal gross income; charitable contributions. But the charities have to be real and operate under a strict set of standards in order to qualify.

The Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation’s tax return, 2014, provides a perfect example of a charity that would not qualify as tax deductions by donors.

In 2014 the Clinton Charitable Foundation total revenue (rounded numbers) was $178 million. From that, actual grants to charity amounted to about $5 million; THREE PER CENT.  Most of the contributions went for exorbitant salaries and expensive travel.

This Tax Code chapter must include standards for a charity to qualify for a tax deduction. For example, grants to charity must be at least 60% (or whatever the correct number should be) of charitable revenue for an organization to qualify.

Every charitable organization would be required to submit income and expenditures annually to the IRS and be subject to audits.  For each tax year the IRS would publish the list of qualifying charitable organizations to be cross-checked with individuals’ tax return deductions. This will guarantee every doner that their money is actually going to a worthy cause.  If the charity can’t pass the smell test and make the annual IRS list, they will quickly be out of business.

 CHAPTER THREE, CORPORATE TAX:

Let’s begin this discussion with a fact: corporations do not pay taxes, people pay taxes.  The so called “corporate tax” is, to the corporation, just another cost of producing a product.  The “tax” is no different than the cost of raw materials, salaries, marketing, etc.  The money that a corporation pays to the government in taxes, has already been passed on to workers (lower wages) and customers (price of the product). 

So, let’s do away with all that nonsense and the hundreds of millions of dollars that businesses spend on accountants and lawyers to compute their tax returns.

Under this plan, there will be no corporate taxes.  There is another way, a more sensible way, to turn corporate income into government tax revenue.

Let’s say for example that General Motors has a very good year.  As a result, they might raise wages and salaries, hire a few hundred new employees, build a new plant (future wages/salaries), pay more/higher bonuses to their top performers, and pay higher dividends to stockholders.  All of those corporate actions will translate into higher individual gross personal income for thousands of tax payers. Bottom line, the government gets their revenue, the corporations’ products become more competitive in the global marketplace and the gross domestic product goes up. 

Therefore, under this new tax plan “corporate tax’ gets explained in a sentence (no corporate tax) instead of thousands of pages of tax regulations. And, perhaps more importantly, corporate tax will no longer be a political yoyo under a tax-and-spend administration. 

Taking taxes off the table for businesses and corporations has many positive residual effects.  As an example, in 2017 President Trump cut corporate taxes from 35% (highest in the world) to 21%.  Economists predicted one of the positive delayed impacts would actually be increased tax revenue rather that reduced federal income. They were correct because cutting corporate taxes resulted in higher wages, hiring went up, businesses expanded and generally the entire economy grew and pushed government revenue to the highest levels in history.

Taking corporate taxes to zero will cause an economic revolution: overseas manufacturing will come back to the U.S., we will be less dependent on China, wages will go up, unemployment down, those who can work will be forced off the welfare rolls, GDP will increase and overall government revenue will shoot up.

CHAPTER 4, CAPITAL GAINS TAX:

Capital Gains Tax is currently a separate tax that is levied on profits an investor realizes when he/she sells a capital asset for a price that is higher than the purchase price.

As of 2021, the long-term capital gains tax is typically either 0%, 15% or 20% depending upon your tax bracket.

Under the new Tax Code there will no longer be a separate tax on capital gains.  If you invest $10,000 and can prove it and then sell it for $15,000 at a later date, that is simply a $5,000 addition to that year’s gross income that may or may not put you in a higher tax bracket. 

Capital losses occur when an investment is sold for less than its original purchase price. Under the new Tax Code this will have zero bearing on your taxes.  Why should you get a tax break for making a bad decision and losing money? As they say, “Life is hard and then you die.”  Deal with it.

This simplified formula for Capital Gains Taxes also does away with the Biden-proposed nonsense of taxing Capital Gains on investments that have not yet been sold.

CHAPTER 5, DEATH TAX, aka Estate or Inheritance Tax: 

Death taxes are the most morally corrupt initiative in our government.  Therefore, in the new Tax Code there will be no such thing as a Death/Estate/Inheritance Tax.

Death Tax is a tax on your right (even though you are now deceased) to transfer everything you own at the time of your death.

The Death Tax habitually hits rural America especially hard.  Farmers and ranchers generally fall into an economic category of being, “land rich and cash poor.”  Agricultural land has almost always increased in value over time; that’s the good news (land rich).  The problem with agri-business is that there is little or no consistency in profitability from year to year.  Perhaps last year’s harvest put a pile of money in the bank. But this year a 30-minute violent hail storm will cut your soybean yield by 50%. Right now, in Southeast U.S., a sustained drought has cut the 2022 projected cotton harvest by 50%.  A year ago, no farmers were anticipating that the anhydrous ammonia fertilizer they would need in 2022 would go up by $86,000 for 1000 acres of crop, (cash poor).

So, Mom and Dad pass away and the two kids now own the farm; a farm they love, where they labored as youngsters and where their children might someday want to farm.  But both middle-income kids have a house mortgage, car payments, some student debt and a couple overdue credit card payments.  No way they can dig up a few hundred thousand dollars to pay the Death Tax. They have no choice; they have to sell.

This is unamerican government-greed insanity.  Under this proposed Tax Code, you inherit it, you own it; period.  Do what you want with it, not what the damned government tells you what you must do. 

CHAPTER SIX, TAX BRACKETS:

The concept of operations for this plan is to divide personal gross income into many brackets ranging from zero to billions of dollars. That could end up to be a lot of pages depending on how small each bracket is.  The good news is that the individual taxpayer only has to refer to one of those pages; the one that lists the tax rate for their particular gross income.

The brackets would be “progressive” but also careful to not disincentivize a taxpayer.  True story:  An acquaintance of mine is a successful upper-level executive in France.  She told me that upon getting a promotion resulting in greater responsibility and longer working hours, the salary increase put her into a new/higher tax bracket; the result, her net take-home pay actually was less than before the promotion.

THE TAX CODE MODEL (with illustrative numbers)

First, define the gross income brackets. For example,

-Zero to $100,000 in increments of 25K.

-100K to one million, increments of 100K.

-One mil to 10 mil, increments of one million.

-10 mil to 20 mil, increments of two million.

-20 mil to 100 mil, increments of 10 million.

-100 to one billion, increments of 100 million.

-Remaining increments of $500 million each.

That’s about 45 brackets but the number is immaterial to the Tax Code model; it could be more or less refined than that.

Secondly, determine the number of taxpayers in each bracket.  After the first year under the new Tax Code that will be easier to do and should be updated every year.

Third, begin refining the first model with a working end state number; that is a budget of $4 trillion.  Then beginning at $25K gross income (zero to $25K is tax rate zero) determine a common tax rate, for example, 7.28%, that, applied to every taxpayer, will get you to the $4 trillion end state.

An alternative model would consist of progressive rates; for example, 7.28% for the second bracket, $25K to $50K. Then adjust the rate upward by one half % for each bracket.  Using the above brackets, the tax rate for $1 million gross income would be 12.78% etc. and the rate for $1 billion gross income would be 28,78%.

With an agreed-to set of brackets, tax rates per bracket and the number of taxpayers per bracket the model is set and could literally spit out an updated Tax Code in seconds or minutes. 

So, the president submits his budget to Congress the first Monday in February. February-September Congress works to publish a final Congressional Budget Resolution by 30 September.  Let’s say the budget is $4.436 trillion beginning the fiscal year on 1 October. 

Put that end-state budget number into the Tax Code model and work backwards from $4.436 trillion to determine the exact tax rate for every taxpayer in the country for the following year.  

Today taxation is a complete mystery to almost every taxpayer. We all live with the “April surprise” when our tax accountant tells us how much we owe or will get as a refund.  No more April surprises.  Now the family can sit down at the kitchen table, work their annual family budget and know exactly what their tax burden will be.

Monthly withholding taxes should result in a consistent flow of revenue to the government and rarely should there be an April surprise tax due or a refund.  That should reduce the IRS personnel requirement by tens of thousands.

Remember when President Trump reduced taxes for everyone and the Democrats all called it “A tax cut for the wealthy”; those days would be over with total tax obligation transparency.

BACK TO THE IRS:

The “problems” with the IRS is not that they  don’t want to do a good job.  It is also not that they are short 87,000 employees.  The problem is the ridiculous 75,000-page tax system.  Fix the system, transform America. Perhaps the IRS, under this system may only need a few thousand folks; certainly not the current 90,000 or the requirement for 87,000 new hires.

BALANCED BUDGET:

Fixing the IRS should not be a stand-alone effort.  It can also present an opportunity to pass a Balanced-Budget Amendment.  In just the past fourteen years the national debt has increased from $10 to $30 trillion and there is no relief in sight. The total transparency of tax and revenue with this new tax plan will provide the opportunity to fix our current deficit spending mania. 

Congress, whatever party is in power, has clearly demonstrated they do not have the discipline to control spending.  We do not have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.  A Balanced-Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would constrain total government spending to be less than or equal to total tax collections. Given Congress’ predilections towards annual deficit spending, it is the only way we can get our national debt under control. 

REDUCE SPENDING:

There could be a snowball effect to this effort to fix the IRS and the tax system. It could cause us to look at the size of the entire government bureaucracy and where the bloated government budget comes from. 

There are tens or thousands of government regulations on the books that are a drag on the economy, no longer applicable or downright damaging. The fact is that every regulation has to be administered by some branch or division within the government (hence the bloated bureaucracy) and each one has an annual budget.  The sum of all spending requests become the president’s annual budget to Congress.

FYI in a recently published book, Fix the Systems, Transform America, Chapter 4,there is a detailed plan to clean out the Executive Branch bureaucracy and drastically reduce needless government spending.

CONCLUSIONS: 

This essay began with the assertion that President Biden’s new law which provides an extra $80 billion to the IRS to hire 87,000 new IRS agents is beyond ridiculous and completely unnecessary. 

But, in a larger sense, the new law is illustrative of the way our government does business; one nit-pick at a time and by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it. They appear unable and/or unwilling to look at the larger picture and approach problem-solving by fixing the system in its entirety.

Alignment of the government’s calendar (fiscal-year budgeting and calendar-year taxing) would be a helpful step. 

Reality tells me a simplified, understandable, transparent tax system as described above will probably never see the light of day. Two reasons; the lobbyists representing lawyers and accountants will go crazy and shoot it down. Also consider that 43% of members of Congress are lawyers.  

BOTTOM LINE:

If our great nation is to survive, we-the-people have to speak up and be heard.  If you agree with the above concept of operations, please send a copy to your Congressional Delegation.

We-the-people can dream and plan. Perhaps a

future tax return could simply consist of

a post card and a check.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and a new book May 2022, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.

What is the “state” of the union today? No, not in the sense of the requirement for the president to periodically apprise the Congress of the state of the union, but rather our individual and collective state of mind about the foundational elements of our society.  Are the Constitutional underpinnings alive and well, or are they being threatened or are they in some cases already gone? Liberty, and will, need to be defined, explored, investigated, discussed and protected.  To ignore the discussion is to put them in jeopardy.

First, we need to put liberty in the context of mankind’s history. 

Throughout human history there have been perhaps thousands of, at least semi-organized, human groupings of varying types and sizes; family groups, stand-alone tribes, groupings of tribes, kingdoms, city-states, individual nations, grouped nations (USSR), etc.  One thing they all have had in common is that some ONE was in charge of the grouping.  ONE person held the power. ONE person decided what was best for all others.

U.S. BACKGROUND:

The United States of America was founded on July 4, 1776.  “Founded” means that it was declared independent from the Kingdom of Great Britain.  But it would take another fifteen years to get it all sorted out. 

Having fought and won the Revolutionary War, 1783, popular sentiment was decisive, the American people wanted something very different from the despotic English monarchy. They wanted strong guarantees that the new government would not trample on their newly won freedoms of speech, press, religion and upon their right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures.

In May of 1787, delegates from the 13 states convened the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to draft the Constitution.   They began the debate with a we-the-people theory based on a lot of assumptions that they believed were within the art of the possible. From that they developed a concept of operations that ended up being one of the greatest stand-alone documents for self-government in the history of mankind, the U.S. Constitution, four pages long.

The majority of the text of the Constitution is boiler-plate about the three branches of government and how they are to function.  The Constitutional underpinnings are codified in the 50-word preamble. 

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”  There it is, “secure the blessings of liberty” the essence of the overall intent of the founders that set the stage for something revolutionary that had not heretofore existed for humankind summed up in one word, liberty.

The Constitution was ratified, June 1788.

Liberty, we say it every time we put our hand over our heart and pledge allegiance to, “….. one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.”  

LIBERTY, Oxford dictionary: “The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views”.  Liberty is being able to exercise a freedom, to take an action, or even think a certain way without being prevented from doing so, and without being forced to do so. Liberty is the linchpin for what we-the-people have always believed in and depended on. Liberty is a state of mind.

The Constitution was remarkable but not yet perfect.  For one, it did not contain a “bill” of individual rights. It specified what the government could do but did not say what it could not do. It would take four more years of intense debate before the new government’s form would be resolved.

Essentially the debate was over the breadth and depth of authority the federal government would have or not have. Thomas Jefferson led the debate with: “A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse or rest on inference.”

The nation’s founders believed that containing the government’s power and protecting liberty was their most important task.  From that came the 10^th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or the people.”  From Jefferson’s inspiring argument, the American Bill of Rights, drafted by James Madison, was adopted in 1791, becoming the Constitution’s first ten amendments and the law of the land. 

Like no other nation, liberty is the cornerstone of our foundation. But having liberty is not the end-all be-all.  What we do with liberty is what counts.  What we have experienced in America since the passage of the 10^th Amendment is the application of liberty throughout every element of our society through personal and collective will.

Will, defined: “Unwavering strength to carry out one’s own wishes, decisions or plans.” Individual and hence collective will power, competitive spirit, not to be denied ideology, driven to be-all-you-can-be.  Will is a force in and of itself and has made the United States of America the greatest nation on earth.

Stop for a moment and contemplate the thousands of Americans who, in the 19^th century loaded all of their possessions into a covered wagon and set out across a thousand miles of desert and mountains to start a new life.  Undaunted personal will to succeed!

In the 1930s we watched the Axis Powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, ignite World War II.   Who would have believed that the U.S. would produce 300,000 combat aircraft and 1,200 major combatant ships, including 99 aircraft carriers by the end of WWII and fight in two theaters of war 3000 miles apart.  Unprecedented collective will to win not only by those on the front lines but also by the millions of “Rosy-the-riveters” who put the military gear together.

SMALL BUSINESSES:  A “small business” is officially defined as one with fewer than 500 employees although the majority have less than 100.  There are over 32 million small businesses in the U.S. representing 99% of all businesses.  Small businesses employ over 61 million Americans, 47% of the U.S. workforce. Small businesses are the heart and soul of the U.S. economy.  The American entrepreneurial spirit exists because of the liberty provided by the Constitution and the individual will to grow something and be successful.

The will to win has emboldened ordinary Americans to accomplish extraordinary results for themselves and for others since our Founding Fathers made it all possible.

BUT, ARE WE LOSING IT?  Are political and social forces today undermining our liberty?  Are these forces systematically destroying individual and collective will to move forward and succeed? What will be the consequences and long-term ramifications?

LIBERTY AND WILL, SOME DISTURBING INDICATORS:

SOCIAL MEDIA:

In the past few years, social media platforms have become the go-to medium for Americans to voice political and social opinions. The problem that has too-often surfaced is that those monitoring social media are capable of and have been depriving many Americans of their First Amendment right of free speech. It would be nice to know exactly who is doing it and why but what is most disconcerting is that it is being condoned by powerful political operatives who see it as an advantage to silence political opponents in particular and the public in general if they are of a different political persuasion.  They justify it by calling free speech misinformation. Elon Musk recently summed it up best by saying, “Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy.”  Silencing free speech is all about control and it is very dangerous. It strikes at the heart of liberty.

MASS MEDIA:

TV, radio and printed media have historically performed a vital role in society; sometimes referred to as the Fourth Estate. They have in the past been characterized as one of the pillars of democracy that bind our society together. Mass media can be the watchdog of elected officials, our rights and our liberty.  

Unfortunately, the role of the Fourth Estate has changed. Mass media has become so politicized their believability is constantly in question as they are unlikely to present all the news and opposing viewpoints. The greatest power of the mass media is the power to ignore.

What does that have to do with liberty?  Today’s liberal Democrats and Progressives believe in big government, power and control over the citizenry and they have near total support from mass media. Too much government, too much power in the hands of one political party, supported by most mass media and too much control over what we-the-people can do and say is infringing dangerously on our liberty.

FBI AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT:

Politization of the FBI and Justice Department has been increasingly evident over the past few years and has become front and center with the Biden administration.  On day-one, 20 January 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order lamenting America’s “systemic racism.” The order called for the administration to pursue “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.” It is no secret that the target of the ridiculous “systemic racism” charge was the whole of the Trump supporter population; about 73.6 million of us.

Then came nation-wide Democrat support for teaching critical race theory to kids of all ages in schools across the nation with teachers making students stand in privilege circles, dividing them into categories of “oppressor” and oppressed” based solely on skin color and ethnicity. Parents across the nation loudly exercised their Constitutional right to free speech during school board meetings objecting to the radical, unfounded and dangerous CRT curriculum.

This led the National School Board Association to advise President Biden, in writhing, that, “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat” and imploring Biden to deploy the Justice Department, the FBI, Homeland Security and the National Threat Assessment Center to combat this supposed scourge. The letter described complaining parents as “extremist hate organizations”, aka domestic terrorists.

What followed was Attorney General Garland’s memo, October 4, 2021 to FBI Director Christopher Wray and all 93 U.S. Attorneys, stating that the Justice Department would shortly be announcing “a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel” and directed addressees to convene meetings with local officials to “open lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment and response.”

Snowball effect: The Democrats support a racially divisive school curriculum, the president gets involved, he has already primed the Executive Branch to battle by charging “systemic racism”, the Justice Department over-reacts and we end up with the strength of the Federal Government and its tentacles reaching into millions of households in a national effort to restrict free speech; all of this vigorously supported by the majority of mass media.

There are about 180 million American adults with an under-18 years of age child in the household.  The majority of parents want to be a player in their child’s education.  With the feds involved through intimidation at the local school board level, how willing are the parents to remain engaged, exercising free speech?  What choices do they have?

This scenario is real, it just happened; a perfect-storm example of the cornerstone of the Constitution, liberty, under attack by a too-big government with too much power exercising massive control through intimidation.  And what did we do about it?  Nothing yet, but we can and should on November 8^th.

That’s an example of how easy it is for important things like freedom of speech to go south. Big government, power and control is like a cancer on society that if unattended will spread and destroy all that has made this the greatest nation on earth.  Yes, it can happen to us because it is happening right now before our eyes. Wake the hell up America; it’s a simple equation.

REGULATIONS AND BLOATED BUREAUCRACIES:

In 2021 there were 4,283,079 federal employees. How did it get so big?  There is a corollary between regulations imposed and those administering them.  For example, between 1995 and 2016 there were a total of 88,899 federal rules and regulation on the books. Some group of federal employees have to administer those regulations; hence the rise of a national, bloated, sometimes out of control bureaucracy. Massive government regulation is stealth government control and a stealth tax on all Americans.

Complicating the issue is that as new regulations pile on, old regulations rarely go away and neither does the bureaucracy supporting them.  It’s called “regulatory accumulation”.  The bottom line with regulations and bureaucracies is that they tend to distort business investment, limit innovation and slow economic growth.  This is a perfect legal formula for suppressing and/or destroying a person’s will simply with too much “red tape.”  Too often it can just become too hard, too expensive and too time consuming to overcome the strength and depth of needless government interference.  It gets more difficult every year to start a new business, expand existing businesses and understand the potential penalties and taxes.

By the way, why do you think deficit government spending is out of control and we are $30 trillion in debt?  Every one of those groups of bureaucrats administering a regulation, that we may not need, will request and get tax revenue with which to operate no matter how unnecessary or destructive or debilitating that regulation might be.

Bottom line is that regulations and bloated bureaucracies dampen the entrepreneurial spirit and kill the will to be all you want to be and can be.  What are we doing about it?  Nothing now.  Trump set deregulation as a priority initiative and made some progress.  That is now gone. Don’t forget, 8 November.

THE WELFARE STATE AND WILL:

There will always be those who are incapable of caring for themselves.  The U.S. is the most benevolent nation on earth and we will continue to care for those in need.  But under the guise of “helping the poor” the Democrat Party in particular has for decades created a dependency class in America, particularly among Black Americans. Some refer to it as vote- buying.  In 2022, $1.3 trillion is projected to be spent on welfare programs in the U.S.

Let’s work the numbers:  The “labor force participation rate”, is a monthly calculated percent of the 243 million Americans age 16 and up.  The participation rate is now about 62%.  That means (62% of 243 million) 151 million are working or looking for work.

That leaves 92 million (243 minus 151) who can work but are neither working nor looking for a job. Of the 92 million, 9 million are age 16 and 17 and still in school, 21 million are in college and 40 million are over age 65. That math leaves us with about 22 million that are able to work but are not looking for work. Granted there are some mentally or physically incapacitated but most are in the over-65 age group.

What are the 22 million who are not looking for work using for income? Probably some type of welfare and this is at a time when it seems nearly every employer in America is looking for more workers.  These are the Americans who have lost the will to be all they can be simply because the government will take care of them even though they can and should be part of the labor force. Speaking of will, the government seems absolutely unwilling to solve this simple math problem. Remember, $1.3 trillion this year for welfare.

DIVERSITY EQUITY AND INCLUSION: 

Biden in particular and the Democrat party in general are hell-bent on application of DEI to shape every aspect of our lives and society. Is that best for we-the-people?

EQUITY vs EQUALITY AND WILL:

“Systemic equity is a dynamic process that reinforces and replicates equitable ideas, power, resources, strategies, conditions, habits and outcomes.” Where does one even start to unravel that bowl of spaghetti, how is it done, who does it, what is the end-state?  Contrast that with the concept of equality with meritocracy wherein everyone has an equal opportunity to pursue “X” and the best and brightest will be chosen to do so. The concept of meritocracy drives will to win and be all you can be. What does equity do for individual will?  Nothing positive and probably lots of negatives.

PARENTING, EDUCATORS, GOVERNMENT AND WILL: 

We now have a couple generations of Americans who grew up receiving participation trophies (PT).  Life is one big competition start to finish while PT dampens development of a sense of competition and the will to win. PT creates a false sense of importance. PT deprives children of learning from their mistakes and the will to do better next time. PT is misled motivation.  One needs self-motivation, aka will, to be all you can/should be. PT is harmful to child development.

Recently three of California’s largest school districts dropped “D” and “F” grades. There is a bunch of psychobabble associated with this concept but the bottom line is it kills the will to do better. 

A recent poll revealed that 90% of college students would like for their school to have “safe spaces” where they can escape being exposed to ideas that make them feel uncomfortable.  We are talking about young ADULTS!!  What happened to “man up” you wimp?  Life gets ugly, get used to it and build the will to overcome tough times because there will be a lot of them and there are no institutionalized “safe spaces” out there in the real world.

You work like hell to build and succeed only to have one or a team from the 87,000 new IRS agents camping out at your front door. This is the return of Lois Learner on steroids. Nice going feds, do all you can to kill the will.

We cannot build a successful society on a false premise thereby producing adults who are aimless, pampered, perhaps lazy, and without a sense of will to win, succeed and prosper.  Government responsibility is like parenting responsibility, build will don’t kill it with cradle-to-grave guaranteed handouts and “safe spaces.”

POST SCRIPT: 

This article would not be complete without a comment about the elephant in the room.  Our glorious system has for too long had some holes in it.  Slaves had no liberty.  Once freed, minorities and women had insufficient liberty which led to low levels of willingness.

Some of the founding fathers were slave owners but that issue needs to be put in perspective. Nothing one can say will every make slavery right or morally acceptable but two hundred years ago there was a different view of slavery. Slavery was the way of the world and had been for thousands of years. Humankind has always had to deal with conflict and to the victors went the spoils of war which were, for the most part, territory and people; hunting land, agricultural land and enslaved workers.

The issue of slavery certainly must have been a topic of conversation during the Constitutional Convention.  But historians tell us that if resolution of the slavery issue was to become a part of our Constitution, it would surely have been a deal breaker.  There would never have been a United States of America. Standing together on the Constitution as drafted was the linchpin.   

The framers of our independence were surely guided in their deliberations by the famous Thomas Payne quote, “If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.”

Slavery was a perplexing issue for the founders because no society had ever abolished slavery before. But to their credit, they did include a place-holder in the Declaration of Independence with the words, “all men are created equal”, and eventually we got there. 

BOTTOM LINE:

The concept of liberty, first written in the preamble to the Constitution, set America on a path heretofore not accepted in the world.  The American spirit embraced liberty and practiced it as individual and collective will. Pioneers expanded our country to the Pacific Ocean on will, we have prospered like no other nation on earth from will, fought and won world wars on will. But now we are trending towards a government with tens of thousands of active but unnecessary regulations, bloated do-nothing bureaucracies, a welfare state and driven by the concept of equity.

Pound a stake in the heart of liberty, kill the will of we-the-people and ultimately destroy all that we hold sacrosanct.

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, and a new book May 2022, FIX THE SYSTEMS, TRANSFORM AMERICA as well as the author of a blog WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.

Calling the Republican National Committee:  Hello, is anybody home?  Hello!

Have you looked at the RNC website lately?  There is nothing there that is servicing a single Republican candidate for any office in 2022 and nothing looking forward to 2024; zero. What in the hell are they doing? There is no Republican platform to guide candidates who are on the stump today.  What is in the website is only about 2016 and 2020.  The only reference to 2022 and 2024 is this statement; “RESOLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention.” Amazing, not one before-the-fact action by the RNC that could guide candidates in 2022 and 2024.

Thousands of Republican candidates across the nation are campaigning right now and the 2024 presidential wannabees are already posturing; publishing a book, visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, etc.  Under these circumstances one would expect the RNC to be front and center with a coherent message for every Republican candidate in the country to use. Not happening and no indication that they plan to do anything. 

January, 2022, President Biden, from the podium at a virtual Democratic National Committee grassroots event, questioned what Republicans “are for” and suggested that they “don’t stand for anything.”  That statement, kicking off the 2022 election year, should have been a red-flag wake-up call at RNC headquarters.  It should have perpetrated an all-hands-on-deck reaction.  Nothing that I can find suggests they were anything other than asleep at the switch.

Memo to Ms. Ronna McDaniel, RNC Chairperson: 

The RNC website is a disgrace to the Republican Party and not helpful to conservative candidates and voters.  It’s full of boiler-plate fluff that has no value-added for any candidate.  Only recently did you finally take down the 2016 platform and nothing has replaced it.  Our candidates are out there talking about gas prices and inflation; that’s not enough.  They need an entire array of issues laid out in a coherent way that they can use to enhance and focus their campaign presentations every day. Madam Chairwomen, here is what you need to do and it needs to be completed yesterday. A starter list of issues is provided later in the memo. 

Immediately get out a memo to everyone in the RNC headquarters:  All hands-on-deck except emergency leave for the next 10 days.  This is not an eight-to-five endeavor, we will work as long as it takes. We are going to provide a Point Paper to every Republican candidate in America on every subject the Republican Party is now or should be involved in and a lot of what we see the Democrats doing that is harmful to this nation.

The senior staff and I will meet in the conference room tomorrow at 7 a.m.  We will spend however many hours it takes to complete the list of issues.  Following that, the issue list will be distributed to teams of researchers/writers to prepare their first draft of their assigned Point Paper.

On day one, I will get the word out to every Republican candidate that Point Papers will be on the way in 10 days.   

The objective is for every Point Paper to be one page but never more than two, no exceptions, font 12. Every Point Paper will begin with this sentence: The purpose of this Point Paper is to………

I will immediately communicate with some senior mentors (e.g., Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Alan Simpson) and ask that they quickly review and comment on the list of issues that we are for and against.

I and the senior staff will work from the conference room all day, every day to review Point Papers as they are available from the research/writer teams. Every paper will indicate at the top of page 1, which draft it is; first, second, etc., final.

Everything in a Point Paper must be fact checked.

Every Point Paper will be written as if you are the candidate selling the issue to the constituents.

Every final-draft copy will immediately go out to the senior mentors.

Most of these Point Papers can be in first draft by close of business the first day.

Here is a starter list of issues that need to be transformed into Point Papers.

1. End state: The Founding Fathers envisioned a limited government, especially at the Federal level.  But over time the bureaucracy in the Executive Branch has grown into a fourth branch of government with a life of its own and unintended power.  We want a federal government that works for we-the-people and is not bent on controlling every aspect of our lives. RNC: expand on this with some examples of government over-reach that voters can personally relate to.
2. March 2021, the American Rescue Plan, $1.9 trillion:  At that time every economic indicator told us the pandemic-riddled economy was on the way back and improving every day. Biden immediately initiated his (and Obama’s) tax-and-spend economic philosophy by sending a check to 90% of American households.  It was completely unnecessary and is largely responsible for kick-starting the inflation we are experiencing today.  RNC: fill out the details of this bill and what a disaster it has become for every American.
3. November, 2021, Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act.  Everyone knows our infrastructure needs help but how much of the bill is actual infrastructure and how much is “pork”?  The bill was 2700 pages long so it’s another piece of legislation that no one read and that did not pass muster in Congressional Committee hearings. Additionally, Democrats claimed the bill would pay for itself without raising taxes.  But the Congressional Budget Office concluded most of the pay-for provisions were false and ultimately the package would add $256 billion to the deficit. RNC: Fill out the details in a Point Paper.
4. July, 2022, Biden signed into law the “CHIPS” Act, providing $52 billion in incentives for semiconductor production in the U.S.  Fine, we need to reduce our reliance on foreign-made semiconductors.  But what’s in the remainder of the $280 billion law? More pork that we will borrow money to pay for? More tax and spend? RNC: Fill out the details into a Point Paper.
5. We want the Secretary of Defense to get in his lane and stay there. Secretary Austin said, “The DOD will elevate the climate as a national security priority, integrating climate considerations into DOD’s policies, strategies and partner engagements. The DOD will incorporate climate-risk assessments into war-gaming, modeling and simulation, and bolster mission resilience and deploy solutions that optimize capability, and reduce our carbon footprint.” Mr. Secretary, the only thing climate has to do with warfighting is to ensure our service members take weather into account when planning a combat mission.  Military actions are always about “WET”, weather/enemy/terrain.  RNC: fill out the details into a Point Paper.
6. In 2016 Hillary started the mass-name-calling routine with, “You know to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters (that would have been about 35 million Americans) into what I call the basket of deplorables, the racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.”  Biden picked up on it in his 2020 campaign and as president he has openly accused white Americans who support Trump policies as racist, white supremacists and “an existential threat to our nation”.  Those kinds of lies are ugly, ignorant and unamerican.  Of course, there are right-wing extremists in our nation but an intelligent person recognizes there are also left-wing extremists.  Those thugs are not main-stream Republicans or Democrats that care about our country. They do not represent either party’s public policy positions.  For a president to paint 70 million conservative Americans with that brush is demeaning.  Every candidate should vigorously attack this kind of rhetoric and rightfully call out the Democrats and Democrat leaders for perpetuating that message. 
7. The recession of 2008 was an Obama/Biden challenge.  They attacked it with a Democrat-endorsed tax and spend offensive that resulted in the slowest economic recovery since World War II.  After eight Obama/Biden years the GDP growth was declining in their final year in office.  This is exactly the path Biden is following.  It didn’t work for Obama and it won’t work now.  RNC: expand on this point, it’s a powerful example of where we are and are headed.
8. Do a Point Paper of campaign one-liners that contrasts the Trump economic plan with the Biden plan: In 2017 Trump cut taxes on everyone.  Labor participation rates went up. Median household income grew.  Poverty rate among Black Americans fell below 20% for the first time. Unemployment rates for Black Americans went under 6% for the first time. Female employment set new record highs. From 2017 to 2019 wages for the bottom 10% of earners grew at more than double the rate they did during the Obama/Biden administration. In the two years following the Trump tax reductions, household incomes rose by more than they had in the previous eight Obama/Biden years combined. Every candidate should hammer these stats every day, the average voter does not know all of this.
9. Corporations don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes. Corporate tax is an additional element in the cost of producing a product just like the cost of raw materials, salaries, plant operations, marketing, etc. RNC, do a Point Paper on the debilitative impacts of raising corporate tax rates, another Obama/Biden debacle that Biden is bringing back.  Trump lowered corporate tax rates and reversed the downward trend in business investment, companies could compete price-wise on the global market, corporate wages went up, bonuses went up, 401(k) matching went up. Increased corporate taxes inevitably leads to lower wages and less hiring. Republicans are for keeping corporate taxes at the levels established by Trump.
10. RNC: do a Point Paper on the Democrat’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (being considered by the House as I write this):  Democrats are saying it will reduce the deficit by $300 billion. In spite of the ridiculous title, the Inflation Reduction Act is nothing more than another tax-and-spend tactic that will only serve to exacerbate current inflation issues.  Here are some specifics according to the Wall Street Journal, 4 August:  It will hurt Americans in every tax bracket. More than half the new taxes would be on those making less than $400,000. It is a far-reaching tax on manufacturing that could be devastating.It will make the U.S. less competitive and drive more jobs overseas. It will discourage new investment and create negative economic growth. An estimated 25% of the impact on corporations will fall on employees and lower wages. About 30% of the corporate tax will fall on consumers. It will decrease gross domestic product by an estimated $68 billion with over 200,000 jobs lost. The U.S. tried this in 1986, it didn’t work and was repealed in 1989.  Candidates need to tell the voters that this is the kind of debilitating nonsensical thinking they will get from the Democrats. 
11. RNC: Do a point paper on the debilitating effects of government over-regulation.  Here are some starter facts: The Obama/Biden administration added 20,642 new regulations. Just during 2015 new regulations imposed over $22 billion in regulatory costs. During the Trump administration, the ratio of regulations deleted to regulations gained was 3.2 to 1.  The Trump administration reported eliminating $198.6 billion in overall regulatory costs. It should be noted that a key to becoming energy independent under Trump, was the rollback of stifling energy production regulations. With gas prices soaring to $5+ a gallon, many of us have been asking why can’t we just go back to whatever we were doing in 2019?  Here is the beginning of the answer and candidates across the nation should be explaining this every day. Biden has blamed the increase in gas prices on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.  He knows that is a lie and he also knows the truth about why gas across the nation went to $5 a gallon. In his first 16 months in office, his administration and Congressional Democrats have initiated over 100 actions (executive orders, policy decisions, new regulations) deliberately designed to make it harder and more expensive to produce energy in America. Thirty-two of these anti-energy proclamations were enacted after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Republicans are for energy deregulation back to the 2019 norm for regaining energy independence and for stopping the export of our strategic oil reserves.
12. Republicans are for open debate in public and in the Congress on critical issues. Here are some reasons it is not taking place.  Instead of engaging in legitimate debates based on merits of each side’s position, Progressives’ tendency is to shut down the exchange of ideas by too often simply asserting that, for example, “securing our border is racist, the 2nd amendment is racist, prosecuting crime is racist, cutting taxes is racist, school choice is racist, voter ID is racist, math is racist” and the list goes on and on. Whenever they do not agree with a position, they characterize that position as racist.  Not very intelligent. The irony of all this is that from the end of the Civil War in 1865 for the next 99 years the Democrat Party was the party of segregation which is, next to slavery, the most damning and demeaning of all actions against Black Americans.
13. Biden and the Democrats have created what they believe is a cute new campaign tactic by referring to conservatives as “MAGA Extremists.”  Here is the proper response to that nonsense.  Yes, says the candidate as the opening to a campaign speech, I am a MAGA Extremist, there are about 70 million of us and here is some of what we are extremely interested in:  Energy independence, year to year economic growth, lower taxes for everyone, employing more women and Black Americans than any time in history, support for Israel, no nuclear weapons for Iran, shutting down North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing, secure borders, best qualified leaders for Executive Branch Departments, each NATO country paying their share, deregulating the federal government, support to small businesses, lower corporate taxes, states’ rights, criminals in prison, support for police, if you are able to work and there are jobs available, get one. If all that is “MAGA extremism”, sign me up. Republican candidates should begin to campaign on being a MAGA extremist and throw that thought right back in Biden’s face.

Note to Chairwoman McDaniel:  There is a new book, May 2022, Fix the Systems, Transform America.  The intent of the book is to define national issues in detail and then present a workable solution for each.  The subjects are education, race relations, illegal immigration, voter fraud, size and scope of the Executive Branch, deficit spending, a dysfunctional Congress, term limits, universal service and world peace.  The point to be made is that Fix the Systems can be an excellent reference for your research/writer teams who are working Point Papers on these subjects.  BTW Ms. McDaniel, I sent you a copy of the book a couple months ago.

14.Biden and the Democrats have been exercising a great tactic for spending trillions of dollars on pork and debilitating laws.  They do it by putting together legislation that is literally thousands of pages long, that no one voting on it has read and that has not been vetted by open debate in Congressional Committees. RNC, do a Point Paper on this kind of legislation and provide some good examples for candidates to use to explain why this is so destructive, e.g., one good example was amnesty for all illegal aliens hidden in the multitrillion dollar Build Back Better bill. Here is another Democrat gem; paying couples who make $299,999. a year a Child Tax Credit, aka buying votes. The point being we-the-people should know exactly what issues are being considered in any particular bill before the Congress.  With the current level of Congressional dysfunction, we are clueless about the details.  “The devil is in the details.” RNC: For more details, see Chapter 5, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

15.Republican candidates should agree the world needs to reduce carbon emissions. But, explain that the Biden/Democrats’ obsession with electronic vehicles (EV) does not compute; do the math.  To be effective the world, not just the U.S., needs about a billion EVs of the 1.446 billion total.  To build one EV battery requires 250 tons of earth materials (lithium and rare metals). Mining, transporting 250 tons of stuff, processing it and building an EV battery produces massive amounts of carbon to the point that an EV battery does not become a net reducer of carbon for several years then they must be replaced with a billion new batteries. One more problem is that China controls about 80% of the known supply of lithium. How do you think that is going to work out?  Secondly, we will need massive new world-wide sources of electricity (demand is estimated to increase by 50% by 2050) to recharge a billion EV batteries every day or so.  Again, the carbon footprint is massive with billions of tons of iron and concrete to build “carbon free” wind turbines and solar panels that, oh-by-the-way are mostly produced in, you guessed it, China. Candidates need to get this information out to the voters.  Yes, we need to reduce carbon and create more electricity so let’s begin some dialogue on expanding the use of natural gas, quickly building a lot more nuclear power plants and a full-court-press on fusion research.  And let’s stop using our hard-earned tax money to pay thousands of dollars in tax credits to the rich folks who can afford to buy a Tesla.  Do the math.

16. Have you noticed lately that all the Democrat bills in Congress raise taxes and go on to claim it will increase federal revenue?  Again, they have their economics exactly backwards.  The Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act actually increased follow-on tax revenue because tax cuts cause economic growth, lower unemployment and rising wages. Why is that so difficult to understand?  RNC, flesh out the numbers to go along with this subject; this needs to be shared by all candidates with the voters.

17. Education is a national disgrace:  Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the U.S.; that’s a student every 26 seconds, 7,000 every school day. In the U.S. high school dropouts commit about 75% of the crimes.  About 25% of high school freshmen fail to graduate from high school on time. Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students.  Hundreds of thousands of students are routinely tested across the U.S., here are the results: reading comprehension, percent NOT proficient, grade 4, 59%, grade 8, 66%, grade 12, 76%.  Math, percent NOT proficient, grade 4, 65%, grade 8, 66%, grade 12, 63%.  For decades the Democrats’ solution has been to throw hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of bureaucrats at the problem and it just keeps getting worse.  RNC: In building your Point Paper you can research the detailed look at a solution to all of this mess, Chapter one Fix the Systems, Transform America.  It will work and its free.

18. “The border is secure.”  BS!   For Biden and the Democrats to purposely place our national security at risk is perhaps the most egregious action taken by a president with support from Congress against all Americans in our history. RNC, get a line of facts together for every candidate to use; 2022, number of known illegals processed, estimates of numbers of illegals entered but not processed, numbers of unaccompanied minors, amount of drugs seized, amount of drugs estimated crossing into the U.S., data on terrorists, gang members, criminals, cost to taxpayers.  Republican position:  walls are a deterrent, they work.  Finish the wall.  There is a simple solution that will voluntarily shut down illegal immigration, see chapter 2, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

19. Critical race theory is not fact, it is a theory and not a valid one.  The end result from teaching CRT is greater divisiveness.  There are better ways to vastly improve race relations in America.  See chapter 1, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

20. Republicans are fed up with boys competing in girls’ sports and the voters should be also. RNC:  Need a Point Paper with a few brief horror stories to emphasize the fallacy of this nonsense.

21.Kim Jong Un is a dangerous and unpredictable nut case and since Trump departed, he has aggressively resumed long-range missile and nuclear testing. Trump met with him one-on-one three times and shut him down. RNC:  Republicans need to jump on this one and embarrass the hell out of Democrats for putting this issue in their too-hard box. We must do something before it is too late.

22. Infrastructure: Republicans need to sound off about the desperate need for a pure infrastructure bill that is not full of fluff and pork.  Sure, roads and bridges need repair but there needs to be some prioritization. The West in general and California in particular are about out of water.  It has been more than 40 years since California last opened a major new reservoir. Nuclear power is safe and clean but because of bureaucrats, environmental fanatics and legal actions it takes 20-30 years to build one.  RNC: Find some other critical, do-it-now projects our candidates can talk about.

23. Blame, blame, blame.  Republicans need to get fired up over the complete absence of accountability by our government leaders.  RNC: Need a Point Paper on this subject with lots of examples since January, 2021. We need to get voters fired up over the Democrat blame game.  

24. Green New Deal:  RNC:  Republicans need a few short hard-hitting stories about the Greens’ nonsensical approach to problem solving.  For example, the Keystone pipeline that would safely and with no carbon footprint deliver about 850,000 barrels of oil per day and Biden killed it within hours of being sworn in.  That oil has to move somehow so let’s use truck tankers; 4,357 of them that will burn 1,951,064 gallons of carbon-belching diesel fuel per day.  It’s a simple math problem.

25. The Latin American Cartels have declared war on the U.S., are making billions of dollars and operating unopposed. The Cartels have been the enemy of several Latin American countries for decades so it should not be difficult to cut a secret deal with them to allow the U.S. to operate secretly with small teams inside their borders.  Then give the mission to JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, leave them alone and let them take out the leaders and headquarters in one big secret operation.  Republicans should declare war on the Cartels during their campaigning.

26. The Republicans should come out strong and united on the subject of Woke nonsense in the military.  Wokism does not fit with a warfighting culture, our allies and enemies will see it as a weakness (because it is) and what deterrent strength we have remaining will be compromised. RNC: We need to get the Republican candidates fired up on this issue before it is too late.

27. RNC:  Do a Point Paper on Republicans’ support for Israel, our most valued ally and friend in the Middle East for decades. It was a month before Biden reached out to the Israeli leader after the inauguration. 

28. Law and order: RNC:  do a Point Paper on law and order beginning with exactly what our Vice President thinks about lawlessness.  The looting, burning, assaults on innocents and police causing loss of life over the summer of 2020 was led by leftwing extremists, Antifa and the radical elements of Black Lives Matter. Camilla Harris, was a national leader in the movement to instantly provide bail money to the criminals so they could get back on the street to join the crimewave; she tweeted, “If you’re able to chip in now the @MNFreedonFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”  Later on in the summer Harris is quoted as saying, “This is a movement, I’m telling you, everyone beware, protestors are not going to stop before election day in November and they’re not going to stop after election day, they should not.  We should not.”

After pointing out what Republicans are up against (RE the above paragraph on VP Harris) here are some recommendations for Republicans that need to become part of the Republican agenda, such as: Start at the top by firing the Director of the FBI and find someone who is totally focused on law and order and could give a damn about politics; a director who will clean out the upper echelons of the FBI and restructure the culture of the organization. After reorienting the FBI, do the same thing to the Department of Justice.  Law enforcement across the U.S. needs to believe the nation’s top cops in the FBI and Justice Department have their act together.

29. RNC: Do a Point Paper calling out the Democrats for pushing for an expansion of the Supreme Court expressly for the purpose of packing the court with left-wing justices. The Democrats want to, purely for political gain, challenge the 250-year concept of separate-but-equal branches of government.

30. Voter fraud does exist and it shouldn’t.  For example, a couple years ago in California it was determined that 1.5 million individuals were registered to vote even though they no longer were eligible.  So, what happened to the 1.5 million ballots mailed to them?  North Carolina, 2018 the 9^th Congressional District race was overturned because of vote harvesting that included altering and forging absentee ballots. In New Jersey a candidate bribed voters with $50 payments for mail-in ballots. Virginia, an investigation found 592 examples where registrants were simultaneously registered in another state. There are about 11,600 dead people on Virginia’s voter rolls, all of whom would have received mail-in ballots. In New Mexico a Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 3000 individuals registered multiple times. And so it goes across America. Pathetic and unnecessary.

Voter fraud takes many forms:  It begins with grossly inaccurate voter registration data and then there is ballot stuffing, voter impersonation, fraud by election officials and absentee ballot fraud There is an easy fix for every type of voter fraud; Voter ID. From the president on down to rank-and-file members, Democrats call voter ID “racist”; an insanely ignorant conclusion.  The Congress has passed a bill into law that says if you want to board a domestic air flight beginning May 3, 2023 you must have a “Real ID” card.  You get it at the state DMV site and to do so you must prove U.S. citizenship, local address, etc.  None of the Democrats have called that requirement racist. We can/should use the same procedure for a Voter ID card.  The card data would instantly become the voter registration rolls, 100% accurate and automatically updated whenever your Voter ID is renewed simultaneously with you drivers’ license. When you go to vote the Voter ID card is used just like a credit card; the data is extracted and printed out. Only this time, the printed paper becomes a personal ballot with all of your data on it.  A voting machine will never accept it twice and will not accept it if it does not agree with the Voter Registration Rolls. Mail out/mail-in ballots will be produced accurately from the Voter Registration Rolls.  One eligible voter, one valid ballot counted once.  Voter ID can also be used to solve the problem of hundreds of millions of dollars being “contributed” during the campaign season to buy votes. Voter ID is not racist and it solves all of the current voter fraud problems.  Republicans across the country should be campaigning on this issue.  For more details, see Chapter 3, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

31. Universal Service for every 18-year-old American:  This is a program that has been talked about for years but I have never seen anyone lay out a complete concept of operations for accomplishing that mission.  It would be a huge, complex operation but the combined short- and long-term benefits to the nation are incalculable. The Republican Party and RNC should put Universal Service to America (USA) high on their list of issues they are for and willing to execute.  See Chapter 7, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

32. Shame on all of us for still having to deal with racial discrimination 157 years after the Civil War.  We, but especially the Democrats, have tried to work the issue from the top (federal government) down with trillions of dollars in “assistance”. It has not worked and will not work going forward.  Discrimination can be wiped out of our culture but we have to begin by recognizing some facts and properly define the problem before we search for a solution. Fact, babies are not born bigoted, disrespectful or hateful. Second fact, youngsters learn to be bigoted, disrespectful and/or hateful at home, at school, on the playground, on the streets or, in some cases, in church.  Having properly defined the problem, what is the solution?  We simply have to change what they learn and we can do that by working from the bottom up starting with every 5-year-old kindergartener in America.  It is a program that can work and its free.  See Chapter one, Fix the Systems, Transform America.

BOTTOM LINE: 

Here, in part (emphasis added), is the RNC mission statement: “We are engaged in a national effort to fight for our proven agenda, take our message to every American, grow the party, promote election integrity and elect Republicans up and down the ballot.” How are they doing in 2022 with fulfilling their obligations?  You fill in the blanks, C, D or F? 

Post script:  Fix the Systems, Transform America is a self-published book.  I’m not interested in selling a bunch of books but I sure as hell am interested in doing what I can to help save this nation. If you, the reader, agree please contact your Congressional Delegation and ask them to put some pressure on the RNC to help out the 2022 Republican candidates.  I would ask you to simply send an email directly to the RNC but that is not possible anymore; no surprise, they apparently don’t want to hear from We the People.

Copy furnished: FedEx over-night to Ms. McDaniel, RNC Chairwomen

Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of two books, Vision to Execution and Fix the Systems, Transform America as well as the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com.