Month: July 2024

Remember about May of 2022, most everyone in the Republican party was already deciding what the Party would do after the expected across-the-board landslide in the November mid-term election.

Wake the hell up Republican Party, we are about to have our collective ass handed to us again in November 2024.  Given the state of the economy, our nonexistent internal national security, open borders, our vulnerability in a world with four openly aggressive adversaries (Russia, China, Iran and North Korea), our nonexistent deterrent posture,  the pathetic state of our military readiness, our increasing regulation-nation, our administration led by a president who can’t walk or talk, a vice president who has accomplished absolutely nothing in three and a half years, given all that, Republican candidates across the nation should be 20 points ahead.  Whatever small lead Trump had disappeared in one week after VP Harris entered the presidential race.  Think about it.  Also, with the overall pathetic state of the Biden administration and Biden himself, why wasn’t Trump 10-20 points ahead in most states?

Just when the main stream media was waking up to the fact that Biden cannot lead and the Democrat Party is in complete disarray, they now have a new darling of the Democrat Party and it will be all-hands-on-deck to get her elected.  VP Harris’ handlers will keep her behind the teleprompter where she has a very productive delivery, minimize her press conferences If any and avoid circumstances wherein she is likely to revert to the “wordsalad /cackling” delivery she has so frequently demonstrated as VP.  

THE OBAMA PART OF THE EQUATION: In a speech in Columbia, Missouri just before the 2008 election Barack Obama declared, “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” Do not under estimate how powerful and dangerous Obama has been and can continue to be in his behind-the-scenes “transformation” agenda. In an interview near the end of his terms in office, Obama stated, “People would ask me, knowing what you know now, do you wish you had a third term? And I used to say, you know what, If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in a front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and then I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony I’d be fine with that.”

Obama has been leading the nation the last four years through his disciples in many key Biden administration positions.  A Harris victory in November is an Obama dream come true. Our country is on a very slippery slope moving towards a socialist nation and this could put the final piece in place. Do you want the government to control everything you do, say, have, etc.? We are currently moving in that direction and in four more years your once-great country will be unrecognizable.

THE TRUMP APPROACH: The Republican leader, Mr. Trump is struggling with his narrative.  In his campaign stump speech his new phrase is, referring to VP Harris, “she is a terrible person.” While that might be true, every time he says it, probably another hundred thousand women decide not to vote Republican in November. 

His campaign rallies are packed with tens of thousands of loyal followers but in spite of their enthusiasm it can be misleading?  Does he have tens of millions of followers that include millions of Independents and Democrat cross-overs? That’s what he needs to win and everything he says from now on will be treated negatively by the majority of the mass media and every Democrat.

We need a revived offensive, a new tactic, a different approach to the campaign, a different approach to the voters and we need it NOW.

WHAT TO DO? GET EVERY REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE IN THE COUNTRY SINGING FROM THE SAME SHEET OF MUSIC WITH “IR FACTS” AS THE LYERICS.

OK, what’s an IR Fact sheet?  It is a very focused one- or two-page paper that lays out issues with irrefutable (IR) facts.  There will be dozens of them.  They can and will be updated whenever necessary and immediately dispatched to every candidate.  This will allow every Republican candidate, from the local dog-catcher to the president, to have on-hand at all times a three-ring binder of what the Republican party is for, what they are against and why.

For tomorrow’s campaign speech, the candidate can simply pick a few subjects from the binder and he/she is ready to go.

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 generated an all-hands-on-deck reaction. Nothing that I can find suggests that the RNC was anything other than asleep at the switch.

Here is a way to do this and get it done and executed by the time the Democrat Convention is over on 22 August.

The RNC can take the lead on this initiative with the Co-chairs Lara Trump and Michael Watley at the head of the table.

Of course, the media will get their hands on the IR Fact sheets and the contents can chip away at their nonsensical negative responses to what the Republican campaign is selling to the American voters. It will also force VP Harris’ speech writers to back off on a lot of the untruths they are having her try to sell. 

RNC IMMEDIATE ACTIONS:

Lara and Michael should put out a memo to everyone in the RNC headquarters; here is a draft example:

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 IR Fact sheets 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 in general and VP Harris in particular are proposing that is harmful to this nation.

Lara, Michael and the senior staff 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 you, the researchers/writers, to prepare the first draft of their assigned IR Fact sheet.

We will also compile a list of email addresses for every Republican candidate in America. We will then tell them what is coming in the next 10 days and to get their three-ring binder ready. The administrative requirements are as follows:

• Every paper will NEVER be longer than 2 pages, font 12.
• Every paper will begin with this sentence: The purpose of this IR Fact sheet is to……..
• We (Lara and Michael) will work from the conference room all day every day to review your papers from first draft to final product. No appointment required, bring it in whenever a draft is completed.
• We will build the table of contents as the draft papers come in and provide each paper with an identifiable number, 1 through whatever, for ease of handling and identification.
• Every paper and each iteration of the table of contents will have a notice in the upper right corner that will say, AS OF (DATE).
• As time passes it will be necessary to update the papers and get them immediately into the hands of the candidates.  As a revised paper goes out it will have a revised AS OF date on it. Every candidate in the country will be simultaneously and immediately updated on revised or new information on a daily basis if required.  
• First draft papers are due on day one.  Cochairs from the conference room will immediately turn that draft around with questions and comments for more work to be accomplished. 
• Every fact in every paper must be absolutely IRREFUTABLE.
• Every paper will be written as if you, the author, are the candidate selling the issue to the voters.

Here is a starter list of issues that need to be transformed into IR Fact sheets. Remember it is the Biden/Harris administration so she should get directly linked to all of Biden’s failed policies and programs. But this is not just about Biden and Harris, this is about the Democrat agenda. Begin by breaking down the written policies coming out of their convention.

1. 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 and regulations to which voters can personally relate.

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/Harris immediately initiated their (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 worst inflation in 40 years and that we are still experiencing today. RNC: fill out the details of this bill and what a disaster it has become for every American.

Democrats will campaign saying, “our economic policies are bringing inflation down.  That’s not the point they caused inflation in 2021.  Include in the IR Fact sheet lots of data as to what the Biden/Harris administration has done to every family.

Rising interest rates (perhaps a separate IR Fact sheet) have negatively impacted every family and business in America.  Why did interest go up?  To fight the rise in inflation.  It’s all on Biden/Harris.

3. November 2021, Biden signed the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act. Everyone knows our infrastructure needs help but how much of that Act 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 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 an IR Fact 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 the IR Fact 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 wargaming, 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 an IR Fact 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 mainstream Republicans or Democrats that care about our country. They do not represent either party’s public policy positions. For Biden/Harris 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/Harris are 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 An IR Fact Paper of campaign one-liners that contrasts the Trump/Vance economic plan with the Biden/Harris plan: In 2017 Trump cut taxes for 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 an IR Fact Paper on the debilitative impacts of raising corporate tax rates, another Obama/Biden debacle that Biden/Harris are 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, and 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. VP Harris is proposing a whole range of tax increases.  Do an IR Fact paper listing all of them.

11.. RNC: do an IR Fact Paper on the Democrat’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Democrats said it will reduce the deficit by $300 billion. Despite 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:
-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.

12. Do an IR Fact 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, the Biden/Harris 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.

13. Republicans are for open debate in public and Congress on critical issues. Here are some reasons it is not taking place. Instead of engaging in legitimate debates based on the merits of each side’s position, Progressives tend 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” 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 in general, the most damning and demeaning of all actions against Black Americans.

14. 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 can 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 the Democrat’s faces.

15. Biden/Harris 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. We need to elect a Congress that will protect We-the-People from this nonsense. For example, ‘amnesty for all illegal aliens’ was hidden in the multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better Bill and fortunately caught and deleted. Here is another Democrat gem; paying couples who make $299,999. a year a Child Tax Credit; it’s called vote buying.  My all-time favorite is “$10 million for gender studies in Pakistan.”

16. Republican candidates should agree the world needs to reduce carbon emissions. But, explain that the Biden/Harris 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 it 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 worldwide sources of electricity (U.S. 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.

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%.

The new GOP campaign platform calls for school choice to be the universal option. Democrat leaders oppose it because the education unions are against it. 

18. “The border is secure.” Has been the Biden/Harris administration position.  First of all, it is a direct insult to every American’s knowledge that it is a blatant lie.  In the IR Fact Paper (perhaps 2 or 3 of them) hammer home the numbers of aliens and the dollars.  Reveal the real annual tax payer cost by Including the hidden cost of the many tax-payer supported Non-Governmental Organizations, NGOs spending billions.

19. No administration in history has so deliberately, by policy, threatened the internal national security as Biden/Harris with their open borders.  Do an IR Fact Paper on the millions of “got aways” comprised of criminals, gang members, terrorists, human traffickers, Cartel operators and drug dealers.  Hammer home the 100 + young Americans who die every day from Cartel drugs crossing the border. There is blood on the hands of Biden/Harris.  Make this a headline campaign issue. 

20. Biden/Harris mandated application of DEI throughout the Executive Branch.  DEI is pure poison to the military organization.  Lay this out for voters as corporations across the country are coming to the conclusion that DEI is a failed concept.

21. Republicans are fed up with boys competing in girls’ sports and the voters should be also. RNC: Need an IR Fact Paper with a few brief horror stories to emphasize the fallacy of this nonsense. For example, a University of Pennsylvania athlete, Lia Thomas, competed on the man’s swim team for three years, switched to the girl’s team, set records and was nominated for NCAA Woman of the year award.

22. 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, 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.

23. Iran has been the world’s leading supporter (funding, training and equipping) of terrorists for 40 years. Through aggressive sanctions on Iran, Trump had Iran in serious financial trouble which in turn limited support to terrorists.  Biden/Harris lifted sanctions and otherwise provided them about $100 billion dollars and an oil export business that provides all the funding needed for Hamas, Haskalah and Houthis to aggressively turn the Middle East into a potential World War three situation. Lay this one out with a lot of numbers. Trump put the Houthis terrorists on the world terrorist list; Biden/Harris immediately took them off the list.

24. The Biden/Harris Infrastructure and Jobs Act, 2022, $1.2 trillion.  Good idea, much needed, bipartisan support, etc. However, only about $250 billion actually goes to real infrastructure; roads, rail, bridges, water, etc.  What happened to the other $850 billion?  The Biden/Harris tax-and-spend administration at work.

25. Blame, blame, blame. Republicans need to get fired up over the complete absence of accountability by our government leaders. Need an IR Fact Paper on this subject with lots of examples since January 2021. We need to get voters fired up over the Democrat blame game.

26. 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, under construction, would safely and with no carbon footprint deliver about 850,000 barrels of oil per day and Biden/Harris killed it within hours of being sworn in. That oil has to move somehow so let’s use trucks and rail 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.

27. Israel has been 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 and the Biden/Harris team failed to attend Prime Minister Netanyahu’s presentation before the U.S. Congress on 24 July.  Despicable disrespectful behavior demonstrated to the whole world.   

28.Do an IR Fact Paper on law and order beginning with the looting, burning, destruction, assaults on innocents, and police causing loss of life over the summer of 2020. Publish all the numbers associated with those crimes. They were led by leftwing extremists, Antifa, and the radical elements of Black Lives Matter. 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, chip in now at @MNFreedonFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” Later on, in the summer Harris is quoted as saying on national TV, “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.” The “movement” was in fact a bunch of low-life left-wing thugs joined by local gangs to loot and destroy.  It was obvious to everyone but Senator Harris.

29. RNC: Call out the Democrats for pushing for an expansion of the Supreme Court expressly to pack the court with left-wing justices. Purely for political gain, the Democrats want to challenge the 250-year concept of separate-but-equal branches of government. And while doing so, they relentlessly say the Republicans will destroy democracy.

30. Strategic oil reserve. We have one. “Strategic” is the key.  Beginning 2022 the reserve was 621 million barrels.  Biden/Harris have released 45% of the reserve reaching the lowest level in 40 years and threatening national security in that we have only a 17-day reserve in case of an emergency. It has previously been drawn down for emergency reasons, for example when Iran invaded Kuwait in 1991 oil imports were disrupted.  Biden/Harris drew the strategic reserve down in an attempt to reduce rising gas prices for political gain.

31. On “60-minutes in 2020 Nora O’Donnel addressed Senator Harris saying “The nonpartisan GovTrack has rated you as the most liberal senator.”  The IR Fact Papers needs to track VP Harris’ voting record in the Senate and draw some conclusions about her liberal standing in the overall Progressive liberal movement.

32. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) ACT passed in the House in July, 2024. The Acct simply requires proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote. The House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it, “An extreme MAGA Republican voter suppression bill.” 198 House Democrats voted against it.

Illegal immigrants and non-citizens across the nation are being improperly registered to vote, allowing them to cast illegitimate ballots in federal elections. The SAVE Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act to clarify that states must require proof of citizenship when registering individuals to vote in federal elections. Why wouldn’t every Governor, regardless of party affiliation, want a fair election in their state?

All 47 Democrat Senators have so far refused to comment on the bill and President Biden has already vowed to veto the measure if it passes the Senate. Senate Majority leader, Chuck Shumer, can find ways to delay a vote until after the November election.

Every Republican running for any office should make this Bill a priority issue in every campaign speech.  Every incumbent Democrat Representative who voted against SAVE and is running for reelection should be publicly ridiculed every day by their Republican opponents.

For years, Democrats have called any Republican suggestion of requiring “voter ID” a “racist” requirement.  On the campaign trail, ask them to explain why it is racist. Then ask them if the law requiring every American who wishes to travel by airplane, effective May, 2025, to have in their possession a “Real ID” is also racist.? Proof of citizenship is required to get a Real ID

33. Unemployment defined, sort of: If you do not have a job but are looking for one you are “unemployed.” Makes sense. But you are NOT unemployed if you do NOT have a job and are NOT looking for one. Surely there is one too many “nots” in that sentence. Nope, that’s our government at work.  RNC, do some research on the “Welfare to Work” program that President Clinton initiated while in office. It made sense and it worked until Obama/Biden killed it.  Lay it out in an IR Fact Paper for all Republican candidates to consider.

34. Biden/Harris have been advocating for taxpayers to pick up the tab for $1.77 trillion student loan debt even though it is unconstitutional to do so. They call it “good economics” but in reality it is simply old fashioned vote-buying. 

35. Energy independence is just good common sense. Something sorely lacking in the Biden/Harris administration. In 2020 the U.S. became a net exporter of petroleum for the first time since 1949. Biden/Harris quickly turned the U.S. back into net importer of crude oil, about 3 million barrels per day.

Biden’s concept of foreign relations is to refer to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah nation” then go begging for oil imports which they logically declined.  So, he revitalized the oil industry in Venezuela which, under the ruthless dictatorship of Maduro, is a pariah nation. And so it goes in the Biden/Harris administration.

There are many more fact-based issues that need to get into the hands of Republican candidates.  Get to work, RNC.

BOTTOM LINE:

This election is too important for the future of our country to lay the responsibility all on the Trump/Vance campaign team.  We need every Republican candidate talking the same language.  This program will work but it needs centralized planning with decentralized execution and that logically falls on the shoulders of the RNC coleaders, Lara Trump and Michael Watley.  Make it happen.

 

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” Ayn Rand.  Strikes a nerve doesn’t it?

A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable federal government was never the vision or intent of the founding fathers.  Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns; it ceases to be efficient, effective and/or no longer performs the functions for which it was created.  At that point a large organization will tend to look inward and become self-perpetuating rather than value added.

 Some or all of that could apply today to the Departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government. This results in two major problems that must get fixed. 

First, a too-large organization is very expensive to maintain.  A more effective and efficient Executive Branch will be much smaller and less expensive. Every 1% reduction in end-strength equals about a $1.5 billion saving in annual salaries plus billions of dollars more in long-term retirement pay and benefits.

Secondly, and more importantly, the annual U.S. budget boils up out of this massive organization. Every government-funded program is maintained and sustained inside these bureaucracies.  These programs are this organization’s PRODUCT.  General Motor’s product is vehicles; the Executive Branch’s product is taxpayer supported programs.  The question is, what is the value added of those programs?  An in-depth review will undoubtedly find programs that have existed for decades, their original purpose no longer relevant, programs that sounded good at their inception but have failed in execution, programs to solve a problem that should have been the purview of state or local officials, programs initiated to solve a short-term problem but live on forever.  The list is long.  President Reagan summed up the problem with this statement, “Government is like a baby, an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

NATIONAL DEBT: 

Before we launch into how to fix spending, a word about national debt.  The out-of-control spending and debt increase is a relatively new problem. The Obama/Biden administration swamped us with more debt than all of the 43 previous presidents combined.  And now increasing debt annually has become the norm.  The Congressional Budget Office has been telling us for several years that annual debt increases is “not sustainable”, aka there will be a day of reckoning and it will be ugly.  

It is difficult to get our minds around the almost $35 trillion debt that is increasing by a mind-bending $1 trillion every 100 days.  If you had stood on a street corner in 1960 handing out dollar bills, one dollar per second, you would just about now finish giving away the first billion dollars. Your federal government spends a billion dollars about every 8 hours, 24/7.  You would be on that street corner for 62,000 years to hand out the first $1 trillion. If you were paying off the current debt at one dollar per second, it would take you over 2 million years.  Unsustainable. We have to do something about spending and we have to change the way we think about debt. 

A frontal assault on the Executive Branch could result in the first major attempt at reducing annual federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars; something the current Executive Branch and Congress collectively are incapable of doing. 

THE REGULATION NATION:

The Obama/Biden administration led us down the path to become a “regulation nation” by using their bureaucracy to effectively bypass Congress with massive regulation oversight which is often referred to as a “stealth tax.”  In their sprint to the finish in 2016 nearly 4000 regulations made their way through the federal bureaucracy, costing billions of dollars per year and wreaking havoc on American businesses in particular

In 2017, a week after the inauguration, President Trump sent a message to the Congress, the government bureaucracy and the American people with his Executive Order, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs”, that required agencies to revoke two regulations for every new rule they want to issue.

On 20 January, 2021 a few hours after being sworn in, President Biden cancelled the Trump 2 for 1 Executive Order.

In 2020, the Trump administration’s regulatory costs were about $20 billion. In 2021, Biden’s first year, the cost exploded to approximately $200 billion.

In Trump’s first year, 2017, the Federal Register finished at 61,308 pages the lowest count since 1993 and a drop of 36% from Obama’s 95,894 pages in 2016 which was the highest in history.

REGULATIONS IMPACT:

 Regulations are a tax on every American. The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that overall regulatory costs to the economy are at least $2 trillion; about 8% of the gross domestic product. If you think of regulation costs as a tax, it would be larger than federal income tax. Or, if it was a country, U.S. regulation would be the world’s eighth-largest economy.

FIX IT AGAIN:

The federal government can be fixed but it will take strong leadership, attention to detail and, if done properly, at least six months of hard work. It needs to happen and the sooner the better.  The American people are looking for someone to lead us away from growing governmental control, growing entitlements and out-of-control government spending aka uncontrolled taxation. The Trump/Vance team can do this.

Reducing the size, reach, budget and influence of the sprawling Executive Branch should, become a major issue in the remaining months of this presidential campaign. Here is what could be accomplished in three phases.

PHASE 1: Now through November 2024. Make Executive Branch transformation a high priority issue.  Trump and Vance talk about it at every stop on the campaign trail. Use the above regulation nation statistics for emphasis.

Some of you reading this know and can communicate with candidates for House and Senate seats this year.  Those of you who believe the following program is necessary, encourage your candidate to support Executive Branch transformation as a priority in their campaign. 

PHASE 2:  Nominate Executive Branch Leaders, November, 2024-January 2025. The President/Vice President-elect should concentrate their selection process on principals and their deputies who understand organizations, who have successfully led large complex organizations and who will lead the effort to re-think their mission and to restructure their organization to most effectively and efficiently accomplish their mission.

PHASE 3:  January 2025 through at least, June 2025 execute the transformation.

This will be a difficult process because we are talking about change, massive change.  We must recognize that for any large organization, especially one as large as the Executive Branch, change is hard. Fear of the unknown is a powerful human force, especially in government with an entrenched, layered bureaucracy that is stiff, stifling and in many respects self-serving.

Vice President Vance will provide hands-on leadership from start to finish with periodic in-progress reviews to the American people.

How does all this get accomplished? It is a long and tedious process, even explaining it is a long, tedious read, but there are no viable shortcuts to re-thinking, re-designing and re-structuring large organizations and make them be all they can/should be. 

FIRST, the Vice President Vance should set up a senior Spending and Debt Reform Task Force consisting of the deputies of all the departments, agencies and commissions. They will be the change agents and become the junkyard dogs of Washington.  

SECONDLY, define the end state and end date for the campaign. For example, the VP might say, “Over the next six months our task force will look inside every organizational element of the Executive Branch.  We will assess their mission (is it relevant today), their structure (too many or too few people), layering (is it OK or dysfunctional), can the organization integrate (communicate) vertically and horizontally efficiently and effectively on a day-to-day basis? Is the organization as a whole agile (able to deal with change as a matter of course) and is there overall value added for the government and especially for the American people?”

THIRD, organization charts. The process begins in every named organization by putting together a very detailed organization chart. That’s the visual for the task force and it provides an immediate sense of the size, complexity and layering.  Big government is layer after layer after layer; some of which produce nothing; they exist just to oversee what is being produced at the layers below.  Why the organization chart?  Because it allows the task force to begin the analysis and restructure at the bottom of the organization. One cannot reorganize and restructure top down; to be successful it must be a bottom-up process. 

Using the Department of Agriculture as an example, there are 65 different organizational elements that come under the headings of “departments, agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards and facilities.” Inside them are departments, directorates, branches, sections, cells and individual elements.  Every one of those becomes a “box” in the organization chart.  Each organizational box must list the name of the element, number of employees and the grade of the leader, GS 10, 12, whatever.

Within the Department of Agriculture, for example, the deputy Secretary, part of the VP’s senior task force, will form his/her own internal departmental task force. The Department Task Force’ first action will be to send out an internal memo to the leaders of every “box” to submit in one week a no-more-than-two-page report to the Deputy Secretary.  The report format should include, as a minimum:

First, a one or two-sentence mission statement that describes what it is that element collectively does; for example, “responsible for writing, executing and enforcing Department Regulation 135, Beef Export Program, and reporting results quarterly to ………”

For this “box” the Department Task Force’ assessment would begin by determining whether or not Dept Reg 135 Beef Export Program is any longer needed?  If so, could the mission be accomplished with fewer people?  Could the same number of employees also be responsible for Dept Reg 246, Pork Export Program? Do we need the report quarterly? And most importantly, what is the value added to the overall Department of Agriculture mission.

There are probably tens of thousands of worthless reports written every year by an entrenched bureaucratic mass that lives on forever sucking up tax dollars, stifling initiative and being a roadblock to progress.

Secondly, the report should describe the grade structure of all the employees in the box.

The Task Force job is to determine if the grade structure is commensurate with the degree of complexity of the mission? Could two or more similar “boxes” be combined, perhaps scaled down and led by this same leader (a span of control issue)? Is the leader a “working leader” or just grading the papers of his/her subordinates and passing them up the chain?

Third, describe a typical work week; number of meetings, amount of travel, etc.  

This can reveal a lot about an organizational element and its leader.  Many meetings are just to fill up time, or are a daily social coffee clutch, or make the person in charge feel like he/she is actually “leading”.  Many meetings are a colossal waste of time. If employees have time to attend too many meetings, they probably are not very busy to begin with. A personal note; I once worked with a senior leader who was so anti-meeting he would require everyone to remain standing for the entire session.  Food for thought.   Is the travel critical to success, nice to have or perhaps just to fill up the work week? Travel is very expensive.

Four, what regulations and/or directives guide your work? 

After reviewing the answers to the other questions, it may become apparent that these regulations are no longer necessary.  Another piece in getting the big organizational picture.

Five, product.  A list, in single sentences, of major accomplishments in the past 12 months.

The task force will then determine if the accomplishments are in line with the mission or are they just doing “busy work”?

Finally, a short statement of value added to the department of…..(agriculture).  That is, “Without us the Department would not/could not do the following……….”

The Task Force review of the input is all about policy, practices, process, grade structure commensurate with overall responsibility, span of control, layering and value-added determination.  When  VP Vance randomly attends Departmental Task Force sessions, he will be grading their work and progress; are they tough enough, too tough, thorough enough, on the right track or being overly protective of the status quo?  The VP will also be able to pick up strong-points and pass them along to other Departments as best practices. 

Once the task force has worked its way up from the bottom, looking at every element, their individual mission and value added, then and only then will they be capable of looking back and seeing how many subordinate elements are off track, irrelevant, unnecessary or even counterproductive.  They will then be capable of restructuring, re-aligning, re-tasking and  reorganizing the subordinate elements to create an organization that is more focused, aligned, responsive, innovative, agile and rid of pockets of resistance.

What must be emphasized here is the importance of the bottom-up review process.  As the task force works up from layer to layer on the organization chart, they will come to some conclusions about value added at each level. Having reached the top of the org chart it is possible the Vice President’s senior task force could conclude that an entire department’s continued existence should be questioned.  A prime example is the Department of Education.  Education in America is a national disgrace and not getting better in spite of the hundreds of billions of tax dollars expended by the department since its inception 40 years ago.

This process may look tedious and time consuming, because it is.  But unless you begin at the bottom and unless you include every element, you will never achieve an acceptable level of success.

CONCLUSIONS: 

The task forces must be especially mindful of the phrase “we provide oversight.”  That is a red flashing light that an organization does not, in and of itself, produce anything of value. They simply exist to grade papers, expand their purview, inhibit progress and expend tax dollars.  As President Reagan reminded us, “The most terrifying words in the English language are, ”I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

During the process, it is important to not lose sight of the overall objectives.  First, the objective is NOT to reach some specific lower number of federal employees.  Secondly, the objective is to rid the government of “boxes” in the organization charts that have no “value added”; they just exist because they have always been there.  The end state is an organization that is leaner, more focused, more efficient, more effective, and agile.

WHY DO ALL OF THIS WORK?  THREE REASONS:

First the most common attempts at downsizing, in my experience, used numerous times over the past decades, have been to declare a hiring freeze or order an across-the-board xx% personnel cut, neither of which make any sense nor achieves any positive results. 

Secondly, what I have described above has never been done before.  We have just allowed the Executive Branch to grow without ever undertaking a necessary and insightful pruning process.

When completed, many positions (perhaps tens of thousands of them) will be eliminated. It will then take a couple years of shuffling the deck by the Office of Personnel Management to get folks reassigned or retired, but it is within the art of the possible and worth the effort. 

Third reason we are doing all this work is that the U.S. budget is the sum of what all of the Executive Department’s agencies, councils, institutes, programs, foundations, services, authorities, offices of, boards and facilities need to accomplish their missions.  If, the task forces finds that perhaps thousands of Executive Branch “boxes “are unnecessary, it follows that perhaps tens of thousands of actions, programs and policies can be eliminated because they are outdated, unnecessary and/or redundant.  Budget requirements can be downsized by potentially billions of dollars.

There is also a states’ right issues in all of this.  As the federal government grows a natural outcome is that they over-reach into areas that are better and more effectively handled at the local and state level.  Federal over-reach tends to result in a one-size-fits-all approach to problem solving and it is usually ineffective and inefficient. 

President Reagan summed all of this effort up with three of his famous conclusions: “Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.” “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” And, “Government always finds a need for whatever money it gets.”

BOTTOM LINE:

Getting spending and hence debt under control will resonate with the American people a lot more than the tax-and-spend economic baseline of some administrations.  This is a necessary, positive endeavor that needs to be embraced by both political parties. 

This action could be the first step towards government operating with a balanced budget.

This action can solve the regulation nation problem.

This operation will not cost the taxpayers a cent but it will save them billions.

This will also send a powerful message to Congress.  Congress has become increasingly irresponsible over spending and debt.  They need a wake-up call and if enough politicians will campaign and win with this message, the Congress will be obliged to listen and hopefully change.

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.

IT’S AS SIMPLE AS “TASKS, CONDITIONS AND STANDARDS”

Let’s begin at the end with a conclusion. The Secret Service could have conducted themselves more professionally while planning and executing the protection of President Trump in Butler Pennsylvania. The attempted assassination will of course be investigated officially by the FBI and Congress and unofficially by the media and personal opinions. 

The Secret Service mission statement. “We have an integrated mission of protection and financial investigations to ensure the safety and security of our protectees, key locations, and events of national significance.  We also protect the integrity of our currency and investigate crimes against the U.S. financial system committed by criminals around the world and in cyberspace.”

All of the investigations should begin by defining the state of training of the Secret Service agents involved with, ensuring the safety and security of our protectees.

TASKS/CONDITIONS/STANDARDS

TASKS: A blinding glimpse of the obvious, there are a series of tasks to be performed before and during the conduct of a protection function. The tasks differ for each level of the agents; Patrol Officer, Elite Officer, Bodyguard, Agent, Field Agent, Senior Agent, Special Agent.  That is, the tasks to be performed by agents assigned to be up close and personal with the protectee differ from the agents who are responsible for assessing the area of operations and developing the overall plan for execution.

Tasks fall into two categories, individual and collective tasks. Every individual task for a specific grade, Field Agent for example, must be performed to a specified standard under varying conditions.

 For those Secret Service agents in leadership positions, there is a separate set of tasks called collective tasks.  Just like the individual tasks, every collective task must be performed to a specific standard under varying conditions.  Individual and collective tasks must be written and be the centerpiece of all training manuals.

The first question, by the FBI and Congressional Oversight Committee investigators to the Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle should be, do you have an official publication specifying every individual and collective task to be performed by every agent at every level involved in the security of protectees?

The second question is, can you define the task proficiency level of every Secret Service person involved before and during the Trump rally in Butler Pennsylvania?

CONDITIONS:  For every individual and collective task there is a defined condition. For example, is the protectee inside or outside, in a vehicle, walking down a line of people shaking hands, moving through a crowd, or stationary speaking to a crowd, is it daylight or dark? The conditions further define and complicate each individual and collective task. Tasks and conditions are always linked and result in defining a standard of conduct.

STANDARDS: An organization without standards is a failed organization.

For every individual and collective task there is a specified standard of performance. Until an agent, at any level, is proficient in every task associated with their grade, they are in an unqualified status. There can be no exceptions for gender, especially when it comes to physical capabilities.

Old saying, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.” The training manual listing of tasks by grade and condition that must be performed to standard at all times under varying conditions is the road map for a successful organization, especially one with a life-or-death mission every day.  If such a document does not exist, the proficiency level of every agent can and should be called into question.

A final note about standards. As stated, an organization without standards is a failing organization.  A second absolute truth is that an organization that begins to reduce standards to accommodate a lesser qualified person or group is on a slippery slope from which there is no recovery.

MERITOCRACY:

Tasks/conditions/standards is the lifeblood of meritocracy.

Can we think of any organization in government that is more dependent on meritocracy than the Secret Service, given their protectee mission?  Any agent at any level should absolutely not be in the field with a protectee unless they are proficient in every task. Period.  “One-the-job training” should not even be in the Secret Service lexicon.  ‘On-the-job observation” should certainly be part of the training process as long as the observer is not part of the head-count required for the mission.  

Are the proficiency levels of all agents the same?  Certainly not; not all will achieve a max score on the physical tests, not all are equally qualified on the shooting range, etc. But there are absolute minimums that must be achieved. No exceptions. That is what meritocracy is all about. Periodic written evaluations should specifically point out strengths and areas for improvement for every individual.  Periodic evaluations should always have a section whereby the rater can answer the question, “what is this individual’s potential to successfully serve in positions of greater responsibility.”  Leaders at every level should be recognized as those who are the best and brightest regardless of race and gender. Meritocracy is part of the process of developing and enforcing a daily operating culture of trust and respect.

The point of the above dissertation on tasks/conditions/standards is that the training level/certification of every agent at Butler Pennsylvania before and during the shooting should be the opening question to the Secret Service Director.  If she cannot answer that question in great detail, that, by implication speaks volumes about the current status of the Secret Service. 

CAN AN ORGANIZATION BE DISTRACTED FROM TASK/CONDITION/STANDARD?

Once inaugurated, Biden directed the leaders of every department and agency in the Executive Branch to make Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, DEI, a priority within their management agendas, and they were given 100 days to assess the state of DEI within their own workforces and associated policies. From that assessment, they were to move forward with implementing agendas. Additionally, each organization was to hire a DEI czar with a staff reporting directly to the Department/Agency leader.

The DEI folks will tell you, “Inclusion is about all employees feeling their voices will be heard.”  That is a feel-good thing, it’s an all-about-me thing.  It flies directly in the face of being the best team member you can possible be every day and the combination of all that collectively creates, maintains and sustains an unbeatable force.

The vast amount of written material, the large staff requirements and the long-term continuous training requirements all associated with DEI are not only disruptive to daily operations but also can be confusing and difficult to understand and implement.  

DEI, A DESTRUCTIVE CULTURE IN THE SECRET SERVICE ORGANIATION?

In a podcast, February 2023, the DEI Director Loucious Hires III described DEI as a “mission imperative” and the “ultimate goal” to spread DEI with the agency via seminars on “respectful use of pronouns” and striving to be the “gold standard.”

The Director outlined how “every action at the Secret Service should be informed by DEI” and claimed “the ideology makes the organization stronger.” Every employee should consider how every action is reflective of equity”

In the DEI world equity means that “opportunities are shaped to fit with the needs of each individual in a way he or she feels is fair”. Stated another way we dumb-down standards to the lowest common denominator. By contrast, the all-encompassing imperative in an organization with a life-or-death mission is that the standard is as high as possible for every action and for every agent.  The standard is there for the taking by everyone and is the heart and soul of meritocracy.  “Fair for everyone” is not an acceptable operative culture for the Secret Service.

This begs the question, does every agent have his or her head in the game every day and on every mission or is DEI a mental distraction?

CONCLUSIONS:

 he Secret Service failed at Butler Pennsylvania.  It is imperative that every stone is overturned and examined to definitely determine what were the causes.  General training regimen?  Leadership?  Insufficient preparation?  Etc. Etc.

Once the causes are found, there must be organizational changes in leadership, training, culture, etc.

BOTTOM LINE:

“Zero defects” is not an appropriate goal for any organization.  We do not live in a perfect world and zero defects is not achievable so don’t try to go there.

But there must be more/better oversight, planning, training, defined standards to be comfortable that a Butler Pennsylvania does not occur again.

The investigation should not be about Republicans and Democrats, it is too important to let that nonsense interfere. It should not be about blame. Blame is the easy way out; find a scapegoat and move on. 

The investigation must be about two things; what didn’t work and how does the Secret Service fix itself.

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

If I was having a chat with President Trump right now it would go something like this:

You have been campaigning the last sixty days or so as if it was September and October.  That’s OK but there is still four months to go and the same tune is getting old and tiresome.  We have all heard the generalizations, “the border is a mess”, “inflation is the worst ever’, “Biden is the worst president in history”, etc. etc. While those are all true can there be a new and different way to get the points across?   

Another thing that is disadvantageous about selling generalizations is that they can come across as opinions and not facts and the opposition then calls them lies because they have a different opinion.  Biden and most of the main-stream media frequently refer to you as “a liar.”  And they say it so loud and often that more and more people will begin to think, “if everyone says so, maybe it’s true.”

There is a way out of this but it is going to take some work and the new concept may shock a few folks.  That’s OK too. There is truth in the old saying, “If we always do what we’ve always done, we will always get what we always got.” Which may not be the best case.

Thesis:  Don’t continue telling the voters this is the worst administration ever and hope they believe you.  Hope is not a process!  Do this by giving them enough irrefutable facts and information that will cause each individual to come to the conclusion that it is in FACT the worst administration and the worst led presidency in history and therefore the democrats must be defeated in 2024.  

Additionally, don’t spend all your time on just “Biden.”  Spread your message of failure to the “democrat party.” This could convince more voters to also support their Representative and Senate republican candidates.

CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS: Here is a starter list of issues for you to consider.

Announce your Vice President NOW.  Why now? Another appropriate quote, “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” Brutus

FACT:  The democrat party has never been this disarrayed, dismayed, divided, damaged or disgusted.  They have no leader.  CNN pole early July, “Three-quarters of US voters say the Democratic Party would have a better shot at holding the presidency in 2024 with someone other than Joe Biden at the top of the ticket”

While the democrats don’t even know who their candidate is going to be and the Democrat Convention is only a few weeks away, now is the perfect time for the Trump campaign to strike with some big, positive news; the Vice President selection.  The media will be all over it while the democrats can’t find their collective ass with both hands.

Be different.  Be decisive. Make new news.

The second part of the concept is to lay out a very specific, itemized close-hold plan for issues to be discussed every week after the close of the Republican Convention until the first of November.  Close the convention speech with a tease, telling the media and voters to “tune in” every Monday morning at 10 a.m. Here is an example of the first week’s campaign speeches.

Monday 22 July, 10 a.m.: Bidenomics and the Middle Class Melt Down.

Biden was, for months, talking about the glorious Bidenomics every time he got behind a teleprompter.  That has ended because his handlers probably concluded that most of the public has figured out what a disaster it is for them, especially the middle class.

Every day that week have a new speech FILLED with irrefutable convincing facts and let the voters draw their own conclusions about this administration’s handling of the economy. For example, discuss:

Trump Inflation numbers from Jan 2017 to Jan 2021.

What causes inflation?  Too much money chasing too few goods. Too few goods because of world-wide Covid shutdowns. Too much money because the democrats, to show off their spending skills and to buy votes, unnecessarily passed out $1.9 trillion in the American Rescue Plan, 11 March, 2021.

Explain in detail how the economy was already rebounding by March 2021 and the democrats Rescue Plan was ill planned, unnecessary. and was in fact foolish because there had already been two timely previous Covid relief payouts.

Detail the price rise for fuel from $2 a gallon to $5 or $6 that drove a price rise for every product because of the number of times everything we purchase is in a truck going somewhere before you buy it.

Give a detailed history lesson on inflation in America and that this was the worst in 40 years.

What was the price rise for basic necessities for a middle-class family of four.

Wages did not keep up with inflation.  Detail how many thousands of dollars of buying power have been lost.

Compare everything to what it was January 2021 and what it still is today compared to your last year in office.

Another example:  

Monday, 29 July, 10 a.m.: Our nation is no longer secure.

The first responsibility of a president is the safety and security of American citizens.

The Border Patrol estimates 1.8 million “gotaways” entered the U.S. illegally during the past 3 ½ democrat-led years.

What is a “gotaway”?  They are illegal immigrants who are detected by cameras and other means but successfully evade apprehension.

Why do they evade contact with the Border Patrol?  The straight answer is they evade because they have a criminal record or they are gang members, Cartel operatives, drug dealers, human traffickers and terrorists.

 In FY 2020 there were 136,808 gotaways and by FY 2023 that had increased to 670,674; and increase of 390% under the Biden administration.

1.8 million gotaways is more national security deviants than the combined populations of Montana and North Dakota.

1.8 million democrat policy-aided gotaways is more than the 1.4 million recorded in the entire decade from 2010 to 2020.

Over 13,000 “criminal noncitizens” have attempted to enter the U.S. and have been already apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Fiscal Year 2024; a rise from 4,269 in FY 2019

Terrorists. FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist is a federal database of people who are either known or suspected terrorists.

Terrorist Watchlist apprehensions (north and south borders) for FY 2020 was 299. The FY 2023 total was 736. The questions these facts raise are:  How many terrorists on the FBI Watchlist have arrived undetected?  How many terrorists have arrived who are not even on the Watchlist?  Where are they now?  Have they populated existing and new terrorist cells all over the country?  Are they training?  Are they waiting for guidance from home base to attack? How vulnerable is our national security to terrorists’ attacks resulting from this administration’s open border policies?

Gangs: Altogether within the U.S., the FBI reports that some 33,000 violent street gangs, motorcycle gangs, and prison gangs are criminally active with about 1.4 million members. Transnational gang members are included in the gotaway crowd. Transitional gangs move us forward from the urban neighborhood street gang that controls a few city blocks and pushes a little dope, to something larger, more violent, and linked and aligned to more advanced and sophisticated crime organizations in Latin America.

 MS13 is the current leading transnational gang example. It is the largest street gang in Latin America and one of the world’s largest and most violent gangs. They are part of the gotaways plus those who are not detected. American gangs are responsible for 48.9% of violent crimes, 42.9% of property crime, 39.9% of drug sales and 13% of all homicides. 

Cartels in the U.S.: There are at least 13 U.S. cities that are used as distribution hubs by the Mexican drug cartels. These cartels primarily employ Mexican nationals to oversee their distribution operations in the U.S.  Cartel operatives are part of the 1.8 million gotaways.

Drugs: It’s encouraging to hear the main-stream media and the Biden administration crow about U.S. authorities intercepting hundreds or even thousands of pounds of fentanyl at the Mexican border. That is, until the Border Patrol authorities tell us they estimate the recovery is only about 5% of what gets successfully into the U.S. and distributed throughout the country. On average in 2023, 307 young Americans died EVERY DAY from drug overdose, the majority from fentanyl.  There is blood on the hands of the democrats in general and Biden and Harris for facilitating the drug trafficking via an open border.

The border was not yet completely secure under President Trump but there was an all-out effort to get to that point. The first afternoon of his presidency, Biden began cancelling the Trump administration’s efforts to close the border. 

BOTTOM LINE: In the history of our once-great nation, there has never been a political party, an administration or a president/vice president who have used policy to open the border and thereby facilitate the degradation of our national security and do so simply to create a democrat-friendly identity group who will vote to continue this open border nonsense.  And, by the way, the open border is costing the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Another example:

Monday, 5 August:  Voting and voter fraud.

Our ability to legally vote and ensure that our vote is properly counted is one of the underpinnings of a successful democracy, right up there with freedom of speech. 

Voter registration rolls are notoriously inaccurate and out of date, containing the names of millions of voters who are deceased, have moved, or otherwise have become ineligible. 

Having thousands of ballots arriving in the mail for individuals who no longer reside at a registered address risks those ballots being used as fraudulent votes.

Covid changed voting habits. In 2020, 69.4% of voters cast ballots by a nontraditional method, mostly mail-in ballots.  That was up from 23% in the 2016 election. That volume overwhelmed ballot counting facilities across the country to the extent that there simply was not enough time to verify voter signatures and addresses. Some examples:  

North Carolina: In 2018 the 9th Congressional District race was overturned because of illegal vote harvesting that included altering and forging absentee ballots.

Oregon:  A survey of one county found that five percent of registered voters admitted that other people marked their ballots, and 2.4% said someone else signed their ballots.  It is suspected the actual number was much higher, given that most people would not want to admit being a party to a crime. Likely tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are being cast in Oregon by individuals other than the registered voter.

New Jersey: A candidate bribed voters with $50 payments for mail-in ballots. 

The Election Assistance Commission found that 28.3 million ballots in federal elections between 2012 and 2018 were lost or disappeared in the mail.

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 receive mail-in ballots if an election were held by mail.

New Mexico: The Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 3,000 individuals registered multiple times; 1,700 registrants who are dead; 1,500 voters aged 100 or above, 64 of whom are over 120 years old. All of these supposed voters would receive mail-in ballots.

Here is how bad the voter rolls are across the country.  Judicial Watch conducted a study of voter rolls in 37 of the 50 states.  The results revealed that 353 U.S. counties in 29 states had 1.8 million more registered voters than eligible voting-age citizens. In other words, the registration rates of those counties exceeded 100% of eligible voters, some as high as 130%. Those facts alone define the potential for fraudulent vote counting in one of every four counties in America.

Ballot harvesting is another problem because it relinquishes control of ballots into the hands of individuals who are not legal officials in the voting process; a broken chain of custody issue.

Mail-in ballots are the tools of choice forelection fraudsters because they can operate outside the supervision of election officials, making it easier to steal, forge, or alter ballots.

The bottom line is that when millions of ballots are being mailed out to addresses of dead or relocated or non-citizens, the door is wide open for fraudulent mail-in ballots. We as a nation are better than this.  Governors and State legislators need to look at this problem right now, get proactive and take every possible action to prevent voter fraud in their state.

The bottom line is that every ballot should have a voter ID number on it.  That could be a social security number, the number on your Real ID card or a passport number.  Is that too much to ask for the privilege of voting? The democrats call voter ID “racist”.  How stupid can they get?  By federal law May 2025 one must have a “Real ID” just to get on an airplane in the U.S.  Is a plane ticket more important than a secret ballot?

Three-quarters of voters, and even two-thirds of democrats, said they would be more confident in election results if every voter was required to show government-issued identification at the polls.    

Voting rules are a states’ rights issue which is a good thing but by implication, they also have to operate their system responsibly and legally.

Monday, 12 August: High interest rates are a killer for individuals, families, businesses and economic growth.  The current high rates are directly related to Biden’s inflation.  Lay that out for voters.

Monday 19 August: The pathetic state of US/Iran relations and the general mess in the Middle East. 

The Trump administration renewed UN sanctions on Iran and enforced them.  Iran’s foreign currency reserves fell from $128 billion in 2015 to $15 billion in 2019,

During the Trump administration, Iran’s capabilities and options were reduced and the U.S. was gaining ground in Middle East countries’ acceptance of Israel’s right to exist and prosper as a friendly neighbor.

Notwithstanding that for 40 years Iran has been the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and routinely declares “death to America”, the Biden administration has spent three years exercising a policy of appeasement. Biden has rewarded the Ayatollah to the tune of about $100 billion; that is, massive revenue from the non-enforcement of U.S. oil sanctions over three years, a $6 billion ransom payment and a $10 billion sanctions waiver.

Iran has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars towards training and equipping Hamas, and Hizballah terrorist organizations in the past few years. In Yemen, Iran has provided a wide range of weapons, training, advanced equipment such as unmanned aerial systems, and other support to Houthi militants, who engaged in hundreds of attacks against regional targets in Saudi Arabia and are now endangering world shipping in the Red Sea. 

When Trump took office, he put the Houthi organization on the world terrorist list.  Biden, immediately took them off the terrorist list for no reason other than to undo a Trump initiative.

Monday, 26 August: Why increasing corporate taxes is a bad idea.

Corporations don’t pay taxes, people pay taxes.  Every corporation has a “product” and a cost associated with it; raw materials, salaries and wages, paying the light bill, etc. etc. etc.  Add up the costs, plug in the desired profit and you have the sales price.  Adding a corporate tax is just another item in the cost of production.  The tax gets added on and passed on to the buyer of the product. The higher price also reduces our position in the global market.

Raising corporate taxes is just another democrat anti-business move.

Monday, 2 September: Cut spending by reducing the size of the President’s budget submission.

GROUND TRUTH:

A mammoth, sprawling, uncontrollable, federal government currently numbering about 4.3 million plus hundreds of thousands of contract employees was never the vision or intent of the Founding Fathers.  Organizations have a propensity to grow to a point of diminishing returns; cease to be efficient, effective, and/or no longer perform the functions for which they were created.  At that point, a large organization will tend to look inward and become self-perpetuating rather than value-added for the greater good.

Some or all of that could apply today to the Departments in the Executive Branch of the federal government. This results in two major problems that desperately need to get fixed. 

First, a too-large organization is very expensive to maintain.  A more effective and efficient Executive Branch will be much smaller and less expensive. Every 1% reduction in end-strength equals about a $1.5 billion saving in annual salaries plus billions of dollars more in long-term retirement pay and benefits.

Second, and more importantly, the annual U.S. budget boils up out of this massive organization. Every government-funded program is maintained and sustained inside these bureaucracies.  These programs are this organization’s product.  General Motor’s product is vehicles; the Executive Branch’s product is taxpayer-supported programs.  The question is, what is the value added of those programs?  An in-depth review will undoubtedly find programs that have existed for decades, their original purpose no longer relevant, programs that sounded good at their inception but have failed in execution, programs to solve a problem that should have been the purview of state or local officials, programs initiated to solve a short-term problem but live on forever.  The list is long.  President Reagan summed up the problem with this statement, “Government is like a baby, an alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

A complete and total re-look at the entire Executive Branch will be the number one responsibility of the Vice President for at least the first six months in office.

Note to the Trump research group:  there is a complete concept of operations on how to do this in a book, Fix the Systems, Transform America chapter 4.

Monday 16 September: Cut spending by insisting on changes in the way Congress operates.

In 2020 when the pandemic was beating up every aspect of our society the Congress concocted a 5,593-page-bill monstrosity for Covid-19 relief, The Cares Act.  Of course, it passed; nearly everyone could use a little relief from Covid and the taxpayers were stuck with the bill, all $1.8 trillion dollars.  But here is the pathetic part; under the guise of helping Americans through the pandemic, members of Congress took the opportunity to pork-up the bill with dozens, if not hundreds, of earmarked funding directives that had absolutely nothing to do with Covid or Covid relief.  Here is a sampling:

$10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan,

$300 million for fisheries,

$100 million for NASA,

$300 million to Endowment for the Arts,

$300 million to Endowment for the Humanities,

$300 million to Public Broadcasting,

$500 million for Museums and Libraries, 

$720 million to Social Security Administration,

$315 million to the State Department,

$90 million to the Peace Corp,

$492 million to National Railroad Passenger Corp,

$526 million grant to Amtrak. 

$4.7 billion in foreign aid to nine countries.

The takeaway from this example is that under different circumstances, each of these expenditures could have/should have seen the light of day in one or more congressional committees where expert witnesses would have testified to the pros and cons of passing the funding.

The second takeaway is that the Covid Relief Act was not a one-off occurrence. Producing multi-thousand-page bills has become the norm. No one who votes for them has actually read them and therefore do not know what they are voting for or against. Should we be borrowing money for earmarks that have never been exposed to public scrutiny? If viewed separately by the American taxpayers, would they all pass the smell test?  Absolutely not.

For years politicians have been emphasizing the need for infrastructure spending.  So, in 2021 Congress finally passed, in a bipartisan vote, a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure bill which, by the way, is also funding universal pre-K, child care, enhanced child tax credit, earned income tax credit, Affordable Care Act subsidies, Medicaid expansion, medical hearing benefits, affordable housing, Pell grants, children’s nutrition, immigration, state and local tax deductions, etc. etc. etc.  Only about 25% of the expenditures actually exist for real infrastructure such as roads, bridges and airports. What happened to the remaining $900 billion?

President Trump should declare that he will not accept and will not sign into law bills that Senators and Representatives have not read, bills that have not had every expenditure vetted and voted on in Committees, bills that go way outside the law’s main subject and intent. 

This action, along with a smaller President’s budget, will cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually and put us on a path to balanced budgets.

Note to the Trump research group:  there is a complete concept of operations on how to do this in a book, Fix the Systems, Transform America chapter 5.

Other examples for the campaign:

The truth about “tax cuts for the wealthy.”

The pathetic state of education in America.

20% of U.S. students do not graduate high school.

Almost 2,000 high schools across the U.S. graduate less than 60% of their students. Those “dropout factories” account for over 50% of the students who leave school every year. One in six students attend a dropout factory.  One in three minority students (32%) attend a dropout factory compared to 8% of white students.

In the U.S., high school dropouts commit about 75% of crimes.

Of those graduating high school, over 20% are unable to pass the test to enter the U.S. military because they are functionally illiterate.

On average, 7,000 students across the country drop out of school every school day thereby creating a linkage to a life of crime and/or welfare.  About 70% of prison inmates do not have a high school diploma.

Why do they drop out?  The main reason is they got behind in K-5, further behind in Middle School and eventually became frustrated, disenchanted and just gave up

.

Average U.S. annual spending per public school student is over $14,000 in 2023.  That is about 34% higher than the average of the other 37 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Currently our number one “solution” to improving education results in the U.S. is for the feds to throw money at the problem. It’s not working.

The Department of Education’s 2024 budget is $90 billion; a $10.8 billion increase over 2023 and we keep falling further behind in world rankings and become an ever-increasing nation of functional illiterates.

Note to researchers:   The National Assessment of Educational Progress, NAEP, also known as the “nation’s report card” provides proficiency data for elementary, middle and high school students over the past several decades.

Regain energy independence and replenish the oil reserves.

Return the military to its former greatness as a credible deterrent force.

Note to the trump researchers; see article, HOW DID THE U.S. MILITARY FALL OFF THE CLIFF? WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT. www.WeThePeopleSpeaking.com

World peace forever.

Note to the Trump research group:  there is a complete concept of operations on how to do this in a book, Fix the Systems, Transform America, chapter 8.

Cabinet nominations.

Another beneficial Monday surprise for late August could be to announce the proposed nominees for Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury.  Emphasize their background training, intellect and overall qualifications to head these critical positions. Contrast this with the Biden formula for building his Cabinet which was to end up with, “the most diverse in history.”  Which has absolutely nothing to do with being the best qualified to serve the American people.

This will give voters an opportunity to get to know the leaders of the next administration and give them more reasons to vote republican.

CONCLUSIONS:

Why not?  Why not roll out a fall campaign that is different, more factual, more interesting and that will keep the democrats and liberal media off balance. The public will love it and Monday mornings will certainly be more interesting.

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