THE CONGRESS, FIX IT

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?

We just finished a fiscal year with $1.8 trillion in deficit spending, up from $1.7 trillion in 2023.

Those opening paragraphs are just attention getters.  Now to reality.  It has become obvious in the first week after the election that President-elect Trump is serious about cutting needless spending.  My all-time favorite, “$10 million for gender programs in Pakistan.”

In a great attention-getting move President Trump has selected a couple of very smart patriots, who have themselves built huge, successful, lean, efficient organizations, to downsize government and cut needless expenditures of many Billions of dollars; namely Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.  I am at this point a little unsure if they are just going to concentrate on the Executive Branch or will they also look into the Congress.

This Musk/Ramaswamy endeavor is a great start for the following reasons.

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.

Their downsizing and reorientation of the Executive Branch will undoubtedly cut hundreds of Billion in unnecessary spending.  But there is a second arena that when turned inside-out and looked at through a microscope can potentially save additional hundreds of Billions of dollars annually. That is the Congress, coming up next.

UP-FRONT WORK

First President Trump should do a couple things.  One is to call in the Congressional leaders and tell them he has no intention of signing into law any passed Bill that is thousands of pages long.  I will not sign Bills that you have passed but not yet read. Additionally, I will not sign a Bill in which all of the expenditures have not been analyzed in relevant Congressional Committees and voted out of committee before going to the Floor for a vote.”

This would be the beginning of a complete overhaul of the concept of operations for the Congress.

Additionally, the entire project of reorientation, reorganization and spending cutting in the Executive and Legislative Branches should be the overall purview of Vice President Vance. He should be the Spending-Cut Czar as his immediate and number one priority project as Vice President for at least the first year.  This would be an important delegation by the President.  It would be the best possible training ground for the VP. It would set him up for a successful run for the presidency in 2028. Finally, as effective as the Musk/Ramaswamy team might be, the downside is that they are not in the chain of command. A reluctant Department leader could nod his/her head yes every day and then just blow them off and continue with business as usual.  The VP is in their chain of command and can make sure those under review clearly understand who is in charge. 

What follows is a suggested concept of operations for the Congress which currently is a lethargic, undisciplined, ill-guided failure as an operating organization that routinely wastes hundreds of Billions of taxpayer dollars every year thereby creating annual deficit spending and additions to the unsustainable national debt which is currently approaching $36 trillion.

THE NEW CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS FOR CONGRESS

Begin by institutionalizing a set of seven new operational standards and then establish a small oversight organization that will make sure the standards are in place and utilized every day in every way.  An organization without standards is a failed organization.  

THE CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDRDS AUTHORITY, CLSA

This small agency will be formed under the Inspector General (free from Congressional influence) inside the General Services Administration (an independent government organization). The CLSA’s sole purpose will be to enforce these seven standards and to administer the life-cycle of a piece of legislation. The CLSA will NOT be in charge of the Congress.  They will NOT make policy.  But they will become the administrators of the day-to-day process of creating new legislation and a new budget.  The Congress has proven that it is incapable of successfully and efficiently administrating themselves.  The CLSA can become something akin to the very valuable oversight we see from the Congressional Budget Office whose work is objective, impartial and nonpartisan. 

Under the CLSA every Bill will first appear on a Congressional web site operated solely by the CLSA that is totally dedicated to enforcing the standards for every Bill.  Every member of Congress will receive an alert each time a new Bill is proposed and posted on a congressional new-legislation website. 

This website will be managed solely by the CLSA; The sponsors of a Bill may contact the CLSA at any time to update schedules, to notify members of committee hearings, to make changes to the legislation, etc.  But the CLSA employees are the only ones who can access the site to add, delete or change any piece of information.

The CLSA does not have the authority to recommend changes, additions or deletions to the intent of the legislation.  Their function is to determine if the proposed legislation meets certain established standards, with particular emphasis on Standard Number Three, Applicability. 

STANDARD NUMBER ONE, OUTLAW “EARMARKING”

An earmark is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending Billthat directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or competitive funds allocation process. Most earmarks are attached to a “must-pass” Bill so that it is protected from non-passage or presidential veto. My definition of an earmark is an idea that would not have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting passed if, standing alone, it was exposed to the light of day.

STANDARD NUMBER TWO, SUNSET LEGISLATION

This is a measure, within a statute or regulation, that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific future date, unless further legislative action is taken to extend the law. Most laws do not have sunset clauses and therefore remain in force indefinitely. Keep in mind that most laws cause some new Executive Department organization to be created.  Our government is full of agencies, divisions and branches that require annual funding, while having outlived their requirement to exit.

STANDARD NUMBER THREE, APPLICABILITY

 In the 2020, a 5593-page Covid-19 relief Bill there were scores of organizations funded from that Bill that had absolutely zero association with the Covid-19 outbreak or relief thereof.

Hereafter all of the provisions of a particular Bill must clearly identify with the subject, purpose and intent of the Bill which could save hundreds of Billions of needless expenditures per year.  It will prevent publishing Bills that are too lengthy to read; e.g., not a single Representative or Senator actually read the 5593-page Covid-19 relief Bill before they voted on it.

STANDARD NUMBER FOUR, STAND-ALONE

Every Bill will be a single-issue piece of legislation. Period.

STANDARD NUMBER FIVE, TIME LIMITS

There are two different situations to consider.  One is the federal budget process and the other is all Bills other than those in the budget process. 

The non-budget Bills will get processed in one continuous timeframe not to exceed 90-days per Bill.  The CLSA will grade the scheduling of all activities to insure it is ready to be voted on within the 90-day timeframe.  The exception to this is, at any time the Bill’s sponsor or committee may pull it from consideration. (We will get to the federal budget process in a few minutes.)

STANDARD NUMBER SIX, LEADERS CANNOT HIDE A PENDING BILL

The Speaker of the House and the Majority Leader in the Senate too often practice sitting on Bills, not allowing them to be voted on for protracted periods of time. This will not be allowed.  Every Bill will be voted on or before the end of its 90-day window.

STANDARD NUMBER SEVEN, STANDARD WEBSITE FORMAT

Every piece of legislation will be formatted with four specific sections and pages as follows:

SECTION ONE OF THE CLSA STANDARD FORMAT IS ALL ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY AND TRANSPARENCY AND WILL LOOK LIKE THIS:

CONGREESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDARDS AUTHORITY

Page 1, Administrative data

Current as of: ____ (date ____(All of the below data will be filled in as it becomes available from Congress.  For each new or changed data point, this “current as of” date will also be updated.)

Title of the legislation:  ___   ($10 million for “gender programs” in Pakistan)_________

Date which starts the 90-day calendar: (the date the CLSA initially uploads it onto the website and notifies all legislators that it is there for them to act on)

Not-later-than-date to be presented, debated and voted on the floor of the House of Representatives or Senate___(90 days after the above “start” date)_____

The member of Congress who is the principal sponsor: ______________________

co-sponsors: _______________________

                                                _______________________

                                                _______________________

Author of the proposed Bill: ______________ (a member of Congress, the White House, a Congressional committee staff, Executive Branch Department, Non-governmental organization, lobbyist, private citizen, etc.)

Sunset legislation date:  ___(a date that must be included inside the Bill)_______

Schedule for committee hearings: ___(determined by congressional leaders)____

            ____(Foreign Affairs Committee)______

            ____(___etc.______Committee)______

COMMENTS ON DRAFTING OF LEGISLATION:  

Lobbyists. There are nearly 12,000 registered lobbyists in the U.S.  They work for businesses, professional associations, cities, states, non-profit organizations, etc.  They get paid to make things happen in government and mostly that is in the form of special interest legislation. Lobbyist are a prime source of today’s legislation and earmarks. It is not a completely negative concept but the downside is that they can too frequently get politicians to earmark appropriations that are self-serving and not in the best interest of the general public. 

Congressional committee staffers.  Staffers write much of the legislation today and therein lies a big problem.  Because many issues rarely fit nicely inside the domain of a single committee, there will ultimately be multiple committee staffers, working on behalf of their politicians and bringing their individual thoughts and prejudices to the effort. Too often, having begun in good faith to build a thoroughbred race horse, they end up with a herd of camels. Under today’s system that “camel” ends up earmarked to some “must pass” Bill and eventually in some Executive Branch, department or agency for execution. By then, the original intent for the Bill may be so convoluted that it is potentially a complete waste of time, energy, money and is one of the causes of the gross inefficiency of government. 

The Executive Branch of government, to include the president, should author a larger portion of the Bills.  Why?  Because they know the who, what, when, where, why and how details of their proposals that should not be delegated to lobbyists or congressional staffers. Why not let the experts, those who will be responsible for execution, do the up-front piece?  For example, if the Department of Homeland Security needs $400 million for border security, they should write the proposed Bill and seek out some member(s) of Congress to sponsor it.

SECTION 2 OF THE STANDARD WEBSITE FORMAT WILL LOOK LIKE THIS:

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDARDS AUTHORITY

Page 2, Legislation Intent

Current as of: ____(date inserted by CLSA)_____

(CLSA Instructions:  This narrative must be limited to one single-spaced page, font 12 and must begin with the words, THE PURPOSE OF THIS LEGISLATION IS TO…….

Intent is one of the least used and most important aspects of any law.  Congress and the authors of a Bill should not leave it to the applicable governmental departments to infuse their own intent for what the laws should or should not be about and thereby create unintended consequences.

SECTION 3 OF THE STANDARD WEBSITE FORMAT WILL LOOK LIKE THIS:

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDARDS AUTHORITY

Page 3, Component outline

Current as of: ____(date inserted by CLSA)_____

            (CLSA instructions: provide an outline of the major elements.  The format

will be similar to a Table of Contents but with a few sentences explaining each entry.

SECTION 4 OF THE STANDARD WEBSITE FORMAT WILL LOOK LIKE THIS:

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDARDS AUTHORITY

The Entire Bill, (e.g.HR-12 or S-16}

Current as of: ____(date inserted by CLSA)_____

(The entire Bill should be carefully crafted and consist of a very limited number of pages that can be easily understood by the general public.)

SIX CONCLUSIONS about having Congressional Legislation Standards Authority oversight of day-to-day stand-alone legislation.    

One, “$10 million for gender programs in Pakistan.” After the fact; that’s when we found out about this and dozens more ridiculous “Covid-19 relief” packages.  Who knew about them before they became law?  None of us.  Why?  Because the Congress can waste our tax dollars almost at will while hiding behind a wall of anonymity. What happened to accountability?  Without standards there is no accountability.

Two, under the above proposed CLSA program, we would have known on day-one who sponsored this insane earmark.  We would have known when a committee was going to discuss it.  We would have known weeks in advance when it was going to be voted on.  We would have known all this because it would have been a stand-alone Bill, not hidden inside a 5593-page unread Bill.  Accountability and transparency would have been front and center. The fact is, it would never have made it to the floor for a vote because visibility by the press and by we-the-people would have caused it to go away. 

Furthermore, one of the great advantages of a standards-based legislative process is that in all likelihood, the Bill would never have been written because anonymity is non-existent.

Three, journalists will use the CLSA website as a source for up-to-the-minute reporting on pending legislation.  Citizens can read it, learn what the legislation is all about, understand the positives and negatives of the intent and weigh in with their elected legislators before, not after, it becomes the law of the land.

Four, after about a year, this simple process will guide all new-legislation activities in the Congress and will be accepted as the new normal.  This process has the potential to save hundreds of Billions of dollars per year.  It will have the effect of spending our tax dollars first in support of we-the-people.

Five, additionally, and perhaps most importantly, this more disciplined approach to legislation could have the long-term impact of moving toward greater fiscal responsibility building towards a future balanced budget mindset.  

Six, successful, admired organizations operate this way every day. It is as simple as one-two-three.  One, thoroughly define a single TASK at hand.  Two, define the CONDITIONS, in this case stand-alone Bills. Three, set and enforce the operating STANDARDS without exceptions.  Task, conditions, standards; this new approach to doing the peoples’ business in Washington is within the art of the possible and it will not cost a dime to adopt and institutionalize operational change.  But it will take strong leadership to put it in place and make it happen.

THE FEDERAL BUDGET PROCESS STANDARDS:

As previously stated above in STANDARD NUMBER FIVE, TIME LIMITS, there are two different situations to consider; the non-budget related Bill with sections 1-4 defined above, and now a look at the federal budget process legislation.  

THE FEDERAL BUDGET PROCESS LEGISLATION: To develop and pass a new budget with twelve separate appropriations Bills is supposed to be a standardized eight-month process from early February through the end of the fiscal year on 30 September. 

THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH RESPONSIBILITIES:  Each October federal agencies begin compiling their budgets for the following fiscal year and submit their proposals to the President via the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  OMB edits, calculates, and coordinates the budget for final review and approval by the President.  The President then forwards the approved proposal to the House and Senate, hopefully, by the first Monday in February.  

CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ACTIONS: The Budget Act of 1974 lays out the required congressional actions, February through September of each year, in order to have a completed, agreed upon and signed budget by 30 September. Upon receipt of the president’s budget, various Committees begin reviewing their respective sections of the budget; the process is spear-headed by the Budget Committee.

BUDGET RESOLUTION:  Upon receipt of the President’s Budget, the Budget Resolution document is then worked in the House and Senate. The budget resolution process allows Congress to establish a framework within which the House and Senate will consider budget-related legislation and set revenue and spending levels. The Budget Act set a target date of 15 April for adoption of a budget resolution by both chambers. The CLSA will closely monitor the resolution process looking for violations of the standards on earmarking and applicability.

BUDGET RECONCILIATION

 The Budget Act further sets a target date of 15 June for completing action on reconciliation legislation if required in able to complete the resolution. Without resolution between the House and Senate there are no rules, no timelines, no standards and no discipline.  All of that leads directly to the chaos and disasters of completing a budget for all twelve separate appropriations Bills by 30 September.

Following budget resolution and reconciliation, April through June, the 90-day CLSA standard window begins for passage of the twelve budget appropriations. 

The Budget Act of 1974 lays out the timelines for Congress in the passage of an annual budget by 30 September each year.  So, how are they doing?

According to the Pew Research Center, “Congress has passed continuing resolutions to keep government agencies running between budgets in all but four of the last 40 years. The last time Congress completed all Bills on time was in 1996.”

Congress has only adopted a budget resolution prior to the April 15 target date on four occasions since fiscal year 1985, with the most recent being fiscal year 2004.

Because Congress usually doesn’t pass its 12 appropriations Bills on time, it then uses continuing resolutions and omnibus Bills, which cover several appropriations. The consequences are a less effective, more expensive government that wastes taxpayer dollars and burdens current and future generations with massive debt.

The 12th and final appropriations Bill for FY 2024 was finally passed 23 March 2024; six months late.

Before adjourning for the summer recess last August, Congress had passed only one of the 12 appropriations Bills for FY 2025. By the time they all got back to work, they had only 11 days to pass the remaining 11 appropriations.  It didn’t happen. September, 2024 the House and Senate approved a stopgap measure to keep the government funded for three months. Therefore, they are currently facing a funding crisis next month in December.

One of the most basic Constitutional tasks for Congress is to pass a fiscal year budget and do it on time.  However, Congressional indiscipline continues to place the day-to-day functioning of the federal government in jeopardy and thereby negatively affecting nearly all Americans in some way.

This is unacceptable institutionalized irresponsibility and ineptitude.  The system is seriously broken because of the failure of the senior leaders, House Speaker, Senate Majority Leader and Committee Chairpersons.

STANDARDS FOR THE ANNUAL BUDGET PROCESS, FEBRUARY THROUGH SEPTEMBER.

STANDARD NUMBER ONE:  Leaders publish detailed plans, well in advance, for action with hard suspense dates for accomplishing all assigned tasks. That includes all Committee chairpersons.  If they can’t get their act together, replace them immediately.

STANDARD NUMBER TWO:  Leader’s schedule and take frequent IPRs, In-progress reviews.  If committee work is behind schedule, the senior leaders will direct night and weekend work to ensure on-time results

STANDARD NUMBER THREE:  Runing out of time is not a valid excuse.  Work hard, work long, work weekends if necessary but get it done.

STANDARD NUMBER FOUR:  Election year schedule. When 435 Representatives and 1/3 of the Senators are home campaigning every other year, that needs to be taken into consideration and not become a valid excuse for not accomplishing any of the budget tasks on time.   

the Congressional Legislation Standards Authority needs to come into play again as follows beginning with these website pages:

CONGRESSIONAL LEGISLATION STANDARDS AUTHORITY, CLSA and THE ANNUAL BUDGET PROCESS

The Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader in the Senate and House and Senate Budget Committee chairpersons will be required to prepare and publish a Concept of Operations for the next fiscal year budget preparation process published on the CLSA website not later than 15 January.  Their narratives will cover the who/what/when/where/why and how of the process in great detail. 

(The CLSA will, prior to putting the above proposals on the web site, reconcile any conflicts in dates or products.) 

CONCLUSIONS

We the people should not stand for the irresponsible, wasteful consistent conduct of our elected leaders and members of Congress.

Given the overall irresponsibility and potential waste of Billions of dollars in the current approach to the annual budget process, does it make more sense to produce a biannual budget that will be required on 30 September of every non-election year?

BOTTOM LINE:

President-elect Trump is working hard to cause the swamp to be drained and for the Executive Branch to become more efficient and less costly. He should take advantage of this popular initiative and press hard for the Speaker of the House and Leader of the Senate to immediately demand an update to the Budget Reform Act, 1974 to give it some teeth and demand Congressional actions that will cause the entire budget process to be completed on time every time.

TWO NOTES TO SUBSCRIBERS

One, parts of this concept of operations was first published about three years ago but it fell on deaf ears of the Biden/Harris administration. Much has changed and is changing just since the 5 November election. If you know the president or his staff or advisors, please make them aware of this potential initiative that could cut hundreds of Billions in spending. 

Two, with President-elect’s attitude towards change and improvement there are a number of concepts of operations that could potentially interest him.  They are all contained in a book entitled, Fix the Systems, Transform America.  the subjects include:

Our Education System

Race Relations

Illegal Immigration

Voter Fraud

Federal Deficit Spending Cuts by,

            Reducing Size and Scope of the Executive Brance

            Fixing Congress

Term Limits

Universal Service for Young Adults

Achieve World Peace Forever

I’m not trying to sell books; I want to help fix America and now could be the time for several or all of these topics to take flight. As a minimum, the concept for operations is included to fix each one and could be a start point for a team to begin thinking through these problems as opposed to beginning with just a blank piece of paper.

PS: During the presidential campaign Harris was constantly advocating, “a new way forward” because it was a catchy phrase, not because she actually could articulate one.  While not naming “it,” her new way forward that she did articulate was more taxes, more spending, bigger government with more regulations. President-elect Trump, on the other hand, and without using the phrase, is in fact actively working on a new way forward that will positively impact all Americans…..smaller government, fewer bureaucrats, balanced spending, secure borders, economic growth, strength through real deterrence, law abiding communities, deported criminals, and hopefully some of the issues named above.  Need your help expanding the president-elect’s horizon with some suggested problems/solutions in the book.  

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

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM

Thankfully the 2024 election cycle is over and the presidential race is not being decided in the courts. But being over does not mean there aren’t things to do. In fact, it is the perfect time to fix some things while they are fresh in our minds. Campaign finance reform should be one of them.

According to Forbes, the 2024 election will go down as the most expensive in U.S. history, with a projected $15.9billion in spending across all federal races; presidential, the House and the Senate.   

At the center of it all is a record-setting presidential race. Kamala Harris’ campaign committee and outside PACs raised $1.6 billion, compared to Trump’s $1.1 billion. While the final numbers are not all in, their combined $2.7 billion already beats the $2 billion raised for Trump and Biden in 2020 and dwarfs the $1.2 billion raised in 2016 for Trump and Clinton.

Among other big doners, Harris was backed by Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates who each contributed $50 million in support of her campaign. Trump received nearly a quarter of a billion dollars from just two backers, Timonthy Mellon and Elon Musk, who pumped millions into pro-Trump PACs.

But the 2024 campaign is not unique.  Going back to 2020, Forbes analyzed the top 20 contributors and found they spent a total of $2.3 billion in contributions.

What are they spending the money on? According to AdImpact, the total bill for ad spending in the 2024 election hit almost $11 billion, a new record and $2 billion more than in 2020. You remember the almost continuous flow of campaign ads that we got so sick of watching we almost wore out the mute button on our TV remotes.

That whole campaign finance gig just has a really bad smell. It’s influence buying on steroids. The whole contribution concept of operations does not represent the general public, it has become a contest within a contest to see which candidate can sell their soul to the highest bidding billionaires. Shame on us.

THE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION is supposed to be in charge of all this.

“The FEC is an independent agency of the United States government that enforces the Federal Election Campaign Act, 1971 which covers U.S. campaign finance laws and oversees U.S. federal elections. It is led by six commissioners who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.”  First question, if FEC members are nominated by the serving president how, if they are all of one party, do they function as an “independent agency” without some bias?

The commission describes its duties as, “to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections.”

Under the Federal Election Campaign Act, in place for 2023 and 2024, an individual can donate to more than one candidate (for president, House and Senate) in both the primary and general elections.  The limit is $3,300 to each candidate in each election.

How then did billionaire Michael Bloomberg get $50 million into the Harris campaign? The short answer is through a PAC.

POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEES, PAC

A PAC is typically organized for the purpose of raising money to either elect or defeat a political candidate or ballot issue. 

Every PAC is required to register with the Federal Elections Committee within ten days of its formation. 

There are three main types of PACS.

One, Separate Segregated Funds, SSF, is a PAC organized by a corporation, labor union, membership organization or trade association. This kind of PAC can solicit money only from those connected with the association that sponsors it. 

Two, a Nonconnected PAC is independent of the above organizations, and therefore permitted to solicit donations from the public.

Three, Super PACs may solicit and accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor organizations and other PACs.  They may not accept contributions from foreign nationals, federal contractors, national banks or federally chartered corporations. Super PACS can use their contributions to bankroll independent expenditures and political activity. 

WHY PACs?

PACs are not an essential part of our important election process. We can do without them.

There is certainly a downside to the overall election process that contains a provision for, “unlimited contributions.”

What do we lose if we just rely on contributions from individual U.S. voter-eligible citizens?  Nothing important.  There will certainly be less TV advertising.  

 CHANGE THE LAW

Campaign financing for all federal candidates (president, House, Senate) should consist of one, and only one, source and that source is the voter who is geographically associated with the candidate.  for example, any legally registered voter may donate to a presidential candidate; any registered voter in a state may contribute to their U.S. senatorial candidates; and any registered voter in a congressional district may contribute to their House of Representative contest. 

During the 2023-2024 two-year election cycle the limit for contributions by individuals to federal candidates for President, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives was increased to $3,300 per election per candidate.  That is, $3,300 to a candidate for President, the House and Senate for a total of $9,900 for the primary election and $9,900 for the general election. Anyone found to have contributed more than these limits will be guilty of a federal offence and subject to a fine and/or imprisonment.

HOW TO POLICE THE CONTRIBUTION SYSTEM

Concurrently, every federal candidate must scrupulously and continuously account for every campaign expenditure. For every national election, the federal election commission could have temporary auditors operating in all 435 congressional districts and they will have open access to every candidate’s campaign finance records.  The FEC auditors, operating in each congressional district, will also audit senatorial and presidential campaigns. FEC auditors will, throughout the campaign, audit candidates’ books with the objective of aligning contributions and expenditures. 

Candidates are to file periodic reports that disclose the total amount of all the campaign contributions they receive, along with the identity, address and occupation of any donor who contributes more than $200 during the campaign period.

How can the FEC accountants, in each of the 435 Districts, monitor individual contribution input from the voters and identify the voters who are exceeding the contribution limits and thereby identify the candidates who are accepting those too-large contributions? One way is to identify every contribution with the voters’ Voter ID number.  I know, Voter ID is not yet a reality but it is the solution to many other potentially fraudulent actions throughout the election cycle.  

If Voter ID can become a reality, the auditors will immediately know that the contributor is a citizen and an eligible voter. With contributions sorted by Voter ID numbers they can immediately know if the total contributions have exceeded the legal limit to any one candidate during the primary/general election cycles.

During each calendar year of a national election, the FEC could create some number of panels consisting of five retired federal judges for each panel.  All accounting irregularities will be immediately referred to a FEC panel of judges. If the panel finds conclusive evidence of gross campaign finance irregularities, the candidate could be subject to being disqualified by the FEC. That regulation alone, will encourage accurate and legal reporting into the election system.  

CONCLUSIONS

The election process should lead us to the best qualified person being elected, as opposed to ending up with the best fund raiser.

The Federal Election Commission cannot provide effective oversight when forced to deal with an “unlimited contributions” provision leading to multi-billion-dollar campaigns.

Super PACs are for the most part uncontrolled.  Analysis of the use of Super PAC contributions reveals that it is primarily used for negative campaigning. “The role that super PACs often play is to do the dirty work for a campaign,” said Chris Karpowitz, co-director of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University. When name-calling and character assassination become the dominant message, the American people tune out and probably gain a healthy disrespect for both candidates.

BOTTOM LINE

There is little goodness in multi-billion-dollar political campaigning.  It’s not hard to fix it so it should become one of President Trump’s 100-day initiatives while it is all fresh in our minds.

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.

A STRAWBERRY METAPHORE FOR LIE

The month of May is strawberry season in North Carolina.  Lots of them and they are delicious.

This morning, 22 October, when I went to the barn to do chores, I noticed we had our first frost of the season.  As I was opening a gate to go out into the horse pasture, I noticed one, lone, small, red wild strawberry.  I picked it and before eating it, a thought occurred to me.  That little berry was tough enough to bloom and mature in spite of the season and the cold.

That is sort of a metaphor for life.   If you are tough enough you can bloom and mature in spite of abnormal, adverse conditions. 

Tens of millions of Americans are currently disadvantaged and I’m sure many of them feel desperate to improve their lives.   Well, maybe this is the time to do just that.

A disproportionate number of the disadvantaged are African Americans.  Currently, African American unemployment is the lowest since records have been kept. 

The upcoming election may actually be a national referendum on the two political party’s philosophies; big government vs less government intrusion, stifling regulations vs private sector innovation, government hand-outs vs a helping-hand. 

The above article was first published just before the mid-term elections in 2018. Yesterday, 1 November, 2024, I found three lonely, small, red wild strawberries.   

Don’t under-estimate American grit.  Given a chance there are a lot of out-of-season “strawberries” out there among we-the-people that are just tough enough to bloom in spite of the odds and be all they can be/should be.  

Go vote. make change happen

Marv Covault

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS…..WHO GOES, WHO STAYS?

Note to subscribers: This immigration article was previously published some years ago. Since immigration consistently polls as one of the top three voter concerns for this election, and because neither Trump nor Harris have articulated a specific plan to deal with the issue, I am providing an updated concept of operations to shut down the open border and stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S.

All persons residing in the U.S. are supposed to fall into one of three categories; that is, a U.S. citizen or those with a Green Card permanent resident status or temporary inhabitants with Visitor or Student Visas.  However, an estimated 20-plus million inhabitants exist outside those categories; WE DO NOT KNOW WHO THEY ARE OR WHERE THEY RESIDE. They are undocumented and therefore illegal inhabitants.

According to polled voters, immigration is one of the top issues in this campaign.  Candidate Trump has said he will execute a “mass deportation.”  The questions are, who goes, who stays and how do we sort it out?

Of course, the Democrat’s “solution” to illegal immigrants in the U.S. is amnesty-for-all which will be a complete disaster for the country.  “Amnesty for all” means ALL, including criminals, cartel operatives, trans-American gang members, human traffickers, drug dealers those out of work, those who don’t want to work, those sucking on welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, government housing and the many hard-working honest folks who love this country. To the Democrats, illegal immigrants are just another identity group to be sucked into the Left’s ideology and put on the voter rolls.  

In 1954, border officials worked with local law enforcement to, they claimed, round up more than 1 million Mexican nationals and deported them to the Mexico side of the border.

IMMIGRATION REFORM END STATE.

 If the Republican Party was to brain-storm a possible 2025 campaign plan to clean up the illegal immigration mess, what would we be looking for? It might look something like this:

Institute a policy that will shut down the mases of illegals crossing our borders, forever.

Free up the Border Patrol agents to fulfill their intended mission; catch all illegals  and stop the flow of drugs and human trafficking.

Create a path to citizenship for the hard-working, law-abiding illegals already in the U.S.

Provide a clear distinction for potential deportees so that ICE can locate, arrest and deport them.

Do all this with a program that pays for itself.

HERE IS A DETAILED PLAN:

The objective of this Immigration Reform Plan is, by a certain near-term date, make documentation available to every non-citizen U.S. inhabitant.  Thereafter, everyone undocumented becomes subject to deportation. 

The “document” for the undocumented inhabitants will be an Illegal Alien Card (for simplicity, hereafter referred to as the IA Card). The cards will have the high technology of a drivers’ license to inhibit counterfeiting; will be changed and reissued annually; and each card will contain a picture, fingerprint and an IA Card number assigned from a U.S. central registry.  This is a multi-phased operation but the Immigration Reform Plan can be fully operational within a few months after being signed into law. 

This plan is simple, self-regulating, and does not require supplemental regulations or a federal bureaucracy to execute. This concept of operations is based on the assumption that Trump will be elected president 5 November, 2024.

PHASE ONE, THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The President prepares a 10-page law based on the procedures explained herein followed by Congressional passage of the Immigration Reform Plan.  The language in the law must be very specific and not subject to interpretation or change by States or local authorities.  The reason for specificity in the law is to preclude the requirement for federal bureaucrats to interpret the law and re-write it into policy with unintended consequences. 

PHASE TWO, MAY, JUNE, 2025

Each State will set up IA Card registration sites.  A logical solution is to add one or two positions to every DMV office.  Additionally, in Phase Two, every law enforcement agency in the United States will forward information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on every felony committed by an undocumented inhabitant (who, what, when and where).  The FBI will establish and maintain a continuously updated national database of these cases which allows for an immediate check against an application for an IA Card.

PHASE THREE, JUL thru DEC, 2025

The tens of millions of undocumented inhabitants may report to an IA CARD registration site in the state where they reside in accordance with a published alphabetical schedule (last name beginning with A, B, C, or D report during July, 2025 etc.).  If the applicant has a felony conviction, that person will be taken into custody, deported and will NEVER be eligible for an IA Card. 

This is an example of the specificity of the language that must be in the Immigration Reform Law; one strike and out. 

Prior to appearing at the IA Card registration site, each applicant must download a Federal Form, Employer’s Statement of Employment, fill it out and have it signed by their employer. No employer signature, no IA Card.  The form must contain a statement of strong penalties for any employer signing a false statement.  Registration fee for the IA Card is $50 per year. 

When phase 3 ends it will never be repeated.  Every illegal immigrant in the United States on 1 January, 2026 is either a legal holder of an IA Card or THEY ARE deportable.  The IA Card holders will tell us who is employed, where they live, where they work, what they do and how many direct family (spouse and children) members they have. 

PHASE FOUR, JANUARY, 2026: 

This is the phase that begins to change behavior and thereby solve the dual problems of undocumented inhabitants and unsecured borders.

On 1 January, 2026, any employer who employs an undocumented worker (no IA Card) will be subject to a fine of $25,000 for each worker, first offense; $50,000 each worker, second offense. No exceptions, no excuses. No employer is going to risk his livelihood over the employment of an illegal alien.

Laws change behavior and add accountability of employers into the immigration solution.   

This simple act of requiring illegal aliens to carry an IA Card will have four positive and immediate results:

First, employers will protect themselves from potentially heavy fines by only hiring inhabitants who have a valid IA Card.

Second, undocumented inhabitants who choose not to apply for an IA Card or were denied an IA Card will not be able to find an employer who will take them on.  They will therefore be unemployable, will be constantly liable for deportation if detained for any reason and many may choose to return to their country of citizenship.

Third, and this is where a secure border begins to become a reality, foreigners contemplating illegal entry into the United States in order to work will soon learn that no employer is going to hire them and illegal entry will be futile. This inevitable behavior change will, by default, reduce illegal immigration to a trickle.     

Fourth, this will provide Border Patrol officers the opportunity to concentrate their efforts on the illegal entry of drugs, terrorists, gang members, criminals, cartel operatives and human traffickers.    

PHASE FIVE, 1 JULY 2026: 

This phase begins the twelve-month reissue of IA Cards; $50 fee.  The card color will change each calendar year.  ONLY (again, specificity in the law) those inhabitants holding an IA Card can receive a renewal card.  Additionally, they will be denied renewal if they have been unemployed and made less than $5000 or if they have been convicted of a felony.  Once denied, they will be detained, deported and NEVER receive another card. Any IA Card that is not renewed by the annual renewal date will automatically be moved to the government’s deportation list.

In order to fund the Immigration Reform Law, a provision in the law will require IA Card holders to pay 10% Federal income taxes on earned income.  Employers must issue a 1099 using the individual’s IA Card number to identify them to the IRS. 

The Federal Government will retain 2% of the tax revenue to fund three national data bases for The Immigration Reform Plan. The remaining 8% will be returned to the States in proportion to the number of IA Card holders. 

IRS REGISTRY OF IA CARD HOLDERS

The IRS will establish the National Registry of Card holders and their card number.  That data base will eventually list earned income and taxes paid for the previous year.  During the IA Card renewal process, the registration center will immediately access the IRS data base to determine if the applicant has in fact been employed, made at least $5000 and paid taxes.  No tax records, no renewal and the applicant will be detained and deported. 

DEPARTMENT OF LABOR REGISTRY

An IA Card holder who loses his or her job may immediately place an employment application to a National IA Card holder registry website maintained by the Department of Labor.  This database will describe the IA Card holder’s skills and be broken down by zip code.  An employer seeking to hire, for example, a carpenter has two options. One is to make direct contact with an IA Card holder; second is to review the Department of Labor national data base of unemployed IA Card holders.

FBI REGISTRY OF KNOWN NON-CITIZEN CRIMINALS

This will be accessed by the state application center for the initial IA Card and during each card renewal process.

PRIVILEGES FOR IA CARD HOLDERS

One, they may apply for a state vehicle operator’s license and will be tested in English. A provision of the law will be that every State must prominently display the individual’s IA Card number on the State Driver’s License.  Additionally, every applicant must show proof of auto insurance.

Two, a current IA Card will authorize the holder to legally cross U.S. borders. 

Three, legal holders may apply for an IA Card Dependent Card (using the sponsor’s IA Card number with a suffix) for their spouse and children (no extended family members).  If granted, the sponsor will be authorized to escort the dependents across the U.S. border.

Four, children born to IA Card holders in the U.S. will not automatically be granted U.S. citizenship.  If, however, the parents eventually gain citizenship, dependent children under the age of 18 will also be granted citizenship.  This law will undoubtedly be challenged in the courts. The current law is based on post-Civil War intent to protect children born to freed slaves who had no documentation to substantiate their citizenship.  That law should be updated as part of the Immigration Reform Plan

Five, after legally holding an IA Card for five consecutive years, that person is eligible to apply for U.S. citizenship for themselves and their immediate family (spouse and children).

Remember, these people are here illegally.  Therefore, they will NOT be eligible for social security, welfare payments of any kind, food assistance programs, Medicaid, Medicare, or social services.  This will save billions of dollars per year in federal and state assistance payments.  

CONCLUSIONS

Is this plan doable? Yes.

This plan provides the sorting process to answer the key questions, who may stay and who should be deported.

If employers want foreign workers, they must become involved and accountable. Their only requirements are to hire IA Card holders and to report employee earnings on a 1099.

Enforcement:  Let’s say a person is stopped for a traffic violation.  If the driver’s license contains an IA Card number the law enforcement officer can immediately access the FBI data base to determine if the person has a felony conviction, if the card is overdue for annual renewal or if the person is on the FBI’s deportation list.  If any violations are found, the alien will be arrested, detained and deported. 

For this to work two things have to happen.  First, the Congress has to pass a pure, non-watered down, straight-talk law with only a few pages of specificity that is not subject to interpretation by bureaucrats at the Federal, State or Local levels.  Secondly, the FBI, IRS and Department of Labor, will need to develop high-speed, simple, secure, data bases that are immediately accessible by State and Local officials.  We cannot afford to create a bungling bureaucratic morass like the current Immigration and Naturalization Service. 

This will save the tens of billions of dollars state and the federal governments are currently spending on illegal immigrants.

This will get the Border Patrol agents out of the business of processing, on average, over 7,000 illegals per day and back to intercepting criminals, gang members, terrorists, cartel operatives, human traffickers and drug dealers.  This criminal element is currently referred to as “gotaways” by the border patrol and have been arriving in the U.S at an average rate of over 36,000 per month under the Biden/Harris administration.  That’s about 1,200 per day.  And we wonder why our streets are no longer safe.

BOTTOM LINE

We should assume that most immigrants come here with the expectation that they can eventually get a job.  Under this plan, 14 months from now on 1 january 2026 there will never be another IA Card issue and therefore everyone crossing the border illegally will be a potential deportee.  This will voluntarily stop the flow of the thousands per day we have experienced under Biden/Harris policy.

Immigration reform is not about amnesty or open borders; it is about accountability and changing behavior. 

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

TRUMP vs BIDEN/HARRIS SCORE CARD

TRUMP vs BIDEN/HARRIS SCORE CARD

11 October, 2024

Memorandum for Conservative Voters

Subject: A Voting Score Card

The purpose of this memo is to provide a compilation of fact-checked data that you can provide to your Liberal and Unaffiliated friends before they go to vote.

THE ECONOMY:

INFLATION: Trump inflation January 2021 was 1.4%..

Biden/Harris took inflation to 9.1%.  How did they do this?  the simplest economic formula that everyone knows is that inflation is caused by, “too much money chasing too few products.”  Also. what everyone knows is that Trump sponsored a $2 trillion stimulus package for the American people May, 2020 because the nation was shut down from Covid. Few were working or getting paid.

Trump signed, what was to be the final stimulus package December, 2020: $900 billion. Everyone was getting a Covid shot which would put people back to work.

Soon after the Biden/Harris inauguration, January 2021, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act which contained an additional covid stimulus package of $1.9 trillion. By then everyone had a Covid shot and the economy was up and running. But because production of products throughout the world in 2020 had been reduced by businesses being shut down, there were few products to buy with the $1.9 trillion in the hands of consumers; “too much money chasing too few product.”  Any first-year economics student could have predicted the 40-year high inflation rate that went to 9.1%.  Middle class and lower income class families suffered from terrible decision making and still do today.

Throughout the Biden/Haris administration whenever the inflation rate has gone down a half a per centage point, there would be a White House briefing declaring that “Bidenomics is working.”  Yes, the rate went down but the prices didn’t, especially for daily family essentials such as food, gas and rent.

Trump-era bottom line; paychecks grew faster than inflation. Average weekly earnings for all workers were up 8.4% after inflation.

Biden/Harris bottom line; Biden/Harris claim, “this country’s working people actually got a raise.” The truth is, they did with an overall increase of 4.7%. But with inflation at 7%, the average person lost ground in terms of real income. 

CONSUMER DEBT:  In 2019 consumer debt was $13.67 trillion. In 2024 it is $17.8 trillion.  A 30 % increase under Biden/Harris. Bidenomics is unsuccessful economic policy and will likely continue into a Harris administration. Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

GAS PRICES:  January, 2021 the average price for a gallon of gas across the U.S. was $2.25.  Under Biden/Harris the average price peaked in June, 2022 at $5.06.  An increase of 125%. That also increased the price of everything we buy that comes out of a truck. The average price today, 11 October, is $3.25.

INTEREST RATES:  In January, 2021 the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage Annual Percentage Rate was 2.65%. On October 8, 2024, the national average 30-year fixed mortgage APR was 6.45%. And the highest rate in the past 3 years under Biden/Harris was 7.51% which stalled out business expansion and home buying.

IMMIGRATION:  Under the Trump administration, there were 2.4 million encounters on the border. Since January 2021, there have been more than 10 million encounters. An increase of 320% by Biden/Harris. These figures do not include people who crossed the border undetected.

“Gotaways” are illegal immigrants who were detected by cameras and other means but were not apprehended. Gotaways include criminals, gang members, terrorists, human traffickers, cartel operatives and drug transporters/dealers. 

From 2010 to 2020, when former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump held office, around 1.4 million gotaways entered the country. That is an average of about 15,000 per month. Under Biden/Harris there have been at least 1.6 million gotaways in their first 36 months, an average of over 44,000 per month. A serious threat to national security.

As his number one priority, getting control of the border, Trump initiated 472 Executive actions on immigration. During the first 364 days of the Biden/Harris administration, they took 296 executive actions to reverse or undo Trump policies on immigration.

To be more specific, a recent release from ICE reveals, “over 13,000 murderers, 15,000 rapists and 425,000 convicted criminals were allowed into America by Biden-Harris open border.” They are walking our streets today.

Violent crime in Venezuela is at its lowest mark in 22 years. Why? Venezuela cleaned out their prisons, rounded up gang members and sent them to us under Biden/Harris.

THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY:

In October 1973, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced that it was implementing a total oil embargo against the countries who had supported Israel at any point during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That oil embargo shook the global energy market, reset geopolitics and reordered the global economy. Therefore, for the past 5 decades it has been U.S. policy to find a way to gain energy independence.  Trump set out to do just that and in 2019 and 2020 U.S. exports of primary energy exceeded energy imports from foreign sources.

Biden/Harris immediately torpedoed the U.S. oil industry.

For a lot of complex reasons, the U.S. began importing crude oil from Russia. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden/Harris decided to drop Russian imports.  So, Biden went hat-in-hand to Saudi Arabia which he had earlier publicly proclaimed to be a, “pariah nation.”  The Saudis, who had been our Middle East friend for decades, refused to provide oil.  So, Biden/Harris turned to Venezuela, a nation led by a brutal dictator Maduro where the economy has nose-dived and children are starving.

U.S. oil and gas drilling takes years of planning and financing by the oil industry.  As normally happens, before leaving office Trump proposed 47 lease sales over a 5-year period.  Biden/Harris cancelled all lease sales for 2024 and will only allow 3 sales in 2025-2028. Just another anti-Trump action with no thought behind it.

STRATEGIC OIL RESERVE:

The energy crisis spawned by a Middle East war 50 years ago spurred the U.S. to create a huge crude oil stockpile to shield the country from threats by unfriendly nations.

Normal levels over the years have ranged from 600,000 to 700,000 barrels. When Biden/Harris took over, the inventory was 638,000 barrels and a gallon of gas was $2.25.  When gas prices reached over $5 a gallon and the 2022 midterm elections were upon us, Biden/Harris sold off more than 40 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve leaving the stockpile at its lowest levels since the early 1980s. National security means nothing to Biden/Harris. What do they think the word “strategic” implies?

TAXES:

In 2017 Trump cut taxes, the economy grew, minority and female employment was the highest ever and from that tax cut the federal government revenue was the highest in history in 2019.

Biden/Harris’ economic policies are based on a simple but ridiculous philosophy of “tax and spend.”  That is, continuously look for new ways to tax and to increase existing tax rates. Then look for ways to return those tax dollars to identity groups.  It’s called “vote buying,” For example using billions of tax payers’ money to pay down student debt is a perfect example off vote buying to build a young-voters identity group.

Biden/Harris continuously target the wealthy for higher taxes. Rich folks do not put their extra money under their mattress.  They invest it; it’s called capital. “Capital” finances capitalism, the heart and soul of America.  Biden/Harris believe rich folks are prime tax targets to “pay their fair share.”  The latest data available tells us the bottom half of taxpayers paid 2.3 % of all federal individual income taxes while the top 1% paid 45.8 % of all federal income and Biden/Harris say that is not fair?

Harris says, “the rich corporations need to pay more taxes.” Trump’s tax cuts slashed corporate rates from 35% to 21%. Why? In today’s globalized world, U.S. corporations were at a huge competitive disadvantage. Our 35% tax rate was the highest among the 33 other industrialized countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which had an average rate of 25 %.

First of all, Harris needs to understand that corporations do not pay taxes, people pay taxes.  That is, a corporation’s product is the sum of many expenses; raw materials, production, wages, advertising etc.  They add up all the expenses, plus a profit and that becomes the product’s selling price.  A corporate tax is just another cost of producing the product and results in a higher price to the consumer which also makes it less competitive in the global market.  Harris proposes to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28%. Why?  Because she needs tax revenue to support her new expensive give-away programs.

She is also proposing an unrealized capital gains tax. That is, you own an asset, it increases in value and you are taxed on that current value that year even though you didn’t sell it.  Did she ever think that assets may increase in value one year and the next year decrease in value? This is pure nonsense.

FENTANYL DEATHS:

While Trump was getting some control over the border. American deaths from fentanyl in 2019 were 22,900.  By 2022 with the Biden/Harris border wide open the deaths were 45,300, an increase of 99%.  By 2023 the U.S. fentanyl deaths rose to 112,000, which eclipses every previous drug epidemic. The 112,000 averages out at about 307, mostly young Americans, dying from fentanyl overdose every single day in 2023. When have you heard either Biden or Harris mention fentanyl? What have they done about it?  Absolutely nothing. There is blood on Biden/Harris’ hands.  

WORLD WAR III IN THE MIDDLE EAST?

WW III is a possibility with the Israelis fighting Hamas, Hizballah, Houthi and Iran. They are in fact not four wars they are one war based on Iran’s financing, training, supplying and leading all of the above.  Why is Iran capable of financing all of this mayhem?

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. For the Biden/Harris administration it has been three plus years of appeasement towards Iran. 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’s oil exports and sale of massive numbers of weapon systems and drones allows it to live up to their 40-year title as, “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” 

What is it about this simple equation that Biden/Harris cannot comprehend? The turmoil and blood-shed in the Middle East today is their doing. It didn’t have to happen.  It should not have happened.  Someone with an ounce of common sense when it comes to foreign policy has to lead this nation.

LEADERSHIP 

Defining leadership can be a complicated task.  But there are some simple pieces that can tell a huge story.  Great leaders by design or sometimes it just happens to work out that they create an environment wherein there is a continuous sense of trust and respect that runs both up and down the chain of command throughout an organization no matter how large of small.  

Staffers who worked for Harris before she was vice president said one consistent problem was that Harris would refuse to wade into briefing materials prepared by staff members, then berate employees when she appeared unprepared. 

VP Harris currently has a staff of 47. In just 3 yeas the turnover rate has been 91.5 %. 24 of the departees, nearly half, have departed in just the last 12 months; one departee said in an interview, “VP Harris destroyed my soul.”  Trust and respect?

The White House needs to be the ultimate work place where our best and brightest will gladly work long, hard days to be all they can be for America.

BIDEN/HARRIS SUMMARY

Increased prices from inflation have become the new normal.

The deterrent level of our military has been shattered; our former allies no longer trust us and our enemies do not fear us. 

Many of our once-great cities are unrecognizable with homeless people living on the streets littered with human feces and drug paraphernalia.

Too many Americans are fearful to walk the streets and use public transportation because of gang violence.

It is not uncommon for someone arrested for committing a violent crime already has a rap-sheet showing 10, 20 or even 30 prior arrests without having served a day in jail.

No-cash bail, putting criminals immediately back on the street, has become all too common. 

Too many prosecutors do not prosecute obvious criminals.

Too many liberal judges do not send convicted criminals to jail.

Too many communities are now controlled by violent trans-American gangs.

We are living in a failing society.

CHANGE 2025-2028

The above scorecard paints a frightening picture of what the American people have experienced under Biden/Harris.  The takeaway for a voter is the pronouncement last week by VP Harris while appearing live on THE VIEW. When asked by the host, “would you have done anything differently than Biden?”  She responded, “there is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of—-and I’ve been a part of—–of the decisions that have had impact.” 

How does that no-change-necessary statement VP Harris link to her almost daily public assertion that her campaign is about, “a new way forward?” She has consistently avoided explaining what “new way” means.

The above scorecard has nothing to do with gender.  I’m convinced that if the likes of Nikki Haley were running for president with her background of successfully leading as governor of South Carolina and her four years up-close-and-personal dealing in foreign affairs as U.S Ambassador to the United Nations, the potential future for America would look very different.

WE NEED AN INFORMED PRESIDENT

What we have observed from the Biden/Harris administration are leaders who are not only reluctant but appear incapable of standing in front of a room full of reporters and answering tough questions for an hour or so. Our conclusions from watching pre-scripted questions and pre-scripted answers being read to us from note cards is that they are generally uninformed, uncomfortable and unsure of their own capabilities.  We are in fact hearing from some nameless, faceless staffer or bureaucrat.  A very uncomfortable situation for we-the-people.

TRUMP OR HARRIS?

While most of you conservatives clearly recognize the VP Harris is not qualified to be president, many of you are also uncomfortable with former President Trump’s ego, communications skills and sometimes pompous attitude. What I am suggesting is that under the circumstances we need to look beyond his personality and recognize that his policies are almost without exception in the best interest of all Americans.  Also recognize that he has a tireless work ethic and will not shy away from any issue, no matter how distasteful or controversial it might be.

BOTOM LINE

America is going through one of the most trying times in our history.  When considering which candidate has the better chance of cleaning up this mess, I see a striking difference between the two candidates.  There is every reason to believe Harris will be a disaster.  Trump, on the other hand, will likely leave the country in better shape in January 2029 than he found it in January 2025.  For the sake of this country, do not fail to vote just because you do not think highly of former President Trump, your country is counting on you. Again, as requested in the opening, please share this with your Democrat and Unaffiliated friends.  Thank you.   

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.

AVOID WW III IN THE MIDDLE EAST

One view of the warring efforts by Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Houthis in Yemen is that they are independent actions and that Israel should seek cease fires, hostage release and peace negotiations with each of them.  That kind of thinking fails to consider the definition of the overall problem in the Middle East.

FACTS BEARING ON THE PROBLEM:

Iran has the 3rd largest world reserves of oil and the 2nd largest reserves of gas.

The Iranians have mastered the art of sanctions circumvention and thereby are currently giving their economy a $35 billion-a-year boost.

Since 1984 Iran has been designated “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” For four decades the Iranian leaders have consistently articulated their twofold objectives; “destruction of Israel and “death to America”.

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. For the Biden administration it has been three plus years 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.

Tehran has used its so-called “proxy army” of more than a dozen militias and terror groups across the Middle East with outposts around the world to help foment instability, carry out attacks, and expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution.

Iran has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars towards training and equipping Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi terrorist organizations with thousands of rockets, missiles, drones and other warfighting equipment.

The Houthi have conducted 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.

CONCLUSIONS FROM THE ABOVE:

While war fighting in the Middle East appears to be separate wars they are not.  What is going on right now in the Middle East is Iran’s promised destruction of Isreal and creation of a new Iran-controlled Middle east.

Placing responsibility for negotiations on Netanyahu is absolutely the wrong approach and will not end well. 

Let’s be honest about what Homas, Hezbollah and Houthi are; they are Iran trained, equipped, financed and led forward-deployed forces. Iran calls all the shots. 

We and the remainder of the world have to take “negotiations” directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The U.S. must lead this effort because the United Nations is helpless and cannot lead anyone towards a productive end of anything.

A WAY FORWARD

Begin by getting President Biden on the phone with all of the other 30 NATO country’s leaders.  Ask for their naval forces to converge on the Persian Gulf with U.S. carrier battle groups providing total control of the air. Then call on our allies in the Pacific, Indian Ocean, Latin America and Africa to also participate in the Persian Gulf.  That is, nothing going in to Iran and nothing coming out without Coalition approval; a 100% embargo.  

Three years ago, Iran opened its first oil terminal in the Gulf of Oman, a move that allows it to avoid using the narrow Strait of Hormuz shipping route that is vulnerable to being shut down. Therefore, expand the embargo into the Gulf of Oman.

THE OBJECTIVES OF THE MIDDLE EAST EMBARGO COALITION ARE TO:

Get this multi-nation impenetrable embargo in place within two to three weeks.

Immediately convince Iran’s leaders that the embargo will last until all terrorist aggression has ceased throughout the Middle East.

The embargo will shut down oil and gas exports and thereby shut down Iran’s financial support to world terrorist organizations.

The embargo will shut down Iran’s import of all nations’ supplies of hardware and software that support their large and expanding weapons manufacturing and export capabilities.

As of January 2024, Tehran has exported drones and/or drone technology to at least five countries on four continents as well as to at least seven of their force projection terrorist organizations and militias in the Middle East.

Drones pose a continuing threat to Middle East security because of their low cost, widespread availability, and potential deniability, since their point of origin can be disguised.

Iran’s missile proliferation efforts have enormous destabilizing potential for the region. Iran has about 20 different ballistic missile models as well as cruise missiles with delivery ranges up to 2,000 kilometers. Nine different Iranian missile models can reach Israel.

BOTTOM LINE:

For four decades Iran has been allowed to build a force projection capability consisting of Iran-trained, equipped and led terrorist organizations operating outside Iran’s borders. Take away Iran’s ability to support those forces and they will no longer be a significant conventional threat to Middle East stability.

Simply stated, we need to stop thinking about 12 Iran-supported terrorist organizations as independent operators and begin referring to them as forward-deployed elements of the greater Iran military establishment.

Forward deploying forces is not a new concept. For example, the U.S. has had forward air and land forces on European soil continuously since WW II and in South Korea since the armistice was signed in 1952. 

IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER AYATOLLAH ALI KHOMENEI:

He is the most powerful figure in Iran; the country’s Supreme Leader since 1989. He is head of state and commander-in-chief. He has authority over the national police and the “morality police.” The Ayatollah also controls the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps which is in charge of internal security, and its volunteer wing, the Basiji Resistance Force which has repeatedly quelled internal dissent. When the Iranian people begin to rise up against their leaders, the world should support them.

Upon implementation of the Middle East Embargo Coalition, send the following message, signed by the leaders of all participating nations, to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Supreme Leader, naval and air forces of the world are enroute to establish and impenetrable shipping embargo in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. Ground forces will not invade your nation if you adhere to the following conditions.

 CONDITION ONE FOR ESCALATION: 

The coalition is taking the same position of that practiced by NATO nations over the past eight decades. That is, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states: “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them . . . shall be considered an attack against them all.” 

The point being, the Coalition is hereby advising you that if there are any counter attacks, including cyber, conventional military, manned air, drones of any kind, missiles, rockets or nuclear, against any Middle East Embargo Coalition member from this moment forward by your forces in Iran or any of the terrorist or militias forward deployed that you support in any way, will result in an immediate escalated response from the Middle East Embargo Coalition nations. 

The response will be to immediately transition from an air and naval operation to an all-out air-ground operation.  The Ground operation’s intent will be to accomplish the following: 

All military forces and every associated facility and military item will be dissolved and/or destroyed.

Military forces resisting the Coalition ground force will become casualties or captured. POWs will be incarcerated.

Any military leader of a company-level sized force or larger may surrender in-mass if every person in the unit comes forward with their uniforms and every piece of equipment associated with their military duties. The equipment will be destroyed and the personnel released to go home.

Any individual military member may, of their own choosing, appear at a designated site with uniforms and equipment, surrender his/her allegiance to your military and be released to go home. 

Within hours or days, you will have no military force or military equipment.

Your government will cease to exist.

The coalition will provide all support necessary for a new government of-the-people and by-the-people to be selected and seated.

The general nature of the Iranian society will include equal opportunities for all men and women alike in education, property ownership, general rights and privileges, professional careers in law, medicine, teaching, government, etc. 

THE SECOND CONDITION that will cause the Coalition to escalate to ground operations described above has to do with your intent to become a nuclear power. If it is determined that you have completed development of a nuclear weapon or that you have purchased or bartered for and have on hand all the necessary elements to produce a nuclear weapon within days or if you have purchased a completed nuclear weapon, the Coalition ground forces will engage and take down that entire nuclear capability and destroy every associated facility you have hidden underground or inside mountains.

At this point, Ayatollah, you are possibly concluding that this Coalition is likely to be an impossible undertaking. We are telling you a coalition effort is certainly within the art of the possible. You will recall in 1990 Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces attacked, defeated and occupied Kuwait. Many believed it was a stepping-stone move towards the Saudi Arabian oil fields. In January 1991 a 39-nation coalition attacked and defeated Saddam Hussien’s vaunted “Mother of All Armies” in just six weeks of air and ground operations. Please pay attention to these numbers which tell a powerful story.

Coalition: 39 countries, of which 28 contributed combat forces.

Force size: Approximately 670,000 troops from 28 countries, 425,000 of which were from the United States.

Coalition air component size: 2,250 combat aircraft, 1,800 of which were American.

Coalition airlift: 509,129 passengers and 594,730 tons of cargo carried.

Coalition sorties flown: 100,000+.

Aerial refueling: 15,434 sorties and dispensed 110.2 million gallons of fuel.

Number of dumb bombs dropped: 210,000.

Number of smart bombs dropped: 9,342.

30mm depleted uranium rounds fired by A-10 manned aircraft (tank-killers): 782,514.

Duration of air campaign before ground invasion: 39 days.

Iraqi tanks lost during the war: 3,700 out of 4,280 in inventory.

Number of U.S. Carrier Battle Groups on station: 6.

Coalition POWs taken during the war: 26.

Iraqi POWs taken during the war: 70,000+.

U.S. combat related deaths: 147

Iraqi military deaths: 100,000+.

Ground war duration: 100 hours.

The U.S. has done it once and we can do it again. That, Supreme Leader, is a glimpse into your future if you so choose.  It is up to you. The message to you articulated in this memo is not a “threat”, it Is a “promise”. From this day forward, your relationship with your forward deployed terrorist organizations and various militia’s must not include offensive military actions or training them for military actions or financing them to further their offensive actions or providing them with military equipment to carry out military actions or assisting them in planning for military actions.  Cease being a sponsor of world-wide terrorism, cease being a destabilizing force throughout the Middle East.

 You, Supreme Leader, must understand that, from this moment forward,  one more Hamas rocket into Israel or one more missile by Hizballah into Israel or one more drone from Houthis into the Red Sea shipping lanes or into Saudi oil production areas or one more attack on U.S. anti-terrorist forces throughout the Middle East, you will be personally responsible for initiation of Coalition ground-force operations inside Iran and the mayhem resulting from it.  We are not doing this to the great Iranian people, we are doing it for them.

You may import food, medicine, medical equipment for humanitarian purposes after the supplies have been inspected by Coalition force members.

We, the leaders of the following listed Coalition nations, hereby pledge our willingness and equipment to fulfilling the Middle East Embargo Coalition commitment.

In alphabetical order: (for example)

Australia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, India, Israil, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, United States of America, United Kingdom.

End of the memorandum to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Copy furnished to the world.

Note to President Biden: 

President Biden, you and VP Harris are in fact complicit (“association or participation in a wrongful act”) in the on-going wars in the Middle East.  Knowing that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, knowing that Iran has been and continues to finance, arm and encourage thousands of rocket and missile attacks against Israeli civilian targets, and knowing that Iran’s Supreme Leader has for decades publicly declared his objective to destroy Israel; in spite of all that knowledge you have orchestrated a policy of appeasement towards Iran for the past 3 ½  years.  By lifting sanctions, you have allowed Iran to develop the financial strength to train, arm and encourage Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi to put the entire Middle East on a path towards WW III.  

And in the first four months of the Israeli/Hamas war, Iran-backed terrorist groups and militias attacked U.S. and allied forces stationed in the Middle East over 150 times, killing three and wounded dozens without a U.S. response from our Commander in Chief, you.

That, Mr. President is your legacy.

A WAY AHEAD:

Neither Biden nor Harris have demonstrated the leadership skills or credibility to initiate the Middle East Embargo Coalition force described above. This then is a recommendation that, if elected, President Trump do the above beginning on 20 January, 2025.

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

STOP KILLING SCHOOL KIDS

BACKGROUND: The Columbine High School massacre occurred April 20, 1999.  Seems like yesterday. According to Post Data, there have been 417 school shootings since Columbine which reportedly exposed over 383,000 students to school shooter violence and trauma.  

So, you ask, what have we learned in the past 25 years about school shootings? Here are some thoughts:

One, we obviously have little or no on-going deterrence in the majority of school security programs.

Two, the majority of schools rely almost entirely on local law enforcement to respond.

Three, this “911 outside-in” concept of operations will inevitably result in first responders arriving on the scene in some number of minutes after it is determined a shooter is on campus.

Four, in most cases casualties from the shooter have occurred before first responders arrive.

Five, multiple law enforcement organizations will show up; police, Sheriff’s deputies, highway patrol, fire department, etc. Result, no one is in charge. First responders may not be familiar with the area of operations.  What does “left wing third floor of building B” mean to the first on-scene arrivals? Who is going to brief the arriving first responders?

I refer you to the Uvalde TX massacre 24 May, 2022 at the Robb Elementary school.  There were 376 responders and no one in charge. A 600-page report revealed that the shooter was locked in a classroom with 9-and 10-year-old children for 37 minutes.  Armed law enforcement officers were outside the classroom waiting for a key to unlock the door while the shooter was executing 19 children and 2 teachers.  And how many similar shooter incidents have there been with the same after-action reporting of delays and incompetence since Uvalde?

I rest my case as I outline what needs to change.

THESIS:

The 61 million parents of school-age children and the 82,423 School Board members are all hoping there will not be a shooting in their school.  When there is a shooting, and there will be a next time, everyone hopes the first responders will get there quickly. Everyone is also hoping there will not be casualties.

News flash…….” hope “is not a process!!

The first responsibility of all school administrators is to provide a safe and secure environment for learning.  The first responsibility of school-age parents is to demand safety as the first priority in their school.

Wake the hell up America, the “911 outside-to-inside in minutes” concept of operations, while well intended, has not worked for the past 25 years and won’t work for the next 25.

All of this begs the question, is it possible to have an “inside-to-outside security force concept” which can and will respond to a shooter incident in seconds?  Yes, it is within the art of the possible and I can recommend that concept to all 129,000 schools across the country.

WHERE TO BEGIN WHEN BUILDING A NEW CONCEPT OF OPERATIONS?

The concept can take on a life of its own by working from three simple questions.

One, what are the tasks to be performed? 

Two, what are the conditions in the area of operations? 

Three, what are the standards of performance that will result in success?

Tasks/conditions/standards is a proven starting point for solving complex multifaceted operations involving people as the operators.

The tasks:  Have in place a continuous, internal, all-encompassing, highly trained security force that is capable of reacting in seconds to any potential or actual on-campus shooter.  From this, there will be lists of individual and leadership tasks for everyone involved for which they must sustain proficiency.

Conditions: The conditions for this operation are consistent and relatively unchanging.  Daylight operations.  Large, perhaps multiple-floor buildings with many hallways. And a target-rich environment with at least hundreds if not a few thousand students, faculty and staff on site every school day.

Standards. An organization without standards is a failed organization. With a concept based on proactive response in seconds, this will then dictate the levels of training to ensure the overall objectives are met every time.

THE DOWNSIDE OF AN INSIDE-OUT SECURITY OPERATION.

The thought of having armed faculty on site every school day just does not have a good feel.  However, it is possible to develop a security force operation wherein a weapon will never be visible until the moment it becomes necessary to engage a shooter.

THE INTERNAL ON-SITE SECURITY FORCE:

The size will be dictated by the size of the building, number of entrances and numbers of students.

For this scenario let’s say the force consists of a leader and eight operators. The leader should be a person of authority on the staff every school day. The best solution is to assign security operations to the Vice Principal as his/her highest priority responsibility.

The operators should all be volunteers for this additional duty and will work in two-person teams. The team approach provides increased confidence that my team mate has my back at all times and an operator will feel more confident about using deadly force without hesitation when it is called for.

Team schedules must be constantly coordinated so that at least one member will be in the school house while classes are in session.

Security force members will train to the extent that they are as comfortable with their weapon as they are with their tooth brush.

Seek training assistance and training facilities from the County Sherrif and/or the local Chief of Police.

All potential team members in training will undergo a psych evaluation.  The purpose is to determine if the operator has, under certain circumstances, the will to inflict deadly force on a shooter.

OPTIMIZE THE ENTIRE AREA OF OPERATIONS, some examples:

Make it user friendly, optimize relevant technology, limit the number of entrances, preferably to one with metal detectors. 

In compliance with fire safety regulations, the fire exits should all be covered by a continuous-feed camera and an alarm system for whenever that door is opened and that reports continuously to the operations center.

For operational reasons name every potential entrance with a letter designation; door “A” will be Entrance Alfa or Bravo, Charlie etc.

All of the technology will flow to the Operations Center.  Best case, the center will be the Vice Principal’s office or adjoining room. Additional long-range cameras will continuously provide a view of the parking areas. 

Again, for operational clarity, every hallway should be named.  For example, use states.  Hallway Iowa, Colorado, etc. For example, “Entrance Charlie just breached, shooter is moving down Nebraska towards the intersection with Minnesota.”

There should be a “shooter alarm” on the wall with every fire alarm, both covered by a camera.

COMMUNICATIONS DISCIPLINE

Every security team member and their leader will be equipped with a small radio that will be turned on and will be on their body every minute they are on the campus.

Each day will begin with a comms check of every radio with the ops center.  There will be absolutely zero chatter on the radios ever.  The only time there is a transmission it will be to activate the teams and cause them to immediately deploy to their first designated station, according to the standard number of seconds.

EQUIPPING SECURITY OPERATORS

Every team member will have at their place of work, be it a classroom or office, a secure immovable “box.” It will have a digital panel that will open in a couple seconds with a 3-digit code known only to the operator. 

Every box will hold a pistol, loaded with a round chambered and the safety on. There will also be a second loaded magazine. Additionally, there will be a lanyard to put around their neck with a master key to open every door in the building.  Why the key? Remember the law enforcement personnel outside a classroom in Uvalde waiting for a key to unlock the door and thereafter engage the shooter.

Hanging next to the box will be a red, armored vest with “SECURITY” in big letters front and back. The vest will have a special pocket for the extra, fully loaded, magazine.

The point of explaining the above is that within a few seconds after a breach has occurred, the ops center will know it and seconds later phone calls go out simultaneously to every operator. When the operators’ phones go off, they immediately get to their vest, open the box and out the door, armed and deploying to their first position perhaps within 10-15 seconds. 

AN EXAMPLE SCENARIO

An alarm goes off in the ops center. The Vice Principal (call sign, Security 2) sees an open door from the reporting camera at fire exit Charlie and yells into the phone, “breach, breach at fire exit Charlie, I say again, breach at fire exit Charlie.”

Through multiple training scenarios Team 2 knows they are closest to fire exit Charlie and deploy directly towards that location. All teams will deploy to a location associated with a breach at exit Charlie. All teams will be reporting to the ops center via phone.

“Team 4 out the door” Each team reports “out the door” and subsequently report when at their assigned destination.

About now the Vice Principal, Security 2, has sounded the campus-wide alarm for possible shooter on site. All teachers and staff immediately lock their doors and everyone is on the floor face down.

Security 2 also calls 911 to report a possible shooter and tells the operator to stay on the line for in-process reports. .  “Fire exit breached, all operators are armed and deploying with red vests.”

“This is team 2 at Charlie, door open no one in sight.”  If a shooter entered from Charlie, he/she will most likely be moving down Alabama hallway.  So, under the Charlie scenario, Team 4 knows they are to deploy to Alabama. 

“This is Team 4, one male on Alabama headed for Texas, has a long gun.”

Security 2 to 911 operator.  “Shooter sighted inside armed with a long gun.”

Each of the Security Teams deployed to a designated area that was associated with a breach from Charlie.  Similar but different scenarios exist for breaches at Exit Alfa, Bravo, Delta, Echo, etc. etc.

The Security Teams will have trained to every scenario and know without radio conversation where to go. Based on those exercises the Security Leader will know within about 5 seconds what time every team will be in place.  THAT’S WHAT TRAINING TO ESTABLISHED STANDARDS IS ALL ABOUT and it is not rocket science. It’s common sense.

The Principal (call sign Security 1) also has a radio and is monitoring all the action.  He/she is the logical one to get outside to meet and brief the arriving first responders so they can assist but also so they do not get in the way.

Back to the action:

“This is team 4, the shooter has seen us and is running to evade or escape. He will be at Team 3 location in seconds.

“This is team 3, roger all, ambush set, IPRF (in position ready to fire), OUT.  The “OUT” signals to everyone that radio silence is now in effect and the next transmission will be from Team 3.

“This is Team 3, shooter down, alive, need medics.”

When shots were fired, all teams abandoned their current locations and moved toward the sound of gunfire to assist if necessary.

Security 2 reports this to 911 operator who is keeping the deploying first responders in the loop.

“This is Security 1, just informed first responders are on the way.  Team 3, your location and shooter status please.” 

“Team 3 located at the end of Montana.  Shooter with leg injuries, bleeding heavily, applying pressure.”

This is Security 1; I will escort medics to your location ASAP.

Security 2 informs 911 operator that the shooter is wounded and in custody.

“Security 2, this is Security 1, give the all-clear over the campus intercom.  Tell all personnel to remain in their locked rooms until told to do otherwise. Also provide this public address to 911 for immediate release……..A shooter at Smith Elementary is in custody as of 0942 this morning.  The shooter did not have contact with any students.  No one was injured.  All classes have been cancelled for the day.  Students will be released at 11 o’clock. Students not having transportation will be kept in the dining hall.”

“Security 2 this is Security 1, all security team members are to report to the end of Montana immediately to debrief law enforcement when they arrive.  Also, the entire security team will attend the AAR in the conference room at 1230.

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS

Timely situational awareness is a critical factor in any operation; the larger the organization the more difficult it becomes. But in this case, with a limited number of security personnel and with all of them hearing every phone transmission in real time, situational awareness becomes a positive as long as strict communications discipline is maintained.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Every one associated with security must know the ROE and train to them.

First:  The first rule of ROE is the right of self-defense.

Second: if a shooter is obviously armed, preemptive fire is allowed.

Third; there are two levels of attack, to disable the shooter or use deadly force.

If the shooter has not raised his weapon to fire, consider incapacitating him/her by firing rapidly below the waste. If the shooter gives any indication, they are about to fire, aim for center of mass with deadly force.

In the above scenario Team 3 observed the shooter moving rapidly towards an exit with his rifle pointed down.  Team 3 opened up rapidly firing their semi-automatic pistols at the shooter, waste down to incapacitate him.

TRAIN THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY

Hold periodic mandatory assemblies for everyone on campus. Go over the concept. Everyone must know to lock their door and get on the floor.  Everyone will be expecting to hear rapid movement by the Security Teams in the hallways.  Everyone will know there is a possibility of hearing shots fired.  Everyone knows they are to remain in place until they get an “all clear” from the principal only on the campus-wide speakers.

Drill into the heads of everyone at the assembly that it is important that, IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING.  IF YOU HEAR SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING.  Tell them exactly what to do.  Make the points by providing some examples. For example, have a student walk across the stage with a jacket on and it appears that the butt of a pistol can be seen outside the pocket.  Tell them that if they see a gun of any kind anywhere on campus and the person is not wearing a red security vest, they have permission to pull the nearest alarm located in the hallways.

Explain that the words “gun” “rifle” and “pistol” are absolutely verboten on campus even if used in jest.

TRAIN THE STAFF AND FACULTY

Insure they know and understand the operations plan in detail and are 100% committed to it.  If they are not, they must go do something else.

Emphasize that if a student sees or hears something they are likely to tell their teacher. Tell the staff and faculty what they are to do immediately.

TRAIN THE PARENTS

Hold a series of Parent Teacher Association evening meeting at the school early in the school year and do as many as necessary in order to have some assurance that everyone has had an opportunity to attend.

Explain the “Inside to out in seconds” concept in detail, emphasizing that the “911 outside to in in minutes” will not keep your children safe. Explain the Uvalde TX mess ending with 17 small children killed and hundreds more traumatized.

There undoubtedly will be some loud-mouth parent preaching to the audience that the school has no right to have armed teachers. Plan on it and be prepared to deal with it.

UNANNOUNCED EXERCISES.

One and only one person will know there is going to be an unannounced exercise this morning.  The Principal will call the Sheriff and Chief of Police at 0930 on a school day and tell them that he/she will begin the exercise in a few seconds. 

The Principal gets on the campus intercom and says, “this is an exercise, this is an exercise.  There has just been an exercise breach at Exit Charlie.  I repeat this is only an exercise but everyone is to take actions as if it was real.” Then the stop watches come out, the Vice Principal calls the operators on the phone, activates the campus-wide alarm, calls 911 all the time emphasizing it is an exercise only.

When it is concluded all the times the operators checked in on their phones; “Team 3 out the door”, “Team 4 at first location”, etc.

When it is over, from the ops center calculate how many seconds it took for every team to call in their repots and actions.

CONDUCT THE AAR IMMEDIATELY AFTER SCHOOL

An After-Action Review, AAR, is a tool developed by the U.S. Army and advertised by Havard Business School as a valued technique to get important immediate feedback from any group or organization-wide activity that can be fed back into improvements. The “R” in AAR does not stand for “report”.  A report can take days to months to prepare and may be keyed on finding fault and placing blame.  While the AAR keys on individual accountability and immediate fixes.

An AAR is a gathering of the key players to answer three questions.

One, what did we do good? In this security exercise the answers would key on the timing of all the communications and deployments. 

Two, what could we have done better? Team 3 is new and missed the standard time of getting out the door.  Team 2 initially deployed to the wrong destination.  The Sheriff’s deputies didn’t arrive for 20 minutes after the 911 call. Etc. etc.

Three, how do we institutionalize the fixes?  Saturday morning, we will go through all the breach scenarios again to improve timing and communications. Etc. etc.

An AAR is not a blame game. A successful AAR is based on honest accountability from every leader and player.

Hundreds of AARs take place throughout the U.S. Army every day.

A SALARIED SECURITY OFFICER ON CAMPUS

There is a role they could play.  Be visible at the main entrance every morning to monitor the metal detector. Conduct the morning radio comms check. Physically visit every entry point to ensure they are locked and alarms and cameras are functioning. Occupy the operations center when the Vice Principal is absent.  Stand in for a missing security team member.

CONCLUSIONS

Many schools across the country have a retired law enforcement officer on salary and have thereby declared themselves to be “secure.”  They are not secure. One person simply cannot be more than one place at a time to successfully deal with a breach of security. Security will result from a highly trained and capable multi-person security force. 

Local law enforcement first responders can never match the reaction times of an internal security force that is in-place every minute of every school day.

Once the equipment is in place, this is not an expensive operation by a group of faculty volunteers.

This proactive inside-out in seconds concept of operations can in and of itself be a deterrent to potential shooters. Credible deterrence is a powerful and effective force.

BOTOM LINE

Lessons that should have been learned at Columbine 25 years ago have never replaced the 911 outside-in concept. We can and we have to do better to stop killing kids in our schools.

This is not a federal or state government issue.  God help us if the Departments of Education get involved with thousands of bureaucrats and reams of regulations to guide us.  This is a local issue that can and should be solved locally. Just do it.

There is an old saying that sort of defines what is going on with respect to school security.  “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.”  What we “got” is more dead kids. There is one more that is apropos when dealing with an organization (such as a school district), “Change or die.” in this case literally more kids will die of we don’t change.

Note to subscribers.  If you agree with this concept, please take the time to get a copy to your local Board of Education and Superintendent of schools for their consideration.

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

“BLAME”, THE LAST VESTAGE OF A FAILED LEADER, (AND MAGA-2)

BLAME,” to find fault with, to hold responsible, to place responsibility for.”

The Biden/Harris Administration blamed the Afghanistan debacle on, “the generals”, blamed tangled supply chains on “inflation”, blamed the over-all economic nose-dive on “COVID and Putin” blamed surging lawlessness on “COVID and guns”, blamed out-of-control fuel prices on “Putin and the Ukraine invasion”, blamed gas prices on “fuel company CEOs”, Blamed increasing inflated prices for everyday essentials on “CEOs” and on and on and on. 

Truth just doesn’t seem to matter to Biden/Harris; they will say whatever it takes to get past the moment. “The border is not open.” The truth: Every statistic associated with illegal immigration tells us just the opposite.  Biden/Harris June, 2022: “We have the fastest growing economy in the world.”  The truth: More than 50 countries were growing faster. Biden/Harris, “People have record savings.”  The truth, wealth losses in the U.S. exceeded $10 trillion in 2022, the most significant catastrophic vaporizations of wealth and savings in U.S. history.  Biden/Harris, “The economy is in a better place than it has been historically.”  The truth:  During the Trump presidency, before COVID, median household income rose by $6,446, the largest three-year gains in income for middle-class families in history. Under Biden/Harris, wage increases lagged behind increases in inflation. Biden/Harris, “America is in a position to tackle a worldwide problem (inflation) that’s worse everywhere but here.” The truth: U.S. inflation was higher than in Japan, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada. Repeatedly, Biden/Harris, “we have created more jobs than any administration in history”. Truth, tens of millions were temporarily without a job when covid shut down America.  When businesses reopened, those millions returned to work, their jobs were not “created”.

The political left picks up on blame, it spreads, it is deemed an acceptable course of action by our liberal media and liberal institutions of higher learning. We are creating a next-generation of leaders who believe blame and untruth are acceptable leadership tools.

President Biden is now almost irrelevant in his final days in office, but the Biden/Harris blame game lives on in Kamala’s campaign speeches. They have consistently used blame as a leadership tool and it is a disaster.

This is not to say that the Republican politicians are not players in the Blame and Hate game, but everything former President Trump says is immediately fact checked by the main-stream media and widely reported while Biden/Harris can count on the media to eagerly report their erroneous findings and conclusions.    

THESIS: Culture is a powerful and pervasive force in any organization. An “organization” could be a small team of two or three individuals or it could be the whole country. We know that every individual has a definable personality; bubbly, solemn, self-serving, introverted, optimistic, mean, the list is long.  “Culture” is the personality of an organization; caring, harsh, entrepreneurial, selfless, hateful,  bureaucratic; again, a long list. 

In the 1990s this new culture began to emerge.  It started with a new meaning for the word “spin”. When a potentially negative issue emerged, the Clinton White House would “spin” the issue to make it look as though someone else was responsible. The blame game took root, grew, migrated to the U.S. Congress and transformed it into today’s blame-everything, dysfunctional, grid locked organization.  And then it spread across the country. Today we have a deeply engrained culture of blame everywhere.

Additionally, in the past few years the country has been trending towards a culture of hate and it is moving like a wild fire. 

Hate: “to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest.” 

And here is the worst part, babies are not born with hatred in their little hearts. But they will learn hatred, bullying, the use of vindictive language, disregard for civil discourse, at home, in school and from the media. A culture of hate is already on track to become a generational problem.  

Hatemonger: “one who incites others to hatred or prejudice”. We saw that recently on compasses across the nation with hatemongers preaching to and leading uninformed rioting student bodies about antisemitism. We hear it every day from those with deeply ingrained hatred towards former President Trump, notwithstanding the success of many of his policies that lifted America’s standing, economy and security.

Chuck Shumer, Senate minority leader, after the Supreme Court decision to make abortion a states’ rights issue vs federal law, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price, you won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Hatemongering on a national scale by a senior leader of the Democrat party.

Representative Maxine Waters outside the Federal Building in her California district.  Railing against President Trump and his Cabinet, “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them. You tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Hatemongering.

Civil discourse, agreeing to disagree and the golden rule are in danger of becoming a thing of the past We are waking up to an America we don’t know or like, an America that has lost its goodness.

HOW CAN WE COUNTER THE CULTURE OF BLAME AND HATE?

First, we have to define an alternative. There are four steps to changing the culture of any organization.

One, define the existing culture. Not always easy but doable.

Two, answer the question, is it what we want the culture to be? In this case absolutely no.

Three, define what we do want the culture to be.

Recall on 20 January 2021 newly sworn in President Biden provided us with an impassioned plea for national unity.  But he did not define “unity” or a specific path forward.  Then a few hours later he signed a pile of Executive Orders that torpedoed many of President Trumps policies that enhanced the lives of most Americans including the 73.6 million who had voted for him. For example, Biden insured that energy independence for the first time in over 50 years would be gone.  He reopened the border and sacrificed the safety and security of all Americans. Etc.

Kamala is now campaigning on, “a new way forward” without defining WHAT it is or HOW to achieve “it”. She recently defended her flip-flop on major policies and issues by emphasizing that, “My values have not changed. The Wall Street Journal rightfully acknowledged that her statement on values, “can be read any way you want. We take it as a studied wink to her left flank that she’s on their side but can’t say so clearly until she’s elected.”

Four, having clearly defined WHAT you want the culture to be, then have a plan to implement and institutionalize it.

Sometimes it is instructive to look at issues by putting them on a spectrum of behavior; that is, look at the polar opposites.  Good/evil. Selfless/self-serving. Accountability/blame. Then there is today’s issue with hate on one end of the spectrum and on the other end is trust, respect and love. We simply have to get on the correct side of the Blame and Hate spectrums.

From that it is easy to suggest an easily identifiable alternative to  the hate and blame culture; it could be a culture of Accountability, Respect and Trust.

ACCOUNTABILITY: “the obligation to bear the consequences for failure to perform as expected.” 

Accountability is a foundational element of leadership.  A person who attempts to dodge accountability for their policies, beliefs and actions turns to lying about results.  The conclusion from we-the-people is that if he/she consistently lies about the little things, they will also likely lie to us about the big stuff.  And it is the big stuff that can and does negatively impact the lives of Americans every day.

The seriousness of the absence of accountability goes further.  Very high up on the line-up of desirable leader character traits are trust and respect.  Without accountability, neither trust nor respect will become part of the leadership equation. We cannot trust someone who lacks the moral courage to tell us the truth about the most important issues facing we-the-people.  Without trust and accountability how are we going to respect that person as our leader?

 If you are looking for a single word that sums up the attributes of accountability, trust and respect it would be integrity. A person of integrity will consistently display moral commitment, selflessness and confidence to speak out and act out with honesty and honor. A mid-1900s radio personality, Edward R. Murrow summed it up accurately with this, “To be persuasive you must be believable; to be believable you must be credible; to be credible you must be truthful.”  Amen.

CULTURE:  Having discussed the Biden/Harris character, or lack thereof, we also must consider the larger issue; it is about the organization, i.e., the collective U.S.A.

As pointed out, culture is a powerful and pervasive force in every organization and every organization, no matter how large or small, has a culture. Too many times senior leaders in industry, the military, education, government and politics pay little or no attention to the culture of their organization until they wake up one day and figure out that it is a disaster and is dragging the entire organization down. The point being, culture needs attention all the time. 

A leader does not build or change an organizational culture by sending out an email or memo or making a speech on “unity” (Biden) or talking about “a new way forward” without defining it (Kamala).  The leader defines what the culture currently is, decides what he/she wants it to be and then sets in motion all the initiatives necessary to institutionalize it. It’s a lot of work; a leader must get the majority on board, make them actively participate and sell it, talk about it openly and frequently.  Everyone in the organization should be able to define the culture and its impact on the environment in which they live and work. 

Why are great leaders great?  Some people will refer to a successful leader as a, “born leader.” No such thing.  First is desire.  If a leader does not want to lead or is uncomfortable in the seat, they will likely fail.  Secondly, is preparation.  Great leaders have years of experience at the first-line leader level, the operational level and finally at the strategic level. They are good at what they do as a result of a combination of formal leader development training, self-initiated study, having been properly mentored and by having experienced many successes and failures along the way. 

I believe we can all agree that being president of the United States may be the most difficult, the most demanding leadership position in the world.  A best-case scenario would be for the president to have experienced at least years if not hopefully decades of leader development at tactical through strategic levels, experienced near-term and long-range planning successes and failures, learned how and when to deal with direct-report subordinates as well as dozens, then hundreds or perhaps thousands of worker-bees at the lower levels, experienced how to deemphasize self-interests by always seeking the greater good for the organization as a whole and keeping that thought in the forefront of every action and reaction.

President Biden has none of this training and has, therefore, failed the American people on so many fronts. His natural reaction is to turn to what 50 years of politics taught him; play loose with the truth and resort to blame, blame and more blame.

The scarcity of information on Kamala Harris’ leader development is at least alarming if not down-right dangerous. What we have seen over the past three years gives us pause.

The office of the Vice President has a staff off 47 individuals, hand selected. The staff has recently been described as, “a revolving door, a staff exodus of key aides heading for the exits.” Resulting in a 91.5% turnover.  One former VP Harris staffer says aides have to, “endure, a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism.”  How do you believe VP Harris’ accountability, respect and trust is doing?

BOTTOM LINE:

Almost nothing damages the reputation of a leader faster than attempting to dodge an issue rather than deal with it.  Blame is a dodge.  Nothing positive will ever come of it.

Our lives are defined by how we deal with adversity.  When failure manifests its ugly head, the last course of action should be to abandon accountability because doing so ensures there also will be no trust or respect going forward.

A thought from an unknown author, “The only thing that happens when you throw dirt is that you lose ground.”  Blame does not inspire, it breeds malcontent, discord, disarray, frustration and ultimately, in this case, failure for the entire nation.

WHAT TO DO?

We should begin to answer that question by defining where we are today on the issue of who will lead the country next year. Having looked at the dismal Biden/Harris administration’s three-year track record, at their lack of basic leadership capabilities, at their “unfavorable” polling results that are over 50% for both and over-all what they have done towe the people vs done for America and considering Trump’s many highly successful policies and presidential experience why are Harris and Trump in a dead heat?

One would consider that while Trump has been campaigning for about two years and Kamala for just a few weeks having never received a single vote for the presidency, maybe it is worth looking a something new for the last two months of the campaign.

MR. TRUMP, TAKE ON THE ISSUE OF THE CULTURE OF BLAME AND HATE IN AMERICA TODAY.

BACKGROUND:

About 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, diplomat, sociologist, political scientist, political philosopher, and historian came to America to study this seemingly wonderful and successful up-start nation called the United States of America.  He traveled throughout the 21 states and departed with some worldly and brilliant conclusions.

In 1835 he published Democracy in America and the most famous conclusion from his writings is the thought that America is great because it is good; and when it ceases to be good it will likewise cease to be great.

That is where America is today. We have lost our goodness via a deeply seated culture of Blame and Hate. While Trump continues to campaign relentlessly on the objective of Making America Great Again one can (should?) conclude that his entire campaign missed a step. That is, in order, first tackle the Goodness and then go for the Greatness. 

My contention is that we cannot succeed in being “great again” without restoring some level of goodness to America. I do not believe it is too late. What does Mr. Trump have to lose, he is just treading water right now and getting nowhere as the clock runs down.

NOTE TO SPEECH WRITERS:  using some of the above information put together a highly advertised, dynamic speech in which you do not mention the existing MAGA.  Introduce a new MAGA, Make America Good Again.  MAGA-2.

Explain the thesis that we cannot achieve greatness until we regain some acceptable level of goodness.  This can possibly be a dynamic shift in campaign dialog on both sides. Everything the Democrats have done TO America in the last few years, broke the middle class financially, degraded trust and respect for law and order, destroyed most major cities, vastly degraded safety and security for the American people, degraded military capability and with that lost our deterrent force, led us into the greatest vulnerability since WW II by support to Iran that made them financially able to support their forward deployed forces such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. All of that and more has accelerated the Democrat dialog of Blame and Hate. Goodness is gone.

Explain that on day one of a new Trump presidency you will sign Executive Orders on the subject of a new Culture of Accountability, Respect and Trust.  It’s easy to remember, ART. One of the Executive Orders will direct the new Secretary of Education to mount an immediate and vigorous campaign to make Accountably, Respect and Trust the operational culture in all of the 140,000 schools where it will be explained, talked about daily and be a part of every classroom activity.  The intent is to begin now to build a new, changed, better generation of Americans. 

An Executive Order will direct immediate action in every element of the Federal Government to use the new culture every day in every way.

Trump will tell Americans that on one day one he will meet with the entirety of the leadership in Congress to include Committee Chairs to sell the new culture.

One of the president’s most senior advisors will be the Culture Czar.

President Trump will not have difficulty instilling the ART culture in the military because that was the culture when the military was the most capable, most feared in the world before nonsense like Biden/Harris Diversity, Equality and Inclusion killed the basis of any great military; that is, 100% equal opportunity to be all you can be followed by measures of meritocracy.

Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

Conclude every campaign speech with the thought that Make America Great Again is obviously necessary because of the Biden/Harris mass destruction of society, education, the military, world standing, energy independence, family financial security, increased vulnerability from the newly formed China/Russia/Iran/North Korea cabal, and lack of internal safety and security for all Americans. 

Finally tell America, “But we cannot successfully Make America Great Again unless we also successfully Make America Good Again.”

CHANGE THE NARRATIVE OR THE REPUBLICANS GET DEFEATED AGAIN

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 AmericaDo 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.

JOB ONE FOR VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE

 

“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 PRODUCTGeneral 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 boxin 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.