Illegal immigration

Two years later

By Steve Woodward

While generally skeptical about so-called resolutions prompted by one month bleeding into another, I nonetheless resolve to torment hypocrites and Marxists (Democrats) as never before in 2023.

What other choice do we have? Anthony Fauci is retiring but his legacy — gain-of-function, fear, masking, boosters — is not going away. In fact, it is going to places heretofore uncontemplated. Vaccinated sheep (citizens) we are told now are more vulnerable to upcoming “variants” of the Wuhan virus. And pay no attention to vaccinated healthy young adults becoming ill or dying “suddenly”.

The blank canvas that is 2023 should not be frittered away at the hands of status quo Republicans. The battle in the U.S. House of Representatives to name its speaker reinforces a pressing need to deflect establishment forces. Our Founding Fathers did not create their framework to limit conflict within a party; they envisioned a battlefield upon which bold ideas and deep passion would overwhelm hypocrisy and political fraudsters.

Were we to summon a fraction of the determination that drove the Founders just think what we might accomplish. Locally, we would create a coalition to insure that a drag show never would darken our community again. We would direct our school board to eradicate gender grooming and race theory from public education. And we would challenge our county commissioners to marginalize the county board of health — over which it presides — so that it never again intrudes on public education by recommending school closures, masking and subjecting children to experimental mRNA injections.

But we also must stand resolute against purveyors of revisionist history as we approach the second anniversary of the unity rally of January 6 in Washington, where your correspondent traveled to chronicle what would unfold. We know many brothers and sisters who came and went without so much as raising their voices an octave, while raising objections that D.C. government chose to limit rest facilities apparently in an effort to disperse the “mobs” of seniors, families and young Republicans. The choice was clear: urination or defend the nation.

Apart from the planted, scripted disrupters who raged into the Capital two years ago, those who merely showed up are now, two years on, still sobered by what our nation looked like after the crowds went home and the Biden Administration ascended. Where we are in 2023 affirms that our motivation to assemble in Washington on that fateful January day in 2021 was prescient.

To the extent that a few hundred people swelled into the Capitol we now see how that modest demonstration pales in comparison to the trampling and burning down of societal norms in the aftermath. We might ask, where was the outrage on that January afternoon amid news that the lone fatality was an unarmed military veteran (Ashli Babbitt) who was gunned down in cold blood by a Capitol police officer? Why does January 6 merit a “commission”? Where are the commissions denouncing violence on America’s streets that, by comparison, make that citizens’ rally look like a county fair? Innocents who participated that day still rot in D.C. jail cells charged with taking selfies. But who was doing the plundering of our democracy in reality? Facebook and Twitter, of course. When will those digital accomplices be shackled and sent away?

Two years on, the Left is waging its own insurrection. Look no further than an essay I endured in a recent, Dec. 31-Jan. 1 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. It is worth noting that, in order to fill up the sections in weekend Journals, editors give voice to authors who would prefer to be published in The New York Times. The Journal helps them audition.

Zachary Karabell, who is the founder of the ominously named Progress Network, wrote to praise 2022 as as year in which “far more went right … than most of us recognize”. One can only imagine from which penthouse or city brownstone the author was perched as he typed fervently to remind us that 2022 was the year “climate technology was supercharged” by $400 billion allocated through Biden’s absurd Inflation Reduction Act. (In China, the equivalent would be the Oppression Reduction Edict).

Mr. Karabell is positively giddy in reminding readers that voter suppression laws failed (but misses the point that no such laws existed). Without a hint of irony, he claims “voters surged to the polls in (2022) despite fears (expressed only by left wing media) that laws passed in states such as Georgia and Texas would lead to voter suppression.”

The illogical Mr. Karabell goes on in his rambling essay to praise wage gains for citizens he disparages as “workers” — up by 6% in 2022 — “that did not (emphasis added) for most of the year keep pace with inflation.” Not to worry, he writes, “inflation moderates”. Just as urban crime waves sweeping our nation moderate. Some nights are less deadly than others.

2022 was a train wreck but, apparently, Mr. Karabell blissfully travelled on a parallel track.

The reliably moderate Gerard Baker, in his weekly Journal column, tried to ease into a new year by calling for an ideological truce. “Can we start to work to eradicate the binary mind-set that has seized our thinking about the kind of society and world we think we should live in?” Baker asks.

He answers his own question near the end of the column — as if the more he kept typing the more he was talking himself out of the premise. (As editor emeritus, Baker should impulsively have send the column back for a re-write).

Baker continues: herein is “the great conundrum for the more skeptical among us: Advances in the lot of humanity have rarely come from calls for moderation and humility, but from true believers — zealots who convinced enough people that the choice they faced really was a binary one between good and evil.”

Citizens who endure wages ravaged by bad economic policy, and law and order dysfunction driven by the “woke”, deserve our fierce defense of their liberties, no matter the cost.

If parents with children in government run indoctrination centers (schools) must become zealots to reform the system, let them do so boldly. If mechanical ballot tabulation presents a binary choice between integrity and fraud, we must go full binary to expose the Left. If U.S. border security is de-emphasized even as Ukrainian border security is funded by an American Congress to the tune of $100 billion; if medical tyranny advanced by thinly veiled lies threatens livelihoods, mental health and the well being of healthy young adults; if we observe the normalization of transgenderism and the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in our communities; if the very foundation of American exceptionalism is crumbling under the iron boot of the Left’s Great Reset in pursuit of a one-world order; well, then what?

With grudging apologies to Mr. Baker, the task is not to eradicate a mind-set. The task is to eradicate enemies within.

Edgartown

By Steve Woodward

(Sing along with your friends to “Allentown” by Bruce Springsteen)

Well we’re livin’ here in Edgartown
And they’re closing all the B&Bs down

Down in Washington they’re killing time
Undoing norms
Reciting false lines

Well looks like the nasty immigration war
Has now come to the Atlantic’s shores

Met resistance from Barack Hussein O
He and Michelle sim-plee reee-fused to go
And compassion for we folk is sinking quite low

The Obama estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Edgartown, MA.

But they’re livin’ here in Edgartown
Trapped here in a human lost-and-found
Awaiting promises that Biden made
Just walk right on in
Pour in and invade

So we flew on up to Mass, had a ball
But now imprisoned by a Leftist cabal
They’ve never really told us the deal
We’re drinking cold Cokes
It’s getting surreal

Now, Ed-gar-town is drivin’ us out
‘Cause their immigration love is in doubt
They just want us back — a way down south
And sure like to talk … both sides of their mouth

Nope, we’re not livin’ here in Edgartown
Why’d the locals greeted us all with a frown?
Bussed us over to a naval base
Now we just wait, unsure of our fate

Oh no more livin’ high in Edgartown
Will we be free or left adrift, sentenced … to … drown?

Soft tyranny prevails

By Steve Woodward

The presumption on the left in 2019 is that Republicans enter public service to engage in activities that advance human suffering. This despite common knowledge that politicians across the spectrum have proven themselves across the ages to be deeply flawed, and largely harmless more often than not. On this many can agree. But a recent diatribe by a fellow resident of Pinehurst serves as a reminder that, while all humans are flawed, some also are deranged.

In a July 31 letter-to-the-editor published by The Pilot, a newspaper in the Sandhills run by media lefties, Ken Owens of Pinehurst, a suspected invader from a northern state opined:

“When Gov. Roy Cooper explained why he would veto the Republican-backed budget plan, he got straight to the heart of what is wrong with our Republican legislators. … There are a lot of poor people in North Carolina, and it seems that the Republican legislators want to keep them that way. Note to Mr. Owens: The state’s poverty rate has fallen every year since 2012 after spiking to 18%, entirely during the rule of a Democrat controlled General Assembly for 140 years through 2010. Look it up.

The writer then ramped up his scolding of Republican policies.

They refuse to expand Medicaid. Because it is rife with peril to do so for the people who allegedly will benefit. Gov. Cooper vetoed the 2019-21 state budget because it does not expand Medicaid. Guess what? If North Carolina covers the so-called Medicaid insurance gap and the federal government rolls back its current 90% coverage of the cost to states, NC will be rocked by a cost surge and Medicaid for All will become Medicaid for Fewer. In the shorter term physicians will cease taking on new Medicaid patients to avoid being overburdened, or simply to stay in business. Meanwhile, the Cooper veto is denying state employees and public school teachers scheduled pay raises. Look it up: States that bought into expansion when Obamacare passed are regretting the decision today. Costs have spiraled upward, limiting expansion as intended.
They cut unemployment compensations. Unemployment compensation at previous levels was unsustainable and smothering the state in debt north of $2 billion. Today, the state has a budget surplus and unemployment is trending downward in step with a national trend. Do the math.
By raising the sales tax, they (Republicans), in effect, raised taxes on the bottom 40 percent at the same time that they were cutting taxes for the top 5 percent. The Democrat-controlled General Assembly passed legislation in 2007 allowing counties to raise sales taxes by a quarter-cent to increase revenue as needed. Meanwhile, the state sales tax (4.75%) is lower today than it was in 2011 (5.75%). Which “they” are you accusing of political malpractice?
They removed many poor people from food stamp programs. No one has been “removed”. In 2015, the state legislature took a common sense step to rein in food stamp program abuse. It reinstated a federal requirement — invoked during the Obama administration — requiring food stamp applicants to demonstrate they are working, volunteering or taking classes a minimum of 20 hours a week. And it impacted only adults under 50 who do not have children. As usual, Democrats eventually opposed these minimum standards because they champion soft tyranny through economic enslavement of citizens. They want reliable voters to become addicted to entitlements that go on forever, no questions asked.
They cut child care subsidies and slashed dental care programs for poor kids. Another blanket, baseless accusation ignoring reality. Government funded child care is complex because no amount of subsidized care will make everyone happy, or address every need. Ever. In 2014 the General Assembly tweaked qualifications to direct more subsidized child care to children under age 6 — citing the importance child care experts place on nurturing children from infancy. There have been no “cuts”. The pending 2019 state budget adds $3.2 million to the program. Activists dismiss this because there are kids on waiting lists representing a fraction of those receiving subsidized care. Of course, under the soft tyranny of liberalism, it is out of bounds to ask why many low income families continue having children they can not afford to raise. It is not an unfair question: If a couple already has one or more children, and both parents are working full time to support their families, why is it the state and federal government’s responsibility to underwrite child care for yet another child brought into the world, planned or unplanned?

“What I don’t understand is why “the people” keep re-electing them”, Owens laments. “They are not there ‘for the people’. They are there to please the wealthy and the corporations that donate to them.” Who donates to Democrat candidates? Homeless people and companies too small to incorporate? No, to the contrary Democrats have been known to collect from sexual predator Harvey Weinstein, socialist billionaire George Soros and sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, not to mention employees of the largest publicly held companies in America: Amazon, Facebook, Google and the list goes on.

Send in the clowns

” … Where are the clowns. Send in the clowns. Don’t bother, they’re here.” – Stephen Sondheim, 1973

By Steve Woodward

It is increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to avoid opinion columnists who are so wrong on so many topics. Their renderings ramble on and on, littered with unsubstantiated statistics and unsourced assertions. I’m encountering these diatribes despite never, ever reading op-ed pages in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Who needs those formerly credible publications when one can find the same extremes of anti-Republican, anti-Trump, pro-left vitriol in The Pilot? The April 28 edition showcased Robert Levy observing that illegal immigrants pouring across the southern border are the reason for the nation’s robust economy; William Shaw praising North Carolina teachers, who are not union members, for planning a union-style, May 1 March on Raleigh that will force school closures; and Don Tortorice lamenting Donald Trump’s strategy to rein in China’s intellectual property theft by imposing tariffs on its U.S. exports to trigger, for once, negotiations.

Levy’s tirade veered way off the rails in several passages, but this is the laugh-out-loud portion that is pure fantasy: “(Illegal immigrants in the workplace keep) employment numbers artificially high and unemployment, especially for blacks and Hispanics, artificially low.” Using this premise, we are supposed to believe that Democrats, who deliberately do nothing to stop illegal immigration, are nonetheless willing to let Trump get all of the credit for historically low unemployment and wage growth. Who does Levy think he is the kidding? Democrats would rather their voters (citizens, ex-cons and aliens) receive an entitlement than a job, every time.

Shaw cheers teachers who will abandon their responsibilities to swarm downtown Raleigh on May 1 during a demonstration coordinated by the National Education Association’s state affiliate (the NEA doggedly maintains presence in states without teachers’ unions). Teacher pay in North Carolina has risen steadily five consecutive years but “while progress is being made, teachers should not expect greater largesse from the General Assembly if they silence their voices.” What about the voices of parents who wonder why teacher pay always must go up regardless of student performance in the classroom? What about kids who can’t read in middle school?

In an April 29 column for RealClearEducation.com, Terry Stoops of the The John Locke Foundation observes that despite endless calls for higher teacher pay “results from state achievement tests administered last year show that only 56 percent of elementary and middle school students were proficient in math, and just 57 percent were proficient in reading.”

Why do teachers refuse to demonstrate to students that pay rises on the tide of merit, not entitlement? The students should be the ones in the streets.

Tortorice’s column is written like a textbook lecture, perhaps to be expected of a former professor at the Law School of the College of William and Mary. It is full of eye-glazing statistics and purports that tariffs are never paid by the country on which they are imposed. But Tortorice misses the essential point of the Trump-era tariffs on China. This so-called trade war is moving the two countries toward a long-term trade agreement with a goal of eliminating tariffs in both directions over time. Talks, potentially the final round, are ongoing as we speak. The imbalanced global trade system has been entrenched for too long and would never be challenged without a period of economic pain.

The columnist insists American taxpayers are paying for tariffs imposed on Chinese goods, yet the U.S. economy is growing every quarter (per a 3.2% GDP uptick in Q1), consumer confidence moved higher in a recent survey and inflation fears are off the table. Americans with a long view would rather reach an agreement that deters China from stealing intellectual property and gradually reduces tariffs.

This trio of diversions from reality pale in comparison to the unhinged column by ex-Reagan speechwriter and decades long pundit Peggy Noonan in the April 27-28 weekend editions of The Wall Street Journal.

Despite the innumerable ways in which the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have rewarded American citizens for their votes in 2016, Noonan is incensed that Trump has failed because he did not seek to pacify members of the Washington establishment (she calls them “the old ambassadors) who were willing to give him a chance. If, that is, he came around. Which Trump did not, thankfully.

“One by one,” she writes, “the ambassadors shut down and turned away. … They feared Madness of King George-ism. They’d come to think the president was, irredeemably, a screwball.”

The Swamp guards the status quo at any cost, but Trump is the one who is dangerous? The ambassadors, when they were younger, were equally skeptical of the fitness for the presidency of Noonan’s old boss, Ronald Reagan. Even when Americans cheered a booming 1980s economy long overdue, the ambassadors scowled and ordered another martini.

Now, here we are 30 years later. Noonan wrote beautiful words which once complimented the warm delivery of President Reagan. But her recent column was delivered like a manifesto written from a cabin in the woods after the meds ran out.

“There is an unarticulated wish out there to return to some past in which things were deeply imperfect and certainly divided but on some level tranquil, and not half mad,” wrote Noonan, who we assume uses “out there” and the Upper East Side of New York interchangeably, and chose not to name the deeply imperfect Barack Obama.

She reveals herself as just another horrified, well-heeled bystander peering over her bifocals, who longs for the return of a ruling elite in Washington and is incapable of understanding that this is just the opposite of what ordinary Americans between the coasts desire and will vote again to avoid in 2020 and beyond.

Thanks, Tiger

By Steve Woodward

Joining millions of television viewers as golf legend Tiger Woods defied insurmountable odds to win his fifth Masters green jacket, 14 years after claiming his fourth, was intensely nostalgic.

I love the game of golf. Yet Tiger’s Masters resurgence had nothing to do with golf. Close your eyes. It’s 2005. Tiger was invincible. America was great, the indispensable nation. Our kids were still kids. Our backs were not stiff and sore. The media was, mostly, committed to journalistic integrity. Saddam Hussein was defeated in Iraq. The U.S. economy had roared back from the dot-com bubble. 9/11 still united us as a nation. George W. Bush had begun his second term as our 43rd President.

Tiger 2019 — Tiger Woods wins fifth Masters.

Less than two decades ago, when Tiger Woods was the undisputed No. 1 golfer in the world, we took so much for granted that today, in 2019, is up for grabs, in jeopardy of demise.

Marriage was defined, as through the ages, as a union between a man and a woman. Gay marriage was not legally recognized.

The U.S.-Mexico border was secure.

A male was a male; a female a female. He, she. Men’s and women’s rooms.

No one faced a penalty for refusing to purchase medical insurance they either did not need or could not afford.

Speakers invited to university campuses rarely were uninvited due to the threat of violence posed by other student groups; and those who fulfilled their engagements rarely required security or feared for their well being.

There were no openly anti-semitic or progressive socialists serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. Elected federal servants were duty bound to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Barack Obama was a junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, working on a book in his spare time. Hillary Clinton was a junior Senator from Arkansas representing New York.

Tattoo shops were not very busy. Men wore suits and ties to work. Comedians were funny, entertaining.

I closed my eyes on Masters Sunday. Those harmonious Augusta National birds were chirping as if outside my window. Crowds roared as Tiger moved into a lead he would not relinquish. If only for a moment, it was 2005.