The Swamp – Carol A. Spencer

Are you a voter or a lemming?

Is a list of endorsements from an organization an end point for you or a starting point? Do you vote in a primary from a list provided by one organization or do you research endorsements from several organizations and see where they overlap? Do you do your own research?

Bunni Pounds from Christians Engaged has great advice. Read below or watch this clip.

“In 20 minutes you can research your ballot and go in much more prepared than anybody else. Look at the races. Look at their Facebook pages. Look at their website. Read out of their own mouth what they say about their qualifications. Check out their resumes. Google their names. See who else is supporting them in your community. See if they answer some of the questions that are important to you about these non-partisan races. And, then check around people in your communities to see who they are supporting and why. […] Check out public forums and anything they are hosting to get to know the candidates in your city.”

Did the organization print a transcript, or at least a summary, of the interviews with the candidates on which they based their recommendations?
Did they ask the candidates for written answers to a common set of questions and publish those answers?
If they didn’t interview a candidate, did they tell you that?
If they have an affiliation or prior business relationship with a candidate, were they transparent enough to tell you that?
If one candidate is a member of their organization and the other is not, do they reveal that?
Did they provide any rationale at all for why they chose one candidate over the others?

Never be a lemming. Just because this group or that says “vote for our list of candidates” or worse yet, “take our list to the polls with you”, that’s not what you should do in a primary, runoff, or uniform (May non-partisan) election.

Expect information. Better yet, demand information or refuse to be a lemming. Your vote is yours, not theirs.

Paxton Impeachment Trial

Ken Paxton was acquitted of all charges. I watched or listened to almost every minute of this trial in the TX Senate.

Here’s what I wrote to my State Senator, Charles Schwertner, the last day of the trial.

Probably unlike most of your constituents, I have either listened to or watched almost every minute of every day of the Paxton hearings. I’ve been waiting for proof of the allegations against him, and even now that the House managers rested, I’ve not heard it.

It is very clear to me that there were lots and lots of assumptions made, and then actions taken in support of those assumptions. Example: the “apoplectic” reaction to subpoenas being issued, and the witness had no knowledge of the second referral at the time he went “apoplectic”. Reaction without knowing the facts. Actions, including the meeting with the FBI, taken as a result without knowing the facts.

One of these employees acknowledges that he sent documents to Johnny Sutton. Thus, documents could have been taken to the FBI. Claiming they couldn’t take internal documents externally is BS since they DID send internal documents to Johnny Sutton.

I’m not going to take the time to go through each and every Article of Impeachment. Suffice it to say that the case has not been made. A bunch of innuendos have been thrown against the wall to see what y’all will vote for to get rid of the most effective AG Texas has had.

The House Managers claim they brought these charges because Ken Paxton asked for the funds to settle all this. OF COURSE those have to be public funds. It was the OFFICE that was sued. Under the statute ONLY the office can be sued, not him personally. Isn’t it in everyone’s best interest to settle this and get back to work? As a mayor in the past, we settled many suits that were without merit because it was cheaper to do so than to go to trial.

I urge you to vote to exonerate Ken Paxton on each and every allegation.

Here’s how the Texas Senators voted:

2023-09-16PaxtonImpeachmentVotes

My thoughts on this whole thing:

Thank you to the senators, including mine, who saw through this sham of an impeachment. Thank you for listening to your constituents, representing them. Thank you for upholding our votes.
Dade Phelan should resign. He should resign because he was drunk on the floor of the House. He should resign because, when called on it by Ken Paxton, he did exactly what they accused General Paxton of doing: he retaliated by rushing through a bogus impeachment.
Dade Phelan, if he doesn’t resign, should never again be considered for TX Speaker of the House. He doesn’t deserve a leadership position. He didn’t serve the people of Texas. He served himself and his cadre of compatriots, exactly what he accused AG Paxton of doing.
House legislators who voted for this sham should be very circumspect about future votes. And, if they took money from Phelan, they should return it or face defeat at the ballot box.
The cost of this fiasco should be made public.
If there is any settlement for those alleged “whistleblowers”, the cost of this debacle, both houses of the legislature, should be deducted from it. If there isn’t enough, Dade Phelan should pay the rest out of his campaign funds.
AG Ken Paxton has hopefully repaired his relationship with his wife. He, and any other cheating elected official, should remember this is a job they’ve been elected to do, not a party or a social gathering. If you fit that category, clean up your act.
Ken Paxton should clean house in that Attorney General’s office as best he can subject to HR laws. As an elected official, you can’t work with people who refuse to support you or your agenda.
Ken Paxton needs to remember to pick his friends and associates carefully. As an elected official, it’s hard to know who to trust and who is blowing smoke… well, you know. Learn to cut ties quickly and completely.
Ken Paxton needs to find trusted, truly trusted, advisors outside his realm of business. As Ronald Reagan used his beautiful ranch to ground himself, Ken Paxton needs to do the same… find a grounding place and a couple of people who have no ties with government to give him perspective.

Core Values vs “Go along. Get along.”

The Friday Reflection in today’s Texas Minute from TexasScorecard.com is a must read for every voter. I’m reprinting with permission. Don’t vote for your friend because that person is your friend. Don’t pick your candidate based on campaign literature. When analyzing your choices, remember that pressures will come from all sides: lobbyists, businesses, utilities, other legislators who can hand out plum committee positions, office locations, introductions. Can your candidate withstand those pressures? If you don’t think so, that candidate should not get your vote.

2022-02-11Friday-Reflection

If you’re not watching, you should be

If you’re not watching Mike Lindell’s Symposium on the 2020 election, you should be. https://frankspeech.com

This isn’t political. This isn’t about Trump.

This is about cyber security. This is about cyber warfare. It’s about the ways machines can be hacked. Not connected to the Internet? Really? How would you know? It’s the question I raised when we ‘tested’ the machines locally.

This isn’t about mail-in ballots. This is about digital hacking. You’ll get quite the education, not matter what you believe after hearing the evidence and experts.

China is not going to have to fire a shot to take over our country. They will control elections, while we sit arguing with each other about poll watchers, mail-in ballots, state laws.

Watch. Learn. Understand the math, the movement of data, the transformation of data, and the stealing of our elections.

I was here before you came. I’ll be here when you leave.

In the late ’90s, I served as mayor of a town of 16,000 people. One day, as I sat in my office with an employee discussing her lackluster job performance, she looked at me and said “Mayor, I was here before you came. I’ll be here when you leave.” And, she was.

Her comment was in defense of not wanting to participate in automating work in her office. You know, the “we’ve always done it this way” mentality. But, it was a philosophy that was pervasive in local government among union employees who could not be fired except for “cause” (basically, provably, breaking the law).

People don’t like change. And, for government employees, every four years can bring a new chief executive with his/her own campaign promises, philosophies of governance and management, and policy implementation. If they wait long enough, that elected leader will be out of office.

Nothing compels employees to support and implement the policies of a new leader. I was undermined by employees who were loyal to former mayors. I was undermined by employees who were loyal to my political opponents. How? Submit required paperwork without signatures. Send legal documents to the wrong address so they don’t arrive where they need to be by their due date. Promise others funding that I specifically earmarked for a totally different project, leaving that project without funding. Cancel contracts without asking me first, contracts that could not be reinstated. Commit to tentative agreements, agreements I had clearly stated I would not approve. And, I could go on.

It is through that lens that I watch the impeachment hearings. It is through that lens that I am suspect of those testifying. It is through that lens that there isn’t one iota of doubt in my mind that there is a swamp, bureaucrats actively working to destroy the Trump presidency. It is through that lens that I believe the Democrats, and some Republicans, are working hard to keep the status quo that made some of them and their friends rich. It is through that lens that I support the President, believe there was no quid pro quo, and trust that Trump is doing the right thing by investigating the swamp dwellers.

“No Borders. No Walls.” Incrementalism

While President Trump is being slammed for separating mothers and children, it’s important to take a step back and remember historically how we got here, and it was not President Trump that brought us to this point.

In 1997, it was Democrat President Bill Clinton’s court settlement in the Flores case that set a 20 day limit on detaining children who illegally enter our country.

It was a court order in July 2015 that slammed the Democrat Obama Administration’s immigration policies on family detention, and applied that 1997 decision to children who enter with or without parents.

It was then 120+ Democrat legislators who, in 2015, penned a letter to President Obama, demanding the FAMILY facilities be closed .

While President Trump may have (finally) decided to treat illegals as illegals to stop the inflow of illegals, he wasn’t involved in any of the prior decisions that now cause parents and children to be separated.

Congress could have fixed this problem any time they wanted: when they had both houses and the presidency during the Obama Administration, or while they had both houses and the presidency during the Trump Administration. But many in Congress don’t want to; the optics against President Trump are just too good to pass up by the “Never Trumpers” on both sides of the aisle.

And, once again, the operative word is ILLEGAL. Every day, parents are separated from their children if they are a mom or dad and are arrested for doing something ILLEGAL.

Perhaps under President Trump’s “let’s get it done” leadership, Congress will finally act to fix all this, but I doubt it. Listening to Chucky Cheese Schumer, he has no intention of doing so. He had no intention of fixing DACA either, and those brought here as children still linger in limbo. The Democrat Socialists of America use the optics to creep closer to their goal of “No border. No walls. Sanctuary for all.”

The optics of both of these make such nice issues for Dems to use in their campaigns. They’re users, not problem solvers. That’s why pragmatist, solution-seeking, “Art of the Deal” President Trump scares them so much and they’ll do anything to get rid of him. And, it’s why the American public likes him so much and wants the swamp drained of obstructionists.

Gohmert Issues “Robert Mueller: Unmasked” Report

Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX) has published “Robert Mueller: Unmasked“, a scathing report of the history and tactics of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, now hell-bent on taking down President Donald Trump. In the April 30, 2018 report, Gohmert says of Mueller’s fixation with keeping innocent men in jail (men who ultimately were paid, by the taxpayers, $100 million in compensation for false imprisonment): “But it was part of a pattern that eventually became quite clear that Mueller was more concerned with convicting and putting people in jail he disliked, even if they were innocent of the charges, than he was with ferreting out the truth.”

“The Swamp” continues to attempt to protect itself. The targeted misuse of government bureaucratic power against US citizens should scare every single citizen who understands, and believes in, the tenets upon which this country was founded.