So how corrupt is our government?

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It was a running gag on The Tonight Show, a standard format for jokes. Johnny Carson might say the weather sure is cold. Sidekick Ed McMahon would say, “So just how cold is it?” Carson would finish with his punch line, it’s SO cold that [joke here]….

We’ve been trying to follow the Wikileaks email revelations, and the sheer volume and the enormity of what they reveal is mind-boggling. These emails don’t raise more questions about corruption in the political class, corporate media, and Hillary’s activities, they PROVE widespread corruption.

So how corrupt is our government? Bruce Walker at American Thinker has an extended "punch line." He expresses outrage in his article “Breathtaking Criminality in Washington.” Some extracts:

Recent revealed emails within that broad criminal conspiracy known as leftism show just how utterly dependent those sock puppets like Obama and Hillary are upon the nefarious intertwined collusion of the leftist media, the agencies of the Executive Branch, the Clinton campaign, and the DNC.  The depth of this criminal conspiracy, as these latest emails show, is stunning.

. . .

During the debates, the number of interruptions of Trump and of Clinton are not even close, and the softball questions to Clinton (probably prepped, as we have found out in Hillary's interviews) make for a vast contribution to the Clinton campaign which is completely unreported and, because the gatekeepers are also the malfeasants, completely ignored.

But it gets worse.  Giant media corporations, unlike most other giant corporations, operate only by virtue of FCC licenses, which impose an additional duty to act "in the public interest," which means colluding to hide news from Americans, which is what notional "competitors" like CNN and CBS and ABC and MSNBC are doing.  All this violates not [only] federal antitrust laws, but also the conditions of their licenses, which are, themselves, a type of monopoly. 

When large corporations operating in the same section of the economy act in concert to deprive consumers of what they would have gotten in a truly competitive marketplace, corporate officers and directors go to prison.  Typically, the evidence required for convictions in these sorts of cases is little more than a "pattern of behavior."

. . .

The nefarious "Clinton Foundation" turns out to be nothing more than a grotesque scam using high public offices and murky machinations to enrich public "servants" through influence-peddling and shakedowns that make the Mafia look like petty crooks.  It is clearly "pay to play" on steroids and so unsavory that it is not even considered a real philanthropy by those organizations that grade the transparency and reasonableness of nonprofit finances and expenditures.  

This "foundation," which is a nonprofit organization that seems to serve no real purpose beyond laundering extorted money from foreign powers to the Clintons and their cronies, deserves much more scrutiny . . .

. . .The Augean Stables must be cleaned, and that process requires dramatic and serious action.

Read the rest here. 

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Voter fraud: minimal or in the millions?

art credit: TheRealSide

 Data suggests millions of voter registrations are fraudulent or invalid. That’s enough to tip an election, easily.

JohnGibb, writing at The Federalist, argues that the potential for voter fraud is real, and actual voter fraud is a bigger problem than we might have thought:

This week, liberals have been repeating their frequent claim that voter fraud doesn’t exist. A recent Salon article argues that “voter fraud just isn’t a problem in Pennsylvania,” despite evidence to the contrary. Another article argues that voter fraud is entirely in the imagination of those who use voter ID laws to deny minorities the right to vote.

Yet as the election approaches, more and more cases of voter fraud are beginning to surface. In Colorado, multiple instances were found of dead people attempting to vote. Stunningly, “a woman named Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.” In Virginia, it was found that nearly 20 voter applications were turned in under the names of dead people.

In Texas, authorities are investigatingcriminals who are using the technique of “vote harvesting” to illegally procure votes for their candidates. “Harvesting” is the practice of illegally obtaining the signatures of valid voters in order to vote in their name without their consent for the candidate(s) the criminal supports.

These are just some instances of voter fraud we know about. It would be silly to assume cases that have been discovered are the only cases of fraud. Indeed according to a Pew Research report from February 2012, one in eight voter registrations are “significantly inaccurate or no longer valid.” Since there are 146 million Americans registered to vote, this translates to a stunning 18 million invalid voter registrations on the books. Further, “More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters, and approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.” Numbers of this scale obviously provide ripe opportunity for fraud.

Don’t Let Data Contradict My Narrative

Yet in spite of all this, a report by the Brennan Center at New York Univeristy claims voter fraud is a myth. It argues that North Carolina, which passed comprehensive measures to prevent voter fraud, “failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina.” However, this faulty reasoning does not point to the lack of in-person voter fraud, but rather to lack of enforcement mechanisms to identify and prosecute in-person voter fraud.

The science of criminal justice tells us that many crimes go unreported, and the more “victimless” the crime, the more this happens. The fact is, a person attempting to commit voter fraud is very unlikely to be caught, which increases the incentive to commit the crime.

. . ..

We have no reason to believe that the low number of prosecutions means only that exact amount of voter fraud is happening. Rather, it could mean a lack of enforcement is failing to reveal the bulk of the violations that are occurring. Thus, as with many types of crimes, especially victimless crimes, the real number of cases is likely significantly higher than the number reported.

. . .

What are some solutions to this problem? States like Michigan have Poll Challenger programs, where observers from both parties may be present at voter check-in tables at precincts. They check each voter’s ID against a database of registered voters for that precinct to ensure the person attempting to vote is actually legally qualified to vote in that precinct. If there’s a discrepancy, the poll challenger may officially challenge the ballot. Other states should implement similar programs.

States should sponsor initiatives to remove dead voters and correct the registrations of people registered in multiple states (make them choose just one state). Since many local jurisdictions are reluctant to clean their voter rolls, federal or state oversight with teeth may be necessary.

. . .

So let us not believe false claims that voter fraud doesn’t exist. It’s real, and we must work to stop it, while making sure those who are eligible to vote but without proper ID are accommodated fairly.

Read the entire article here.

If you are already signed up to work the polls, or act as an observer, etc., you’re doing your bit. What can others do at this late stage of the game? One thing is to spot check voter registrations in your own family. We know a lot of dead people are never purged from the rolls. So it occurs to me that the parent who died within the last several years might still be registered to vote. I can go to the BOE and check out that one in person; it probably helps if you have the photo ID, the death certificate, and (at least in my case) standing (power of attorney or documentation as executor). 

I can also check my own; I’ve been a registered voter my entire life, but for two recent elections, the signature facsimile in the sign-in book was not even close to my own signature. I wonder if that meant my details were also registered in another precinct. So I can check that as well.

Please add your suggestions in the comments.

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The Politics of Personal Destruction. Again.

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Politico is reporting “an avalanche of revelations and allegations about Trump’s behavior toward women.” Just coming out now? Astonishing timing. With less than a month before the election.

We’ve seen this before. Remember Herman Cain’s accusers? (Here’s one of the reports.) As soon as Cain dropped out of the 2011-12 primary race, we heard nothing more. No cases went forward. The women dropped out of sight.  

And like clockwork, attorney Gloria Allred (who represented women accusing Cain) has stepped forward to help the alleged victims take legal action against Trump.

Trump’s speech today in West Palm Beach takes on this latest attack – head on. You can read the transcript here. Or you can watch the speech live streamed here (his speech at the rally starts at 1:21:38.

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Hillary’s Foundation and campaign: follow the money

 YouTube video

You may run hot and cold on Sean Hannity, but when Dr. Sebastian Gorka is a guest, I take the TV off mute and turn up the volume. Dr. Gorka is a national security professional, and his interview with Hannity is just under 3 minutes. They are discussing Hillary’s hypocrisy concerning women’s rights, her (and the Clinton Foundations's) funding from countries hostile to American values, and the recent email evidence that proves that such accusations are true. Take a look.

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Electing judges

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Election Day approaches, and most of the attention has been going to the Presidential race. But in Cuyahoga County, voters will also be choosing judges for the state Supreme Court, Common Pleas, etc. I am usually not up to speed on many of the candidates, and unless you follow court decisions closely, you might be interested in one online resource that collects ratings for judicial candidates. The Judge4Yourself site is here. I google check a few names, print the page out and take it with me to the polling place. 

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Voter registration deadline

If you have not registered to vote, you have one day left to do so.

Ohio Voter Registration

The deadline is tomorrow, Oct. 11

  

You can access a registration form here.

You will be registering to vote in the General Election on November 8, 2016

Registration Deadline:  October 11, 2016

Mail the form or bring it in person to your local County Board of Elections office. 

Board of Election addresses are here.

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Legitimacy in government: Spengler’s take on Debate #2

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Some polls show Trump the winner, others Hillary. Similarly, the pundits are mostly declaring their preferred candidate the winner. David P. Goldman (a/k/a/ “Spengler”) published his take on PJ Media and here are a few short extracts:

The referee should have stopped it in the tenth. Punching at will, Donald Trump said, "Hillary used the power of her office to make $250 million. Why not put some money in? You made a lot of it while you were secretary of State? Why aren't you putting money into your own campaign? Just curious."  Reeling and against the ropes, Clinton gasped that she supported . . . the Second Amendment. It was a brilliant rhetorical device: under the rubric of campaign financing, Trump slipped in an allegation that Clinton corruptly enriched herself by using the power of her office for personal gain--and Clinton didn't even respond. That's a win by a knockout.

That's the decisive issue of the campaign: the corrupt machinations of a ruling elite that considers itself above the law, and the rage of the American people against the oligarchical ruling class that has pulled the ladder up behind it. Trump's bombshell below Clinton's waterline came at the end of the debate, well prepared by jabs at Clinton's erased emails and Bill's rapes. Trump used the "J" word--that is, jail. That was perhaps the evening's most important moment. This is not an election fought over competing policies but a struggle for legitimacy. A very large portion of the electorate (how large a portion we will discover next month) believes that its government is no longer legitimate, and that it has become the instrument of an entrenched rent-seeking oligarchy.

. . .

The Republican voters chose a reckless, independently wealthy, vulgar, rough-edged outsider precisely because they believe that the system is corrupt. 

Read the rest here. If you missed the debate (or could not bear to watch), you can see the whole thing here. 

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