Moved to the Republic of DAVE

More News on the Blog

If you visited this site over the last two years you probably got redirected to a newer pMachine incarndation of the blog.

Well, time passes and pMachine proved inadequate to my needs too, so the latest incarnation of this blog is now located at republicofdave.com and is using WordPress. Quite a nice site. Do stop by and check it out.

Dave

News on the Blog

Having invested in pMachine, a real blogging engine with a lot of great features, I'm working on moving the whole blog over to proprietary servers and making it far more powerful and interractive.

The new blog is up and running well now. If the script works you should be automatically forwarded there. If not, click on - www.diablog.us

Hope to see you there.

Dave

The Turning Point

We're about to enter one of the most exciting periods in the history of our nation. Having won a significant victory in this election, President Bush has a reshuffling of his cabinet on the table. Some appointees are tired out and some have become liabilities, and Bush has a chance to set a new tone for the next four years and also lay the groundwork for the election of 2008. Who he picks to fill these slots and which jobs he gives to which people will tell us a great deal about Bush, his true allegiances and the future of the Republican Party. In addition, Bush's new cabinet choices will be a test of how real the neocon conspiracy which so many liberals talk about really is.

Powell, Ridge and Ashcroft are likely to be leaving and a few others may as well - quite possibly even Rumsfeld. There's a large field of interested applicants for their jobs and we all need to watch Bush's choices very easily because they will tell us an awful lot. Among the contenders are Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Bernie Kerik, Condoleeza Rice, John Danforth, Fred Thompson, John Warner, Jeb Bush and a variety of lesser figures. Some of these job seekers are likely presidential or vice presidential candidates in the next election and what Bush does with them will tell us who he wants to succeed him.

Giuliani is the key figure. He worked really, really hard for Bush in the last election so he deserves and will almost certainly get some job. But Giuliani is about as liberal a Republican as you can find, at least on social issues. He's totally out of step with the neocons, but of course, that also makes him one of the most appealing Republicans to the general population. The jobs he's best qualified for are Attorney General and Director of Homeland Security, both of which are likely to be available. Which job he gets will say everything about the Bush administration and the neocons. If they put him in as Director of Homeland Security that's the worst sign. That means they don't really trust him and don't want to advance his career. It's a position which can be made a scapegoat if there's another terrorist attack and it's mostly an administrative job with limited public exposure. If the neocons are the extremists many claim them to be then this would be where they put him. He's best qualified to be Attorney General and this is the most logical place to put him. It's an important position with a high public profile, but doesn't appear to be a promise of future advancement. It's a position from which he could run for president, but doesn't give him the absolute endorsement of the current administration. This position would say positive things about the neocons, since it has a lot of influence over social policy. If Giuliani gets Secretary of State that's a full-out endorsement for the presidency in 2008. Because he's not terribly well qualified it's a way for him to get foreign policy experience, and it's the most public and most prominent position available. If Giuliani is Secretary of State two months from now then he's our next Repugblican president, because that's the best way to give him an edge running against Hillary Clinton who's the almost certain Democratic candidate. This would be a brilliant move by the administration and would definitively prove that they are devoted to the good of the country and their party more than the neocon agenda.

McCain is an interesting figure in the whole mix. He's the second best contender for the Republican nomination in 2008, but he's less popular with the administration than Giuliani is and didn't work as hard for Bush in the election. The logical choice for him is Secretary of Defense. If he gets this slot then he's in position to run for president if he does a good job, or could take a fall for the administration and no one there would cry over him. He's a viable choice for Homeland Security and unlikely for Secretary of State or Attorney General. If they give a good slot to Giuliani they ought to give a job to McCain as well, and it ought to be a lesser position. If they really hate him they'll offer him Homeland Security. If they want to let him hang himself it will be Secretary of Defense, though that might be a launching point for his presidential campaign.

Condoleeza Rice is the potential wildcard. She's a long shot for the presidency in 2008 but number one on the Vice Presidential candidate list. They need to put her in a more prominent position because she deserves it and because she's a black woman. And she's very competent. The logical choice for her would be Secretary of State, but Homeland Security and Defense would be viable as well. She's the only major figure who wouldn't be taking a major hit if she got Homeland Security, and although she's got military expertise her lack of actual military service counts against her for Secretary of Defense. What she gets says nothing about the neocon agenda, but it says alot about Republican plans for 2008. The more prominent she is the more worried they are about Hillary.

Danforth and Warner are the easy fallback figures for the administration and they're compatible with the neocons. If they get prominent positions - likely Attorney General and Secretary of Defense respectively, then that's a sign the neocons are going against pragmatism and towards ideology in their choices. That's a bad sign for the Republican party in 2008 and probably not great for the next 4 years in America either. Jeb Bush is another wild card who has probably earned a slot for winning Florida for his brother, but isn't terribly well qualified for anything, so his likely job would be down the list, like Housing or Education. Fred Thompson is another long shot who really deserves an administration job and would make an excellent VP choice for 2008 because he's from the south and very personable. He's qualified for Attorney General, but it would be a bit of a surprise to see him there.

Here's the line-up I'd like to see:

Secretary of State: Rudy Giuliani
Attorney General: Fred Thompson
Secretary of Defense: John McCain
Director of Homeland Security: Condoleeza Rice (or staying as Nat Sec Advisor)
Secretary of Housing: Jeb Bush
Surgeon General: Ron Paul (just for fun)
Republican Ticket in 2008: Giuliani/Rice (winning)

Here's the line-up I expect to see:

Secretary of State: Condoleeza Rice
Attorney General: Rudy Giuliani
Secretary of Defense: John Warner
Director of Homeland Security: Bernie Kerik
Secretary of Housing: Jeb Bush
Secretary of Something Unimportant: John McCain
Republican Line-Up in 2008: A Mystery

Here's the neocon lineup we need to worry about:

Secretary of State: Condoleeza Rice
Attorney General: John Danforth
Secretary of Defense: Donald Rumsfeld
Director of Homeland Security: Rudy Giuliani
Secretary of Whatever: Jeb Bush
Nothing: John McCain
Republican Line-Up in 2008: Something bizarre and scary

So there you have it. As a side note I have to mention that after researching the bios of the candidates and seeing their pictures Danforth is the youngest looking 68 year old I've ever seen and Thompson is one of the oldest looking 62 year olds I've ever seen. At 60 Giuliani is also much younger than I realized, which means he has more political life in him than I had feared, though he does have past health issues, which is always a problem for a presidential candidate.

In my opinion, moving Giuliani to a prominent position in the administration is essential if the Republicans want to stop Hillary Clinton in 2008, and a ticket of Giuliani/Rice in 2008 would be truly formidable. So we'll see if Bush and his advisors have enough common sense to override ideology and make the right appointments.

Dave

Why Johnny Can't Add

It may be government schools, or it might be because they tend to favor logic over emotion, but I've noticed recently that liberals as a group seem not to be able to do basic math. Here are three examples.

While wandering around other blogs I recently visited a frothy, sarcastic liberal blog called Jesus' General where there was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth and the remarkable assertion that the Republicans had tried to keep 'brown' (their term for ethnic voters) out of the polls by various means. Here's where their math fails. In every election since the Reagan administration the Republican party has seen modest gains in the ethnic vote among both blacks and hispanics, but especially among hispanics. They have gone from getting tiny percentages of these groups to actually winning the hispanic vote in many states in the recently concluded election. This is a clear, observable and inevitable trend and it's accelerating. In 2000 Bush had the largest increase in the ethnic vote of any Republican candidate. In the 2004 election initial figures show an even larger increase, gaining just over 10% among hispanics and just under 10% among blacks. This isn't surprising, as Bush has more hispanics and blacks in his administration than any previous president, many of them in very prominent positions, and despite the slurs of the left the Republican party is ethnically blind in a way which is very attractive to upwardly mobile minority members. Believe me, Republican campaign strategists are very aware of this. What this means is that not only would the Republicans not want to discourage ethnic voting, but sensibly they ought to want to encourage it. This is an area where they are gaining new voters and the democrats are losing them. That means that when minorities vote as a group the Republicans are gaining voters they didn't have in the previous election. With a minority voting population around 40% that 10% shift is enough to win a close election with breathing room. Hey, it's about 4% which is about what Bush won by. Do the math.

I also recently had a little dialog with the fellow who runs a hardcore leftist blog called The Old Hippie. We were mostly discussing unemployment and he kept ranting at me "do the research" and pointing me to sites run by bizarre socialist loonies and semi-literate Bush-bashers, none of whom seemed to be the kind of primary sources one actually uses for research. Remember, I'm an economic historian by training, so I know the difference between research and opinion and also know how to do basic math. So when he claimed that Bush had presided over the worst 4 years of job loss since Hoover and that the percentage job loss in the last 4 years was even higher than in Hoover's administration, even if the total numbe wasn't, I had to destroy him with math. I went to one of my favorite sources, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which keeps unemployment records and other useful employment related data going back about 100 years. I've already previously used BLS stats to point out that unemployment under Bush has been well below average for the last 30 years. In response to the Hippie's claim I can now inform you that good stats and good math inform us that not only has Bush not lost more jobs than Hoover, but he's had less unemployment growth than most presidents since the depression, including his father, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. As for the claim that we lost a higher percentage of jobs in the past 4 years than in the Hoover administration, it's just laughable. 14% of the population lost their jobs under Hoover compared to 1.7% under Bush. Only with liberal math could 1.7% be higher than 14%. BTW, the Hippie stopped emailing me after being confronted with actual research.

Finally, the most timely example is the recent period of electoral limbo while John Kerry tried to figure out how you could count 135,000 provisional ballots - which would presumably not be 100% for Kerry - and gain 136,000 votes to turn around the election in Ohio. That this took them over night and that they were considering taking even longer tells you everything you need to know about Liberal math. The details tell you even more about their mathematical ineptitude. Apparently the reason they clung to this fantasy for so long was that despite the fact that election officials in Ohio had told them they had a near exact count on the provisional ballots, the Kerry campaign was basing their hopes on the theory that there were many more provisional ballots because they had calculated a total of 250,000 by taking provisional ballots from one district and extrapolating from that number to find a total for the entire state, which they did by just multiplying the count for that district by the total number of voting districts without regard to the relative population of the districts. That's just bad procedure and you can't get good results from bad math and bad methods. Of course, even with that many ballots Kerry would have needed almost 90% of the votes to cover his 135,000 vote deficit, an outcome so improbable it should have never even been considered.

In all three of these examples, the liberals appear to have reached their conclusions based on the outcome they wanted really badly or expected because of their preconceptions, without actually doing the math which would point out how abyssmally wrong they are. The problem for liberals is that you can't browbeat or intimidate or frighten a number into agreeing with you. Numbers just sit there and are right and wrong, and there's really only one way to run a formula and get the right answer no matter how emotional you are about it.

Dave

Rule or Ruin

So, the actual election is over, and Bush has clearly won by a margin which is small, but comfortable enough to avoid the contention of last election. Or so it would seem...

However, the hubris that drives John Kerry makes him unwilling to concede the election and willing to drag it out for as much as two weeks over the miscellaneous votes in Ohio. This despite the fact that it is a near mathematical impossibility for the provisional and absentee ballots to bring him in ahead of Bush even if he got almost every single vote on those ballots - very unlikely just on the basis of probability alone and even more unlikely given that many are military ballots which will go overwhelmingly to Bush.

What this tells me is that Kerry doesn't care about the people or the welfare of the country. His ego and lust for power must be fed no matter what the expense and no matter what the damage he does to the nation, to the electoral process and to his own party's reputation. This doesn't really surprise me at all, but then this is largely why I couldn't vote for the fatuous toad.

Dave

Dancing in the Streets

It's election day. Anything could happen. Let's assume the worst and the election is so close that it could go either way with a court ruling or the vote of a few legislators. What happens when the result of that is another legal but marginal victory for Bush?

Based on the rhetoric, the attitudes and the inflamed emotions of democrats, is it unrealistic to prepare for widespread rioting and civil unrest? Neolibs may hate war, but they don't necessarily hate violence, so long as it's directed against the United States or 'The Man' or the person on whom they've focused all their fear and loony paranoid fantasies for four years. They're depserate for a win because in many ways this election is a final referrendum on their entire political philosophy. If they win liberal socialism lives on. If they lose it goes onto the dustheap of history along with its old pal communism.

We've already seen some signs of the desperation. The massive get out the vote effort, the increasingly shrill tone of the rhetoric, the forged documents, the rumor campaigns, the pure scare tactics and today the massive efforts at election fraud from college students voting twice in New Hampshire to bogus ballots in Pennsylvania to vanishing poll locations and electioneering by officials right here in Texas. They're pulling out all the stops and taking advantage of the fact that the republicans have at least some scruples and don't like to get their hands dirty. Republicans prefer to buy elections. Democrats like to steal them.

But what if it doesn't work. For the mass of democrat extremists this seems to be a make or break election. They either win now or they give up on the political process, blame it all on a conspiracy and claim the system disenfranchised them. The next step is rioting in the streets, looting and burning down schools and libraries. These are people who are ruled by fear. They want to capitulate to terrorists and the UN and every bully on the block because they're afraid to take a stand for anything. They like to pass the buck and pass the blame. Responsibility is an dikrty word and they've been too long without a government mommy putting the teat in their mouths. They're on the brink, and I'm afraid that once the election is over and their lawyers can't steal it back for them, they're going to crack and explode in violence all over the nation.

At base the extreme Neolibs really aren't very mature people. Their view of the world is childlike. They see it as full of mysteries and secrets and generally hostile - something too complex for them to understand and therefore only to be feared. They're like kids who see a glittery ball and that's all they want and all they can think of. If someone takes that ball away a tantrum is inevitable.

I think that if Bush wins the election a certain amount of violence is inevitable - some rioting on college campuses, a few beatings, some looting - but there may be even larger ripples. I could see it leading to a split in the democrat party when the liberals who failed to get Kerry elected and become the target for blame from the Neolib extremists and the two groups go their separate ways. I had always thought this would happen in the Republican party first, but with this election I see more volatility and fear among the liberals.

I think the republican response to a loss would be much different. Republicans aren't driven as much by fear, the party is more accepting of diversity and certainly more flexible. With a loss their may be some lawsuits and a lot of angry rhetoric, but there won't be riots of entrepreneurs and suited executives in the streets. They're the people who do the work to keep the country going and their natural response will be to get to work on figuring out why they lost and making sure it doesn't happen next time. Plus, by all counts they'll still be running the country from the house and senate and most of the governors mansions, so it's much less of a last hope for them.

Dave

The Company They Keep

It's not a big observation, but over the weekend, while keeping tabs on the campaign, something struck me.

Bush's rabid opponents paint him as an extremist with views that are out of the main stream. They say he's driving a wedge between the parties and some sort of neocon ideologue. After all, the democrats are supposed to be the party of inclusion, right? They're the 'big tent' party where everyone is welcome, right?

Well, that's not the case if you judge by how the campaigns have been going. Bush has surrounded himself with happy, supportive moderates of substantial stature. These are people who don't agree with him at all on certain key issues, but who still believe he's the better leader for the country. They aren't just paying lip service, they're out there day after day making speech upon speech with considerable enthusiasm. You have to take Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain pretty seriously. They're the leading lights of moderate politics in America today and they're 100% behind Bush. As for big tents, Bush has prominent moderates crossing party lines and supporting him, like Zell Miller and Ed Koch. They're democrats, but they put the good of the country ahead of slavish party loyalty.

As for Kerry, who has he got out campaigning for him? Well, mostly hired flacks and other ultra liberals. The big names of his party are significantly absent. They don't want to be tainted with the brush of ultraliberalism. He did manage to get Bill Clinton to come out for a couple of appearances, but Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and other semi-moderate democrats are pointedly staying home. The best he can do is some appearances by the increasingly crazed and anti-American Jimmy Carter. And his tent certainly doesn't include any Republicans. Even the anti-war and Bush-hating Republicans are staying as far away from him as possible. Kerry's tent just keeps getting smaller, filled with nothng but bomb-throwing ultraleft diehards and paid-off yesmen.

When you want to throw around claims of extremism and exclusion, just look at who supports each of the candidates. The spectrum supporting Bush is truly broad. Kerry's supporters are hard core, but that core rests far away from the middle of the road. Perhaps the truly scary implication is what this will mean if Kerry wins, because then the forces of extremism and socialism will have the key to the doors of the executive branch. Not something to look forward to.

Dave

Help is on the way!

In these last days of the presidential campaign, John Kerry has taken to wrapping up his speeches with the rousing catch-phrase "Help is on the way!" This choice of slogans suggests that Kerry is either completely out of touch with reality or drinking too deeply from the well of his own rhetoric and actually believing some of the silliness in his position papers.

Consider what exactly John Kerry is going to save us from.

Is it the perils of unemployment? Unlikely with historically low unemployment sitting at 5.4 percent, 1.4 points lower than the average for the last 30 years. Kerry talks about how Bush lost us 1.9 million jobs, but the truth is that while we may have lost that many jobs in the industrial sector we've gained substantially more than that in other areas and have an overall net gain in employment over the last 4 years.

Perhaps he plans to save us from the dangers of terrorism. That should be easy to do anyway, since the war in Iraq has already drawn most of the terrorists to that battle and resulted in no major terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11. Not sure what Kerry could to to improve on that situation. Perhaps pull us out of Iraq so the terrorists have more time and freedom to figure out ways to bring their fight to US soil.

Maybe Kerry wants to save us from a depressed economy. I know I'm suffering pretty hard with my stock portfolio up almost 30% overall in the past year and interest rates still remarkably low. The only weak point in the economy is the high gas prices and resulting inflation, and I can't begin to imagine how Kerry can fix that and neither can he judging from his utter lack of specific proposals to deal with the problem and his plans to cut back on domestic oil production.

I guess he could be planning to save us from the bloated deficit with his multi-trillion dollar national health insurance program. He might at least get some mileage there since big numbers scare people and most of them don't realize that the current deficit is relatively low in proportion to the Gross Domestic Product and that the GDP is growing at an extraordinary rate. Yes, Bush has spent a lot more than we'd like on all sorts of programs, but because of the rate at which the GDP is growing the proportional growth in tax revenues will eventually offset the growth in the deficit. This is the same phenomenon which erased Clinton's deficit spending with no effort on his part.

I know he wants to protect us from difficult decision making situations. The stress is just too much for us. He wants to make sure that our money continues to go to Social Security where it earns no meaningful return and insures us a pathetic living as paupers when we retire - assuming it even still exists at that point. We certainly can't be trusted to manage and invest even a portion of that money so that we've got something meaningful to fall back on in retirement.

But thank god that help is on the way. Kerry's bringing it with one government hand in our pockets and the other force feeding us what it thinks we need. Personally I'd much prefer that he leave me the hell alone and let me help myself. At least that way I know someone who has my actual interests at heart will be on the job.

Dave

How to Pick a President

On the very eve of the election which some are overdramatizing as "the most important election of our times", I have to reflect on why i find myself willing to support Bush with all of his imperfections and unable to warm to Kerry at all.

In a general way I feel that I hold to a fairly liberal perspective on social issues and am more conservative on fiscal issues. That's the position of an old-style, Teddy Roosevelt Republican, and to some extent the Libertarian position as well. Based on that I had assumed that I'd agree with John Kerry on most of the social issues and agree with Bush mainly on economic issues.

So, I decided to compare my positions on the issues with those of the two major party candidates as stated on their websites and in position papers and speeches - I also threw in Michael Badnarik's positions as well just for fun. Here are the results:

                               Bush       Kerry     Badnarik  Me

School Choice                  For        Against   For       For

Comprehensive Tax Cuts         For        Against   For       For

Gun Waiting Period             Against    For       Against   Against

Privatize Social Security      For        Against   For       For

War in Iraq                    For        Against*  Against   For

Patriot Act                    For        For*      Against   Against

National Health Care           Against    For       Against   Against

US Troops Under UN Command     Against    For       Against   Against

Kyoto Accords                  Against    For       Against   Against

Oil Drilling in Alaska         For        Against   For       For

Partial Birth Abortion         Against    For       For       Against

Stem Cell Research             Against    For       For       For

Prayer in Schools              For        Against   Against   Against

Gay Marriage Ban               For        Against   Against   Against

Hate Crimes Law                Against    For       Against   Against

Increase Minimum Wage          Against    For       Against   Against

(* on these issues Kerry has taken positions both for and against, so I chose the position his record seems to suggest he actually holds)

As I see it these are the 14 issues which are either most important or at least of concern to the most people in America. Naturally my positions on the issues are the only ones which any rational, pragmatic person could hold.

I was surprised to find that on all but three of the issues I was basically in agreement with Bush. Naturally, those were all social issues. I was also surprised to find Kerry on the absolute wrong side of so many social issues. Even on one where I sort of agree with him he's somewhat off base. He's all out for gay marriage, I'm in favor of leaving it up to the states. That's not exactly the same position, though we both oppose a federal ban.

When looked at as a group Kerry's positions form a pretty coherent whole. If it takes power away from the people and gives it to government he's all for it. Groups and numbers mean more to him than individuals, and he's willing to weaken the nation to serve his agenda. Bush may have some questionable, downright creepy positions (like supporting the Patriot Act), but more often than not he's on the right track, even when it's for the wrong reasons. On the whole he's at least trying to empower individuals more than government, even if he hasn't been terribly successful at it so far. Badnarik's even closer, of course, but still off on a couple of issues - especially the entrenched Libertarian isolationist/pacifist position.

So, Kerry does actually have positions, despite accusations that he's a waffler. The problem is that his positions on most issues, especially the important ones, are just unacceptable. Bush is weak on performance, but his heart is mostly in the right place. Given that, I really have to vote for Bush because he at least offers some hope, while even Kerry's as yet unfulfilled promises are promises of tyrrany and oppression. If Bush does what he promises the country will benefit. If Kerry gets into office and is at all successful it will be a disaster.

Really sort of a simple choice.

Dave

Be an Informed Voter

Anyone who goes to the polls and votes without knowing what the candidates believe in is doing a disservice to their country and their community. Sometimes it's hard - well, it's always remarkably difficult - to figure out where candidates actually stand on the issue just from listening to them speak or debate or from their ads on TV. Half of what they say is confusing or contradictory and half the issues you may care about are never even mentioned.

This means that responsible voters need to go out and seek the information they need to make a meaningful choice. One quick and effective way to do that is to look at issue questionaires and ratings from organizations which have queried the candidates on key issues and tabulated the answers. You don't have to agree with the group which asked the questions to benefit from the answers. In fact, sometimes looking at the questions and answers from groups you're opposed to is particularly enlightening.

One nice, easy to access set of issue ratings can be found on the Free Market Foundation's website. They may have questionable allegiances and dubious positions and be rather humorously misnamed, but they do ask the basic questions of all the candidates from local to national races and seem to have gotten a surprisingly high level of response. If you plan to vote - and you'd better - scanning through these ratings can help clarify things for you and rapidly get you basic information especially on those down-ballot races where you've never heard of the candidates. You might also find out some surprising things about what candidates you thought you agreed with actually believe.

The issue questionaire results are at: http://www.freemarket.org/

dave

Liberty Under Attack

If the Patriot Act scared you - and it should have - the same folks who brought you warrantless searches and monitoring all of your phone and data transmissions have another one up their sleeves.

Right now the Senate is considering H.R. 10 which includes provisions for a national ID card (section 2173) and a centralized database (section 3052) in which the government will keep track of all your health, financial and personal information, including such things as your HIV status and how many guns you own. Ultimately it would be a single, centralized repository for all of the information collected by every state and local government entity and many private organizations. So a bureaucrat could easily go through and know an awful lot of personal stuff about you, just in case they felt like putting everyone with HIV in quarantine camps or taking away every gun in every private home in America.

This bill is so bad that Eagle Forum and the ACLU which are on the opposite sides of almost every issue are both opposing it. Apparently both the far right wing and the far left wing agree that privacy is important, not to mention being guaranteed in the constitution.

I urge everyone to send a letter to their representatives, both in the house and the senate to urge them to vote against this dangerous legislation.

A group called The Liberty committee has provided a useful form to send a letter to the appropriate people. To access it just CLICK HERE

You can also phone your representative at their local offices or in Washington. You can get their numbers from their websites which are all linked to from http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml That same site also has an emailing page where you can email any member of congress. The Senate has a similar page at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm. You can even go direct to House Majority Leader Tom Delay and encourage him to step in and stop this bill. You can call him at 202-225-4000 or send a fax to 202-225-5117. He can also be emailed from http://www.majorityleader.gov/CONTACT.ASP?a=form

It's up to you to take action. They're likely to vote on this in the coming week if it gets out of joint committee, so you need to act now.

When fear and complacency make you surrender your freedoms to the government the enemies of liberty win their greatest victory.

Dave