Tag: Politics

Featured

Gerard Piqué’s Master Class for Democratic Party Aging and Decrepit ‘Elites’

This article originally appeared on https://unamericanactivities.substack.com

By: Jeffrey Winograd

OPINION

Gerard Piqué, an FC Barcelona icon, by example and presentation, has delivered a master class in how to take leave from a beloved profession with charm, humility, integrity and consideration of the greater good.

Before almost 93,000 adoring Barcelona fans, the 35-year-old world class soccer player expressed his feelings about departing the playing field after a career spanning 25 years.  

The world of professional soccer was caught by total surprise when Piqué announced his decision to permanently remove his boots on November 3 and several days later took to the pitch for what turned out to be his 616th and final appearance for Barcelona. Along the way, he won 30 trophies for Barça.

Not inconsequentially, according to the BBC, he had 18 months remaining on his contract and his early departure will boost the club’s critical efforts to reduce their wage bill.

Afterwards, Piqué, with a microphone at the ready while standing at the center spot of the field, made a heartfelt speech and near the end was overcome with tears:

“In life, as you grow older, sometimes to love is to let go. It was a relationship with so much love and passion between Barça and me. I’ve always said there won’t be any other team after Barça. And that’s how it will be. I have to organize myself a little. Now it is time to enjoy my friends and family. As my grandfather says – I was born here and will die here. Long live Barça”

Democrat’s Roster of So-Called Elites

Now substitute the United States for Barça and decide whether love-of-country or self-interest is the name of the game for the following Democratic “elite”:

  • President Joseph Biden (soon to be age 80) who as a presidential candidate hid in his basement during the campaign, and now constantly forgets his rehearsed lines, spews falsehoods and claims that inflation is a transitory affair.
  • Vice President Kamala Harris (only age 58) who is prone to repeat nonsense during her public remarks and is Biden’s designated Border Czarina who has deemed the southern border safe and secure.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (age 82) who spearheaded, behind a false face, the misnomered Inflation Reduction Act and refused to green-light the presence of National Guard troops offered by President Trump days before the January 6th affair because she feared bad political optics.
  • Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (soon to be age 72) who at the drop of a hat spews forth his staunch support for Israeli security but fast-tracked President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal which constitutionally was a treaty requiring Senate approval.
  • Rep. Bennie Thompson (age 75) who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee with oversight of border security matters and also heads the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, a panel which only has GOP members approved by Pelosi.
  • Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman (age 53), the senator-elect whose campaign emulated Biden’s by his avoidance of a debate with his opponent until after the bulk of mail-in ballots were submitted leaving an electorate generally unaware that the effects of a stroke impede his ability to answer questions in an understandable and thoughtful manner.  

The Piqué Way

It may seem a stretch to suggest professional politicians take to heart and follow the Gerard Piqué model of integrity, responsibility and loyalty to something far greater than himself.

The FC Barcelona motto, in Catalan, is “Més que un club.” [More than a club]

The honorific for Gerard Piqué should be “Més que un home.” [More than a man]

It is highly doubtful that any known Democratic party bigwig, man or woman, could achieve such venerated heights.

That’s America’s loss since our faltering nation is “Més que un país.” [More than a country]

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Featured

Election Day Chaos: The Political Climate Crisis and the Top 10 Constitutional Remedies

By: Jeffrey Winograd

Election Day is on the doorstep and the related political climate crisis is threatening to overwhelm the American social fabric.

The Congressional Research Service (Election Day: Frequently Asked Questions) describes Election Day as “the day legally established for the general election of federal public officials: President, Vice President, and U.S. Congress.”

It is obvious that Election Day in America has been hijacked by the various states. “State and local elections are often, but not always, held on the same day as federal elections,” according to the CRS.

In fact, Election Day, as now practiced, is a misnomer of epic proportions – better to call it Election Weeks. The result is that more than 100 election lawsuits that impact the conduct of federal elections are now on court dockets across the country.

Typical Election Issues Circa 2022  

Looking at the United States from outside its borders, it must be unimaginable to view a laundry list of issues that continue to overwhelm the judiciary in various jurisdictions.

The issues contributing to the chaos run the gamut from requiring photo identification to signature matching to the use of unregulated drop boxes for ballots.

No wonder there are so many Americans who have been labelled “election sceptics.”

The Constitutional Fix

While the Constitution and federal statutes provide a structure for elections and voting in the United States, election administration is primarily a state responsibility, explains the CRS.

A second CRS publication (Campaign and Election Security Policy: Brief Introduction) delves a bit further and, as if by magic, emerges a golden constitutional nugget: “The U.S. Constitution and federal statute regulate the division of governmental responsibility for election security, although no statute is devoted specifically to the topic. Most broadly, the Constitution’s Elections Clause assigns states with setting the ‘Times, Places and Manner’ for House and Senate elections, and also permits Congress to “at any time…make or alter such Regulations” (Art. I, §4). [Emphasis Added]

It would seem that, if projections on the eve of Election Day are accurate, the Republican Party is likely to be the majority in both the Senate and House of Representatives.

Consequently, the GOP can claim “ownership” of the issue and deliver a comprehensive package of federal election reforms for delivery to the White House for signature.

Top 10 Fixes

A series of bicameral legislative hearings could produce a comprehensive package of reforms that would withstand any constitutional challenges and progressive Democratic claims of racism and other bogus issues.

Take a look and even compile your own Top 10:

#1 Establish a 3-day period named Election Days, running from a Sunday through the following Tuesday, with no early voting except via restricted absentee ballots.

#2 Valid photo identification is a must with provisions to give low-income citizens, regardless of race, such identification.

#3 Given the open border in the south, proof of citizenship is essential. Passports and birth certificates (along with a photo ID) are common-sense possibilities with others to be added.

#4 Mail-in ballots and absentee ballots only for cause and with 100% signature matching by humans.

#5 Drop boxes for ballots must be restricted, regulated and placed at secure locations.

#6 Specific standards for voting machines must be established and enforced.

#7 Ballot harvesting must be prohibited.

#8 Ballot counting timeframes and procedures must be established and enforced.

#9 So-called ballot curing must be prohibited unless carefully regulated.

#10 No voter registration on Election Days.

Pennsylvania Calamities

The argument for restricted early voting is best made by the unfortunate case of John Fetterman’s candidacy for the Senate. Most fair-minded persons among those who have already voted for him would now likely want to reclaim their vote.

And then there is a significant ballot counting issue that has been festering in the Keystone state for more than two years. Read about it at the risk of winding up totally confused.

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Featured

Marc Elias Redux: The Prophet of a Potemkin Democracy

By: Jeffrey Winograd

The dark shadow of Marc Elias, the maestro of Democratic party election law manipulation and the epitome of legal ethics as it is now practiced in American party politics, has cast a pall over the integrity of activities related to what has become falsely labeled as Election Day.

Elias’ name became mainstream during the 2020 presidential campaign and subsequent post-election legal battles in a host of states but especially in those states where the victory margins for Joseph Biden could potentially be wiped out if the legal challenges by and in behalf of Donald Trump had seen the light of day as opposed to being “canceled” (aka dismissed) in some 40-plus instances solely on the issue of plaintiffs’ legal standing.  

According to Wikipedia, “Elias supervised the response to dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign seeking to overturn Biden’s win. Out of 65 such court cases, Elias prevailed in 64.”

Master of Ephemeral Ethics

For those uninitiated in the true politics of Elias, deception is the order of the day. To those under his spell, he appears to be a sweet talker.

But then there is a revelation that suggests something fundamentally undemocratic lurks under his 100% pure façade. “If we don’t use the tools we have to save democracy today, then we may have a wonderful museum of unused tools in the future, but we won’t have a democracy to use them in the future,” he recently told Sue Halpern, a writer for The New Yorker.

This from the same guy who played a prominent role in the events that led to the probe of the recently elected 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump.

As described by political reporter Mollie Hemingway in “Rigged,” in 2016, Elias, on behalf of the “Hillary for America” campaign and the Democratic National Committee, hired a firm called Fusion GPS to do opposition research on Trump. Fusion then retained Christopher Steele who produced the salacious and fictional “Steele dossier” which was instrumental in the creation of the Robert Mueller probe of Trump.

The funding for Steele came from part of the $5.6 million in legal fees paid by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to the firm of Perkins Coie where Elias headed its political law practice. This was a closely guarded secret hidden behind alleged attorney-client privilege. On Oct. 24, 2017, the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, a darling of progressive Democrats, posted a tweet: “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and sanctimoniously, for a year.”

And here is another insight into the ethical conduct of Elias.

Commenting on Elias’ efforts to boost campaign finance limits on political parties, Prof. Rick Hasen, University of California, Irvine School of Law, a highly respected legal scholar who writes the popular Election Law Blog, stated in a Jan. 30, 2022, post: “One election lawyer wrote to me, ‘And did you notice that Elias was paid $20 million by dark money groups to fund his rogue, scattershot legal work in 2020?’”  

If the claim cited by the anonymous source of Pro. Hasen holds up to scrutiny, coupled with his actions in the case of the Steele dossier, what should people think about the legal ethics presumably taught at the Duke University School of Law, Elias’ alma mater?

Legal Targets and Political Accusations

Besides his legal practice which he now plies at the Elias Law Group, a firm he founded after leaving his long sojourn at Perkins Coie, Elias heads a feel-good, Democratic-oriented outfit called Democracy Docket. It is not a law firm but rather a convenient platform through which he spouts his brand of democracy and his version of voting as it should be in the United States.

Some of the generalized voting-related issues prominent on Democracy Docket’s website include election administration, voting by mail, voter registration, in-person voting and redistricting litigation.

In turn, delving into these broad areas will reveal a host of issues ripe for Elias-style litigation, including but not limited to: drop boxes for ballots; ballot counting procedures; voter assistance; ballot harvesting; photo identification; signature matching; ballot counting deadlines; polling locations; voting machines; recounts; ballot curing; absentee voting; and purging of voter rolls.

So, at first blush the Elias mindset sounds good until taking a closer look at the content of his writing and his choice words about the Republican Party and its adherents:

  • The Republican Party “wants our electoral system to break.”
  • The Republican Party has “abandoned decency and respect.”
  • Republican “election deniers, vote suppressors, ‘Big Lie’ advocates.”
  • Republicans “seek to fence racial minorities and young voters out of the political process.”
  • So-called “dog whistles … have been replaced by [Republicans] blaring sirens of authoritarianism.”
  • Republicans seeks to benefit “from damaging our democratic system of elections.”

What Lies Ahead?

An Oct. 28 article by the Supreme Court reporter for the Washington Examiner carried the banner “More than 100 election lawsuits threaten to plague 2022 midterm elections and beyond.”

It seems that there is fertile ground ahead for the likes of Marc Elias and other Democratic lawyers to ply their trade. According to the article, “many of the GOP-led challenges seek to challenge new rules for mail-in voting, early voting, vote counting and voter registration.”

One can imagine a smug look on Elias’ face when he pronounced to The New Yorker staff writer, “I really believe that when the history books are written, what they write about our generation will be whether or not we were able to preserve democracy.”

Presumably he meant only his version of democracy!

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