Today’s JG rant: Forget about the 2016 election, Dopes are still trying to re-litigate the 2000 election as well

UPDATE:  Greatest news ever.  Demo-Dopes are now in a bidding war for the minimum wage.  The $15 an hour movement has been out bid by radical know-nothing and raging anti-Semite Rashida Talib who now thinks $20 an hour ought to be the goal.

I think the first question at the next Dope candidate’s debate ought to be, “How much should the minimum wage be?”  By the time the debate is it will look like two billionaires biding on the last bottle of water on a desert island.  Kamala’s got $15.  Do I hear $20? Corry’s got 20.  Do I hear $25?  Mayor Pete says $35.  Do I hear 40?  Big Chief Lizzy’s $40.  Do I hear 45? Bernie says he’ll go $5 over the last bid.  Do I hear $100?...

Why not?  If the goal is to destroy the American economy, which it is, why not $25 or even $50 dollars an hour?  Rush Limbaugh has long argued that the way to counter this minimum wage argument is to simply add $5 dollars to whatever figure the know-nothings are demanding.  When they agree to that, add five more until they finally say, “well $45 an hour is too much.”  Then you have them.  Why is $45 an hour too much?  Then the know-nothing will be forced to accept economic reality.

Here’s the real minimum wage – whatever sum a person is will to exchange his services for.

Today's JG rant
The JG’s editorial page gets wackier and wackier by the day.  David Placher’s piece “Democracy doomed?” of July 22, 2019 is a doozy.  Democrats, among the biggest sore losers known in the history of man, are still re-litigating the 2000 Presidential Election. 

Placher’s account of the Florida recount is the most one-sided load of bovine excrement on the subject since AlGore famously said, “When votes are cast, we count them.” Unless, of course, those votes break against him like the military absentee votes Gore’s team tried to get excluded from the 2000 Florida recount, or Gore’s attempt to restrict a manual recount to four heavily Democratic cherry picked counties.

With regard to the Supreme Court decision on the matter, the Left loved to call Justice Kennedy a moderate swing vote on the court, unless he voted with the four strict Constitutionalist Justices then people who just make stuff up call it a “conservative-leaning Supreme Court.”

Placher demonstrates all the grace and dignity of the now  most famous sore loser in all of mankind, Hillary Clinton, when he tries tells the fairy tale that data shows AlGore would have won Florida if only all the votes were counted.  First, AlGore NEVER wanted all the votes counted.  Second, the assertion is pure poppycock. 

I’m sure Placher searched the internet until he found a study by four guys living in their moms’ basements that supported his theory.  Here’s some other news.  On April 3, 2001 PBS, not generally regarded as a conservative outlet, noted that, “In the first full study of Florida’s ballots since the election ended, The Miami Herald and USA Today reported George W. Bush would have widened his 537-vote victory to a 1,665-vote margin if the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court would have been allowed to continue, using standards that would have allowed even faintly dimpled ‘undervotes’ — ballots the voter has noticeably indented but had not punched all the way through — to be counted.”  

How about the fact that “according to a massive months-long study commissioned by eight news organizations in 2001, George W. Bush probably still would have won even if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed a limited statewide recount to go forward.”

Placher also wants the states to throw an extra constitutional requirement on PDJT for the 2020 election cycle – release of his tax returns.  I’m sure if Texas passed a law that candidates had to have completed 4 years of honorable service in the US military, Placher would squawk.  Scholars can scan Article II of the US Constitution from now until forever and they will not find any requirement for the release of tax returns as a prerequisite for the office of President of the United States.  They can scan the other dozen or so typewritten pages of the Constitution as well as all 27 amendments with the same result.

In reference to the rest of Placher’s whinny piece, he should thank his lucky stars it’s state legislatures overturning the citizens’ initiatives he cites.  In such cases the voters always have the opportunity to throw the bums out. 

When a conservative initiative wins at the ballot box, passes a legislative process or is implemented by executive order, Liberals always run to an unelected, unaccountable judge who is more loyal to his politics than he is to the law in order to put a dagger into the will of the people. 

Monday, July 22, 2019 1:00 am

Democracy's doom?

Vote after vote, public wishes seem to count less

David Placher

David Placher is a Fort Wayne resident.

The death watch over democracy in the United States has started.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and other foreign vultures are circling the nation as its elections and its representative democracy are on life support. Within the past two decades, voters' decisions have been subjected to an unprecedented number of attacks. In several states, citizens have gathered signatures to place initiatives on ballots, only to watch voter-passed initiatives stomped on by governors and state legislatures that oppose them. Legislatures often draw both state legislative and congressional districts that tilt in a partisan direction so legislators often face no repercussions from disgruntled voters for their decisions. But democracy's fatal blow could arrive sooner than expected with the 2020 presidential election around the corner.

It's easy to pinpoint the recent event that hurt our elections: the 2000 presidential contest. George W. Bush's victory instantly became mired in controversy after a mandatory recount in Florida, and an additional hand recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court came to an abrupt halt by order of the conservative-leaning Supreme Court because it viewed such a recount as unconstitutional. Bush, whose brother was Florida Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, won Florida by 537 votes, but only after a number of ballots were discarded as a result of voter errors caused by ballot design in an area that heavily favored Al Gore. Bush lost the national popular vote but won the Electoral College and clinched the presidency. A nonpartisan postelection analysis concluded that a majority of Floridians intended to vote for Gore, but the defective ballots changed the outcome.

Then along came citizen initiatives that were popular with voters and unpopular with state legislatures. The Florida legislature devised plans to overturn or diminish voter-passed initiatives to limit class sizes, develop high-speed rail and, most recently, restore voting rights to nearly 1.4 million felons who were not convicted of murder or sex offenses. The Republican-controlled Florida legislature recently passed a law that clarified the voter-passed initiative that if felons want their rights restored, they have to pay their court-ordered financial obligations first. Many believe these felons are low income and support the Democratic Party.

In 2016, South Dakota voters passed a citizen initiative meant to diminish the influence of lobbyists. But the South Dakota legislature quickly repealed the law and replaced it with a law that placed fewer restrictions on lobbyists. That same year, Oklahoma voters passed a citizen initiative covering criminal justice reform that reclassified nearly all felony drug possession charges as misdemeanors. But the Oklahoma legislature immediately watered down the voter-passed initiative.

In November 2017, Maine voters passed a citizen initiative for Medicaid expansion, but Gov. Paul LePage was staunchly opposed to it, and he spent the reminder of his time in office refusing to implement it.

The District of Columbia – considered a progressive paradise for Democrats – City Council ignored a voter-passed initiative that would have required restaurants to annually raise the minimum wage of tipped employees by $1.50 until 2025, when the hourly rate would match the $15 minimum wage for non-tipped employees.

Voters got shafted last month when they lost an avenue to address their grievances of partisan-drawn congressional maps by state legislatures. The Supreme Court handed state legislatures a weapon in their battle against voters who want to make congressional districts politically balanced. The court ruled that federal courts are powerless to fight against state legislatures that draw congressional maps that favor the state legislature majority party, thus reducing the voice of the minority party.

Voters could get shafted yet again. Many states are exploring ways to hurt President Donald Trump by requiring presidential candidates to release their tax returns to appear on their November 2020 ballots. Trump has repeatedly said he would release his tax returns but has stalled.

The 2020 election could be the most controversial. If a candidate loses a state, but the state legislature is controlled by the losing candidate's political party, will it ignore the will of the voters and give its electoral votes to its losing candidate? If a state fails to place a party's presidential candidate on its ballot, is the presidential election valid? As the hyperpartisanship continues and scary scenarios seem more probable, the obituaries for U.S. democracy should be prepared and the services may be announced on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020.