First consider just what abortion up until birth means. The mainstream media tries to downplay it by claiming it will never really happen except in the most extreme circumstances. The question is, just what circumstances could be that extreme? By the third trimester of a pregnancy, abortion is almost always more dangerous to the mother than continuing through delivery. It’s certainly more dangerous to the child. Pregnancy is not an illness, it is natural. While it does provide the chance for medical issues earlier on, by the time the baby is fully formed, the safest thing for both mother and child is almost always to continue through delivery. Potentially dangerous issues like breech births have largely been eliminated by modern procedures like C-Sections.

Suppose a woman is scheduled for a C-Section on Tuesday, but her doctor has an emergency and reschedules to Wednesday. If the mother decides to exercise her “choice,” she can instead head to an abortion clinic. Did the baby magically revert to an embryo or fetus? Nope, he or she is still a fully formed human being. What about the many times when a pregnancy extends past its due date? Sorry kid, you should have been born on time—now mom gets to have the doctor kill you. Late term abortions often involve an “induction abortion,” in which the doctor inserts a needle into the baby’s heart and injects it with Misoprostol, which causes a fatal heart attack, and then the corpse is delivered 2-4 days later, because by that time the baby is too large to just hack into pieces or dissolve with chemicals.

Now let’s look at the case of Lindsay Clancy. On January 24, 2023, she started the day by driving her five-year-old daughter, Cora, to a doctor’s appointment while her husband, Patrick, stayed home with the boys, 3-year-old Dawson and 8-month-old, Callan. While she was there, Patrick texted her a photo of Dawson, who had just dressed himself for the first time. She replied with a photo of Cora in a mask and gown. They exchanged a few more messages about the children and other matters. Her messages were all clear and generally positive in nature.

Lindsay returned home about 8:30, put the baby down for a nap, and dressed the older two children to play outside in the snow, while Patrick retreated to his home office in the basement to do some work. Patrick came up a couple times to check on things, and the couple continued sharing messages throughout the day about the children. In the afternoon Patrick went out to run some errands. She texted around dinner time and asked him to pick up take-out from a place they liked. He agreed, and he also asked if the baby had taken a nap, to which she replied that he had taken a short one and was awake again. A few more messages passed about the food, a prescription for Cora, and a brief phone call from Lindsay that Patrick characterized as “quiet.”

Patrick returned home a little after 6:00 with dinner. The house and yard were empty. He kept calling out for Lindsay and the children and even called her phone again. Finally he found that their bedroom was locked, opened the door and found blood everywhere. Lindsay had cut her wrists and neck, then jumped out the window in a suicide attempt. When he ran outside and found her, she told him they were in the basement. She had strangled them, one-by-one, with exercise bands around their necks. It was clearly something she had planned thoroughly and in advance and had completed while exchanging texts with her husband.

Lindsay had emotional issues, including depression and anxiety. No doubt she was a tortured soul. But the feminists defending her are claiming that her post-partum depression should exonerate her completely. They also want to blame her husband because, well . . . stuff. And he has a penis! He and the “patriarchy” are completely to blame! Note that they have plenty of signs with Lindsay’s picture, but none of the three innocent children.

This was a terrible tragedy, and I have no doubt that Lindsay has remorse for her actions. But there is something completely unnatural about women who will ignore the deaths of three young children in the name of feminism. The Bible tells us in Romans 1:26 that in the end times women will “change the natural use into that which is against nature.” What could be more unnatural than women who have no regard for children?

Like Mayor Mamdani in New York, El-Sayed is a charismatic, articulate, and physically attractive candidate. Bored, affluent, white, leftist women can’t stop swooning over him. They even voted for him over Haley Stevens, a woman! Admittedly, Democrats seem to have a lot of trouble distinguishing between the sexes these days, but I thought the goal for feminists was to increase political participation among women. Leftist women are remarkably susceptible to smooth-talking politicians.

Of course our leading leftist woman, Governor Whitmer, has endorsed El-Sayed. Further, she and Attorney General Dana Nessel are running cover for him. You might have noticed yard signs supporting his candidacy which only state his first name, Abdul. According to Michigan campaign laws, “a candidate’s full name must be prominently displayed” on all yard signs. I assume the reason behind only including his first name was to make Mr. El-Sayed seem less Muslim, but why is he allowed to flagrantly violate the law?

Another law Mr. El-Sayed flaunts involves his claim that he is a physician. Mr. El-Sayed has never been licensed as a physician. Yes, he has gone through medical school, but the law in Michigan—at least for the rest of us—clearly states that only licensed, practicing (or retired) physicians can claim that title. According to Politico, a source that is usually very friendly to Democrats, he has been making the claim that he is a physician for several years: “The perception in Michigan is that he is, at least at one point in his life, a licensed physician,” said Chris Dewitt, an unaligned Democratic strategist based in Michigan. “That apparently is not the case, and it blows up a big part of his campaign.” El-Sayed is a liar.

Abdul El-Sayed may have been born and raised in Michigan, but his loyalties do not lie with our state or our nation. He is first and foremost an adherent of Islam, a “religion” and political ideology that opposes almost everything our nation represents. MSN, another source that is generally supportive of Democrats warns, “Dr. Abdul El-Sayed . . . has a history of downplaying the threat posed by the Muslim Brotherhood - now designated a terrorist group by the U.S. - and even defended a brazen power grab by the Islamist group’s leader during the Brotherhood’s brief reign in Egypt.” The Muslim Brotherhood’s favorite chant is “Death to America.”

El-Sayed’s loyalties to Islam continue today. He lies about his desire to bring Sharia Law to the United States, but he can’t hide from his past. When Oklahoma passed a law prohibiting judges from taking foreign cultural views, and specifically Sharia Law, into consideration when hearing cases, El-Sayed compared it to historical mistreatment of Native Americans. “You can’t understand a Sharia ban without understanding the Trail of Tears,” El-Sayed told the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in October of 2022, according to The Washington Free Beacon. “You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding white supremacy.”

What’s so bad about Sharia Law? In Muslim-controlled nations, it means girls are not allowed to attend school past the age of 12. Women are not allowed to drive and must always cover their entire faces and bodies in public. Those who don’t comply can be beaten publicly, raped, or even killed for the smallest of infractions. In 2022, Mahsa Amini was beaten to death for not fully covering her hair in public. Gays are thrown from buildings, infidels are beheaded, and little boys can be used for sex without punishment. That is Sharia law.

El-Sayed is part of the Bernie Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez radical wing of the Democrat party which is quickly taking it over. He has no use for moderate, traditional Democrats. Politico reports a conversation he had just before last week’s primary: “If I win . . . well y’all came at me so now I get to come at you, and you know, primarying people like John Fetterman, I have no problem to do that. Ideally you put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message, and all of a sudden starts to sound a lot different,” El-Sayed added later, referencing how he could help propel the progressive moment. An interesting choice of words considering that Islam is the religion of beheading.

If you vote for El-Sayed, make no mistake: you are voting for the destruction of our nation. It’s bad enough that he lies to you—stop lying to yourself.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who could literally be the poster boy for capitalism, has become a pariah for leftists. The mainstream media was giddy to report that he had (briefly) become the world’s first trillionaire. For leftists, trillions are only good when they are part of the national debt (currently approaching the unfathomable number of $40 trillion). If you’ve never visited the site, type “National Debt Clock” into your browser, then watch it climb. Our federal government spends a million dollars every 25 seconds currently. Musk, on the other hand, creates wealth through his many innovations. Just a few years ago, in fact, he was the darling of leftists for creating the electric car company, Tesla. Then he committed the unforgiveable sin of exposing government waste and fraud, two things leftists claim don’t exist.

The origins of capitalism go back several hundred years, following the end of feudalism, a system in which everything was owned by royalty, and all other people were either slaves or servants to their state. It started with cloth manufacturers in England, who, after being freed from the control of their royal masters, used their profits to increase and improve their manufacturing capabilities. It turns out that when people own things, they take better care of them. Who would have guessed?

The advance of capitalism also coincided with the Protestant reformation. Hard work, clean living, and fairness are tenets of faith that also serve as an underpinning for a capitalist system. Conversely, laziness, hedonism, and corruption are the hallmarks of those who flourish under socialism, which is why no country has ever successfully implemented it. Take a look at the recently deposed leader of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. According to the Voice of America website, his regime engaged in “significant human rights abuses included credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; unlawful recruitment or use of children by Maduro-supported groups in armed conflict; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom; trafficking in persons, including forced labor, among others.” But to the American left, Maduro is a hero and Elon Musk is a monster.

Human beings are competitive by nature, and capitalism relies on the competitive spirit. But unlike sports, just because one team wins, it doesn’t mean others have to lose. Following the Initial Public Offering of SpaceX, when Elon Musk reached trillionaire status, 4400 of his employees became millionaires. Many more experienced significant gains in their personal wealth, and that doesn’t count the small businesses in related industries that will also flourish because of Musk’s success. As President John F. Kennedy remarked, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

Capitalism isn’t a perfect system, but it’s by far the best. If you would really prefer socialism, take a look at the institutions in our nation which are closest to the socialist model. The first schools and hospitals in our nation were not developed by the government, but by private individuals who voluntarily joined with others to fund them. This collective approach was made possible because of the freedom of individuals to prosper. Then busybodies in government got involved, and schools and hospitals became government property. If you are happy with schools that fail to produce competent graduates and health insurance costs that continue to skyrocket, then you definitely should embrace socialism.

Politicians love taxes and regulations, the two most effective weapons for destroying prosperity. They also love power, and socialism grants all of the power to government because government owns everything. Dreaming about starting a small business? Nope, the government will own the business, and you will be an employee. Your wages, your benefits, your ability to secure a promotion . . . all controlled by government. In the countries that have been stupid enough to try socialism, the first thing that happens is confiscatory taxes. Tennis legend Bjorn Borg, who had the misfortune of living under Sweden’s failed attempt at socialism, left the country because his tax rate rose to more than 100% of his income. Imagine going to pick up your paycheck at the end of the week and instead getting a bill from the government.

The young people who voice their support for socialism are misguided. They think it means everything is provided for them by government, excusing them from the realities of hard work and living within their means. If they think living is expensive now, just wait until everything is “free.”

There is no way to justify the horror of slavery, particularly in a nation which was founded on the concept of individual liberty. I will never understand how men like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington could speak and write so eloquently about the importance of individual freedoms while also owning slaves. It was common practice in many areas of the world, and remains common today, but our nation was supposed to be better. We eventually came to our moral senses, and much blood was shed in our Civil War to end the atrocity. Had President Andrew Johnson left Special Fields Order No. 15 in place, it would have been entirely fair to compensate newly freed slaves in that manner.

But history is history. Johnson stopped the plan, returning the land to the plantation owners, and it’s now been over 150 years since slavery ended in our nation. None of the people enslaved in the United States are alive today, nor are their children. The last person who was a child of American slaves, Daniel Smith, died in 2022. His father was born into slavery during the Civil War and was freed when he was five. Only a handful of people across our nation can positively state that they were the grandchildren of slaves. Time has moved on.

In the meantime, our nation has never stopped trying to compensate for the dark days of slavery. Many of our social welfare programs owe their origins to helping blacks achieve cultural and financial equality. Black civil rights leaders are celebrated with holidays, statues, and streets named in their honor. For decades blacks have been given preference in education and employment. As is typical of our government programs, many of these efforts have actually worked against blacks, creating a dependency on government assistance and a culture of single mother households, high abortion rates, and poverty. A second President Johnson, Lyndon, was responsible for the “Great Society,” a series of welfare and “racial justice” programs that stopped black families from acquiring true equality. No racism is more insidious than the racism of low expectations.

Black people didn’t stop coming to America after slavery. While no definitive statistics are available, only about 75% of black Americans today are descendants of slaves. Thanks to the breakdown in black family structure, it’s difficult to impossible to prove who is or isn’t a descendant of slaves. Nor was it a clear-cut process even a few decades ago, as not all the blacks who lived in America during slavery were slaves, and many who arrived here after slavery married those who were descendants of slaves. And, of course, a great deal of racial mixing has occurred over the last 150 years. In the 2020 census, over 10% of Americans listed themselves as mixed race.

Deciding whom should receive reparations is as difficult as determining who should pay them. What about people whose ancestors fought and died on the Union side of the Civil War? How about those who didn’t come to America until after slavery had ended? More than half of Americans today are descendants of families that immigrated here after 1900, and almost 20% of Americans are from families that immigrated here after 1965. Even at the peak of slavery, less than 2% of Americans were slave owners. I’m a descendant of Mary Dyer, who was hanged for being a Quaker and an abolitionist. I think she already paid my bill.

Reparations aren’t merely a black and white issue, neither literally nor metaphorically. If reparations are an appropriate way to settle past transgressions, then the descendants of Irish slaves, who often worked side by side with black slaves on plantations, have a claim. What about Japanese Americans who were locked in internment camps during WWII? Unlike slaves, many children of those families are still alive today.

The logistics and, frankly, the stupidity, of paying reparations to former slaves, make it clear that it will never happen. That won’t stop Democrats from crowing about it every campaign season, nor will it stop greedy slime like Al Sharpton from using the issue to gain popularity and wealth. It’s simply another way to sow division and buy votes.

Being an old geezer, I was around for America’s 200^th birthday party. That was fifty years ago—1976 for you math majors—when Gerald Ford was President, the Detroit Lions were awful (okay, some things never change), and your telephone sat on a table or hung on the wall. And get this—you could only use your phone to make phone calls! President Ford was a pretty decent man, but a pretty terrible President. His abysmal handling of the economy started us on the path to “stagflation,” a combination of a stagnant economy and high inflation. His biggest initiative to deal with inflation? The issuance of “WIN” buttons. WIN was an acronym for “Whip Inflation Now,” and we were all encouraged to wear the buttons so inflation would go away. I can’t imagine why it didn’t work.

A lot of things weren’t great in 1976. Besides the economic woes, we faced increasing violent crime, massive losses of jobs as manufacturers moved abroad to seek lower taxes and cheaper labor, and the constant threat of a large-scale nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Oil prices had surged a few years earlier, gas at the pump had nearly doubled from five years before, and the average vehicle got a little less than 14 miles per gallon. Not only were phones just phones, but there were no tablets, laptops, smart watches, or streaming services. Unless you had rare and expensive “cable television,” you got to choose between NBC, ABC and CBS. After the 11:00 news, the American flag appeared on the screen, the National Anthem played, and then the picture was replaced by a test pattern (or just “snow”) until 7:00 the next morning.

Still getting over the very unpopular Viet Nam War, our nation was hardly awash with patriotism heading into 1976. Soldiers were looked upon with disdain by many people—they were much more likely to be called murderers in public than to be thanked for their service. President Ford was not popular, either, having committed the unforgiveable sin of pardoning President Nixon, and trust in our government was falling.

Despite all of this hardship and unrest, our nation banded together to put on a spectacular celebration. Planning for the event officially began ten years earlier, with the formation of the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, created by a unanimous resolution of Congress and signed by President Lyndon Johnson. Of course we’re talking about government, so the commission only lasted seven years before being dismantled, having accomplished pretty much nothing. But it was replaced by another planning commission, and eventually the summer of 1976 was crammed with events and celebrations.

Celebrities couldn’t get enough of our nation’s Bicentennial. All three of the major networks hosted endless specials, musicians wrote special songs, and artists produced patriotic works. Washington, D.C. and other major cities held spectacular fireworks shows and parades. Special quarters and half-dollars were minted with the 1776-1976 date stamp. Auto manufacturers released special Bicentennial models of cars and trucks. Other nations even got into the celebration, joining nautical parades of tall ships in Boston Harbor and conducting official ceremonies in our honor. In one of the more odd gestures, George Washington was posthumously promoted to the level of Six-Star General, but even that didn’t elicit any dissent. Everybody was celebrating.

Contrast that with what is happening in our nation today. President Trump has initiated several projects to beautify our capital in preparation for celebrations, drawing legions of blue-haired psychos who are vandalizing the Reflecting Pool and other monuments on a regular basis. Social media is awash with gaping morons wearing tee shirts that say “Pro Algae.” Entertainers are glorified in the mainstream media for backing out on scheduled performances, while blue state politicians threaten to “sit this one out,” refusing to send delegations to represent their states in the national celebration. Leftists are inherently stupid people, so maybe they are just upset that “semiquincentennial” is harder to say than “bicentennial.”

I’ve written before about my issue with using the word “pride” to describe how I feel about our nation. I prefer “gratitude.” I thank God every day that I was born here, and that our founding fathers—and millions of brave individuals since—have been willing to put their lives at risk so that I can enjoy the freedom and prosperity that we far too often take for granted. Happy Birthday, America, and thank you.

I can’t blame government for the increase in the speed of the Earth’s rotation, but much of the remaining turmoil has certainly been generated by legislation and regulatory changes that have attempted to implement radical changes on us with little or no warning. Auto manufacturers lost billions of dollars as the government tried to force people to buy electric vehicles before the technology was practical. Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, taking a break from his regular job as a Bond villain, told us that by 2030 we would “own nothing and be happy.” Government “scientists” defied thousands of years of basic biology by asserting that men can have babies.

Things get even more chaotic when government gets in bed with corporations. Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Oil are in many ways our de facto government, with Big Tech occupying center stage at the moment. My last column focused on the changes to vehicles starting with the 2027 model year to include sensors that will monitor a driver’s fitness to operate the vehicle. Even positive changes, like advancements in televisions, phones, and appliances, can be overwhelming as we are required to learn how to use all of the new features. The current issue raising concerns in many communities is the sudden appearance of data centers.

Three or four years ago most of us had never heard of data centers. I will be honest and tell you that I still really don’t know much about them. A few facts that I have learned are that they require tremendous amounts of electricity and water, they employ only a handful of technicians to function, and there is a sudden, almost desperate need for more of them. The United States currently has about 5500 operating data centers with another 3000 under construction. In 2022 there were fewer than 3000, and before 2010 they were primarily just dedicated “data rooms” in universities and corporations. These small data rooms and large mainframe computers around the world provide the framework for the internet.

I may be a simple country boy from Springport, but I do know that data transfers at virtually the speed of light. I have many friends in foreign nations on social media. We can trade messages and comments in real time with no perceptible delay. The obvious question that raises for me is why we need so many data centers scattered all over the nation, even in small communities like Marshall? Why not four, five, or even a dozen massive regional centers set apart from population centers? If we really have an immediate need for more data storage, wouldn’t it make more sense to expand existing centers than to keep building new ones?

A couple years ago I wrote a column about the plan globalists have developed to force people to live in “15-Minute Cities,” isolated communities in which everything you need is within a fifteen-minute walk. A central motive behind that plan is to increase surveillance and control. If you stream movies at home or on your phone, you know that video requires a lot of data. My guess is that individual data centers will be dedicated to storing and analyzing all of the surveillance video from these tightly controlled communities. Big Brother will always be watching.

Another coming change that will require massive and secure data storage is the move to virtual currency. A large percentage of the world’s financial transactions already occur electronically, but many individuals still rely on cash transactions in their daily lives. The existing cryptocurrencies all require significant data storage.

If the increase in the speed of our planet’s rotation and data centers aren’t enough to make you go “Hmmmm,” our government has also been promising to release its previously classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), the new term given to unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other phenomena that defy explanation by normal scientific analysis. Vice President J.D. Vance has made some statements in which he suggests that such phenomena are of a spiritual, rather extraterrestrial nature, and I tend to agree.

One of the things I’ve always loved about Springport is that we have stayed a few years behind the prevailing culture in our nation. The internet, social media, and communication technology have closed some of that gap. I hope we can maintain at least a little of our diffidence in that respect. If the world keeps spinning faster, pretty soon things will start getting thrown off.

The first U.S. pennies were minted in 1793. They were the size of a poker chip and made from solid copper, much like the British pennies from which we got the name for our coins, although the official name of ours is a “cent.” From 1793 to 1857, we even had a half-penny coin. The penny went through many changes over the years, most notably in 1943, when the penny was produced in steel to save the more valuable copper for the war effort. If you’re lucky enough to find one of the very few pennies from that year that were accidentally produced in copper, you are sitting on a gold mine. Some have sold for well over $1 million. More likely, like me, you’ve got a pile of “wheat pennies” stashed somewhere. They were last minted in 1958, and most of them are worth considerably less than a dollar.

When I was young, you could still buy some pieces of candy for a penny. Jawbreakers, bubble gum, suckers, Root Beer Barrels, and other “penny candy” was usually kept in containers on the counter of convenience stores. When I was first old enough to walk to the party store about two miles from our home, my friends and I would pick up bottles along the way. Brown beer bottles were the only returnable containers then, and they fetched a whopping two cents apiece. Later the deposit was raised to five cents and expanded to include soft drinks, and you could still buy penny candy! By the time the deposit went to ten cents, the days of penny candy were over.

Of course, back then there were also dime stores, as well as “five and dimes,” so named because they carried items that could be purchased for a nickel or dime. They have now been replaced with dollar stores, although you’ll be hard pressed to find much you can buy for a dollar in them. Oddly, gas stations continue to break their prices into tenths of a penny, even though gas has once again gone over $4 per gallon. Oops, I mean $3.99 and 9/10 cents. How absurd is that?

When we are talking about our currency, the penny is the base unit. All other denominations just represent a number of pennies. A nickel is five, a quarter is twenty-five, a dollar is 100, and a hundred-dollar bill is equivalent to 10,000 pennies. With the penny gone, the nickel will be our lowest denomination of currency. While no legal rule has yet been finalized, the government’s guidance on the issue is that businesses should begin rounding prices to the nearest nickel. I’ve been to a couple businesses that do that, though most are still taking pennies. It’s increasingly common to see one of those little bowls of pennies near the cash register from which you can borrow a penny or two to save making change.

While it may have been the cost of making pennies that was the final blow for the little coins, inflation is the bigger culprit. When “penny candy” now costs more like a quarter, it’s easy to think of the penny as valueless. Just watch how people treat them. Very few people will bend over to pick up a penny, even one that they dropped themselves. Teenagers won’t stoop to pick up a returnable bottle or can, because they don’t think the hassle of returning it is worth ten cents. When inflation drives prices up like it has today, people suffer from sticker shock. They just pay the inflated cost of the items they need because they will probably cost even more tomorrow.

Eliminating the penny is also a further step toward digital currency. While physical pennies may no longer be in circulation, electronic payments can include the cents. I already wrote a column about the perils of digital currency, but I’ll repeat a few of them. 100% government knowledge of everything you buy. No more slipping a kid $10 for shoveling your sidewalk, or putting a $20 in your granddaughter’s birthday card. No March Madness or Super Bowl pools, but you will get to pay sales tax for items you sell on a garage sale or social media, and capital gains tax if you happen to make a profit. The government will know everything you own, everything you sell, and everywhere you go. Nope, can’t see how that could be a problem.

The penny is a part of our currency, but it’s also part of our culture. A penny saved is a penny earned. Penny loafers. Pennies from Heaven. A penny for your thoughts. Bet that cost a pretty penny. Penny wise, and pound foolish. Pennies placed ove the eyes of a deceased person. Pennies may not be worth much today, but they are a reminder of how things used to be. I think I’m going to hang on to that can of wheat pennies just a little while longer.

I understand the long-term strategy involved in removing the threat from a nation that exists on the motto “Death to America.” The first step in the strategy, returning Venezuela to a democratically elected leader and economic prosperity, went very smoothly. A big part of securing our nation’s safety is to return us to our former status as the leader of the free world. President Trump has opened up more land to drilling, removed regulations that hampered the oil industry, and pulled in the reins on “green energy.” But it’s time he got something more from Big Oil than a tip of their collective CEOs’ hats.

Watching farmers out planting with off-road diesel fuel topping $4 per gallon (and #1 diesel at over $6) is concerning to say the least. Just a year ago, it was under $2 per gallon. That price rise will be carried into every farm product, and it doesn’t just affect planting, fertilizing, and weed control. Farms rely on a lot of heavy products like animal feed and chemicals. The semi-tractors and trains that haul those items around our nation are also paying exorbitant prices for fuel. Every extra penny will ultimately be felt at the grocery store. Meanwhile, most big oil companies are experiencing record profits.

President Trump has taken steps to rein in profiteering by Big Pharma and Big Insurance, and I certainly applaud him for that. However, it’s high time that he employs the same tactics against Big Oil. Because of his goal of returning the United States to a position as the world’s largest exporter of energy, he has created many opportunities for oil companies. Just the return of the production that was stolen from them in Venezuela was a massive gift, paid for by the taxpayers of our nation. Now it’s their turn.

Diesel fuel should not be anywhere near $5 per gallon. Crude oil makes up 57% of the cost of gasoline, but only 42% of the cost of diesel. Obviously, it should not rise and fall in lock step with gasoline, but it almost always does. Many of you probably remember that a couple decades ago diesel was usually less expensive at the pump, primarily because it required less refining that gasoline. Environmental regulations changed that, unfortunately. Those regulations also killed the market for small diesel automobiles. My cousin had a Volkswagen Rabbit diesel that got over 50 miles per gallon. Chevrolet even made a diesel Chevette in the 1980s.

One of the biggest profiteers currently is British Petroleum (BP), which more than doubled its profit during the rising prices. BP, Amoco, TA Travel Centers of America), and AM-PM are all gas stations in the United States that are owned by BP, in addition to the Castrol brand of motor oils. So a company from a nation that has offered only lukewarm support of our conflict with Iran is profiting off of American taxpayers due to the rise in oil prices? Seems fair.

For most of my life, gas stations have engaged in blatant price-fixing with little interference from our government. Working for the Michigan Dept. of Corrections back in the ‘80s, employees regularly used the term “Thirsty Thursday” to remark on the fact that all of the gas stations in Jackson would suddenly raise their prices every other Thursday, because that’s when state employees received their paychecks. If you see a gas station raise its price today, you know you need to hurry to another station because within a few hours they will all rise to almost the exact same price. You can always count on a rise in prices when a holiday weekend is approaching.

Some economists will claim that it’s all about supply and demand. The last time I remember gas stations running out of fuel was in 1979. If more people are going to buy gas to travel over a holiday, and there is no shortage of gasoline, then the law of supply and demand would call for prices to drop, not increase. And as I mentioned in my column on pennies, gas stations are still posting their prices in tenths of a cent. What other industry gets away with that?

Living in a blue state, I have no doubt that Governor Whitmer is loving the increased prices. She doesn’t care how miserable life is for the people of Michigan as long as there’s a chance they will blame that misery on President Trump. I wouldn’t doubt that she and her equally corrupt Attorney General have told oil companies to charge whatever they like, which would help explain how our prices are much higher than states around us.

If the Republicans have any chance of winning the midterms, President Trump needs to act now to bring down energy costs. The conflict in Iran is taking too long, and working class Americans are hurting. Big Oil benefits from his policies, and they should be willing to trim their profits a little to support him.

Online gambling apps and services now make up a large percentage of the ads I hear on radio and television, and a significant majority of those I see in the margins on online games and social media. A few, like PolyMarket and Kalshi, have substituted the word “trade” for “bet” in what I assume is an attempt to distance themselves from the negative connotations associated with gambling, but they are no different from a slot machine at a casino. You place your bet and hope to beat the odds.

Government is heavily invested in gambling. Gambling is completely legal in 45 states, and all of them participate in the Powerball and Mega Millions national lotteries. 42 states also have their own lotteries. Winnings from both government-operated lotteries and private gambling are heavily taxed. When you are talking about gambling, government is the quintessential “house,” and we all know that the house always wins. Only politicians can be disingenuous enough to ignore the irony of following ads for lottery games with public service messages about problem gambling.

Plenty of laws exist that forbid or regulate specific types of gambling. Technically, those Super Bowl squares that we love to play each year are a no-no, as are most privately operated raffles, bingo tournaments, and other games of chance. Non-profits like churches and schools can use them to fund raise, but only under very strict regulations. The reason most casinos are owned and operated by Native American tribes is because some federal laws and regulations that don’t apply to them.

When politicians make laws about gambling, they generally cite religious or moral concerns, but is gambling immoral? The Bible doesn’t have any specific prohibitions against gambling; in fact, it doesn’t really refer to gambling at all. You could probably stretch some other sins to include it, and it’s fair to say that gambling could be evidence of a “love” of money, which is declared in 1 Timothy 6:10 to be “the root of all evil.” But I would argue that gambling is a part of being a human, stemming from the aforementioned optimism we possess, and it’s something we do a lot more than we realize.

If I’m in a hurry to get to Jackson, I can decide to take I-94 or back roads. Back roads are slower most of the time, but I have to weigh that fact against the odds of getting caught in a highway traffic jam that could take hours to clear. Similarly, if I’m approaching a slow down in traffic, I can decide whether to stay in my lane or try to move to a faster one. I’m effectively placing a bet on which lane will move faster. If I have the same luck that I have when choosing a checkout lane at the supermarket, I might as well shut off my car to save gas.

The entire insurance industry is built on odds, determined through a process called “underwriting.” When you buy insurance for your house or car, you are placing a bet that something will go wrong, and that it will be expensive. You agree to pay relatively small amounts to the insurance company in the form of premiums, and they agree to cover the cost of any catastrophe (within reason). The insurance company is betting that nothing will happen, and it will get to keep your money. It hedges this bet by insuring many other people and investing the premiums.

Recently I’ve seen a trend emerging in which people are choosing to go without insurance on their homes and businesses (and sometimes cars), playing the odds that nothing will happen. My apologies to Nevin Alexander and Austin Ward, but I will admit that I don’t like paying my insurance premiums. I can think of a lot more fun things to do with that money, but I also know that I couldn’t afford to build a new home if mine burned down, so I’m willing to pay for the coverage. However, I’ve seen some people who chose to play the odds and lost now turning to GoFundMe or other services to have people “help” them. Sorry, but if you choose to sit in front of a slot machine at Fire Keepers and lose your house payment, I don’t really feel the need to help you. It’s the same if you decide to go on vacation with the money you owed for insurance premiums. Gambling may not be morally wrong, but asking others to pay for your bad decisions is. Go fund yourself.

As I predicted in my last column, the tactics used by these leftists to create chaos during the arrests have resulted in another death, this time a man. Alex Pretti was shot by agents during a violent altercation in which he was discovered to be carrying a 9mm handgun with two extra magazines (a total of about 45 rounds of ammunition). Details are murky about exactly what led to the agents using deadly force against Pretti, while the mainstream media (MSM) is busy making him into a saint, including the display of photoshopped images (like they used with Renee Good) to make him appear more attractive.

The First Amendment of our Constitution guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” It’s a right that is essential to a free people, and one which I strongly support and have employed myself many times. The protests in which I have participated never included whistles, bullhorns, blocking traffic, or throwing objects at law enforcement agents, all things which clearly defy the notion of “peaceably” assembling. Nor have I used my vehicle as a weapon, brandished a firearm, or damaged law enforcement vehicles or other public property.

Leftists like rules, but only when they are applied to non-leftists. The MSM, always sympathetic to their cause, has no reservation about covering this behavior with blatant lies. Remember the dimwit reporter who characterized the protests in 2020 as “mostly peaceful” while standing in front of a burning building? If you listen to any of their reports, you’ll be told that blocking traffic and all of the other criminal behaviors are completely fine because they are part of a protest.

According to GovFacts.org, a non-partisan website that offers practical analysis of Constitutional Amendments, laws, and regulations, “Lawful protest means expressing disagreement with laws, policies, or government actions while staying completely within legal boundaries. Civil disobedience involves deliberately breaking specific laws as a form of protest. Political philosopher John Rawls defined it as ‘a public, non-violent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the laws or policies of the government.’” Civil disobedience isn’t necessarily bad. Rosa Parks’ refusal to move to the back of the bus was civil disobedience. It was also non-violent and didn’t intrude on the rights of anyone else.

Once you start including violence, you are no longer protesting or engaging in civil disobedience. You are rioting. When Renee Good used her vehicle to block ICE officers from performing their duties and then accelerated suddenly in the direction of an agent, she crossed a very serious line. Alex Pretti had already had a violent encounter with ICE agents at a previous “protest,” where he also kicked out the taillight on a government vehicle. Similarly, when other protesters block traffic, threaten violence, and throw objects at agents and other bystanders, they are no longer protesters. They are criminals, just like former CNN journalist Don Lemon and his group of thugs who invaded a church last week and threatened women and children while disrupting their worship.

Like Renee Good, I don’t believe Alex Pretti intended to kill any ICE agents. But his previous violent behavior, and his clear efforts to physically resist his arrest, were not a protest. They constituted a crime. Add in the circumstances with leftist idiots creating noise and other chaos, and the stage was set for tragedy. One of the theories about his shooting is that after an agent had confiscated his gun, a Sig Sauer P230, the gun went off, a malfunction that is characteristic to that model. In the midst of the bedlam, this might have caused the other agents to believe that Pretti had shot at them, prompting the return fire.

Protests and civil disobedience are essential to the health of our nation, and they are responsible for countless changes to laws and regulations, including civil rights. Riots are counterproductive. Leftists rely heavily on blurring the meaning of words, and the MSM is always happy to assist them. Don’t let them lie to you. What is happening in Minneapolis and a few other blue cities is rioting, plain and simple.

The MSM will also tell you that Ms. Good had “training” to be a “lawful observer of ICE activities.” Just where or how someone acquires such training is not explained, nor is the content of the training. Apparently, it didn’t include warnings that driving your car toward an armed law enforcement agent is a really bad idea, or perhaps Ms. Good was absent that day. Although the initial video of the incident did not clearly show her vehicle moving toward the ICE agent who shot her, other videos released later clearly show her vehicle striking the agent before he fired three shots at her, causing her death. The agent received internal injuries from being struck by her vehicle.

Just before Ms. Good chose to drive her vehicle forward toward the agent, Becca Good taunted the ICE agents, gesturing for them to approach while saying, “You wanna come at us? You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy!” She then yelled for Renee Good to, “Drive, baby, drive!” Following the shooting, Becca screamed, “It’s my fault!” While that statement isn’t completely true, she was certainly complicit in the tragic and completely avoidable death of Renee Good. She unwittingly admitted her complicity in a later interview when she said, referring to the ICE agents, “We had whistles. They had guns.”

Noise is a tool that can be used to create confusion and tension. “Hey, batter, batter” chants at baseball games, crowds stomping their feet and yelling when the opposing football team is attempting a field goal, and the flash-bang grenades used by SWAT teams are all examples of this. If you watch any coverage of the riots in Minneapolis, you will hear constant noise from whistles, car horns honking, and loud chants screamed through bullhorns. That noise helped create the environment in which Renee Good lost her life. If you make enough noise during a baseball game, you might get an opposing batter to swing at a bad pitch. If you make enough noise while armed law enforcement agents are carrying out their duties, you might get someone killed.

No one can know Renee Good’s intent as she shifted her vehicle into drive and stepped on the accelerator. My guess is that she didn’t really intend to hit the ICE agent with her car but simply wanted to escape before she was arrested. She either didn’t see the agent in front of her vehicle or misjudged her own driving ability. The agent, however, had to respond in real time, and in the midst of all the noise and chaos deliberately created by Becca Good and the dozens of other rioters. He was faced with an attack using deadly force and responded accordingly, and lawfully, to stop the threat.

ICE is carrying out its duties of arresting illegal immigrants in numerous cities all across our nation, but it’s only in the “sanctuary cities,” controlled by Democrat mayors, police chiefs, and other officials, where they are facing riots. A majority of the participants in those riots, like Becca and Renee Good, are activists who have dedicated their lives to such activities. Many are paid to be there, and their signs, bullhorns, and other equipment are provided by leftist organizations whose leaders sit safely in the comfort of their homes watching the riots on television. Similarly, Democrat politicians like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, inflame the rioters with carefully worded calls for violence while claiming that the ICE agents are acting illegally. It’s easy to talk tough while hiding behind armed bodyguards.

Also lost in the noise of the MSM is the fact that there were two victims in this incident. Jonathon Ross, the agent who shot Renee Good. In addition to the injuries he suffered from being struck by the vehicle, he now must deal with the emotional trauma of taking a civilian life, which will heal much more slowly. Agent Ross previously served our nation as a member of the Indiana National Guard, fought in Iraq, and was a Border Patrol Agent for eight years. He’s what we would have called a hero in saner times, but instead he now faces constant threats to himself and his family from leftist cowards.

Renee Good is ultimately the person responsible for her own death. She chose to interfere with ICE agents and put them and others at risk of being hit by her vehicle. But vile cowards like Tim Walz are responsible for creating the “noise” that led to her death, and they have no intention of stopping. Renee Good is simply another pawn they were willing to sacrifice in their efforts to destroy our nation from within.

Once upon a time, public schools taught courses like wood shop and home economics, which focused on the skills needed to keep a home and raise a family. A hundred years ago, a majority of the curriculum in public schools was built around preparing students for family life. This made sense, as most people got married shortly after finishing school, which usually happened by age sixteen or earlier. Since the massive influx of women into the workforce during WWII, public education has increasingly been focused on career preparation. Thanks to the influence and financial power of universities, in the last several decades a lot of pressure has been placed on schools to make sure every graduate is “college ready.”

Careers are great. I’ve had a few and enjoyed them for the most part . . . except for a short stint in retail management. That would only work for me if homicide was legalized. But most of you will discover as I did that a career is primarily a means to support family life. No job could ever be as fulfilling as time spent with my wife, children, and grandchildren. I lost my father-in-law a couple weeks ago and there has been a recent spate of funerals at our church. Obituaries may mention careers, education, and military service, but it is crystal clear at a funeral that what really matters is family.

The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s did a lot of harm to families. It removed the conventional wisdom that sex was part of the marriage contract and tricked young women into believing that “free love” was smart and stylish. Promiscuity became a virtue, and virginity a joke. The rates of teen pregnancies, abortions, and sexually transmitted diseases skyrocketed, and the highest divorce rates in our nation followed in the 1980s, as those sexual revolutionaries discovered that lust is a poor substitute for love.

Families are not perfect. Divorces still happen, although thankfully the rate has fallen significantly in recent decades. Some families are fraught with abusive behavior, others with neglect. The very first family was cursed when one brother killed another. Still, people with strong family ties express much greater levels of happiness and contentment when surveyed. In a crisis, your family is your first and best source for help.

Strong families also tend to prosper financially. What is sometimes called “white privilege” by the racists who populate our government agencies is really “family privilege.” Some of the reasoning is simple, such as shared resources. Big meals are cheaper to make per person than small meals. Six people riding in a car takes about the same amount of fuel as a lone driver. Families benefit from inheritance, and they are often able to take care of their own elderly members to avoid or at least delay the expense of nursing facilities.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, President Lyndon B. Johnson established his “Great Society” initiative in the 1960s for the stated purpose of “eliminating poverty, reducing racial injustice, and expanding social welfare in the country.” The only one of those things it achieved was the last one, which in turn worked to destroy black families and increase poverty and racial injustice. The overall effect was to break up black families just as they were beginning to achieve social and financial equality. Conversely Asians tend to excel in our nation because of their strong family structure.

Make your college and career plans, but don’t ignore your family plans. Think about what you want to achieve and then find a spouse you can trust to join you in making your plans come true. Put time and effort into your relationship and your marriage. Have children when you are ready, but be conscious of biological reality—the monumental increase in the need for in vitro fertilization and other interventions is precisely because women are waiting too long to start families. College and career success matter, but family matters more.

According to radio ads from our state government, Michigan citizens are just dying to have their taxes raised so that we can fix our roads. One legislator cited a poll in which 85% of respondents allegedly said they would be willing to pay more. If that poll is even remotely accurate, then 85% of those respondents are also idiots.

It doesn’t require an endless number of studies, ads, and lying politicians to tell us that our roads are terrible. I can’t drive more than 100 feet in any direction from my home without encountering a pothole. Around the potholes are layers upon layers of asphalt patch from previous repairs. In many areas, like the curves on 29 Mile Road south of S Drive, there is more “patch” than original road surface.

Periodically we will hear from some politicians that we need to reconsider our method of funding road construction and maintenance. Currently, the rules about funding roads date back to a Public Act from 1951. In 1951, only a few sections of I-94 had been completed. Our population was 30% smaller. Semi tractors were rarer, smaller, and carried far less weight, and the largest farm tractor you were likely to encounter on the road was a Farmall M. Most families had only one car, and they didn’t drive nearly as much as today. It’s pretty ridiculous to think that what worked in 1951 will still work in 2025.

Why are we funding our roads the same way we did in 1951? The answer is on display at our capital right now. A couple months ago, the Republicans in our House, joined by a few Democrats, passed a $3.1 billion bill to fund road construction and repair. The bill includes no new taxes, relying on spending cuts from other programs and agencies. Governor Whitmer predictably has criticized the bill, and the Senate, with a Democrat majority, declared it dead on arrival. Democrats instead want to raise taxes on “major corporations,” marijuana, vapes, and tobacco pouches. The two plans are obviously incompatible, and so nothing will get done.

While the call for more “sin taxes” on marijuana, vapes, and tobacco pouches is absurd, Governor Whitmer’s reasoning on the large corporation taxes has some merit. In a press release, she argued that “these corporations haul heavy weights using semi-trucks that deteriorate roads and bridges faster than commuter vehicles.” In principle, I agree with the notion that vehicles which weigh more should also pay more. A federal study found that while semi-tractor rigs weigh roughly 20 times as much as passenger vehicles, they inflict 9600 times as much damage on the roads. In fact, vehicle registration fees used to be based on the weight of the vehicle, until our government decided it could make more money by basing the fees on the original price of the vehicle instead.

However, taxing corporations, as I’ve mentioned many times in previous columns, is a profoundly dumb idea. First, corporations don’t really pay taxes—they just pass the increase on to the consumer by raising the prices or reducing the value of their products. Second, if taxes become so high that it affects their bottom line, corporations lay off employees and reduce their capital investments. If that doesn’t work, they leave.

As usual, the root of the problem with road funding isn’t that our government doesn’t have enough money, but rather that it spends its money unwisely. Eric Paul Dennis, an associate researcher of infrastructure with the Citizens Research Council, in an interview with Bridge Magazine, said that, because of the way state law is currently structured, “we spend too much time thinking about funding, and not enough time thinking about how that funding is spent.” I might be more inclined to accept higher taxes for roads if I didn’t see perfectly good intersections being replaced with “roundabouts,” and cable fences alongside highways which require constant maintenance that could be greatly reduced simply by moving them to the center of the median. Most outrageous is the fact that in a state plagued by freeze-thaw cycles that make roads more vulnerable to damage, we have some of the least restrictive weight limits on those semi-trucks Governor Whitmer complained about.

The solution to fixing Michigan’s roads is not simple. While we rank tenth in population density among US states, our population is very heavily concentrated in the lower third of the Lower Peninsula. It’s no surprise that the roads up north are in much, much better condition. Farm equipment has gotten much larger and heavier, and while we need to accommodate progress in agriculture, there is no question about the amount of damage that equipment does to our roads. Years of squabbling over funding have reduced regular maintenance of our infrastructure, compounding the problem.

Overall, we must do our best to tie funding to use, which means that registration fees and fuel taxes should be the primary sources for road funding. Currently, there is no requirement for our government to use gas and diesel taxes for road funding, and that must change. We don’t need more taxes to fix our roads, we just need to spend the tax money we collect more responsibly.

Last week, under orders from President Trump, US planes bombed three locations in Iran that were involved in the production of nuclear material that could eventually be used to produce warheads for missiles. Our intelligent agencies are still evaluating the effectiveness of those strikes, but whatever the results this is unfortunately not a permanent end to the efforts of Iran’s rulers to build and use nuclear weapons. Much like the fact that domestic gun laws can’t magically transform criminals into pillars of the community, destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities won’t deter its leaders’ efforts to destroy Israel and the United States.

We are lied to so frequently by our government and its intelligence agencies that it’s hard to believe anything they say. Historically we have often been told that the leaders of “rogue” nations are psychotic monsters who want to kill all of us. Since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of WWII, that threat has been amplified with the possibility of a nuclear attack. Nearly a quarter million people, mostly civilians, were killed in those two cities. The lucky ones were at ground zero and died instantly; those further out from the blast often lingered for weeks or months with severe burns and radiation poisoning before finally dying.

Those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s experienced “Duck and Cover” drills in school, neighborhood civil defense drills, and “détente,” the standoff with the Soviet Union in which only the threat of mutually assured destruction kept the missiles in their silos. Had President Kennedy not shown exceptional bravery and fortitude in keeping Soviet missiles from being deployed in Cuba, we very well might have experienced a full nuclear exchange that would have devastated both of our nations. I remember reading Pat Frank’s novel Alas, Babylon in school. The story was set in Florida and involved a small group of survivors trying to rebuild their lives after all the major cities around them had been destroyed. It ended with a military officer telling the survivors that the United States had won the war, then adding, “Not that it matters.” There are no winners in a nuclear war.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of a full-scale nuclear war has been somewhat diminished, but it is still present. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), “Combined, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States possess over 12,300 nuclear weapons, most of which are many times more powerful than the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima.” The fate of the planet rests on the sanity of the leaders of those nations.

The effects of a nuclear war don’t end with the explosions. First, radiation fallout can travel a long way, killing people and poisoning water and soil far from the point of impact. The power grid would be directly affected by the blasts and secondarily by the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP), which would destroy electronic components in vehicles, cell phones, computers, and pretty much anything else. For those of you who are concerned about global warming, any problems that could be caused by the planet warming up a few degrees pale in comparison to the possibility of a “nuclear winter.” Nuclear winter is the term used to describe the theoretical effects of a hundred or more nuclear bomb explosions. That many explosions would put enough soot into the atmosphere to block a significant amount of the sunlight that reaches our planet, causing crop failures and violent storms that could last for decades.

Even a limited nuclear attack would cause massive loss of life and long-term damage to our power grid and other infrastructure. A single “suitcase nuke,” a bomb small enough to be carried like a suitcase, could kill thousands in a sporting stadium, school, concert hall, or similar venue. In the 1980s the United States and China both developed neutron bombs, also known as “dirty bombs.” They were nuclear devices that would employ a much smaller blast but spread a massive amount of radiation, thus causing a large number of casualties while inflicting much less damage to infrastructure. Due to international outrage, the last warheads were dismantled in the 1990s, but the technology remains.

Iran’s current leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, is not rational. Following the complete domination of Iranian air space by the Israeli Air Force and the destruction caused by our bombers, he declared “victory” in a public address. His particular sect of Islam, which calls for the annihilation of Israel and the United States, oppresses women, and sentences nonbelievers to death, is tantamount to mass insanity. Allowing him and his followers to possess nuclear weapons is a risk the rest of the world simply cannot tolerate. Until the Iranian people can rise up and take their nation back from these lunatics, we must continue to prevent them from acquiring or developing nuclear weapons.

In recent years, I’ve noticed another surge in talk radio—the number of advertisements (and “public service” spots) which subtly attempt to sway listeners with more “moderate” ideology. These ads usually begin with something on which we can all agree but then move the needle just a little left of the point of agreement. Currently, there is a concentrated campaign to advance leftist ideology by starting with a word that has a positive connotation for people all across the political spectrum: rights. We all love rights, but these ads confuse rights with privileges, and not by accident.

One of the ads ends with a little jingle, “Know your human rights, know your human rights.” It advises listeners that they have 16 basic human rights that are not to be infringed, although it stops short of saying just who might be trying to infringe them. Conservatives and libertarians understand that the US Constitution exists to protect our rights from the government; leftists believe that rights are granted by the government. However, the ad to which I’m referring has no connection to our Constitution, as it’s a product of the United Kingdom. A sensible person might be curious about a non-profit organization from another nation talking to Americans about human rights. Globalism is a leftist ideology.

Some years ago, I heard a church sermon that made a relevant point. Suppose your friend invites you over and offers you some brownies fresh from the oven. Placing a brownie on your plate, your friend expounds on the extra effort and care that was put into making the brownies: “I used only the finest imported cocoa, organic eggs and flour, and pure virgin olive oil.” You pick up the brownie to take a bite and your friend adds, “Oh, and I put in a teaspoon of dog crap.”

“What?” you exclaim, dropping the brownie back on the plate.

“Don’t worry,” your friend laughs. “It was just one teaspoon, and I baked them thoroughly to kill any bacteria. You won’t be able to taste the dog crap at all.”

Most of us would leave the brownie on the plate, followed by a serious re-evaluation of our friendships. Anyone who would try to coax you into consuming dog excrement is probably a good person to avoid. Next time you might not get a warning. Similarly, leftists who claim to be championing human rights start with the good stuff. Everyone has a right to life, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc., rights that are covered by our Constitution. I certainly have no disagreement with that. But then comes the dog excrement: you have rights to the wealth and labor of others.

One of these is a right to education. I’m a strong supporter of public education, but I stop short of considering it a right. Your rights end when they infringe on the rights of others. I taught high school for fifteen years, and while I thoroughly enjoyed teaching, I would not—and could not—have done it for free. No student or their family had the “right” to my labor. It was the collective choice of the taxpayers of the school district to provide the school buildings, hire the teachers and support staff, purchase necessary materials, and establish a curriculum. Education is a privilege, one that our society has agreed is important enough to make available to all of our children. It should invoke gratitude, not entitlement.

Similarly, leftist organizations have invented a right to healthcare. This includes our American Bar Association, which demonstrates just how far removed that organization is from reality. They state, “Health is not a commodity; it is a right. We must take back that right from profiteers and demand a universal health care system for all.” Hmmm. So all doctors and nurses must provide their services for free? Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies must operate with 100% volunteers and free facilities and equipment? Perhaps the American Medical Association should counter with a demand for free legal services: “Legal representation is not a commodity; it is a right. We must take back that right from profiteers and demand a universal legal representation system for all.” Or we could just ban all lawyers from receiving healthcare, which could go a long way toward restoring the sanity of our nation.

More insidious “rights” like the right to “safety” (which is really a veiled attack on our Second Amendment) lurk within the policies of other globalist agencies like the World Economic Forum. If some leftist idiot feels unsafe, then we must surrender our guns to accommodate him. Dig deep enough and you will find demands for rights to force others to provide just about anything leftists desire: housing, transportation, employment, and even “respect.” With all due “respect,” they can go to Hell.

If the media had any real journalists left, they might have noted that the gold in Fort Knox is meaningless. Even with the recent surge in bullion prices, the value of the entire stock of gold in Fort Knox is about $600 billion. Last year the federal government spent about $6.8 trillion, or 850 times the value of that gold. So if someone did steal all of it, he or she would be taking less than half of what our government spends in a single day. The gold that is there was mostly acquired from foreign governments in trade, although in 1934, under President Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership, Americans were required to turn in almost all their personal gold and silver to the government in exchange for paper currency.

Many people still mistakenly believe that money printed by the Federal Reserve for our nation is backed by physical assets like gold, silver, infrastructure, and land. The truth is that the money in your wallet is just a promise, based on the anticipated productivity of the American people. Put together every asset owned by our federal government, and it still wouldn’t cover a year of spending. Since our government has for more than a century been spending more than it receives through taxes, our national debt has been increasing steadily, now marked at well over $37 trillion. If you want to try to wrap your head around that, search USdebtclock.org, which shows the accumulating debt in real time. The last six digits (hundreds of thousands) move so fast you can barely see them.

When you take our astronomical debt and divide it by the number of households in our nation, the average family now “owes” just under $100,000 (it might actually surpass that amount by the time you get to read this column). I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I don’t have an extra $100,000 tucked under the mattress. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t hand it off to our government so they can waste more. The reality is that we will pass that debt on to our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I have a new granddaughter due to arrive at the end of May. If we don’t get government spending under control, by the time she is 21 she will owe more than that $100,000 herself.

I’ve made no secret of my support of Elon Musk and his DOGE team identifying the fraud and waste in government departments. How the morons on the left can possibly be opposed to his efforts is completely mystifying. Suppose you had an accident resulting in a badly broken arm, causing you excruciating pain. When you get to the hospital, the ER staff puts you on pain medication, easing your suffering. Then the doctor comes in, examines your arm, and says he would like to prepare you for surgery so he can reset the bone, put in some surgical screws, and get you on the path to healing. You ask if it will involve more pain, and he says that it will, but without surgery, the arm will not heal. It might even become infected and require amputation. A rational person would agree to get the surgery. A leftist would accuse the doctor of being a sadist and demand to be discharged. Then he’d organize his friends and march around the hospital with signs saying the doctor is a monster. They might even key his car or threaten his family for good measure.

Unfortunately, like the gold in Fort Knox, the efforts of DOGE will not be enough. We need a massive reduction in the size and scope of our federal government, and we need it now. Every time a carefully selected district judge oversteps his or her authority to stop President Trump’s efforts to reduce and reform our government, it delays the inevitable. If your credit card bill is more than you can pay, you have to stop using that card until you get your spending under control. You might even have to sell some things to get back on your feet. What you probably won’t be able to do is go to your boss and demand to have your wages increased to cover your spending habits.

We had no federal income tax until 1913. The initial formation of the federal government was largely funded by voluntary donations and sales of land. Temporary taxes were implemented to fund the Civil War and the Spanish-American War. In each of these cases, the need existed before the revenue was acquired. Following the Civil War, tariffs on beer, wine, tobacco, and liquor accounted for 90% of federal revenue. Our first debt, $17 billion, arose during the Great Depression. It increased almost every year afterward, first exceeding $1 trillion in 1982. We must return to funding our federal government on an “as needed” basis. Sending money to Washington so politicians can “find” the need for it is very bad practice, one that could ultimately lead to the end of our nation.

Predictably, leftists and their apologists in the mainstream media have gone berserk. The world is surely ending! This will destroy the economy, ruin our relationships with other nations, and leave our store shelves bare! No doubt it will also contribute to global warming and systemic racism, while bankrupting Social Security and causing elderly people and children to starve! Oh, woe is us!

The stock market certainly took a beating in response to the tariffs, with the various indices losing 6-8% of their value in the two trading days following implementation of the tariffs. While the media has claimed that this erased something like $5 trillion, the fact is that only those who choose to sell stocks at their new lower prices will lose anything. A stock’s value is only an imaginary number until that stock is sold. Most smart investors will instead hang on to their stocks and buy more in anticipation of a return to rising prices.

That raises an important question: who are the people invested in the stock market? While most of us have retirement plans or pensions that consist at least partially of a stock portfolio, the rich are the primary investors. The wealthiest 10% of Americans currently hold over 93% of all stocks, while the poorest 50% own just 1%. This gap widened greatly under the “leadership” of Joe Biden. Irina Ivanova, an editor at Fortune magazine, characterized the trend, writing, “The running of the bulls in 2023 was more like the waddle of the fat cats.” On January 10, leftist news source Axios complained that “the rich now own a record share of stocks.” Shouldn’t the left be cheering as the rich lose money?

Considering that an increasing number of wealthy individuals have aligned themselves with the left, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that some of the stock market’s losses may have been engineered deliberately just to make President Trump’s tariffs look bad. This is definitely the case with Tesla stock, which has been artificially devalued by people selling in a bizarre attempt to demonstrate their rage at Elon Musk for revealing the waste and fraud in our government. There is far more emotion and luck than science involved in the movement of stock prices. Unless, of course, you’re a member of our government, like Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, who takes advantage of your position to engage in insider trading. Corruption beats luck every time.

“Experts” will claim that the stock market fall is a sensible response to the implementation of tariffs. Those experts are denying history. Our nation declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776, but there was no federal income tax until the Sixteenth Amendment was passed in 1913. Prior to that, 90 percent of all federal revenue came from tariffs on imported goods and excise taxes on liquor, beer, wine and tobacco. By no coincidence, it was the implementation of the federal income tax that spawned the administrative state, the web of bureaucracies that has been growing ever since. It is unlikely that we will ever restore our freedoms and sovereignty until we end the ability of the federal government to reach into the pockets of the people.

Tariffs are only being applied to countries that already impose tariffs on American goods. A few years ago, a company bought several mature trees on our farm. The logs were pulled out into one of our fields and arranged for an auction. A representative from the company told us that the logs were bought by a firm from Malaysia. They would load them aboard a ship that was equipped with a fully functional sawmill. The logs would be turned into lumber while at sea, sold to a Malaysian furniture company, and then the finished furniture would be shipped back and sold in the United States. Why could they afford to do this instead of letting American companies build the furniture? Because they used slave labor, had far fewer regulations, and faced no import tariffs for their furniture, even though they charge a 47% tariff on goods imported from our country.

Through the 1970s, Grand Rapids was knows as “the Furniture Capital of the World.” The majority of its furniture factories are now closed because they could not compete with imports. Even nearby Devereaux, now just a wide spot in the road, once housed a major furniture store. We’ve been treated to a rash of lies from our government about transitioning to an “information economy.” Here’s some information for you government economists: if we don’t manufacture goods, we will fail. Our economy is based on the productivity of our citizens. Government doesn’t make anything but excuses.

Despite the darkest predictions of the left, the tariffs have already started to work, less than a week since they were implemented. Over fifty countries have reached out with a desire to negotiate. It may take a while, but the rest will come around. We are done giving the bullies our lunch money every day. We might get a bloody nose or split lip, but the United States will no longer accept unfair trade practices from other nations. If your friends demand that you pick up the tab every time you go to lunch, you need to find some new friends.

I’m about as happy as can be with the work of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), even as desperate leftists continue using “lawfare” to frustrate their efforts to root out corruption and wasteful spending within our federal government. Their carefully selected judges have overstepped their authority and will only succeed in delaying the inevitable. They will be overturned on appeal or by the Supreme Court, and their ridiculous rulings will serve as a catalyst for more clearly defining and limiting their power for the future, something that is long overdue.

I am similarly pleased with the fast start that Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has achieved in reining in the use of artificial ingredients in our food and the corruption of Big Pharma. I will admit to being completely surprised about just how bad things have become, as I had no idea how many ingredients commonly used in food here are banned just about everywhere else in the world. And while I am not opposed to vaccinations, nor convinced that they are behind the rise of autism, it’s completely reasonable to look into the monumental increase in the number of vaccines given to babies and the schedule on which they are delivered. Common sense tells me that injecting an infant with a vaccine intended to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, for example, is more than a little premature. Of course, with the number of pedophiles in our government, perhaps that also needs further thought.

Now comes the tough part. President Trump can not make our nation great again alone. Elon Musk and DOGE can’t possibly find every bit of corruption and waste in our massive federal bureaucracy, nor can they guarantee that it won’t simply return in a few years. And Secretary Kennedy can’t make us all healthy. Our country has been given a brief window of opportunity to restore our strength, sovereignty, and sanity, but only if we the people take advantage of it.

First, we cannot let up on our representatives in Congress. It wasn’t only the Biden and Obama administrations that put out nation in its current peril. The administrative state began with the presidency of Woodrow Wilson. There have been plenty of Republican presidents in the last 100 years, as well as Republican majorities in Congress. Our elected representatives, through corruption and just plain laziness, have surrendered their authority to bureaucratic agencies within and outside our government. Go to town hall meetings, write letters, make phone calls. With the pending end of the federal Dept. of Education, it’s very important that you attend school board meetings and let your voice be heard.

Second, we must demand justice in the form of severe punishment for those who are found guilty of fraud and negligence in our government. Republicans have a bad habit of wanting to play nice when they are in the majority. They are like Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football, believing that this time he can trust Lucy not to yank the ball away at the last moment, even though she’s done it every other time. Some of these people are responsible for taking millions of dollars away from taxpayers and they must be held accountable.

Finally, (and I’m going to make some of you angry here), we must take responsibility for our own health. It’s great that Secretary Kennedy is making food producers eliminate unnecessary chemical additives, and I’m delighted that Big Pharma is losing its cozy relationship with the Dept. of Health and Human Services. But the truth is Americans have become fat and lazy on our own. 42% of adults and 17% of children in our nation are classified as obese. Not a couple of pounds overweight. Obese. Big Pharma loves that, because obesity virtually guarantees a lifetime dependency on heart and diabetes medications, not to mention the damage it causes to the body. Most of those people you see riding around in carts at Walmart are doing so because they have overloaded their knees. Drive around with a ton of cargo in your half-ton truck and see how that works out. Eating responsibly and exercising doesn’t require government approval.

Don’t believe the pollsters who are telling you that people regret voting for President Trump, or that they don’t want Elon Musk and DOGE investigating fraud and eliminating government waste. Last fall those same polls were predicting that Kamala Harris would be President. Our nation dodged a very dangerous bullet, but dodging a bullet is not the same as being bullet proof. It’s time we return fire.

Because most people are wisely skeptical of solar energy, especially those of us who live in rural areas and small towns, our state government has taken away our local control in deciding where solar abominations can be placed. In November of 2023, House Bills 5120 and 5121 were passed and signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer was a vocal proponent for removing locals’ authority and giving it to the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), consisting of three members appointed by . . . wait for it . . . Gretchen Whitmer! Dictators love to dictate.

Democrats passed those bills on party lines, and Whitmer signed them despite strong opposition from the Michigan Farm Bureau, Michigan Townships Association, Michigan Agri-Business Association, Michigan Association of Counties, and Michigan Association of Planning, among other groups and numerous individuals. Gosh, who would have thought that farm organizations would oppose more “farms?” Recently she and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources also authorized over 400 acres of state forest land to be clear cut for more solar abominations. Fortunately, the public outcry got the attention of our congress and the company who was purchasing the lease on the land, and the plan has been sidelined, at least for now.

Whitmer and other liars in our government like to say that people oppose solar abominations for “esthetic” purposes. We just think they are ugly. Newsflash Gretchen—if ugly was a problem, you couldn’t get elected dog catcher. While solar abominations are definitely not pleasant to view, they pose a myriad of problems that are of far more concern than their appearance, the primary one being that they simply can not work as an alternative to fossil fuel power plants.

There is no question that solar abominations (and their equally idiotic partner, wind turbines), will never provide the power needed in our state. First, Michigan doesn’t get much sun. We rank behind only New York and Alaska for the lowest number of clear days per year (71) and total hours of sunlight per year (2711). Solar panels only generate electricity when the sun is shining, so the only way they can be a reliable souce of energy is by storing that electricity in batteries. Storing electricity always results in some loss. And, of course, mining the materials used for modern batteries is horrible for the environment and leaves us at the mercy of other nations to acquire those materials.

The problems with solar power are further exacerbated by Whitmer’s demands for electric vehicles (EVs). Currently, Michigan citizens own about 2.7 million automobiles that run on gasoline or diesel. That is 2.7 million small, independent power plants that generate the electricity that your car uses along with making it move. Imagine the increased need for electricity generation if those 2.7 million vehicles are replaced with EVs. Whitmer and her Democrat friends also passed legislation mandating that Michigan is powered by 100% renewable energy by 2040, including all state-owned vehicles. Thankfully, President Trump has ended Joe Biden’s ridiculous mandate that 50% of all new vehicles produced by 2030 must be EVs.

Common sense is the primary motivator of opposition to solar abominations. Instead of destroying farmland, for example, why aren’t we locating solar abominations in brownfields? Brownfields are areas in which former industrialization caused harmful chemical contamination to the ground, leaving the areas unsuitable for occupation. As an early industrial state, Michigan has plenty of them, including many in Jackson and Albion. They are usually surrounded by high fences with warning signs posted. They are also located in industrial zones, which means they are close to the existing power grid. Michigan just received a few million dollars in federal grants to help clean up some of our brownfields. If the goal was really to provide power, wouldn’t that make more sense than locating them in rural areas?

One of our local citizens, Chris Talbot, has founded the group “Stop Solar Panels.” You can find it on Facebook. At our first meeting in February, Dr. Paul Kenyon provided us with some sobering facts. With the power plants scheduled to be taken offline in the next two years, by 2027 Michigan will start experiencing regular blackouts and brown outs. Whitmer’s term as our governor ends in 2026. As long as the Chinese Communist Party keeps funding Whitmer’s hopes of running for President, she’ll keep using our tax dollars to fund solar abominations, battery plants, and windmills. When told that French citizens had no bread to eat, Marie Antoinette famously replied, “Let them eat cake.” Thanks to Whitmer’s corruption, Michiganders won’t even be able to bake a cake.

Lefty ordered a third beer, and it happened again. This time another patron, Billy-Bob, who was sitting a couple stools away, approached Lefty. “I know what’s happening to your beer. Every time you look up at the game, the bartender is taking a drink from your glass. Look, I even took a video on my phone.” He showed Lefty the video, which clearly depicted the bartender sneaking drinks from Lefty’s beer.

Lefty immediately became furious. He turned to Billy-Bob and shouted, “You’re not the bartender, and I didn’t ask you to watch my glass. And I sure as heck didn’t ask you to video tape me! You got no business looking at my beer. What are you, some kind of wise guy?” He then turned to the bartender and demanded that he throw Billy-Bob out.

Less than ten years ago, Elon Musk was the darling of the left. His Tesla electric vehicles were set to revolutionize the auto industry, his innovative approach to space travel was opening up the solar system for colonization, and his innovations offered a potential end to the terrible specter of—GASP—climate change. Musk was young, brilliant, and a really fun guy. He had been born in South Africa, later gaining citizenship in Canada and then the United States. Yes, as Musk likes to joke, he is a true “African-Amercan.”

Then Musk started paying attention to the growing use of censorship in social media, the inefficiency of our government, and the waste of money and resources it perpetuates. He stopped supporting Democrat politicians and got behind President Trump’s campaign. As the richest man in the world (a title he periodically alternates with Jeff Bezos), when Musk speaks, people listen. The left only likes billionaires who work exclusively for their side.

I can’t cover Musk’s entire biography in this column, but he’s a very transparent individual. Revealed through that transparency is the fact that he’s also charitable, extremely intelligent, and likes to have fun. What I can do is address some of the falsehoods the left has made up about him now that he’s using his position in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to expose waste and fraud:

1. “Elon Musk made a Nazi salute!” Yeah, this one is almost too dumb. Musk is a hyperactive guy and a little bit quirky. Some claim he is on the autism spectrum. The gesture he made was borne of enthusiasm, not fascism. Simply ask yourself WHY he would make a Nazi salute. Is it possible that he concealed his allegiance to Hitler throughout his entire life and then chose to expose it on stage? What sense does that make? As a staunch, long-time supporter of Israel, if Musk is a Nazi, he’s definitely not very good at it.

2. “Elon Musk is making $8 million per day for working at DOGE!” Musk takes no salary for his work at DOGE. He does make a lot of money from government contracts that have been in place for some time because he’s really smart and can do things our government can’t, like bringing home the astronauts NASA has stranded in space for the last four months. Any money our government gives to his companies is money well spent.

3. “No one voted for Musk and he has access to all of our private information!” No one voted for mass murderer Anthony Fauci, either. Presidents get to appoint the people who work for them. DOGE receives information the same as any other government agency, and very little of it is at the “personal” level. DOGE is looking at budgets and spending by agencies, not individual taxpayers.

Yesterday, at the direction of President Trump, Musk sent an email to all federal employees asking them to justify their employment by responding with a summary of their productivity for the week. He clarified the request in a second message: “An email with some bullet points that make any sense at all is acceptable!” That’s a very low bar. President Trump later added that if employees failed to respond, or were unable to show meaningful productivity, they should be fired. The left has become apoplectic. How dare he ask employees to demonstrate that they actually perform work for their pay!

Elon Musk has created no fraud or waste. He hasn’t started any wars, used our “justice” department to attack his political opponents, nor suppressed our Constitutional rights. He’s just exposing the people who have. If you don’t see that as a good thing, you should probably give up drinking.