29% of Americans Voted in Midterm Elections

It turns out that the voter turn-out at Tuesday’s midterms on a national level was not as high as observers and analysts predicted would be.

According to Channel 7 KBZK.com in Bozeman, Montana:

Nationally, voter turnout was higher Tuesday than for the mid-term elections four years ago….The turnout is projected at 42 percent of registered voters. That translates to about 90 million people, 6.2 million more than in 2006. [Emphasis added.]

To analyze it much further, the break-down of the math is like this:

• According to the Midterm Elections 2010 Rates data table at the United States Elections Project website, 90,504,100 registered voters showed up to vote at the polls on Tuesday. That’s 90.5 million voters casting their votes for Highest Office (which is the highest vote counted for Governor, U.S. Senator, and combined House of Representatives). The Voting-Eligible Population (VEP), which is the number of eligible registered voters for this year’s 2010 midterms, is 218,054,301. Divide the Highest Office by the VEP, and what you end up getting is 42% of the total number of minority eligible registered voters electing the 112th Congress to office via pluralities/majorities.
• According to the Census Bureau‘s U.S. Population Clock, there are exactly 310,636,612 Americans living in the United States. If one takes the total number of eligible registered voters — that being 90.5 million — who showed up to vote on Tuesday and divide it by the total U.S. population count (as given by the Clock), only 29% of the entire population, whether they are registered to vote or not, cast their votes, thereby electing the 112th Congress to office via pluralities/majorities.

That leaves 71% of Americans either choosing not to vote or being unable to vote because they were prohibited from doing so (because they were convicted of a felony which legally prevents and prohibits them from voting, they were under the age of 18, or they were fundamentally and legally disenfranchised). Furthermore, that percentage alone is not an indicator of why those who opted out of voting this year chose not to engage in the process. Thus, “apathy” is not the reason for those who embrace non-voting as a means to reject the political process; on the contrary, “non-consent,” which is the tacit choice not to be governed by the ruling elite, is the reason for those who have turned their backs on voting.

For the next two years, the congressional and senatorial establishments will “represent” (rule) us, meaning that he or she, regardless of whether either he or she has an R or D next to his or her name, will have the legitimate power to have authority over us.

Quite par for the course.

[H/T goes to Tom Knapp of KN@PPSTER and the creator of the newly-formed Ⓧ2012 Project for bringing this to everyone’s attention in the Liberty movement.]

Senator-elect Rand Paul Chooses Campaign Aide as Chief of Staff

Senator-elect Rand Paul, who won his senatorial race in Kentucky against Democratic opponent Jack Conway, has chosen campaign aide Doug Stafford, a long-time GOP political consultant, to be his Chief of Staff who will be responsible for assembling a Senate staff.

WLKY.com reports:

Stafford serves as vice president of National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and as a consultant to the Campaign for Liberty, an organization chaired by Paul’s father, Ron Paul, a Texas congressman and former GOP presidential candidate.

I will admit that, while Conway was worse than Paul on a number of key issues, Rand has made me feel uncomfortable throughout the election season with his comments on a handful of issues that obviously paint him as a social conservative on that front. His troubling positions, as best as I can assemble them, include his positions on gay marriage and medical marijuana, Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act* (specifically because of his poorly-argued, poorly-worded semi-libertarian defense of private racist proprietors who refused service to people on the grounds of their skin color), his defense of the War on Terror (specifically his opposition to closing down Guantanamo Bay a.k.a. Gitmo and trying the “enemy combatants” in New York that issue became the center of a much-publicized controversy), his polarizing stances on illegal immigration and birthright citizenship, abortion, transferring some functions like disbursing student loans and Pell Grants of the Department of Education (which he does favor ending, and I concur with him on this) to other departments and agencies in lieu of eliminating them, to name a few. Additionally, his comments on the recent BP oil spill, in which he called Obama’s criticism of BP “un-American,” rankled me because, although I oppose the federal government’s involvement in the clean-up, BP ought to have been held responsible for the spill and be forced to pay for the clean-up costs.

I’m willing to reserve judgment and see how he handles his first six-year term. But don’t expect me to hold my breath either.

[*Note: While I agree in principle that racist proprietors have a right to be racist and do have a right to exclude anyone for any reason (even if it has to do with that individual’s skin color) because of my support for freedom of association, that does NOT translate into me saying that I condone the behavior. I am a much bigger fan of community organizing (like Obama is), and I do favor boycotts, sit-ins, non-violent and voluntary ostracism, and other forms of non-violent protests aimed at private statist employers who use their bigotry as a moral and rational justification for averting non-violent customers from entering their establishments. Such criticisms of these grotesque practices are valid and widely accepted in the Liberty movement. It is regrettable that Paul had to reverse his position on that provision of the bill due to the ugly fall-out of his comments which were clearly poorly-constructed and ill-thought out.]

The GOP Reneges on Promises of Huge Spending Cuts

Except for the Senate, the Republicans have complete control of the House. While the Tea Partiers are stoked over their newly-backed GOP congressional line-up and its “pledge” to “pare down” federal spending, “balance” the federal budget, and “slashing” the federal deficit, their enthusiasm for the new Congress after last night’s election results will be short-lived.

House Republican leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who’s poised to become the next House Majority Leader and with congressional Republicans flocking to his side, has gone on record saying that his conservative colleagues and he will be pursuing “across-the-board” cuts in “discretionary spending” and cuts in the state’s payroll. He has come out noting that he wants such spending levels pared down to 2008 levels not excluding defense, which is nonsensical because the GOP, especially prior to Election Day, has been vague on specifics on the budget, aside from talks about “saving” taxpayers $100 billion a year (which is meaningless). After all, Cantor has shown no interest in gutting discretionary spending at all, before and after the elections. (The GOP’s only achievement so far is the push of a spending cap that would cut the outlay by $20 billion as opposed to what Obama wanted, but talk is cheap in the political scheme of things.)

Discretionary spending is a form of outlay that Congress authorizes by “appropriating” (stealing) taxpayer monies every fiscal year. This is separate from “mandatory spending” – another outlay specifically set (by default) to allocate stolen taxpayer funds to the entitlement programs for retirees and needy who are dependent on and can’t live without their Medicare, Social Security, and food stamps.

Most Americans are not aware that discretionary spending (and this is what the two major parties don’t want them to know) only accounts for approximately 33 percent of the entire federal budget. This translates into meaning that the GOP is only interested in a that minute amount of spending. They are set only on those cuts, the GOP pledging that military (defense) and “homeland security” spending are off-limits notwithstanding. So much for the “huge spending cuts” that the Republicans promised the Tea Partiers throughout the election year.

In other words, the GOP has just reneged on their promises of huge spending cuts – promises to which they made to the Tea Partiers. Their so-called referendum against Obama has, for all intents and purposes, gone up in smoke.

With all of this in mind, the only message that one can deliver to the Tea Partiers is this: don’t you feel better now that the Big Statist Republicans whom you passionately and excitedly elected have your best interests at heart?

Yesterday’s Midterm Elections

My good friend and mentor Sheldon Richman is absolutely spot-on: elections are the American people’s opiate. The political process may make you feel so special about yourself, but once you cast your vote for your “preferred candidate,” you end up leaving the polls (and, if you’re lucky, you may respond to the exit poll surveys they always give you), and go home and return to your daily business (whatever it was what you were doing). Then, as the obedient slave whom you’re expected to be, you doze off until the next event comes. The magnificent state will coddle you, protect you, and be there for you while you’re asleep.

Wow. What a great, noble system. Not!

Hypocrisy and Absurdity Reign in This Election Season

Today is Election Day, and nothing can be worse than the incessant impetus of the state-worshiping electorate swarming into their local voting precincts, whether they are public “government” schools, firehouses, and other state-approved municipalities, to cast their state-sanctioned, state-endorsed, and state-approved votes for their preferred candidates for public “government” office. This even entails their votes for or against state-approved measures on the ballot.

The Tea Parties’ call for constitutional government, tax-and-spending cuts, no cap and trade, fiscal accountability, and a repeal of the recently-passed, Obama-approved health care program, as stated in its recently-circled “Contract from America” document which has been pushed and lobbied by many of its backers, rings hollow in comparison to their steadfast backing of the establishment’s Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and controlling and their need to militarize the borders between the U.S. and Mexico. One must include their lack of condemnation of the former Bush administration’s profligate spending (although some of them like conservative The Dana Show host Dana Loesche have skewered W.’s domestic agenda). Last but not least, they have not even bothered to deplore the Department of Homeland Security‘s Transportation Security Administration checkpoints’ thoroughly invasive search and frisking procedures commonly known as “enhanced patdowns” along with its utter disregard and violation of passengers’ privacy and civil liberties via its screeners’ use of naked body scanners at nearly every airport across the country. (Ironically, the Bush and Obama administrations “informed” us that the scanners wouldn’t record our images, but the recently-leaked photos of the scanners prove otherwise. Even the U.S. Marshalls Service admitted it.) Given that the conservatives’ “revolutionary” movement has put Congressmen John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and nearly the entire GOP in the House and the Senate “on probation,” should we seriously take them at their word?

The “Contract from America” document is a de facto embarrassment and fraud on the American electorate, its semi-libertarian undertones notwithstanding. It’s nothing more than a descendant of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America,” although a number of GOP’ers more or less liken the GOP’s “Pledge to America” document to it. No where in this newest proposal does it tacitly say anything about repealing nearly every federal agency, regulation, and a host of entitlement programs. There is no call to end the U.S. federal government’s disastrous energy and foreign policies (which go hand-in-hand in reality). For example, the manifesto calls for an “Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy,” which mandates the following:

Authorize the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation, lowering prices and creating competition and jobs.

Even worse, there is no call to repeal the federal income tax, the capital gains tax, the estate tax, and repeal all the federal spending (which constitutional scholars on the laissez-faire/minarchist side would deride as “unconstitutional”). Only a mention of a “moratorium on all earmarks” unless a balanced budget appears, but why a moratorium? Why not outright abolition of the earmarks and the spending? In the interim, a gutting of the spending would be much preferable to that option, but obviously this is done specifically to pander to a base of conservatives who really don’t want cuts in or repeal of entitlement, pork, and defense spending out of fear that such moves would affect their piece of the welfare-warfare pie. After all, there’s nothing better than a conservative politician who is buying votes from blocs of welfare-worshiping, warfare-worshiping Tea Party activists and their voting base who are primarily interested in and defensive of propping up and maintaining their hegemonies of the Middle East.

One would think that the Tea Parties would field GOP candidates who are solid on pro-peace, pro-civil liberties platforms. With the possible exception of Ron Paul, the idea of said candidates is an oxymoron in terms. The vast majority of the Republican establishment is a warmongering outfit, and one can include all the Tea Parties on that column. Republican congressional candidates running on anti-war and national-security state platforms might have been worthy of consideration for the electorate (despite the likelihood of grumblings from the Tea Partiers), given that it might have energized scores of Americans who have been increasingly viewing the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as both fiscal albatrosses and embarrassing quagmires. But don’t count on that. The Tea Party is fundamentally opposed to that idea, and their conservative underlings would scream bloody murder at the prospect of an anti-war, anti-state Republican in their midst. Thank you Tea Partiers and Republicans. Your pro-war, anti-civil liberties records have emboldened President Obama to magnify his assaults on the peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire Middle East, and on our own shores as well and bolster international support for global hegemony. Obama’s barbaric policies, which were carried over from the Bush administration and made into his own, ought to incite anger from every American.

The “Pledge to America” manifesto is worse than the above-mentioned one. It gives lip service to slashing spending and paring down the deficit, but it barely elaborates on some specifics. The Republicans’ conservative base and the Tea Party are heavily putting an enormous amount of stock in the GOP to retake the House (which is very likely after today) and possibly conquer the Senate to carry their agendas, but they are foolish to do such a thing. The GOP is asking the Tea Party and their conservative supporters to have faith in their fiscal restraint, but what do they have to show for it after Bush’s rampant spending during his years in the Oval Office? After being wiped out politically in 2008, their credibility and respectability have been virtually obliterated beyond repair. Even their support for the War on Drugs, the War on Poverty, and other pervasive government programs have never wavered. What will it take for the Tea Party candidates to wake up and realize that, despite one of their concerns is cuts in entitlement spending (despite the fact that 63 percent of the movement is opposed to that), Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are also government programs? Even the Pentagon and the Military Industrial Complex are programs too.

And what of the Democrats? The Democrats have come off as absurd hypocrites on the home and war fronts without question. President Obama has broken more than a handful of promises to the American people, promises that he made to his constituency and his base who backed him to deliver his promise of “change” to the U.S. His promises, such as making his administration transparent to an already-skeptical, already-cynical American public, ending the Bush-propped, Bush-backed War in Iraq (which he’s failed to do twice in a row), digging the economy out of the Bush-imposed recession, and ending Washington’s culture of interest interests and lobbyism, were never intended to be delivered. After all, he has already backpedaled on his intentions to end the military’s old “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (twice in a row, point of fact), and his appeal to a federal appeals court that overturned that Clinton-era executive order has already enraged his gay progressive Democratic base. Oh, and his expensive stimulus and Cash-for-Clunker programs and bailouts of GM and Chrysler have really bloated the deficit even further, which have become fodder for the right-wing talking heads on Fox News.

Obama has already embroiled the nation further in the Iraqi and Afghani conflicts than Bush ever had. After all, we are talking about the same current president who has proceeded with Bush’s war policies by amplifying his genocidal killings in the Muslim nations and blatantly declared war on our civil liberties and the Constitution. Unlike Obama, Bush did not so much possess a morsel of authority to engage in assassinations of Americans in the name of the War on Terror without a shred of due process. His pledge to pull the plug on Guantanamo Bay — that is, releasing all Americans imprisoned as “enemy combatants” who would be tried by a an American criminal court in New York (given that they are constitutionally accorded with the right to due process and a right to a speedy trial) in lieu of a U.S. military tribunal without the presence of a jury of their peers and the right to a defense by an attorney on their behalf — was rescinded due to conservative outcries because expressions of sympathy and empathy for “terrorists” would be tantamount to appeasing and treason. Such a move would give the loopy fringe right wing plenty of ammunition, thereby denouncing Obama as a supporter of terrorism. Obama’s backpedaling on reversing Bush’s foreign policy would enable the Republicans to brand the President sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause. Can you imagine how that would play out for Obama’s re-election chances? Those labeled slapped on him and the Democratic Party would make the Democrats’ chances for re-election to the House and the Senate more problematic than it is now.

Americans who are convinced that the country is moving towards the wrong direction should realize that the GOP’s power grab of the House and possibly the Senate won’t do anything to unroot the manifestation, cause, and flow of statism in this country and abroad. The state’s tentacles have reached every facet of American and international lives as we know it. Republicans who claim that this election is about a “referendum against Obama” are deluding themselves because it’s truly a referendum to exact more control of American lives and wiping away more of our freedoms than ever Republican-style. The Democrats are at least honest about not being in favor of laissez faire and individual liberty; after all, they have never believed in the individual, just only in the collective. But the Republicans’ incessant claims of championing those values are not worth the campaign literature on which they are printed. Every statist action from exacting conquest of other nations (including the Muslim world) to engineering government-mandated pensions and medical care for retired and poor people must be scrapped. The much-worse welfare-warefare state that has inundated the United Kingdom and Europe will soon metastasize to our soil. The welfare-warfare statism in our homeland is untenable and unmanageable.

All the odious signs of the Republicans are there. Once they are in power (and after tonight, they will be), they will proceed with the War on Drugs and be more aggressive with their xenophobic, nationalistic, and jingoistic anti-immigration zealotry. All the campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, the Tea Parties and their Republican operatives will conquer and rule the American people like their Democratic counterparts in a statist conservative Republican manner.

Hypocrisy and absurdity surely reign in this election season. Especially on Election Day today.