Donald Trump

There is no Magic Money, Which is Why Leaders Have to Make Tough Choices

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

The federal government is shut down. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has no budget or appropriations bill. These are just words on a page to most people, because most people don’t eat, sleep, and pray politics, believe it or not. They go to work, take care of their families, and try to live their lives the best they can. They cannot simply decide to stop doing that, so their time to read about what the government is doing or proposing is very limited. They kind of need the cliff notes version so they have a basic understanding of the problems, and what should or can be done. I’m going to give it to them here- there is no money.

Your county, your city, and your school board basically are being kept open using your local taxes- often property taxes, but also sometimes sales and income taxes as well. Yes, the federal and state government are still collecting revenue from you right now (taxes), but they have no legal authority to spend new money moving forward. For now there are still some payments that were pre-approved that are going out, but even they are starting to run out of legal authority. In the not so distant future, there will simply be no more money going from the feds or the state out to counties, non-profits, cities, townships, public-private partnerships, or school boards. The net effect of this is devastating. Most of what counties, municipal governments, and school boards do are mandatory actions imposed on them from Washington or Harrisburg. A school can’t cut school lunches or busing, for instance. A city can’t stop providing a police department or fire department, in some form. The feds and the state send along a rather large chunk of cash to finance all of that. Local governments don’t tax nearly a high enough rate to pay for all of these programs on their own. They still must provide them either way.

In other words, there is a breaking point. I recently slammed Roger Maclean for saying “we’ll get our money” in his Lehigh County Executive debate with Josh Siegel, because that is an ignorant statement. Even before the Federal shutdown, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” DOGE, and the last appropriations bill all cut federal payments to state and local governments. Now that cut is currently a zero. Worse yet, the state contribution to local governments and services is now zero. If they don’t give you money, money does not magically show up. Lying to the public and to public workers and saying “it will all be okay” is not only irresponsible and immoral, it takes the heat off of the people who should be doing their jobs and funding the locals. Congress shut down the government to cut Affordable Care Act subsidies, aka health care for working people who buy it. The State Senate hasn’t come to work in three months because they want to kill SEPTA and make Josh Shapiro look like a weirdo. No local official should be giving these people a pass. Local elected leaders should be pointing out all the ways this is beginning to hurt normal people.

Unfortunately a month out from an election, there are a lot of irresponsible children running for office who want to pretend nothing is wrong. Unfortunately both parties are doing it. I get it, nobody wants to be mom telling you to eat your peas and carrots instead of cake, and certainly nonsense like this from “The Quiet Man” Tom Giovanni, silent because he’s confused, isn’t helpful:

“As a candidate for Northampton County Executive, I believe it is unacceptable that the current administration has chosen to cut essential programs and furlough hardworking employees simply because Harrisburg has failed to pass a state budget. Leadership is about preparation, responsibility, and putting people first. Our county should never be held hostage to gridlock in the state capital.

Instead of hurting workers to make a political point, I recommended that the administration follow Treasurer Stacy Garrity’s example of providing loans to counties to cover short-term budget needs. That would have protected services and employees while avoiding unnecessary disruption.”

Garrity’s loans will not be sustainable soon, and are not free money for the county, but let’s get to the heart of this- actually Tom, people suffer when Harrisburg fails to pass a budget. It turns out state and national government are actually important in our society, and we’re learning that in real time. The county does not tax their population a high enough rate to absorb the costs of running itself if the state just decides to stop paying them. If your response to that is “do less!,” then please proceed to tell us if you’re going to close the prison, stop providing a court system, get rid of the department of children and youth, or close the nursing home. If you can name another county office that actually exists, you can choose that too. For the most part though, cutting those services would run into legal trouble, because most of what they do is mandatory under federal and state law.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the Democrats though who also aren’t willing to bite the bullet. The truth is that the solution to the counties and municipalities running out of money is Harrisburg and Washington making agreements that re-open the governments. There is no other answer, and frankly given that Democrats aren’t in charge of anything federally or the vacationing State Senate, we should be saying that. I’ll be voting for Tara Zrinski, but I don’t agree with her here:

We need to create avenues of mutual aid within the community by calling on community partners to fill some of the gaps in human services. We have already delayed funds to service providers but we did not entertain temporary redistribution of County Funds or a Tax Anticipation Note, which would allow us to borrow against anticipated property tax revenue. This TAN would be paid back when the State passes a budget but with approximately $350,000 – $400,000 of accumulated interest. This has been the sticking point for the administration that has no desire to bail the State out because the interest would not be paid back by the State. We cut our nose off to spite our face though. That interest is a small small price to pay for the safety of our community and the security of our workforce that knows we have their backs. Literally, it is an estimated 2 cents for every $1000 of assessed property value in the County. 

Well, here are my 2 cents– County Executive McClure has presented this as an inevitability. But there is nothing inevitable about abandoning our workforce. There are alternatives. There are reserves, reallocations, and other strategies available that don’t involve punishing workers or jeopardizing public safety. Leadership means problem-solving—not taking the easy way out by balancing the books on the backs of our workforce. When we destabilize human services, we invite higher long-term costs, greater risks, and more pain for the very residents we are sworn to protect. So today I stand with SEIU 668 workers, and I call on County Executive McClure: stop these furloughs. Protect the people who protect Northampton County. And I call on Harrisburg legislators: end the gridlock. Pass a fair budget now. You are literally arguing over what amounts to 6% of your overall budget– for what? To lower medicaid, to take away SNAP benefits. Where are the adults in the room?

Ok, so basically “the plan” here is to borrow money against money we’re supposed to get back in the future, never mind that we don’t know when that will be and therefore don’t really know if the $350-400k number will be final, and continue providing services? We should reallocate funds- should that be Medicaid/Medicare funds for Gracedale, the funding for the jail, the funding for the courts, or what mandatory spending should we end? And we should accept the 6% interest on a loan because Ann Flood and Joe Emrick don’t want to fund SEPTA and the GOP State Senators wanted to spend September and October at their beach houses?

Yes, I think it’s fucking awful and barbaric to do things like furlough caseworkers who literally work for way less than they’re worth to protect children, or to close Safe Harbor and services for the homeless, or to really lay off anyone who is working for the county, almost everything they do down there is to help those who are the least fortunate in our society. It’s awful and barbaric, and it’s who the hell we are as a society. The State Senate is not some abstract entity that has nothing to do with the people, the State Senate is the people. Ryan Mackenzie wants to cut subsidies for working poor people buying the Affordable Care Act and dramatically raise health insurance rates for people paying full price, such as myself (a recent amputee), but Ryan Mackenzie is in Washington shutting down our government for a reason- he was elected to go there. Let’s stop pretending we’re so much better than our government as a society, we picked the bastards who are in it.

What the local officials are proposing here is simply shifting the pain and suffering of the incompetence in Harrisburg and Washington from municipal and county employees to the broader society that pays their salaries. Is that fair and moral? Probably yes actually, you voted for this. Is it sensible or even remotely a sane way to run a community? No, of course not. Re-distributing the pain and suffering on to our full society sounds absolutely nuts if you say it out loud, and if you do it in front of someone they’ll either hit you or have you committed. Yes, it’s obviously an easier, temporary way out. It’s also utterly stupid.

If you sit here and say furloughs are a good thing, you’re a heartless moron that is robbing Peter to pay Paul. If you sit here and say we should just borrow our way through the ineptitude, you’re inept. The only good solution would be a Harrisburg and a Washington that aren’t trying to do anything possible to screw the least amongst them, and funded their governments. That is the solution. There is no “magic carpet ride” to utopia here. The money that keeps children, old people, the disabled, the sick, and the mentally incompetent safe in our society, it comes from the federal and state governments. Do I think McClure is insane to propose furloughs in the middle of both the campaign to succeed him and his own Congressional campaign? Yes, it could very well be political suicide. These are the actual choices being presented to us locally though by our elected state and national leaders.

Yesterday our neckbeard Vice-President basically suggested emergency rooms should not have to treat the “illegals” that are over-running them (that is not happening). That would, of course, be a violation of the law, everywhere in America. I wonder how many people have considered or fathomed what this would look like though? I have friends in foreign countries, some of them have seen dead bodies from people who starved or were left untreated while sick. This is a choice a society can make, and it’s a choice that the Vice-President of the United States is advocating. We really aren’t better than this.

Anyway, I lost you by the second paragraph I’m sure. My original point was people don’t have time to read all of this shit. So I lead with the point- there is no money, because Harrisburg and Washington. If you got anything, I hope you got that. There will not be any “magic money.”

Happy Shut Down Day

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

The government is shut down. Good. The truth is that the Republicans are in the majority in both houses of Congress. They also hold the White House. If they want to fund this government, they should figure out a way. What is this government doing that someone who disagrees with Donald Trump should want to continue?

This fight is not about illegal immigrants getting health care from the government. That is illegal now, and does not happen on any meaningful level. Medicare and Medicaid have plenty of safe guards now against giving a policy to non-citizens. If you wanted to make sure those programs and the VA and ACA had literal zero illegal immigrants on policies, you’d give them more money, not less, so they could enforce it better. This is all just excuses from Donald Trump.

This fight is about the ACA and affordable health care in America. Cutting subsidies for premiums under the ACA simply will raise the amount of money people pay for a plan. If premiums are higher, less people will buy plans. Because less people are buying, plans will become more expensive people who buy plans. It’s a nasty cycle, and the reason most of the 20 million or so on “Obamacare” plans didn’t just buy an insurance plan before. The whole market is cheaper with more people on it. With less people insured, you get more people showing up at hospitals and clinics and receiving care they will never pay for. The hospitals and clinics then make up that money by charging insurers more for the people they are covering. Simply put, health care is cheaper on the micro (household) level with more people insured than less. Cutting subsidies to the ACA is a rate hike even for people like me, who don’t accept the subsidy.

Aside from the multitude of horrific things the current government is doing that Democrats should have no interest in paying for, there’s no point in screwing up the health care market because you don’t like the President who designed it. Keep the government shut down. If the Republicans want to fund it, let them figure it out. If they want Democrats to help, they can cave on health insurance premiums. Otherwise there is no harm in shutting it down and keeping it down. Democrats were voted out, we’re under no obligation to help them.

Are My Supposed to Feel a Sad for James Comey? #LockHimUp

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

James Comey might be the dumbest mother fucker in America. He literally influenced the 2016 Election to help Donald Trump win- any other excuse he gives about complying with Congress is silly, he gave them info they already had. His memo about Hillary Clinton was likely the 1,000th cut that bled her dry, and I’m sure he was quite smugly proud after that. Trump took office, realized that he couldn’t trust Comey, and fired his ass. Comey than ran his mouth off about him for a few years. Trump got back into office for a second, non-consecutive term, and fired Comey’s daughter and indicted his ass. Listen, I’m still not a Trump fan, but this is hilarious.

Trump’s read on Comey’s inability to be loyal to anyone but his own ego is a pretty good read. I might have called his efforts to stop illegal surveillance by the Bush Administration admirable, in a silo. Then he sent the famous “Comey memo” to Congress two weeks before the 2016 Election, costing his then-boss, President Obama’s chosen successor the Presidency. Comey likes attention. In both cases he failed to actually achieve anything- the illegal surveillance programs of the Bush Administration continued with Comey’s blessing after he got a White House meeting with President Bush and he never even indicted, much less convicted Clinton of even a minor crime. Since leaving office, Comey wastes no opportunity to write a book or get on TV. Comey’s loyalty is to Comey’s own ego. He did not serve his country well at all in office.

Obviously this is Lord of the Flies level shit, no responsible Republic lets their President order indictments against his enemies and then goes and finds a case to bring. This is basic lawlessness and Pam Bondi is just the latest useless goon to serve as hired help. With all of that said, I guess oh well? James Comey put himself ahead of the country when he plunged us into this mess by helping Donald Trump win in the closing weeks of the 2016 Presidential Election. Given the suffering some people are enduring from that, I’m totally fine that he has to suffer too. In fact, I don’t feel bad when Trump turns on any of these idiots who decided they’d be his personal ass kisser. You created this mess, James Comey. Sure, it’s ridiculous. It was ridiculous when he fired you, or for that matter your daughter, but you caused it. I don’t care, do you?

What in the Delusional Hell?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Look, I’ve found some of what Kamala Harris has had to say so far in her book to be hilariously funny. When I read the excerpt about why she didn’t pick Pete Buttigieg as her running mate, I definitely found her logic to be sad and maybe even cynical, but also probably correct from a purely strategical manner. Her “criticisms” of Biden for staying in as long as he did basically miss reality for me, but I think from her perspective are almost a necessary rationalization of why things went how they did.

Then there’s the screenshots above about her book, which are basically a good enough reason for me to not read it. Look, I voted for Kamala Harris, and I would again. She’s got tons of good qualities. The fact is though, if they weren’t prepared for her to lose by election night, she and her team are the most delusional people I’ve ever seen. Yes, I knew we were going to win for Biden/Harris in 2020, because Joe Biden was not only consistently ahead in state and national polls, but was usually over 50% in most polls, regardless of his margin. At no point was Kamala Harris ever really there. She was behind in the polling averages in almost all of the swing states, well within the margin of error, but behind. Her numbers in the polls looked eerily similar to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Election Results, and they basically finished exactly there. Many Democratic donors, activists, and even operatives have spent years getting excited at every “gotcha” moment for Donald Trump, every bad debate performance or speech, and every new scandal that arises around the guy, and every time they get excited and proclaim “this is the time” people finally turn on him. They never do. The only campaign that ever put forward a viable alternative that a broad enough cross section of the country might vote for instead of Trump, was Biden’s 2020 campaign. Hillary and Kamala both sort of relied on the country finally decided Trump was too stupid, evil, corrupt, or wrong to vote for. That was never, ever going to happen.

There’s a really ugly truth that maybe Vice-President Harris didn’t want to write about, or maybe it was cut from the book, or whatever- Kamala Harris was never going to win the 2024 Election. The country had soured on the Democratic Party as a whole. Inflation had put them in a bad mood. They had soured on Biden, in part because of inflation, in part because he was old, and very largely because they felt he had governed less moderately than they hoped he would when they elected him. Harris was his Vice-President, in a party where really no one had made a move to stand against Biden’s Presidency, making her the most vulnerable to his negatives of a party full of people who were vulnerable to his negatives. Then there is the simple fact that Harris herself was viewed even more negatively than Biden through virtually his entire Presidency until Democrats ran away from him (like cowards) after his debate performance. And yes, since I named every other reason, let’s just state the obvious demographic reasons. Hillary Clinton was possibly the most qualified, most universally known nominee the party ever put forward in 2016, and Barack Obama was still very popular, not to mention she was the first female nominee in the history of the country. Just read everything after that last comma and get the point, because none of the stuff before it mattered. Hillary Clinton lost, as about the best woman nominee anyone could have come up with at that time. The country is very, very resistant to electing a woman. That’s a bad thing, but it’s a thing that isn’t changing on it’s own. Kamala Harris was not only the next woman to run for President, she was also a Black woman. This country’s history of racism is well chronicled. It’s a large reason why one of our first forty-seven Presidents wasn’t white. Harris, with an avalanche of things already against her, was asking the country to elect a Black woman. I don’t know if it was impossible for her to win in a neutral environment, but the odds were pretty high against her. Stack all of the other negative things I mentioned here on top of that, and Kamala Harris was basically trying to swim up Niagra Falls in this race. She never had a chance.

The 2024 Election was decided when party elders like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama decided to be influenced by the politically blind, such as George Clooney and other wealthy donors, and basically pushed Joe Biden out of the race. No one but Biden had a prayer in hell of beating Donald Trump. Biden knew that, that was why he had continued running for President well after his 80th birthday. Biden also knew that if he didn’t run, the only way to avoid a complete Civil War level meltdown within the Democratic Party was to coronate Kamala Harris and hope for the best. He had much better instincts than any of the other “elders” in the Democratic Party. All of this is what bothers me about what Harris is saying here. She’s criticizing Biden for being the adult in the room. She also wants us to believe she really had no idea she was going to lose. The day Biden dropped out, I knew she was going to lose. I know she was smart enough to know that too. I am willing to bet a donut to anyone that if you could get a candid answer out of anyone senior on the analytics team, they would tell you their numbers showed they were losing. As cynical as I am about analytics, even I would be stunned if they were so bad that they actually believed anything else.

Charlie Kirk, the Weaponized Martyr

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Last week I wrote about Charlie Kirk at length. My message was simple- this was a horrible tragedy, this is not a right-left political violence problem, and we’re being over force-fed “us vs. them” info. I went on to talk about how Kirk’s death and the hyper-partisan reactions were playing out locally, and how Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about Kirk fit into the larger war on liberal comedy. For those of you who read me regularly, you know this is a lot of typing for me about Charlie Kirk, who had never once been mentioned on my blog before his death. I don’t talk about really any of the MAGA podcast/influencer folks- not Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, not even Tucker Carlson. It’s not so much that they are insignificant to me, I acknowledge they have large audiences and a good deal of influence with MAGA leaders all the way up to Donald Trump. I think talking about them is complicated and takes a lot of nuance that you can’t really have in every post. They are not elected officials or government officials who have direct powers to help or hurt us as a society or individuals. I don’t listen to or read any of them, other than when I come across their tweets and other posts, most of which I don’t agree with (occasionally I do, but even a broken clock is right twice a day). On the other hand, and definitely in part because they are not empowered government officials, I absolutely support their first amendment right to speak whatever they wish, free from any government censorship. On the other hand, if they lie or defame people, they should have to deal with their employers, funders, and civil lawsuits from individuals for their actions. I just kind of think their world is largely none of my business, I’m not one of their consumers.

So all the writing about Kirk does kind of prove a right-wing talking point- Kirk is larger in death than he ever was in life. I didn’t give a shit about him a month ago. Now I’m writing about him. But are my writing about the actual person Charlie Kirk, or whitewashed character that has only marginal ties to the actual person? David A. Graham of the Atlantic writes about this, and concludes that this is literally an affront to the actual person Charlie Kirk was. He writes beautifully about the irony in this mythological version of Charlie Kirk:

Kirk’s commitment to debate was inextricable from his political views; he wasn’t a value-neutral advocate for free speech. Kirk arose as a countercultural figure and deployed the First Amendment as a crucial tool for spreading his ideas: In an environment where they were not welcome, he pointed out that they were protected. Now that Kirk’s political allies hold power, however, many appear eager to suppress ideas they dislike. The Trump administration is vowing to use Kirk’s death as an excuse to crack down on dissent even as it lionizes him for defending it.

Kirk began his career planting Turning Point USA chapters on college campuses. As many conservatives were writing off academia, Kirk was evangelizing, creating a beachhead for right-wing views in traditionally liberal environments. Free speech was an important shield for him, because some of his ideas were bigoted, or articulated abrasively.

Some people now praising Kirk are conflating a commitment to argument with a devotion to civility. Kirk succeeded, in part, by eschewing civility in favor of conflict. He said, for example, that “Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled—Alzheimer’s—corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.” (In the same radio show, he questioned whether Kamala Harris is Black.) He bused supporters to Washington on January 6, 2021; invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the insurrection; and campaigned for pardons for the perpetrators.

Kirk railed against transgender and gay rights. He called George Floyd a “scumbag,” declared the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake,” and claimed that many influential Black figures were in their roles only because of affirmative action. “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified,’” he said. He said that if Donald Trump lost in 2024, hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants would be brought to Alabama, where they would “become your masters.” Comparisons to King are especially ironic because King, Kirk said, was “awful. He’s not a good person.”

I hold some inconvenient beliefs sometimes, but central to them is authenticity. Charlie Kirk said exactly what he said, and simply replaying or reprinting his words is not an attack on him, it is an honest rendering. I don’t agree with virtually any of Kirk’s beliefs about civil rights, Joe Biden, women voting, LGBTQIA rights, “DEI,” George Floyd, January 6th, Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, or really anything I can think of, besides his belief that he had a right to say it. I don’t think that people I deem as bad should be shot, ever. I don’t believe the government should try to cancel a television show, ever. Hell, I’ll just be honest and say I don’t think employers should have any absolute right to view your social media, or censor it, even as I acknowledge that isn’t covered by the First Amendment. I think people should have the ability to be their authentic selves, and in fact I think morally it is an imperative. Yes, if you are out in public (I at least on some level don’t consider social media public, particularly if you are protecting your posts from the entire public), saying something really crazy can get you fired. I typically do not think it should.

The truth of the matter is that even dangerously stupid and ignorant speech should be policed through the court of public opinion, and if your response is that this is failing in our current society, my response to that is this is who we actually, truly are. Trying to censor who we are because this “Trump era” makes you uncomfortable, or because you thought these kinds of opinions were supposed to be gone by 2025, is UnAmerican and morally reprehensible. If it bothers you that Charlie Kirk was amassing followers saying the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, or that he hated Barack Obama and Joe Biden, or that he thinks Kamala Harris is a moron, or that Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad man, or that women didn’t vote, or whatever it is you think- just understand that the people listening and agreeing with Kirk also agreed with what he was saying before he had a job saying it. These opinions and thoughts, they always existed in the world, and it’s not society’s formal job to silence people for saying them. You silence these opinions by not listening and not buying from the advertisers. Charlie Kirk should be able to speak to the audience that believes these things, just as Jimmy Kimmel should be allowed to do the same. There is a market of millions of people who agree with them. As long as that exists, they should exist, and we should make authentic judgments about how we feel about them. It’s pretty simple.

Of course, there is only one logical conclusion to this though- I didn’t like Charlie Kirk. I did not listen to him when he was alive, and I wouldn’t now. He told us how he feels about the role of women in our society, how he feels about Civil Rights in our society, that he thinks most Black Americans in the work place are of lower quality and that they are there because of DEI, that he thinks Donald Trump is a good man and Joe Biden is not, that LGBTQIA people are predators, and lots of other things. Charlie Kirk lived authentically and told us who he is. I did not approve of it. While I would not describe myself as a “Jasmine Crockett Stan,” but I think she’s right to question why any Democrats were voting to honor Kirk in the Congress. Do these Democrats agree with him on his beliefs? Did they agree when he was live? Or are they being inauthentic and cowardly, in hopes that this conversation will go away?

Charlie Kirk’s death has been weaponized to do things that some conservatives wanted to do anyway, like cancel Jimmy Kimmel. The conservatives doing it are being as dishonest as the Democrats in Congress voting to honor Kirk. This is all mythology. It’s creating a martyr of a person who was just a person. It’s gross and antithetical to being a health nation with a vibrant First Amendment. It’s creating a false narrative about who we actually are and who we actually want to be as a society.

Crosswell Tells the Crowd He’s Stopping Emil Bove’s Nomination…

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Out of town Republican running for the Democratic Congressional nomination Ryan Crosswell found Northampton County over the weekend to meet the Democrats there and ask for their support for him for Congress. Good for him honestly. Unfortunately, I hear it went very badly. One candidate called him an opportunist in her speech, for which she is spot on. Another noted his “in-artful use of a political metaphor.” I’m down the beach this week and didn’t get to see the bumbling, blunder filled speech, so I asked some people what he said. Apparently he claimed he’s been fighting the nomination of Emil Bove to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Now of course that’s silly- Crosswell is no longer at the Justice Department, after “bravely” cutting and running from his former post, he’s also not a Senator or staffer dealing with the nomination, and there’s no public record anywhere of him leading some kind of protest. I’m glad he opposes Trump’s henchman for the nomination, but based on what? He’s opposed to unions too. Neither one left Trump after his flunkies attacked the Capitol on January 6th. Both of them were fine with Trump when the high court struck down Roe v. Wade. Based on their long held Republican views, when Crosswell registered as a Republican in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Washington D.C., I would presume Mr. Crosswell is for this nomination. I guess he’s not though, this time. Maybe there’s a primary coming up, or something.

The Moderate Myth

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment
Bill Clinton speaking in front of an American flag at the Hotel Bethlehem during the 2008 Presidential Primary season.

“Why do all of these rich tech bros think Donald Trump is a moderate? They spend all this money. pushing a right-wing agenda and then people actually believe it’s moderate.”

This was the prompt of a recent conversation I had, and well, it’s a fascinating one. Donald Trump did have a lot of rich “moderates” behind him, didn’t he? Hillary Clinton was simultaneously beat on by alt-left dead-enders for basically being Dick Cheney, and also viewed as too left by a lot of voters. Kamala Harris is about as “normie Democrat” as you can be on policy at this point, but she was viewed as the extremist by a lot of voters, not Trump. Why did this happen?

I tend to not really want “big change” policy moves, and so I have a tendency to like and support actual moderate policy. I think it’s highly important that we don’t mistake actual fairly moderate policy for being a political moderate though. There is no real pocket of voters out there giving you credit for say, taking a moderate position on abortion rights, for example (codification of Roe in it’s original, two-trimester form that allows some regulations of procedures and when you can access care). Not many voters gave Senators any credit for moderate positions on immigration or gun control in the past 15 years. Taking actual moderate policy positions often times leaves you in the bullseye of your own party’s activists and gets you no credit from the opposition.

One of the key reasons both parties (and not at all the only reason) could not properly handle Donald Trump is that both are fairly ideologically homogeneous. Democrats fight over how to get people health insurance, they don’t fight over whether or not to do it. Voters don’t really view you as more moderate for preferring the Affordable Care Act over government Bernie-care for All (it’s not Medicare, really). Same on the Republican side, they have some disagreements over how far to go on deporting illegal aliens and whether or not they’ll allow bare minimum background checks for all gun sales. No one is literally arguing for a path to amnesty or for blocking some gun sales in the GOP. Both parties have their positions, and there are degrees of separation in them, but even a moderate is still basically a member of one or the other. Voters don’t really see moderates as different.

Most of the reason is that lower information voters and honestly voters in general are far less ideological than voters who are activists, staffers, or candidates. They personally hold views that are not always consistent. For instance I know friends that vote regularly and are pro-gay marriage (and lgbtq rights in general) and pro-life. Anti-war and love going to the shooting range. Anti-immigrant and pro-marijuana. Many non-politically active voters actually very commonly hold views that are ideologically contradictory. When they think of a moderate, they think of someone who breaks out from party orthodoxy, like they do. And there’s a lot of them- a third of Americans identify as moderate and 43% consider themselves an independent.

When faced with Trump’s sometimes bizarre campaign positions- being for mass deportation, but against any foreign military action, or being pro-life while also being for ending taxes on tips and social security- a lot of these voters feel more comfortable with that. Very disciplined candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris actually pay a price for not saying anything all that shocking. Voters who want “moderate” are often times just telling you they want something different, and an ideologically consistent candidate isn’t it.

Obviously identity plays into how a candidate is perceived, and some portion of the public understands the “left-right continuum” in a traditional way. Part of this is just a basic disconnect though. Political people are thinking about moderates as actually being moderate. Normal voters are thinking of moderates as more free wheeling and less careful. That fits Trump perfectly. It’s also now his biggest vulnerability, as he governs. How long until the public realizes he’s the definition of a conservative?

I Wonder How Much Union Buster Money is in Crosswell’s $320K?

/ Rich Wilkins / 11 Comments

In an earlier post, I told you how Ryan Crosswell is a Republican carpetbagger, running a fraudulent campaign for the Democratic nomination in PA-7. Ryan didn’t grow up in this district, or ever live in it until earlier this year. He registered to vote as a Republican in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Washington, DC (That we know of), and voted in the Republican Presidential primary in every one of Donald Trump’s races for President, so far. He claims he had some epiphany to become a Democrat when Trump’s DOJ decided to drop the charges against Eric Adams, but he purchased his campaign websites long, long before that. He just thinks Democratic voters are dumb enough to be bought off by a Republican from the Beltway.

Despite that, VoteVets and other DC groups are astroturfing together a well-funded campaign for the carpetbagger. He announced that he raised $320,000 in the first three weeks in the race. That’s an impressive amount of money, for regular candidates. This guy is going to need every penny of it though to distract voters from the fact he’s got no connection to this district, and that he’s not a Democrat. Turns out though, he’s got lots of help with that. He doesn’t just have VoteVets helping him, or the mega law firm that he works for in San Diego currently (yes, that’s in California). In fact, the guy is likely being funded by actual Republicans.

Back before Crosswell was working for the Trump Administration he worked for a firm called Littler Mendelson in Charlotte, NC. As they would tell you it, they’re the best of the best in employment law, from the perspective of the employer. Ask literally any labor union in the United States and they’ll tell you they are a notorious anti-labor firm. In regular people speak, Littler Mendelson is a union busting law firm. According to Crosswell’s LinkedIn (above), he specialized in the kind of “non-compete” agreements that the Biden Administration was trying to weaken or end in some cases.

Basically, in addition to not being from here and being a Republican, Crosswell is asking a district that literally was the birthplace of the working class (Bethlehem Steel and Mack Trucks) to elect a union buster. I would laugh at this, if he didn’t have so much money.

Of course Crosswell would raise a bunch of money to try and buy a district he has no relationship to. One has to just ask though- how much union buster money is in that $320,000? Given that nothing in his record suggests that he changed his mind from his previous Republican positions on any other issue, one has to wonder how working on the Eric Adams case changed Crosswell’s career long beliefs in anti-union practices?

Weird New York Results, Explained?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

It has become a near sacred belief for some folks on the internet that they don’t believe the 2024 Election results. I get it, they’re a nightmare. The idea that nearly 50% of the public would re-elect Trump after everything seems impossible. When you understand how close virtually every Presidential Election other than 2008 has been this century though, it starts to make at least some sense though.

Enter New York, specifically Rockland County where I worked on a County Executive race, more than a decade back. It is a politically peculiar place. It’s a very purple county in suburban New York City. It’s got the highest percentage of Jewish people of any county in America. It’s incredibly diverse in general. It’s got super, super wealthy and very working class people living together. It’s a part of the swing NY-17 Congressional District, one of the most competitive in America. It’s really, really expensive to run a campaign there. And they have a rather significant Hasidic Jewish population, now sitting over 50,000 in the district. They tend to vote together, as a block, getting them the name “the block” amongst politicos. Once the leaders decide who they are backing, and to what level, everyone does their job. It doesn’t fit neat partisan or ideological politics, and so it confuses many political class people who are new to the area. This often puts them at odds with other groups in the county, who don’t particularly love their voting power. The East Ramapo School District there has been controversial, but that’s nothing new.

I’m not shocked that a friend sent me an article about a challenge to their 2024 Election results, but I was immediately skeptical. Rockland is the king of weird election results. What’s more, Vice-President Harris underperformed President Biden and Secretary Clinton in general in New York. Senator Gillibrand was facing weak, token opposition at best, and some of the national hot button issues were less so problems for her. When I first looked at Smart Elections’ Blue Sky post comparing Harris and Gillibrand’s numbers in several voting districts, I immediately assumed they are simply “Block” voting districts, where the Hasidic population chose Donald Trump, but still wanted to vote for the incumbent Democratic Senator. There are absolutely districts in Rockland County where Trump probably won almost every vote, and so did Gillibrand. There are a few problems with my explanation though. First, just having the district number isn’t enough for me today to be sure those were “block” districts. Second, the lawsuit does point to other things, like statistical analysis, that suggests a problem. So it’s possible I’m wrong here.

My guess is that Harris generally underperformed fairly popular incumbents across the state, and Rockland was no different. My second thought is that the lopsided districts will be “block” areas. If anyone knowledgeable on the subject comes across this post, please feel free to keep me updated on this.

A Republican Carpetbagger Wants to be my Congressman

/ Rich Wilkins / 16 Comments

If you’re from the Lehigh Valley and don’t recognize the guy above, it’s ok, you’re not alone. His name is Ryan Crosswell and until we had a Congressional seat he felt he could win by switching parties, he probably had no idea where we were. Unless you’ve been at party events, you haven’t met him or heard the story he wants you to learn.

What is Ryan’s story? Well he grew up in Pottsville of the 9th District of Pennsylvania, not in the 7th where he’s running. He became a Marine, went off to school, graduated law school, and went to work in both the military and for the Department of Justice. He registered to vote as a Republican in North Carolina, Louisiana, and Washington, DC, from what I’ve been told. He has never actually lived in Northampton, Lehigh, Carbon, or Monroe Counties, the counties in the district. Ryan has voted as a Republican through the Tea Party, first Trump Administration, January 6th, Republican attacks on President Biden through his term, and up until this past December. The timeline that was provided to me:

December 2011: Ryan Crosswell registers as a Republican In North Carolina.

July 2014: Ryan Crosswell registers as a Republican in Louisiana.

July 19, 2016: Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination for president. Ryan Crosswell voted as a Republican. 

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected President of the United States. Ryan Crosswell voted as a Republican. 

January 2017: Ryan Crosswell begins working for the Trump administration. 

August 15, 2017: Trump defends white-nationalists: ‘Some very fine people on both sides’ . . . . Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican. 

January 20, 2018: Ryan Crosswell begins his second year working for the Trump administration. 

January 20, 2019: Ryan Crosswell begins his third year working for the Trump administration. 

January 20, 2020: Ryan Crosswell begins his fourth year working for the Trump administration. 

April 23, 2020: Donald Trump suggests injecting bleach will cure COVID. Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican.

January 6 . . . .Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican.. 

June 24th, 2022: Roe v. Wade is overturned. Trump and the Republican party celebrate the decision. Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican.

November 15, 2022: Donald Trump launches his third Republican campaign. Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican.

December 5, 2023: Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one. Ryan Crosswell is still voting as a Republican.

May 18, 2024: Donald Trump begins floating the idea of seeking a third term, which is unconstitutional. Ryan Crosswell was still a Republican.

July 19,2024: Donald Trump promises mass deportations if elected. Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican.

July 15, 2024: Donald Trump secures the Republican nomination for a third time. Ryan Crosswell voted as a Republican. 

August 26, 2024: Donald Trump meets with Nayib Bukele to begin planning the  illegal detention of American residents in El Salvador. Ryan Crosswell continues to vote as a Republican. 

October 22, 2024: Donald Trump issues threat to prosecute political rivals. Ryan Crosswell voted as a Republican.

November 6, 2024: Donald Trump wins the 2024 general election.  Ryan Crosswell voted as a Republican. 
December 27, 2024: Ryan Crosswell decides to run for Congress. Changes Washington, D.C., voter registration to Democratic.

To hear the story as it’s told to me, this guy voted as a Republican in the 2012 Election, then again in the 2016 Election, took a job in the Trump Administration in 2017, re-registered as a Republican and voted in the 2020 Election, and was a Republican through the 2024 Election. His story is of course that he registered as a Republican many years ago, in the Bush 43 Administration years, when that President was lying about a war that cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives, trying to open up secret prisons for torture operations not allowed to be carried out in America by law, was firing U.S. Attorney’s without cause, conducting massive unapproved warrantless wiretapping, passing the Patriot Act, and otherwise trampling on the rule of law. His defenders have suggested that Crosswell was not an ideological or active Republican. They say he was non-partisan because of his government work, and really just left his registration alone. He re-registered at least three times as a Republican that I see, and was registered as a Republican for all three of Trump’s runs. He went to work for Trump’s DOJ in 2017. It’s been also provided to me now that while he was mailed a ballot in the crucially important 2024 Presidential Election, he didn’t return it. I definitely have questions. He definitely does not seem to have held any meaningful Democratic views through the Iraq War, Obama years, first Trump Administration, the ending of Roe v. Wade, or at any other pivotal point.

Now, I’m not against converts, particularly given how terrible this Trump Administration seems to be doing. Let’s just say though that the more you tolerated, the more skeptical I am. When Trump mocked the disabled reporter, when he called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists, when the Access Hollywood tape dropped, when he did the first Muslim ban, when he appointed ideological extremists to the Supreme Court, when his supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6th, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, when Trump said he wanted to be a dictator, when he accused immigrants of eating cats and dogs, all of that did not cause Crosswell to denounce his Republican registration. What we are asked to believe is that dropping the Eric Adams indictment was the last straw that made Croswell switch parties. Should we believe it? He entered this race on June 9th. He says he left DOJ on February 17th. He bought his websites for his run in December. We know all the things that didn’t make Ryan Crosswell leave the Republican Party. It certainly appears you can add dropping the Eric Adams prosecution to that list. He had made his decision to switch parties and move to a district he never lived in before the Adams’ prosecution was even able to be dropped.

I will say, it’s honorable that Crosswell defended his country, and he has an impressive academic history that suggests he’s a smart person, but our Republican Congressman Ryan Mackenzie can claim those things too, even after he recently voted to take health care from over ten million Americans. Crosswell could have moved home to the 9th Congressional District and ran in the open Republican Primary for 2026, but for whatever reasons he has decided to come run here in the most purple district in the country. The House Republicans will spend millions calling him a hypocrite, a liar, and citing his own contradictory history to make Republicans and Democrats alike hate him. There’s a long campaign to run, and maybe he’ll prove me to be wrong here, but he seems like a tremendous risk for Democrats to take.