Threats are Mounting and This is No Tea Party

 

Political “talking heads”, unchallenged by the media, are working hard to write off the takeover of the Democratic Party by communists as nothing more than the Democrats’ version of the Tea Party that took the Republican Party by storm in 2009.  Whether this comparison was born out of the desire to deceive or ignorance, it is as factually incorrect as it could be.  Pundits are frequently given unfettered access to media audiences and enabled in their effort to minimize the significance of the moment by “reporters” who do not probe further or push back. “Journalists” who have no interest in the truth show us why they cannot be trusted every day.

 

The Tea Party Movement Fought to Preserve the Democratic Republic

 

The Tea Party was a conservative movement that emerged within the Republican Party in 2009. It was triggered by opposition to Federal bailouts and the growing national debt and borrowed its name from the Boston Tea Party of 1773. It was not an organization with a charter or bylaws; it was a decentralized and loosely affiliated groundswell of angry conservative voters.  They created a communication network through the new and rapidly growing social media phenomenon, taking advantage of Twitter, Facebook and free conference calling to form the connections that fueled their momentum.

 

The movement was economic; not social.  Participants had developed a deep distrust of the political establishments of both Parties and of the media, and were as disillusioned with George W. Bush and the big spending Republicans as they were with Barack Obama and the Democrats.

 

The $831 billion stimulus package, called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and enacted under Obama, was based on an economic theory that during a recession the government should offset the decrease in private spending by increasing public spending.  Tea Partiers considered bailouts of large banks, insurers, and auto companies poor investments, and the expansion of government control of healthcare with the Affordable Care Act pushed them to the limits of their tolerance.  The goal of their rebellion was to demand that both Parties address their opposition to spending which included:

• Excessive taxation through high Federal income taxes and complex tax codes.

• Growing national debt.

• Government regulation and intervention in private business and free markets.

 

The movement shifted the Republican Party to the right on fiscal and governance matters, and later led to the populist and America First movements that gave rise to Donald Trump’s elections.

 

The Tea Party movement of 2009 was about responsible governing that would secure freedom and prosperity for future generations. It was never about dismantling and replacing the democratic republic created by our Constitution.

 

Democratic Socialists are Fighting to Replace the Democratic Republic with Communism

 

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is an organization that has given rise to liberal extremists whose agenda is to dismantle our Constitution and replace it with communism. DSA is supporting candidates for local, state and national offices on the Democratic side of the ballot who are promising to take the country in directions that will deconstruct our government and destroy our way of life.  They make no attempt to hide their plan to remake the United States into their vision of a utopian society with a government that will take care of everyone and ask little in return.

 

 DSA’s objectives include:

• Replace the President, Senate and Supreme Court with a “unicameral proportional legislature” (a single-house lawmaking body where political parties win seats based on the exact share of the total votes they receive). Abolish the Electoral College and replace the two-party system with a multiparty democracy.

• Open the borders and extend full voting rights to non-citizens and criminals. Abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and offer amnesty to everyone in the country illegally.

• Shift ownership of large corporations from the private sector to the public sector.

• Provide single payer health care to everyone at no cost.

• Provide affordable housing with rent control.

• Provide free public education from pre-kindergarten through college and forgive all student loans.

• Defund the Department of War.

• Abolish prisons.

• Aggressively tax the wealthy.

 

Candidates have been running and winning on this agenda, often displacing long term Democratic incumbents who were considered stalwarts of the Party. The “leaders” of the Democratic Party refuse to eject this dangerous ideology from their party because they have no principles and fear their own displacement from power more than they fear the destruction of the country.

 

What happened in Wisconsin on August 11?

 

Francesca Hong is a 37-year-old Democratic Socialist who competed on August 11 to become the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin Governor.  She campaigned for months all across Wisconsin on a platform that mirrored the agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).  She had built up enough momentum to leave the other candidates in her dust.  The last five polls taken just before the election showed her leading the others by 18 to 29 points.  The State Navigate poll, released just four days before the election, showed Hong leading David Crowley, the Democratic establishment’s choice, 44 to 22.

 

Early Wednesday morning, the Associated Press declared David Crowley the winner over Hong, 39.8% to 39.4%, a difference of 3,211 votes. Here’s how the election unfolded.  David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive, was in the race from the time Governor Tony Evers declared he was not seeking re-election.  There were 6 other candidates in the race at the outset.  Evers emphatically said he would not endorse anyone.  He would let the people choose their candidate. On July 8, David Crowley suspended his campaign because he said it was apparent he could not win.  He was unable to garner support from the voters above single digits and could not raise money. He immediately endorsed Sara Rodriguez. Sara Rodriguez, the current Lieutenant Governor, was considered a frontrunner but was forced to drop out on July 17, due to serious financial mismanagement in her campaign. 

 

On July 18, Crowley was back in the race, endorsed by Tony Evers, who did not hesitate to break his pledge to let the people decide.  Mandela Barnes, another candidate in the race, former Lieutenant Governor under Evers, and failed 2022 Senate Candidate, was trailing far behind Hong but second among the remaining candidates after Rodrieguez dropped out.  On July 30, he unexpectedly dropped out of the race announcing it was clear who the nominee was going to be. It was assumed he meant Hong, but in hindsight, he cleared the way for Crowley.  Nearly 140,000 early votes had been cast before Barnes dropped out.  The early voters who voted for a candidate who dropped out were prohibited by law from retrieving their ballots and choosing a different candidate.  In the end, 68,000 votes were cast for candidates who had pulled out.

 

The Michigan Primary election was held one week prior to Wisconsin’s. Abdul El-Sayed is a radical extremist who was running for the United States Senate against Haley Stevens, currently a Michigan Congresswoman and described a moderate Democrat.  El-Sayed denies being a Democratic Socialist, though he embraces their policies and campaigned with fellow extremist podcaster Hasan Piker, who once said America deserved 9/11.  The Democratic national establishment brought in all of their big guns to endorse Stevens and spent nearly $70 million to get her elected, more than 11 times the amount El-Sayed raised and the most ever in any Senate race, yet he won the election 48.5% to 47.5%.  Watching the Michigan result, one can only imagine the panic that gripped the Wisconsin Democratic establishment at the prospect of a Hong win. Republican voters were excited to have the stark contrast between their Candidate, Congressman Tom Tiffany, and Hong.  The Democratic establishment was desperate to figure out how to stop her and drag Crowley over the finish line with less than a week until the election.

 

On election day, Hong was expected to win big. There was no evidence to suggest Crowley had tightened the gap between them. Late in the evening, the race was “too close to call” pending about 30,000 outstanding votes to be counted in Milwaukee.

 

Election results are reported by county. Milwaukee County has 19 municipalities; nine of them process their absentee ballots at a “central count” location and then forward their data to the Milwaukee County Courthouse for the final tally. Late on election night the public was informed Milwaukee’s results were delayed by a human error.  “Someone pushed the wrong button”. Five of the nine memory sticks delivered to the County Courthouse did not contain any election results.  They contained only what were called “audit logs”.  They had to be taken back to Milwaukee’s central count location, the results downloaded from their counting machines, and taken back to the Courthouse.

 

On the following Thursday, AJ Bayatpour, a reporter with CBS 58 in Milwaukee, broke the story that his camera had by chance captured the computer screen showing what the election worker saw when the “error” occurred.  It was crystal clear that an audit log was being downloaded rather than election results, and the fact that pushing a button to “confirm” was required made it inconceivable that this could have been done five times in error.  

 

After one o’clock on Wednesday morning following election day, Milwaukee announced 65,131 votes for Crowley and 62,739 for Hong. This margin gave Crowley most of the votes he needed to be declared the winner.  The media and the political pundits tried to make this unlikely comeback for Crowley believable. They attributed it to the tremendous influence of Tony Evers’ endorsement, who they described as the most popular politician in the state, and the “implosion” of Francesca Hong in the last week of the campaign.  Hong, they said, hurt herself by stumbling when confronted with foolish statements she had made in her past such as canceling Thanksgiving. Why would this cause her to implode at the end when the crazy things she had been saying throughout her campaign only seemed to strengthen her position?  56% of the people surveyed in the final Marquette poll said Evers’ endorsement of Crowley either made no difference to them or made them less likely to support Crowley, making it clear it is improbable that Evers’ support was a key factor in putting Crowley over the top.

 

Did the Democratic establishment find a way to cheat to win?  We do not know. Wisconsin’s elections are unverifiable. We cannot tie every vote cast to the name of a currently eligible voter and the extreme resistance to making elections verifiable by those who control the process has created a dangerous and untenable situation for the people of Wisconsin.

 

This election outcome defies reason and leaves any thinking person doubting that it accurately reflects the will of the people. Verifiable elections are the only way to resolve questions of legitimacy, and the people of Wisconsin are going to need the help of the Federal Department of Justice to force the issue for the November election.

 

I am a rational and objective person, and I base my judgments on critical thinking. I do not believe that David Crowley legitimately won the Wisconsin Democratic primary, though I would welcome evidence to the contrary.  Without verifiability, we have only our best judgment to rely on, and this is what my judgment tells me.

 

David Crowley’s rejection by the voters early in his campaign reflected who he is and his abysmal record as the Milwaukee County Executive. The Democratic establishment, desperate for a candidate they could prop up as a suitable alternative to Hong, pulled him out of the ash bin of his failed candidacy and marketed him around the state as the best Democrat to beat Tom Tiffany.  Why didn’t Charles Franklin, Director of the Marquette Law School Poll, conduct a survey in the last week of the campaign?  Perhaps because it would have confirmed that Crowley wasn’t able to pull anywhere near Hong, which is what the other polls were showing.

 

I would not pretend to know precisely how cheating was accomplished, if it was, but these are some of the indisputable facts that create opportunity for serious fraud. There are more than 4 million names of ineligible voters on the Registered Voter List, a rich reservoir for sophisticated hackers to create fraudulent ballots. 250,000 drivers licenses have been legally issued to non-citizens, identical to those of citizens, that can be used to register to vote and cast a vote with no questions asked.  Milwaukee and other communities that use central counts are moving thousands of ballots throughout the city, creating the opportunity to break the chain of custody required for evidence security.  Ballots are evidence and need to be treated as such. Milwaukee elections officials lied about how and why they delayed reporting their results.

 

The massive fraud that is being exposed by the Trump Administration throughout the country provides ample evidence that people will steal things of value if they can. Nothing would be of greater value to steal than an election.

 

 Mounting Threats

 

Serious, mounting threats to our freedom must be defeated to secure the liberty we have enjoyed for the generations that follow. The citizens of Wisconsin must be able to trust the results of our elections. They are the foundation of a free society upon which everything else is built. This fight for verifiability should be unnecessary, and only reinforces that something very dirty is going on here. The growing movement to take down our democratic republic and replace it with communism must be taken as seriously as the threat of insecure elections. To miss the significance of this moment would be a perilous mistake. This is not the Democrats’ Tea Party.