It is interesting that we are hearing more from Christians that the end of the world is near. Or they are saying we must be near the End of Days as described in Revelations. I don’t pretend to be a prophet but I personally, don’t believe that either is imminent. The problems we are dealing with today have been festering for decades because we have ignored them. We have all been too busy working hard to create a better life for ourselves and our families but have forgotten that elections have consequences. We have become so caught up in our own needs and desires that we forgot that we are a republic of the people by the people and for the people and we the people need to be attentive to who we vote for to govern us. We are the only ones who can fix the problems by starting to pay attention to the people we elect.
In the election of 2022, only 57.2% of Idaho’s registered voters cast ballots and you wonder why We Get the Government We Deserve. We have been saying for years that because of democrats being able to switch parties for republican primaries our state has been electing more liberal republicans to our legislature. A recent email from representative Heather Scott was more than interesting as she said “Although Idaho is considered a Republican State, it is not very conservative. Last year, Idaho dropped in nationwide status as the most conservative state from #6 to #23. I imagine this year things may get worse. Blue republikans (or RINOs), continue to vote with democrats to kill good bills and pass bad bills.” This is not the only problem we have in our state according to Representative Scott. Idaho has over 5,600 MOU/MOA agreements that bureaucrats have entered Idaho into agreements many of which may involve the sharing of data. You can bet that our governor under the guise of Covid has taken millions of dollars from the federal government which have Memorandums of Understanding attached that force us to accept certain regulations and rules if we accept their money. Fortunately, house bill H97 now protects us from this sharing data.
Idahoans gave Governor Little 60% of the vote in 2022 but got little in return for putting him back in office. This past legislative session Idahoans were promised a reduction in property taxes and what did we get? Not very much for a state that consistently has a $1.5 to $2 billion surplus and property taxes are running at about $2 billion per year. The legislature should have reduced property taxes by much more than $355 million and there is absolutely no reason that the grocery tax should not be abolished. While Idahoans are being told we have the best economy in the country many are suffering with wages that do not come close to keeping their heads above water with high inflation and energy prices that seem to rise every week.
It is no different with the amount of money we are taxed for education. Each year schools’ boards around the state come to the ballot box and hold special elections at odd times of the year so as to get the lowest voter turnout possible so they can bond issues passed that will raise taxes for homeowners. This year it seems that the citizens of the Meridian district got the message loud and clear and turned down a half-a-billion-dollar 10-year bond issue with a 57.5% vote against. This was a stunning victory for homeowners who have been continually burdened with these huge bond issues just about every year. Is it possible that Idahoans are waking up to the game being played by the Teachers Union to make sure they are overfunded?
Nationally the more important question is how much attention will the average person pay to the coming 2024 elections when we will vote for a new president? Our economy has been pummeled, our military turned Woke, our budget deficits running up like we were a third-world country, our law enforcement agencies arresting and going after anyone or thing that appears too conservative. Last but not least we have a president who we all know is cognitively unfit to run this country. As in 2016, there will be a lot of choices for president in the primary but of course, only one person can win. The big question is will that person be able to pull us out of the quagmire of socialism and wokeism that the progressives have buried us in for the past 2 years?
What most Americans are asking themselves is will the election be a fair one with all the early voting and mail-in voting permitted by so many of the liberal states? Hopefully, the republicans will have their game together and be on the lookout for discrepancies unlike in 2020. My money is on Trump to be the winner, but you never know what can happen in the next 17 months. With all of the games being played by the DOJ and FBI it is hard to say with any certainty if they will try to play a prominent role in getting sleepy Joe elected again. To be sure they will attempt to prosecute Trump for who knows what to keep him distracted. In any case, I hope we can get the right person in the White House this time if we are going to save our republic from the coming disaster that is currently confronting our country.
We Get the Government We Deserve.
3 replies on “Just some Thoughts on Politics and Voter Apathy”
JUST SOME THOUGHT ON POLITICS AND VOTER INVOLVEMENT
One of the dumbest things the constitutional framers did was to usurp Yahweh’s exclusive election authority (per Deuteronomy 17:15, etc., thereby turning election “discretion” over to We the People the majority of whom, according to Christ in Matthew 7:13, are in the broad way leading to *destruction.* What could go wrong?
Add to that Article 6’s Christian test ban by which mandatory biblical qualifications (such as, Exodus 18:21) were eliminated and you have the perfect recipe disaster, which is exactly where America finds herself today, precipitously teetering on the precipice of moral depravity and *destruction.”
For more, see blog article “Constitutional Elections: Dining at the ‘Devil’s Table,'” at http://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/constitutional-elections-dining-at-the-devils-table/
For how the Bible’s one-God, one-vote election system operates, see blog article “Salvation by Election” at https://www.constitutionmythbusters.org/salvation-by-election/ Don’t be fooled by the title.
For more regarding Article 6’s Christian test ban, see Chapter 9 “Article 6: The Supreme Law of the Land” of free online book “Bible Law vs. the United States Constitution: The Christian Perspective” at https://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/BlvcOnline/biblelaw-constitutionalism-pt9.html
The Revelation, please it is one book, not Revelations…. Otherwise, a great article thanks. One can indeed see the corruption setting in even at the County level. MOU/MOA’s are just the tip of the iceberg. Money is indeed the root of ALL evil.
As far as being a prophet, few are the last prophet was John, the Baptist. Those of us who are familiar Christian Theology, the Christian Bible, the Hebrew, The Mormon, Bibles, and the Codex’s cannot but help to recognize the similarities of today.
Getting on to the subject of political participation and having witnessed politics as far back as the end of WWII, I’d report that voter participation today is much similar to the voters of today. People get tired of the BS fogging out of the political repertory theatre. After WWII most of Idaho were religious conservative Democrats. They are still here, but the Democratic Party liberalized and moved away from them. The Republican party filled that intellectually intelligent gap.
The reason that people do not vote is their disenchantment with the outcome wherein the politician is absorbed in the political structure and to function and stay in office becomes complacent with the rules and survival of the political body. You mention that we should pay attention to those who govern us. True, but structurally impossible. When a legislator is elected to Idaho’s Senate or House, they are assigned to committees and controlled by the Senator Pro Tempore or the Speaker of the House and allowed only to consider the issues they allow them to hear. Which are controlled by the entities that pay to keep them in the office. A review of the donations to the elected officials, although at this time difficult to separate by the Secretary of States dysfunctional recording of contributions, will identify who is keeping them in office and it is not the people who vote, but the entities that pay for their reelection. During the 2022 election one of the House leaders was given over $30,000.00 in contributions of which only $1,500+- came from voters they represented. In other words, they were and are bought. The potential voters recognize that their representatives do not represent them and consequently have a jaundiced view of actually voting.
An example of this during our last 2023 session, as you remarked, was the property tax bill that Speaker Moyle, Senator Grow and Chairman of the Monks pushed through in the last days of the session which gave a 4% reduction to the homeowners a 2% reduction for school Operations and a 2% property tax reduction across the board to residential, commercial and Agriculture resulting in a less than $300.00 deduction to the average homeowner and increased rents. They did this while holding a bill that would have reduced the average homeowners’ taxes in Canyon County by nearly $1,000.00 and would have started shifting the property tax burden back to commercial’.
The school funding you remarked on is unstable as approved. The $310 million was given to the schools during the 2022 special session from surplus sales tax as are the funds going to the schools and utilized as property tax reduction. That funding could and should have been used to remove the grocery tax. The school districts tried to get the legislature to approve impact fees for schools which the rapid growth would pay for, but used a basically untrue argument that it was not constitutional. The rapid growth in Idaho during this past few years requires new elementary schools statewide by over $2 billion dollars which the residents will have to pay now.
Did these actions favor the actual voters or the people that paid them to stay in office. Yes, we have many problems with voter representation in our state. Do some work and vote intelligently.
Ron Harriman Chairman of the Concerned Citizens of Canyon County Committee’. Ronharriman1@outlook.com