Tag Archives: Matt Margolis

Dubious Scorecards of Violence By Ideology

02 Thursday Oct 2025

Posted by in Political Violence, Terrorism

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There have been many claims about the relative frequency of violent terrorist acts committed by the left and right sides of the political spectrum. Leftists like to focus on fatalities because they believe the data favor them as less violent. Broader measures of violence tell a different story. However, the comparisons are terribly flawed owing to the difficulty of 1) knowing that ideology was definitely the motive in a particular case; and 2) classifying the ideology of a violent actor. Law enforcement statistics are obviously subject to those kinds of classification problems, and so are most studies that purport to measure ideological violence accurately. In short, the comparisons are a mess.

Ideological Homicide

The following are counts of total ideologically-motivated homicides since 1990 according to a 2024 DOJ National Institute of Justice report. Excluding the 9/11/2021 Twin Towers attack, there were 520 total fatalities; 227 were attributed to the far right and 42 to the far left. That report is now available only as an archive on the Wayback Machine. The on-line PDF disappeared just after Charlie Kirk’s murder in September, which seems a little too coincidental. Nevertheless, as we’ll see, the report’s findings were absurd.

Matt Margolis reviews a recent CATO study by Alex Nowrasteh on politically-motivated violence. Here are the totals by year:

Margolis discusses a couple of major (and questionable) decisions made by the author or his sources:

—The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (168 deaths) was committed by Timothy McVeigh, an individual of ambiguous “anti-government” political persuasion who supported abortion rights. Those deaths were attributed to the right.

—The 2020 riots following George Floyd’s death resulted in 19 deaths. Of course, Antifa (which we’re confidently told doesn’t exist) and Black Lives Matter (BLM) were heavily involved, so this was clearly leftist violence. Those deaths aren’t counted,

These two adjustments alone would swing the attribution of deaths to a majority of leftist killers. Margolis then credits Amber Duke for identifying several additional misclassifications that occurred between 2015 and 9/10/2025 (the day prior to Kirk’s murder), during which there were 57 “politically-inspired” killers. She documents nine cases (26 fatalities and a number of serious injuries) of questionable political attribution. Several of these cases involved motives that are arguably nonpolitical, including severe psychological disorders, and at least one killer could have been motivated by a desire to promote a leftist politician (Tim Walz). I would probably accept a couple of these incidents as right-adjacent if not right-wing motivated, but the point is that ambiguities frequently compromise these ideological classifications.

Duke notes the head-scratching exclusion of a couple of incidents attributable to leftist passions: the BLM-affiliated Waukesha killer who plowed into a Christmas parade in his truck, killing six; a killing perpetrated by multiple BLM protestors; and a bomber at an IVF clinic that killed one person. Again, in the nine cases identified by Duke, the perps were either questionably classified ideologically or not classified at all. Correcting all of these errors swings the tally to 20 left-wing and 19 right-wing killers from 2015-9/10/2025.

Oddly, Duke takes no issue with the non-classification of the Pulse Nightclub shooting in 2016 (treated separately as Islamic terror). The killer was said to have had “issues” with gays, but apparently he was gay! And there were reports that he was motivated by opposition to U.S. foreign policy, which usually codes as left.

The ADL Weighs In

Duke also directs us to a critique by Ryan James Girdusky of some agitprop produced by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Of course, the ADL has a left-wing bias that comes through loud and clear in this report. As Duke summarizes,

“… they lump white nationalist inter-gang killings, domestic violence, and other non-ideologically motivated murders into its ‘right-wing political violence’ category.“

And here is David Harsanyi:

“The [ADL] list includes murders that occurred during attempted prison escapes, sex crimes, robberies, and family squabbles, none of which have anything to do with furthering the tenets of white supremacy or any cause. In one of the incidents, the police have yet to find a motive for the homicide.“

In case you still harbor any doubt about the ADL’s bias, their report actually excludes six deaths connected with the Zizians, a murderous trans cult. They also ascribe no political motive for Luigi Mangioni’s assassination of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson because:

“… hostility towards the healthcare system or health insurance companies is not in itself an ideology and because a good portion of the anger on Mangione’s part may have stemmed from purely personal reasons .…”

The list, however, includes “right-wing” murders that occurred during attempted prison escapes, sex crimes, robberies, and family squabbles, none of which had anything to do with furthering the tenets of white supremacy or any cause. In one of these incidents, the police have yet to find a motive for the homicide.

Harsanyi offers further criticism of the FBI’s classifications and the Global Terrorism Database. Of the latter, he notes:

“It counted the Las Vegas mass shooter who murdered 59 people in 2017 as a right-wing ‘anti-government extremist.’ In truth, we have no clue what the shooter’s motivations were, unless the GTD has inside information from the FBI. Of the 32 other incidents the organization labeled right-wing terrorism that year, 12 were merely ‘suspected’ of being on the Right (mostly because they had white skin).“

More Systemic Misclassification

The CATO and ADL reports, as well as government statistics, are uniform in treating violence by Islamic extremists as a category apart from violence on the left and right. The Islamist category dominates the data on terrorist homicides due to 9/11 (87% of terrorist fatalities since 1975; excluding 9/11, Islamist attacks account for 23%). Separate treatment is based on alleged religious motives behind these acts. However, Islamic causes have garnered increasing support from the Left in the years since 9/11 and the War in Iraq. That became more palpable during the Obama years. It has culminated in a surge of aggressive anti-Zionism and support for not just a Palestinian state, but one extending from the river to the sea, which is code for genocide in Israel. Apparently, Hamas’ murderous raid into Israel on 10/7/2023 was a major touch point for this activism.

At present, there isn’t much ambiguity surrounding the leftist-Islamic alignment, despite what should seem like obvious points of tension. These include Islamic subjugation of women and harsh treatment of homosexuals. But in the West, leftists identify with the presumed victimhood status of Islamic populations. Certain cases of violence by Islamic actors in the U.S. can reasonably be counted now as leftist terror attacks. However, the reports aren’t tallied that way, which helps to foster the impression that the right instigates a larger share of violent and homicidal attacks.

Also problematic: “anti-government” actors have almost always been classified as right-wing. This is highly misleading. Both left-and right-wing anti-government violence tend to vary with which side is in power.

Non-Lethal But Could Be Lethal

Despite its severe shortcomings, the CATO report at least gives lip service to non-lethal violence … or what, for the grace of God, might have turned out to be non-lethal. This encompasses foiled efforts to harm, injuries of all sorts, arson, smashed windows, stolen merchandise, other property damage, and even threats to individuals or institutions, which tend to inflict emotional distress and other costs. Too much commentary hints at praise for the left’s “restraint” in perpetrating non-lethal violence! Protests accompanied by riots are described as “mostly peaceful”.

There is no question about the recent surge in left-wing violence, especially in 2025. Over the past few years, there have been several assassination attempts against high-profile individuals on the right, including Donald Trump and Charlie Kirk. Trans activists have perpetrated other killings. There have been multiple attacks on ICE agents and other law enforcement officers. We’ve witnessed persecution, intimidation, and attacks against Jews on college campuses and elsewhere. Riots have erupted in Portland, LA, New York, Atlanta, and other cities. The trend is not new, but the levels of unrest have been disquieting.

They Say, “Don’t Overreact”

Another factor is prosecutorial leniency. Violent leftist actions tend to be concentrated in urban areas where prosecutors are likely to share the actors’ ideology and give them a pass. This does nothing to discourage destructive behavior. As a civil libertarian, however, Nowrasteh warns in his CATO report:

“The big fear from politically motivated terrorism is that the pursuit of justice will overreach, result in new laws and policies that overreact to the small threat, and end up killing far more people while diminishing all our freedoms.“

I too have strong libertarian leanings, but the balance of risks should favor action to protect individuals and their property from threats of violent action, maintain public order, while not prejudging the intent of disturbances as “peaceful”.

Views on Violence

Official statistics and other reports on political violence by the left and right are unreliable. They tend to overstate right-wing inspired violence and understate left-wing inspired violence. The recent swing toward leftist acts of terror has been difficult to hide, however.

I’ll close by noting that the mainstream right and left seem to have considerably different attitudes toward politically-motivated violence. In my observation, when some fringe right-wing maniac, white supremacist, or militia group perpetrates violence (or so much as stages a public demonstration), the mainstream right tends to react with revulsion. When fringe leftists do the same, the mainstream left tends to rationalize and even support the uglies.

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) has noted the rise of “assassination culture”. Surveys show that violence against political opposition has more support from the left than the right. Social media has become a breeding ground upon which these sentiments can turn into action. From the last link:

“NCRI’s analysis, based on troves of social media data, reveals how fringe internet culture has helped build what the group calls ‘permission structures’ for violence. These are social environments—online or offline—where violent acts are no longer condemned but tacitly accepted, if not outright encouraged.“

This is what Christopher Rufo calls the “left-wing terror memeplex”, and it’s often less tacit than right out loud! It’s almost enough to make a sham of the explicit exceptions to protected speech defined by the First Amendment.

Beware of Government Health Care Yet To Come

02 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in Health Care

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Ongoing increases in the resources dedicated to health care in the U.S., and their prices, are driven primarily by the abandonment of market forces. We have largely eliminated the incentives that markets create for all buyers and sellers of health care services as well as insurers. Consumers bear little responsibility for the cost of health care decisions when third parties like insurers and government are the payers. A range of government interventions have pushed health care spending upward, including regulation of insurers, consumer subsidies, perverse incentives for consolidation among health care providers, and a mechanism by which pharmaceutical companies negotiate side payments to insurers willing to cover their drugs.

It’s not yet clear whether the Trump Administration and its “Make America Healthy Again” agenda will serve to liberate market forces in any way. Skeptics can be forgiven for worrying that MAHA will be no more than a cover for even more centrally-planned health care, price controls, and regulation of the pharmaceutical and food industries, not to mention consumer choices. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is likely to be confirmed by the Senate as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, has strong and sometimes defensible opinions about nutrition and public health policies. He is, however, an inveterate left-winger and is not an advocate for market solutions. Trump himself has offered only vague assurances on the order of “You won’t lose your coverage”.

Government Control

The updraft in health care inflation coincided with government dominance of the sector. Steven Hayward points out that the cost pressure began at about the same time as Medicare came into existence in 1965. This significantly pre-dates the trend toward aging of the population, which will surely exacerbate cost pressures as greater concentrations of baby boomers approach or exceed life expectancy over the next decade.

Government now controls or impinges on about 84% of health care spending in the U.S., as noted by Michael F. Cannon. The tax deductibility of employer-provided health insurance is a massive example of federal manipulation and one that is highly distortionary. It reinforces the prevalence of third-party payments, which takes decision-making out of consumers’ hands. Equalizing the tax treatment of employer-provided health coverage would obviously promote tax equity. Just as importantly, however, tax-subsidized premiums create demand for inflated coverage levels, which raise prices and quantities. And today, the federal government requires coverages for routine care, going beyond the basic function of insurance and driving the cost of care and insurance upward.

The traditional non-portability of employer-provided coverage causes workers with uninsurable pre-existing conditions to lose coverage when they leave a job. Thus, Cannon states that the tax exclusion for employer coverage penalizes workers who instead might have chosen portable individual coverage in a market setting without tax distortions. Cannon proposes a reform whereby employer coverage would be replaced with deposits into tax-free Universal Health Accounts owned by workers, who could then purchase their own insurance.

In 2024, federal subsidies for health insurance coverage were about $2 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Those subsidies are projected to grow to $3.5 trillion by 2034 (8.5% of GDP). Joel Zinberg and Liam Sigaud emphasize the wasteful nature of premium subsidies for exchange plans mandated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare. Subsidies were temporarily expanded in 2021, but only until 2026. They should be allowed to expire. These subsidies increase the demand for health care, but they are costly to taxpayers and are offered to individuals far above the poverty line. Furthermore, as Zinberg and Sigaud discuss, subsidized coverage for the previously uninsured does very little to improve health outcomes. That’s because almost all of the health care needs of the formerly uninsured were met via uncompensated care at emergency rooms, clinics, medical schools, and physician offices.

Proportionate Consumption

Perhaps surprisingly, and contrary to popular narratives, health care spending in the U.S. is not really out-of-line with other developed countries relative to personal income and consumption expenditures (as opposed to GDP). We spend more on health care because we earn and consume more of everything. This shouldn’t allay concern over health care spending because our economic success has not been matched by health outcomes, which have lagged or deteriorated relative to peer nations. Better health might well have allowed us to spend proportionately less on health care, but this has not been the case. There are explanations based on obesity levels and diet, but important parts of the explanation can be found elsewhere.

It should also be noted that a significant share of our decades-long increases in health care spending can be attributed to quantities, not just prices, as explained at the last link above.

Health Consequences

The ACA did nothing to slow the rise in the cost of health care coverage. In fact, if anything, the ACA cemented government dominance in a variety of ways, reinforcing tendencies for cost escalation. Even worse, the ACA had negative consequences for patient care. David Chavous posted a good X thread in December on some of the health consequences of Obamacare:

1) The ACA imposed penalties on certain hospital readmissions, which literally abandoned people at death’s door.

2) It encouraged consolidation among providers in an attempt to streamline care and reduce prices. This reduced competitive pressures, however, which had the “unforeseen” consequence of raising prices and discouraging second opinions. The former goes against all economic logic while the latter goes against sound medical decision-making.

3) The ACA forced insurers to offer fewer options, increasing the cost of insurance by encouraging patients to wait until they had a pre-existing condition to buy coverage. Care was almost certainly deferred as well. Ultimately, that drove up premiums for healthy people and worsened outcomes for those falling ill.

4) It forced drug companies to negotiate with Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) to get their products into formularies. The PBMs have acted as classic middlemen, accomplishing little more than driving up drug prices and too often forcing patients to skimp on their prescribed dosage, or worse yet, increasing their vulnerability to lower-priced quackery.

The Insurers

So the ACA drastically increased the insured population (including the new burden of covering pre-existing conditions). It also forced insurers to meet draconian cost-control thresholds. Little wonder that claim rejection increased, a phenomenon often at the root of public animosity toward health insurers. Peter Earle cites several reasons for the increase in denial rates while noting that claim rejection has made little difference in insurer profit margins.

Matt Margolis points out that under the ACA, we’ve managed to worsen coverage in exchange for higher premiums and deductibles. All while profits have been capped. Claim denials or delays due to pre-authorization rules (which delay care) have become routine following the implementation of Obamacare.

Perhaps the biggest mistake was forcing insurers to cover pre-existing conditions without allowing them to price for risk. Rather than forcing healthy individuals to pay for risks they don’t face, it would be more economically sensible to directly subsidize coverage for those in high-risk pools.

Noah Smith also defends the health insurers. For example, while UnitedHealth Group has the largest market share in the industry, its net profit margin of 6.1% is only about half of the average for the S&P 500. Other major insurers earn even less by this metric. Profits just don’t explain why American health care spending is so high. Ultimately, the services delivered and charges assessed by providers explain high U.S. health care spending, not insurer profits or administrative costs.

Under the ACA, insurance premiums pay the bulk of the cost of health care delivery, including the cost of services more reasonably categorized as routine health maintenance. The latter is like buying insurance for oil changes. Furthermore, there are no options to decline any of the ten so-called “essential benefits” under the ACA, thus increasing the cost of coverage.

Medical Records

Arnold Kling argues that the ACA’s emphasis on uniform, digitized medical records is not a productive avenue for achieving efficiencies in health care delivery. Moreover, it’s been a key factor driving the increasing concentration in the health care industry. Here is Kling:

“My point is that you cannot do this until you tighten up the health care delivery process, making it more rigid and uniform. And I would not try to do that. Health care does not necessarily lend itself to being commoditized. You risk making health care in America less open to innovation and less responsive to the needs of people.

“So far, all that has been accomplished by the electronic medical records drive has been to put small physician practices out of business. They have not been able to absorb the overhead involved in implementing these systems, so that they have been forced to lose their independence, primarily to hospital-owned conglomerates.”

Separating Health and State

The problem of rising health care costs in the U.S. is capsulized by Bryan Caplan in his call for the separation of health and state. The many policy-driven failures discussed above offer more than adequate rationale for reform. The alternative suggested by Caplan is to “pull the plug” on government involvement in health care, relying instead on the free market.

Caplan debunks a few popular notions regarding the appropriate role for markets in health care and health insurance. In particular, it’s often alleged that moral hazard and adverse selection would encourage unhealthy behaviors and encourage the worst risks to over-insure, causing insurance markets to fail. But these problems arise only when risk is not priced efficiently, precisely what the government has accomplished by attempting to equalizing rates.

Pulling the plug on government interference in health care would also mean deregulating both insurance offerings and pricing, encouraging the adoption of portable coverage, expediting drug approvals based on peer-country approvals, reforming pharmacy benefit management, ending deadly Medicare drug price controls, and encouraging competition among health care providers.

Value Vs. Volume

There are a host of other reforms that could bring more sanity to our health care system. Many of these are covered here by Sebastian Caliri, with some emphasis on the potential role of AI in improving health care. Some of these are at odds with Kling’s skepticism regarding digitized health records.

Perhaps the most fundamental reforms entertained by Caliri have to do with health care payments. One is to make payments dependent on outcomes rather than diagnostic codes established and priced by the American Medical Association. To paraphrase Caliri, it would be far better for Americans to pay for value rather than volume.

Another payment reform discussed by Caliri is expanding direct payments to providers such as capitation fees, whereby patients pay to subscribe to a bundle of services for a fixed fee. Finally, Caliri discusses the importance of achieving “site-neutral payments”, eliminating rules that allow health systems to charge a higher premium relative to independent providers for identical services.

For what it’s worth, Arnold Kling disagrees that changing payment metrics would be of much help because participants will learn to game a new system. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of reducing consumer incentives for costly treatments having little benefit. No dispute there!

Avoid the Single-Payer Calamity

I’ll close this jeremiad with a quote from Caliri’s piece in which he contrasts the knee-jerk, leftist solution to our nation’s health care dilemma with a more rational, market-oriented approach:

“Single payer solutions and government control favored by the left are no solutions at all. Moving to a monopsonist system like Canada is a recipe for strangling innovation and rationing access. Just ask our neighbors to the north who have to wait a year for orthopedic surgery. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is teetering on the brink of collapse. We need to sort out some other way forward.

“Other parts of the economy provide inspiration for what may actually work. In the realm of information technology, for example, fifty years has taken us from expensive four operation calculators to ubiquitous, free, artificial intelligence capable of passing the Turing Test. We can argue about the precise details but most of this miracle came from profit-seeking enterprises competing in a free market to deliver the best value for the buyer’s dollar.“

Let’s Suppress Fraudulent Votes

11 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by in Corruption, Election Fraud

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No matter how you feel about the 2020 presidential election, whether you think it was conducted fairly or that it was “stolen” from Donald Trump, you should at least come to grips with the reality that our electoral process is quite vulnerable to manipulation. Most voters agree that election fraud is a problem. A recent poll found that 56% of likely voters agree that “every state should require that ballots be available immediately after elections for bipartisan voter reviews to enhance election confidence and transparency. Only 23% are against ballot reviews…”. So these respondents also agree that compromises to the integrity of elections should be addressed.

Local Fraud, National Scope

There is plenty of evidence that the 2020 election was manipulated by agents both inside and outside the government, if only the mainstream press could be bothered to look at it. Nuts and bolts election fraud is largely a local phenomenon, though there is likely some coordination at higher levels. Robert Zimmerman provides this summary of the election fraud in the 2020 election in Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia:

Fulton County and its elections are controlled by democrats, much as in other large cities. Localized fraud in deep blue urban centers doesn’t have much if any effect on local races, but it throws statewide and national races into doubt. Of these deep blue enclaves, Zimmerman says:

“… the government is essentially a one-party Democrat operation. Many election districts in these cities have no Republican election judges at all. If the Democrats wish to commit election fraud, there is no one looking over their shoulder to question them, with some districts actually taking aggressive action in 2020 to illegally keep Republican poll watchers out. … Thus we saw strong evidence in all of these cities of pro-Democrat ballot-stuffing, of all types, from fake ballots to ballots counted multiple times to evidence the votes on the ballots themselves were changed by computer.”

In Wisconsin, the State Supreme Court finally ruled last month that the placement of hundreds of drop boxes in its largest cities was illegal. Those unsupervised drop boxes made it a simple matter for hundreds of “mules” to deposit stacks of fraudulent ballots, not to mention enabling other kinds of ballot harvesting on a massive scale. This was not limited to Wisconsin. Zimmerman also discusses Arizona’s Maricopa County (Phoenix), where there were a host of different issues casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election results. The race in Arizona was very close, and this kind of vote tampering likely threw the state into Biden’s column:

If you doubt the ease with which “mishaps” occur when ballots are counted, take a look at the following tweet from three weeks ago:

The point is that it’s amazingly easy for fraud to occur given the lax standards of accountability often seen in elections, particularly in one-party jurisdictions.

The New Front

Will the Left seize control of elections or leverage that control more aggressively, particularly in deep blue areas? With that control, they can reinforce their ability to swing elections for statewide offices and electoral votes, and they are certainly trying. The link just above describes some well-funded organizations channeling funds to support progressive candidates running for down-ballot positions with supervisory authority over local elections and their procedures. Charities founded by billionaire George Soros, Hilary Clinton, and Mark Zuckerberg are just some of the players involved. This activity has its parallel in Soros’ successful efforts to fund the campaigns of radical leftists for prosecutor jobs in many cities.

There is also the matter of private grants to local election offices, ostensibly to support the “health” of voters and election workers, but mostly used to “get out the vote”. This was the approach used by the activist group funded by Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan:

“In 2020, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $350 million to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a left-leaning group that distributed grants to mostly Democrat-dominated precincts, driving up the vote. The Zuckerbergs’ grants, dubbed Zuckerbucks, helped finance drop boxes and expanded mail-in balloting, among other activities.”

Pennsylvania recently prohibited private election grants in order to reduce outside influence on elections, a wise response to the violations of state law that occurred in the 2020 election. The ban covers nonprofits like the Center for Tech and Civic Life. Zuckerberg asserts that the organization distributed more grants to Republican jurisdictions (anywhere Trump won in 2020) than elsewhere, but that claim is dubious based on the amounts of those donations:

“… Republican jurisdictions were far more likely to receive grants of less than $50,000, which would likely not be enough to materially change election practices in the recipient jurisdiction.”

Pennsylvania is not alone in its bid to restore integrity by banning these grants. At least 20 states have passed similar laws since the 2020 election, with varying degrees of stringency. That’s good news, but it won’t stop tampering by officials elected with the aid of organizations intent on controlling election procedures.

Corrupting Federal Institutions

There have been, and still are, machinations at levels much higher than local election authorities. The FBI engaged in election sabotage in 2020 to destroy Donald Trump, a sitting U.S. President. This occurred on at least two fronts. There was the staged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Windmere in October 2020, with all hands attempting to implicate Trump and his supporters. Trump’s prospects fell in Michigan after the announcement of this foiled “kidnapping”, which was subsequently discovered to be a plot by the FBI to entrap a few rubes. Equally disturbing was the flagrant attempt by the Justice Department before the election to discount evidence that Hunter Biden had been engaged in influence peddling for years. That discounting continues to this day, of course.

These maneuvers followed the FBI’s complicity in the Russia Hoax, which was conceived in opposition research by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. The agency made use of a dossier compiled by ex-British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of a Clinton campaign contractor. Despite strong suspicions that the dossier was fabricated as well as politically motivated, it was used to obtain clearance from a FISA Court to surveil Trump’s presidential campaign. The FBI continued its misrepresentation of the Steele dossier throughout the Mueller investigation, which ultimately found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia

Today, we know the FBI and the Department of Justice are still at it. Their attempts to destroy Trump, just 80 days ahead of the 2022 midterms, are transparently motivated by politics, culminating in the raid on Trump’s private residence at Mar-a-Lago in search of “classified documents”. It is also likely a fishing expedition that they hope might turn up evidence of a “planned insurrection”. Note that neither Hillary Clinton nor Sandy Berger (President Clinton’s National Security Advisor) had their private residences raided despite personal and illegal possession of classified documents. The hypocrisy is jaw dropping, but it seems clear the Mar-a-Lago raid was another example of efforts within federal law enforcement to influence elections.

Another recent example of likely election influencing within a federal institution is how the Census Bureau managed to “significantly” miscount the populations of 14 states in the 2020 Census. Five of the six undercounted states were “red” states. Six of the eight over-counted states were “blue” states, including New York. The admission of the miscount by the Census Bureau occurred after redistricting took place, a process that surely would have been impacted by the count. So the Democrats picked up congressional seats by virtue of the miscounting. In addition, according to Matt Margolis, the miscounts will give the next democrat presidential candidate nine extra votes in the Electoral College.

Efforts to wholly eliminate the Electoral College are another example of the Left’s efforts to seize control of the Executive Branch, once and for all. The popular vote would be replaced and control ceded to a group of highly populated coastal states. As I’ve written before, the Electoral College was an arrangement necessary to obtain the agreement of all states to join the union. There is no doubt that many states would insist upon a similar arrangement today if we were to do it all over again.

Conclusion

There is very real potential for ongoing election tampering and vote fraud in elections, and the Left has demonstrated a wholehearted willingness to engage in this effort. Much of this activity takes place at the local level in jurisdictions in which election supervision is controlled by one party. The looser the rules, the greater potential there is for abuse. This also explains the motivation to pour resources into electing certain candidates to offices with supervisory power over elections. Also disturbing is the complicity of federal law enforcement in attempts to influence presidential elections. Our Republic cannot withstand the unbridled partisanship we’ve witnessed in the election process. Addressing these problems is likely to require a major clean-up and reorganization of the FBI and possibly the DOJ, but restoring the integrity of those institutions will probably require significant election successes for Republicans in 2022 and 2024. Yes, there really is a deep state!