By Tim Tapp
​
   America is facing the continuing effects of the COVID-19 global pandemic on both the economy and public feelings of fear and/or frustration, racially-based civil unrest, and the over-the-top political antics of the presidential election season. In the past - feels like the ancient past - the news media would have reported all of the potential scandals and questionable activities of all of the candidates for the highest office in the land. But those days are over, as many in the mainstream media report as if only those with an "R" at the end of their name are capable of behavior that should be questioned or brought to the attention of the American voting public. This is why it is not surprising that a report from the Washington Free Beacon has been largely ignored with a few conservative news outlet exceptions.
   Joe Biden is currently the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President. Biden has been running what many are calling a "basement campaign," making few public appearances. Democratic operatives claim this is due to COVID concerts and a strategy to step back and let Donald Trump implode (which is what they desperately want the American people to believe). Trump surrogates (and many who have simply been paying attention) vocally assert that it is an attempt to protect Biden from exposing what appears to be declining mental capacity. But clearly, it is also a way of helping the news media in their quest to protect the man they want to move 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from having to answer questions he may not want to answer. (Remember how long it took to get an official response to the Tara Reade allegations?)
   The Washington Free Beacon report that is being mostly ignored to this point is not as "bombshell" as sexual misconduct claims or as politically damaging as Biden's involvement in Ukraine to protect Hunter should have been. It doesn't even rise to the level of being in a meeting with then "Occupier of the White House" Barack Obama, along with members of the DOJ, when plans to derail the Trump presidency where being made. (After all, that's par for the course these days ... right?) But, the issue exposed in this news story is the kind of reporting that the American people - regardless of how they vote - once cared about very deeply.
   The Biden Cancer Initiative, a nonprofit that the former Vice President established after leaving the White House, spent nearly two-thirds of its budget on staff compensation. A rather large percentage of the operating budget for a nonprofit; in fact, most charity watchdogs recommend twenty-five percent of the budget be spent on administrative overhead and fundraising costs combined. According to Charity Navigator, "spending less than a third of their budget on program expenses are simply not living up to their missions." Is this alone enough to reflect poorly on Biden? If you don't look any deeper, maybe not, but there is more to the story.
   You see, at the Biden Cancer Initiative, salaries made up nearly 65% of its total expenditures. The organization raised and spent $4.8 million over the two years it was in operation, $3 million of that went to salaries, compensation, and benefits, according to 2017 and 2018 tax forms. The Biden Cancer Initiative also spent $1.7 million on other expenses not related to their mission to "develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research, and care, and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes," including $740,000 for conferences, conventions, and meetings. Still not worth raising an eyebrow for most political observers, until you look at who has been receiving those salaries.
   The Biden Cancer Initiative's president Greg Simon and it's vice president Danielle Carnival were among the executives who were paid six figures. They also had been a part of the Obama administration's "Cancer Moonshot" program, as were many of the six-figure executives. Some would excuse this as Biden working with people he knows who have "expertise" in the field. However, it does raise the question of if the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's organization allowed associates to profit off their access to Biden. (Not the first time this question has arisen. In fact, one might say it speaks to a pattern of behavior.) 
   Joe Biden has garnered goodwill, as well as cash contributions, in the name of fighting cancer. Biden's son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, so Biden would be expected to be passionate about that fight. But then it would appear that he was not a good steward of the resources granted to the Initiative. It would be fair to ask what, if anything, was actually done to fight cancer at the Initiative. If the American people can't trust Biden with private dollars given to combat something that took his son from him, how can he be trusted with taxpayer money (not that he doesn't already have a track-record with taxpayer dollars)?
   It would appear from the outside that to many in the Democratic party and those surrounding him, Joe Biden has ceased to be a person and now is just a brand. A brand that the party can use to advance their goals - and should Biden win in November - to control from behind the scenes. A brand that those around him can latch onto and leech off of to pad their bank accounts. Joe Biden and his wife Jill left the organization's board in April 2019 as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign. The Biden Cancer Initiative suddenly shuttered on July 11, 2019. Was this because without the brand, the dollars stopped coming into the Initiative? Why were these executives at the Initiative, to fight cancer or to cash checks?

By Tim Tapp

​Some people just want to watch the world burn.
  
   The idea that the "majority should decide" has been used by those in power, to appease crowds for some time now. So, the language of democracy has rung sweetly in the ears of people living in Western-value-based nations since the time of the Greek philosophers. But there is a problem inherent in a straight democracy; the majority does rule, and minorities never win the political arguments when they inevitably arise. This rule by the majority always leads to feelings of being ignored and or marginalized for those who are not part of that majority, which leads to frustration and anger over time. That frustration has historically led to the formation of mobs.
   The angry mob is a tool that has been used to overthrow those in power for centuries. Those who would rise up in revolution often are small in numbers - too small to take control on their own - so, to better their odds, they ferment unrest in the larger body of the minorities. The revolutionists fan the flames of division and anger using both the legitimate grievances of the people and using misinformation techniques to exaggerate the plight of the group they wish to nudge to become a mob.
   For that reason, the Founding Fathers of the United States chose to add as many safeguards as they could into the Constitution. Safeguards to protect the rights of minorities from being ignored or overruled by the majority. Safeguards against too much power being placed in one person's hands. Safeguards meant to - at the very least - slow the advancement of tyranny and allow a moral people (they were hoping that would be us) to maintain individual liberty. For that reason, the United States has never had a democracy; we have always had a constitutionally federated republic that included democratic principles in its operation.

But some people just want to watch the world burn.

   The Constitution has worked as a roadblock to those who wish to impose their will on the people who live in this nation. For that reason, many have been working to weaken the constraints of the Constitution since its ratification. Today, those constraints are little more than a speed bump as many elected officials move to impose their wills rather than follow the path laid out by the Framers.
   America has been under assault since its inception. The idea of a nation that can be ruled by its people is dangerous in the minds of some. The notion that government doesn't belong in the daily lives of a nation's citizens is a hard pill to swallow to those who believe that they know better than you how you should live, what you should think, etc. The enemies of individual liberty see the separation between the current government and the Constitution, and they have decided to elevate their attacks and break out that time-honored classic - the angry mob.

Because some people just want to watch the world burn.

   The past few weeks, we have watched as legitimate outrage over the wrongful death of George Floyd morphed into riots, looting, and more wrongful deaths. We have seen all police vilified by the media and by "activists." We have seen places like Seattle give up control over blocks of the city that included homes and businesses (they have finally taken steps to re-establish control). We have watched the toppling of statues of historical figures, which now include the likes of Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt because of the complete lack of historical context. When the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, must be removed in the name of the Woke mob's cancel culture, it is not black lives that matter, it is the erasure of history that is at hand.
   Make no mistake; this is an assault on the republic. It is not for the reasons that the organizers claim. Most of the people involved are well-meaning individuals seeking to address issues where our nation has fallen short. Still, they have been manipulated into becoming part of the angry mob. The unthinking angry mob that only feels rage and where those legitimate grievances are blurred and secondary as the individual has no voice in the crowd is a tool not for justice but revolution. Those who seek justice have been duped into mob-hood by organizations claiming to be one thing but are Marxists trying to end the republic.
   When Nikole Hannah-Jones tweets that it would be an honor to remember these events as the "1619 Riots", she demonstrates her desire to see our republic burned down. When Shaun King tells people that statues of Jesus as "white European" should be torn down because they are a form of white supremacy, he is not encouraging people to come together to solve issues. An agenda is being pursued; a narrative is being engrained into our society. The goal is to end capitalism and abandon the republic, even if many of the people helping push the agenda are unaware of the result of following the path that they are on.

They just want to see the world that has been built burn down because they want to re-make it in their own image.

   Our republic has not always lived up to the principles that we laid its foundations upon, but the United States is the freest nation in the world for all those who reside here. The flaws that are often pointed out by America's critics are not flaws of the systems but the men at the levers of those systems. All humans are flawed, and holding them to an impossible standard serves no purpose (other than to excuse their cancel). The nation has grown, and as it moved forward, those promises in the founding documents have been realized by more and more people. Each day is a step closer to fulfilling the vision of individual liberty for all in a society that does not make judgments based on skin color; a step further down the path began not in 1619 but 1776. 
   Don't let these revolutionaries whip up mobs and erase the history that we share. Don't let them burn down the republic and end the two hundred plus year journey that we have been on together. I can't promise you when all of our societal ills will be remedied (or if they ever will be). But I can tell you that socialism nor communism can ever solve the issues that are dividing us today. A fight for equality, for individual freedoms, can never be achieved in a system that requires you to be a cog in the machine. Remember that true democracy is little more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to have for dinner, so there are no protections for minorities. That is why we have a republic and not a democracy. Let's keep it and move forward together.

By Tim Tapp 
 
   The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, better known as DACA, has been a hot button issue since it's inception by the pen of one Barrack Obama. The problem with DACA is that it was never legal. Putting aside all of the compassion vs. legal right to be in the United States arguments, DACA was created via Executive Order. At this point in our nation, many have forgotten that the authority to issue EOs are derived from the United States' Constitution Article II, Section I, where it states, "The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." and Article II, Section III where the Framers told us, "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."  If that seems a little vague to you, let me simplify it just a bit. President is the Chief Executive, which means it is his responsibility to oversee the operations of the federal government, like the CEO of any private company. President is expected to use his "power" as CEO of the government to make sure that laws that have been duly passed by Congress - and signed by him or VETO overridden - are upheld in accordance with the limitations that have been placed on the federal government by the Constitution. Okay, so that still sounds a bit convoluted, so let me try that again. President is in charge of the executive branch of the federal government and is expected to use the executive branch to enforce the laws that have been passed by Congress.  Is that better? 
  The point so far being that only Congress writes laws. President has no authority to write legislation. President does have the power to give directives to the various offices of the executive branch, such as the DOJ, IRS, etc.  Those directives are Executive Orders. If you're paying attention to this point, you now know that EOs are only directives from the CEO to their subordinates regarding how they want the job done. There is no power of law for an EO. As an example, the director of the FBI can be removed from their position for failing to follow such a mandate; but anyone who does not work for the executive branch is not compelled to heed those same directions. Here is where I remind you that (according to the Constitution), the director of the FBI serves at the pleasure of President, but President works for the American people. There is, however, one exception to the limitation of the EO. Only if the Congress has passed legislation giving the Executive authority to act on a particular issue does an EO have the power of law. (And just for the record there is still debate among Constitutional scholars as to if Congress can grant the Executive this exemption. But it has become accepted and has been left unchallenged at the SCOTUS level - at least so far.) 
   When Barack Obama wrote the EO creating the DACA program, he did so out of frustration with Congress due to their inability or unwillingness to move forward legislation on immigration reform. Nearly a year earlier, Obama had told a Spanish-speaking television audience that he did not have the power to make proclamations; he was not a king. But on the day he proclaimed DACA, we were all told that he had a phone and a pen. I bring this up to show you that even Obama acknowledged that it was the role of Congress to make changes to immigration law just a year earlier. He knew that he had no legal authority to institute the DACA program but was later counting on the fact that no one - with "standing" - would challenge the EO's legality. In Congress - both houses - Democrats cheered him, Republicans rebuked him, and both ignored the Constitution and their jobs. (Remember it's the job of Congress to make or change law.)  
   Another well-documented fact about Executive Orders is that if the next person who becomes President doesn't like a previous EO, they can simply write a new one repealing or replacing it with their own. That is because the EO - if you will remember - is the directive of how the current CEO wants their subordinates to carry out their assigned duties.  
   President Donald Trump took steps to phase out the DACA program by writing an EO. In Trump's order, he established a time frame and expressed his desire for Congress to take action on immigration reform within that time frame. Trump was trying to re-establish the rule of law in two ways: eliminate an unconstitutional EO and have Congress fulfill its responsibilities as law-makers. Instead, he was accused of being a racist, and Congress postured rather than go to work on the issue. 
   Part of the posturing that we saw from activist leftists was a legal challenge to Trump's EO to end the DACA program. After this challenge had made it's way to the SCOTUS, the ruling of the court was rendered on Thursday, June 18th, 2020. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the four leftist judges ruled that Trump’s decision to rescind DACA violated the Administrative Procedure Act saying that Trump's effort was “arbitrary and capricious.” In a very narrow look at the issue, the court wrote, "the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients" while refusing to rule on the legality of DACA itself. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch did acknowledge that DACA was illegal from its inception in their dissent, but given the refusal of the leftist justices to ask that most basic question, the Constitution and Common Sense both lost the day.  
   In the simplest terms, the SCOTUS has told President Trump that he does not have the same authorities that all previous Presidents have had. They have said to all of America that we should accept EOs as if they too are laws. They have told Trump that he can't clean up Obama's mess because it will be a mess to clean up, even though it is a mess that should have never been created. And possibly worse of all, they have told all of America that we should no longer care about the Constitution because clearly, at least five of the Justices do not.  ​