“All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward.” – Ellen Glasgow
I had a conversation with a friend this week about the societal planners and their unending subversive schemes at the local level. It went something like this: “I sure wish that I could unplug from the nonsense and just go back to getting my kids to adulthood. Alas, our tormentors are relentless.”
I regularly speak with like-minded regular folk, and I’m astonished at how little those around us know about what is going on in local affairs. Things that impact them greatly are happening right here in Southeast Idaho, and too often the public is just generally unaware. The allure of ignorance is enticing, but at what cost? We have a civic duty to be informed on what is going on around us, and so here is a brief snapshot of a few ongoing topics of discussion.
Earlier this year the Marshall Public Library came into focus when local librarian Vickie Christensen issued complaints about some of the material available for checkout in her library. Noted in the past, the Marshall Public Library drew controversy over its hosting of Drag Queen Storytime. The material in question includes graphic and instructional novels depicting sex acts among minors, such as how to perform fellatio and anal intercourse. Many parents organized in protest and it was requested that these materials be removed or sequestered to a mature section where parental consent could be sought.
As a society, we agreed that content rating systems were appropriate for most forms of art and entertainment, such as video, music, and game content. Yet, the expectation of the same in literary content available to the public on the taxpayer dime is unacceptable. Opponents of sequestering this content suggest that it is hateful and bigoted to not allow children to have access to it. They call it an attack on the LGBTQ+ community. If not sexualizing children is an attack on the LGBTQ+ community, does that suggest that the sexual demographic of the LGBTQ+ community is children? We can do better, Pocatello. Contrary to the press spin, sequestration is a happy medium.
A few months ago I mentioned a subversive scheme of District 29 Representative Dustin Manwaring, working in conjunction with Secretary of State Phil McGrane to move Idaho’s Presidential primary from March to May. It drew nearly zero attention. The stated goal of this move was to save Idaho money by condensing elections into one instead of two. The only problem with this subversive tactic was that its intent was to make Idaho’s primary irrelevant. Unless all national primaries are held on the same day, early primaries exert undue influence as they drive the press cycle and candidates drop out after the first few primaries are held. By moving Idaho’s primary to May, we’d be fully three months into this process, and Idaho will only effectively have the choice of voting for whomever early primaries have elevated. They were successful.
If this was all Manwaring and McGrane had cooked up, we’d have problems. Unfortunately, either by incompetence or sabotage, they managed worse. They completely left out a primary mechanism for the 2024 elections, and as of right now, Idaho has no Presidential primary for 2024. The only way for this to be resolved is for Idaho’s Governor to call a special session to fix their error. For his part, Manwaring penned an Op-Ed touting his horrible voting record and how it advanced with the past legislative session, and lamenting his failures to make a primary for 2024 in his legislation. Dustin can somewhat redeem himself by getting said special session and setting an Idaho primary as early in the primary season as possible so that Idahoans might actually have a voice on a national stage. Get it done, Dustin!
Finally, last year Idaho left-wing activist organization Reclaim Idaho launched a statewide petition to increase funding for public education. They were successful and in order to head off their use of the ballot referendum, Governor Little called a special session to allocate additional funding for education from the state’s budget surplus, in order to have some control over it. Having seen a measure of success, Reclaim Idaho is back to work, this time looking to pass Ranked Choice Voting and Open Primaries so that they might organize Idaho’s left to exert undue influence in Idaho’s elections.
I have covered Ranked Choice Voting before, but it is essentially a scheme to dilute the majority vote by splitting it amongst candidates while elevating the minority to majority status. Alaska was the example mentioned and it had disastrous consequences for the majority Republicans in Alaska. Essentially, two Republican candidates split sixty percent of the vote, and that left the Democrats with the majority at forty percent and effectively allowed them to leapfrog the Republican Party in a Republican majority state. DO NOT fall for this nonsense, Idaho. The legislature has recently banned it in Idaho and Governor Little signed off on it, but these organizations hope to use their condensed numbers in places like Boise to advance it to the ballot. Reject it.
As for Open Primaries, it is no secret that Democrats are changing their party affiliation to Republican to control who the Republicans nominate to represent their party. Idaho state law allows voters to remain unaffiliated until the election and then affiliate before they draw a primary ballot in order to jump around in parties between midterms and presidential elections. I calculated the numbers from the Secretary of State’s Office between November 2020 and 2022, and there were some fifty-eight thousand Unaffiliated and Democrat registrations that dropped off and some forty-six thousand Republican additions in that span. That would easily account for discrepancies in several statewide races. The Primaries should not only remain closed, but legislators and the Governor should work to further close off the primaries, so that Republicans may control their own party.
Photo by Mitchell Kmetz on Unsplash
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