L&T Publisher Earl Watt
Over the years a lot of people have been in and out of the office that would make great public servants, and I’ve encouraged many of them to run for office.
While many are flattered by the encouragement, there is always one issue that makes them say no.
“It will hurt my business,” they say.
I push further, telling them that if we don’t have good candidates we won’t get the best leadership.
They agree. But the personal risk is too great. If they make a decision that might be best for the community, there will still be about half of the people who won’t like it, and that half will retaliate personally against their private business.
I try to assure them that we have to put more trust in people, that even when they disagree they will surely respect the reason why a decision was made.
“It’s just too risky,” they say.
Disappointed, I tell them I think they should reconsider.
And then I watched the last week where Teslas are being lit on fire around the country. They are being dented, scratched, and in any way possible vandalized just because Elon Musk is invested in the company.
What does Musk have to do with cars being lit on fire?
It’s simple — Musk committed the cardinal sin of volunteering to serve the American people in government.
That was never an issue as long as Musk was supporting Democratic candidates.
But when Musk joined forces with Trump to root out government waste, he became Public Enemy No. 1 to the far left.
Had Barack Obama or Joe Biden asked Musk to head up a new government department to root out waste, Democrats would have welcomed him with open arms.
Chances are a number of Republicans would have done the same, but even if they didn’t, it is highly improbable that Republicans would be lighting Teslas on fire.
Where did they get such a crazy idea?
Maybe it came form House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries who said when fighting against Donald Trump’s agenda, “We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets.”
In the streets? Just what exactly did that mean? Physical violence? Setting cars on fire?
Legislatively, fine. Take your case to court, absolutely.
But in the United States, we don’t settle our political differences in the streets. We settle them in the voting booth.
Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are now touring the country with rallies claiming the cuts of waste and abuse are actually taking benefits away from people. They claim shutting down the U.S. Department of Education will take money away from schools.
These aren’t true, of course. No benefits to the public have been affected by the Department of Government Efficiency, only the governmental cost of providing those benefits.
For example, the claim that school lunches would be discontinued without the DOE was refuted by the fact that the DOE doesn’t administer the school lunch program. That is done through the Department of Agriculture.
“Student financial aid will go away,” the far left claimed.
Again, not true. That responsibility has been passed to the Small Business Administration.
Their claim about Medicaid cuts have nothing to do with DOGE. Any cuts that happen to programs like that have to be passed by Congress, and this issue has become a poster child to get voters fired up.
Where did they get this idea? House Republicans have pushed the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion in government spending. The far left has interpreted that to mean Medicaid. Crazy, I know, but that is the leap they are making, and the media is going with it.
Headlines like “Medicaid cuts will increase homelessness” are proof that the media is also interpreting Energy and Commerce Committee cuts must mean and only mean Medicaid.
And that’s why good people won’t run for office. Any common-sense suggestion gets twisted into something it’s not, and all of a sudden people are boycotting a business or intentionally burning down their products.
These products, by the way, were championed by the far left less than a year ago. Electric cars were the wave of the future, and the far left was demanding the government force people to buy electic cars by making oil and gas prices so ridiculously high that people would have no choice but to go electric.
But Musk wants to cut the cost of government. They twist that to mean Medicaid, which it never did, and then we find out it was enver about saving the environment. It was about pushing for electric cars sold by Democrats.
Just like women’s rights issues end when conservative women are involved. Had Biden supported women-only sports programs, he would have been a hero. Trump, however, is a self-serving narcissist.
Trump and his company have suffered greatly because he wanted to serve his country. Musk is now taking losses for volunteering.
The far left is claiming rich people are taking over despite the fact that mega donors kicked in $1.65 billion for Kamala Harris to Trump’s $1 billion.
Despite being outspent, Trump won, and the far left still makes the claim that he bought the presidency. And that’s, again, why good people don’t run.
AOC has taken heat from the right for being a bartender before running for Congress as not being qualified, and Musk takes heat from the left for not being qualified. No one is burning down bars, but Teslas are on fire. You want to know why we can’t get good candidates? That’s why.
