In the midst of the uproar over former President Donald Trump’s indictment, Greg Kelly, on his popular Newsmax show, spoke forcefully in favor of entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy as Trump’s running mate.
He did this although Ramaswamy, as yet, has failed to register more than a point or two, if that, in the polls.
And Kelly isn’t the only one. Ramaswamy has been mentioned as a potential vice-president several times by the politically educated readers in the comments sections of this paper, and elsewhere. Out front with what some might deem controversial opinions, the long-shot candidate is having an impact.
Late on April 2, his campaign issued a brief statement, titled “Vivek Ramaswamy Announces Plan to End Political Weaponization of Federal Administrative Power.”
- Shut down and replace the FBI.
- Shut down and replace the IRS.
- Pardon all federal defendants prosecuted based on political motives. This includes Douglass Mackey, nonviolent Jan. 6, 2021, defendants denied due process, and any defendants convicted pursuant to unconstitutional vestiges of the Patriot Act.
- Hold Congress accountable for using U.S. taxpayer dollars as hush money for sexual harassment claims against members of Congress.
- Publish the Jeffrey Epstein client list: the federal government shouldn’t weaponize police power to protect a select few from accountability.
The FBI has been a disgrace since its inception, known, under J. Edgar Hoover, to have spied on and attempted to strong-arm, in highly dubious manners, the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
A salient domestic example of Lord Acton’s famous warning about power, merely to reform such a blot on our national character, as some recommend, would be insufficient. The ghost of its unprincipled past would always be with it.
Ramaswamy is correct. The FBI should be completely shut down and replaced—and in a manner that would put it under the supervision of the U.S. people for whom it works, not the reverse.
And then there was the IRS’s partisan targeting, sometimes to impoverishment, of Tea Party Movement organizations over a decade ago. These activities were cited by a government inspector but only resulted in a settlement in 2017 with no more than an apology from the agents involved, all of whom walked.
Ramaswamy says the IRS should be shut down and replaced, but with what?
The U.S. tax code is more complicated than the Babylonian Talmud, with nowhere approaching its moral intent. Our code’s real purpose is largely to grant financial favors to the rich, most often in return for supporting certain candidates, Democrat or Republican.
For years, Steve Forbes has been recommending that it be replaced with a flat tax. He says it wouldn’t harm the poor, most of whose income would be taxed in that system anyway while netting more revenue for the government, with fewer opportunities for loopholes and cheating. Why not?
This one should be a classic no-brainer unless you prefer the old Soviet Union during the days of Comrade Beria of the NKVD. Now that the video has been released of the goofy “QAnon Shaman” being escorted about the Senate floor by a complaisant Capitol police, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Jan. 6 was a massively overblown scandal, in large part engineered by agents provocateur of our government who ginned up a riot of the largely innocent and encouraged violence, all financed by our taxpayer dollars.
And just who were the violent ones anyway? All we know definitively in that regard is the unpunished murder of the unarmed Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol policeman. Wow.
One of the (many) reasons the left fights the election of Donald Trump so unrelentingly, including waging more “lawfare” against him than any president in our history, is that he might appoint an attorney general—assuming he can find one this time—with the moxie and honesty to unravel all this and much more deception that has been going on in our country.
In a putative Trump/Ramaswamy administration, many would be released.
Hmm ... I have to admit I’m not entirely up to speed on this one, though I have heard rumors and seen allegations. If true, it should be exposed in the interest of that most elusive of all things—government transparency—which leads to Ramaswamy’s conclusion.
I roll my eyes at the nearly instant decision of former William Barr in declaring Epstein’s death a suicide, just as I roll my eyes at the then-attorney general determining the 2020 election was fairly contested, with only minor cheating, barely a month after the vote.
Ramaswamy is clearly asking the right questions and making some solid recommendations.
A request to Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, is in order.
Ms. McDaniel, please do your best to ensure that Ramaswamy is qualified for the primary debate. Your party deserves to hear him. So does the rest of America.
