Samuel H. Clovis, Jr., Doctor of Public Administration
The Democrats and the Constitution
When I broke away from dealing with a lot of personal issues over the past several weeks, I did glance at the TV to see how the trial of the President was proceeding. I about puked when I heard Adam Schiff invoke the Constitution on repeated occasions. I would be willing to bet my income (which is not much right now) that none—none—of the Democrat managers had ever read the Constitution until they had to come into the trial chamber and try to convince 100 sitting Senators that they were sincere in their arguments. After invoking the secular holy writ of the Constitution, they proceeded to lying over and over again about their evidence on the President. It was laughable.
- Thursday, February 13, 2020
I consider myself a pretty smart guy. Of course, I have a huge ego that really does not need massaging. Thus, when I run into a situation where I should have picked up on something long before I did is disconcerting, to say the least. This is the situation when it dawned on me that Candidate Trump was a realist, a pragmatist and really had no real ideology guiding his thinking. When I read four of his books and edited the book he published during the campaign, it hit me like a safe dropped from the fourth floor of a building. When the clue bird landed on my shoulder, my help for the candidate improved exponentially. He liked what I wrote and what I said. He must have as he kept me on all the way into the administration.
I’ve written about labor issues in these pages many times. However, it seems that each recent jobs report, there is more to say about what is going on in this country. Right now, I am bullish on the economy and think we are going to continue to see positive growth. There might be some small corrections over the next several months, but for the most part, things are looking good.
There is one big promise made by the President that must be kept. That promise is to build a wall on our southern border and to get a handle on immigration into this country. Here is why this is so important.
Today, there are 10.7 million people in this country illegally. Of that number, 50% come from Mexico and another 18% from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The government shutdown is finishing its second week and the new Congress gets sworn in today. I can hardly wait. As the establishment elements of both parties continue to hand-wring over the current President,
I have chronicled in past writings how much heat we took for predicting 4% GDP growth if we would be able to get some form of tax reform in place. Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore took the campaign’s fiscal policy outline and refined it and got it passed through the congress.
I have grown so weary of conservatives and Republicans ceding the language of politics to the progressives and Democrats. Why is it that we allow media talking heads, prominent progressives and the elitist leadership of the opposition party to call us such hideous names and to take control of the language?
I am a Star Trek fan, like millions and millions of others on the planet. In later versions of the franchise, the great threat to the star fleet and the Federation was the Borg. The Borg, if I remember correctly, was about the collective—that total lack of individuality among beings and a complete lack of liberty for those civilizations that had been conquered. If one did not submit, then elimination of that civilization was the obligation of the Borg. Their goal was perfection. Does any of this sound familiar in any way?
Russell Kirk, arguably the best conservative intellect of the 20th century, wrote often about being on guard for ideologues. His admonition was offered because he recognized that far too many people who seek public life do so for power and not service.
An ideologue is an individual who conducts political action and activity to gain political power so as to suppress or eliminate those who might hold contrary views.
I started this newsletter with a brief discourse on liberty because, hopefully, such an entry will provide context for the political violence we see every day. Antifa, confrontations in restaurants, and violent protests in cities around the country do not serve the political process well. And when people kill others, or try to kill others, that is no longer political confrontation—those are acts of terrorism.
Every time I start to write about the economy, I worry that I might drill down too deep, because most people don’t care as much about the details of the economy as they care about how much money is in their bank accounts and wallets.
I don’t think it will serve any real purpose to rehash the despicable behavior of the media, the Left and the Democrats as they collectively tried to block a good man from assuming a position on the Supreme Court.
The American people are currently witnessing the worst angels of the Democrat Party (and some establishment Republicans) as Brett Kavanaugh gets dragged through the sewer. This man is acknowledged by both sides of the aisle as one of the great legal minds in America. He is perhaps, as some have said, a man set apart in his generation.
(Editor’s Note): The following ‘Below the Radar’ gem can be found in the ‘Impact With Sam Clovis’ Newsletter, and it’s only one! Clovis, who served as co-chair of Donald Trump’s Campaign in the 2016 presidential election, and went on to be nominated by President Trump as Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics in the United States Department of Agriculture, before returning to his home in Iowa, is as close to being the 21st Century ‘Mr. Smith Goes To Washington’ as it gets.
In today’s toxic environment found inside “the swamp,” I am often reminded of the old saw about evil flourishing when good people do nothing. I consider this a truism, an absolute, a defined value that is not zero. Unfortunately, I have had the opportunity to see this phenomenon up close and personal.
For 20 years or so, I had the good fortune of being a college professor. I started out as an adjunct instructor in 1996 teaching in an evening adult education program for a prominent Colorado private university. From that humble beginning, I eventually found myself, at various stages of my academic career, an assistant professor, a department chair, a center director, a tenured full professor and a dean.
I live in farm country. The northwest corner of Iowa is the “reddest” part of the state, having cast massive majority votes for the current president in most of the counties in this region. The economy is dominated by corn, soybeans, ethanol production and massive livestock operations focused on eggs, poultry, pork and beef.
I was a child, young adult, aspiring young military man and aged warrior of the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union. During my time in the military, I trained for—and became proficient at—combating the Russian hordes, or their surrogates, anywhere in the world.
No matter how much makeup we put on the federal procurement system (pig), the underlying animal is still a pig
As much as I am eager to celebrate the American economy coming back into the land of the living, I am also cautious about getting into the Conga line until I can look at some of the internal numbers associated with those who are striving to achieve the American dream.