It was all over on Monday as it turns out. They came, they parked here, they tore up the road one street over. Then they left and haven't been back.
No notice that they were coming. No idea when they will come back. The invasion is on hold. But it is a good bet that they will be back. This is America in 2024.
That brings me to the Federal Elections Commission. It is one example of how our federal government does not function, and it presents a real opportunity to go big or go home.
The FEC declined to investigate – not declined to prosecute, mind you, but declined to investigate – a complaint that campaign funds in at least two elections were illegally used to fund various activities and people with respect to running a so-called "ghost" candidate in Florida. A "ghost" candidate is a person who has say the same last name as a real candidate of the opposing party, in these cases, the opposing party's candidates are Democrats and the funders are Republicans. In one of these cases, the ghost candidate not only did not campaign but fled to Sweden.
The FEC declined to investigate the funding concerning these ghost candidates because the Republican members of the FEC voted to reject the recommendation of their general counsel to investigate this stuff, presumably because these shenanigans involved Republicans running for office who ended up being elected. Well, what is to be done?
It is up to Congress to abolish the FEC, but the Republicans in Congress don't give out much confidence that they will actually act. The President, on the other hand, presumably could remove Commissioners. Here in Florida, Ron DeSantis has removed State Attorneys who will not enforce his laws, one of whom was just critical of DeSantis's abortion laws but did not say he would not enforce them. Since when does Ron DeSantis have more power than the President of the United States?
So, Joe, consider removing Federal Election Commissioners who voted in favor of illegally funding federal elections by voting against their own lawyer's recommendation to investigate the allegedly illegal funding. If they sue, let them. Ron DeSantis has come up with his own defense funds after the State Attorneys he removed have sued him. Surely you can raise defense funds as well.
In the end, the ideal solution will be to eliminate every commission, agency, and appointed group that does not function because of so-called "politics," although it's hard to believe that saying "it's politics" is just another way of saying "it's illegal." Since politics keeps good things from seeing the light of day in Congress, however, at the present time perhaps the best remaining alternative is to consider removing the people who perpetrate these wrongs.
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