Political Thoughts of Timothy A. Raty

 While the beginning paragraphs of the U.S. Declaration of Independence are the most quoted, it is often overlooked that our Founding Father’s listed 27 grievances against Great Britain’s King George III and outlined their reasons for declaring independence from the British Crown. Here is how these grievances stack against former President Donald J. Trump (R): He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. While “Governors” in the Declaration’s context is in reference to King George’s ministers, it can also be applicable to the Governors of the United States during both the COVID-19 Pandemic and other natural disaster situations, when President Trump pressed the issue of withholding aid to “blue” States and areas, due to the lack of popular support for him in such. Though not the same concretely, this gri...

To my recollection, there has not been a time when the Electoral College has been so severely under attack by Democrats (whose only Presidential election losses this millennium, save one, were when they lost the electoral vote, despite winning the popular vote) and so vigorously defended by Republicans for all the wrong reasons (solely that it gives them a chance to win, despite clearly being less popular than the Democrats). More disheartening is the fact that most people do not understand the rationale for the Electoral College. To most, it is an anachronistic mechanism, developed solely as a utilitarian function for practically conducting a nationwide election in the 18 th Century. To others, it was a means of exploitation by wealthy landowners, ensuring that they would always control the levers of power (a ridiculous notion, considering such landowners could have easily established a more robust aristocratic system, modeled after Great Britain after the Revolutionary War, with t...