Free and fair elections
Free and fair elections cannot be held in this country unless laws are made against private individuals and corporations donating money to government election agencies.
Shortly before the 2020 election, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook donated $350 million of his own money to give grants to government election agencies. There is no law against that, in theory, at least.
Since the 2020 election, much has been found out about the grants that Zuckerberg and others made. The grants were given and managed in ways that left a widespread trail of corruption. The money was channeled from Zuckerberg to a leftist organization called the Center for Technology and Civic Life, or CTCL. CTCL, in turn, gave direct grants to government election boards, and 20 percent of US election boards received such grants.
The grants made by CTCL to election boards were only allowed to be spent on specific purposes chosen by leftists in CTCL. They were designed to increase voting by people who were likely to vote Democratic. They were disproportionately given to battleground states.
The Capital Research Center did thorough research to find out about each of the CTCL grants. This is carefully documented on its website, Influencewatch.org. They found that much more money was given to Democratic counties than Republican. They also found that CTCL told Democratic counties about availability of the funding about a month before it told Republican counties.
Some Democratic counties already had their grant applications turned in weeks before the grants were generally announced. In Wisconsin, CTCL connected multiple elections administrators to a very partisan leftist operative, who became known as their “de facto elections chief.” He was even given keys to where ballots were stored.
Apparently this was legal, but it was a gross violation of justice and integrity.
Lois Johnston
Moscow
The cost of war
Although I live in the Midwest, I recently stumbled across the column by Steve McGehee published Sept. 24 in the Daily News called “A better way to win hearts and minds.” Although I don’t have any comment on the essential points of McGehee’s column, I did notice he began his piece with an inaccurate and unfair attack on former White House Office of Management and Budget Director, Mitch Daniels that merits a response.
McGehee attempted to give the impression that Daniels and his team expected that the war in Iraq would cost in the range of $50 to $60 billion. This claim lacks context. Daniels’ office was actually asked to give an estimate for how much it would cost for six months of war. The accountants in Washington were not war planners charged with estimating the length and total cost of a military intervention. Instead, they were given a specific question, “If we were to go to war for six months, how much money would need to be appropriated?” Their estimate was $53 billion, but they were wrong. The cost for six months of war was less, just $46 billion.
Had they been asked, “how long would a prolonged military action cost?” Daniels and his team would have obviously provided a different answer.
Spencer Deery
West Lafayette, Ind.
