Early Voting Starts This Week
Early voting begins on Wednesday, October 14 of this week. Visit the website of the Knox County Election Commission if you are not sure where you can vote early. You can find the voting locations at www.knoxvotes.org or refer to page B4 in this week’s Focus.
President Donald Trump is planning to make another midterm stop in Tennessee as this paper is going to press. The president had stopped in Knoxville, where he attended a UT football game two weeks ago. President Trump is stopping in Clarksville, where he will hold a rally to encourage Republicans to get out to vote in the midterm elections. Senator Marsha Blackburn is heading the GOP ticket as the Republican candidate for governor; Senator Bill Hagerty is seeking a second term in the US Senate, and Republicans are bidding to win all nine of Tennessee congressional seats in the House of Representatives.
Blackburn has pledged to make affordability for Tennesseans the top priority for her administration if she wins the governor’s office. As a member of the Senate, Blackburn has consistently voted to allow hardworking families to keep more of their hard-earned money in their own pockets. Marsha Blackburn believes the fight is about more than refining regulations and taxes, although she insists liberal mayors should not be able to continue escalating property taxes. Blackburn says that Tennesseans can afford to stay in the same community where they grew up.
Marsha has pledged, “For Tennessee families, seniors and first-time homebuyers, help is on the way!” Amen to that!
DeSantis Knows How To Govern A State
Anyone who followed the news will recall how congressional Democrats swore up and down there was not a single penny misspent in the entire federal budget, much less any fraud, waste or abuse of federal programs. That was, of course, before the revelations of the scandals in Minnesota, where taxpayers were fleeced of some $8 billion in taxpayer dollars in the Somali community, where there were programs spending millions of dollars to feed hungry children – except there were no children at the empty, make-believe daycare centers.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has cracked down which has resulted in a nearly $1 billion decrease in spending just in the area of “behavioral therapy services.” Peculiar billing practices caught the attention of state investigators who discovered fraudsters were billing Medicaid for more hours than there are in a 24-hour day. Governor DeSantis and his administration are taking the approach of stopping payments that are suspicious rather than trying to recover taxpayer dollars after they have been spent. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health & Human Services Secretary, has been urging the federal government to stop the “pay-and-chase” of the misspent dollars from fraudsters.
The state of Florida has managed to reduce a projected $3.86 billion expenditure on the Applied Behavior Analysis, a therapy frequently used on children with autism, to $2.88 billion, a savings of almost $980 million for the year through “a combination of fraud enforcement, managed care and utilization management efforts.”
The results have come from efforts by the Florida state government, which is actively screening for fake or stolen identities, as well as determining the ownership of some companies. Florida has also placed a moratorium on “certain high-risk provider categories.” The state government has also cracked down on those providers who are suspected of entering or remaining in the program.
The DeSantis administration has also sent inspectors on more than 400 site visits to providers. It is a model program that has the potential to stamp out the greater part of fraud in programs that provide vital services to many Americans, as well as saving Americans their hard-earned tax dollars.
It also obviates the need for the traditional Democrat-Socialist remedy, which is to insist there is never any fraud or waste; in fact, the program needs even more money and you need to pay more in taxes. That is absolutely not something that makes life more affordable for working Americans.
Criminals Are Not Victims
There are those who do not belong amongst a civilized society at large. They are genuine, ruthless and deadly predators and will almost certainly never be anything else. That seems to be the case of Tyree Reynolds, who was released from prison just eight days before being charged with the fatal shooting of a 12-year-old girl in Maryland. Apparently, Reynolds was firing at two men near a youth football homecoming game at Leon Day Park. Reynolds had been released from the custody of the state of Maryland’s Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services on September 25. He is now charged with 30 criminal counts, including murder and attempted murder.
The shootout began due to an argument over a parking spot, ending the life of a beautiful young girl who should have had her entire life ahead of her. The Democrat-Socialists try to lay the blame on the gun instead of the person pulling the trigger. Mankind has devised all manner of weaponry over the ages to kill and maim, including cars. The Democrat-Socialists want to invoke victimhood for the perpetrators of heinous crimes and talk about defunding the police and emptying out the jails and prisons. Anyone stupid enough to believe that should empty a nest of deadly vipers in their own home and see what happens.
Congresswoman Nellie Pou, a Democrat-Socialist from New Jersey, sponsored a bill while a member of the state assembly to release certain prisoners during Covid. While it did not allow those who had been convicted of murder or sexual assault or sex crimes to be released early, it did allow others who had committed aggravated manslaughter and other crimes to be eligible for early release. Two inmates who were released early have since pleaded guilty to or were convicted of homicide in different cases. Yet another is in state custody awaiting trial on murder and conspiracy charges. Supposedly, the early release, permitting the release of some prisoners early, would make it safer for everyone, including the guards. Clearly, it wasn’t safer for those on the outside.
