The above is the first paragraph of the Advertiser op/ed of 3/9/10. For the footnoted version click here.

“Barack Obama, elegant and professorially articulate, was an invitation to sophistication that America simply could not bring itself to turn down. If “hope and change” was an empty political slogan, it was also beautiful clothing that people could passionately describe without ever having seen.

“Mr. Obama won the presidency by achieving a symbiotic bond with the American people: He would labor not to show himself, and Americans would labor not to see him. As providence would have it, this was a very effective symbiosis politically. And yet, without self-disclosure on the one hand or cross-examination on the other, Mr. Obama became arguably the least known man ever to step into the American presidency.”

Click here for Steele’s op/ed

Please recommend this video to your friends.

The secret ballot movement started in Australia in the mid-1800s but was quickly adopted around the world so that voters would be, as the French said, “exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful.”

Before this time when voting was not by secret ballot it was not the least unusual for votes to be openly bought and since the buyer could check on how people actually voted they were assured of getting their money’s worth.

We need to ensure that not only are our own ballots secret but also that other citizens’ ballots are kept secret so that we can be assured that they to are “exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful.”

Unfortunately, without giving the matter much thought we are drifting away from the secret ballot. We can no longer assure ourselves of the benefit we all enjoy when every voter votes in secret.

While we allow absentee voting in places where the secret ballot can be ensured, we also mail out “absentee” ballots by the thousands with absolutely no assurance that the recipient will vote while “exempt from the corruption of the wealthy and the violence of the powerful.”

We should be alarmed that over 15 percent of the votes cast in the 2008 Hawaii elections were mail-in votes. This is greater than the typical difference in votes cast for the winning and losing candidates. We may already be at the stage where some of Hawaii’s last political races were decided by unsavory influences on “absentee” ballots.

It would be astonishing if no attempt was made to influence these votes by people who have a great deal at stake on who wins elections. When groups like Acorn are involved in the electoral process, mail-in ballots are prone to all manner of influences.

The City Council seat that Barbara Marshall’s untimely death made available was voted on exclusively by mail-in votes. This was a very important race for those with a significant interest in the bed and breakfast and rail transit issues.

Construction unions spent a great deal of money influencing the vote on the rail referendum in November 2008. It would be surprising if absolutely no effort, albeit legal, was made to influence the outcome of this Council race through the mail-in ballot.

Union officials are working hard to rid their unionization activities of the hampering effects of the secret ballot. Under the recently passed Hawaii Card Check legislation, union leaders are now able to go into employees’ homes and ask them to sign a unionization card without any prospect of a subsequent secret election. The union then presents the signed union application cards to the National Labor Relations Board and the company is thereby unionized.

This is a perfect example of people who might sign the card only because have no protection from “the violence of the powerful.”

The amount of sheer fraud, let alone intimidation, from mail-ins in the U.S. may be seen by entering the following in a browser search window ( “mail-in (ballot OR election)” fraud ). The amount of fraud being reported is staggering.

Until such time as we can be assured of voters enjoying the secret ballot such as signing a blank ballot before a qualified official while unaccompanied, we should end the mail-in ballot.

“In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”

Military-Industrial Complex Speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

Here is a paragraph from an op/ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. The link to the entire column is here.

“Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.”