Politics – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Republicrats are scrambling

July 21, 2026

Donald Trump is preparing to accuse every state of rigging the election this year when his party is defeated in Congress and the Senate. His bill would allow him to violate our Constitution and force the court system to, once again, keep him from overstepping the powers that this document gives the president.

He has announced that he will not sign any more of the bills that our legally elected legislators have approved until they give in to his childish temper tantrum. Parents, how much of your time is spent fighting to get your children to listen to you? Is our Chief Executive acting like a spoiled brat?

Let’s look at the problems in our country. Skyrocketing inflation, severe weather, poverty, the breakdown of our families, and the list goes on. These are the things that we want our government to address. The question is how? How do we go about solving these problems?

This bill that President Trump wants passed will solve which of these difficulties? That’s correct, none of them. Its purpose is to give our federal officials more control over elections. According to our Constitution, that right falls to the state governments. We are The United States of America.

We will start with our economic problems. Many people are having trouble paying rent, providing food, and maintaining their homes. Our Missouri state legislature has given us the opportunity in our Amendment Five to eliminate our state income tax and save a lot of the citizens a great deal of money.

The problem is that to accomplish this, all we the people must do is revoke a Constitutional Amendment we passed decades ago that does not allow them to tax us without asking us first. I would like my taxes reduced. I am retired, and my wife is also. Our state taxes on income are practically nonexistent.

This would have been great when we were working, or would it? How much money is left at the end of your month? For us, it was little to none. Another way of putting this is to consider how much must be paid each month when the paycheck is spent. For us, that was often a week or more. If you stop taking my state taxes out of my pay each week and increase the cost of food, fuel, and rent by an equal amount, you have not helped me, the taxpayer.

This bill won’t help me; it will aid elected officials in raising more money from people who can afford to finance their election campaigns. They are the ones who are paying for the ads where a little old lady says that she will have more money for her grandchildren.

Give me a break. Do I look that stupid? Whether it is in the national legislature or our state houses, we need to see a lie when we are told one. Stop the ones who are lying to us by voting them out of office. Here in Missouri, August fourth is our primary election. Do not allow these corrupt individuals to keep their jobs.

Let’s give someone else the chance to represent us, and do not listen to the names that their opponents are being called. I am talking about “woke,” “liberal,” and “Democrat,” here in the seventh district of Missouri.

What names are your incumbents calling others where you live? And what are they trying to get you to believe that is not true? If you look closely, you will see their lies as well.

Amendments for August

July 13, 2026

We have four amendments on our Missouri State August primary ballot this year. I am going to explain what the ballot wording means and why there is a controversy on these issues. I recommend that you read the actual amendments and not just what appears on our ballots.

Amendment One is one that we have been voting on every ten years for decades. It approves the renewal of a one-tenth of one percent sales tax for Conservation. This continuing tax has accomplished much for our state.

The next issue is Constitutionally required to allow Jackson County to elect a county assessor. The county has already voted to do this, but the state constitution requires a statewide vote to allow them to do this. This is Amendment 2.

Our General Assembly is asking us to approve Amendment four which will limit our current ability to add issues to the ballot that legislators do not want us to be able to vote on. Advertisements tell us that this will prevent out-of-state groups from influencing our state laws. The problem is that these ads are paid for by Political Action Committees that are registered in other states.

Another provision that concerns many of us is that it requires every congressional district to approve the voter endorsed issues. That means that voters in any one district can defeat every other district’s votes. This is not one person, one vote. It would allow one vote to override hundreds of others.

The only good thing in this bill is the requirement to give voters a copy of the exact wording of every issue that we force them to allow us to vote on. If the legislators put it on the ballot, they control what we can know about what we are voting for. It sounds like they want more control of us.

We are also being asked to allow changes to laws that have been in effect for years. One that we approved is called the Hancock Amendment. When we, the people, voted it in it required our state legislators to ask our permission to raise our taxes above a certain level without our permission.

Amendment five will allow them to ignore this law and do anything they want as they did before we restricted their powers. They tell us they will “phase” out the state income tax and ask us to give them Carte Blanche to add as many sales and use taxes as the legislators want.

This amendment will also allow them to force local property tax cuts without the permission of residents. I usually ask for an issues only ballot in the primary elections. I plan on taking the Republican ballot because my representative and senator that approved these issues are Republicans. They are not representing me, and I want them to be fired.

Once again, the organizations promoting a yes vote are from other states. I think we need a state law that does not allow out-of-staters from lying to us about issues that will make them money at our expense. When the hail hit this spring my wife and I did not allow any of those contractors that are not based here to even quote on our repairs. Why would we want to listen to foreigners when our President is doing such a good job of throwing them out of our country.

Take your toys and go home, Donald

June 29, 2026

Have you noticed the tantrums that the man who holds the office of Chief Executive has been throwing lately? He’s continued to lie about everything from how the 2016 election ended to having a photograph taken in Europe. He has his point of view, while others disagree with how he sees reality.

Now he has come back to the U.S. and decided not to sign a law that the Senate and House had both approved. He’ll sign it as soon as the Trumpites browbeat those who don’t agree with him into agreeing on another bill that does not seem to be very popular.

This is just another example of the childish attitude of a man who is old enough to know better. Spoiled brat behavior is often seen in preschoolers. Grown men who have been elected President of the United States rarely pitch these kinds of fits in front of the press. We know today that some of the former Presidents did this in private.

Donald Trump no longer has a filter that most of us use to prevent the embarrassment of foot-in-mouth syndrome. I’ve been a non-Partisan voter for all my voting career. When I registered to vote in August of 1972, they tried to tell me at the county clerk’s office that I had to declare a party to be eligible to vote.

Having my high school diploma did not necessarily guarantee that I knew voting law. My history teachers made it a priority to teach us about the new laws that were in effect after the problems in the sixties. I asked to speak to the county clerk, and he told me I was correct that I did not need to declare a party.

I currently serve as an election judge for Greene County, Missouri, where most voters are Republicans. When I signed up for this job, they needed to know my party affiliation, and I told them I was non-Partisan and that is what I am listed as. To me, that means I should be able to work with a Republican or a Democrat. I have always been paired with a member of the GOP because here, there are always more of them and fewer of us.

It does not matter to me whether Trump belongs to any party. I have known for over forty years that he is a dishonest, lying businessman that I would never trust, even if my pastor told me to. For the last three elections, when most of my friends thought he was the only choice, I disagreed with them. I continue to believe that he never should have been elected either time.

This year, as always, I want to overthrow all the political parties. It is not just the way our groups work against each other. After fifty-plus years of watching politics, I have seen US and other countries’ politicians use party affiliation to bypass the people they represent. I’m tired of it. We need to learn this as citizens.

Did you know that Trump used to be a Democrat, and so was former President Ronald Regan. When the Republican Party was formed, it was the party for the downtrodden. The Democrats were the ones who supported slavery. They continue to flop back and forth on almost every issue. I can trust a candidate but not the party he belongs to. They sell their souls to the parties to get money to buy their election. It must stop.

250 years and counting

June 19, 2026

On July 4^th of 1776, Thomas Jefferson and others signed their own death warrants when he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Let’s look at that statement and how this country has proven and tried to refute that statement.

The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were ratified and came into force on March 1, 1781. James Madison and Alexander Hamilton were instrumental in proposing a radical new concept, a constitution that was finally accepted by the thirteen states and became operational in 1789.

That was the year that George Washington and John Adams became the first President and Vice-President of this nation. The Constitution originally had the two top candidates filling these offices. Amendment twelve modified this, and the electoral college voted for both a President and a Vice President in 1803.

The Bill of Rights was the first ten amendments to the document, which were ratified by the states in 1791 and guarantee personal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, the right to publish, practice religion, possess firearms, and to assemble.

What most of us do not know is that the Tenth Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” These were originally referred to as States’ Rights and are continually opposed by many in the federal government.

In 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected as our sixteenth President, the Confederate States of America was formed in February of 1861 by South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In April, hostilities between these and the Union began with an attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederates.

After the war began, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina decided to join the Confederacy. The major reason for cessation was the belief that Lincoln’s administration would support the abolitionist movement’s desire to end slavery nationwide. This was considered one of those states’ rights issues mentioned in the Tenth Amendment. When the conflict ended in 1865, the Union had declared the ownership of other humans a violation of our Constitution, and Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation effectively ended this practice.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution sealed this as law and solved some of the problems still in the former Confederate states. The assassination of Lincoln again tested our resiliency as a country.

One last test for our land that happened before I was born was on December 7, 1940, when the Japanese attacked our naval base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, forcing Franklin Delano Roosevelt into requesting Congress to declare war on the Axis powers. Many believe that without the U.S. involvement in World War II, even more countries would have fallen.

Both sides

May 8, 2026

That’s what the newscaster said. They were going to give both sides of a political story. Why are there only two sides? One is true, or one is false, right? Not necessarily. Often, these reports include the truth from two sides and no others. It can be hard to sift the truth from the spins that we all like to give to what we say.

What other positions are there in politics other than Republicans and Democrats? When you go to your precinct to vote in your primary election this year, look at which parties you must choose from. You should have at least three, including an issues-only ballot. In Missouri, we must choose only one party’s candidate.

When I talk about what Jehovah says in the Bible, you may hear this as my spin on the truth. To me, it is the truth. This is just two sides of the story. There are many religions, and then there are those that do not accept any gods and believe that when life ends, everything is over.

Every opinion we have is probably opposed to someone else’s beliefs. I have friends who are Republicans, Democrats, or other political party supporters, and then there is me. I am one of those weirdoes who believe that you should vote for the person and not consider any party affiliation.

There are many other ways in which we put ourselves on different sides. There is a group that calls itself Black Lives Matter, and I agree with them. I just take their beliefs a little further. I belong to ALM, All Lives Matter. We are not in opposition to BLM or any of the organizations that stand for anyone’s rights.

We include all lives of all colors. There is another group whose initials are BLM. Their name is Blue Lives Matter, and they support the police. When I was a kid in Springfield, MO, our officers’ uniforms were brown, like many sheriffs’ offices use. That would really be confusing to have three different BLM organizations.

Having an opinion about things is necessary, but taking a side against others is not. I am a follower of Jesus. If you want to know what that means, I will tell you as much as you want to hear. Years ago, at a new job, I had a fellow employee come into my office and say, “I hear you are a Christian.” And I acknowledged that I was. Then he asked, “Are you going to try to make me one?” “Do you want me to?” No was his reply, and I simply asked him to let me know if he had questions about it. He never asked, even though he often came in to talk about a host of other things.

I hated it in school when we had to choose which team to be on in classes. I preferred speech and debate to sports, where you were assigned a side in debate and had to alternate. I often adopt this policy when discussing controversial issues. Just because I give reasons against what you say is correct does not mean I disagree. I may be voicing opposing ideas I have already heard.

Know your own mind, keep an open mind to show that you know you are not always correct, and be willing to have an open discussion without sounding like a person who is closed to any other opinion.

For a Little While

April 25, 2026

When President Trump was asked if Americans could expect the price of Gasoline and other petroleum products to remain exorbitantly high, he answered, “For a little while.” As a politician, he is careful not to say anything that can be used against him later.

This phrase does not say what President Trump wants you to believe. He wants you to think that these outrageous prices will subside quickly. He is not the one who raised the prices. He is not the one who caused prices to rise across the board. That is done by those who control the pricing in our country.

You and I are responsible for consumer prices. Our economy is based on supply and demand. When we illegally attacked Iran, the Oil Companies chose to increase their prices. The excuse was the rise in crude oil futures. If you do not understand the futures market, it is what investors will pay for the product at a time to come.

Higher oil prices are not the current prices of the actual cost. That will come in a few months. Our gas prices are rising now because the oil executives are greedy. To make the prices go down, we must reduce our demand. Stop traveling. Stop buying products that use this commodity. Remember the price reductions after the Covid crisis.

There are non-petroleum options for many things that often call for crude oil. The economy was already tanking since President Trump and our Congress tried throwing money at the COVID-19 pandemic. All that did was convince some that they could get money without working. Those of you who run legitimate businesses were hurt most.

Greed, money, and infamy are what motivate most of the so-called political leadership. They only need you to vote for them. The rest of their two-, four-, or six-year terms, they try to be sure that you will not remember the stupid things they said or did.

Back to what President Trump really meant. Let’s break it down. This means that he is not willing to predict a definite time. A little while is also so vague that no one can take him to court for it after he leaves office. Most of us are like he was during his first campaign and term. He lied and never thought it would be used against him.

Today, he is starting to realize that we, the people, are not as stupid as he thought. Even those who believed his lies and ignored the confusion he attempted to perpetrate in America have started to rise from their sleep. He will call them woke because that is the same thing, only he uses it as an insult.

This year, all the legislatures of both the US and each state will be elected. To stop the so-called war in Iran and the Trumpites’ quest to dominate the world as Hitler did in World War II, we need to throw out both the Republicrats and Demicans. If you can, in your state, select representatives who are non-partisan. That is the only way to stop this madness.

No, on One

April 13, 2026

There was a proposition on the Springfield ballot for Tuesday April 7^th on a hotel motel tax to remodel and build additions to our existing Civic Center on St. Louis Street. I am not a citizen of the city. I live in the county so I and other residents near us could not vote on this issue.

On election day, my wife and I were at our polling place and voted on a candidate and issue in the Ebenezer Fire District. No one was talking about this issue. The April election determines whether you are a faithful voter or just someone who wants the right to be able to complain when the vote goes against what you want. You don’t understand this? If you did not vote, you do not have any right to complain, because you did not vote.

My wife and I are so committed to the idea of voting, we also serve as election judges for Greene County, Missouri. We have done this for over fifteen years. It was important to vote in this election because it may be your last chance. For my entire life, we as Americans have had this privilege. There are people including our President who wants to keep you from voting, if you do not agree with them.

The current Iranian conflict may well be the way to accomplish this. If we are attacked on US soil and Martial Law are declared, the 2028 election could be canceled. Especially if the candidates for offices are ‘accidentally’ killed before we can vote for or against them.

It is not only the Trumpites that want to restrict voting. Other groups do not think that many of us should have this right. It isn’t just your color, religious preferences, sexual identity, or opinions that they wish to control. Have you noticed how often something you voted against comes back to the forefront, again.

Proposition One in Springfield was just this type of issue. It was defeated last year and came back again. It was defeated by even more voters this time. Will it be back again next time or next year? We have been told that it will not be on the ballot again. I will believe that when I see it. We are from Missouri. My guess is that it will appear on the November ballot in 2028. If it is, you heard it here first.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned when this happens. I have been voting for more than fifty years and have never felt that this could be a possibility until now. Donald Trump and his supporters proved they were willing to kill our Congress and Senate in 2020. They murdered a guard and the President pardoned them once he regained power. What next?

I do not understand

March 22, 2026

I keep watching commercials on television where political candidates are claiming that they will solve all the world’s problems in their first day in office. They are not sharing the plans that they have developed to accomplish these miracles. Pardon me if I have some reservations about the probability of any of these candidates being able to fulfill these promises.

Can Missouri’s Governor or his Lieutenant deport illegal aliens? I thought that was the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security. The current administration is botching the execution of those promises. I do not want to hear the statement “I don’t ask for permission.” from someone that wants my vote.

The 2026 elections are in process. In Missouri we will only be electing all our representatives to Congress. That is the same in every state. We have some positions in our county that are being filled again. None of Missouri’s Senators are up for re-election this year. As things stand, I cannot support any of the current incumbent politicians that support our president.

And I am having reservations with any non-Republican incumbents in the House or Senate. The Government has been frozen twice while they have been in office. I am not naive enough to take one side over the other. They are both at fault for this. Stop acting like two-year-olds fighting over toys.

It is time to gut the house of representatives. My Seventh Missouri District Congressman is a card carrying Trumpite who supports all the terrorism that has gone on across the country. He must go. If you are honest with yourself, yours should as well. We all want to believe the person we voted for isn’t as bad as the others. And yet, the evidence says otherwise.

Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. The convictions that were dropped when he was elected must be re-instated and due process must be followed. We cannot throw innocent people in determent camps, but we must imprison convicted felons until their appeals are exhausted. If Trump is innocent, then we should send him to El Salvador, or maybe Iran.

Time to act is now. No more picking the lesser of two evils. If you know someone supports the overthrow of our government and is too ignorant to admit that is what is going on, dump them with Trump.

The two-party system is not working. Trash it and those that have used it to block a republican democracy for over one-hundred years. Twenty-twenty-six is the year for the next American Independence Day. Make your vote count.

The last fifty years

February 27, 2026

In 1968, when Richard Nixon was nominated by the Republicans for President, his running mate was Spiro Agnew. Shortly after the 1972 election, some charges of impropriety forced Agnew to resign. With the majority of his second term ahead, Gerald Ford was selected to become the V.P. He had been a congressman for twenty-five years.

Ford became the 38^th chief executive and had a difficult campaign against Jimmy Carter, the 1976 Democratic candidate. President Ford pardoned President Nixon before he could even be charged with any crimes from the Watergate Hotel break-in. This was considered by some as the biggest hit on his prospects.

Ford lost to Carter, and the party shift kicked in again. Carter served from 1977 to 1981. During his first term, the Shaw of Iran was overthrown, and a pro-Muslim government took power. The U.S. Embassy was attacked, and hostages were seized on November 4, 1979. The thirty-ninth President lost his second bid for the office in 1980.

The power shifted once again when Ronald Regan defeated the incumbent based on failure to solve the hostage problem and other fiscal problems attributed to his administration. Regan held office until 1989 after winning the 1984 election as well. The hostages were released before Regan was inaugurated as our fortieth chief executive.

“Read my lips, no new taxes” was the campaign promise that convinced many to continue a Republican Presidency under Vice-President George H. W. Bush. His term was from 1989 to 1993. When other Republicans convinced him to sign a tax proposal that Congress passed, the Democrats used it to their advantage.

They nominated Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton as their candidate, and he defeated the forty-first to become the forty-second President. Clinton’s administration featured a joint Presidency with his wife, according to the GOP. She had no official title or authority. They were in the White House from 1993 to 2001.

Do you remember the September 11, 2001, attacks on our country? Muslim radicals hijacked four passenger jets and crashed them. Two took out buildings in New York City, part of the Pentagon building in Washington, D C., and the last went down in Pennsylvania.

When our forty-third President, George W. Bush, the son of the forty-first, addressed us that evening, he launched an investigation to determine how this could happen. We were involved in wars in the Middle East to eliminate factions supposedly responsible for this attack. His administration ran from 2001 to 2009.

Are you getting tired of the constant flip-flop of power from one political party to the other for over one hundred years? In 2008, we elected our first African American President, Barack Obama, a Democrat from Chicago, as the forty-fourth man to hold the office. He served until 2017.

I will not make any comments about the last three Presidents. There are situations that I feel will have to be resolved before we know what should be said without hurting feelings. Both current parties have opposing opinions of what should and should not be commented on. I hope these columns have given you insights into who our leaders have been.

Hoover to Ford

February 16, 2026

A vacuum cleaner to an automobile? No, Herbert Hoover accepted the Republican nomination in 1928 and won decisively. Before he ran, he was the Commerce Secretary from 1921 to 1928. He was our thirty-first President from 1929 to 1932. Often blamed for the Great Depression, it was his predecessors who might have been responsible.

Most of us know of FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only one to be elected four times. The first time was in 1932. Of course, he was a Democrat. I’m sure that you have noticed that we jockey back and forth from one party to the other. The problems in a particular year often result in a change.

Roosevelt attempted to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, but his speech on December 7, 1941, put us there. Congress, the President, and the American public had to react to the brutality of the Japanese in attacking our base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He served as our 32^nd President until he died in 1945, when Harry Truman, the Vice-President, became the thirty-third to occupy the office.

Truman is known for ending World War II by bombing two Japanese cities with atomic bombs. These were newly developed, and we succeeded shortly before the Germans and Russians. When Truman ran for re-election in 1948, he faced Republican Thomas Dewey, and most of us have seen the headline that stated Dewey had won. An early case of stating false election results.

General Dwight David Eisenhower was elected as our thirty-fourth President and served from 1953 to 1961. He was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe when the Germans were defeated.

What most of you do not know is that Truman requested Eisenhower run as a Democrat in 1952. He declared to the President that he preferred the policies of the Republican party and they nominated him. His Vice President was Richard Nixon, who ran in 1960 because in 1951 the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, which limited our Presidents to two terms.

Now I can speak from personal knowledge of the rest of our Presidents. There will be some non-historical comments on these men. I remember the 1960 election when our thirty-fifth President, John F. Kennedy, defeated Richard Nixon and served from 1961 to his assassination in 1963. I do not have to look up these dates; they are etched in my memories.

Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President after John Kennedy was declared dead in a hospital in Dallas, Texas. He was re-elected in 1964 and declined to run in 1968. Since he served a little more than a year of Kennedy’s term, he was eligible to seek a second term of his own.

Richard Nixon was elected our thirty-seventh President and served from 1969 to 1974. He defeated Johnson’s Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, and was the first President, and to this date the only one, to resign his office. Next time we will discuss the only President never elected as either President or Vice-President.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Tag: Politics