People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. ― John C. Maxwell

Today’s quick hits deal with these important subjects:

• Gazette & Census
• Gallup – Confidence in Institutions
• Reagan & Trump

Gazette & Census:

It was good to see the Billings Gazette editorial board write about the 2020 Census and the citizenship question. Media will play a very important role in helping the U.S. Census Bureau obtain a complete count.

The Gazette talked about the citizenship question saying:

No citizenship question has been on U.S. Census surveys since 1950 because it discouraged people from returning census forms. The fear that the federal government will target non-citizens is longstanding.

Then the Gazette editorial board rightly went after Republican U.S. Senator Steve Daines and Republican U.S. Representative Greg Gianforte:

Back in May, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., announced that he was going to help Montana get that second seat by passing a law that requires the U.S. Census Bureau to include a citizenship question on its survey. In a guest opinion published by The Billings Gazette, Daines was clear about his purpose: to discourage census participation in other states with large immigrant populations so that Montana would be more likely to gain a second House seat.

The Gazette editorial board correctly pointed out that the idea of deliberately skewing the census results is abhorrent first because it is dishonest, but also because it is contrary to the U.S. Constitution. Article 1, Section 2 mandates a population count every 10 years, not a count of citizens only.

The Gazette editorial board also reported that Gianforte voted against a $383.3 billion package of five of the 12 appropriation bills needed for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. The package includes $8.45 billion for the Census Bureau.

I hope that other newspapers across the state and nation will follow the Gazette and tell the facts about how getting a complete population count is the role of the 2020 Census, and it should not be used to try and document the location of non-citizens.

Gallup – Confidence in Institutions:

A new poll from Gallup shows that Americans’ confidence in the church or organized religion continues to erode, with 36% now saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in organized religion, establishing another new low point in Gallup’s trend.

I’m not surprised. I think when churches take their vision off God and concentrate more on being political and being a business it hurts their reputation and the confidence people have in churches.

The good news from the poll, which has been done yearly since 1973, is that people have high confidence in our military. As for the bad news, Congress and TV news rank pretty low.

See how other institutions rank by clicking HERE. Good stuff.

Reagan & Trump:

If you read my columns very often then you know how much I hate fake news. I am fine with people on Facebook and Twitter giving their opinions (it’s called free speech), but when they post fake news that pisses me off.

Several months ago Trump supporters were posting a meme showing President Ronald Reagan shaking hands with a young Donald Trump. The photo showed a quote from Reagan saying, “For the life of me, and I’ll never know how to explain it, when I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with a president.”

President Donald Trump retweeted the meme. You can see the meme HERE.

The fact is the meme is fake. There was nothing found that supports that the quote ever happened. FactCheck.org has the story HERE.

I liked Ronald Reagan. He put the spirit back in America when he was elected.

On the other hand, I dislike Trump because he lies all the time. Trump divides people. He’s a racist, too.

The good news is that the account where it came from was suspended. The bad news is the President of the United States was, as many people were, dumb enough to think it was real.

Beam me up, Scotty!

 

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