These are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.

TO REOPEN THE NATION’S ECONOMY, and who has the authority to make that decision, has been the topic of discussion in the news since Monday’s virus briefing when President Trump declared it was within his authority, although he stated “a decision by me, in conjunction with the governors and input from others, will be made shortly.”

As I began writing this segment, I was awaiting the president’s Tuesday briefing, during which he has said he would introduce his economy-focused task force, a group that will provide him with advice on opening commerce in the U.S. where possible. That didn’t take place.

Earlier, he said that he hoped Americans would continue to follow social distancing measures and practice frequent hand-washing and other hygiene guidelines with an end of April aspirational date to consider reopening the nation for business.

President Trump could feasibly leave the reopening decision totally in the hands of the governors.  He could leave it up to them to suffer the ire of their citizens.

It seems to me that the president, with the advice of his task force, plans to lay out a plan, that will place the political risk on their backs if they choose not to go along with it.  The governors, I assume, will be on the hook to continue pressing their citizens on following the health guidelines that are sure to be part of the proposal.

As a political wonk, I understand why the president is desirous of reopening our economy.  Facing a reelection in about six months that was all but assured with a robust economy prior to the virus outbreak, he knows that voters will obviously look favorably on him with businesses reopening and people going back to work.

He knows that the health of our economy is important, too, and believes the cure is worse than the problem.

PONDER THIS – I’m sure you will recall the pleas of governors for ventilators over the past few weeks, with New York’s Andrew Cuomo being the “squeaky wheel,” with needs for thousands of ventilators.

In recent days, stories have been circulating that there are thousands of ventilators spread across the nation, many of them not being used.  Some 4,000 were being held by Washington.  Not one individual who needed the use of a ventilator was unable to have one at his or her disposal, the president announced at Monday’s briefing.

Today, it was announced that thousands more were in the pipeline and a I noticed that Car and Driver magazine reported that Ford, working with GE, would begin ventilator production the week of April 20, 2020 with a goal of producing 50,000 more ventilators by July 4, 2020.  General Motors is in the process of producing 50,000 ventilators.

An overreaction?  Maybe, but surely, this will enable us to provide ventilators to other countries in a humanitarian gesture.

LEFTIST COLUMNIST E. J. MONTINI, writing in the Arizona Republic, the anti-Trump paper that regularly criticizes anything the president says or does and anyone, primarily Republican Sen. Martha McSally or Gov. Doug Ducey, who supports him, continues to diss the journalism profession.

“Is COVID-19 help linked to support for Trump?” headlines his latest attack, in which he ridicules McSally and Ducey for writing tweets that were “self-congratulatory and fawning reverential of President Trump.” Each thanked the president for responding to their request for ventilators for Arizona hospitals.

It’s what elected lawmakers do in an emergency, a flood, hurricane, tornado or a pandemic.  It’s usually the governor who asks the president to declare an emergency in their state.

Thanking the president and/or vice president for help is a common courtesy that Montini seemingly views as “sucking up” – something his hero, the late John McCain, wouldn’t do with Trump.

“Being a sycophant of President Trump should have nothing to do with it,” Montini writes, “in fact, Trump himself should have nothing to do with it.”

Montini referred to it as “grandstanding,” and writes that “it feels like a favor  granted in return for political support, because a couple of our politicians have an “in” with the president.”

Deal-making out of Washington for a federal contract or for pork barrel spending meets with Montini’s approval, but with the request for ventilators “these are lives were talking about. Not Democrats or Republicans.”

What an overreach, even for Montini.

REVISITING VOTER FRAUD – I wrote here about voter fraud on April 9 and again on April 11, 2020, when I promised to follow-up on the danger voting by mail is to our election system and our democracy.

Digging into my “pile of stuff,” I found a report, “Election Exclusivity by Mail: A Terrible Idea Whose Times Should Never Come,” by Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation, published a decade ago.  Reading it again, I recall why I saved it for future reference.

While the Democrat scheme of “ballot harvesting” has recently come to light, those close to our election system have been investigating voter fraud with absentee ballots for decades.

Examples in Essex County, New Jersey, East Chicago, Indiana, Miami, Greene County, Alabama, and in Oregon, where they switched top all-mail voting, are reviewed in Spakovsky’s 2010 report.

You’ll find additional evidence since then in John Fund’s book, “Stealing Elections.”

Yet, the left-leaning media refuses to investigate these cases, instead, they choose to say it isn’t happening.

“Mailed-in votes are cast in unmonitored settings where no election officials or independent observers are present to ensure that the registered voter is actually the person voting and that there is no illegal coercion or payment for a vote, wrote Spakovsky.

“The secret ballot is under siege; it is too easy for wrongdoers to request absentee ballots in the names of registered voters, particularly poor residents and senior citizens, and then either intimidate them into voting a certain way or fraudulently completing the ballots for them.”

Citing a 2000 survey of a single county in Oregon, five percent of residents admitted that other people marked their ballots and 2.4 percent admitted that other people signed their ballot envelopes.

Also noted was the case of a woman there admitted that she had voted three times in the last election – with her own ballot, her husband’s ballot, and a third ballot in her maiden name that had been mailed to her home.

While Democrats would have you believe that it is too difficult for the poor to get to a poll to vote, many states have addressed this with various means.  You’ll hear them call it disenfranchising the people, and voter suppression.

The main reason that people do not vote is that they are simply not interested in the candidates, or do not think that whoever is elected will make any difference in their lives or careers, according to Spakovsky.

“Trading the security, integrity, and shared experience of the in-person election process for all-mail elections is a bad idea,” cites Spakovsky, who sees in-person voting as a shared communal act that inspires patriotism and civic pride, and is a demonstration to our children of the importance of voting.

                  May God continue to bless the United States of America.