Clayton Wood for Knox County Commissioner

11/02/2024

I have been surprised and a bit frustrated at how poor the data is that is available on voting.

Anyone else feel a low grade anxiety related to this election? When I feel that way, I generally feel better and calmer by reviewing data.

World of data did a great job during COVID with that important information.

There is not a website in this world that will report voting results in a massively consequential Presidential election showing you each state, that states rule on voting, where early votes are in that state, which counties and precincts are voting and how that compares to this time in 2020.

Pretty big market opportunity. Votehub has a decent site. L2 data has some great info but don’t love how it is laid out. Where are my fellow political junkies getting their data fix?

One man stands above the rest in terms of reporting on early voting and explaining what it means. Jon Ralston of Nevada is excellent.

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-2024

For the rest we keep hearing people touting polls.

At this point I do not care at all about polls, I do not think they are accurate, they were wrong in 2016 and wrong in 2020 and I believe they will be more wrong this time.

There are lots of new voters in this cycle. That is not modeled well in any of the polls I see.

They make guesses based on demographics.

If you are a 20 year old male first time voter, based on 2020 Biden Trump that should be good for who?

Do you have a different guess based on Joe Rogan, Shawn Ryan, Jake Paul and Theo Von (if you don’t know they are all podcasters who are incredibly popular with young men to the tune of bigger than all the broadcast networks with that demographic)?

Do you think Trump has lost or gained support since 2020?

Do you think Kamala is less or more popular than Biden in 2020?

One thing I can tell you for certain is that in Georgia, GOP counties are up massively in early voting compared to 2020 (30 percent plus in several) and that the more red the county, the higher the voting totals in terms of participation.

I can also tell you that in Nevada (read Jon Ralston) Kamala can only win if independents are favoring her over Trump significantly.

Also in Wisconsin the Democrats will lose statewide unless they have massively more in person voting in Milwaukee on Tuesday not just than in 2020 but in any Presidential cycle in history including 2008 Obama?

Why is no one talking about that? Remember 2008? A change election? People not happy about the economy? In person absentee voting is up 50 percent from 2020. Wait why does that make me so happy? Because of WHERE it is up. It is not up in the highest D areas. It is up in the highest R areas.

Waukesha county is one all Wisconsin political junkies know well (it is where Scott Walker declared his run for President) and Trump has underperformed here relative to other Republicans (he gets 60 percent here not the 66 to 70 percent others got) but no sane prediction has it breaking blue.

It’s the economy stupid.

In many states including Wisconsin, the in person voting was won easily by Trump, same as PA, but they said “wait we need to keep counting this mail, and all of it is for Biden”.

Would you be interested in knowing there are less mail in votes?

If you want Trump to win Wisconsin, you want more married voters, you want more rural voters, you want more working poor voters. Guess what the data shows (L2 is best for this)?

Over a million in person absentee votes cast in Wisconsin already.

Milwaukee is much more important than Madison for that state. You have to crush the GOP in Milwaukee or you cannot win. Early votes? 33% of early ballots returned in person in Milwaukee are coming from Republican voters, but crucially, the early voting is way down from where it was in 2020.

Early voting is up in the rest of the state by a lot (30 and 40 and 50 percent).

Unless Democrats for the first time ever decide to flood in person on Election Day in Wisconsin, the man who Brett Favre endorsed at a massive Green Bay rally this week will win the state, and may win it by such margins that his coattails pick up with new Senator Hovde beating incumbent Tammy Baldwin.

Why is this not a major news story?

Well if you are the GOP, the narrative of it’s a close race and we need every single vote works better for you than “GOP is cruising in Wisconsin” but more importantly, if you are a leftist journalist in Wisconsin (is there any other kind) you know it will hurt you in the fight for state races. It also seems clear to me that the GOP holds in the 8th and 3rd and 1st all seats Democrats spent a bunch of money to try to pick up.

Also helping Trump, a ballot amendment about whether or not to allow non citizens to vote.

Trump beat Hillary in Wisconsin by 20,000 votes.

Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by 20,000 votes.

I think this cycle Trump wins Wisconsin by 50,000.

Follow along with Nevada’s 2024 election in our early voting blog. Get the latest updates, insights, and key information as voters head to the polls.

10/03/2024

Hurricane Helene was devastating.

At this point I am so proud and grateful of all the ways that people have come together to help.

With communications still limited and many places cut off, there is still a lot we do not know.

The reaction already has definitely shown us all some important things, for those who are paying attention.

I am puzzled somewhat and it has been twenty years, but the reaction to this disaster compared to Katrina has been radically different in terms of:
Nonprofit response,
Media coverage,
Governmental response,
Political fallout.

This is a once in a thousand years event for Western North Carolina and some parts of East Tennessee.

I am not certain if Helene will surpass Katrina, but I feel confident that it is at least the second deadliest hurricane on the US Mainland in the lifetime of almost all of us.

The nonprofit response has been interesting to observe.

In 3 weeks after Katrina over a billion dollars had been raised by nonprofits. There has been absolutely nothing like that in this first week after the devastation of Helene.

Samaritan's Purse is a massive organization that does good work around the globe, but it has been hit very hard at its own headquarters area of Boone, North Carolina. I trust that organization, and I am glad folks have been donating to them.

The American Red Cross has taken massive reputational hits since Katrina for the way it handled that disaster, the way it handled Sandy, the way it handled money given to help Haiti etc. It takes in more than 3 billion a year, and while it has some incredible volunteers, it has also had some serious missteps. The commentary when someone suggests giving to them that immediately followed on post after post, was interesting.

There is a sad (and to me disgusting) impulse for some non-profits that is a race to relevance. "Hey look at us, we are helping flood victims!" Do you know where the needs are? Do you have relevant experience? Can you help best with your time, or talent or treasure? If your "help" is mostly about marketing and PR for your organization, it is to me exactly what Jesus warned us against doing in Matthew 6.

Still the non-profit help that has been encouraging to me has been the army of volunteers who are helping neighbors. Tons of people whose only fanfare has been to let folks know they are taking supplies over to hard hit areas. I have been so encouraged to see people all over my area demonstrate why we are called the Volunteer state.

I was also speaking with a business owner yesterday who has friends in the Asheville community who lost their business. She said, "people often complain about churches, but I am so glad they are all over the place in our area, because they are the ones who are helping." Praise God! That is true, and that should be true, and I am glad she is noticing.

The media response has been pathetic. I think part of that should point us to a recognition that much of the world of media and reporting has been hollowed out and cut in the last twenty years. News Helicopters circled New Orleans constantly after Katrina, whereas today citizen reporting from smartphones has been worlds better than any of our national press. They do not have reporters, and when they do, they have been in the wrong place. There has been more coverage of golf course damage at Augusta than of towns that were scoured from the earth by flooding. You see the same stupid shots of cars with water damage in parking lots and trees that fell on a house in the kind of damage that happens thousands of times a year somewhere in our country, and almost zero of places where new canyons exist where a week ago there was a town.

The choices and failures of the media coverage of this disaster has a large impact on nonprofit support and awareness, governmental response and political fallout from the failings to respond well.

George W Bush was criticized for his "slow" response to Hurricane Katrina. Katrina hit on Monday, August 29th. Relief operations with National Guard troops began the next day, August 30th.

In total, 50,000 guard troops were sent.

The response to Katrina began BEFORE Katrina hit. George Bush declared parts of LA a disaster area on the Saturday before the storm hit. By September 1, President Bush had gotten the Senate to approve over 10 billion in aid. 51 plus billion more was approved on September 7th.

I write all that to remind you that the media over and over and over put the blame for the devastation of Katrina on the President of the United States. The contrast is remarkable.

FEMA is bragging today in release HQ-24-235 that President Biden has given out $20 million in aid...

Political ramifications...

Well first of all the scale of the disaster matters. If 200 people died, that is deeply tragic, but if we find out that it is more like 500-1000 people and ESPECIALLY if we find out that another 100 people die this week because of incredible incompetence in helping rescue survivors, there should be a large fallout.

Ronald Reagan famously said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” If initial reports (and I want to be very clear that there is still tons of confusion and misinformation out there) are true that say that the FAA shut down flight zones where heroic private pilots were using their planes and helicopters to help, it is shameful and there should be consequences. The tendency of bullies is to bully, the tendency of authoritarians is to make problems worse by consolidating control away from the skilled and courageous and to the paid and fearful.

Let the mule trains deliver supplies. Sure, require coordination, but let the church groups deliver the water. See which politicians are allowing the people the freedom to help, and which politicians do not trust people and are poorly micromanaging in a fearful and unproductive way.

Finally, even as I write about the devastation, I want to say that what should be next for parts of Western North Carolina is a return to normalcy as soon as possible, wherever it is possible.

If you work in a tourism-based job, I can guarantee that living in a FEMA trailer and signing up for welfare will not provide you with the dignity and joy you had before that job disappeared.

It is very challenging for business owners to balance compassion for those close by, and what is best for their people. If you have a restaurant close to where a flood devastates a community, closing for a week and giving out free food while keeping your workers busy helping seems wise and commendable. Closing permanently because people want your community to become a memorial to all that was lost will absolutely crush all those who are still alive. Western Carolina is an absolutely gorgeous and special place, and as soon as you are safely able, aside from gifts and donations, for those who love it, come on back to Highlands, and Cashiers, and Black Mountain, and Asheville, and Waynesville, and all the incredible places that rely on your visits to feed their families.

Pray for East TN communities that were hit hard. Rejoice that churches and neighbors are helping. Pray for Western Carolina communities that in some cases no longer exist. Pray that help comes quickly for all the survivors. Pray that the infrastructure is put back in place with urgency. Thank the Lord that we can rely on more than the MSM and recognize how little you can and should trust many of those whose failures mark this moment.

Be watchful. We all should be praying. We all should help as we are called and able. We all should notice what we can learn from what is happening. My trust in some people and groups has increased in the last week. My already low trust in other people and groups has fallen further. Please share below in the comments if you know of great ways to help. Please also share as you find contrasts between the truth and what is being reported (even in the light of incredible devastation that makes shock and harsh language feel appropriate in some ways as always I will only delete comments that have curse words).

May God continue to have mercy on us as we seek to be watchful and mindful and helpful.

03/05/2024

It is so much work to run for office.

Sadly many who are willing to make the sacrifice are narcissistic or egomaniacs. The kind of know it all’s who have been planning on ways to grasp higher so they can wield power since grade school. They aren’t the kind of people I want to see in office.

Toni Scott is a humble servant leader. She is a former public school teacher. She is going to do a fantastic job as the 5th District County Commissioner.

She needs your help tomorrow. If you haven’t voted yet, please get out and vote. If you have already voted, grab your friends and family who haven’t voted and get them to get to the polls. There are 5 candidates and it should be a very close race and we need your help.

It is hard to get a smart Christian conservative with a great personality to be willing to run. Now the doors have been knocked on, the signs have been put up (sometimes multiple times sadly with campaign shenanigans) and the work is almost done. Tomorrow is the big day.

Please get to the polls! Thanks!

02/14/2024

Fifth District voters!

Many of my friends know I ran for office 4 years ago. A question I ask about anything I am praying about doing is “what difference will it make?”

This election cycle, I am thrilled to be able to strongly endorse to all my friends in the 5th District, Toni Scott. I am certain Toni can serve in this role in a way that has a greater impact than I could.

Toni is a servant leader. There are people who have been waiting their entire life to acquire as much power as possible and have been planning to run for office. Those folks often occupy halls of power just as they planned. Toni is the opposite of that. She was convinced to run by the people who know her well and see qualities we need on County Commission.

Toni is smart and wise, but she is also humble. I believe God is calling her for such a time as this to stand for protecting our children, protecting our community and fighting from first principles for liberty.

She went to Farragut, her kids go to Farragut and she worked as a public school teacher. She knows how to support excellence in education.

Today is the first day for Early voting, you can vote across from the artsy movie theater at Downtown West or you can vote in Farragut at the senior center near Village Green that used to be a church.

If you have any questions for me I am happy to answer them! God bless you, so thankful to live in an area where amazing Godly people are willing to serve us as elected leaders.

12/20/2023

Highly recommend adding the daily chapter of Proverbs to whatever else you are doing for quiet time.

I try to pay extra attention to anything repeated each day. Today we have:

10 Unequal weights and unequal measures
are both alike an abomination to the Lord.
and

23 Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord,
and false scales are not good.

God is just.

His mercy is incomprehensible, and deeply needed by us who He loved so much that He sent Jesus to die and pay for our sins.

He is not neutral on cheating. He is not neutral on hypocrisy. A just system is vital to a functioning Republic. Using different sets of rules for rich or poor, credentialed or not, Republican or Democrat, separated by the false social construct of race, God hates it. He hates it. Those who follow Him should hate it to.

Cheating in the marketplace is evil and it impacts everyone touched by that market (including children who grow up seeing it as profitable to cheat and are led astray). Cheating at a justice level impacts an entire society. It has been widespread throughout human history. It is also evil. We should hate it.

Good questions for me to ask myself:
Are there areas where I judge others where I do not hold myself to the same standard?

Are there areas where I tolerate injustice?

Are there areas where I am hopeful to be the winner in an unjust system instead of working to dismantle it?

Hope you are having a great week! Live for Jesus and celebrate His love in this season and throughout your life.

12/06/2023

https://x.com/billackman/status/1732179418787783089?s=46&t=NbwlxSaewv_BdRpXJGxX9A

Very sobering to watch this Congressional testimony this morning. It is important to understand what leads to brokenness where dehumanizing others is acceptable. What leads to people defending terrorists?

The root answer of course is sin. Othering people so you do not see them as made in the image of God is evil.

A great test to see if someone is infected with the new racism that is pervasive is simply whether or not they support the “dream” famously expressed by MLK. Should we judge based on the content of character and not the color of skin? Racists say ”it depends on context”.

The mind virus on display here, defending calls for genocide at Harvard and MIT and Penn are truly breathtaking. Know where the fools are and know that they want to lie to your kids as well. The why is that they have embraced a false religion, it is works based and requires constant anxiety to see what new demands are being made. 2 plus 2 may be an agreed on 5 today and a 6 tomorrow. Kids don’t need a mom and dad becomes men can have babies.

There is no grace in the struggle sessions of the new army of critical theorists. If you are on their side, they will defend you if you are a literal terrorist (Bill Ayers, Susan Rosenberg) but if you are not on their side you are the enemy and must be destroyed.

My impulse especially in seeing how destructive they are is to want to mark them and go after them with all the power that culture war can bring to bear.

I think there are two sides to a biblical answer. One is laughing at folly. The other is being grieved by fools and their wickedness and praying for their salvation.

I continue to be shocked when someone who is smart says something that is morally crazy. I shouldn’t be. The leadership of the largest mass murders in the last 150 years was all way above average IQ wise. A genius apart from Christ is a destructive weapon who based on EQ and leadership inclination has the power to bring down many others on his way to hell.

Pray for repentance and salvation.

09/21/2022

The DeSantis flight to Martha's Vineyard was a political stunt that was not nearly stark enough to highlight the horrors that our political leadership has created through their failures in immigration.

We have more children being trafficked than at any time in our history.

We have more women being sexually assaulted and r***d due to failed immigration policy than at any time in our history.

The "kids in cages" that ended up being Obama era pictures falsely used against Trump was a tiny drop in the bucket compared to where we are today.

If you wrote about "kids in cages" then and are silent now, you should be ashamed. Most of you are kind people of good faith who are not aware of how you are being manipulated but take this as your wake up call.

How many people died this year at the border that we know of for certain? Would you be surprised that it is an all time record?
Over 750?

How many children have been lost who were FLOWN by the U.S. government and released ostensibly still in our custody?

40 people flown to Martha's Vineyard who caused a crisis for rich hypocrites. Do you know how many more children released from last October 2021 to July 2022 in my home state of Tennessee? More than 100x more (link below).

The massive failures around immigration in our country have created massive incentives around sending children to pay enormous sums of money to criminals who get them across the border often after abusing them. These traumatized young people are then flown to stay with people who are supposedly vetted to provide their care. A staggering number of them (tens of thousands a year at this point) then disappear and the government does not know if they are being fed, or educated or cared for, or loved.

Kids in cages? America now has kids in ditches. Kids being beaten on by alcoholic uncles who don't think they are working hard enough. Kids who are living with people who started being treated as adults at 13 or 14 when they were growing up who treat these kids the same way.

The 10 year old Biden referenced who was pregnant? R***d by an illegal immigrant.

These activities are not happening in a vacuum.

There are massive numbers of amazing people in the United States who are here illegally and yet are kind and compassionate and hard working and in short everything you would want in a neighbor and friend.

They also exist in a system that pushes them out of law and order and that incentivizes in large and small ways not paying taxes, not seeking help when they are victims of a crime, not reporting criminals who are in their family who may be deported if their regular drunken abuse comes to light etc.

There is a better way. There are solutions to these problems. Policy incentives are skewed in awful ways that make it so that people in countries send for their kids and kids who aren't even related because they know that unlike adults, they can get to them and start working quickly.

I would like to see the death penalty for Coyote ra**sts. I am not sure we can get there, but as long as the best paid least dangerous jobs in Los Zetas is being a serial ra**st, we will see the horrors continue. Hurting people also hurt people. We see traumatized people who need years of help because of the nightmare they endured getting to the United States.

An expanded guest worker program would help enormously.
A program that allowed children in need of asylum to apply in country (which is always how those programs are supposed to happen) and actually get a hearing in a timely manner would make a huge difference as well.

Currently our system is overwhelmed and broken. The VAST majority of people coming to the United States illegally are not fleeing certain death or political persecution, they are seeking economic opportunity. They have been prepped to lie about their reasons, because they can often work for years and get lost in the system once they are here, earning in a 4 year period what they could not in 40 years in the village they came from.

The illegal immigrants I know personally are hardworking people. They come from places where the justice system is corrupt. They come from places where if you do not want to work for criminals in the drug trade, you will be poor like your family has been for 500 years. They come from countries where their group lost a civil war that was in large measure over the fact that they have been denied economic opportunities on purpose by rich people who own the political power to keep them working as serfs with no possibility of economic or social mobility.

They come here and with a smile on their face, they work diligently, not taking jobs from others, but doing work that lazy, entitled Americans refuse to do. They have come from incredible hardship, and know oppression in a way Americans have only read about, and yet they see themselves as victors, not victims.

When I am in Home Depot with friends from Guatemala, every time people come up to me and ask me if I can connect them with workers. Construction, landscaping and agriculture are all areas where the Republican party seems captured by scummy rich people who benefit from keeping illegal immigrants illegal, while at the same time, Democrats want to sign up illegal immigrants for the same programs that already destroyed communities in the United States for 50 plus years and in some cases destroyed the countries that our immigrants are fleeing.

A realistic compromise feels impossible because the uniparty we have in D.C. is content with the status quo. What Joe Biden has created is the worst immigration system in my lifetime. Will the Republicans fix that if they take over in November?

For everyone I know who posted about "kids in cages" you better hope so. We cannot afford to continue seeing exploitation, and r**e and death. Our immigration system is immoral. It must be fixed.

I have friends who live in other countries who want to come here and cannot. They are willing to do jobs (and do them well) that you cannot fill here for $20 dollars an hour. They also do not believe in the myth that everyone needs a one bedroom apartment of their own, and are willing and enjoy living and working together as a family that shares housing that many Americans would never consider (despite the fact that it is nicer than the housing most of our grandparents lived in).

The nomenclature around these debates is also stupid. "Uh Clayton, if you truly are helping illegal immigrants you would know that your language is problematic, because undocumented is preferred and no person is illegal." Wrong. That is not the way legal terms work. A person with a gun they are not legally allowed to have is an illegal gun owner, not an undocumented gun owner. A ra**st is not an unconsented sexual partner. "Undocumented" sounds as out of touch as Latinx, because all of my friends who are illegal immigrants have plenty of documents, and are regularly headed to Atlanta to get renewed papers, or to Oregon to get a drivers license etc.

A system that allowed legal status while not allowing welfare benefits and that still allowed for deportation of those committing dangerous crimes would be welcomed by every illegal immigrant I know.

They do not want a handout. They want opportunity. They do not want ra**sts and abusive drunks to be allowed to stay, and if they were deported when reported, my strong suspicion is that our newly legal guest workers would within a year have self policed into a group that is the most law abiding in the United States.

Here is the final piece that I think would shock most of my friends as much as it shocked me. If you made the guest worker status renewable and transferable and only took it away due to crime, you would see an enormous shift of wealth and of the labor pool itself. Many of the incredible people I know who are from Guatemala or Honduras would love to go back to their home village, but they cannot legally travel. They have missed funerals of their loved ones. If they were given legal status, they could invest in the places they left and build them into places people did not desperately flee. They were denied opportunity by oppressive wealthy people who knew that they would remain in power forever over the coffee farms of Huehuetenango for example because the workers could never buy a plantation themselves. That broken dynamic would change overnight if people who own homes and trucks and mowers and businesses with great net income could sell them and be full participants in the economy with the rest of us. Americans assume that everyone here illegally wants to become a U.S. citizen, but that is not the case. They want opportunity, and they want their children to have more chances than they did. We should be fighting to make that happen.

You cannot have rule of law without law. You cannot have a country without borders. America is broken today in our immigration system. Fixing it will take courage and will unmask the powers that profit from the injustice that is the status quo. Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. Happy to hear your own suggestions below, take the time to read the links if you want to know more.

Feel free to share, and feel free to argue, but please do not feel free to remain apathetic to the critical brokenness that is our immigration system in the United States.

08/25/2022

The fact that the people who most rail about separation of church and state are the ones talking about theonomy and jubilee is almost as hilarious as the group that was most upset about building a wall also being the group that quoted Nehemiah most to say we need to focus Christian work on urban areas.

Let me break down why jubilee is wonderful and doesn’t apply at all to this situation.

The rich oppressing the poor isn’t some Marxist tagline, it is a pattern of behavior throughout human history that Proverns warns that God hates. Unequal weights and measures Proverbs 20 (twice) is exactly what is happening when people who have never voluntarily entered into a contract for student debt, people who paid off student debt, people whose entire careers were shackled with lower earning because they couldn’t afford college and felt that debt was unwise (borrower is servant to the lender) are being asked to pay for the debts of others.

The government cannot give anyone money. The government doesn’t have its own money. It has money that we the people pay in the form of taxation. That is it. When Joe Biden gives away 300 billion he said he legally couldn’t last year (with Pelosi) he is taking it from the people.

It will also cost you in another way if it is able to hit the economy and isn’t stopped in the courts, it will cause inflation.

If they wanted to fix the issues, student debt could be dissolved in bankruptcy, and then people would cry that they cannot get money to pay for graduate school (the majority of student debt) and then the market would respond. Instead we have a plethora of truly worthless degrees in grievance studies sending out hordes of professional victims who end up demanding the type of parasitic jobs that help no one and destroy a Republic from within.

Jubilee helps to prevent predatory lending because people know that no matter what they cannot give more than X because the loan has a limited term. Being shackled by lifelong debt isn’t a possibility in an economy with jubilee. But the lender is aware of that from the start. Now the government is telling the taxpayers that we are paying a debt we did not incur and did not agree to pay and are not responsible for.

The IRS wants 87000 new agents so they can go after poor people who accept 1000 on Venmo for doing piano lessons as a side gig. This is class warfare and if people understand it before they vote, the rich thieves in DC are in for quite a wake up call.
Lois Lerner intentionally used the IRS in a partisan way, lied under oath and destroyed her hard drive, and things are worse today than they were then.

I am including in the comments two rants that demonstrate correct outrage at what is immoral and unjust that is happening. Feel free to share!