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   Well now, that was unexpected. Flyover country flexed their collective muscle and did the unheard of; toppled the mighty, connected, hand-picked successor to Barack Hussein Obama’s “transform(ed) America(n)” dream-regime.
   Some have expressed doubt about the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, but seriously, preliminary results show us that Trump won 3084 US counties, whereas Clinton only won 57. This is why the Electoral College works so well. All politics is local, and our Presidential election is simply a collection of local county elections (3141 of them, Alaska doesn’t count results by county), so it is clear that Trump won a clear, more representative victory in this cycle.
   Never a gloater, I, a hopeful look ahead at what manner of America lies before us these coming four years, is my style. We are on the cusp of a very, very exciting time in our history! The campaign is over and now is the time for the rubber to meet the road. It looks as though some of the biggest and most destructive governmental agencies are either on the chopping block or the gutting table. Among the likely casualties: The Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency. Before you shriek in horror, let’s examine the origins and actual purpose of these agencies.
   The Department of Education is a cabinet-level agency that was created by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Although a Department of Education existed for 1 year, (1867), starting in 1868, federal oversight of education was limited to the Bureau of Education, a minor part of the Department of the Interior, then became the Office of Education, a part of the Federal Security Agency, which later became the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1979, the Office of Education had 3,000 employees and an annual budget of $12 billion. In President Obama’s 2017 budget, The Department of Education’s budget is $209.1 billion, (discretionary and mandatory funding) and it has 4400 full-time employees.
   In that time, it should be noted, the scholastic aptitude of America’s children has not changed significantly. In 1981, the United States ranked 12th in the world, last year, we ranked 14th, according to edudemic.com. According to the DoED, the primary functions of the Department of Education are to “establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.” Fantastic. That is an awful lot of money to do things that are already done by local school boards and law-enforcement agencies.
   President-elect Trump has named Betsy DeVos, the daughter-in-law of Amway founder Richard DeVos as his pick for Secretary of Education. Ms. DeVos is an outspoken advocate for education reform, and is said to harbor a particular disdain for the “Common Core” national curriculum. It is not inconceivable that Ms. DeVos would be more than willing to oversee a complete dissolution of the Department during her tenure as Secretary.  
   The Environmental Protection Agency was established by an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon. According to the EPA website, it was “ Born in the wake of elevated concern about environmental pollution, EPA was established on December 2, 1970 to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection. Since its inception, EPA has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people.” In 1970, the budget for the EPA was $1 billion, with 4,084 employees, this year it is $8.1 billion, with 15,376 employees.    Most of what the EPA does, as far as regulating industry, is already handled by individual states, which have pollution regulatory agencies of their own, and are wont to be much more responsive to immediate threats to life-quality than a stodgy, wasteful, bloated Washington slush-trough.
   These steps forward by the fledgling Trump administration would be the first of many streamlining improvements that would be immediately felt, and would set us on the course for the Sea of Prosperity.
Now it should be noted that many supporters of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, have registered great displeasure with the outcome of this election. Hashtags such as #NotMyPresident and #FirstWhore and many others with names not fit to print, have begun to appear on social media, and the vitriol and anger has been stunning! Calls to end the Electoral College, endless complaints about the low IQ and unfitness of the electorate to have been able to properly cast informed votes have sprung up. I have tried not to antagonize Democrats, I have sympathy. This was a bitter fight, and it was a devastating loss.
   I think the future of the Democratic party hinges on their ability to re-connect with the silent electoral majority. These are the folks dismissed as rubes, racists, and morons by the media. These are they who don’t live in big, expensive, over-regulated cities. Those are the voters that have made the difference in tight races. Instead, I see the Democrats acting as if they have just been run over by a car, and instead of calling an ambulance, they are arguing about what kind of tires the car had.