Normally, Hillsdale Conservatives focus on local and state government. That focus is intentional. It is where power is closest to the people, where decisions can still be observed directly, and where accountability is still possible if citizens are willing to exercise it.
However, the fraud, abuse of office, and complete lack of accountability now visible at the federal level can no longer be treated as a distant or separate problem. What we are witnessing federally must be compared directly to what has already been experienced locally and at the state level, because they are not different failures. They are the same failure, expressed at different scales.
Our Republic does not function from the top down. It functions from the bottom up. The federal government does not establish standards of acceptable conduct. It reflects what has already been tolerated in local and state institutions. What is excused close to home becomes normalized everywhere else.
This is where civic memory matters.
A people who lose civic memory lose the ability to recognize patterns. Each abuse is treated as an isolated incident. Each violation is explained away as procedural or unavoidable. “Trust the Process” Over time, the pattern disappears from view even as the behavior continues uninterrupted.
We have seen this most clearly at the local level.
In Adams Township, election irregularities were not merely alleged in public commentary. They were exposed in a court of law. Testimony and evidence revealed that election materials were unlawfully taken and destroyed. The actions were not isolated to a single office. They involved coordination between local and state authorities and the use of local governmental and local judicial power to carry them out.
The judicial system itself was used not to protect election integrity, but to facilitate the removal and destruction of evidence and to shield those actions from scrutiny. Authority meant to safeguard constitutional process was instead used to bypass it. Our local Sheriff refused his duty and allowed the state to act unlawfully in our County, and ignores testimony under oath admitting to unlawful acts.
Most telling was what followed.
Rather than holding accountable those who exceeded their authority, the response turned against the one official who attempted to uphold constitutional duty. The Township Clerk, whose role exists to preserve election records and protect the integrity of the process, was targeted and accused in order to redirect blame and suppress further inquiry.
This was not a failure of process. It was the use of process to avoid accountability.
Nothing meaningful happened.
Investigations into federal elections followed the same pattern already familiar at the local and state level. Serious allegations of fraud and manipulation were raised. Evidence was presented. Hearings were held. Reports were issued. The exposure was real.
And yet nothing happened.
No meaningful accountability followed. No systemic correction occurred. No restoration of public trust was attempted. The machinery of government absorbed the exposure and continued operating as before.
This failure did not originate at the federal level.
The federal government is not above the states or the people. It is downstream from them. It is constructed from officials who learned what is acceptable in local boards, county offices, and state agencies. When misconduct is tolerated locally, it is carried forward. When accountability is avoided close to home, it is replicated federally.
Exposure without accountability does not resolve corruption. It teaches systems that revelation carries no consequence. Misconduct may be exposed, discussed, and debated, but never punished.
We have also seen this pattern at the state level, with an important distinction.
Lifeways is not unique to Hillsdale County. Every county in Michigan has a similarly structured organization operating under a different name. These entities receive state funding to operate and are routinely renewed through approval processes that assume compliance rather than verify it. Not unlike many other organizations in other states.
In this instance, something different occurred.
Residents of Hillsdale County paid attention. Questions were raised. Outrageous spending was challenged instead of quietly approved. Local officials and representatives were pressured to explain decisions that are normally rubber stamped without public involvement.
Because of that pressure, enough of the local government refused to simply approve the spending. Instead, the issue was placed on the ballot and submitted to the people for a decision.
That step matters.
It represents a small but real act of accountability. Not a solution. Not a victory. But a disruption of the usual pattern. It demonstrated that when citizens insist on transparency, even entrenched systems can be forced to pause.
The lesson, however, remains incomplete.
If that spending is approved by a minority of voters (a mere fraction bother to even vote), the result will be no different than if it had never been questioned at all. Outrageous spending will continue. Oversight will retreat. The system will absorb the challenge and resume as before. (This is not how a Republic founded upon a Constitution is meant to operate. America is not a democracy.)
Partial accountability is fragile. Without sustained attention, it collapses back into habit. The role of our Representatives is to prevent this very corruption within our Republic.
At the federal level, comparable programs operate at vastly larger scales. Public funds are misused. Warning signs are ignored. Whistleblowers are dismissed. When misconduct becomes undeniable, the response focuses on process rather than responsibility.
The is structural and civic decay.
Few individuals enter federal government without first passing through local or state offices. Those early positions are where habits are formed. When officials learn that violations produce no consequences, they carry that lesson forward. Power becomes something to manage rather than restrain.
Our Founders warned us plainly. A Republic must be kept. That warning was not poetic. It was practical. They understood that unchecked power does not correct itself. It accumulates. It hardens. It becomes unaccountable.
We are now living inside that warning.
Governments take from the people and call it taxation without genuine consent. Elections lose credibility while institutions demand trust instead of earning it. Public funds are misused while oversight bodies protect reputations instead of enforcing the law.
This is not what representation was meant to be.
We elect representatives to restrain government, not to justify it. Their duty is not loyalty to institutions, parties, or careers. Their duty is loyalty to the Constitution and to the people who consented to be governed under it.
When that duty is abandoned, the damage spreads in every direction. Citizens disengage. Corruption becomes expected. Silence becomes safer than truth.
That is why accountability must begin locally. Not because local government is small, but because it is formative. If election materials can be unlawfully destroyed in a township and no one is held accountable, the lesson is carried forward. If public spending can escape scrutiny at the state and local level, it will do so wherever power is further removed from the people.
A Republic cannot be preserved by elections alone. It can only be kept by a people who remember how it was designed to function, recognize familiar patterns of abuse wherever they appear, and refuse to accept unaccountable power as normal.
The year 2025 was a year of exposure. Corruption was revealed. Patterns became visible. Illusions collapsed.
Exposure alone changes nothing.
The defining question of 2026 is whether exposure becomes accountability. Whether memory becomes responsibility. Whether the people finally choose to keep what was entrusted to them.
That responsibility does not belong to parties or movements.
It belongs to the people themselves.
in libery,
The Hillsdale Conservatives Happy New Years!!!
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