There are so many reasons to get out and vote

When someone like my next door neighbor tells me they aren’t political and therefore they don’t vote I just want to bang my head on the wall. If you don’t vote you’re just saying that whomever those that do vote elect will be fine. That’s OK when figuring out where to eat lunch with your co-workers but it’s not so fine when the struggle for civil rights and women’s rights are at stake. We every citizen of voting age have a responsibility to ourselves, our children, our family, and our friends to vote so that the best possible people to lead our national, state, and local governments are selected.

Last week Donald Trump participated in a town hall on Univision and a 64 year old California farmer named Jorge Velazquez asked, “For many years, I have worked with these hands, hunched over picking strawberries and cutting broccoli. This tough job is mainly done by undocumented people. If you deport these people, who would do that job, and what price would we pay for food?” Trump rambled about farmers having it tough right now and how he was the best thing that ever happened to farmers but he never actually answered the question. I’ve wondered about this question myself and I’ll bet you have too, yet I have yet to see any journalist ask such a basic question of any Republican let alone Trump.

There’s no doubt that our immigration system is a huge mess. It can take over a decade for a foreign citizen to get through the hoops and hurtles even when they are the family member of a U.S. citizen. Not all applicants are successful. Our legislators keep talking about reform and even proposing legislation but as happened back in March of this year politics rears its ugly head and derails even bi-partisan efforts so that Trump can campaign on the broken system that he keeps broken because it gives him the opportunity to blame someone else.

Republicans always complain about inflation and government spending but let’s look at their solution. The Republican mantra is cut spending severely especially social programs. Argentina elected a new government early this year and their new president delivered on his campaign promises to drastically cut spending. Those spending cuts did indeed cut inflation from 26% to 4% but they also damaged the economy so much that now the poverty rate has jumped to 53%, the highest in over 20 years. Argentina’s president is an economist, though apparently a very poor one, and look at the mess he made of their economy. Trump made a mess during his first term and now he wants try again, this is a man who has filed bankruptcy 6 times. He can’t run businesses successfully so how can anyone believe he can do so for the entire American economy.

In this election we have a chance to choose between candidates, like Kamala Harris and Trump for president and Colin Allred or Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate. If elected Harris and Allred will move forward on reforming our immigration system while the same old Republicans who lie claiming that immigrants are all dangerous criminals will leave it broken or make it worse so they can continue to bash immigrants.

Even people who think their not political should recognize that letting Republicans wreck the economy over their spending cut fetish and anger to toward immigrants isn’t in their best interests.

Early voting has begun, make a plan to vote soon and bring your family, remind your friends.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 23, 2024