Heed John Lewis

Civil rights hero, Congressman John Lewis, has taken to social media recently to encourage voters to use their right to vote. He tweeted “I have been beaten, my skull fractured, and arrested more than forty times so that each and every person has the right to register and vote. Friends of mine gave their lives. Do your part. Get out there and vote like you’ve never voted before.”

Congressman Lewis’ remarks are especially important this week when many Americans are going to the polls for early voting at the same time a right wing terrorist has mailed and hand delivered at least seven bombs to former president Obama, Hillary Clinton, former Attorney General Eric Holder, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, progressive billionaire George Soros, and the New York offices of CNN. Hate from the right; like the white nationalist/Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia last year that ended in the death of Heather Heyer, has been on the rise since Barack Obama began his campaign for president in 2007. The current White House stoked that hate during his campaign and enough Americans in the certain states accepted his hateful message so that he managed to take office even though he received nearly 3 million fewer votes. Since his inauguration he has thrown more fuel in the fire and claimed that the bigots marching in Charlottesville were nice people.

By continuing to spout hateful language toward his opponents and those in the media not associated with Fox News and AM talk radio the popular vote loser in the White House has incited and given permission for his followers to act on his words by striking out at those with whom they disagree. No prior president of either party has pushed the envelope the way the man in the White House today has done. Even Reagan using dog whistles like his imaginary welfare queen remarks didn’t stoop to calling for violence.

In the face of attacks and calls for violence it is of the utmost importance that we all heed John Lewis’ call to vote. Even though they were subjected to violence from both police and civilian bigots Lewis, Rev. Martin Luther King, Dolores Huerta, Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez, and the many other activists forged a highly effective and non-violent path to achieve their voting rights and civil rights goals. Once their right to vote was established those pioneers were able to achieve and protect other civil rights for a time.

Over the last 30 years as the right has recognized the opportunity to rule by exploiting division amongst the electorate. One of the main fault lines exploited is race, others are generally religious biases like non-Christian faiths, a woman’s right to control her body, and non-traditional sexuality. Exploiting these fault lines requires generating fear, anger, and hate to move those who are susceptible to voting for those who claim to be protecting them. Of course the politicians who use these methods including the record setting liar in the White House aren’t really interested in or concerned about the issues surrounding race or religion. Their vociferous calls to protect white, Christian America are just tools to get access to the levers of power for the purposes of enriching themselves and their billionaire and corporate sponsors. The evidence for this is the single significant piece of legislation that the Republican controlled congress was able to pass was a giant tax break for those billionaire and corporate sponsors.

If you, your family, your friends, and your neighbors don’t vote, the hate mongers and their rich sponsors win. Don’t let them.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - October 26, 2018

Party Unity Means Persuasion Possible

In the media lately there’s been much talk of “party unity” when discussing support for the presumptive nominees of both parties. While I had worked for and contributed to Bernie’s campaign and had real hope he could pull off an upset we can now see it was not to be. I hope my fellow Bernie supporters, especially those of the “Bernie or Bust” mindset, will take heed of what I have to say.

First you must understand that although the national party apparatus didn’t help Bernie get his message out and various establishment members did put their fingers on the scale to assist Hillary Clinton it’s clear now she didn’t need it, she won resoundingly. She is the choice of the majority of Democrats. I won’t belabor the discussion with statistics other than to say she won millions more votes and won them in the most democratically run primaries, meaning elections not caucuses. We don’t have to like it, we just have to make the best of it.

Now here’s why it should matter to you that Hillary becomes our next president instead of the reality show blow hard. To explain I’m going to tell you a little story about how our then congressman Henry Cuellar came to support the Affordable Care Act back in 2010. Cuellar, who is the only Democrat endorsed by the right wing, anti-tax group called Club for Growth, was unwilling to commit to voting for the bill. I and others called his offices repeatedly that winter and spring urging him to come out in support of the bill. When he continued to keep his distance we organized rallies in Schertz and Seguin and met with his local staff several times hoping to up the pressure. We wrote him letters and emails, we wrote letters to the editor. We made such a nuisance of ourselves that we heard through back channels that he was asking his contacts what was going in Guadalupe County since we’d never made a ruckus before.

Late one evening a couple of days before the vote was to take place I received a phone call from a member of his Washington, D.C. staff asking if I could manage to get some Affordable Care Act supporters to attend an event in Laredo the next day at which he was speaking and would likely commit to vote for the bill and he knew there would be opponents present. Since I was working with a nationwide group and had the phone number for an organizer with a wider range of contacts I called her and she agreed to make some calls. When Cuellar spoke the next day there were roughly equal numbers of supporters and opponents and he committed to vote in favor of the bill.

In an effort to persuade Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn to support the bill knowing that it would improve the lives of nearly one million Texans we held many more events with many more people in attendance. We held petition drives and delivered the petitions to their local offices. We organized phone calls to their offices from Texans from all over the state. Even with all that effort neither of them ever showed the slightest inclination to support the bill.

If you haven’t figured out my point yet, I’ll make it crystal clear. It is better to elect a wavering Democrat who can be pushed to move in our direction than to allow a Republican of any sort to hold office as we won’t have any persuasion power over them at all.

Trump Would be Pillager-in-Chief

Now that it’s pretty clear who the major party candidates will be in November let’s compare their resumes. Trump claims to be a billionaire though he hasn’t disclosed his tax returns so we can’t really know. He said he couldn’t be bought because he was self-funding his campaign but that’s not true now that he’s won the primaries he’s begging for dollars the same as every other candidate.

Trump’s experience is all in real estate and entertainment where he became a household name through is “reality” show “The Apprentice”. His experience with government has been as an applicant for licenses for casinos and permits for construction projects. He’s never held elected office or even an appointed one like Planning and Zoning Commissioner.

Last Sunday the New York Times ran a well researched and documented story on Donald Trump’s financial dealings in Atlantic City. When Trump talks about it he says he hit it big there brags about how much money he made. What he doesn’t say and the story reveals is that he ventures in Atlantic City were an unmitigated disaster for everyone but him. Whether they were an investor, supplier or construction contractor almost everyone lost money by dealing with Donald Trump.

Whether it was one of four bankruptcies or self-dealing Trump always won and everyone else took a loss. After a couple of Atlantic City bankruptcies and a downturn in New York, Trump used shareholder money to pay his personal debts while receiving $450,000 a month for personal and household expenses. He delayed paying for construction work on his hotels for 3 years or more and then only paid 30 cents on the dollar yet he walked away with millions personally. The Times quotes Sebastian Pignatello, a former Trump investor, as saying: “He drove these companies into bankruptcy by his mismanagement, the debt and his pillaging.”

Clinton has served eight years in the United States Senate where she served on the Committee on Armed Services, Committee on Environment and Public Works, Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. She then served four years as Secretary of State. As the first lady of Arkansas and then the United States, Clinton has studied and advocated for better education, the availability of health care to everyone and improving the lives of women across the world.

Clinton’s life and government service haven’t been without controversy yet even after the Benghazi Committee wasted a shade less than $7 million on hearings they have found exactly nothing. Of course if you’re a conspiracy theorist there’s always the tragic suicide of her friend Vince Foster that you can let yourself be distracted by.

In the end the choice is clear we can vote for someone prepared to be the commander-in-chief or someone prepared to be the pillager-in-chief.