Republicans Know How to Exercise Power

I have to compliment Senator Mitch McConnell, he knows how to use power. When there was a Democrat as president and a vacancy on the Supreme Court 9 months before a presidential election and 11 months before a new president would take office McConnell used his power as Senate Majority Leader to stop even the consideration of the President Obama’s nominee. His argument was that the people should be allowed to speak. It didn’t matter that his action was unprecedented. The people spoke and nearly 3 million more voted for the Democrat. Nevertheless a Republican won due to the anti-democratic Electoral College votes and it didn’t matter that it was hypocritical to still prevent even a hearing let alone a vote.

Now only 5 months from an election in one third of the senators who will vote on the new president’s Supreme Court nominee will stand for election he’s pushing hard to assure that a vote is taken before the people have an opportunity to speak again. Democrats just don’t have the idea that when you have power you’re supposed to exercise it. Obama had overwhelming majorities in both the House and Senate and failed to use his power to push through a robust Affordable Care Act. Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi allowed the Republicans to amend and twist the bill into a pretzel without ever committing to vote for it. That’s one of the reasons Republicans and Trump have been able to whittle away parts of it in an attempt kill it without taking blame for breaking the parts that even Republican voters like.

Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership failed to use the power of their offices to twist arms that needed twisting and it was just the Affordable Care Act. We didn’t get the forceful stimulus bill we needed, nor the environmental protection bill that would have put a real dent in climate change, or an immigration bill that might have prevented the tragedy we’re seeing at our southern border today. In fact I would argue that Obama’s failure to use the power inherent in the office is the very reason we have Trump as president today. I believe that if he had used his power in concert with the congressional leadership Democratic voters wouldn’t have sat on their hands in 2010 and Republicans wouldn’t have taken control of both houses of Congress. If he’d been the strong leader we needed voters in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida would have turned out to vote for another Democrat in 2016 and the winner of the most votes would have also won the Electoral College vote.

It’s important that Democrats get out and vote in November so we can take back the Senate and the state legislature. It’s also important that our Democratic leaders use their power to do the people’s will. Failure to use your power is a lot like failure to use your muscles. Democrats have allowed their power to atrophy unlike Mitch McConnell who doesn’t even blink at his own hypocrisy. McConnell uses his power to get anything and everything he can accomplished.

Neither Franklin Delano Roosevelt nor Lyndon Johnson were perfect, but they did great things for this country because they understood both the need and the method for exerting power. As we now know winning elections isn’t enough if you aren’t going to use your power to get things done. Understanding the use of power is one of the key attributes I will look for in every candidate in future primary elections.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - July 13, 2018

"Mom's" letter to the President on job creation

Dear Mr. President,

Having lived through the “Great Depression”, I’ll be 82 later this month, I can speak from experience that many of your esteemed advisers cannot. I am a child of an unemployed laborer who died prematurely of a heart attack and a disabled homemaker. I went to school often having eaten no breakfast and bringing nothing for lunch. I must tell you that while the current “Great Recession” is certainly not as bad as when I was growing up that is cold comfort for workers and their families who through no fault of their own have been without jobs for several years.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been my hero since I was old enough to say his name and I know from terrible experience that his policies are what saved my life and that of my sister and three brothers. The Herbert Hoover clones in Congress would have America cut spending and therefore cut more jobs, how can that possibly be the remedy for the lack of jobs we already suffer? Even Richard Nixon knew such actions were foolhardy for he said “We’re all Keynesians now.”

FDR recognized that the American people he loved were suffering under Hoover’s policies. I know that you too feel for the millions of Americans who are suffering today. I urge you to put aside the attempts at bi-partisanship which the party of Hoover apparently sees as weakness and proudly follow Roosevelt’s lead by putting Americans back to work building for our future.

Vandalism and violence have no place in politics, or Who's a Nazi now?

First it starts with petty things like stealing political signs, then like today it escalates to vandalism, this is how political violence begins. When my wife was at a local shopping center today someone broke the mirror on the car along with other damage and left a note “Obama sucks” obviously in response to the various political stickers on the car. Since the vandalism occurred around Noon and it is a school day I must conclude the perpetrator was an adult. Vandalism of this nature is a form of bullying the likes of which often continue to escalate into physical violence.

About the time of the vote on health care reform there was a spate of vandalism of congressional offices. Now those who simply support progressive candidates like Hank Gilbert and Jeff Weems are victims. I have heard and seen many on the right claiming that the President is a Nazi, but it is not the President who has used Nazi tactics of vandalism and intimidation. No, it is the loud mouth angry Right that uses those tactics.

I want the perpetrator and anyone else like him to know that I will not be cowed. I want the bullies on the Right to know that violence will not stop me or my friends and associates from supporting candidates of our choice. In fact it has only made me more determined and I have doubled the donations I’ve already made to Democratic candidates as well as added a few more.

What do Obama is a closet muslim, terrorist babies, social security broken and a mosque in Manhattan have in common?

Last Friday, a Republican National Committee woman, Kim Lehman, said about President Obama “… he personally told the muslims that he IS a muslim, read his lips."

Senator John Cornyn recently said the mosque issue would haunt Obama come November. Cornyn says "This is not about freedom of religion."

Texas legislator Debbie Riddle claimed in a CNN interview that there is a nefarious international conspiracy by immigrants to cross the border illegally, while pregnant, to give birth without insurance, to then cross the border back again, so that 21 years later they can send their child back again to do us harm.

Congressman Lamar Smith calls for privatization of Social Security claiming that it is broken even though the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that Social Security has a surplus of $2.5 Trillion that is estimated to grow to $3.8 Trillion in 2020.

What do all these “issues” have in common? They are pure and simple attempts to divert the public’s attention from the reality that the Republican Party has no solutions to the real problems of America especially the lack of job creation. They don’t have any new ideas and the old ones like tax breaks for millionaires have proven not to work during both the Reagan and Bush administrations. While some claim Texas has suffered less than other states that’s only partially true since we have a higher percentage of low and minimum wages jobs than just about anywhere else in the country. Remember that in November.

Why does Obama continue to cover-up deaths at Gitmo?

Will the Obama administration continue to be complicit in a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006? The story in the January issue of Harper’s Magazine is based largely on interviews with Army guards who were there and a report by the Seton Hall University Law School.

The three prisoners who all knew that they were likely to go home soon as investigation had shown that there was no evidence that they had been involved in Taliban or al-Qaeda activities and release was being negotiated. The manner of death initially reported as cloth shoved down their throats was suddenly changed to hanging hours later. Guards whose duty it was to check each cell every 10 minutes supposedly missed three people hanging from wire fencing for several hours but were never disciplined.

Decorated veteran Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman, a man inspired by Ronald Reagan to join the military, has provided testimony to the Justice Department which is at odds with the report provided by NCIS. His testimony is corroborated by and expanded upon other Army personnel on duty on the night of the deaths but the Justice Department has ignored it.

Not only did NCIS not collect all the various documentary evidence available like video footage of the corridors around the cells of the deceased but they didn’t even bother to interview the Army guards at all.

Why is an apparent cover-up from the Bush administration being continued by the Obama administration?