Still Angry After All This Time

Not too many years ago, I would not have considered myself to be a “political person” at all. I voted and I did my homework first, although not to the extent I do these days. I studied the candidates, the issues and I claimed no allegiance to either party. My personal leanings were very liberal, but I always listened to the conservative views and for many years did not disagree with them in many instances. I never took the elections too seriously, because talking politics was pretty much forbidden and because I knew that whoever won, whichever side won, there would be another election in two or four years and there are lots of checks and balances within the system.

This election was different. The results are different. The campaigns were different and the outlook is very different. All standards have been kicked aside. The campaign was mean and ugly and distorted by misinformation, creating more confusion and division than ever before. Trump seemed to break every rule and never had to answer for it. He solicited campaign money from foreign countries. It was reported by offended foreign nationalists. Nothing happened.

He lied incessantly and denied it and got caught in the denial and his people didn’t care and the media let it ride. He lied and made shattering missteps so often they couldn’t be adequately checked out before the next headline loomed. He refused to show his tax returns. His health certification was a bad joke. His business ventures are all over the world and will be heavily influenced by his presidency. No one seemed to care. Nor did they care that he has no experience of the kind we need the president to have.

Some voted for him solely because they want to see abortion outlawed. Some because they believe white skin makes some people superior to others and they feel that Trumps agenda fits their needs. Others believed he was going to create a job for them. The employees at Carrier in Indiana are now living with the reality of that myth. Some believed he would save Social Security and Medicare. Apparently not. Don’t even look for him to say he’s sorry either. I can’t fault those who voted for him thinking he is going to help them in some way. Too much bad information was always in the way and most people do not have enough time to dig through every item.

Like always, I started out listening to every campaign speech of every candidate, and I was proud of the Democrat’s campaign. We had good compassionate people with good ideas who pretty much kept to the issues and out of the mud.

The Republican campaign was mired in sewage from the start and issues were buried beneath the stinking pile of hate filled rhetoric and diversionary talk and lie after lie after lie. I know this because I checked everything out that I could. He employed with aplomb the mind control tactic of “gaslighting” that the republican party seems to have adopted as their primary strategy.  Lie, deny, distract, confuse.

When the party nominees were selected the race really got nasty. Trump enlisted David Bossy, of Citizens United who has been waging a war against the Clintons for twenty years. I researched his accusations. I had already been a fan of Hillary and had raked through years of information on her. Her accomplishments filled pages and so did the accusations against her. As I looked back over all of them again, I found almost all the accusations were groundless and those that got any traction at all were investigated and proven false. Like the years of investigation into her handling of Benghazi and her email server, they seemed to be made up out of thin air and to hold her to a completely different standard than anyone else in her position.

While Trump could issue loud, ugly, bold lies and have those lies exposed, even though he would refuse to acknowledge them, no one seemed to care, but if Hillary made a small error she was held to excruciating hounding and recalling.

While he was whining about the media picking on him and not treating him fairly, he was getting more free airtime because of his unorthodox and insulting actions than all the other candidates put together, and distracting us from his failings. His accusations were ridiculous because he accused the media of misquoting him when they quoted him exactly and played the video to prove it, but his followers believed him. They believed what he said that they wanted to hear and completely discounted the blow back the next day.

While he was accusing Hillary of cheating, he was calling on Russia to hack into the Democrat’s computers. The republicans were as always trying to suppress voting from certain groups of people. Trump was calling on his supports to “Keep and eye on other people at the polls”, he was inciting violence, he was lying and doubling down on the lies about Hillary when he was called on them. His followers did not care.

So against all odds and all predictions, he won the electoral votes necessary to become the President of the United States. I was angry, disappointed and terrified when Donald Trump was declared the winner of the Presidential election. The reasons were numerous then and they are growing more numerous with each day. Did I mention insulted? Now I am also extremely insulted.

We have allowed someone to be elected to lead our country who ran on a platform of lies, cheating and being outrageous. He has the temperament of an over-indulged nine-year old and is currently more interested in pandering to his fragile ego than in attending daily security briefings. He threatens the constitution, he intends to subvert the law, he encourages white supremacy (even though he has been forced to denounce it) and is populating his cabinet with people who are unqualified, or publicly adverse to the agency they are charged with, have close ties with Russia and Vladimer Putin, are temperamentally unfit for the position, or simply stroke his ego.

Now we know that 17 security agencies have concluded that not only did Russia hack US computers, and share the information with Wikileaks, but that they did it (and who knows what else) to insure that Trump win the election. There are questions about ballot counts, about practices at the polls. The FBI released a questionable statement about possible emails not sent by Hillary and found on someone else’s laptop that might have possibly include a secure email document in them 11 days before the election. Could anyone be any more obscure? Just a suggestion of a possible, but not even probable situation thrown out to the public who is desperately trying to pick a leader. Oh none were found of course and now there is a question about the warrant for that computer. Who knows how many people voted with the possibility of another scary email hanging over them. This was a complete smoke screen.

 Fake news sites were reporting fiction as fact and people were believing it. Some still believe Hillary had an FBI agent killed and that she is part of a child sex ring. They believe what pleases them.

I am angry. Our country has been hijacked. This was not a fair election. A con-artist was put in place by a foreign government and a good woman was attacked in the process. Our people were not given the information they needed. Hillary has been in the public eye for her entire adult life. Some people like her and some don’t for real reasons. That’s the way humans are. But if anyone dislikes her solely because of something they were told or read about her and they didn’t bother to check it out, it’s probably not the truth. Even with her mistakes, her errors of judgement failures, she is still a good woman. Donald Trump may or may not be evil, but the entities pulling his strings area definitely evil.

 

I Will Not Wait

We are three weeks out from the election that has shocked the nation and rattled the entire world. It promises to change our country and our lives profoundly. How, is yet to be determined. How is dependent on a changing number of things, known and unknown. How, depends on us.

People ask, “Why don’t you give him a chance before you insert your pre-conceived biases?” In answer, I say this: He gets his chance regardless of my views, but no, I will not wait to begin to speak out. I will not wait until our constitution is diluted by more crimes against the citizens of this United States of America. I will not wait to see if we begin to register Muslims before I speak out. I will not wait to see if he rebukes the agenda of the white supremacists who have delighted in his election to make my view known. I will not wait to see if he follows through on his plans to abolish women’s reproductive rights or protection against discrimination of the LGBTQ citizens to begin to resist.

I will not wait to stand up for the rights of ALL the citizens of the United States of America. I will not wait until it is too late. I WILL NOT WAIT!

Gender Bias

I found last night’s episode of the new series “Bull” on CBS to be very fascinating. The subject of the show was a pilot of a commercial passenger plane which had crashed killing everyone on board except the captain. She was saved only because the nose cone broke off on impact and was flung away from the plane. She was being sued by the families of the deceased and was accused of being negligent.

It was a good story. She was a former combat pilot, a highly decorated veteran with many combat missions on her resume. A concussion at the time of the crash left her with no memory of the last few minutes of the flight or why she made the decisions she did in those minutes in spite of the protests of the co-pilot.

When the identical trial was presented to two identical shadow juries, one found in her favor and one did not. The only difference was that one shadow jury was presented with a defendant who looked like her and the other was presented the exact same information with a defendant who was a male.

Gender bias, it seems, is so ingrained in us that our expectations are very different for a man and for a woman in the same circumstances. When we see a man and a woman acting and reacting in the same manner we can put completely different assumptions to those actions. Without realizing it we expect more from a woman and accept less from a man.

I have watched this exact scenario play out in this election campaign. Mr. Trump is excused time and again for over the top, inappropriate and unacceptable actions and statements. And Secretary Clinton is punished for discretions that are nothing more than accusation and innuendo. People say they don’t trust her, when she fact checks as the most consistently truthful of any of the candidates and he blatantly misleads and lies more that 70% of the time.

I do trust Secretary Clinton because I have done some homework and I know what she has accomplished and I know that an accusation with no validation is nothing.

Go to this link for a good example of what I think might be mostly gender bias: 

http://www.forwardprogressives.com/fine-lets-actually-compare-controversial-scandals-hillary-clinton-donald-trump/

Fifteen Days

Fifteen days until the polls close and we elect a new President of the United States. Fifteen more days to wonder what kind of things we will hear about the candidates. Fifteen days for Donald Trump to make a transformation that will render him worthy of that office. Fifteen more days. Fifteen days.

And then what? Will we wake up on Wednesday and cheer our new leader? Or will we wake up in yet another nightmare situation where the election is contested?

I believe that Donald J. Trump does not possess the qualities we need in a leader and that should be no surprise to anyone. I know a lot of you are disappointed in that and I understand. We do need to change the way the government works for us and I will continue to work for that to happen.

Some of you, like me are avid Hillary supporters for many different reasons and some of you are Trump supporters for reasons of your own. Then there is another group who feel cheated because you don’t really like either candidate. Let me talk to you just a moment.

I don’t think Hillary is a poor choice and I want to give you some things to consider. She has been in public service for her entire adult life, serving in probably hundreds of capacities and she has certainly made mistakes, judgement errors and had some failures. But she has worked and accomplished more than anyone I can name. She has done this working in and with an imperfect system, because that is what she had to work with. Look at her accomplishments. She did these things working as a woman in an environment that was not known for being woman friendly.

She does know how to work the system, but that does not make her necessarily corrupt. If you want change, she is the one most likely to make it happen.

She heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak when she was still in high school and decided she wanted to spend her life serving others so she became a Democrat because it seemed the best way for her serve others. She was a volunteer for the Eugene McCarthy campaign, during the Civil Rights movement and during the anti-war movement. She worked on Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee to research migrant labor.

FIRSTS:

She was the FIRST student to give the commencement address to her class at Wellesley College. She was the FIRST female chair of the Legal Services Corporation, helping to insure equal access to justice under the law regardless of ones ability to afford it. She was the FIRST female partner at the Rose Law Firm. At that time she was also listed as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America by The National Law Journal and was Woman of the year in 1983. She was the FIRST Chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession.

She lobbied for the first ever U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on human rights, declaring gay rights are human rights.

First FLOTUS to hold a post graduate degree. First FLOTUS to be elected as a United States Senator (twice)

CHILDREN AND FAMILIES:

She helped to found the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families which advocates for the health, well-being and education of children in Arkansas. She was an attorney at the Children’s Defense Fund, leveling the playing field for children. When she was a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law she was the Director of Legal Aid Clinic there.

She created Arkansas’s Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth to help parents prepare their children for school. She was leader of a task force that reformed Arkansas’s education system. She was instrumental in the passing and implementation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program in Arkansas and promoted nationwide immunization against childhood illnesses. She played a leading role in the creation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act and the Foster Care Independence Act. She also helped to initiate the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice.  

With former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, she helped to establish Vital Voices, whose mission is “to identify, invest in and bring visibility to extraordinary women around the world by unleashing their leadership potential to transform lives and accelerate peace and prosperity in their communities”.

She sought to increase the funding for research into prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health.

She spoke to the United Nations declaring “Women’s rights are Human Rights and Human Rights are Women’s Rights” at a time when this was a brave action.

VETERANS

She helped to investigate the effects of the Gulf War Syndrome on the veterans afflicted. She helped lead the charge to expand healthcare access for the military, including an expansion to The Family and Medical Leave Act which was necessary for those wounded in service.

9/11.

She took a leading role in investigating the health issues facing 9/11 first responders and was instrumental in securing $21 billion in funding for the World Trade Center site’s redevelopment along with fellow New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

OTHER:

She served on the US Committee on Budget, Committee on Armed Services, Committee on Environment and Public Works, Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Special Committee on Aging. She was the Commissioner on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. And of course the Secretary of State under President Obama.

She did all this, not only within the system but also by working hand in hand with members of congress on both sides of the aisle, members of the Pentagon and private entities. She did all this and battled private issues at home. She did all this and still wants to serve this country. What other politician has been so scrutinized? She is not crooked. An accusation without foundation does not mean a thing.

She isn’t perfect, but it is my educated opinion, based on a great deal of research that she is qualified and possesses the attributes we need and can depend on to lead us forward and make us stronger. Just a few things to think about.

Vote For All Of Us

Vote For All Of Us

I’ve been voting in Presidential elections since 1968, not exactly the dawn of time, but long enough for me to get a pretty good idea about how they work, or at least how they are supposed to work. Of course for the first few elections I couldn’t even get another woman to talk about politics. We, good little ladies either went into the voting booth and voted like our husbands told us to or we went into the voting booth and secretly voted for the candidate we had quietly, with little discussion and of course, without the internet, with only the information that was presented on the local television station, decided was the best. Not very informed.

I have always gathered as much information as I could and voted for the person who most closely represented what I thought was the right thing to do. Sometimes it was a Republican, sometimes a Democrat, and occasionally an Independent.  I realized there were profound differences in the platforms of the two major parties but I always thought both parties wanted the country to succeed and that it would survive regardless of which party won the election. So even though I sometimes heard the phrase “the lesser of two evils” I knew it would only be a temporary thing anyway.

I have always believed mightily in the power of Democracy. I have known the disappointment of defeat and the elation of being on the winning side. Either way inauguration day has always been a wondrous day for me. Every time I see the mantel of leadership pass from one regime to another, quietly, solemnly, with the dignity and gravity it deserves, I have been almost overcome with emotion. We are a Democratic Nation. When we the people decide we need a new leader, we can elect him or her, with no war, no coup, not bloodshed. In this world of many governments and many philosophies, ours reigns supreme.

This year we face a challenge I have never faced before. We have two unpopular candidates in the race and their differences are as great as they can possibly be. One is the most gifted, qualified and prepared candidate to ever run for office. The other is completely unqualified, unprepared and unfit. The campaign process has been the longest and the nastiest of any I have witnessed.

I have been researching Hillary Rodham Clinton since she was the First Lady of Arkansas. I have read all the accusations and all about the accusers and the only thing I have learned is that she occasionally makes a bad decision. When she realizes that she picks herself up, reevaluates the problem and changes her strategy. Like the rest of us, she goes on. She fights when she has to, she reasons when she can, she compromises when it works. She has learned to work within a system that was not yet friendly to women and she has succeeded in enacting an impressive number of programs to help women, children, the ill, the elderly and disenfranchised people not just here in our country, but throughout the world.

For 30 years, people on the other side of the aisle have tried to bring her down. I don’t know why. I do know she has survived. I don’t like to hear people use that phrase “the lesser of two evils” right now., because there is a good candidate out there. She isn’t a conservative. She believes in our government even though it needs to be modified and cleaned up. She knows how to get it started. She knows how to bring jobs back and she has a plan. She cares about people and she knows about our strengths and weaknesses and wants to make things work for all of us. 

She has worked with officials from governments around the world and understands foreign policy and diplomacy as well as war and its demands and price. I know she will be a great President of the United States of America. Please vote for all of us. Vote for HRC.

Christa Hedrick

We Do Want Change

I understand that you want to see change in Washington. I do too. I am as tired as business as usual as anyone else. I think the best agent for that change is the woman who has been leading the charge for decades. We cannot make those changes without knowing how to work within the current framework. Let me tell you what change looks like.

In the sixties when Hillary Clinton was coming of age, women were still little more than shadow people. They were almost non-existent in politics or law. They could not get a loan and basically became extensions of their husbands when they got married. They could even be sent to a mental institution for refusing to follow the wishes of their husbands.

When she went to hear Martin Luther King speak in Chicago, she listened to and heard his message and decided then to live a life of service to others. Because of this she changed her political affiliation from that of her family’s and became a Democrat. That’s change.

Hillary was one of a handful of women to be accepted into law school. That was a big step in the direction of changing the pathways of women forever. That was change.

When she was 21 she was a volunteer working in Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign immersing herself in the Civil Rights Movement as well as the conflicts surrounding the Vietnam war. That was change.

As First Lady of Arkansas, she defied tradition by keeping her maiden name until it negatively impacted her husband’s political future. Then she hyphenated it. That was change.

As First Lady of Arkansas she left the cookie baking to others and instead helped to found Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families which is dedicated to the betterment of children’s lives by advocating for their health, well-being, and education. She also became an attorney at the Children’s Defense Fund. That’s implementing change.

She was Director of Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Arkansas School of Law. She was the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation, helping ensure equal access to justice for everyone despite whether you can afford it or not. That was change.

She was the first female partner at Rose Law Firm. That was change.

She was the First Chair of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Women in the Profession. That was change.

She created Arkansas’s Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth and brought HIPPY to Arkansas, enabling parents to be their child’s first teacher. She was appointed leader of a task force that reformed Arkansas’s education system, improving its rating dramatically. That is change.

She was instrumental in the passing of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP/CHIP) enabling all children to have access to healthcare no matter the income level. That was change.

She helped initiate the Office on Violence Against Women at the Department of Justice. That was change.

She Declared to the United Nations that “women’s rights are human rights”, a huge change.

The list goes on. If you want a president that has a long history of initiating change within a system that is very difficult to change, that person would be Hillary Clinton. If you want a president with a history of bettering the people she serves, that would be Hillary Clinton.

What really has her opponent done for anyone other than himself?

Thank You Donald Trump

Thank you, Donald Trump. You have managed to illustrate very well one of the greatest and most ridiculous inequities in our country. I have been arguing with people over the federal income tax rates for years. Everyone seems to have a problem or two and the buzz words used by all sides are “middle class shouldn’t bear the brunt of the burden” I agree with that, don’t you? Everyone I know says the same thing. We all like to think of ourselves as being in the middle income bracket.

“I don’t like the fact that I work and I am paying these huge taxes and that person doesn’t work and gets free stuff.” “Why should someone who doesn’t want to work get to live off my hard earned tax money?” I definitely understand that. I have worked in a real job where I paid into social security and had income tax taken out of my paycheck since I was fourteen and I was babysitting and doing little jobs for people for years before that to earn money.

I am still working part-time now even though I am retired. I still declare my income and am taxed accordingly. I too look for legal deductions to lower my rate and feel sort of good when I am gifted with a deduction option. I am not a deadbeat so I understand when someone complains about carrying the tax burden for those that don’t pay their fair share.

Where we part understanding is in who we don’t mind supporting. I have been making the argument for years that the ultra-wealthy (that exalted 1%) is not paying their fair share and others are arguing that the poor (an increasing percentage) are not paying their fair share. The logic used there is that the wealthy work harder for their money and the poor are worthless. 

There are a couple of flaws in that logic. Number one is that most of the people living in poverty are not deadbeats. They do work and work hard doing hard work. They work longer hours and get fewer benefits and less time off and still need assistance to feed their children and keep a roof over their heads because the wealthy do not want to pay a living wage.  I really don’t mind helping them out if I can. You probably don’t either. I think we both agree than those who scam the system should be denied, but not those unable to work and not the children.

Second if every person who lives below the poverty line paid income tax at the current rate, it would not equal what a single billionaire would pay without the loopholes that allow them to not pay taxes on certain income. I don’t like subsidizing the ultra-wealthy, but for some reason beyond my comprehension I get a lot of push-back when I suggest we ask them to be taxed at the same overall rate as the rest of us, as the middle income earners. They usually fall back on how a tax increase will affect them, a realistic thought.

If we stop the deduction for monies earned from investments, that will affect people who have been wise enough to put back money into dividend paying accounts. We can and make adjustments for the middle income earners if we make adjustments to the code for the upper income earners to make it more equitable.

I currently get some benefit from the real estate deductions because I own a rental property. There are many other lines in the tax rules that benefit us all, but could be rewritten or adjusted so that the middle income earners can still have bit of help without making it possible for someone who could handle a billion dollar loss in a single year to get to live tax free for the next 18.

Whatever system allows someone like Donald Trump to profit over an annual loss of a billion dollars needs to be changed. For one thing much, maybe most of that billion dollars was not born by him at all. The banks who financed his failed projects took part of it. The contractors and working class who made those projects possible did not get paid what they were promised and Don was given a whopper of a ride at their expense. Besides the fact that he personally made the bad decisions that affected thousands of lives and he had the resources to risk when they did not and he walked away undamaged and unrepentant and they were left to struggle, is the very big factor, that he not only did not pay taxes for that year but perhaps for the next 18 years. Did you?

Think about it this way. He did not contribute a percentage of his earnings to the federal budget.  For all  that time he did not contribute to the US defense fund and in that time many of the rest of us bore and raised a child that has now been sent to battle and may not have returned and all that time we were paying taxes. That just doesn't seem quite right to me.

Christa Hedrick

Basket of Deplorables

It is fair to say that broad generalized statements about people are usually unfair and inaccurate. Whatever propensities one person or a few people have should not, for better or for worse, be attributed to the entire group. For that reason, I think it was unwise of Former Secretary Clinton to use the word “half” when referring to Donald Trump’s followers being in the deplorable basket. If you are a Trump supporter and you are not racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic or xenophobic, please take a breath and know that this is not pointed at you. I realize there are many people who have many good reasons for supporting him.

That said, I was glad to have it out in the open that a great many (not all) of Trump’s supporters are racists, xenophobes and anti-Semites. 

We know this because David Duke who founded the Louisiana based Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was for some time the Grand Wizard of the group, has publicly endorsed Donald Trump, because he is running on a platform that shares their values. Duke has also been associated with other white supremacist organizations, such as the White Nationalists and the Alt-Right, who have publicly announced their support for Trump.

We know this because Donald Trump regularly elicits cheers from crowds of his supporters at public and televised events by calling for sanctions against all Muslims, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants from Mexico, regardless of age or circumstance, blocking immigrants from countries where the Muslim religion is predominant.

We know this because of the treatment of non-white protestors at Trump’s televised rallies. We know this because at these rallies violence is condoned against just about anyone not in agreement with Trump’s ideologies.

We know this because Donald Trump has repeatedly made sexist, racist, anti-Muslim remarks at his rallies and received thunderous applause.

We know this because Donald Trump has for 8 years clung to the idea that because President Obama is not “white” he needs to prove again and again that he is an American citizen and many of his followers applaud this.

We know this because – well need I continue? The list is long and the victims of his bigotry and the bigotry of some of those who support him are many and varied.  Donald J. Trump has made racism a building block of his campaign. In spite of his pandering to whatever crowd he is soliciting, he has failed to support African Americans, Mexicans and other Hispanics, LGBT, the poor, the Jews, the Muslim, even the religious right.

Now that he is under new management they are trying to clean him up and gloss over all those ideologies that have endeared him to the David Duke and Alt-Right voters. Keep your eyes open, folks. This election IS about race. This election is about equal rights for everyone, every religion, every sex and sexual orientation, every economic tier and if you don’t look like him, act like him and spend like him, you will not be on his radar after the election.