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Sunday, April 24, 2016

My post politically active year ever!

     So, aside from being a vocal Bernie Sanders supporter, I have also participated in more aspects of the social process than ever before.  I have been a regular contributor by making small $10 weekly payments to Bernie's Campaign, and I've even engaged in phone banking (an activity that I absolutely despise.)  All because I feel like for the first time in my life, a political figure actually represents my views.  However, I have been learning a lot about Hillary supporters in this process, and I would like to take a few minutes to describe what I am hearing from them.

     First of all, there is not much (if any) talk about what actual policies Hillary supports.  The vast majority of people I speak with just say they want to vote for her, and usually say they don't have a reason.  Honestly, who can blame them.  News channels like CNN and MSNBC only cover how much Hillary disagrees with the other candidates, but there is never any talk about what Hillary is planning to do.  She just talks about how she is being attacked by Bernie Sanders, who has tried more than any other candidate to keep the debate about policy issues, but she has only engaged in mud slinging.

     If her time as First Lady, A Senator, or as Secretary of State are any indication of what to expect, then we can rest assured it will be a year dominated by news of the various scandals she is involved with.  We can rest assured that she will continue to deregulate the banks, and we can be certain that the countless wars we actively engage in will continue to receive more tax dollars year after year.  Furthermore, the TPP would be signed, and tax loopholes would be expanded to provide new alternatives to Panama, now that recent events have exposed that loophole.  Our healthcare system would continue as is, and she would make more grants available to finance college education; both of these are part of the problem leading to astronomical College tuition rates and healthcare costs.  This is what we should expect if Hillary does exactly what she has been doing throughout her career.

     I have not talked with a single Hilary supporter who understands what Hillary will do, nor can they even explain what she claims she will do.  Again, who could blame them.  In order to figure out what her claims are, you need to sift through pages of empty campaign slogans and glittering prizes, and you still won't read much about what she actually plans to do.  Most of the time, especially in terms of campaign finance, you are looking at a candidate who benefits greatly from Citizens United and secret funding from Super Pacs; not to mention that she gets sanctioned for campaign finance violations in every campaign she has run.  However, thanks to the Clinton Defence Fund, she can just treat these pesky fines as the cost of doing business as usual.  If she did bring campaign finance reform, it would most likely be in the form of opening up contributions so she wouldn't have to pay so much in court fees and sanctions.

     One thing Hillary has established, is that she knows how to speak out against the ideas of others, but where she is lacking is the actual follow through on her own views.  She considers contacting your state representatives and asking them to support your candidate "harassing the Super Delegates."  She calls Bernie Sanders unqualified with no basis, and then claims she is being viciously attacked when Bernie said taking tens of millions in campaign funds from special interest groups through her Super PACs makes her unqualified; he claims that supporting the Panama Free Trade Agreement makes her unqualified.  Honestly, based on her campaign claims from her own website, she is claiming that she will eliminate the very things that have allowed her to run for president.

I cold continue to go on, and honestly, when it comes to the issues she lists on her own site, nearly every one of them is in direct contradiction to the actions she has taken throughout her political career.  Honestly, I can't go through all 30 of them here, but I encourage you to do some fact checking, and see what she has actually done.  You , may be suprised to find that while many of the points she makes on her site seem good on the surface, she does not have a plan to achieve any of them, and history has shown that she typically voted against these views in the past; with a few exceptions like Alzheimer's, sexual assault, and disability rights.  However, those are no-brainer issues that have not even come up during the campaign; additionally, everyone agrees with those points.

In closing, Anonymous has a great video that lists the scandals that Hillary was involved in.  While I admit some of these are not substantiated claims, but it was proven that she repeatedly lied to the public, she pardoned FALN terrorists, and repeatedly committed record setting campaign fraud offenses.  Anyway, take a look at this video, and judge for yourself.

   

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Why I Chose Bernie Sanders

Before half of our precinct showed up, they had to move us to the hallway because we didn't fit in the room...
After caucusing today, I got really riled up about why I chose Bernie. (121 people in my precinct, 93 for Bernie, 23 for Clinton – well over 1,000 for my district showed up!) Part of it was because I chose to get involved when it came time to give arguments supporting him after the Clinton candidates spoke, and the thoughts are bouncing around in my head now, so I feel like I need to get them out! So, here I go… A vote for Bernie is a vote for:
  • Eliminating the health insurance racket, not reforming it.
  • Eliminating the overpriced private school system we refer to as Universities and Colleges, in favor of updating our public school system to include a college education.  Increasing access to grants and student loans has resulted in over a Trillion dollars of outstanding debt, and the 37th education system in the world in terms of quality.
  • Eliminating tax loopholes, that allow large corporations like the NFL, Microsoft, Walmart, and Apple to shift profits to overseas tax havens, costing the American public Billions in taxes each year (I.E. $40 Billion from Microsoft and nearly $100 Billion from Apple every year!)  Plus we all know the NFL should not be considered a non-profit tax-exempt organization.
  • A vote to repeal citizens united, which Hilary has utilized in every campaign she has run in the past 6 years (thus, no way in hell she would change that.)  I suppose rootstrikers.
  • A vote for trying to confront Islamic extremists by disproving their argument (and primary recruiting tool) that the western world doesn’t care about them.
  • The only hope for achieving peace in the middle east is to treat each of the countries involved as equal partners in a mutual resolution to conflict. (I.E. Remain neutral and not side with Israel and Saudi Arabia exclusively in opposition to Iran).
  • We need to adjust our tax laws to remove tax caps for high income households; especially in terms of the 15% investment income tax, which almost exclusively applies to people with annual income above a million dollars.
  • We need to ask the question of where the money to pay for war is coming from.  This money is obtained by punishing the teachers and schools in this country with insufficient funding.  It is obtained by punishing the citizens of this country by not maintaining our existing infrastructure.  It is obtained by devaluing public transportation, and denying people a mass transit alternative.
  • We need to recognize that we only have one planet, and if we break it we might not be able to fix it.  Global warming is real, and regardless of how it is happening, we need to take every action possible to slow or reverse it’s effects.  We need to reduce subsidies for oil, coal, and nuclear power production, and increase subsidies for solar, wind, and geothermal power production.  There is no reason we shouldn’t have a 100% green power grid by 2020.
  • We need to promote a more sustainable materials economy.  Our buildings, electronics, and other consumer goods need to be designed to be broken down into raw components that can be used for the next generation of consumer goods.  This type of technological ecosystem will reduce the burden of disposing of waste, and reduce the demand for destructively mining new raw materials.
  • Electric vehicles are one of our best bets to reduce CO2 emissions.  Even though the current electric grid would produce a similar or greater emission per mile than gasoline cars; centralizing the source of emissions increases the feasibility of eliminating CO2 emissions from transportation.