Random thoughts that I could have created separate posts about, but instead this is more like a brain dump to kick off the month.
Before I start, a couple of personal items that are a key to me staying balanced in this crazy world…
I happen to work for a very popular talk radio station in the sales and marketing world. Living in Northeast Indiana, this part of the world is pretty conservative with a majority of the population voting for Republicans. Except in the more urban centers where Democratic ideas (the party, not the process) is pretty strong.
Last November’s election saw the Republican incumbent winning his re-election in the race against a strong Liberal Democratic challenger for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for our district. She actually won the vote in our county which shows the support she was able to gather using liberal and Democrat Party talking points.
I have friends of all beliefs. My radio co-workers are all over the map too. But here’s the way I keep my life in check. I keep a hands off approach to public political comments. Not all the time but I am very selective. Why?
Because I have other things going on in my life that have little to nothing to do with politics.
I spend 60 hours a week working on media, marketing and advertising projects to help businesses and organizations. I get my rest, 60 hours a week probably under the covers. That leaves me with 48 hours week doing what I need to do and want to do including mundane things like taking out the trash. And other important things such as this month:
Birthday for my wife, Memorial Service for my brother in law, St Paddys Day/Wedding Anniversary. That’s just one week this month.
If you find yourself obsessed with politics, please add some “real life” into your life too.
Now on to the original intent of this post.
Trump is a Liar and ___________. Okay, I cannot defend the truthfulness of our president, but I rarely do. He was not my choice for POTUS. My favorites didn’t survive the primaries on either side.
The problem is I hear Trump supporters who ignore his lies and Trump haters who ignore anything good that has happened.
Despite all the antics of Washington, Donald J. Trump will remain our 45th President until 12 noon, January 20, 2021. If he wins a second term, it could extend another 4 years beyond that date.
Impeachment and removal from office of Trump will not happen unless he actually does shoot someone in broad daylight with a dozen witnesses, and even then there is doubt. So instead of looking at removing him from office, the opposition better get their act together and make sure they have an electable candidate on the ballot November 3, 2020.
Green Deally-O. What a waste of words. Sure, some of the ideas are great. None of us want to kill the planet, but I’ve been a respecter of our earth since I was a Boy Scout.
The biggest problem with this is money. 2nd biggest issue is manpower. 3rd and underlying issue/problem is the Federal Government Top Down approach.
One at a time: MONEY. Where is the money to make all this happen in 10 or 20 years? Sorry but the bucks aren’t there.
MANPOWER. We don’t have enough people to build and create all the changes stipulated in the Green Deal. Even if we had the money, we are not capable of getting it done. The magnitude and the timeline don’t add up.
GOVERNMENT. Passing laws does very little to create change. Use health care as a recent example. The Affordable Health Care (ObamaCare) was supposed to give us affordable health care that eliminated discrimination of services and reduce the cost of health care for all. Didn’t happen.
Sure there are some good things, like it prevents some people from being dropped by their insurance if they file too many claims and allows those with pre-existing conditions to still get coverage, but it still sucks.
I’m covered by my company health insurance of which they pay 80% of the real costs and employees pay about 20% of the real dollars each year. Prescriptions on my health care plan are still outrageous. So my employer recommends we use a service like Good Rx to find discounts. I do and it can save me an additional 50 to 80%.
But the premiums for coverage for the plans on the health care exchange have been unaffordable for those that needed the coverage.
Government involvement, in my opinion is half assed. Obamacare should have been a universal health care plan from the start. Modeled after our Social Security System as a safety net for everyone. Social Security is not the only way we can plan for our retirement. Additional health insurance options, On Top Of the universal health care would have been the better path.
But politics got in the way. Too many deals to get it passed that weakened it. And now we have another government program that delivers less than promised and cost more than it should.
One last random thought that was on my mind as I was reading headlines today:
True Democracy versus Electoral College. Those that want to dump the Electoral College for a “true democracy” are ignorant of the founding principles of the United States of America.
They think that if all the votes in a national election are counted equally on a national level, like one big ballot box, then every vote will be heard and every voice will be heard. In reality the opposite is true.
Our country has been moving away from the original model for quite some time. We take for granted the idea that we can travel across state lines freely. As such, we have lost many of the reason we have 50 states at all.
Where I live in Indiana, we recently eliminated the prohibition of Sunday Alcohol Sales. I know it sounds silly, but that was the law for decades. Since Fort Wayne is but a 30 minute drive to Ohio, if you didn’t stock up on Saturday on booze for the Sunday games, you would have to hope in the car and drive to our neighboring state to get a case or two.
There are other reasons for state government besides liquor sales. The accountability factor is stronger when the offices are more local. City and County office holders have to be accountable to their neighbors. We had a candidate for Mayor knock on our door recently asking for our vote. He knows that every vote counts.
Same thing with other local offices, the winners are the ones that are doing a good job for the majority of the people they represent.
This is the principle of a representative democracy. That’s what the United States of America is. And it is part of the reason we have States.
We are not the United People of America. 200+ years ago, the power was at the state level. New Hampshire and South Carolina where joined together for the common good and protection provided by a limited Federal government against other foreign countries and to provide a cooperative environment for trade and transportation between the original states which has grown to 50 states for the past 60 years.
These days most of the people I talk to have no idea what the difference is between a U.S. Senator and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Even fewer know that the election of Senators by popular vote has only been around for 100 years. Take a look at the Wikipedia entry on the 17th Amendment for more on this.
States are important. Your vote in the smaller elections are more important mathematically than the large elections.
In the 2016 Presidential election, your vote was worth 1/120,000,000 of the total.
In the 2016 Indiana Governors election, your vote was worth 1/2,600,000 of the total.
In the 2015 Fort Wayne Mayors election your vote was worth 1/42,000 of the total.
In the 2015 Fort Wayne City Council election for my district, one vote was worth 1/9,137 of the total.
In a representative form of government, our vote counts more than it ever could if we were a pure democracy.
Using my local example, we have both Republicans and Democrats on our City Council. If all the seats were “at large” (no districts) then two of our 6 districts would not have a voice from the Democratic Party like they do now.
The Democratic Party in Allen County (where I live) is not as strong as it needs to be, as some of the City Council seats did not even have a challenger to the Republican incumbent. However, despite having a majority of seats on our City Council, 4 years ago we re-elected a Democratic Party Mayor to his 3rd term and he’s running for another term this year.
The fallacy of believing that Donald Trump would not be POTUS if we eliminated the Electoral College fails to address the campaign strategies that each team employed in 2016. Each knew that they needed to win enough Electoral votes by winning the majority in the right combination of states. That was why Trump went to the smaller states and won enough to overcome the popular vote totals that Clinton received in states like California.
With a majority take all approach that eliminates the Electoral College, the candidates strategy would be profoundly different than what is going on now. They simply would need to get the biggest number of total votes and the way to do that is to campaign where the biggest concentration of their likely supporters live. Forget states, we are now looking at metro areas.
If you don’t live in one of these top 50 cities, they won’t care if you vote for them or not. Fort Wayne is # 75 on this list so we won’t make the cut.
Time to focus on other important items in life
The Political side of Scloho 