Minority Voters

The U.S. Needs Informed Minority Voters

The View from the Middle

There are two groups in this country that account for about 25% of the populace that are caught between the arrogance of the Democrat party and the ignorance of Republicans.  They will, however, for the foreseeable future be the battleground over which our two political parties will fight.

Many of you would say, “the war is over, and the Democrats have won”.   In the last presidential election, Obama captured 71% of the Hispanic vote and 93% of African American votes.  Also, minority turnout increased by 20% in 2008, and in 2012 Black American turnout actually outperformed Whites.  But there is a profound disconnect between the aspirations and beliefs of these constituencies and their partisan voting record.  Let’s look at the Hispanic community first.

The President promised comprehensive immigration reform back in 2008.  He made it a major plank in his platform and then he promptly turned his back on this group for the next six years.  Even today he has only cobbled together a short-term, temporary reprieve because he was unable to work with Congress to deliver anything more meaningful.

The Democrat party also has major conflicts with Latino beliefs on social issues.  53% of this highly Catholic group is pro-life vs. only 32% of Democrats.  The Democrat platform actually calls for abortion on demand and has all but eliminated God from its content.

Unemployment is another top concern amongst Latinos, and here again, the Democrats and Obama have disappointed.  In the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Hispanic unemployment continues to stubbornly stay more than two points higher than white unemployment. 

And, the top issue in the Hispanic community is education.  In this area, the Democrat party offers public schools or nothing.  They seem to want “choice” in only one area but coercion in education, healthcare and even energy.  Whether it is charter schools or vouchers, what Latinos need in education is “choice”.

President Obama and the Democrat party have also disappointed the Black community.  The African American unemployment rate is still in the double digits, and more than twice that of whites.  For young Blacks, ages 20 to 24, unemployment is absolutely demoralizing at just under 20%.

Blacks also understand the connection between education and success.  They are similar to the Hispanics in this area.  They feel their young people are trapped in subpar schools and thus don’t have the same opportunity as Whites and Asians.  Deep down, they want the “choice” to send their children to good schools that will allow them to compete in the job markets of the future.

African Americans also have a very different take on the issue of same sex marriage than the Democrat party.  A Pew Research Study done in 2013 showed that only 40% of Blacks support gay marriage while 73% of liberals do. 

Finally, one of the biggest hopes of Black America was that Barack Obama would heal the racial divide in this country.  In 2014 we have a Black President and Attorney General and 45 members of Congress (8.3% of membership) vs. just 6 Black Congressmen in 1965.  We have made great progress, but it seems in the wake of Ferguson Missouri and Eric Garner in New York, that our racial divide has never been greater.  Why is that?

Despite his statement that “there is no Black America and White America” President Obama and AG Eric Holder have systematically approached every racial incident form Professor Gates to Trayvon Martin with a built in bias of their own.  They clearly prefer to use these moments to divide and inflame rather than to heal and unite. 

Both parties need to pay attention to these two constituencies.  The Democrats should take this column as a warning.  Change your platform to start delivering actual results, or lose your absolute hold over them.

Republicans clearly line up better with these two constituencies on social issues like abortion and same sex marriage, but they need to improve their message to convince them of this harmony.  Conservatives could also market themselves as the party of private sector jobs and school choice, but they need to reach out to these groups and make these positions clear.  If they don’t, they will continue to lose their support and pay for it at the ballot box.

If this battle is going to deliver anything positive for the country, these two groups will play a key role.  They cannot blindly support either party.  They must demand results on jobs and education and sanity on social issues.  They must become the “informed voters” that our Founders so desperately wanted for our country.  Accountability, not blind allegiance is the way to change this country for the good.  If you are Hispanic or Black, demand it before you cast your vote.  Actually, we ALL need to do this.

Comment on Ferguson

Trust is the Glue of Life – Stephen Covey

The View from the Middle

I hate to launch my column with an often-derided cliché, but some of my best friends are black, and that has always been the case.  It could be my upbringing or my life long love of sports, but I count this collegial cocktail as a real blessing in my life.

So in the wake of Ferguson, it was natural to me to reach out to my friends to get their take, and what I got back surprised me and educated me.  What I accepted as fact was questioned by my comrades who suggested that law enforcement and judicial representatives were simply lying.

And these men are hardly revolutionary anarchists.  They are solid citizens, family men, businessmen and thoughtful people.  They have just had different life experiences than I have.  Each talked about bogus traffic stops and or harsh treatment by law enforcement throughout their lives. 

These life experiences have destroyed the trust they have in our legal system.  To quote Benjamin Watson in his current viral Facebook post, “Power is a responsibility not a weapon to brandish.”  This reminded me of the importance of “trust” in life in general, but particularly in government.  When we feel we can’t trust the people we elect or whose salaries we pay, they lose their legitimacy.  For my friends it is law enforcement and for me it becomes the government, especially in Washington.

So, when Hillary Clinton said, “What difference does it make” during her testimony on Benghazi in front of Congress, she couldn’t have been more clueless, in my opinion.  The outrage about Benghazi goes beyond the deaths of four loyal and brave Americans who were just doing their jobs.  The anger is driven by the idea that our government was simply not honest with us.

This is just one more thing that dilutes our trust in government.  Let’s add ObamaCare on to the “lack of confidence” pile that our government is creating.  First, the President earned the lie of the year by Politifact for his promise that, “if you like your plan, you can keep it.”  Then we have promise after promise being broken.  Premiums have NOT come down.  Deductibles HAVE gone up.  And the cost of ObamaCare is now nearly three times what was originally promised.

If all of that was not enough to earn every American’s skepticism, enter Jonathan Gruber.  This MIT professor was unquestionably a key architect of ObamaCare, no matter what Nancy Pelosi says.  In a recent lapse into honesty, this arrogant elitist informed Americans that the law had been devised to intentionally mislead not only average Americans, who he called “stupid”, but also the supposedly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

All of these acts of deception, arrogance and outright prejudice erode the faith of the public in our government.  Every police officer that pulls over a black man for some phony violation contributes to this erosion.  Every politician who abuses the truth to get elected has violated his or her fundamental pledge and contributes to our country’s overall mistrust of government.

This accumulation of mistrust in the government has been a team effort, and reversing it will take the same. 

Part of the fix is making every police department look like the communities they protect.  Ferguson is project #1.  Why are there only three black police officers out of the 50 in Ferguson despite the fact that Ferguson is 67% African American?  And don’t tell me you don’t have enough applicants.  You just need to try harder.

The next part of the fix will certainly be the most difficult.  We need our politicians to tell the truth.  We are far from that today, but the good news is that we control their fate with our votes.  We need to pay attention.  We need to become informed voters, and we need to vote the lying manipulators out of office.  But a recent development gives me some hope in this area.

Charles Shumer, democratic Senator from New York, just admitted publicly that focusing on ObamaCare back in 2009 was a mistake.  He was not saying that healthcare didn’t have issues that needed to be addressed; he was just saying that it should not have been “the” priority at that time.  Specifically, he said, “that was not the job we were hired to fix.”  I agree with him.

I’m sure he will be attacked, especially by members of his own caucus, but for me, his honesty gives me new hope that our government can work.  It is this kind of veracity that can begin to rebuild the trust that we so desperately need in our government.  I applaud you, Chuck.

Dead Men Tell No Tales, But Often Vote

Dead Men Tell No Tales, But Often Vote

The View from the Middle

Your vote, is it a right, a privilege or a responsibility?  The short answer is “yes”, it is all three.  It is a right that is guaranteed to all citizens by the 15^th, 19^th, 24^th and 26^th amendments to the constitution.  It is a privilege that we are all blessed with because we were born in a country that honors individual rights over the whims of the government (at least for now).  And, it is a responsibility that our founders expected us to exercise with thoughtful wisdom.

But a right can be abused.  We all have the right to free speech, but that right can be violated by, for example, yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre, according to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.  You can breach your right to vote by voting more than once in any particular election.  And you ask, how big of a problem is this?  It depends on whom you ask.

There are some that say that voter fraud is as rare as getting struck by lightening.  Of course, these people, who include our Attorney General Eric Holder, point to the sparse number of successful prosecutions for voter fraud in the United States.  This does not capture the incidents of voter fraud, however, it only captures the ones who have been caught.  Others will suggest that those caught represent a small fraction of actual violations.  We miss many abusers because we simply are not looking for them. 

A recent study in North Carolina found over 35 thousand people registered to vote in two states.  They found 13 thousand dead people still on the voting register and 81 deceased people who actually voted in the last election.  Other studies have suggested that the real voter fraud occurs through abuse of absentee ballots.  Obviously, there is more abuse than our government leaders think, which is why 74% of Americans are in favor of using voter ID laws to protect the sanctity of the ballot.

While I don’t think voter impersonation is a big source of the fraud, I think the requirement of voter ID would be an important step in winning back confidence in our voting process.  Almost 90% of Americans already have the required photo ID’s via their driver’s license or student ID cards, etc.

We need to insure, however, that every person can acquire these ID’s with a minimal effort.  I support the proposal that the state or federal government make these available for free.  Now, you all know that I am not a big money spender, but this is one example of an expense that I would support in order to mend the mistrust our voters have in our electoral process.

Everyone in this country has to provide a photo ID to buy alcohol or cigarettes or to apply for welfare or food stamps (among other things).   Isn’t the right to vote worth the minimal effort to go to the DMV or other governmental office and apply for a free voter ID card?

A life rule is, “when there is NO cost to something, that thing soon becomes worthless.”  Is that the way we want people to think about their vote?

And all this could be done without suppressing one vote.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) looked at 10 studies of voter ID laws.  Five of those studies showed no difference in turnout.  Four studies showed a minimal impact, which could have been caused by other things, and one actually showed an increase in turnout.  With a little education and effort we could improve the integrity of our electoral process AND even expand voter turnout.  That is truly my wish!

We also need harsher penalties for voter fraud (a $200 fine is just not sufficient).  Make that fine $10,000 and we might have an impact on non-citizen voting and absentee ballot abuse, which is where the real fraud action is. 

Finally, we must take our responsibility to vote seriously.  We must understand the issues and know the positions of our candidates on each of them.  Thomas Jefferson warned that one of the greatest threats to the Republic and to liberty itself was “an uninformed electorate”. 

The Founder Fathers expected “the people” to be the ultimate check on government abuse.  They were depending on us to be “the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”  Let’s not let them or ourselves down.

So, VOTE this Tuesday.  It is your right, privilege and responsibility.  But first, study the real positions of the candidates on the issues.  Look at both sides of the political equation.  There is wisdom and extremism on both sides.  Sift through the mountains of negative commercials and personal attacks to find the crumbs of truth that will help you make your decision.

And remember, “Freedom is lost gradually from an uninterested, uniformed and uninvolved people”…Thomas Jefferson.

Terrorism's Dirty Little Secret

Terrorism’s Dirty Little Secret

The View from the Middle

Terrorists around the world have discovered a fundamental truth about life on this planet.  It is easier to divide, destroy and kill than it is to unite, build and create.   

The Twin Towers, for example took about seven years from start of construction to ribbon cutting to build, but it took only about an hour and a half to bring them both down.  Think of any controlled implosion of a building that you have seen.  The buildings have usually taken years to build and have required the efforts of thousands of people, but can be taken down by a few people in a matter of seconds.

If any of you have studied the creation of life, it is amazing to say the least.  It takes nine months for one man’s sperm and one woman’s egg to create the trillions (yes trillions) of cells that comprise the human body.  Yet, it takes only a fraction of a second to put a bullet through someone’s head and end that life.  And, if you want to be more brutal and inhuman, it might take a person a few seconds to chop that head off.

The United States, The United Kingdom and Germany are unquestioned, sovereign countries today, but each took hundreds if not thousands of years to unite the people within their borders.  The citizens of these countries feel a part of their governments because they are free to participate in its direction through their votes.  And, if they don’t like the outcome, they are free to stay or leave.

Terrorism doesn’t care what the people of any region believe.  They force their beliefs on all people through violence and coercion.  There is only one way to think, their way.  And, if you don’t, you die.  That’s not exactly a pro-choice platform in my book.

ISIS (not ISIL) Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas are all the same (a rose by any other name…).  They take the easy way out.  They don’t know how to build or unite so they divide, destroy and subjugate.  Look at where they dominate.  Want to live in Syria, Iraq or Palestine right now.  Even the official Islamic states like Iran and Pakistan are hardly vacation spots.

According to the Human Development Index, the real Republics like the US, Canada, Germany, the UK and Israel all rank in the top twenty places to live in the world.  Iran, on the other hand, is ranked 75^th and Pakistan is rated 146^th.  Syria, Iraq and Palestine all rank over 100.

The most important thing these Islamic countries offer to people is Sharia law.  This is the system that can resort to cutting off the hands of people who are caught stealing.  Sharia also condones the “honor killing” of a girl for something as simple as looking at a boy in what her father considers an inappropriate way.  And heaven forbid if you are a woman or gay.  You will either be a second-class citizen or stoned to death.  More bad choices.

Who on earth should tolerate, let alone support these barbarian murderers?  Why isn’t every country on the planet outraged by ISIS and joining the US alliance against these savages?  Why would we limit what we are willing to do to destroy these monsters?  Why would we tell our enemies what we WON”T do?

What we need is a real leader who can speak with passion and commitment to rally our allies to join us in this righteous and absolutely necessary battle against pure evil.  FDR did it to rally our countrymen against Hitler and the Nazis, and Ronald Reagan did it when he told Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. 

We don’t need a leader who is “too cool for school”.  We don’t need a leader who wants to weaken his own argument by brining up Ferguson, Missouri and giving that situation some sort of moral equivalency to the slaughter that ISIS has performed in Iraq and Syria.  We don’t need a President who will call these goons ISIL.

When the war started, the west named this group ISIS (The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), but that wasn’t good enough for these thugs.  They wanted to be called ISIL (like we should care what our enemies want to be called).  Why is that?

It’s because ISIL stands for The Islamic State of Iraq and The Levant, which is a very aspirational title.  The Levant is a term that describes an ancient area that includes modern day Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.  ISRAEL!!  Why would our President comply with their desire to be labeled with this goal-oriented moniker?  I liked it better when George H.W. Bush mispronounced Saddam Hussein’s name on purpose just to tick him off!