I have identified 5 issues in this 2016 Presidential race
that I call the iceberg sinking the ship.
If the ship sinks, nothing else is going to matter.
The first three issues were issues of policy, and the issues
were that of jobs, immigration, and Muslims.
These last two issues are different.
The fourth issue has to do with whether a non-politician is
automatically unqualified to be President, because politics is a field that
requires prior political experience, just like a teacher would go to school to
learn both how to teach and the material to be taught, and a tradesman would
serve an apprenticeship before being fully prepared for work in that trade.
There is a problem with that supposition:
The political system is broken, and professional politicians
seem unable to even see the problems, let alone be expected to fix the problems,
especially since they are the ones who created the problems.
What are the problems?
1) It is very
common for politicians to amass great wealth while in public office, and this
continues often long after they leave office, as long they remain in some way
connected to public service or public policy.
This can only be interpreted as politicians are easily corrupted to
serving their personal interests over that of the public’s, and the current
public political system is conducive to major abuse.
2) Voting for
our representatives seems to be rigged in some way. Representatives are elected to only two year
terms, because this way they are supposed to be held accountable to their
constituents. They could be easily voted
out of office. The fact is that most
representatives are able to stay in office until they decide to leave, which
can only be interpreted as they are able to game the system, either through the
gerrymandering of their districts, legal obstacles they have created to shackle
or otherwise hinder potential opponents, the use of public money to buy votes
through legislation, or the accumulation of money for campaigning made easier
by their political office.
3) Politicians control
the spending of enormous amounts of money, and this has shown to be highly
profitable for them. And it’s all
legal. Their spending is very beneficial
to a lot of people, companies, and nations, and somehow these are able to
reward them for their help.
4) Politicians
are unable to curb their spending, such that the federal government and many
state and city governments have amassed debt levels that cannot be repaid, but
no worry in that they have no intention of getting out of debt.
Much of this debt is fueled by pension systems that are
incredibly generous and should have been seen as unsustainable as soon as they
were passed. Another huge portion of
this debt is caused by the government assuming responsibility for people’s
welfare. This discourages or disincentivizes
personal initiative and responsibility,
thus pushing for more government spending.
5) Politicians
use their law-making power to benefit themselves over the public interest. This can be done in several ways.
Politicians use public money to buy votes by providing
benefits to people, like subsidizing their medical insurance. The government can’t pay all of its own bills
as it is, but we’ll just borrow or print money to pay for people’s health
insurance. The politician who votes to
end this program will face the wrath of however many millions the government has
been able to give this program to.
Another way politicians use their law-making power for their
own benefit is by writing legislation that is as long as possible. The goal here is to see that as few people as
possible read the bill, to make it too long to discuss let alone debate the
provisions of the bill, and to ensure that nobody knows everything that is in
the bill. Politicians are then able to
add all kinds of things to the bill that ultimately comes back to benefit them.
The bill will contain a lot of things that would never pass
on their own, but since they have been added to an important bill that ‘has’ to
pass, it gets passed and becomes law.
The public doesn’t benefit, but the politician does, either directly or
indirectly.
6) Politicians
have shown their inability to run the country by pushing it to the brink of
bankruptcy, causing millions of people to depend on the government for their
food and housing, taking the best schools in the world and making them
mediocre, flooding the country with immigrants many of whom we are providing
for at public expense when we already have the highest number of people out of
the workforce in 40 years and we are borrowing money to do this.
By what measure can we say that politicians have done a good
job? Or to put it another way, divide
our nation’s history into two periods, say, pre-1965 and post-1965. I am hard pressed to think of any ways that our
government has improved our lives since then.
Yes, there has been a massive increase in public programs and public
spending, but what has been made better?
We have more welfare, but fewer good jobs. More integration and affirmative action, but
still the same poverty.
7) But lastly
and most importantly, politicians see all this as normal, as the way of doing
business. My response to this is: Are
they nuts? The difference between a bank
robber and a politician is that a politician doesn’t have to wear a mask.
I can imagine someone like Donald Trump getting a thousand-page
bill spending half a trillion dollars and laughing his head off and giving it
back to them with the remark, “You’re kidding, right?”
Congressional bills should be short enough for everyone to
read them and debate them. If you can’t
read a bill and don’t debate the bill, you certainly shouldn’t be voting on it.
Bills should deal with as few issues as possible so that you
are not voting for things you don’t want to get the things you do. They call this compromising, but ultimately
it means that you have two bills that can’t pass on their own merits, so they
combine them into one, and they both pass.
We can do without that kind of compromises.
There are those who contend that Donald Trump is eminently
unqualified for the office of President, because he has not held any public
office. I see this as a rare advantage,
particularly if you see the matters I mentioned as problems, and you want
somebody with half a chance of fixing them.
We don’t need any more of the same old thing.
It’s not experience that is the important thing in running for
political office, but your vision for the country, your vision for how the country
is supposed to run, work, and thrive.
There is a fifth issue in this Presidential race that is of paramount
importance: the Supreme Court.
The next President could actually nominate quite a few
Supreme Court justices.
There are two very different political philosophies in our
country today, particularly as it relates to our Constitution. One tries to understand what the Founders of
our nation were intending by what they wrote, and the other tries to see how what
is written there can be construed to justify modern politically correct ideas. They still want to use the words of the
Constitution, but they don’t see anything particularly valuable about how our
country did things in the past or what the Constitution originally intended or referred
to in its various parts. They believe
they can improve on what was there. The
first philosophy believes that we regress as a nation as we move away from the
Founders’ principles of government.
Supreme Court justices sit for life. The laws, the executive orders, and a lot of
stupid things that Presidents do can be undone by a later President. The Supreme Court cannot. Immigration we have already mentioned in a
previous article is something else that cannot be undone.
The next President can shape the Supreme Court for
generations to come. And the Supreme
Court can shape our country for generations to come. Doesn’t matter what the people want or what
their representatives vote for. The
Supreme Court, even one person on the court, can change everything to a far
different direction than the country had been heading in. One case, nine judges, one swing vote, and
hundreds of years of precedent and tradition can be overruled.
We have two major party candidates running for President
right now. Barring any rare, strange
events, one of them will be the next President.
It does no good to say that you don’t like either one. On this one issue alone, one should be able
to make a clear choice for President.
There are dozens of important issues facing our nation. It is hard to find even one candidate who
anyone can agree with on everything.
I have identified 5 issues that I believe are easily the
most important in this election. In each
case, only one candidate even closely fulfills what is needed to address these
issues, and on all five, it is the same person.
Is he a perfect candidate?
Hardly. Is he the right
candidate? In this election, there is no
question. Is not voting an acceptable
option? No, because your inaction will
not stop events from happening, your inaction may cause others to do nothing as
well, and your actions could prompt others to action.
Learn about the issues, talk about the issues, and then do one
of the most important things you can do about the issues. Vote.
