Apple or Bomb? Your Choice on November 8

It’s easier to compare apples to apples. One apple is green, crisp, tart; the other red, juicy, sweet. It’s harder to compare apples to oranges. But how do you compare an apple to a bomb? 

In this election, how will you compare a politician who has spent her career working to improve the lives of children and families with a wealthy businessman and reality TV star.

Donald Trump is a self-proclaimed multi-billionaire who grew his inheritance by making deals that he acknowledges have benefited him while often fleecing others. Trump University, being sued in three class action suits, is described as “a straight up fraud” by the Attorney General of NY. 

Trump refuses to release his tax returns, so we assume he is hiding something. Is it that he pays little or no income tax? Are many of his businesses supported by foreign investors with questionable integrity? Many have speculated that it is his business interests in Russia that drive his admiration for their authoritarian leader, Vladimir Putin. Newsweek recently reported after extensive research that “If Donald Trump wins this election and his company is not immediately shut down or forever severed from the Trump family, the foreign policy of the United States of America could well be for sale.”

Trump claims he “is the least racist person you will ever meet.” Yet he has consistently made racist statements about Latinos and Muslims, and his first foray into politics was based on the allegation that Barack Obama was not born in America, an accusation that African Americans correctly interpret as a racist effort to delegitimize the first African American President of the United States. He recently retracted it under pressure from his campaign managers who are trying to make him more palatable to mainstream voters. Avowed racists and white nationalists recognize him as one of their own, however, and have been enthusiastically endorsing and campaigning for him.

PolitiFact, a Pulitzer Prize winning fact checker, has rated 70% of his claims in this campaign as mostly false, false, or “pants on fire.”

It’s hard for the media to stop talking about Trump (hard for me, too!) because he’s so outrageous and skilled at bringing attention to himself. Just minutes after playing clips of Clinton referring to Trump and no clips about the policies that comprised the bulk of her speech, an MSNBC anchor asked, “Why doesn’t she talk more about policy?”

In the recent NBC National Security Town Hall, Clinton had to spend half her time explaining the complexities of her e-mails as Secretary of State, a controversy created by the wasteful House Republican investigation into Benghazi.  Added to endless Whitewater investigation against her and her husband in the nineties that ended up uncovering nothing except a man who lied about his infidelity, Republicans have succeeded in creating the perception that the Clintons are dishonest. If she were the liar her critics claim, somewhere in the eleven hours of Benghazi testimony or the hours of FBI grilling there would have been cause for a perjury claim.  PolitiFact has ranked 72% of her campaign claims as true, mostly true, or half true. Remember, Trump: 70% falsehoods. How do you like them apples?  

But let’s talk policy! There are many reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton besides saving the nation and the world from the turmoil of a Trump presidency. With eight years of steady leadership by President Obama, we have recovered from the Great Recession. We just learned 2015 median wages increased by a stunning 5%! Hillary Clinton plans to increase the job growth we have enjoyed the last 6 1/2 years through a variety of proposals, including increased spending on desperately needed infrastructure projects: roads, bridges, clean energy, high tech. She will work to raise the minimum wage, fight for equal pay and guaranteed family leave, child care and housing for those who need assistance. She will work to improve and expand the Affordable Care Act to cover more Americans and keep health care costs down. 

Unlike her opponent who makes up policies on the fly and makes false claims about the effects they will have on jobs and the economy, Hillary Clinton has devised her proposals over the last year with many top experts, including Bernie Sanders. Go to hillaryclinton.com/issues to read her proposals, including a highly detailed fact sheet outlining how she will invest billions revitalizing coal communities.

West Virginians are struggling. Democrats in our state government have not provided the leadership needed to move our economy forward in a declining coal market, so many have decided to give Republicans a try. Like their national counterparts, however, they spread divisiveness, attack worker’s rights, want tax cuts for the wealthy, and starve needed government programs. Historically, under Democratic presidents, the economy improves for working people and those on the margins more than under Republicans, whose policies favor the wealthy. That’s why I’m excited about a President Hillary Clinton. She may not be the “apple of your eye,” but she’s not the poisonous fruit some portray her to be, nor the time bomb that is the alternative.

Occupied Thoughts: Will demonstrations gel an effective movement?

Will the Occupy Wall Street movement have an impact similar to the TEA Party movement? The TEA Party, like Occupy, began as a grass roots organization of frustrated voters demanding change. 

Its followers brought a wide variety of viewpoints and issues to rallies, but their primary issue was taxes. After all, TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. They were fearful that the federal stimulus spending by the Bush and Obama administrations in response to the Great Recession had created long term deficits that would eventually result in higher taxes (despite the fact that much of the stimulus ‘spending’ was in the form of tax cuts).  Most also expressed fear that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (aka Health Care Reform), would increase deficits and be an unwelcome intrusion into Americans’ rights to manage their own health care needs and choices (I believe those fears to be unfounded, but that argument is for another day). What the TEA Party was most concerned about, though, was jobs and the economy, and a general feeling that President Obama and the Democratic Congress, led by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, were not representing their interests (most TEA Partiers are white, middle-aged, and male).

TEA Party principles are:

• Fiscal Responsibility: taxes should be low, budgets should be balanced, national debt should be paid off. 
• Constitutionally Limited Government: the role of the federal government should be limited to that which the founders outlined or intended in the Constitution.
• Free Markets: the government should not intervene in business.

These principles have the ring of sensibility, but if strictly adhered to would result in a fundamentally different America than exists today. “Original Intent” might not allow for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, etc.  TEA Partiers believes the constitution leaves those areas to the states or individuals. Most health, safety, and financial regulations would be abolished, and the Federal Reserve dismantled. However, surveys of self-identified TEA Partiers show that large majorities would be against cuts in Medicare and Social Security, though wanting to cut both taxes and deficits. The only way to square those kinds of desires is through faith that cutting taxes will miraculously raise tax revenues, a belief that Reagan’s and G.W. Bush’s experiments proved false.

Nevertheless, most conservative Republicans and many Independents find these ideas attractive, with the caveat that change must be incremental or that anyone currently receiving Medicare, for example, would continue to receive it. Republican politicians identifying themselves as TEA Partiers emerged with the message that they would be the ‘true conservatives,’ and unlike the big Republican spenders during the Bush years and before, would hold the line, even if it meant shutting down the government. With the promise of even lower taxes and roll backs of regulations, and aided by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen’s United allowing for unlimited political spending, wealthy corporate interests and individuals stepped up with a massive influx of cash to support TEA Party Republican candidates and unseat Democrats in statehouses and Congress in the 2010 elections.

Without the massive influx of corporate cash supporting think tanks, media buys, and political campaigns often disguised as issue advertising (and claimed as tax deductible charitable contributions), the TEA Party influence might have been marginal. Jane Mayer, a journalist writing for the New Yorker, has detailed the methods used in 2010 in articles about the billionaire Koch brothers and a recent article about multi-millionaire Art Pope’s almost single handed purchase of North Carolina for the Republicans.

So, while the TEA Party started as a grass roots organization that hoped to inspire millions of American voters with mass protests and rallies, it is currently supported by only 15-20% of voters. It remains to be seen whether the Republican candidate for president in 2012 will have TEA Party support, and if not, whether there will be a movement to put up their own candidate.

The Occupy movement, like the TEA Party, started as a grass roots movement in response to concern about the economy. Unlike the TEA Party, however, they do not blame government alone for our economic woes; instead they identify the greed of corporations and their influence on government. While the demographic is clearly younger than the TEA Party’s and reflects the frustration or idealism of unemployed college graduates and students, they have recently been joined by unions and other progressive, Democrat supporting organizations, such as Van Jones’ Rebuilding the American Dream. Some proposals taking shape are for more equitable wages and taxation, which line up well with President Obama’s and Democratic platforms.

Will this movement continue to grow, as the organizers hope, into a massive peaceful revolution such as occurred in Egypt, so large that politicians will be forced to take action on yet to be identified demands? Or, as racist elements within the TEA party did, will radicals in Occupy discredit it for most Americans? Will the enthusiasm and persistence of its supporters influence the Democratic Party as the TEA Party has influenced the Republicans? Will their efforts translate into positive change for America? I hope so.

This essay appeared in the Charleston Gazette-Mail on October 21, 2011