Eleven Days to Election Day!
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It matters not if you vote by mail,
at an early voting location or on Election Day.
The important thing is that you …
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The Real Issues are Not Inflation and Crime!
Even though the real issues in the upcoming election are abortion rights, gun violence, voter suppression, and the preservation of democracy in the United States, Republicans are trying to center their campaigns on inflation and crime. These issues, while dwarfed by the four mentioned above, deserve to be addressed ... and that is what I will attempt to do.
JL
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Republicans Misplace Blame for Inflation on Democrats -
What Democrats are Doing About It
The Republicans seem to think that they can use
inflation as an argument in the upcoming elections. Democrats must make it clear that inflation is a
worldwide challenge today, to some extent resulting from the economic slowdown
precipitated by the Covid pandemic as well as by worldwide food and energy
shortages brought about by the war in Ukraine.
It is not just our problem. It is the world's. And it isn't as if the Democrats were not doing something about it. They are not sitting idly by!
Price increases here are being actively counteracted by (1) the country's growing economy (2.6% GDP just announced) for which the Democrats deserve credit, by (2) the Federal Reserve’s increasing the prime rate, and by (3) a substantial decrease in unemployment made possible by the policies of our Democratic president and Congress, including the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act. (Isn't having a job with a paycheck providing income to a family, even in an inflationary economy, better than not having a job at all?) These are reasons to vote Democratic next week, or sooner.
But getting back to the Federal
Reserve, when it charges banks a higher interest rate to access the federal
money they need to operate, that in turn supposedly makes mortgages and
carrying credit card balances more expensive, resulting in less spending,
reducing demand. That, eventually.
should lower prices, combatting inflation. Avoiding going too far or too
fast with such monetary steps risks a recession so it is important to proceed very carefully with them. Treasury Secretary
Yellin won’t make any specific promises as to how long this will take but
cautiously anticipates that it will eventually bring inflation under control.
No Republican, in blaming
Democrats for inflation, ever offers a better solution, or any solution for
that matter. In fact, the Fed’s
actions are bipartisan.
Republicans just continue to preach the
reduction of taxes on the wealthy and businesses, hoping they will invest the
money thereby pocketed into new ventures, the profits from which will ‘trickle down’ to
those lower down on the economic ladder.
This has nothing to do with fighting inflation and has never worked and
never will because the wealthy and businesses find other uses for these funds,
uses which do not benefit American working people and farmers. These include overseas investments where labor
costs are lower, investing in ‘hedge funds’ which are based on betting that the
economy will not improve, and corporations buying back their own shares.
JL
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Republicans Grasp to Blame Democrats for Crime
Republicans also blame a supposed increase in crime on Democrats. They latch on to isolated incidents and try to use them to claim crime is out of control and blame it on Democrats. Crime is not 'out of control.' They seem to think that robberies, assaults, and worse are rampant, taking place daily all over the land. That is not the case. No one that I know is hiding at home to avoid crime.
But let's get to those 'criminals' whose acts Republicans are blaming on Democrats. Often, they blend this with their attacks on immigration and often covertly, on minorities. In doing so, they seem to forget that in our country, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and that bail and probation are legitimate aspects of our legal system, which even includes the opportunity to seek asylum here.
Democrats
are not just turning ‘criminals’ loose on the streets as Republicans suggest. Republicans see our justice system as 'coddling criminals’ despite the fact that many Republicans, including the defeated
former president, take advantage of the
benefits of our legal system, including the presumption of innocence until proven
guilty, to stay out of jail. They don’t
understand that they cannot have it both ways.
And guns are part of it since many crimes involve weapons. There
is an inconsistency there on the part of Republicans who while opposing ‘crime’
(and blaming it on Democrats) at the same time also oppose gun control
legislation that would disarm some criminals. In doing so, they support the misinterpretation
of the Second Amendment which our politicized Supreme Court has endorsed. Criminals are not deterred by the possibility
of potential victims being armed so much as they are pleased by laws allowing
them to legally walk around with guns. (And this includes the gun-toting Proud Boys and Oathkeepers attempting to scare voters away from drop boxes and voting locations.)
Republicans claim that even with stronger gun
control laws, criminals wouldn’t be affected since they get their weapons
illegally anyway. Even if that is the case and indeed is the way
they acquire guns, the vast, uncontrolled, proliferation of weapons in this
country, made possible by the misinterpretation of the Second Amendment, is
what makes so many of them available illegally in the first place. Weapons leave
the factory, starting out legally, but once out there, are easily available to
criminals illegally. We need legislation
to prevent once ‘legal’ weapons from becoming ‘illegal’ ones, via gun shows and personal sales. Excluding law enforcement and the military, there are more guns in the United States than there are people! That is not good.
(A significant footnote to this is that the
Second Amendment deserves to be repealed.
It originally was a ‘trade-off’ to get support for the new Constitution
back in 1789 from the slaveholding States.
Its purpose was to enable them to easily raise an army in the event of
either a slave revolt or Federal troops someday interfering with the practice
of slavery within their borders. These
conditions no longer exist so there is no purpose for the Second Amendment any
longer. Sooner or later, its gross
misinterpretation by the Supreme Court [D.C. vs Heller - 2008 - opinion written by Justice Scalia] guaranteeing citizens the right to bear arms will be reversed. That, or its total repeal, would not prevent
Americans from still having weapons for hunting, sports activities, and personal
protection as made legal by State laws. That would serve to reduce the availability of weapons used in crimes
far better than accusing Democrats of coddling criminals.)
JL
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Aging Leaders and a Young One to Watch
Vladimir Putin is 70. Xi Jinping is 69. Neither has planned for their successors and must consider aging a challenge if not an adversary. In fact, it might be an asset for us. Contrary to their problem, the United States has definite and specific Constitutional plans for succession should our president be unable to complete his or her term in office.
China and Russia, however, are
democracies in name only and the passing of their leaders will open the door
for change, whenever it occurs. That will happen eventually. It will in Cuba as well. As for North Korea, Kim Jong Un is only 38, and therefore, there's a lot of years ahead of him during which history is yet
to be written and cannot be predicted.
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Polls?
Here’s an interesting column from the Los
Angeles Times pointing out the unreliability of pre-election polls. Check It out at
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-10-25/midterms-polls-predictions
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Hurricane Categories Can Be Misleading
For years, hurricanes have been categorized by the Saffir-Simpson
hurricane scale, which is based entirely on wind speed (five categories numbered
1 to 5). Meteorologists know there are
better ways of classifying a storm’s danger to people, property, and the
environment. Just as important are the
overall size of the storm, its speed and direction in which it is moving, and the amount of rainfall,
flooding, and storm surge it might produce.
A category 1 hurricane spread out over hundreds of miles, creeping along
at a snail’s pace, can be far more dangerous than a category 4 hurricane
covering a very narrow area, and whipping through it at great speed.
Meteorologists have developed newer metrics that tell us much more. One is the ‘Integrated Kinetic Energy’ (IKE) which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency has been using since 2007, and which incorporates some of these additional factors. It states a storm’s total energy in ‘terajoules’ (TJ). In addition to storm categories, weather reports should include predictions of likely TJs as well. Here are some examples: Ian (2022) – 47 TJ, Andrew (1992) – 20 TJ, Katrina (2005) – 121 TJ, Sandy (2012) – 141 TJ. Sandy, when it hit New Jersey’s shore and New York City was just a category 1 storm, but its TJ number was far more indicative of its severity!
Another valuable metric is the ‘Hurricane Severity Index’ (HSI)
developed by a private company, which combines wind speed with the size of the
‘wind field.’ Certainly, when another
hurricane is predicted, these tools should be used and more importantly,
publicized. (Source of this material is the Citizens Climate Lobby which provided an
‘Another Viewpoint’ piece to the South Florida SunSentinel recently.)
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In the news about the conviction of several men
who helped train those planning to kidnap Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer whose
policies they opposed was this quote from one of their defense attorney’s arguments
to the jury: ‘In this country, you are allowed to talk the talk but you
only get convicted if you walk the walk.’ To some extent, this is true.
But ‘talking the talk’ can also inspire others to ‘walk
the walk’ and that is where they cross the line into actually ‘aiding and
abetting' the carrying out of a crime. Does this also
describe the defeated former president on the morning of January 6, 2021?
JL
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Voting Reminder
* As I have repeatedly pointed out, there are many important things at stake in this election:
1. The right of women to choose an abortion,
2. Keeping military-type weapons out of civilian
hands,
3. Guaranteeing voting rights to all Americans,
and most of all,
4. the preservation of American
democracy!
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| A Democratic majority in the House would help preserve democracy. A Republican speaker, replacing Nancy Pelosi, would not. |
Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress are needed. Your votes are crucial! The votes of women and persons of color may decide the future direction of America. Please
Vote!
JL
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