Tength Congressional District Democrats

By Steven Gan  – A personal perspective

By the time you’re reading this, the Republican and Democratic Conventions will have come and gone and Trump’s campaign of insults, lies, and outrageous and outlandish remarks, assertions, and beliefs will be in full swing. But now he’s going to have a sidekick who will try to modulate Trump’s sewer mouth, joining those advisors who do their embarrassing best to get Trump to be more “presidential.”

I can’t say that I was surprised when Trump picked Governor Mike Pence of Indiana to be his running mate. When he called Ted Cruz “Lying Ted,” while holding up the Bible and proclaiming him to be a religious hypocrite, Trump alienated Evangelicals throughout the country.

This was a real problem for Trump.  Most religious conservatives revere Cruz. In addition, many suspect that Trump is just not a real conservative.

So who is Mike Pence?  He was suddenly in the national spotlight in April, 2015, when he signed Indiana’s so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in Indianapolis. Although legislation with the same name was originally passed on the federal level under President Bill Clinton, and a version of it was even passed in Illinois with the support of then-Senator Barack Obama, additional legislation at the federal and Illinois State levels was also passed to make it clear that no business that sells to the public could discriminate against anyone based upon sexual orientation or sexual identity. This was not the case with Indiana’s RFRA.

But the fact that the country has overwhelmingly changed its understanding and acceptance of LGBT Americans means that any legislation that has the potential to undermine the rights of LGBT Americans is now recognized as being discriminatory.

So just after Governor Pence signed Indiana’s RFRA bill—in relative secrecy, surrounded by a bunch of conservative religious men and women and some anti-LGBT activists—he got a swift kick in the derriere when many corporate and political leaders threatened to pull their business out of his state. This would have caused serious economic damage and earned Indiana the moniker “The State of Hate.” Furthermore, the inclusion of the RFRA into the Indiana Constitution would have made it possible for florists, wedding caterers, photographers, and anyone else who sells to the public at large to say to LGBT Americans, “Sorry, but my faith doesn’t allow me to recognize your same sex wedding or other gay ceremonies. You’ll have to go somewhere else.”

From Pence’s twisted perspective, this was all perfectly logical, since a person of sincerely held religious beliefs should be able to discriminate against those who they feel might be in violation of their religious doctrine. Fortunately, the blowback made Pence’s head spin, and an amendment to the RFRA was quickly signed into law to make sure that Hoosier LGBT Americans could get their flower arrangements, photos, cakes, gowns, liquor, bands, etc. from any vendor who provides their services generally.

Pence has had a long and illustrious career when it comes to his obsession with religious liberty as an excuse for opposition to gay rights. When running for Congress in 2000, Pence’s campaign website was full of homophobic gems like this: “Congress should oppose any effort to recognize homosexuals as a ‘discrete and insular minority’ entitled to the protection of anti-discrimination laws similar to those extended to women and ethnic minorities.”

The website also declared Pence’s support for gay conversion therapy, evinced the belief that organizations receiving HIV-treatment funds under the Ryan White Care Act “celebrate and encourage” HIV transmission, and demonstrated his conviction that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.”

In Pence’s 12 years in Congress, he voted to define marriage as only between a man and a woman, opposed measures to block employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, and opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In 2009, he opposed the expansion of hate crime definitions to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation because he claimed that it would have a “chilling effect” on religious expression. A year later, he told CNN that open LGBT military service amounts to “social experimentation.”

So here we have it. Trump picked Pence to shore up the Evangelical vote.  And rumor has it that Pence was willing to be Trump’s running mate because his reelection as Governor of Indiana was in doubt. So I say to Mike Pence:

Hopefully this will be your last year in any government office as your bigoted and discriminatory beliefs towards LGBT Americans have no place in a civilized, enlightened, inclusive, and rational society.

And shame on you, Donald Trump, for your willingness to exploit Pence’s homophobia to further your own ambitions.

By Murray Levin

Donald Trump has gained much of his support from people who feel that their financial condition has stagnated for the last several years. They know that their incomes and social situations have not improved and may have deteriorated. They have little hope for improvement. They blame both political parties and the Obama Administration. They blame NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), which makes them angry at Hillary Clinton because her husband signed NAFTA when he was President. In fact, NAFTA was negotiated mostly by the George H. W. Bush administration, but since it was signed by Bill Clinton shortly after he became President, Clinton tends to get the blame (or credit) for this trade agreement. 

Here’s another fact.  Although some jobs probably have been lost because of NAFTA, the largest number of US manufacturing jobs lost over the last several decades were lost between 2000 and 2010— mostly during the George W. Bush administration.  Since 2010, the US economy has actually gained manufacturing jobs.

These facts bear repeating.  The majority of manufacturing jobs were lost to other countries during the George W. Bush Republican administration, and the Obama administration has increased manufacturing jobs in the U.S.  Of the five million U.S. manufacturing jobs that went overseas during the first decade of this century, over three million were lost to China and several hundred thousand more to other Asian countries.  This large number of jobs went to China and other Asian countries because U.S. businesses found it cheaper to manufacture there despite some terrible quality and safety issues. This occurred after China was allowed to enter the World Trade Organization in December, 2001, during the Bush 43 administration. The Bush administration put up few if any obstacles to this shift of jobs to China and other Asian countries.

NAFTA was not the cause of this job loss.  Only 20 percent of the five million jobs lost from 2000 to 2010, about one million, went to Mexico and Canada, the two countries that were part of NAFTA. What happened in Asia from 2000 forward cannot be attributed to Bill Clinton’s having signed NAFTA, much less to his first lady, Hillary Clinton.

One answer to bringing back U.S. jobs is government-funded infrastructure improvement.  However, the Republican leadership in the Senate and House has done everything it can to block President Obama’s efforts to create construction jobs through programs to improve our infrastructure.

Of course, we know why infrastructure improvement, a program that should be noncontroversial, has been blocked over the last seven and a half years. Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of the Senate Republicans, famously called a meeting immediately after President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009 and launched his plan to obstruct everything Obama wanted.  The result?  No infrastructure jobs, no new energy jobs, no government-supported jobs program.

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have championed infrastructure job creation as a way of providing better jobs for the lower and lower-middle economic classes.

The anger of those who are justifiably unhappy with their current economic lot should be directed in the appropriate direction—at the loose attitude toward job loss to China by the Bush 41 administration and at Republicans in Congress, who have blocked President Obama’s efforts to build a better economy.

Donald Trump’s economic plans, which have been blasted by economists of all political and social leanings, would only make things worse. Investment in new jobs would be difficult, if not impossible, if Trump’s plan to decrease tax rates for the wealthy and for corporations were implemented.  In contrast, Clinton wants to make sure that the rich and the companies pay their fair share so that our country’s economy can move forward with investment in our infrastructure and education.

These are only some of the reasons why election of Democrats like Brad Schneider and Tammy Duckworth is essential to helping the next Democratic administration break the logjam in Washington and get our country moving forward again.