Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
I liked this book. I agreed with much of it but disagreed strongly with one part. I’ll get into that later in this review. It is the type of book that gets you thinking. The book is The Purple Presidency 2024: How Voters Can Reclaim the White House for Bipartisan Governance by C. Owen Paepke.
I thank both Netgalley https://www.netgalley.com and RealClear Publishing for the chance to read this before publication. The book will be published on June 13.
I have often thought that our representatives in both the House and the Senate should think independently about the good of the American people and the good of the county when voting (see More RINOs and DINOs needed). Our 2 political parties have become too powerful. The uncompromising party loyalty is the problem.
I had thought the answer was to elect more independents. But the recent appearance of the Forward Party suggests a possibility I had not considered. Independents often have a hard time being elected because of lack of logistic and financial party support. Here there is party support and no pressure to conform to an ideology.
Continue reading “New Political Party”
Several days ago I wrote about President Biden’s Soul of the Nation speech and yesterday about Evan McMullin and his third party run for the U.S. Senate. It seems to me there is a common theme.
President Biden spoke of several things but which seemed to offend some Republicans by calling out MAGA republicans. I don’t think the speech did insult all Republicans. The President clearly distinguished between the MAGA crowd and mainstream conservatives or traditional Republicans.
The problem is trying to sort a larger group into smaller groups. Some will fall in-between, some will misinterpret, and when you add politics some will distort.
Continue reading “Sorting Republicans”
There is no question than this country and our congress face a huge divide. It is important to try to bring them together. Here is one issue I hope they can agree on.
When the pandemic hit, there was a huge shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in the US and we were dependent on foreign sources who gave us only a limited supply since they needed the PPE for their domestic use. American manufacturers tried to increase the domestic supply.
A recent article discusses several small manufacturers who invested to increase the national supply of N95 masks.
Surely we can agree than since we should increase our national stockpile of PPE, we can Buy American in order to do so.
The Republican party used to be highly principled and an important part of our democracy. But now they seem to oppose the very idea of democracy. I liked them better when the were opposing “big D” Democrats, not “little d” democracy. The party now seems to be about retaining power at all costs. See my previous post Are Republicans the enemy of democracy? for more.
Continue reading “Republicans oppose democracy”
I have previously written about this book (Reading now: How Democracies Die). Now that I’ve finished, I think it was even better than my earlier opinion.
Several years I was on the email list of our Congressman and every week, I’d get an email which included many, if not all, or the bills he voted for. He was a Republican so naturally most were Republican bills.
But some were described as bipartisan and I would look up the ones that sounded interesting. Nearly always, they were passed with well over 200 Republican votes and a very small number of Democrats – maybe 3 or 4.
Continue reading “What is bipartisan”
Are we ready to try for a bipartisan healthcare plan ?
The Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 has not yet been passed. Senate Leader Mitch McConnell developed his plan in secret and was then not able to get the 50 votes he needed to get it through the Senate by the July 4 recess.
The Majority leader is still working toward 50 and probably modifying the Bill to help get there. It is a very tricky task modifying it to make it more palatable to extremely conservative Senators without adding some provisions that will cause the loss of support of other Senators.
Continue reading “Bipartisan healthcare plan”
Mitch McConnell has devised a new legislative process. We’ll have to see how well it works but teachers of civics may want to think about updating their lesson plans. This could be the new normal or perhaps a political disaster which is never tried again. It’s a bit early to tell.
In the secret Republican plan to change our healthcare system which is currently being developed in the Senate, we may have a new model for legislation. We don’t know yet what the plan is or if this method will be successful. Continue reading “New legislative process: Teachers update your civics lessons”
It’s a secret plan. I don’t know anything about the Senate healthcare plan except that it is a closely held secret among Senator Mitch McConnell and and handful of other Republican Senators. I suspect a few other Republicans may know part of the plan, at least in broad outline. But I don’t think the majority of Republican Senators know much about it. It seem fairly certain that Democrats are not in on the big secret.
I suppose at some point the public may know about it but probably not until after (or maybe just before) the vote. Senators will probably be informed of the contents before voting. I think that is a rule but I could be wrong. The Senate under Mitch McConnell had surprised me before.
Party discipline wins, President Trump wins, Speaker Ryan wins, Republicans win, most rich people win, millions of Americans lose. In a remarkable display of party unity, House Republicans singlehandedly passed a Heath Care Bill with no democratic support.
Thus it would seem the Democrats are the losers. But in the bigger analysis, it was the American people who lost. Well, most Americans and American ideals. A few people at the top of the economic ladder do get big tax cuts if this becomes law.
Remember when politicians used to say “country before party” and seem to mean it. They still say it but I don’t see much evidence for it. Watch what they do rather than what they say.
Yes, Democrats looks like they are putting country before party by calling for investigations into some of the stuff President Trump is doing or may have done but it is hard to separate the patriotic from the partisan since they seem to require saying the same thing.
But Republicans still say they stand for country before party but don’t seem to be doing much to show us they actually believe that. Is that a case of party before country? Do they think this will help deliver the Republican agenda? Is that the important thing?
Watch what they do rather than what they say.
I don’t understand why Republicans oppose these plans. But they have voted to stop them, “repeal but not replaced” .
Last year the Department of Labor made 2 rules to help people save for their retirement if their employer did not. You’d think Congress would want to encourage that but they repealed the rules and haven’t offered any substitute. So it was a repeal without the replace that many would hope to see.
Maybe they will get around to the replace part but I haven’t heard anything yet. So for now it is “repeal but not replaced”.
Continue reading “Repeal but not replaced”
About every 10 years in Pennsylvania the majority party in the state legislature comes up with a plan to prevent a fair vote by making as many votes of the opposition party as ineffective as possible. This is called redistricting. The same happens in other states too.
The legislature figures out how to slice and dice the population in a way that protects incumbents of their party by making a challenge by the opposition unlikely to succeed. In other words, if you are unlucky enough to be a a district gerrymandered in favor of one party but prefer the candidate of the other party, your vote is unlikely to help bring about change.
The process is also called gerrymander. It is a way for politicians to prevent a fair vote. This political process is almost as old as the United States. But old and fair are not the same. Can this unfairness be prevented?
Continue reading “Fair vote”
It has been months, yet Congress fails to get serious. Our Congress fails again to seriously address the public heath emergency caused by the Zika virus.
President Obama requested $1.9 billion for Zika prevention about 6 months ago, but Congress has not been able to agree on a bill to fund this. Not much has changed since I wrote about this almost a month ago (see Zika, politics as usual) except that Congress has left on vacation without doing anything. Continue reading “Congress fails again”