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We in America need to be a community, once again, with an Ethical & Moral Compass

4/22/2020

The moment I read the title of Marc A. Theissen’s column, “As the toll keeps rising, China must pay for its lies” the word hypocrisy immediately came to my mind. Let me be clear that this is not, for me, a political or social issue. Being a conservative or liberal is irrelevant. But how does one come up with a demand that another country must pay for its lies when, not once in the past three plus years has this same columnist demanded that our current president must pay for his lies, his untruths and more?

Where was Marc Theissen when our current president threw our Kurdish allies under the bus by giving the nation of Turkey the right to attack the Kurds in Syria after the Kurds had fought with us against ISIS for five years and given up eleven thousand of their own lives to help us? Where has Marc Theissen been when on a daily basis, legitimate fact checkers show that our current president spouts falsehoods which have diminished our reputation as a country among so many of our allies around the world? Why does it not bother Mr. Theissen that we have a president who has constantly admitted that he trusts the authoritarian leader of Russia more than he trusts those departments of our government that were created to defend our nation and our people and have proven time and time again that the vast majority of those who work in said departments are public servants that are there for the good of our nation and our people?

It is one thing to argue for or against a political or social issue. It is another thing to ignore a person who proves, by his or her actions that said person is missing an ethical and moral compass. In my opinion, it is time for us to get back to being a community that is there for all of us, a community that is free to speak and behave based upon one’s beliefs but recognizes that those who differ also have these same rights and that, in the end, the most important thing is that we accept another’s differences as we strive to work with our similarities in order to make certain that we remain the United States of America.

The Time Has Come For America to do the Right Thing

12/29/2019

For the past three years, it has confused me as to how our Christian supporters of Donald Trump could blindly support our current president even as they condemned our former President Clinton because of his sexual affair with a woman while married to his wife. Until now, despite the slings and arrows against President Clinton for his sexual misconduct, the same people condemning Clinton have been silent when it came to our current president’s sexual affairs during all three of his marriages including at a time when his youngest son was born during his current marriage. But finally, through a Christian magazine entitled Christianity Today, an evangelical Christian leader has spoken up to acknowledge that Donald Trump “is morally lost.”

“Fake News” has become the daily line expressed by President Trump and his devoted supporters, but it takes little effort to search out the truth of what is actually happening these days. Did President Trump actually use a charity he created to support his private needs, an action that recently resulted in his being ordered to pay two million dollars by a New York State judge to nonprofit groups because of President Trump’s actions? The answer is yes. Did President Trump agree to a twenty five million dollars settlement over his Trump University fraud court case? The answer is yes. Did President Trump actually sign a check for his attorney, Michael Cohen, for the payment of money to a woman who had had an affair with President Trump while President Trump was married? The answer is yes. And did President Trump actually make an agreement with the leader of the Republic of Turkey which allowed Turkey to wage a military attack against America’s ally in the war against ISIS despite the fact that our Kurdish allies had been fighting with us for five years, and since before Donald Trump was elected to his office, and had given up more than eleven thousand Kurdish lives on behalf of themselves and our America? The answer is yes.

We need a leader of our United States of America who leads with the use of a moral and ethical compass. Finally, some evangelicals in America are speaking up and acknowledging that it is time for Donald J. Trump to be removed from his office and to be replaced with someone who does have a moral and ethical compass and who will lead our country, not for his or her own purposes, but for the good of our country and for all of us in America.

Replace American Divisiveness with Talk and Compromise

8/23/2019

To my fellow Americans who are worried over our current divisiveness within our country and our failure, as a country, to address many of our current problems including our continuing military wars and our need to repair our national infrastructure of roads and bridges, I ask that one and all spend time reading about our American history during the 1940s and 1950s. If you read said history, you will discover that unlike today, our nation was then acting in a much more community-based way where a giant majority of our people were behaving in ways that were looking out for one and all of us. This included our need to deal with our financial costs. Regarding the latter, back in the 1940s and 1950s, the upper middle class and the wealthy among us accepted our federal office holders' decision, based upon earnings, to pay close to 40% of said earnings in federal taxes so that the cost of our nation’s challenges including our World War Two effort and our expansion and repair of our national infrastructure under Republican President Eisenhower in the 1950s could be paid for. We succeeded in these efforts and during those difficult times, the wealthy remained rich and the poor and middle classes were doing much better.

In our world of today, we are seeing a totally different America. Less than 1% of our American families are actually participating in our extended wars and our poor and lower middle class people are earning far less in value today than they were earning six and seven decades ago. On the other hand, the percentage of increases in wealth for our upper class people is incredibly higher which explains why the gap between our rich and our poor and middle classes has grown exponentially over the past several decades.

It is time for us as a nation to become one again. We can be both a nation that supports the concept of opportunities for wealth for our people while at the same time making certain that all of us beneath the wealth are provided with opportunities that allow for us, as individuals, and as families to meet our needs for survival as we once again become a national community that is here for one and all of us.

America needs to speak up and defend the rights of the women in our lives.

5/26/2019

As the State of Georgia proceeds with it’s law to deny women the ability to have an abortion under any circumstances and basically from the very beginning of one’s pregnancy, I am reminded of a comment made by Senator Marco Rubio when he was running for president in 2016. A journalist asked Senator Rubio about how he would react if his wife or his daughter told him that she was pregnant but that her doctor had informed her that if she continued with her pregnancy, she had a 98% chance of dying. Senator Rubio’s immediate response was to extend both of his hands out and say that he could never choose between one life and another. Essentially he was saying that in this instance, he could not choose between the life of a fetus and the life of his daughter.

My reaction to the question posed by the reporter was very different. If my daughter had made the same comments to me, I would have expressed my hope to her that she would see her doctor and do whatever was necessary to take care of her life. If her pregnancy had to be ended and if she continued to want a child, there would most likely be an opportunity in the future to seek the birth of a child.

For those who believe that abortion should never be an option, I accept their belief and would fight for their right to never have one. But we live in a democracy uncontrolled by any one religious belief, and for those of us who support the rights of a woman to have control of her body under any and all circumstances, I ask all of my fellow Americans who respect the rights of their mothers, grandmothers, sisters, female cousins, female friends and all of the women of America to accept the concept of their right to control their bodies based upon their individual ethical and moral beliefs.

Time for our America to become a Community For All

4/26/2019

While I believe it is true that if everything remains as is in our country, eventually, the costs of programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will damage our society, the missing piece to this puzzle, in my opinion, is the action our America took back in the early 1940s and through the 1950s in response to Japan's attack on us and our being drawn into World War Two.

Given that our military was not nearly as strong as needed for our entry into a major war, our country raised the top federal tax bracket to 88% in order for us to be able to expand our military strength. What did this rise in a tax bracket mean for our nation? It meant that our federal tax money would be substantially increased as a result of the wealthy in our nation being required to increase the amount of taxes they paid, not to a total of 88%, the number used for the top tax bracket, but to a total of somewhere in the neighborhood of 37% to 40% of all of their earnings. As a consequence of this new tax policy, we expanded our military, defeated within four years our World War Two adversaries, the wealthy remained wealthy despite the increase in the amount they paid in taxes and the middle class did well.

My fellow Americans should also take some time to look at our country's history during the mid 1950s when our President Eisenhower caused our top tax bracket to increase once again to 91% in order for us to be able, as a country, to repair and expand our federal highway system of roads and bridges. Once again, the wealthy remained wealthy, our federal highway system grew to be as good as ever and our American middle class prospered in ways far better than ever in the past.

Since that time in our nation's history, we've taken hard steps backward by reducing our top tax brackets and creating a financial world in our country that has allowed for the wealthy to remain rich while a growing gap between the rich and the lower and middle classes has only continued to expand over decades that has created struggles for those at the bottom of the financial world that is making it so much worse for so many of our fellow Americans.

For me, the answer is for us all to remind ourselves that we are the United States of America, that we are a community designed by our founding mothers and fathers for us to be here for all of us. We can do this without destroying the ability for anyone to become rich and wealthy. During the 1940s and 1950s, we were the perfect match of a mix of Capitalism with socialistic aspects, a match that never diminished the ability for our people to work hard, be creative and experience the success of becoming wealthy. I believe we need to return to this form that has worked so well for us in our past.

Our History of Capitalism mixed with Socialism

3/22/2019

The words “Lunatic Leftist” and “Socialism” have become popular expressions for the conservative wing of our political world that are out to tear apart their political adversaries. For those of us in America who want to avoid being attacked with these words, I have the following suggestions for us all.

Begin immediately to cease your reading of history. Avoid learning about those times in our nation’s past when our nation used taxpayer money to build roads and bridges that allowed for all of our American citizens to drive safely to and from our east and west coasts and to and from our northern and southern boarders. Ignore our history of the 1940s when we used taxpayer money, which was heavily financed by the wealthy who allowed themselves to pay close to forty percent of their earnings in taxes, in order that we be able to, as a nation, build up and pay for, with taxes, a military needed for the defeat of our Nazi enemy in World War Two. Don’t think about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and how it has worked for the benefit of our nation. Disregard our history of public schools supported by taxpayer money. If we want to avoid the accusation of being socialists, we need to insist that rumors that we have always been a mixed bag of capitalism and socialism are false.

While it is true that the name of our great nation is The United States of America, and it also might be true that our history suggests that we have been at our best as a nation when we have come together as a community, local, state and nationwide, it will never be easy to convince some of our fellow Americans to cease their name calling with words like “Lunatic Left.”

Bottom line, my fellow Americans! I leave it to you to decide whether or not you will actually begin to pay attention to our nation’s history or whether you prefer to never be called a Lunatic Leftist and/or a Socialist.

Looking for what is best for my country

2/24/2019

Too many people find the idea of socialism as just a black or white, left wing or right wing issue, when in fact, in our America, it has been a much more complicated question. If I were to be asked to support a program that tried to create a financial equality for each and every one of us in America by dividing our financial worth equally among each and every American citizen, I would, of course, reject the concept.

But America has never been a nation that saw the latter concept as worthy of fulfilling. On the other hand, we have always been a country that asked for each and every one of us to join in with each other to deal with the challenges we face. And how have we done this. By creating tax programs through our federal and state systems to pay for what we consider worthy of keeping us strong.

Consider the programs that have been created in our country that are supported by public tax funds. We have our military force, our local police and fire departments, Social Security and Medicare for our senior citizens, our local, state and federal highway systems created to repair our roads and bridges throughout our country, our public school systems, court systems and prisons.

Now, it is true that at certain times during our nation’s history, as for instance during our World War Two challenge, the wealthiest Americans were required to pay a higher percentage of their earnings for federal taxes than were the lower and middle classes, but if one looks at the history of that time, they will find that the wealthy remained rich and the nation as a whole did much better than they would have if this policy had not been implemented.

What all of the above points to, in my opinion, is that my country has a mixed economic system of capitalism and socialism which has always worked to our benefit. And I confess that I believe we would do ourselves well as a nation if we took one additional step and created a universal health plan for each and every American. If we are providing roads and bridges throughout our country to allow for one and all of us to be able to travel with the least amount of risk to every part of our country, then we would also do well to provide each and every one of our citizens with the ability to see a physician for preventive medical care and for whenever an illness appeared to be ready to attack an individual.

To those in our political world in America who continue to use the word “socialism” as a pejorative comment, I would ask you to cease your attempts to muddy the water of politics and instead, to speak truth to what our country is and always has been. We are a mixed economic system and our job is to elect people in our democracy to work honestly and with integrity for the people and to spend our public funds wisely. Yes we have had our problems and challenges and public office holders who have dealt with our system more for themselves than for us as a whole, but we need to remain a mixed economic system and, as citizens, we need to stay involved in making certain that we choose the best people to run our nation and to make the necessary changes when we have chosen the wrong people to be in charge.

Let us return to adequate support for our public schools.

1/24/2019

Looking at the recent news regarding a teachers’ strike in Los Angeles has brought back, for me, some strong feelings about how my country is contributing to the difficult challenges facing our public schools in America.

My two sisters and I grew up in Philly during the 1940s and 1950s and at a time when our public schools were truly terrific. We attended our public elementary, junior high and high schools and in my mind, I could never have asked for anything better. For those who wanted to attend fine private schools in those days, their families were required to pay separately for said attendance.

Today, privately owned and money-making charter schools have become a major factor in our education systems and have diminished public schools by drawing away tax money. If this method of education continues, we will hurt ourselves by diminishing the educational services that we should be providing for all of our children, including those who are unable to afford private schools.

Please! Let us cease our giving of public funds to privately owned charter schools and return to those days when our public schools were truly places that provided a good education for all of our children.

Seeking an affordable college education for all

1/21/2019

My fellow Americans spend far too little time addressing the unfairness that exists today when it comes to the cost of attending college in our country. I attended Temple University for four years from 1958 until 1962, and the total for my tuition costs for all four of my years amounted to $1,200. In today’s economy, $1,200 back in 1962 is worth $9,732. If only our current students were paying slightly less than ten thousand dollars for their four years of tuition costs. Unfortunately, our current students are paying slightly more than sixty three thousand dollars for their four years of tuition college costs at the same school I attended, or close to seven times as much as I paid for my education.

When are we as a nation, as a community, going to try and fix the problems we face as a result of a growing gap between the rich and the poor, between the well-to-do and those many of us Americans who have so little, and therefore, so many fewer chances to live out the American dream? I’m still waiting for my country to return to those days during the 1940s and 1950s when we actually were allowing for the well to do to live out their dreams while making certain that those at the bottom of the pole were at least above water with opportunities available to them to live well.

Our President Must Be A Better Example For Our Children

10/25/2018

I am at the age where I have many memories over decades of our America’s former presidents, and until this moment in time, I don’t ever recall feeling concerned about how our president was being perceived by our children. Yes, I found myself disagreeing with political and social policies being discussed by our presidents, but I never found them speaking about many of our fellow Americans in ways that showed a lack of an ethical and moral compass.

But now I find myself in a different world, a world where our current president declares by his actions and words that speaking ill of anyone who disagrees with him is perfectly okay.

I have no problem with anyone standing up for one’s beliefs in a strong and passionate way be they political, social or otherwise, but I want my country to be a place where ethical and moral values remain an important part of who we are as a nation. And I want our current president to become a better example for our children and grandchildren in terms of how we behave and how we speak to and about one another.