By Walt Pregler, County Chair
The opinions expressed here are mine and not of the Party’s.
One can honestly say that the Republican Party has its share of nut cases, when Donald Trump out polls Jeb Bush. But try to realize that Trump is saying publicly what many Republicans are planning secretly. Trump’s ratings could very likely remove the road block on Immigration Reform, and force McConnell and Boehner to move on it before the national conventions.
The move for transparency in both Congress and Des Moines has been thrown out the window.
- Governor Branstad has violated the law by closing two mental health facilities in Iowa, and vetoed the funding of each. He also vetoed 56 million one time funding for education, throwing all school districts and three universities into a very perplexing position. Next year will be pink slip time for many employees in the field of education. What a shame. If you have children in the system, he is harming them and insulting you. Call his office and let him know how you feel. His number is 515-281-5211.
- TPP or the Trans Pacific Pact is another “free trade” deal that will be a serious blow to much industry and technology employees in those fields. Already, Congress is seriously considering stealing funds from the Medicare Trust Fund to retrain people who lost their jobs due to this act. $700 million dollars worth. Both Japan and China are known as protectionist nations. In other words, they don’t follow the balance of trade policies of our country. They will flood us with their cheap products, and block importing ours by using ridiculous standards and Tariffs. Many of the Pacific Rim countries are underdeveloped and use very low wages to employ their people, thus undercutting our ability to be competitive. Human Rights is not in their vocabulary. The real blow to democracy is the fact that Congress voted to Fast Track the deal. The end result. We can’t see it, and Congress can’t debate it. They can only vote yea or no on the entire deal. Obama supports it. Call your representatives And ask them to enter the contents of TPP into the Congressional Record. Then we might get to read it before it hits the floors of Congress. SO MUCH FOR TRANSPARENCY.
Also, don’t let the candidates for President convince you that Medicare and Social Security are entitlement programs. Money is deducted out of your paychecks for both programs and you pay a premium each month for Medicare if you are over 65. The funds in those programs is yours, and you should have a voice as to where it s spent.
Common law should dictate that fast track is contrary to the intent of our founding fathers. We elect two senators and four house members to represent us. Fast track abrogates their ability to scrutinize legislation and debate it to get our best interests protected.
Later this fall, the Navy will commission the carrier Gerald R. Ford. The cost to build this behemoth was around 10 billion dollars. It will have a crew of nearly 6000. We are a peace loving nation that separated from England to escape tyranny. Do we need a humongous military to protect us, or are we protecting investments of the rich, who in turn located in foreign areas to avoid wages and taxes in the U.S.? The cost of that carrier could have been invested in infrastructure, and helped beautify our country. After 60 years since WWII we still have troops billeted in Germany, Korea and Japan. What does this cost.
All five candidates for the Democratic nomination for president appeared in Cedar Rapids on July 17. It was historic. Lincoln Chafee nearly put us all to sleep, but Hillary had an eye opening address. She stressed the restoration of middle class America, and the problem of immigration reform and Wall St. ignoring of the economy. Martin O’Malley stressed low wages, student debt reform and stronger support for Obama. Bernie Sanders agreed with the above mentioned issues and added that he would never nominate a candidate for the Supreme Court that didn’t agree to repeal Citizens United. Jim Webb had the toughest job of the five. Speaking last. However, he did dwell on Criminal Justice Reform. He did a good job on it.