Month: September 2016

In a reaction to last week’s post, a reader responded “I get it Joe, you dislike Trump. Please build a case for Clinton as I am unsettled.”

My initial thought was a facile response that the best case for the election of Hillary Clinton was the candidacy of Donald Trump but that seemed too clever by half. I will attempt to make the case for Hillary Clinton but it can’t be done without comparing the two candidates. So, here goes.

Let’s start by examining the two issues that seem to be dogging her campaign, the private e-mail service and the Clinton Foundation.

The use of the private e-mail server was just plain dumb but according to the FBI Director, James Comey, it wasn’t criminal. Clinton has acknowledged that using it was a mistake. Additionally, no one has shown that its use has compromised national security in any way nor led to any event that harmed the United States.

The issue of the Clinton Foundation is a bit more nuanced. Despite promising to build a wall between the Foundation and the State Department while she was Secretary of State, e-mails between employees of the Foundation and her staff at the State Department revealed requests for meetings between donors to the Foundation and Secretary Clinton during her tenure.

Although the requests for meetings were made, there is no indication that the meetings were for anything more than information or face time with her on particular issues. There is no evidence that any of these individuals received anything or benefited personally from the meetings that occurred. Indeed, it would be hard to distinguish the difference between these meeting and normal diplomatic interaction since some of the donors were officials from countries that would be expected to have communication or meetings with the Secretary of State.

As a result of the uproar that followed these disclosures, the Clinton Foundation announced that President Bill Clinton would withdraw from involvement in the Foundation and no foreign contributions would be accepted.

This is too bad because the Clinton Foundation has done extraordinarily good work on issues that plague poverty stricken countries in Africa and the Third World.

While Donald Trump has been the loudest voice in criticizing the Clintons and the Foundation, it is noteworthy that in the past week the news media has reported that Trump’s Foundation has not received any money from Trump for almost a decade and the money it has received from other sources has been utilized to settle litigation against his business entities and other self-dealing.

In the past couple of weeks, with the bombings and attacks in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota, terrorism is back on the front burner.

Who should be supported is a basic reality check.

Clinton, as Senator from New York on September 11, 2001 was instrumental in securing the financial aid and funds to support the re-building of lower Manhattan and compensation for families who lost loved ones in the attack as well as first responders who suffered health ailments from their service at ground zero.

Trump took advantage of the financial aid to obtain monies for a property that wasn’t damaged in the attack.

As Secretary of State and Senator from New York, Clinton has been involved in diplomatic missions and established relationships with heads of state worldwide. She was a member of the National Security team that brought about the deaths of Osama Bin Laden, Anwar Al-Awlaki and other terrorists who would foster terrorist attacks against this country.

Trump promises to ban all Muslim immigration, bring back waterboarding and even more lethal forms of interrogation, and authorize the killing of family members of suspected terrorist overseas. This last proposal would involve ordering American troops to engage in murder and other war crimes.

When it comes to who is the most qualified to lead the United States on the world stage, Clinton, as Secretary of State, has relationships with almost every world leader on the globe. In 2011 I witnessed her testifying before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. She had flown all night from the Baltic States in order to fulfill this commitment and despite her fatigue was able to discuss every foreign situation and hot spot that the Committee was interested in and did so without notes. Although scheduled to testify for only three hours she testified for over five answering every question that the members of the Committee had. It was truly an impressive performance.

Trump’s knowledge of foreign affairs is decidedly shallow. He would jeopardize the NATO Alliance and perhaps scrap the major defense bulwark that has stood between us, our allies and Russia at a time when Putin has stepped up that country’s aggression both in the Ukraine and Syria. He claims to have a “secret” plan to defeat ISIS but will share no details about it. His campaign aides appear to double as agents for his business interests in Russia and Eastern Europe perhaps illuminating what appears to be a “man crush” that he has on Vladimir Putin.

On the immigration issue, Clinton advocates heightened scrutiny of any refugees that we would accept from Syria and the refugee camps in the mid-East as part of the world community’s effort to alleviate the refugee crisis. She also is for comprehensive immigration reform that would give legal status and an ultimate path to citizenship to immigrants that have been in the country and haven’t violated the law, most importantly the “dreamers,” the children of immigrants who brought them here during their child hood and were raised here.

Trump would build a wall on the Mexican border, which he would demand Mexico pay for and create a deportation force that would round up somewhere between six million and eleven million people and deport them. The last country to round up six million people for ostensible deportation was Germany during the 1930’s. On the issues of terrorism and immigration, Trump has not advocated a single legal, realistic or sensible solution.

Let’s look at other issues.

On Climate Change, Clinton believes climate change need to be addressed and is a proponent of clean fuels.

Trump is a climate change denier. He champions the use of fossil fuels and vows to make the coal and natural gas markets “great” even though they are mutually incompatible.

On the issue of gun control, Clinton believes in expanded background checks and closing the loophole that allows purchases without them and banning military style assault weapons.

Trump believes in an unrestricted right to carry any kind of weapon and twice has hinted that Second Amendment advocates might wish to kill Clinton. Some might say that Trump was being sarcastic or said it in jest. I can say, that having lived through the assassinations and attempted assassinations in the 1960’s and 70’s, this is not a matter to joke about. I believe that having raised it twice disqualifies him from leading the country.

On race relations Clinton has been a lifelong civil rights advocate, who spent her earliest years as a lawyer working for the Children’s Defense Fund. As First lady of Arkansas, she devoted her efforts to improving and raising the standards of that State’s educational system

Trump has a well- documented history of refusing to rent to African-Americans and is the favored candidate of former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, and other White Supremacists. His entry into the political arena Occurred when he led the “birther” movement, the racist campaign to illegitimize the nation’s first African-American President.

On the issue of economic regulation, Clinton supports the retention of Dodd-Franks Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in the wake of the 2007 economic meltdown to regulate the banks that “are too big to fail” and have to be bailed out with taxpayer funds.

Trump favors the repeal of Dodd-Franks and abolishing the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.

Clinton has been a staunch advocate for universal health care and would preserve the Affordable Health Care Act and improve it.

Trump would repeal the Affordable Health Care Act.

It is safe to say that both candidates have issues when it comes to trust and transparency. Criticism of each is justified. I would be remiss; however, if I did not point out the fact that Clinton has disclosed her tax returns for every year she has been on the public stage and like every candidate for President since 1968.

Trump refuses to do so and offers the excuse that he is being audited. The IRS does not prohibit an individual who is being audited from disclosing their tax returns. It certainly does not prohibit a taxpayer from disclosing tax returns from years that are not subject to audit, which Trump has also refused to do.

In “making the case for Hillary Clinton,” I should touch on the wisdom of voting for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate. I would say, do so if you want a President who supports eliminating environmental regulations, abolishing the income tax, abolishing public schools and ending Social Security and Medicare because that is the Libertarian Party Platform. In an interview on NPR, Johnson said he would seek a Supreme Court nominee who is an “Originalist”. That is a justice in the mold of Clarence Thomas and the late Antonin Scalia.

This has been my longest post to date.

I think I’ve laid out enough contrasts between Clinton and Trump for anyone to make the choice they believe is the best.

Hillary Clinton has spent her entire career trying to improve life for all Americans of all races and walks of life. She is knowledgeable and deeply thoughtful on the issues that confront us at a time of danger and uncertainty.

Donald Trump has spent his entire life promoting himself and his business interests, utilizing bankruptcy laws multiple times without regard for investors, contractors, employees or the well-being of anyone who might be affected by his failures and defaults.

My own belief is that Donald Trump would be extraordinarily dangerous both at home and abroad were he to become President based upon the positions he’s taken on the issues.

Last week’s reader was right. I don’t like Donald Trump.

When I was in my teens there was an Academy Award winning movie called the” Manchurian Candidate.” It starred Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Its plot involved a communist country trying to manipulate a presidential election by having a prisoner of war it had brainwashed assassinate the nominee of one of the parties, catapulting its preferred candidate into the White House.

This year, we have seen computer hackers employed by the Russian Government hack into the computers of the Democratic Party and turn over a trove of e-mails to Wikileaks in an effort to damage the Clinton campaign on the eve of the Party’s convention.

Since the Convention and the disclosure, state election officials been warned by the Federal Government that their electronic voting is at risk and that the results could be manipulated by the hackers.

One doesn’t have to be clairvoyant to see which candidate would benefit from this type of activity.

Vladimir Putin reportedly loathes Hillary Clinton while Donald Trump has a very public “man crush” on him, even hailing him as a stronger leader than the U.S. President.

Trump’s preference for Russia and Putin has been evident for some time. The alarming warning signs about where he would lead us as President have been scattered upon the political landscape throughout the campaign.

Trump has proclaimed that he would condition our commitment to our NATO allies on whether they had fulfilled their financial commitments to the alliance. Never mind that the only time the alliance has been tested was when they all came to our assistance after the attack on our country on September 11, 2001.

Trump has endorsed Russia’s forcible annexation of Crimea comparing it to the invasion of Iraq.

Trump has surrounded himself with campaign aides who have involved themselves in elections in the Ukraine on behalf of Putin’s proxy candidates. Indeed, his campaign chair, Paul Manafort, was forced to leave the campaign after it was disclosed that he may have been paid millions of dollars by one of his Russian proxy candidates.

Make no mistake about the real reason Trump is not disclosing his tax returns as every other candidate for President has done since 1968.

It isn’t about the audit he claims is ongoing.

The IRS does not prohibit a taxpayer who is being audited from disclosing their returns.

Moreover, since the IRS has possession of the returns that it is auditing it is disingenuous to claim that disclosure would prejudice the audit.

Furthermore, Trump has refused to disclose the tax returns for years in which the audits have been completed.

No, the real reason that he will not disclose his returns is because it would reveal the extent of his dealings and holdings in Russia.

While the Federal government, the Clinton campaign, the Democratic Party and legions of editorial writers and columnists have been condemning the hacking, who has been strangely silent about the subject?

Donald Trump.

His only comment to date was a wish that the Russian hackers would hack Hillary Clinton’s computer in search of more e-mails.

This seems somewhat strange since the man has repeatedly claimed that the outcome of the election is “rigged”

What would be even stranger is, if he is right and the Russian hackers change the outcome of our election and succeed in putting a pro-Russian, pro-Putin stooge in the White House.

Every Presidential election I caution people not to turn the television on after Labor Day to avoid seeing what is going on the campaign trail.

Neither the ads run by the candidates nor the super pacs are good for the faint hearted.

This is particularly true this year as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump enter the final lap of the election cycle post Labor Day. There will be nothing that they won’t blame on each other going back to the biblical plagues and do it in thirty second segments.

I do have to confess to getting an early surprise this year when I turned on the television before Labor Day and was confronted with the situations that Maine Governor Paul LePage and former Congressman Anthony Weiner found themselves embroiled in on the same day.

LePage, a Tea Party Republican, is in his second term as Governor of Maine. Mercifully, he can’t run or a third term.

Throughout his six years in this position he has repeatedly made racially charged comments about the causes of crime and drug trafficking in the state. He claimed that ninety-percent of the drug dealers from other states were African-American or Hispanic and came to Maine to get “young white girls” pregnant. He went on to state that he kept a three ring binder with the photos of the drug dealers to back up his claim.

FBI statistics show that 7.4 percent of those arrested for drug sales in Maine were African-American. The Bureau does not keep statistics regarding Hispanic origin.

When LePage’s remarks were challenged as racially insensitive by a Democratic state legislator, LePage left a profanity laced telephone message on the legislator’s answering machine and told him he was “coming after him.” He later said he’d like to duel with the legislator with pistols.

In the past, LePage has said he’d like to tell President Obama to “go to hell” and said that the President “doesn’t like white people.”

After hinting that he might resign his office in the uproar that followed his remarks, he decided that he would finish out his term.

What the future holds for the Governor is uncertain but Donald Trump has stated there would be a place for LePage in a Trump Administration.

Secretary of State LePage? Secretary of Defense LePage? Chairman of the United States Civil Rights Commission?

The mind boggles at the possibilities.

Anthony Weiner, of course, needs no introduction. He resigned from Congress in 2011 after sending a sexually suggestive picture to a twenty-one year old woman in Seattle, Washington.

In 2013 Weiner ran for Mayor of New York but in the middle of the primary campaign, he was unmasked as “Carlos Danger” who had sent more sexually suggestive photos and “sexted” with a twenty-two year old woman and admitted to the same conduct with three other women.

One might have expected that the angriest person would have been his wife, Huma Abedin, who, to her credit chose to stay and work on their marriage.

I suspect that the truly angriest person was former Governor Eliot Spitzer who was attempting a political comeback in the primary election for City Comptroller after having resigned as Governor when it was discovered he was visiting prostitutes. The last thing Spitzer needed was “Carlos Danger” dredging up memories of both of their sexual escapades. Both he and the would-be Mayor would defeated in their races.

On August 28 of this year, we learned that Weiner was sexting again. He sent a sexually suggestive photo to another woman in 2015

. Just two weeks before the magazine Vogue ran a profile of Huma Abedin in which she praised Weiner for being a full-time stay at home father who gave her the freedom to devote herself to the Clinton campaign. Needless to say, this left Weiner with too much idle time on his hands. Abedin understandably announced that they were separating.

What does the future hold for Anthony Weiner?

Well, he clearly loves politics and the limelight.

Maybe he could get on a future Presidential ticket with Paul LePage.

They could run on the slogan “Giving new meaning to Show and Tell.”

One of the beauties of being retired is the freedom to go anywhere at any time of your choosing.

That, of course, is contingent on being able to arrange for the care of three mules, two dogs, two cats and five chickens. Okay, so it takes a little foresight and planning.

Two weeks ago Terri and I were invited to visit her cousin and her husband at a home they had just purchased on the Jersey Shore. Neither of us had ever been to the Jersey Shore. We have a number of close friends who had rented vacation homes there, year after year, and raved about it.

Terri’s cousin had just reached the mandatory retirement age of fifty-seven at one of the Federal law enforcement agencies. Yes, you read that correctly. The mandatory retirement age is fifty-seven. Her husband, who is my age, had reached the mandatory retirement age and retired from the same agency ten years ago.

Both had careers in law enforcement spanning three decades and each had a distinguished career rising to the top level of the agency they were employed by.

My feelings about mandatory retirement ages have evolved over the years. At one time, I would have liked to serve on the Federal bench where an appointment is for life but in retrospect I’m glad it didn’t come to pass because the temptation to work forever might have been too much. I’m very comfortable with the decision I made to retire at sixty-six rather than seek another term this November, which would have been limited to three years. After all, if I had done that I wouldn’t have the freedom to pick up at a moment’s notice and go off to the Jersey Shore. I do, however, have to wonder about the wisdom of putting people out to pasture at age fifty-seven when they have acquired the knowledge and experience to contribute to public safety for at least another decade. But, I’m digressing.

Since I’ve never driven to the Jersey Shore, I decided to rely on Google maps on my mobile phone for directions. It gave us an estimated travel time of five and a half hours.
It became apparent that when it gave us this estimated travel time that it left out the state of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania has never started an interstate construction project that it intended to complete.
At first I was delighted that Google maps directed us to the 476 bypass which would avoid Scranton. My delight ended when I discovered that Pennsylvania was in the middle of interstate construction on this highway too. Rather than continue us on the bypass, Google directed us onto Route 76 which took us through downtown Philadelphia as rush hour traffic was beginning. We arrived at our destination almost eight hours after we left home.

Terri’s cousin and her husband had chosen the perfect weekend retirement getaway on the Jersey Shore. They were half a block off the main street and in walking distance of all of the shops and restaurants in the town. They were also two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. The town had a boardwalk and beautiful beaches that ran for miles that made for a beautiful early morning or evening walk. The condominium that they had purchased had two bedrooms and a bathroom off the entrance way, the second floor had the living area, kitchen and another bedroom. Best of all it had a roof top porch where you could sit, have a cocktail and read or watch the sunset. It was a place made for relaxation and it was impossible not to relax. We spent two days with them enjoying the Shore and, most of all, their company.

On the third day it was time to leave and return to the menagerie.

To avoid the return trip through center city Philadelphia at rush hour on a Friday, we mapped out a different route home in which we picked up the 476 bypass upon entering the southern border of Pennsylvania. The trip was smooth sailing until I prematurely exited the bypass just south of Scranton.

I believe that Pennsylvania has been doing interstate construction in Scranton since I was born. In fact, I’m quite certain that the construction of the pyramids in Egypt took less time. Whatever time we were saving by missing Philadelphia was now being lost as we sat in Friday night traffic on Route 81 in Scranton.

After a couple of deep breaths and reminding myself that, now that I was retired and I had all the time in the world, I sat and concentrated on the audio book we were listening to.

We arrived home in about the same length of time it took us to get the Jersey Shore.

As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz says, “There is no place like home.”

Eespecially if you have to travel through Pennsylvania to get there.