You can start thinking for yourself!
Today, I Emma Berry, as a candidate for U.S. Representative for the Third Congressional District attended a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters here in Collin County. For most of the hour that we had, I heard all the same cliches that I heard from George Bush in 2000 and the again in 2004. What has been the result of listening to those cliches? Among other things, our net worth as a nation during the last four years of the George Bush Administration declined by $15.5 trillion dollars. In the last 18 months alone of his administration we lost $12.5 trillion dollars. That is $40,000 for every man woman and child in our nations. (From a March 2009 report in the US News and World Report).
************************************************************************
You have a right and a responsibility to ask politicians just exactly what they mean with they come at you with their spoon filled with standard political clichés. Don’t assume that you know what they mean just because you have heard the cliche before.
Vote Pro-Life
What do you mean when you say you will vote pro-life? Do you mean that you will vote to make abortion illegal? If you do, then will you also please tell your constituents that the legal status of abortion in a country is not strongly correlated with the rate at which it occurs? Indeed, in many countries where the procedure is illegal, women obtain abortions at very high rates. Similarly, in some countries where abortion is legal and very widely accessible, abortion rates are low. For example, the Netherlands who have a very liberal abortion policy also have the lowest rate of abortions in the world. Making abortion illegal in the USA is not the solution that many Americans believe it to be. It will not have much effect on the number of abortions. With this solution we will have more women coming into emergency clinics suffering from botched abortions and perhaps they will even be put in jail as they are in Chile. If a candidate is really “pro-life” they will address the root cause by working to find the answer to the factors drive the rates at which abortions occur. Then they will work to reduce and perhaps even eliminate those factors. Simply making it illegal,which is what most politicians mean when they say that they are pro-life, is no real solution.
Defend our 2nd Amendment Rights
Yes, this is important. It is equally important to defend ALL the Amendment Rights. The only problem I have with the Politicians on this one is that they only focus on this one Amendment Right. I would defend not only the 2nd Amendment Rights, but all of our rights as American citizens. You want to talk about violation of our First and Fourth Amendment rights, then talk ask Sam Johnson about the Fusion Center that his son, Dr. Bob Johnson runs here in Collin County (from this home in Santa Fe.)
Support our Veterans
Be sure to ask them how they will support our Veterans. Many politicians like Sam Johnson say that they support our veterans and then they, like Sam Johnson, vote against bills designed to help our veterans such as the GI Bill Expansion and other Domestic Provisions. This bill which did pass the House offers differing amounts of payments to be made to fund the higher education of individuals who have served on active duty in the Armed Forces beginning on or after September 11, 2001 based on factors such as length of active duty service and disabilities accrued, and specifies that these payments shall not exceed the cost of in-state tuition at the most expensive public university in the state in which the individual is enrolled. Usually what a politician means when he/she speaks about “supporting our veterans is supporting unlimited funding of war and military appropriations—not actual support of the young people they send out to die for them.
Protect Our Property Rights
Those of us who live in Texas really need to pay attention to this one because some politicians speak with a forked tongue on the issue of property rights. For example, when the property rights of citizens interfere with a politician’s right to give a handout to a Wall Street corporation like Boeing to build a ridiculously expensive and essentially non functional border fence, the property rights be damned.
Reduce Taxes
This is a cliché that people like to hear, but reducing taxes only means more dollars in the pockets of those who already have it and pennies in the pockets of those who don’t. Rather than reducing taxes we need to work on collecting taxes owed that are not collected. According to an August 2008 report from the Congressional Budget Office, on average $350 billion dollars each year in taxes owed are not collected. $350 bill dollars is half of our bloated defense budget.
Eliminate Government Waste
When a politician talks about “eliminating government waste”, what many of them have in mind is cutting any social program. You rarely hear any of them talking about doing anything about our bloated Defense budget. Defense spending is by far the largest expenditure of our federal government, and it’s increasing every year. The defense budget represents about half of all U.S. discretionary spending. Our defense appropriations exceed the total amount of defense spending by all other nations in the world combined! Defense spending is one of the largest contributors to our huge deficits. But to most politicians, the Defense Budget is a sacred cow. Not only does this Department spend the most money, they also LOSE the most money. The Pentagon alone has “lost” over $2 trillion dollars between 1995 and 2001. Why don’t we try finding that money?
Sales or Consumption Tax to Replace Federal Income Tax
This is another Homer Simpson/John Wayne solution that does not consider the problem at any depth. This tax would unfairly burden the poor and hinder their ability to rise up out of their poverty. Low income families spend almost every penny of their earnings on subsistence items. They would pay a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes (just as they do now) under a national sales tax. Higher income families could afford to put a portion of their earnings into sales and investments. A homeowner who buys an existing home would not pay sales tax on the purchase, but a renter would pay sales tax forever on his rent. (Also, most states tax rental property at higher rates than they tax owner-occupied homes, so a sales tax on top of the “extra” property tax would be heaping more tax on top of an existing unfair tax.) For renters who want to buy a home but are unable to do so, a sales tax applied to rent but not to purchase effects an unconscionable tax penalty for not being able to buy a home, and transfers many billions of dollars from lower-income renters to higher-income homeowners.
Fight Government Health Care
“Fight” is the key word here, not real solutions that might make a difference, but fighting. The only two solutions that some politicians offer are the standard clichés: tort reform and eliminating “frivolous” lawsuits. Tort reform hurts the American people by taking away their legal rights to file a claim and receive fair compensation when they have been injured at the hands of another and it also accounts for 1/2 of 1% of the total costs of health care in our nation.
A May 2006 study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital shows that 97 percent of medical malpractice claims are meritorious. Eighty percent of those claims involved physical injury, which killed or permanently disabled the victim. Sadly, only 56 of these claimants received compensation for their losses.
To listen to some politicians go on and on about tort reform and frivolous lawsuits you would think not only that they are a significant factor, but that they also are on the rise. Neither is true. Between 1992 and 2001, the number of civil trials filed in state courts decreased by 47 percent, according to the Department of Justice. The number of tort cases specifically, decreased by 31.8 percent during that same time.
