pB:5, v10.45 — Opinion — Mountain Views News

Opinion

Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, November 5, 2016

MVNews this week: Page B:5

OPINION

Mountain Views News Saturday, November 5, 2016

JOHN C. Micek

Commentary

THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
or THE REAL DEPLORABLES

First of all, everyone knows that “half of the Trump
supporters” are not deplorables. There is probably
consensus among women especially, that there are only 3
followers who are truly deplorable, not including Trump,
Mr. Deplorable In Chief.

Deplorable No. 1: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
FYI, ‘wiki’ is a derivative of the Hawaiian language word
‘wikiwiki’ which means ‘quick’. And that is the reaction
most people have to the information spewed forth by
this thief. Unverified, target specific, a steady stream
of alleged emails from Julian Assange a convicted
Australian computer hacker, fugitive from Justice who
lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid
prosecution in Sweden for sex crimes. As reported by the
New York Times years ago, “During this time he hacked
into the Pentagon and other US Department of Defense
facilities, MILNET, the US Navy, NASA, and Australia's
Overseas Telecommunications Commission; Citibank,
Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Panasonic, and Xerox; and
the Australian National University, La Trobe University,
and Stanford University's SRI International.”

Assange no doubt cleverly came up with the name hoping
to take full advantage of the ‘logical’ association of the
name of his criminal enterprise (yes, hacking is a crime)
‘wikileaks’ with the more credible and internationally
trusted site Wikipedia. There is absolutely no association
between the two.

Now, during this election cycle he has chosen to release
stolen emails allegedly from John Podesta and posting
them online hoping to disparage Democratic Presidential
Candidate Hillary Clinton and by so doing, support
Donald Trump. The drip, drip, drip of emails has taken
its toll although NONE are from Secretary Clinton and
all, if authentic, are private conversations among co-
workers. Question: Why just hack only Democrats?
Certainly the Trump campaign has far more interesting
ones. Is Assange’s top advisor aPutin who also has an
unsettling interest in this election?

This next section is for Millennials (who may be too young
to know these character’s backstory and to Evangelicals -
please read carefully:

Deplorable No. 2: Rudy Guiliani – If an exaggeration or
lie for, or on behalf of Donald Trump can be co-signed,
Guiliani delivers his defense of the Republican nominee
with such ‘trumped up’ anger that an academy award
is in order. Guiliani’s indignance over the allegations
of women who say Trump sexually assaulted them
and Trump’s comments on how to assault women, is
absolutely shameful. Then again, New York’s former
Mayor is no authority on how women should be treated.
Giuliani announced his divorce from his second wife of
16 years during a news conference without telling her
beforehand. To add insult to injury, while still living
in the official Mayor’s residence with his wife and kids,
the court had to ban Guiliani from having his girlfriend
come to the house while his wife and children (then aged
15 and 11), still lived there.

Further, he should have used that outrage when alleged
Billionnaire Trump accepted $150,000 for his swanky
property at 40 Wall Street from the 9/11 fund for SMALL
BUSINESS OWNERS.

Deplorable No. 3: Newt Gingrich: Wife No. 1: CNN
reported at the time, that the GOP presidential candidate
dumped Jackie Battley because she wasn’t ‘young or
pretty enough’ to be the wife of the leader of the country.
Gingrich married Jackie Battley, his former high school
geometry teacher seven years his senior, in 1962. Two
daughters and 18 years later, the couple divorced.
Divorce court records show that Gingrich had taken
up with Marianne Ginther, who would end up being
his second wife. The more controversial aspect of the
divorce proceedings include a rumored incident where
Mr. Gingrich served Jackie with divorce papers in the
hospital as she was recovering from cancer surgery.

But wait, there is more...History repeated itself! Gingrich
made his second wife (Marianne Ginther, sign divorce
papers while she had cancer in the hospital so he could
marry the woman he had been cheating on her with
- his congressional aid that is 25 years younger than
him? In a 2007 interview with Dr. James Dobson, a
leader among social conservatives, Dobson questioned
the former speaker of the House, saying, "I asked you if
the rumors were true that you were in an affair with a
woman obviously who wasn't your wife at the same time
that Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky were having their
escapade." Gingrich bluntly responded, "Well the fact is
that the honest answer is yes." Gingrich was calling for
the impeachment of President Bill Clinton while carrying
on with his own intern.

At press time, Gingrich, like Giuliani, is still on his third
marriage.

THESE TWO MEN, WHO CLAIM TO BE THE MORAL
AUTHORITY ON FAMILY VALUES ARE TRUMP’S
SURROGATES? Well of course, as they are peas from
the same pod. Trump, on his third marriage actually
conceived his daughter Tiffany while he was still married
to Ivana Trump.

BTW, Hillary Clinton made a promise to God 41 years
ago when she married Bill Clinton and she hasn’t broken
that commitment yet, something she has been maligned,
ridiculed and demonized for. Trump, Guiliani and
Gingrich all blame Hillary for her husband’s indiscretions.
Is Hillary responsible for their bad behavior too?

TAKE A DEEP BREATH

AND VOTE HILLARY

On Tuesday, I’m going to get up bright and early, drop my
daughter off at school and head to my local polling place to do
something I haven’t done for the whole of my adult life.

I’m going to vote for a Clinton for president.

In 1992, I voted for President George H.W. Bush, preferring
his tweedy New England befuddlement, broad globalism and
Ivy League manners to the arriviste, sax-playing former governor of Arkansas.

Back then, I thought all Republicans were like the ones I grew up with: Vaguely dissolute,
well-read, amazingly funny and able to order from that season’s L.L. Bean catalog
without outside assistance.

If they had opinions about the divine and what a woman did with her innards, they
kept them to themselves -- or they waited until they were good and drunk at Thanksgiving.
New England good manners demanded nothing less.

In 1996, when it became obvious to everyone except Bob Dole that Clinton was going
to win a second term, I gave my vote to Ralph Nader, whose family hails from a little
brass mill town a couple of towns over from where I grew up.

So here I find myself in 2016, with another Clinton, Hillary, this time (Bill’s part of the
deal, I get it.).

While others may have been Waiting for Hillary, I was not.

She carried with her not only a surplus of ambition, but also the baggage of the Clinton
years and all that entailed. It was only later we learned that she was worse at emailing
than your Mom with a new Yahoo account and that the Clinton Foundation was basically
a pass-through for donors.

I was also bugged by the early field-clearing and the air of inevitability that settled
over Clinton’s campaign. It struck me then, and continues to now, as a very small-D
undemocratic.

So I felt the Bern in the primary. And I once again went with another fellow New
Englander. And that wasn’t because we were necessarily in-sync ideologically (though
we were on a bunch of stuff).

But now the pre-game is over.

So I’m going to take a deep, deep breath, consider the future of the country, and vote
for Hillary Clinton for president.

And I’m going to do that for a couple of reasons. And I’ll briefly explain why below.

The first one is obvious: Republican Donald Trump is spectacularly unfit to be president.
He is a blowhard and a bully who holds outdated views on women and ethnic, racial and
religious minorities; embraces a dangerous approach to foreign affairs; espouses potentially
destructive ideas on global trade and the economy, and possesses no identifiable
governing philosophy and even less experience.

His disqualification is compounded by the hideous “Access Hollywood” tape released
last month; the dozen women who have since come forward to accuse him of various
improprieties, and last, but certainly not least, by his dangerous and damaging ramblings
that the election is somehow “rigged” against him.

Clinton has the resume, experience and, crucially, the temperament to serve. I trust
her with the nuclear codes. I don’t trust Trump with the code to the locker room at my
local YMCA.

Unlike Trump, she embraces a positive and forward-thinking vision for a nation that
works together to address its shared challenges and celebrates its mutual triumphs.

In nearly 25 years of covering politics, I have never seen someone offer such a bleak
vision for the nation as Trump has in the 18 months of his campaign. His acceptance
speech in Cleveland last July spoke to no America I knew or recognized.

The second is for my daughter.

Since she’s been old enough to be told anything, I’ve told her she can be or do anything
she sets her mind to, including being elected president. Until now, that’s been
an intellectual exercise. A woman, particularly one as well-qualified as Clinton, in the
White House would give that message added punch.

And I can’t help but think of such women as Estelle Liebow Schultz, a 98-year-old
retired teacher from Maryland, who was born before women had the vote, and has now
finally voted for a woman for president. The arc of history, to paraphrase Martin Luther
King, not only bends toward justice, it bends toward progress.

The third reason has a lot to do with the first.

This election, more than any other I can remember in my adult life, is a Hobson’s
Choice.

It’s a choice between all or nothing. A choice between moving forward or embracing
the kind of know-nothingism that’s been a pox on our politics for years.

Clinton is far from perfect. But Trump has insulted and degraded our democracy. And
his time as Chief Carnival Barker to the Know-Nothings cannot end soon enough.

——

An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist
for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on
Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@pennlive.com.

AMERICA NEEDS A SMART

INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM

By Peter Roff

With less than a week before the presidential election, attention
in the nation’s capital is turning slowly to what
might be accomplished during the “lame duck” - that
period when legislative business is conducted after the
voting has done but before the new Congress is sworn in.

The rhetoric is hot right now, so hot it seems to have
crowded out the possibility Democrats, Republicans, and
outgoing President Barack Obama can agree on, well,
anything.

That’s only on the surface. Dig deeper and you’ll find
politicians from Obama and Republican nominee Donald
Trump to GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan and incoming
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on down
saying nice things about the need to do something drastic
about the nation’s commercial infrastructure, which is
badly in need of an upgrade.

“Thanks to years of waste and abuse—not to mention
poor prioritization of projects—our infrastructure is not
up to American standards,” Ryan said back in September.
He’s made what he’s calling infrastructure upgrades
a priority. Schumer told CNBC’s John Harwood he
wants to fund large infrastructure project with revenue
generated by a deal on stranded overseas U.S. corporate
profits. And infrastructure projects mean jobs, jobs, jobs
– the three magic words to any president in any party.
The question is how to get it done.

Whether or not the federal government should be involved
in infrastructure projects isn’t a question - it goes
back at least as far as the first third of the 19th century to
Henry Clay and his program of national “improvements.
There are people who think things like new roads, bridge
repair, and the construction of water tunnels and a new
electric grid should be handled at the state or local level,
through user fees, and through private investment. Given
the level of disrepair, the need for new construction, and
the demands of a commercial economy serving close to
300 million people, not to mention visitors from other
countries that not practical.

It may also be penny wise and pound foolish. Remember
what Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard said about being
sent into sub-orbital space in a capsule atop a rocket
made by people whose major commonality was they
were all the lowest bidder.

With interest rates at near record lows, these projects
could be financed – at least in part – by low rate hundred
year bonds perfect for institutional investors. Some
projects, like the construction of New York City’s Water
Tunnel No 3 which began in 1970 and won’t be done until
at least 2020, take nearly that long to complete.

There also needs to be a revision in the way such projects
are planned. Continuing to bid projects out with an emphasis
on finding the lowest costs up front is not in the
nation’s long-term interest. Cheaper isn’t necessarily better.
Take water infrastructure, an issue the House took up
just before going on recess. Upgrades made using PVC
piping may seem a sensible choice, for example, because
of the initial costs. But PVC doesn’t last as long as other
alternatives like ductile iron pipe, which is lead free, suitable
for all environments, and lasts two to three times as
long. In some cases it may cost more to install upfront
but provides better value long-term.

This is the kind of thinking that, properly employed, can
put America back to work on a crash program to make
our roads and bridges and tunnels and airports and harbors
the envy of the world once again. It not likely a national
infrastructure initiative will overcome what are essentially
political problems.

It won’t stop the unlawful demonstrations underway by
self-appointed social justice warriors intent on blocking
construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline and it won’t
stop the so-called environmentalists standing in the way
of a revival of the Keystone Pipeline. Those are both projects
that should already be well underway.

For the most part though, a national infrastructure program
that isn’t just phony economic stimulus is what the
country needs and it needs it now. It’s the responsibility
of government and it’s been neglected too long in too
many places.

Let’s make “Better, faster and longer lasting” a rallying
cry and fix our public works.

Roff is a former senior political writer for UPI and a well-
known commentator based in Washington, D.C. Email
him at Peter.Roff@Verizon.net.

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