All city ballot props deserve voter support

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I’ve made up my mind … and it was easier to settle on this decision than it has been trying to decide who should become the next president of the United States of America.

All of the Amarillo ballot measures deserve voters’ endorsement.

Some are more vital than others. The city has done a marvelous job of breaking out a total package of about $340 million into separate measures aimed at specific needs.

It settled on a seven-part package.

Here are the seven elements spelled out … line by line:

http://amarillo.gov/pdf/CIP_list_for_ballot_resolution.pdf

Do I rate all of them equally? No. Some are more vital than others. My personal preference would be to place the public safety element at the top of the priority list. The city is hoping to spend $20 million on several elements relating to improving police and fire protection.

The street element also is critical. I do not like driving along pock-marked streets. They are rough on motor vehicles and I much prefer to drive my motor vehicles along streets that are free of those craters.

Yes, there are some problematical issues on the ballot. The toughest political sell — in my view — would be the ballot proposition dealing with athletic fields. The city hopes to spend a huge chunk of change, about $65 million, to improve current ball fields and build new fields. We’ve been down this road before. Amarillo voters rejected the Amarillo Recreational Center proposal. I’m not yet sure if there’s enough support in the city to back this latest request. I hope it’s there and I intend to support it.

The city’s famously low tax rate is going to increase incrementally, depending on how many of the seven measures win voter approval.

Here are the resolutions that the City Council approved:

http://amarillo.gov/pdf/Resolution_Callilng_November_Election_16.pdf

I happen to be a good place regarding tax rates. My property taxes are frozen, given my age. That ought to bode well for these measures among other, um, more mature voters who enjoy the same property tax benefit granted to my wife and me.

Do I wish others to shoulder a tax burden that is too heavy, too costly? Of course not.

Amarillo residents have benefited for decades with a municipal tax rate of about 35 cents per $100 assessed property valuation. That rate is among the lowest in Texas. Is it time to dig a bit deeper to pay for these improvements to our infrastructure or to improve the quality of life in this vibrant — and growing — community?

I believe the time has arrived.

I applaud the city for the manner in which it has pitched these measures to voters. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposal. We have the option of selecting which of these measures to support.

I plan to support all of them.

Thanks for clearing that up, Donald

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To think many of us thought he actually meant those hideous things he has said about women.

The “fat pig” stuff? The jokes about women’s weight? Statements about “flat-chested” women?

It’s all for “entertainment,” Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has said. He doesn’t really mean those things. He was trying to make us do … what? Laugh out loud? Scream out loud? Cry out loud?

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/trump-women-insults-entertainment-229225#ixzz4MKgkqc5I

Let’s not forget the on-going feud with Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, who — according to Trump — had “blood coming from her wherever” the night she confronted him on previous derogatory comments about women.

Does this clown think we’re all suckers, rubes, chumps? Did we all fall of the proverbial turnip truck?

I’d like to say that “no one takes this round of excuses seriously.”

I wish I could. Sad to say, though, some Americans actually are going to buy into this line of crap.

Gov. Johnson needs to study up on foreign affairs

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The world’s most indispensable nation needs a leader who is well-versed on the world that surrounds it.

The United States of America remains the greatest nation on Earth, despite the ridiculous assertions of Donald J. Trump that we’ve become something significantly less than that. Accordingly, whoever becomes president needs to understand the principals involved in some of the world’s greatest trouble spots.

Libertarian nominee for president Gary Johnson flunked that knowledge test yet again.

Sigh …

He asked an interviewer “What’s Aleppo?” He didn’t know that Syria’s largest city is the epicenter of the hideous refugee crisis that has engulfed so much of the Middle East and Europe.

Then, when asked by another TV interviewer to name a single foreign leader he liked and/or respected, he couldn’t name one.

The latest gaffe came when Gov. Johnson was asked to name North Korea’s leader. He couldn’t come up with Kim Jong Un.

One of the tests of leadership in this country must include knowledge of far more than such basic information.

An exceptional nation needs to have exceptional leadership at its helm. Two of the four people running for the presidency — GOP nominee Trump and Johnson — are flunking the leadership test. I won’t speak yet to the knowledge base owned by the Green Party nominee for president, Jill Stein.

The fourth candidate is Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. She has demonstrated that she fully prepared to assume the role of president of the world’s greatest nation.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gary-johnson-couldnt-name-north-koreas-leader-kim-jong-un/ar-BBx3t5v

‘1984’ has come true, but not in the way we thought it might

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George Orwell wrote a book that was published in 1949 that portrayed the world dominated by the ominous eye of “Big Brother.”

“1984,” which I read once in high school, told a chilling story of dominance, loss of individual freedom and civil liberty.

In the 66 years since the novel’s publication, its meaning has come to define the incursion of big, overarching, overreaching, overbearing government.

The thought occurred to me other morning: Big brother exists, all right, but it’s not necessarily in the form that Orwell envisioned.

Social media have morphed into our Big Brother.

Think about all the prying eyes that actually are the devices that millennials and generation-Xers are packing around with them. All those “smart phones” have cameras on them.

People take pictures of everything. Of everyone. At any time. In any place. For any reason.

The list of victims of this big brother incursion is seemingly endless.

All of this serves as a lesson on public behavior. Be wary — be very wary — of your surroundings. All those teenage girls you see with smart phones in their hands? Any one of them could point that camera at you at any moment and snap a picture of you doing something you don’t want seen by anyone.

It’s been said that you can measure one’s character by what they do when no one is looking. In this age of Big Brother, everyone is looking. It’s not necessarily government’s prying eyes, but it’s every bit as insidious.

Welcome to Oceania.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/03/big-brother-must-have-blinked-on-this-one/

‘Atlantic’ makes history with endorsement

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Hillary Rodham Clinton’s pile of media endorsements has added a significant new voice.

While I have conceded that endorsements from elite media organs don’t pack the wallop they once did, this one has gotten some traction.

“The Atlantic” has issued its third presidential endorsement in its 159-year history. The first one went to the nation’s first Republican presidential candidate, a guy named Abraham Lincoln, in 1860.

Five score and four years later, in 1964, “The Atlantic” weighed in with an endorsement of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Now it has backed Hillary Clinton.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/11/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-and-against-donald-trump/501161/?utm_source=atlfb

Here’s a snippet from the editorial: “Today, our position is similar to the one in which The Atlantic’s editors found themselves in 1964. We are impressed by many of the qualities of the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, even as we are exasperated by others, but we are mainly concerned with the Republican Party’s nominee, Donald J. Trump, who might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency.”

This is a fascinating development as the campaign heads for its final month. I’m so glad it’s almost over. I am running out of stamina listening to the candidates trashing each other.

“The Atlantic” concludes its editorial endorsement with this: “We believe in American democracy, in which individuals from various parties of different ideological stripes can advance their ideas and compete for the affection of voters. But Trump is not a man of ideas. He is a demagogue, a xenophobe, a sexist, a know-nothing, and a liar. He is spectacularly unfit for office, and voters—the statesmen and thinkers of the ballot box—should act in defense of American democracy and elect his opponent.”

Ouch, man!

To be candid, the endorsement doesn’t convey unbridled confidence in Clinton’s standing. It’s more of a non-endorsement of  Donald J. Trump. I suppose that sums up what has shaped up to be the theme of this campaign: The candidates cannot stand on their own record exclusively, so they pound away at their opponents’ weaknesses.

Trump is the most profoundly unqualified and unfit candidate for the presidency most of us ever have seen.

Will this endorsement matter? Will it be the difference between winning and losing? I doubt it. Still, it’s worth your time to read and to digest what the editors of a distinguished publication have to say about the next election for the presidency of the United States.

Oh, I am so glad it’s about to be over.

Pence is right about Russia; Trump … is wrong!

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Mike Pence demonstrated quite nicely just how badly the Republican Party has messed up its campaign for the presidency.

It has put the wrong guy at the top of the ticket.

My belief is based on Pence’s assessment of Russian dictator/strongman/tyrant Vlad Putin. He called him a “small bully” at the vice-presidential debate Tuesday night who must be met with stern resolve and military might.

Trump’s view of Putin? He believes the United States and Russia can become allies in the fight against the Islamic State. “Wouldn’t it be great if we got along with Russia?” Trump has asked. He has expressed admiration for Putin.

Pence doesn’t seem to think U.S.-Russian relations can improve as long as Putin is kicking backsides in the Kremlin.

This is the kind of thing that might have Republicans gnashing their teeth over what their party has done. It has nominated a presidential candidate who is spectacularly clueless on the geopolitical relationships that complicate U.S. foreign policy. Meanwhile, it has a vice-presidential nominee who sees the world through a more realistic prism.

The worst news, for Republicans of course, is that Americans are going to vote next month for the candidates at the top of their respective tickets.

Is Trump really and truly that rich?

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Donald J. Trump does something quite unique — it seems to me — among the filthy rich.

He brags about it. The Republican presidential nominee has been telling us long before he became a politician about how much money he possesses.

Trump boasts about his business acumen. He keeps telling us about the “fantastic” success he has enjoyed. He insists — as he did in the first “debate” with Hillary Clinton — that he isn’t being “braggadocious”; he said he keeps harping on it because America needs a president who “knows something about money.”

Well, as others have asked, do we hear other megazillionaires boast in this manner? Does Warren Buffett tell us about the billions he is worth? Do we hear such things from Bill Gates? Does Jeff Zuckerberg yammer about the billions of bucks in his portfolio?

No.

And this brings me — yet again — to this issue of Trump’s tax returns. He hasn’t released them for public review, claiming that an Internal Revenue Service audit prevents him from releasing them; the IRS said an audit prevents nothing of the sort.

I am among many Americans who wonder just why Trump refuses to do what presidential candidates have done since 1976. The questions are numerous and varied. They center on the tax burden he bears, his relationships with foreign governments, his charitable contributions.

It’s the kind of information that those who have sought to become president of the United States has customarily revealed to those they seek to govern.

My first question is a simple and straightforward one: Do these returns reveal that Trump isn’t nearly as wealthy as he claims to be?

Trump muscles his way into Pence’s big moment

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One more thought on what the nation witnessed Tuesday night … then I’ll move on.

Democratic nominee Tim Kaine and Republican nominee Mike Pence jousted vigorously at their vice-presidential “debate” in Farmville, Va.

They talked a lot about their presidential running mates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

But here’s the deal. Trump decided during the event to start “live tweeting” while his man Pence was on the stage.

I have to agree with the assertion made by media and political commentators about that back story. It was that Trump simply is not wired to stand aside and let his running mate do what was assigned to do. Trump just had to throw his own thoughts out there in real time while his No. 2 guy was talking on national television.

Some GOP strategists thought it only showed that Trump and Pence comprise a political “team” and that Trump merely was lending support to his running mate.

Sure thing.

It’s fair to wonder: What might Trump think of Pence doing that very thing during the upcoming Sunday night joint appearance with Hillary?

Pundit class weighs in on VP debate

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Some of the nation’s more well-known political pundits have weighed in on last night’s vice-presidential “debate.”

They’ve determined, I guess, that Republican nominee Mike Pence did himself more good than harm and that Democratic nominee Tim Kaine did more harm than good for his own future. Many of them seem to think Pence is a shoo-in to run for president in 2020.

I gleaned from most of the comments that the presidential candidates still must make their own way as they slog on through to Election Day.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/who-won-the-vp-debate-pundits-weigh-in/ar-BBx2cfz?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

I’ll offer this slightly different take, though, on what I heard Tuesday night.

Gov. Pence might have helped Donald Trump — if only slightly — by coming off as the more mature, reasonable, rational, nuanced, intelligent member of the GOP ticket.

Thus, he might have given Trump’s base of supporters hope that in the event of a Trump election — a thought that gives me the heebie-jeebies — that there will be a viable individual who’s able to step in once Congress impeaches and convicts the president of crimes that haven’t yet been defined.

Has the governor wooed any independent voters, or undecided Americans to the Trump-Pence ticket? I doubt it. These VP encounters generally don’t prove to be decisive. We still focus on the candidates at the top of their parties’ tickets.

However, given what we know about Trump’s utter lack of anything involving government or the limits of the office he seeks, I remain quite convinced that a President Trump would do something — maybe early in his administration — that would so anger legislators that he could become the target of a serious impeachment effort.

What might he do? Oh, let’s see. He could fire all the flag officers who would assist him in crafting a war strategy against the Islamic State; Trump could issue an unlawful order to his military, which then would be able to refuse to carry it out; he could impose that unconstitutional ban on Muslims entering the United States; he could forget about a business deal that profited from a government subsidy; he could issue any number of illegal executive orders.

The man is a walking, talking, breathing example of an ignoramus who doesn’t understand anything about government — and he intends to learn about it all while serving as head of state of the world’s most powerful nation.

Mike Pence has given a glimmer of hope to Trump’s followers that they would have a grownup ready to take command once the president is tossed out.

It doubt, though, it’s enough to win an election.

I mean, c’mon. Pence still has to find a way to defend Trump’s horrifying stump-speech pronouncements.

Moderator deserves a good word

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Elaine Quijano has earned a good word on this morning after the vice-presidential “debate.”

The CBS News correspondent/anchor didn’t do a great job refereeing the exchange between Democratic nominee Tim Kaine and Republican nominee Mike Pence.

As I look back on it after a good night’s sleep, my conclusion is that it wasn’t totally her fault. She sought to reel in the fellas, sought to keep them answering the questions, she sought to avoid the constant interruptions that were initiated by the amped-up Kaine.

She got caught in a buzzsaw of campaign rhetoric, throwaway lines, talking points, insults and, oh yeah, the occasional policy differences that emerged from the candidates.

I want to echo something I heard last night from the post-“debate” analysis about the best question of the evening. It dealt with candidates’ religious faith and how it informs their public policy.

Both men exhibited clear understanding of faith and explained in clear and concise language how it works for them in their public life. Bravo to them both for ending the evening on somewhat of a civil note — and bravo to Quijano for the question.

As we’ve been seeing, though, in these joint appearances, the media moderators are becoming a bit of a distraction. Dating back four years ago when CNN’s Candy Crowley corrected GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s incorrect assertion that Barack Obama didn’t call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism, media and politicians have been waiting for future moderators to interject themselves into the political dialogue.

Quijano, unfortunately, became part of the story again last night.

From my perch out here in Flyover Country, though, I believe she delivered a creditable effort at staying above the fray. I only wish the candidates would have done a better job of focusing on the issues at hand.

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