The Trump Presidential Library - An Oxymoron and a Joke

Has anyone ever noticed that after a president leaves office, funds are reserved for a library that will hold all papers related to the former president's time in office?  Similar libraries exist for notable politicians from both parties whose papers are worthy of cataloging and being made available to the public for research.  

Presidential papers are considered public property under Federal Law and almost all former presidents have chosen sites where their non-classified records are available for research.  For example, former President Obama chose to have his presidential library in Chicago, Il.  President Clinton chose to have his presidential library in Little Rock, AR.  However, notably absent from this list of former presidents having publicly accessable research centers is former President Trump.  If one accesses the government website for his library, it is merely a spaceholder.  No building yet extsts at this time, nor it it likely to exist any time soon.

Why is this important?

Unlike our other former presidents, Trump is not known for having things put down on paper for future reference.  Like all grifters, he knows that any and all forensic evidence can and will be used against him in a court of law.  And that's what's happening right now in New York, Florida, Georgia, and Washington, DC. with Trump's 4 indictments.

Do I think Trump will be re-elected?  The odds against it aren't overwhelming.  There are way too many followers in his cult who act as if he's a messenger sent by god.  (As for me, Jake and Elwood Blues were the only characters I know who were on a mission from god.  But I digress.)  Given a choice of rational understanding and irrational faith, irrationality wins every time.  This is why cults are dangerous - they can cause a lot of trouble for non-believers.

Right now, the Florida case against Trump has to be litigated.  He claimed that all of the presidential papers are his property and not public property as his initial defense.  According to the presidential records act, this is a bogus claim.  He claimed to have declassified the classified documents, all without proof.  Again, this is a bogus claim.  But what is most notable here is that none of the unclassified presidential papers would be in a publically accessible library, given Trump's actions.

So what is available so far?

If one examines the Research page on Trump's presidential records website, the two key resources are his archived websites and his archived social media.  There are no books or letters to be found.  This is what one would expect from a mob boss and not a president.  It takes dogged prosecutors to do the research needed to convict a mob boss, and the same is needed to convict a grifting ex-president. Yet, like mob bosses, it will be hard to obtain a conviction, as there is little recorded evidence.

I expect that unlike all other presidents, that Trump's presidential library will end up being the side of a tiny book library found on Amazon for $249.95 (at time of writing). At least, someone has taken the time to archive all of his tweets and websites.

The looming threat

Our former president's mug shot.  

No matter what they say about Trump, things could be worse.  The man was totally incompetant and not able to change the nature of our political system, but he came close to doing so.  He normalized being openly hateful of vulnerable minorities, and unleashed a movement of malcontents which will likely survive his potential incarceration. 

So why do I say that there is a looming threat?

Several things have happened as a result of this man's time in office.  First, this man has said that if he regains the office of president, he will attempt to consolidate political power in the executive branch.  This is dangerous, as our system was designed to work (or, not work, as of late) with the powers of each branch of government being checked and balanced by the other two.  Second, this man has only anger to propel him.  He has never forgiven the public, nor the honest officials that some may have elected, for not putting him in office for a second term.  What revenge would he try to take at the expense of his perceived enemies?  Most elected leaders in his party are afraid of his cult, and are following his mob to stay in office.

But what happens if this man is not nominated to be his party's presidential nominee?  Will the followers of his cult believe that the elections weren't rigged?  On 01/06/21, we saw the violence that his cult was capable of.  Could it happen again?  What if the man were convicted in one of the courts? Even worse would be the chaos that might happen if the election were close.  For years, Americans have been self-selecting into like-minded communities.  People live in communication bubbles where they select news from sources that reinforce their views, and find it hard to imagine how others could have different views when "the truth" should be self apparent.  If you lived in Rural America, watched Fox "News" on a regular basis, and have been trained by your church to see the world in binary terms, would you be able to challenge the orthodoxy that you've been fed for years?  Wouldn't you want to defend your country from "criminals" from the left?

Years ago, Senator John McClain held a campaign rally where one of his loyal GOP constituents started labeling then Senator Barack Obama as a communist traitor.  Senator McClain interrupted this woman, saying that Senator Obama was a good man with whom he had political differences.  Could anyone see this happening today, where radicals from the far right are calling for President Biden's impeachment? The leaders of one political party have enough "sober" people to govern, while the other's leaders are afraid of the mob who elected our former president.

In 2016, our former president ran for office with the campaign slogan:  

Make America Great Again

Did any of his constituents ever ask: 

When did America stop being great?  

Why is America not great anymore?  

What needs to be done to make America great again?

I never heard any of these questions answered to my satisfaction.  Instead, MAGA anger comes from people who have lost their place in society.  They see our former president as someone who would (at least) give lip service to their feelings, if not restore their former positions in the larger society.

The next year, the former president held a campaign rally in Charlottesville, where he effectively said that there were good people in the neo-Nazi movement :

“You had some very bad people in that group,

 but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”

Once a person implies that there some good neo-Nazis, where does permission to act on one's hatred end?  I can still remember chants of:

"Jews will not replace us!"

As if any self respecting Jew would want for his/her children to grow up with skills so limited that they could not earn a good living.  What successful person of any ethnic group would want for their child to become a bagger at the local Piggly Wiggly?  Many of the MAGAloons are poorly educated, resistant to change, and follow bombastic leaders without bothering to ask: "Does what they are saying make sense?"  They gravitate to "strongmen" who say things that validate their feelings, and not to people who understand the nuances of objective truths.

So, what is the looming threat?

In short, the threat is that our ex-president has unleashed a monster that can not be sent back to its cave before it causes a lot of destruction.  As I started writing this, Jacksonville, FL is dealing with the aftermath of a white nationalist killing 3 black people at a local supermarket.  What will it take to stop this?  I don't know.  But if the ex-president again comes anywhere near the levers of power, god help us.

A potential constitutional crisis

 

Most people know that I lean a little bit left of today's center.  By historical standards, I would have been a "Goldwater Republican."  That is, I don't want the government legislating or enforcing morality, I don't want government needlessly interfering with business, and I want to limit the functions of government to those things it can do well.  Sadly, the GOP has shifted to being a radical right wing party, one that looks to use government as a tool to quietly(?) reverse civil rights gains we've had over the last 60 years, one that looks to subsidize big business and billionaires at the expense of the working person, one that would use morality as an excuse to mistreat people whose looks and bahaviors differ from the fundamentalist White Christian Males who have historically had power in this country.

Our founding fathers understood that our nation was imperfect from the beginning.  The Preabmble to The Declaration of Independance opens with:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of  Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

They knew that men are imperfect, and that governments derive their power from the people.  It continues with:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.

But here lies the problem with the January 6th insurrection.  The majority of the people were happy with our system of government.  They were not happy with the actions of a government that no longer seemed to care about their needs.  And they were ripe to become part of a cult which would enable a despot to overthrow the government while leaving a shadow of its structure intact.

The heart of the Washington, DC indictment of Donald Trump says that he was trying to overturn the electoral college election of Joseph Biden by interfering with the counting of the votes from the 50 states (plus DC).  Assuming that Trump is convicted, he could be considered to have engaged in an insurrection against the United States, as some conservatives are now posing.  Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the constitution reads:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Since there is no chance that the Democrats in either house will vote to remove this disability, what would happen if lunatics in the GOP make Trump its 2024 presidential nomines?  I pose that we could have a constitutional crisis if the following events occur:

1. Trump wins the GOP nomination.
2. Trump is convicted on January 6th issues (and maybe, Georgia RICO as well)
3. Trump wins the Electoral College.
4. Trump is ruled ineligible to serve as president during 2024 (case on rapid appeal to SCOTUS.  SCOTUS says Trump ineligible.)
5. Electoral college vote in chaos.

Since Trump would be ineligible to serve as president and the electoral college hasn't voted, what happens next?  Some states' EC election laws would commit electors to vote for Trump/President & Mate/Vice President.  Other states' laws might allow electors to vote for VP as President, but who gets VP vote?  Even more confusing, we could have issues of "Faithless Electors."  Could the election go to the house?  Could we see a President of one party and a Vice President of the other?  28 years ago, Jeff Greenfield wrote a book about this problem, albeit in an era where we couldn't dream of a criminal being elected as president.  Now, the electoral college risk is much worse, and people need to understand it.

Right now, we must start thinking of amending the us constitution to deal with the issue of what happens if a President/Vice President slate is elected by the 50 states (plus DC), and one member of the pair becomes ineligible to serve or unable to serve before the electoral college elects a President/Vice President slate, or before it takes office.  As part of this amendment, we also need to fix the anomaly of what would happen if the presidential election goes to the House of Representatives, and the vice presidential election goes to the Senate.  Currently, if this were to happen, we could see a President elected from one party, and a Vice President from the other.  Maybe we need to make sure that both legislative houses agree on both the president and vice president as a pair before the president is considered selected.

Language - We all use it, but not well.

This is one of my favorite scenes from Blazing Saddles.  To me, it is one of the best anti-racist films ever made.  And that's because of Brooks' use of language.  Could you imagine the impact of this scene if it were limited to politically correct language?  Try this comparison:

"One move, or the black fellow gets it!"

or

"One move, or the n----r gets it!"

Which is more funny in the context of this film?  Given how dumb the racist whites in the film are being shown to be, I feel the latter line used by Brooks has a greater impact in more ways than one.

- - - - - -

What a person says, how it is said, and the context in which something is said gives much meaning to an utterance.  This is why Germany has strict rules regarding the display of Nazi symbols to this era.  I find it sad that America has greater freedom in the use of Nazi symbols, and with it, a larger neo-Nazi movement.  Sadly, symbols can carry meaning more effectively than words. And during the Trump era, we've seen more Swastikas and Confederate Battle Flags on display than I'd ever have dreamed would be socially acceptable in any part of America.

I was sickened when our former president said "there were good people on both sides" when referring the the Charlottetown protests.  Are Nazi sympathizers good?  How so?  Does this mean that black rights are bad?  I still remember them chanting "Jews will not replace us."  How can they do that, given how few there are in this country?  Maybe, it's because these people don't want want to invest in the education needed to get the jobs of the future?  Maybe, it's because these people don't want to move to where the jobs are?  Maybe, it's because they don't value people who are not as bigoted as they are, and employers reject them because they want a healthy workplace?

Over time, we saw how bad a person our 45th president was. Recently, Business Insider posted an article noting how the Russians have been cultivating this man as an asset for years. The article links to another in the Guardian, that references a new book on the KGB's development of assets in America. Given what is now known about our 45th president, it's easy to see how a foreign power could manipulate a person's use of words to harm a nation while plausible deniability is spread all around.

It's hard for me to say this, but maybe we need guardrails on the 1st amendment.  Germany strictly regulates the use of Nazi symbols.  But it does allow them to be used.  How many of us know that in a country that generally prohibits the use of the Swastika, that Mel Brooks was allowed to use it in a theater where "The Producers" was being performed?  Yet, Germany prohibited the use of the image outside the theater. So, a pretzel flag was used instead. Even Germany realizes that a symbol of hate has to be exposed to the contempt it deserves.  

- - - - - -

Sometimes, freedom of religion conflicts with other people's property rights.  Several years ago, a bunch of ultra orthodox Jews sued to allow their Eruv to be extended from Rockland County, NY into neighboring areas of New Jersey.  What couldn't be openly discussed in the courts is that the neighboring New York religious community had a much higher rate of poverty (50%-60% on public assistance) than in the community on the New Jersey side of the border. The folk in New Jersey wanted to keep their parks for their own community, and not be crowded out by outsiders.  They wanted to make sure that their properties would not be bought out, then turned into illegal multi family homes.  The 1st amendment actually got in the way of free and responsible speech in this case.

- - - - - -

All of our freedoms come with responsibility.  Sometimes they come into conflict with each other.  When I contrast our 45th president's encouragement of a mob storming the capitol on January 6th with the court battle regarding the Eruv, I see evil (as evidenced by the 1/06/21 mob) vs. good (both sides of the Eruv dispute).  In the former case, people had no respect for the law, and would use any and all tools to get what they want.  In the latter case, the court system was responsibly used.  Although the settlement was not perfect, it is being adhered to, and has had a peaceful outcome.  

Language when used effectively is powerful. But without law, it can also be dangerous.  My question is: Do we need explicit limits on 1st amendment freedoms?

Is there a peeing section in the swimming pool?

 

Soon, our four year ordeal will be over.  The minute that Joe Biden takes office will be the minute that Donald Trump can be indicted on State level charges of election fraud.  No amount of Federal pardons can keep any of the states from indicting an ex president.  In fact, it is possible that the mere acceptance of a federal pardon will provide the admission of state level crimes.

Even if Donald Trump spends the rest of his days in prison, the disease he represents is still affecting America.  There are still too many people whose lives have been destroyed by globalism, as our coastal elites have not provided safety nets, nor have they provided meaningful employment to those left behind by global trade.  The people in the heartland have a legitimate grievance against the coastal elites, as the elites have benefitted as the expense of the American working class.  

Although Trump is a grifter who played well out of his league, he finally got caught due to his own failings. Many of Trump's supporters never look inward to determine the nature of their problems. If they did, they would see that they continually make bad choices, and then blame their failures on others.  So it only makes sense that these people chose a "bigger than life" persona to represent their interests.  Unfortunately, they didn't bother to look at this man carefully.  If they did, they might have seen the grifter who no major American bank would lend money to.  They might have seen one of the few men who could lose money running casinos - something very hard to do in this world.  They might have seen a man who was posing to be a false messiah.  And they might have seen a very little man behind an emerald green curtain. In short, with a little bit of effort, they would have seen someone who had only his own interest at heart, and would play them for suckers once again.

Years ago, I read a news article about a young man in Appalachia who asked his state's senator for career advice.  The senator gave the young man honest advice, telling the young man to leave.  There was no opportunity for him in his state.  The senator realized that his  state's would retain political power if it cound keep poor people from moving away for better opportunities. Yet, he was honest enough to give good advice to the young man.  What would have you done if you were that senator?  And this is the nature of the problem for many in the heartland.  There are not enough good opportunities to go around, and politicians often have interests which conflict with the needs of the people they represent.

Many of the coal mining companies in Appalachia are winding down their operations.  They know that the days of coal as a fuel are numbered.  Some of these companies have tried to retrain people for their growing renewable energy businesses and were willing to relocate these employees.  Yet, many of these employees return to the soil of their birth, as they have strong family bonds.  They make a choice to return to a land of poverty for family ties, rather than to prosper in new areas.  How would many of our ancestors have thought about this, given that they came to America and severed ties with their old lands?  They loved families that they left behind.  But they realized that they needed to make better lives for themselves, and that the old country wouldn't be fertile soil for those lives.  Too bad that today's people aren't the risk takers their forebears were.

A while back, I attended therapy sessions with an unconventional therapist.  One of the metaphors he often used was the idea of choosing the same door every time one wanted to exit a room, and getting beaten up each time that door was chosen.  It was his way of trying to get me to choose differently when things weren't working the way I wanted. When I think of typical Trump supporters, they want to live in a way their great grandparents lived without dealing with the problems they face today.  They are not able to choose a different door, and they continually get beaten up when they open the same door again and again.  Success and failure in life depends on the choices we make, and no one can help us if we are excused from the results of our bad decisions.  

So where does this leave us with the populist disease for which Trump is a symptom?  For the short term, we probably need to look back into history to see a solution our government tried 85+ years ago - the WPA (Works Progress Administration).  This "socialist" program made work for many unemployed people, giving them a purpose in life, and some hope for the future.  When people are housed, clothed, and fed, they are less likely to support populist kleptocrats like Trump.  They are also unlikely to fall into the depths of despair and become self destructive.  But if they do, we need to treat these people without applying moral stigma. Instead, we need to find ways to make them choose the right paths in life.  "Little brother", not "Big Brother" must show the way out of despair.

You'll note that I've only mentioned Appalachia so far.  These same problems exist in urban areas as well.  Our economy is shifting to work that can be done anywhere, with a few minor exceptions. So we have to work with business to educate people for the jobs that need to be filled, and make sure that businesses hire the people we trained for these jobs.  Is this too much to ask?

Post Election Day Thoughts

 

I am impressed by this year's election and how it was handled by both traditional and social media. Unlike in 2016, the news divisions of the major networks, the online social media sites, and the print media seemed to have taken the challenge of presenting real information to the public seriously.  Of course, this meant that the news divisions sometimes had to displease their corporate masters, that the social media sites had to perform limited censorship on lies posted by people friendly to a candidate, and that the print media had to call provable lies what they were - lies.

Regardless of who a person decided to vote for, the state election boards acted with appropriate dilligence to keep their elections honest, and many people from both major parties worked to ensure that all legal votes were included in the tallies for the candidates.  Not everyone would be happy. (Especially the supporters of the sore loser we have as our 45th president)  But there was no way that all could be happy in a polarized society such as ours.

My immediate impressions of some problems that must be addressed before the next presidential election are:

1. Procedures must be in place to deal with more than one type of disaster.  If major sections of this country were to be affected by natural disasters such as fires, floods, or hurricanes, what needs to be done to guarantee that the people affected by these disasters be able to cast their votes? 
2. In the case of a pandemic such as COVID-19, it doesn't make sense for people to cast their ballots in person. How can we ensure that appropriate and uniform procedures are available for people to cast absentee ballots in all of the 50 states?
3. Considering how long it took to get the results of the 2020 election, why shouldn't all 50 states be required to start counting absentee ballots before election day, and deal with provisional ballots within 48 hours of the close of polling places on election day?
4. Given that some states are using touch screen machines to cast ballots, shouldn't the states be required to have paper backup for each ballot?  In addition, shouldn't the machines be required to have double confirmation before a vote is considered cast?  (Can we afford not to be able to recount ballots as many times as needed?  Can we afford to have systems record votes before the voters intends their castings to be final?)    

Of course, there are many more procedural problems such as those listed above. But the bottom line is that all voters must be able to easily cast their ballots and be sure that their intent is recorded properly in time to have accurate results posted within 24 hours after the last vote has been cast.  

However, we must be vgilant - we can not afford to have a sore loser destroy the credibility of election results on his way out.  This is something we can't implement in law.  Instead, it has to be a custom that no one would dare think to challenge.  Unfortunately, we have a sore loser as president who will destroy what he can on his way out.  This is his way of expressing his anger at not being loved by the majority of the American public.  Hopefully, we will recover from this disaster of a presidential term....

Harry Truman said: The Buck Stops Here

Harry Truman said: The Buck Stops Here


Years ago, our 33rd president had a sign on his desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here!" Even if he was not to blame for a problem, it was his responsibility, as it happened on his watch. Contrast this with our 45th president who takes no responsibility for any of his mistakes. When push came to shove, he was too busy trying to be reelected than to do the job of keeping America safe.


As much as I felt that stopping the flow of people between the United States and China in January was Xenophobic and not called for, I now realize that this measure didn't go far enough to keep America safe from the Coronavirus. For any measure to be effective, we'd have had to quarantine ourselves off from the world, and then do whatever was needed to identify and isolate any carriers of the virus who have already made it to the United States. Unfortunately, our president claims that his January action was appropriate. He will never acknowledge that his half assed actions and cheerleading was not enough.


When the virus started to become an epidemic inside the United States, we were ill prepared. Little did we know that so much of our medical supply chain came from outside the United States - mainly from China. We didn't have enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the people in our hospitals and nursing homes, much less the people who had to interact with the public on a regular basis. Globalization failed us. In this regard, the rhetoric from our 45th president was correct. But he was a fatally flawed messenger for this message, as most of his branded goods came from the very countries he condemned. Yet, Americans rose to the challenge and started to make many of the goods we needed to help survive the pandemic. Even with this, we needed to import many of the products needed. And our federal government became a hindrance, as it delegated all pandemic related public health responsibilities to the states. It also bid against the states for the very same goods the states needed to help deal with the pandemic. In fact, one state's governor had to arrange for a secret shipment of South Korean goods to American soil, as he rightfully felt that the federal government would illegally confiscate these goods for its own use. Of course, it didn't help that the federal medical reserve was being managed by the president's son in law - someone totally out of his league for the responsibilities thrust upon him.


By the time the economy started shutting down in March, the Northeastern United States was the hardest hit area in North America. The United States, Canada, and Mexico officially shut down their borders to "tourist" traffic, but allowed essential trade and cross-border services to continue. ("Essential Workers" who worked on the other side of the borders were allowed to continue commuting to their jobs. Other people were stopped at the borders.) The New York Tri-State region was "Ground Zero" for the pandemic in North America. From being one of the busiest areas in the world, New York City's streets were empty. One could easily walk across Broadway in the middle of the day without worrying whether any vehicle posed a threat to one's crossing the street. Almost no one was on the road, save for ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars. Almost everything was closed.


Between Mid March and Mid June, the Tri-State region suffered its greatest losses. New York's governor was holding daily press conferences to give current status reports on the number of people suffering from the virus and the number of people who died of the virus. (My father was one of these people.) Nursing homes did not have enough PPE for their staffs. Yet, our president didn't bother invoking the Defense Production Act to make most of the needed goods when we needed them most. Instead, he allowed slaughterhouses to continue with their "Covid-19 unsanitary procedures" (my phrase) in spite of the fact that their workers were getting infected with the coronavirus due to poorly designed work areas. (These work areas are still not redesigned, and the federal government still ignores the health of the low wage workers in these plants.) While people died, our president kept saying that when summer comes, the virus will magically disappear. (Bob Woodward's recent book, Rage, shows that the president knew he was lying when he made statements such as this.) And to be more galling, our president claims that millions of people would have died if he didn't act. Hmmm. Maybe if he had acted more decisively earlier on, we'd have much less than 220,000+ deaths.


Unfortunately, the coronavirus became a political issue, separating political tribes. States where the virus hit hardest tended to vote Democrat, while those where it had yet to hit hard tended to vote Republican. So our president did not feel any need to help his opponents. In fact, he tried to make New York's governor look bad, and Cuomo did not take the bait. Instead, Cuomo deftly managed his relationship with the president, so that the federal government would not interfere with the efforts that states in the Northeast were making to deal with the pandemic. By the time New York (and the rest of the Northeast) got the virus "under control" so that it could relax restrictions on the economy, the virus had started affecting the rest of the United States. Because of this, New York, once the pandemic pariah of states was able to have the last laugh and require people from outside the Northeast to go into quarantine upon entry to the state. Sadly, the use of face masks became a symbol of which political tribe one belonged to, and a symbol of the success or failure of a state's efforts to tame the virus.


From the very beginning, our president dismissed the problems that the virus was causing, and made the reopening of the economy his highest priority. Unfortunately, he didn't understand that he should have been modelling appropriate hygiene by wearing a face mask. So most people from his tribe ignored directives meant to encourage social distancing and the use of face masks, enabling the virus to spread like wildfire outside the Northeast. It didn't help that our president was running for reelection, and held "super spreader" events which made it possible for the virus to infect many more people than had the behaviors in the Northeast had been modelled. To make things worse, governors of many states (mainly in the South and West) ignored the lessons learned in the Northeast, as they wanted to be seen as loyal to the president. Luckily, lessons learned in the Northeast regarding how to treat coronavirus patients helped to keep the death rate lower than it might have been otherwise.


It is now 7 months since the pandemic changed all our lives, and the president has been infected by the coronavirus. He continues to act as if it was a intense case of the flu, and nothing to be worried about. That may be easy for him to say, as he has the best doctors on call and he doesn't have to pay for treatment. But what about the rest of us? How many of us can afford medical treatment (and aftercare) needed to survive the virus? How many of us have doctors with up-to-date coronavirus skills to keep us alive? How many of us will suffer if Obamacare is ruled illegal on a technicality by the Supreme Court? What will replace it? Our president (and his political party) have demonstrated no plan to replace it. They don't care what happens to the public.


As for me, I know how I'm going to vote. And it won't be for people who have mismanaged things from the beginning. Hopefully, you will consider this when casting your vote - your life may depend on your decision....