Thoughts about current issues making news in Central Ohio
The following is a Letter to the Editor I wrote to the Columbus Dispatch regarding the Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill. Ohio Senator Rob Portman was asked by a journalist how he would have voted on the bill if it had come up for a vote. Following is his answer!!
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Following is a letter I wrote to President-Elect Trump on behalf of neighbors and myself in the first week after the election last year:
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Following is an informal “Friend of the Court” brief I mailed to each individual Supreme Court Justice regarding the gerrymandering case from Wisconsin. The Court will hear oral arguments in that case on October 3rd.
I have not written on my blog in recent months. I was so demoralized by the outcome of the 2016 Presidential Election I just needed time to reflect. I was never enamored with Clinton, but I knew from observing him for 30 years that Trump was dangerous. I could not, and after 8 months of the Trump Administration still can’t, imagine what will become of our country if we actually have to endure 4 years of this insanity.
I have decided to suspend new blog posts, at least in the near term. We are entering a new dark chapter in American history and I can’t even imagine where it will lead. My heart is just not into writing anything else until I see if we have a democratic future that includes respect for diversity and any accommodation of political compromise.
This is my last political post before the 2016 Presidential election. I wish we had different candidates this election, but I am a realist. I know that either Trump or Clinton will be President next year regardless of how I feel.
After Wednesday night’s debate performance I hardly know where to begin. I was writing a piece about Trump’s incompetence as a businessman before the debate started. After he refused to say he would accept the outcome of the election at the end of the debate I finally realized the depth of his contempt for American democratic values. His unwillingness to endorse even the peaceful transfer of power, one of the very foundations of our democratic form of government, makes whatever other shortcoming he may have seem almost irrelevant!
A white police officer shoots an unarmed black citizen in Tulsa, OK. The citizen’s life is suddenly over and the officer’s life is probably ruined. I’m sure the black man did not do anything intentionally that he thought would provoke deadly force against him. Likewise, I’m certain that the white officer did not set out to kill anyone that day. She probably did suffer real though unwarranted fear for her life. Most likely both were innocent victims of the racial suspicion, fear, and hatred that bubbles just below the surface in our society.
It is time to abandon the death penalty in Ohio!! Most objective observers agree that it has no deterrent value against violent crimes. It costs taxpayers much more to execute than to incarcerate for life. And it is certainly inhuman for the rare but real minority of death row inmates actually innocent of the crime for which they are sentenced to die. We should substitute life in prison at hard labor without parole as a more rational alternative to the death penalty.
The story of the 13 year old boy shot by Columbus Police last Wednesday night is a tragedy of the first order. I beg the community to wait for the investigation to be completed before rushing to judgement.
Black, White, or Gray?? 