My Vote

I am going to vote today and in the Presidential race I will vote for Hillary Clinton. I am one of those disaffected Sanders supporters greatly aggravated at the party for working against him but in the end for me there is no choice but to to vote Democrat. I am an immigrant and I don't vote for candidates or parties that hate immigrants. I am astonished by gays or women or blacks who vote against their own interests, but me? I don't. I want to refer you to a man who writes far more eloquently than I on this and many other politically relevant subjects. Jim Wright -LINK- is a writer who is as unlike me as you could imagine but who has reached the same electoral conclusion and for many similar reasons.

"Up above I said I tend towards the traditional conservative values of personal liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, personal enterprise and free markets, balanced budgets, strong military, and self-reliance.  All of that is true and as such there is no part of 2016 Republican Party Platform I can support without question, without violent protest.

Social issues? Tell me why a party who professes a profound belief in personal liberty and individual freedom and inalienable rights should contain within its ideology strictures regarding who you can marry, who you can love, what you can do with your own body, how you define your sexuality, how you define yourself. I will never vote for a Republican so long as they support the idea that government and political parties and religion have the right, nay the duty, to dictate these most personal of freedoms. I will never support a political party or a candidate who would deny full and unrestricted rights in any way whatsoever to my friends who happen to be gay, or transgendered, or of color, or female, or Muslim, or whatever ridiculous qualifications we use to deny others full citizenship. I will not. And so long as these things remain part of the Republican Party platform, no matter the bullshit justification, they are deal breakers so far as my vote is concerned. Even if they field a candidate I can enthusiastically admire."

Wright's essay at Stonekettle Station is long but it is coherent and thoughtful and well worth a read if you are casting around for a reason to vote for someone other than Trump. If you are a Trump supporter you won't be reading any of this. If you are a Republican confused about where your party has gone read all of Wright's essay as it's thought provoking for anyone who wants a return to decency and civility in politics from both parties.

Jim Wright 

Election Results

The study to consider dredging went down by 73 to 26 percent in unofficial numbers reported by the Key West Citizen newspaper. I'm guessing, like a lot of skeptics, that won't be the end of the matter as Big Business and Big Money wants big cruise ships to visit Key West.

Mayor Cates beat Margaret Romero 54 to 45 percent ( in numbers rounded up more or less) and as that is her second showing she did quite well, whether on dissatisfaction with the somewhat autocratic mayor or satisfaction with Romero a well educated candidate with experience that could be helpful to a city facing the same economic future as everyone else Up North.

 

In the Utility board race the Mayor's wife got 33 percent of the vote but she will not face off against the bodybuilder and photographer who calls himself simply Vidal who got more than 30 percent of the vote. He will be in the runoff against top vote getter Tim Root who got 40%. That might be an interesting race on November 5th for a rather uninteresting job.

 

Jimmy weekly beat Tom Milone handily so the city commission stays as is. The turnout was 41% which is a lot for an off year election so kudos for that surely go to the dredging referendum. Now it has been handily defeated lets call it what it was: a study to study dredging to widen the channel.

 

Next the mayor comes back for another election to get Key West voting the same year as major elections and he may face more and stiffer competition.

 

 

 

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Change In Key West

This parking sign at the county courthouse will soon become history ( and the glass of beer will, I expect, be gone already). Ward lost the election last month and loses his job in a few weeks when his Democrat successor takes over the top prosecutor's job. Catherine Vogel beat Dennis W. Ward in the party primaries and went on to beat her Republican rival Mark Kohl in the general election in November.

Like so much of public life in Key West the election of the State Attorney in Key West was riddled with the sort of small town politics that belies the urbane sophisticated tourist mecca image Key West likes to project. An e-mail came to light from a Conch king maker whose subject matter, "Payback is a bitch!" was worthy of a high school playground revenge drama. It turns out Ward, elected on an anti corruption promise, managed to piss off the Conch element in town, the real people in charge to the degree that they got together and fired his sorry ass. Their replacement choice Catherine Vogel used to be second in command in the office under Mark Kohl whom she beat and who has been offered an office manager position by the incoming Vogel his former employee. So the world turns among the powerful and would-be powerful in the Southernmost City. Expect prosecutions of Conchs to fade away rapidly come January!

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The End Of An Election

One of the loudest complaints heard echoing around the community after an election relates to campaign signs. no one seems to know exactly what effect the ubiquitous billboards have on voters' decisions but every candidate studiously pays for and posts this annoying and ugly signs everywhere. After the election they are frequently forgotten in situ much tI the irritation of neighbors. Ironically now the election is over the offenders cannot be threatened wit retaliation as the votes are cast.

These reflections were prompted by the sight of the smiling face of outgoing state representative Ron Saunders' legislative aide who has won the seat in her own right as her boss was term-limited out of office. That she is a Republican taking the place of a Democrat is only slightly less odd than the fact that her victorious visage was unceremoniously dumped in the trash after the vote. Would that every candidate had followers as efficient. Truth to tell almost all signs have evaporated in fact. I did notice the day after the election that Sheriff-elect Rick Ramsey had a big Thank You added to his billboards before they disappeared. Now it is time for all the newly elected office holders to get ready for the start of their new jobs next year. Out with the old and in with the new in the next few weeks.

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A Strange Lurch

It grew upon me Tuesday night as I watched the results roll in, no one, I thought, remembers their predictions and their discussions after the election is over. Tuesday night I was in a hotel room watching the returns with my best bud but she gradually lost interest and passed out in the glare of the television. I was still convinced President Obama would win a second term, as I had bee throughout the two billion dollar election campaign farce. Cheyenne snored.

Generally I find the Key West Citizen's editorials to my taste, on local issues at least. On national matters they suck, witness this endorsement.

Aside from the fact that The Candidate Who Believes In Magic Underwear never found a position or political plank he could believe in for longer than five minutes consecutively, Romney announced to the world at large hat he doesn't give a fog about the poorest half of our nation. That doomed his candidacy, whether or not the Citizen was paying attention. Anyone who was paying the least bit of attention noticed there was a massive and coordinated and extremely well funded bid to oust President Obama. The Grand Old Party announced its sole purpose in life was to get rid of the African American President, the one they labeled a socialist. It mattered not too them what they did to the economy or the country, or what lies they propagated as long as the black man was removed from the White Man's House. Not because he's black but because he's a socialist. Except he isn't (a socialist, he is still black!)

Reading the rubbish in the Citizen editorial I despair of anyone ever understanding what the hell is going on. How could anyone believe Romney could reduce our dependence on foreign oil? To reduce dependence on foreign oil we would have to nationalize oil production. If we keep the current system of free market capitalism the oil brokers will always buy the cheapest oil and sell it to the highest bidder and they don't give a toss whose oil it is or how foreign it might be. Try convincing a Republican loyalist the only way to reduce consumption of foreign oil is to undermine the spot market by "socializing" it! Their heads would explode. And the notion that "strengthening the military" is consonant with reducing the deficit is ludicrous on its face. Try telling a Republican the source of our annual deficits is a bloated military fighting two unnecessary wars with 700 worldwide bases and their heads will...explode! Public Broadcasting subsidies consume two minutes worth of federal military spending! Facts are stubborn things and privatization requires paying stockholders dividends out of profits instead of plowing profits back into the enterprise as employees soon discover when wages are cut and benefits annihilated by Romneys free market economy. Privatization does nothing for innovation! It just feeds the one percent.

To further muddy the waters the mainstream press is avaricious enough to ignore the illegal nature of the advertising begging us to vote (state) in support of Biblical Values (church) a conjunction expressly forbidden by the constitution. Never mind, the value-free followers of the Magic Sky Wizard lost on all fronts and were roundly ignored by deadly humanist values voters who supported affordable health care, living wages, freedom of choice and in favor of allowing poofs wreck traditional marriages by allowing them to marry too. The Republic is dead. Actually no, the republic is more alive than it has been ever since Ronald Regan proclaimed a new day in America and since Richard Nixon declared a War On Drugs. The fact is though that President Obama is no socialist.

He has pissed off the Evangelical voters easily enough even though our Affordable Health Care is operated through and by insurance racketeers, the banksters who robbed us and wrecked our economy remain at large and even though his Department of Homeland Insecurity is putting out a bid for 30,000 drones to monitor our beleaguered Homeland, President Obama remains our best hope for a better future. Oh dear, I voted for him though I am no fan. I can only hope the other believer in magic underwear, the Redoubtable Harry Reid, leader of the Senate, will do as he promises and stands up to the bullies of the Right.

Every time I feel ready to give up on this experimental representative government some small thing keeps feeding me the hope that things will get better that a brighter future awaits. I honestly expect more of the same, a gradually declining economy, restricted civil rights, more work for less pay for those of us at work, and diminished expectations all round. How can it be otherwise when one percent of the US population, under President Obama's socialist leadership, rakes in 93 percent of the income in the land of the free and home of the brave. I know what a real socialist would do with that statistic, and that ain't part of President Obama's plan to make things better for the majority of us.

 

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