Senator Ted Cruz

    Today is Ted Cruz day.  Mr. Cruz's hometown is Houston Texas.  His family consisted of an Irish/Italian mother, and a full Cuban father.  According to his campaign website he
     "graduated with honors from Princeton University and with high honors from Harvard Law School. He served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for the Chief Justice of the United States."   Without ever having held office in the past he was elected the 34th U.S. Senator from Texas.  He is a true conservative representative, and champions small businesses and minimal government.

     So where does Mr. Cruz stand on all the issues?

Healthcare: Mr. Ted Cruz has been a strong advocate for repealing Obamacare.  He opposed its implementation in the first place, and filibustered for twenty one hours in an effort to thwart the bill.  He says that Obamacare is causing people to lose their jobs and move into only part-time work, as well as making healthcare costs rise to an unmanageable level.  He has said recently that while others have given up opposing Obama's healthcare plan he will continue throughout his political career.

Welfare:  Here is what Mr. Cruz had to say on the subject during the 2012 Republican national convention:
"Government is not the answer. You are not doing anyone a favor by creating dependency, destroying individual responsibility. 55 years ago, when my dad was a penniless teenage immigrant, thank God some well-meaning bureaucrat didn't put his arm around him and say let me take care of you. Let me give you a government check and make you dependent on government. And by the way, don't bother learning English. That would have been the most destructive thing anyone could have done.
Instead, my parents worked together to start a small business, to provide for their family and to chart their own future. That's the American dream.
To restore America, to get Americans back to work, we must rein in the leviathan. We must stop spending money we don't have and turn around our crushing debt. Each of you comprises the fabric of our nation. Together, we must revive our many-century love story with liberty and restore that shining City on a Hill that is America."

Education: "Sen. Cruz believes that all children deserve a quality education that gives them the opportunity to succeed. School choice gives students more opportunities and improves public schools, making our schools stronger, more effective, and more accountable to the communities they serve.
Sen. Cruz opposes Common Core because education decisions should be made on the state and local level, where parents and communities can be more involved and find solutions better suited to their kids’ needs."  (From Senator Cruz's campaign website.)

Environment:  He wishes to end regulations on energy production.  He was an advocate for the Keystone pipeline, oil fracking, and offshore drilling.  He says that the energy business is growing rapidly, and could help our economy greatly, if only the people working on it could do so without as many environmental regulations.

Taxes:  Ted Cruz, like most right wing conservatives is for decreased spending in the government, and lower taxes.  He lobbied against raising the debt ceiling, and hopes that a less regulated government can do that.  He also opposes taxing the internet saying that he wants it to remain a free and regulation free resource for the general populace.  He says that taxing the internet which is a mainstay of growth and progress would inhibit that progress. This April he announced that he wished to abolish the IRS altogether.  

Illicit Drug use and regulation:  Now Ted Cruz does not have much in the way of policy concerning this subject and he has not said much concerning it either.  He has stated that because the 'war on drugs' is the law of the land it must be enforced, but that does not mean that he will not try and change that once he is in office.

Pro Choice/Pro Life:  Mr. Cruz is very much Pro Life, and has opposed all pro choice action that has come his way.  He is against contraception as well, and ivf.  He strongly supported Hobby Lobby and their action towards religious freedom in small businesses, trying to receive the right to decide whether they supplied women on staff with contraceptives.

Gun Control:  Ted Cruz is an advocate of the NRA and wishes to abolish "burdensome" regulations on arms.  He strongly supports the second amendment and has voted against bills that add more regulations; as well as authoring a brief on the subject.

Foreign Affairs:  Mr. Cruz takes a hardline view on national security and says we must do everything we can to protect our country.  He has supported legislation that took action against terrorists in Benghazi and against Hamas.  He also supported a bill to re-instate regulations against Iran.  He wants to take a strong militaristic stance against ISIS and terrorism in general.

Immigration:  "As the son of a Cuban immigrant, Sen. Cruz celebrates legal immigration. He has championed measures to secure the border, reform the legal immigration system, and uphold the rule of law. "  He has a lot of firsthand experience in this area having lived in Texas his whole life.  He says that regulating our borders would limit access to criminals that would cross over otherwise.  He does wish to reform immigration to make access to legal immigrants easier.

     Now it is obvious that Ted Cruz is quite a bit less experienced than our last subject, however he does have strong and obvious stances on most of the issues.  Simply because he has not been in the game as long makes it harder to collect a lot of his policy information in depth.  This is an interesting contrast to Hillary Clinton because Mr. Cruz leans as far to the right as Mrs. Clinton does the left.  He is definitly an interesting option.

Next up is Senator Bernie Sanders!

Hillary Clinton

    Mrs. Clinton is certainly the most visible of all of the candidates.  She has held very important and influential offices in the past, including being the First Lady from 1993-2001, Senator of New York from 2001-2009, Secretary of State from 2009-2013, and of course ran for President in the last election in 2008.  While she didn't get the nomination then, many Liberal media sources are calling her a 'shoe in' and 'obvious choice' for the democratic party.  She has in the past been a poster child for the liberal secular feminist agenda, and has made no secret of the fact that she will lean heavily on the feminist vote to secure her victory.

Healthcare: Mrs. Clinton has been very vocal about her belief in a national healthcare system.  So much, that Obamacare that was put in place in 2012 was largely considered a ripoff of her previously proposed 'Hillarycare'.  She had proposed a plan in the 1990's when her husband was President calling it the Clinton Healthcare Plan, then brought it up again in 2008, naming it Hillarycare, and has advocated the healthcare cause ever since.  Her plan focused primarily on nondiscrimination, care whether you could afford it or not, and forming something that was "uniquely American."
       Her plans and policies have focused much on working with taxpayer money to help pharmaceutical companies produce generic drugs cheaper, so they can sell them cheaper.  Also she wanted to make healthcare more affordable and efficient in general, offering things like electronic medical records to help offset costs,  She wished to make chronic diseases a priority; as well as making it possible for kids no matter what tax bracket they are in to receive the care they needed.  Also she wanted to make it impossible for people to be exluded from insurance by preexisting conditions.

Welfare and Social Security (including Medicare and Medicaid):  It is well known that in the case of Hillary Clinton she leans very far to the left on almost every issue.  Welfare is no exception.  She says that the systems are flawed, but they were a very critical step in insuring the future of Americans.  She has advocated equal pay for equal work policies in respect to women and minorities, and has advocated raising the minimum wage.  She has said that community responsibility will only take you so far, and you must have intervention on the federal level to make the most of welfare.  In this line of thought, she is up for reform, but she says (as she does with healthcare) that it has to be big, and all or nothing, or it won't make any difference.

Education:  The new Common Core system was on Mrs. Clinton's agenda from 1994, and she has pushed it heavily in the last couple of years.  She strongly championed the bills instituting national testing, and national standards.

Environment: Environmnetaly, Hillary Clinton is strongly for clean alternative energies, as long as they are not nuclear.  She has opposed nuclear energy staunchly.  However she does say that we need a comprehensive energy plan as soon as possible.  She wants to institute a cap and trade policy that essentially taxes those who have a larger carbon footprint and putting that money to use researching alternative fuels.  She also very much wants to limit toxic material coming into the country attached to things like children's toys and other objects around the household. She stands for clean air, and wishes to fund the EPA in order to reduce pollution and make air safer for people to breath.  She says this would reduce childhood asthma, as well as allergies. She has supported numerous bills cleaning lakes, and rivers of sludge and toxic chemicals.

Illicit Drug Use and Regulation:  Clinton stated that marijuana use should be left up to individual states to decide.  She also has advocated for non-violent drug users to be 'diverted' away from regular prisons and given lighter sentences like parole.  She says that we should still be against hard drugs like meth and cocaine and do everything we can to keep it from being available.

Pro Choice/Pro Life: Mrs. Clinton is decidedly Pro Choice.  She states that abortion should remain legal but "it needs to be safe and rare."  She concedes the point that life may begin at conception, but she believes that the lives of the other people in question should be considered as well, and put at a higher priority.  She has spoken out against China's One Child Law, but on the other hand has been very outspoken about her disagreement with Romania's forced pregnancy laws.  She wishes to have an increase in access to birth control in an effort to reduce unwanted pregnancies and therefore reduce abortions.  Recently she has stated that it is necessary to separate abortion from religious ideals.  She believes it is not a religious or moral issue, but a healthcare one.  In this case she follows closely with the feminist agenda. 

Gun Control:  Clinton has been outspoken on her views about gun control, saying that while she concedes the fact that American's have the right to own firearms, the right has gone to our heads and has fallen out of balance.  She says we must 'reign in'  what we have overdone in terms of the right to bear arms.  She says it would be better to amend that statement to something like 'we have the right to bear arms in certain circumstances'; citing the fact that some recent shootings have been over silly things like playing music too loud or texting.  She claims that local governments should take this issue, and create their own regulations according to their populace, but also says that we should do everything we can to keep the firearms out of the hands of criminals.  

Foreign Affairs:  She wishes to take a hard line on countries like Russia and China in terms of their violent acts toward other countries like Georgia and Tibet.  Diplomacy is her main pedestal and she does not wish to use the military for her ends.  She has stated that extending NATO to countries like Ukraine and Georgia would be a good idea, and advocates highly peacekeeping missions.  

Immigration:  Mrs. Clinton is strongly in favor of immigration reform, but she says like healthcare, education, and welfare, it has to be comprehensive.  Halfway measures will not hold up in the long run.  She said that things like offering illegal immigrants diver's licenses was a start, but something even bigger would have to be done.  She is in favor of making the strenuous process of entering the United States as a new citizen easier, and wants to "Introduce a path to earn citizenship in the first 100 days".  

     Altogether Hillary Clinton has a very liberal approach, although she has in recent years moved more towards the middle, possibly in preparation for the upcoming election.  She is a very experienced candidate to say the least, and is very outspoken, opinionated, and passionate about a variety of subjects.  
    Most information about this candidate has been found at www.ontheissues.org  and I encourage you to visit the website to learn more about Mrs. Clinton and the other candidates on these issues.  I have given simply a summary of all the issues here, just to give an idea of  what they are like as legislators.  
     Next week I will be analyzing Ted Cruz, so stay tuned!

Presidential Election

     It has come to my attention that no obvious website has compared the newly announced presidential candidates side by side.  Therefore it is my intention to take each candidate, hopefully one a week, in order to compare them on hot button issues.  I will try my best to present them in an unbiased light.  I will simply present the facts as I see them.  The issues I chose depend on prevalence in the media and immediate relevance to Americans.  

1.  Healthcare

2. Welfare and Social Security (including medicare and medicaid.)

3. Education

4. Enviroment including Global Climate change, alternate fuels, and natural distress as in the California Drought.

5.  Taxes

6.  Illicit drug use and regulation.

7.  Pro choice/ pro life.

8.  Gun Control

9.  Foreign affairs

10.  Immigration. 

     The article that follows will present an analysis of Hilary Clinton's views, as she is the most obvious candidate at this point.  My goal for this series of articles is to put forward information of all the candidates so you can see it all in one place, and hopefully make your choice easier.  

On Immigration

Now many people of late have been speaking of the new immigration plan that Obama has proposed, and it has quite a large number of them up in arms and furious. The plan is, according to the New York Times this:

"Up to four million undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least five years can apply for a program that protects them from deportation and allows those with no criminal record to work legally in the country".


You can read the full article here for more information.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/us/politics/obamacare-unlikely-for-undocumented-immigrants.html?_r=0


Now that we have all, or at least a part of the information, it is time to discuss. I believe that everyone would agree to the statement that immigration has been in dire need of reform for a very long time. The system that we have simply does not work. And I hesitate to say it, but on one point at least in this issue Obama is correct. He did in fact give the Republican side plenty of time to propose a plan of there own. They have had time for years to try and put something through. In fact the last time anything was done about the issue was in 1996 with the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which addressed border enforcement and the use of social programs by immigrants.


"http://www.history.com/topics/us-immigration-since-1965 (Check out this website for more information on the history of immigration throughout the years.)


The second plan of note was proposed in 2007 by President Bush, The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007. The plan was never even voted on.



The sheer lack of any kind of movement in this area speaks to the sincerity of those advocating the cause, and those who have claimed that they do in fact care about it. If the Republican party had in fact grasped the chance to take the matter into their own hands in the last couple of years, or *gasp* tried to work with the democratic party in finding a solution that perhaps finds a way for both parties to be happy with an immigration bill, then President Obama may not have felt like he needed to act with such authority.



This brings me to another point. Several of the founding fathers say in their writings that the last thing they want for their new republic is a two party system like that of England. They have discovered that it in fact causes more problems than it answers. George Washington himself warned that:

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders & miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security & repose in the absolute power of an Individual: and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty." (http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Baneful_Parties.htm)



From an observers point of view it seems that Washington was right. Especially in this situation it can be seen very clearly that party lines are getting in the way of running the nation in a compassionate and ethical way. But for some reason we just can't seem to shake the system. The Electoral College itself was created to balance out these revenge driven politics, but even so, the vote is still decided in the end by party differences.



Immigration itself is something that should be a no-brainer. Our country was built on the backs of immigrants. Why should we now discourage those who wish to make it in the world by not letting them share in our beautiful country and our idealistic freedom?

There is something here that I can't quite taste, something trying to get out of my brain, some obscure, and relevant, and original words that can't quite worm their way into my consciousness. This is my curse, to be blessed with a talent but be unable to access it. I have a power, but no knowledge of the mechanics of using it. I have things running through my brain and streams of knowledge that I can't drink from. What is clawing at the inside of my skull just trying to be heard over the screaming details of everyday life? Many things are fortunate but this is not one of them. I have an eloquence but nothing to use it on. My creativity is stifled only by the limits of my own imagination. I think of things, but they are only things that I have seen already in some shape or another from the minds of those smarter and better than me. flashes of Tolkien, and Twain and Poe, and Homer. All of these things I first think of and am deceived that they might be mine, but when the surface is scratched it is simply another copy of the great people that came before. Is there anything original left in my head?   

Honestly I don't know what to believe about what has been going on in Ferguson right now.  There are a lot of rumors and don't want to place blame where it doesn't belong.  However in an almost unimaginable bout of violence that seems to be turning into a race riot, the people of Ferguson seem to be at the end of their respective ropes.  Half of the reports I have been hearing are demonizing the people and the other half do the same to the police force.  My question is, why aren't people talking about this?
      When shootings in schools occur it is all over the news, all over facebook, and pretty much every other media outlet in existence,  why is this any different?  Is it because of the color of the skin of the people involved?  If so it also begs the question; haven't we gotten past that already?  Racism is old news folks, and there is no excuse that we as human beings can make for ourselves if these prejudices still hold water.  The fact that the KKK is involved in the matter makes it even worse, solidifying the issue into one of race and if anything proving that the police force with whom they are in support are indeed at fault.
      All I can say at this point is that those who have been affected by the violence in any way are in my thoughts and prayers, and I ask for all those who might read this to feel the same.  Whether the people involved are at fault or not please don't let hatred of the act translate into hatred of the person.  Who knows what is going on in the heads of those doing wrong.  It might be panic or misunderstanding, or confusion and these people deserve prayers instead of hate.  Peace, and love should be the reaction to these events instead of hatred.  It may sound a bit 'hippy' of me to say this but maybe that's what we need right now.
       I stand in support of all those hurt, killed, or traumatized by the events and hope that they will eventually be able to overcome what has happened.  

"It is the duty of an educated man to state the obvious"

                                          -William Shakespeare

       I will add to Mr. Shakespeare's quote if I may.  It is the duty of an educated person to state the obvious even if the obvious is something no one else wants to admit.  I would go even further to say especially if the obvious is something no one else wants to admit.  There are many truths in the world that people simply brush over, or ignore completely, but that doesn't make them any less of the truth.

So why did I just rant about the obvious?  Because it has been something weighing on my mind recently, something that I just can't shake.   This thinking was inspired by Pope Francis and his Apostolic Exhortation.  He focuses so much on helping the poor and needy before ourselves.  Honestly it made me feel bad because here I am just finishing four full years of expensive education and I haven't made a difference in any impoverished persons livelihood at all.  But that is when the Shakespeare quote came to me, and I realized it says educated man.  I am looking at it now in a more positive light.  The reason that I received an education perhaps this wonderful is in fact to realize the problems in this world, and maybe, just maybe to help fix them.  There's not much I really can do at the moment, but as my life continues I can help more. 

This brings me to my second point.  Why are those who can, not helping more right now?