The Danger in a Voter Surge Against Trumpism
By James Donahue
I voted a straight Democratic Party ticket this week. I did it out of personal anger at what a gang of Trump followers in Washington are saying, doing and threatening to do to our Democratic system. But I know a shift that gives the Democratic Party total control of our government offers extreme dangers too.
I remember what happened when Lyndon Johnson gained total control of the nation because of a sympathy vote following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He instituted a Guns and Butter policy that escalated an unnecessary war in Vietnam, created CETA, a massive handout of money to state and local governments and made a general mess of things on the home front. Little towns that were getting by with one police officer, for example, suddenly had access to enough money to hire more police and buy more patrol cars and create an environment of “them and us.”
All phases of state and local government quickly found creative ways to cash in on CETA. Additional staff was hired. The war on drugs was escalated. State, county and city budgets escalated. Then the financial burden fell on local taxpayers when the federal cash windfall dried up. After the financial crash of 2008 it all hit the fan. There were massive cuts in public services when property taxes failed to meet demands. This problem is still haunting us and getting worse under excessive military spending coupled with big tax cuts awarded big corporations and the wealthy individuals feeding the Washington political machine.
What is missing in Washington and in many state governments now is political balance, with representatives of both parties working together to find compromise in major spending decisions. For example we cannot feed more and more of our tax dollars into the military industrial complex at the cost of stripping the poor, homeless, elderly and sick of socialistic assistance. Feeding the greedy pockets of gangsters is not the answer to this nation’s problems.
Placing an irrational personality like Donald Trump in the White House is stirring the anger of a lot of people. And the potential repercussions at the polls may come back to haunt us yet again.
By James Donahue
I voted a straight Democratic Party ticket this week. I did it out of personal anger at what a gang of Trump followers in Washington are saying, doing and threatening to do to our Democratic system. But I know a shift that gives the Democratic Party total control of our government offers extreme dangers too.
I remember what happened when Lyndon Johnson gained total control of the nation because of a sympathy vote following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He instituted a Guns and Butter policy that escalated an unnecessary war in Vietnam, created CETA, a massive handout of money to state and local governments and made a general mess of things on the home front. Little towns that were getting by with one police officer, for example, suddenly had access to enough money to hire more police and buy more patrol cars and create an environment of “them and us.”
All phases of state and local government quickly found creative ways to cash in on CETA. Additional staff was hired. The war on drugs was escalated. State, county and city budgets escalated. Then the financial burden fell on local taxpayers when the federal cash windfall dried up. After the financial crash of 2008 it all hit the fan. There were massive cuts in public services when property taxes failed to meet demands. This problem is still haunting us and getting worse under excessive military spending coupled with big tax cuts awarded big corporations and the wealthy individuals feeding the Washington political machine.
What is missing in Washington and in many state governments now is political balance, with representatives of both parties working together to find compromise in major spending decisions. For example we cannot feed more and more of our tax dollars into the military industrial complex at the cost of stripping the poor, homeless, elderly and sick of socialistic assistance. Feeding the greedy pockets of gangsters is not the answer to this nation’s problems.
Placing an irrational personality like Donald Trump in the White House is stirring the anger of a lot of people. And the potential repercussions at the polls may come back to haunt us yet again.