A Discussion About Our President - Based upon Promises to Keep by Joe Biden - Continuing

 

I've been reading Promises to Keep off and on for weeks and have just a few pages to finish this weekend. As I read, I felt more and more aware of just how much knowledge and experience Joe Biden has! And how lucky we are to have this man as our president at this time in America...

First, again, I want to establish myself as a political animal. I am

"It was more about doing good
 than being good."

now a confirmed democrat--for Biden, but for many years of my life, in fact, probably the first six decades, I was a cat...Yes, a cat! You know, one who sleeps through life, eating when fed, or if feral, going out to search for food when hungry... Specifically, I knew who was president and some of the things happening, but in a full-time job that included long hours and much pressure, and from which I ultimately went into job burnout and walked out, well, I didn't have the time or take the time to know what was happening nationally and world-wide...

Probably just like the majority of Americans, right? Anyway, just because I wasn't sure I wanted to be a jackass, so I went out to google the meaning...and found this instead! LOL  I predict most of us will be just as confused except that the creator had been bullied and apparently felt we, as citizens, may often think of politicians as bullies? Let me know if you can add to this tail...LOL

Anyway, what I discovered more and more is that my choice for our president has some really sound basis for doing so--at least from my personal opinion. Consider this issue...even before I read this book, I was opposed to solicitation of funds for candidates from the citizens! Still am, for that matter, although I did break down and contribute to Biden...because of fear and my assurance that he was the right man at this time! My point of reference was my background in Personnel and then in academic administration where the university, itself, paid for advertising and interviewing potential candidates. To me, this made sense. We all had already contributed to the government through taxes. So, why wasn't our taxes used to search and seek out those to fill vacant positions. While I recognize that the government is far larger than the average corporation, it is also a decentralized organization, each with individual budget allocations...so the head of each unit would need to plan for replacement of personnel, just as part of the normal annual budget planning. Believe me, it is really not a hard process to develop and operate an active personal services budget!

I admit though that I was surprised to see that Biden had written on this same subject!

Jim Eastland and I got off to a less auspicious start. I got crossways with him right away—on campaign finance reform. One of the few issues I really dug into my first year was election financing. There has been constant public plaint about public office being bought by big money and big corporations. And it’s a justifiable concern. 

Back in 1973 the liberals in the Senate were calling for reform along the lines of setting strict limits on individual and corporate campaign donations. But with another freshman, Dick Clark of Iowa, I was making the pitch for total public financing of elections, and Mansfield asked me to make a presentation about our proposal in the Democratic caucus. 

Freshmen rarely spoke in caucus, but I made my pitch. Once I got on a roll, I just kept going. Public confidence in the process was eroding with every election cycle, I reminded my Democratic colleagues, and the scandals surrounding the Nixon reelection campaign finances had been a new low point. Public financing was a way to win back the trust. We would never again have to worry about who our contributors were or what high crimes and misdemeanors stuck to them. It would free us all. We’d be beholden to no individual and no interest group. We’d be answerable to our true constituents only—the American people. 

And our proposal was simple: The government would finance every congressional election. A sitting officeholder, like those of us in the room, would get a certain amount of funding to work with, and because of the obvious advantages of incumbency, challengers would get that same amount plus an extra 10 percent. A minimal amount—a few dollars—from every tax return could easily fund federal elections, I explained. I’d done my homework; I had the math. When I finished talking and sat down, there was silence.

“Any comments?” Mansfield asked the room. Still dead silence. Nobody said a word. The senior leadership—Bob Byrd, Daniel Inouye, and Eastland—sat rock still at the front table. Eastland was chewing hard on his cigar. 

Later that day, in the cloakroom, Warren Magnusson literally yelled at me: “Biden, goddammit, get over here…. I want you to cut the crap. Shut it down. I didn’t spend thirty years in the U.S. Senate to give away my seat to some sniveling little jerk who got 10 percent more money than me.” 

But in the caucus that day, after the interminable silence, it was Eastland—and Eastland alone—who finally spoke up. “They tell me you’re the youngest man in the history of America ever elected to the U.S. Senate,” Eastland said, still chomping on his cigar. Actually, I was the second youngest ever elected, but it didn’t seem a good time to correct him. “Y’all keep making speeches like you made today,” Eastland continued, “and you gonna be the youngest one-term senator in the history of America.” 

With that Mansfield banged the gavel: “Adjourned!”

I REMEMBER FEELING that day like I was playing high school football again and I’d just taken my first tough hit of the season. Now I had to prove I wasn’t going to stay down. Game on. Let’s go. I was respectful of my colleagues, but I was not intimidated. I understood how improbable it would be to push through public financing of campaigns: When a rabidly conservative southerner like Eastland and a liberal westerner like Magnusson agreed on something with that sort of vigor, I knew I wasn’t going to find much support. But I didn’t back off; I was determined to push this. 

A few weeks later I testified before the Senate Rules and Administration Subcommittee on Privileges and Elections. And I was perfectly candid. I went on the record about my experiences with the machinists union and the wealthy investors in Delaware and the sense I got that their donations to my Senate campaign came with strings attached. I told the subcommittee members I believed the system turned off people who really wanted to be involved: “The small contributor, in my opinion, feels what in the hell difference does it make whether I make the small contribution because those Democrats are the product of big labor and those Republicans are the product of big business.” And I told them that we public officials were being ripped off by the system, too: “There is a great deal of pressure, in the one particular area at least, to prostitute our ideas, if not our integrity.” 

I believed then that real campaign finance reform is the fastest way to restore some measure of public confidence in the system. Nothing would do more to bind politicians to the average citizen than a guarantee of clean elections. Thirty-five years later I still believe that.

Well, folks, I have to say I was laughing in glee when I came upon this first "proposal" from our now President... No, he was not successful then or at any time since, but that did not change how he and I...and maybe YOU, feel about big money buying our government positions?

Consider the former president. Not only was big money following him, but he also didn't give up any ownership of businesses that could be controversial. And we all learned about how he would go weekly to golf or to his present home in Florida where he would invite people for meetings and thus bring big bucks not only for the meetings but for housing... Surely you are aware that many hotels in many areas complained that they weren't even able to attempt to solicit people to stay at their facilities, given that the "understanding" was clear where they would be staying... Of course, there was the excessive budget used for the presidential inauguration ball(s), the government rental of property in Trump Tower, and, of course, the infamous reason for his second impeachment when he attempted to bargain government funds in order for the president of Ukraine conducting an investigation on Biden's son's employment there. In face, there were routine issues that arrived for him and his staff that were questionable...yet never addressed! 

I won't go into all of the other ethics issues that took place while he was in office, including, for instance, a deal for his daughter, Ivanka's business, with the Chinese, based upon their "visiting" there for governmental reasons...

But, worse, let's look at what has happened since The Big Lie took control of the republican party... Trump continues to solicit donations from his followers for this or that "lie" that he has been charged with...and millions are rolling in, even while so many criminal charges are underway, including the latest on the Trump Organization which has resulted in the chief financial officer being indicated and convicted...that it is hard for us to even keep track... Tell me, who would reasonably expect to be paying for legal fees on his crimes? Only those who have denied truth and work to undermine today's democratic nation!

And, of course, I should include the millions that were solicited for a "wall" by his crony, Steve Bannon... who has also been indicted for fraud... 

In my opinion, the real reason for their to be republican anger by citizens in the continued cry for money TO COVER LEGAL EXPENSES FOR HIS AND OTHER'S LIES! 

Go figure...I can't, for the life of me, wonder how in the world that so many can have been conned, so easily...while so many of us have seen right through the use of government funds for personal, conflict-of-interest purposes... You may recall that the Ethics director resigned shortly after Trump took office, because he could see that "ethics" was never part of any equation and figured he was going to be out of a job anyway, if he "tried" to do his job...

Money buys power. In my opinion, it has resulted in corruption for many that are in office and/or seeking office.  Men like Doug Mastriano and "Dr. Oz" who are running in Pennsylvania!!! They are running for one reason... while John Fetterman, for instance, while in state office, refused to use state money to open the house he could have had, and instead stay in his own home... While the governor candidate has acted on behalf of those, for instance, who had been sexually abused and who had suffered without action until Josh Shapiro took on the difficult task of dealing with proof, the concurrent pain, yet the need for recognition by those victims... This is just one of the things he has tackled quietly in PA... and, for this one, caring, choice to recognize this great need  is enough...I'd take him over anybody else from the republican party! We surely don't need men who are in it for the money--for the power--and for their own ego! One Trump was enough...be careful... do your research, check out their character, their actions, and their background... check out multiple news sources if you have concerns... I did! You Should be sure that those you vote for will bring about those types of actions that Biden has accomplished in such a short time, even though it seems long, doesn't it?

And if you don't know already what accomplishments have been made by Biden's administration, you aren't, in my opinion, watching the right news sources... Change your channels and discover MORE!

Ruminating On The Latest January 6th Hearing...and Looking for Words of Encouragement... The Beginning

 

It's been a while since I've had such an overt God Incident as I began to write. First, I was planning to go in one direction, but as soon as I sat down, I heard the song, Abide With Me through the Holy Spirit. Then when I got to the YouTube site, my eyes were immediately drawn to the name of the above, second, video, Abide in God's Presence Always... 

It just might mean that I...and perhaps you(?) needed to hear all of these words about God abiding in us...always... and I Give Thanks for that gentle nudge of comfort and security...

On the other hand, I was originally thinking of a man of God whose words I was reading late yesterday...

When you intervene, 

you have to stand up and take the consequences.

FROM THE TIME I was little I had a picture in my head of the sort of man I wanted to become, a picture filled in by my mom and dad, by the teachings of the Catholic schools I attended, by stories I heard about our family hero, Uncle Bosie, a pilot who was shot down in World War II, and by a faith in the size of my own future. During my adolescent and college years, men and women were changing the country—Martin Luther King Jr.,

John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy—and I was swept up in their eloquence, their conviction, the sheer size of their improbable dreams. I knew I wanted to be a part of the change. I didn’t know how. I had no plan, but I knew. And as it turned out, surprising political opportunities opened up for me when I was a young man. When they did, I was not shy about pursuing them, because I already had a picture of what I had to do—how I had to conduct myself—to take advantage of them...

“People don’t know who or what to believe in—and, most of all, they are afraid to believe in politicians,” I told the crowd at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington when I announced my candidacy for the Senate in 1972. We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think…. Our failure in recent years has not been the failure of the people to meet the challenges placed before them, but rather the failure of both our great political parties to place those challenges honestly and courageously before the people, and to trust the willingness of the people to do the things that really need to be done…. We all know—or at least we are told continually—that we are a divided people. And we know there’s a degree of truth in it. We have too often allowed our differences to prevail among us. We have too often allowed ambitious men to play off those differences for political gain. We have too often retreated behind our differences when no one really tried to lead us beyond them. 

But all our differences hardly measure up to the values we all hold in common…. I am running for the Senate because…I want to make the system work again, and I am convinced that is what all Americans really want. I believed that in 1972; I still believe it today. Our nation’s founders framed a political system of uncommon genius, and generation after generation of Americans has used that system to make the country more fair, more just, more welcoming, more committed to individual rights. The United States has the finest and fairest system of governing the world has ever known. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with the system; it’s up to each of us to do our part to make it work. It’s been my privilege to serve that purpose. I’ve been a United States senator from Delaware more than half my life. And after almost thirty-five years I’m more passionate about the job and more committed to what I’m doing than I’ve been in my entire career. Any day of the week you can read or hear about the lamentable state of our nation’s politics, about our bitter and partisan party divisions, about the regrettable coarseness of the discourse. I don’t deny it, but from inside the arena none of it feels irreversible or fatal. We can always do better. I believe that, or I wouldn’t still be in politics. In fact, I sense a greater opportunity today than any time in my career. Maybe it’s because after all these years, people actually listen to me...

It felt like a sacred place when I got there, and I’ve never lost that feeling. Thirty-five years later I still get goose bumps when I come out of Union Station and see the Capitol dome. I started at the bottom, dead last in seniority, with an office so small that people on my staff had to get up and stand sideways just so somebody could open the front door. At the time I had no intention of serving more than six months. But I lasted long enough to serve, at different times, as chairman of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees. Things have changed in my six terms, for better and for worse. I served with the last of the southern segregationists, but I was there to see Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama sworn in. There was not a single woman in the Senate in 1973. Today there are sixteen, and one of them has a real shot at the presidency. 

In committee rooms, conference rooms, the cloakroom, and on the floor of the Senate itself, I’ve witnessed the decline of common decency and a growing unwillingness of colleagues to try to see the world through another’s eyes. I’ve seen a rise in partisanship and the rising power of money in both campaigns and governance. But I’ve also seen a thousand small kindnesses from one side of the aisle to the other and hundreds of acts of personal and political courage. The rules and traditions of the Senate have a way of asking the best of the men and women who serve. Back in the early days of my first term, when the courts ordered President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes, the government appeared headed toward a constitutional crisis. The president asked Senator John Stennis to run interference for him, to listen to the tapes, summarize them for his colleagues, but keep them away from the full Senate. Stennis demurred. He would not run interference for the executive branch; the tapes should be available to all. 

John Stennis acted on principle to uphold the Constitution. I remember what he said in the Democratic caucus that day: “I’ve thought long and hard on what my obligation is. I’ve decided what I’m honor bound to do…and I’ve decided I am a Senate man. I am not the president’s man. Therefore, I will not listen to the tapes. I am a man of the Senate.” I’m proud to say I am a Senate man, too. The job plays to my strengths and to my deepest beliefs. I serve the citizens of Delaware, but I also serve the Constitution and the nation. George Washington called the Senate a “cooling” institution, conceived to operate outside the political expediencies of the moment. The nation’s founding documents impel United States senators to take the long view in both national and international affairs; to offer on every issue what wisdom and intelligence we bring collectively and individually; to protect the minority from destructive passions of the majority; and to keep an eye fixed on any president who reaches beyond the limits of his or her power. The Senate was designed to play this independent and moderating role, and it is a solemn duty and responsibility that transcends the partisan disputes of any day or any decade. 

AS A UNITED STATES senator I’ve watched (and played some small part in) history: the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, the Bork nomination, the fall of the Berlin wall, the reunification of Germany, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 9/11, two wars in Iraq, a presidential impeachment, a presidential resignation, and a presidential election decided by the Supreme Court. I have been in war zones across the world and have seen genocide up close. I have sat face-to-face for hard talk with Kosygin, Khadafy, Helmut Schmidt, Sadat, Mubarak, and Milosevic. I’ve seen Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and two Bushes wrestle with the presidency. I ran my own race for president and had to pick up the pieces after the train wreck…then nearly died from a cranial aneurysm. In the aftermath I had to remake my health, my reputation, and my career in the Senate. The years since then have been my most rewarding. I count my role in helping to end genocide in the Balkans and in securing the passage of the Violence Against Women Act as my proudest moments in public life. If I had accomplished nothing else (and if I accomplish nothing more), for me those two efforts redeem every second of difficulty and doubt in my long career. 

I’ve learned plenty about myself over the years, but I believe I’ve learned even more important lessons about the American people—about their point of particular pride. Just after I won my first election to the Senate in 1972, I used to say I had great faith in the American people—and I really meant it. I wasn’t just saying it in speeches; it was pillow talk with my wife. I was so proud of the race we ran in 1972; it was honest, straightforward, and clean. I really believed I had lived up to my grandpop’s admonitions. The Biden for Senate campaign meant to preserve the integrity of politics, and I felt that we’d been vindicated for that effort. I’d talk about it with my wife, Neilia, in our big new house: “I do, Neilia. I really do. I have great faith in the American people.” Neilia was always more clear-eyed than I am. “Joey,” she said, “I wonder how you would have felt if you lost?” 

Full disclosure: I do not have absolute faith in the judgment and wisdom of the American people. We’re all human, and we can all be misled. When leaders don’t level with citizens, we can’t expect them to make good judgments. But I do have absolute faith in the heart of the American people. The greatest resource in this country is the grit, the resolve, the courage, the basic decency, and the stubborn pride of its citizens. I know thousands of ordinary Americans, faced with burdens that would break many of us, who get up every single day and put one foot in front of the other and make it work. Most do it without demanding special favors or pity, even while the more fortunate among us stand willing to help ease those burdens. I’m convinced of the generosity, determination, and capabilities of our fellow Americans. I’ve seen it over and over, but it came home to me dramatically in the hours after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The planes hit while I was on the train from Wilmington to Washington, and when I came out of Union Station that morning, I could see a haze of smoke rising from the Pentagon across the Potomac. 

It was a morning of surreal stillness. There was almost no breeze. It was so quiet, I could hear myself breathe as I walked toward the Capitol dome. I was struck by the warm glow of sun on my face and the sharpness of the cobalt blue sky, which was strangely unmarred by air traffic. But beneath the calm there was a gathering feeling of panic on the ground in Washington. 

The Capitol building had already been evacuated. Senators, House members, and their staffs were milling around the park between the Capitol and Union Station. Some were talking on cell phones. Some were already arguing about the need for funding Reagan’s Star Wars missile defense system. The Capitol police refused to let anybody back into the building, but they were offering briefings for a select group of elected officials at a command post on the top floor of a four-story building behind the Senate offices. Most members were camping out on the floor below. So I was shuttling back and forth between floors, trying to persuade anyone who would listen that we should get back in session and show the American people we were taking care of business. Nobody would budge; leaders in both parties were being told they should be prepared to leave town. Congressman Bob Brady, who had also been pushing our colleagues to get back in session, finally gave up in disgust. He thought he might be able to do some good back in his home district in Philadelphia, and he offered to drop me in Wilmington on the way. On the way out, Brady and I could sense the panic rising as we walked through scores of reporters outside the building; they were understandably anxious to get some word of what was happening. 

“Senator Biden,” a reporter from ABC said to me, “senators I’ve spoken to and members of Congress as well have said we are now at war. Senator Shelby, who is the ranking member on the intelligence committee, has said we are now essentially at war. We have to be on a war footing. And Senator Chuck Hagel says we have to start securing our borders, locking down our airports, revisiting the way we protect our public institutions. What about that?” 

“I hope that’s not true,” I told her and her listening audience. I would say it another way. I would say we’ve come face-to-face with a reality. A reality we knew existed and we knew was possible. A reality that has happened to varying degrees in other countries. But if in fact, in order to respond to that reality, we have to alter our civil liberties, change the way we function, then we have truly lost the war…. The way to conduct the war is to demonstrate that your civil liberties, your civil rights, your ability to be free and walk and move around in fact are not fundamentally altered…. There are a lot of things we can do though to diminish significantly the possibility of this happening again without changing our character as a nation…. This nation is too big, too strong, too united, too much a power in terms of our cohesion and our values to let this break us apart. And it won’t happen. It won’t happen. 

By then the Senate and House leadership had been convinced to board helicopters for a flight to a secure location in West Virginia. The vice president had been spirited away to an undisclosed hideaway. The president was flying from safe spot to safe spot on Air Force One; he’d been convinced it was too dangerous to come back to D.C. The Twin Towers had collapsed by the time we got on the road toward Wilmington, and the death estimates in New York were five, six, seven thousand—maybe more. 

But when I got home and put on the television, I saw that the American heart was still beating strong. Doctors and nurses were standing by at hospitals in New York City, ready to treat the wounded. Snaking through the streets and up the avenues were long lines of New Yorkers waiting to give their blood, even though word was being passed that no more blood was needed. I could see it in their faces: They were hungry to do something, anything. Nobody was talking about war footings or payback. They just wanted to do their part. That was the day that reminded me that even in a moment of almost total silence from their leaders in Washington, Americans would rise to the occasion. Watching those people on the blood lines, I was convinced the country would get up off the mat, face the new challenge head-on, and emerge stronger for having done it. 

To me this is the first principle of life, the foundational principle, and a lesson you can’t learn at the feet of any wise man: Get up! The art of living is simply getting up after you’ve been knocked down. It’s a lesson taught by example and learned in the doing...

As I opened the ebook of Promises to Keep, I realized that, once again, I was being led to go to this book when I needed to read words of encouragement about things happening in America these days...

Yesterday, listening to another hearing describing the January 6 Insurrection, was illuminating... I heard and saw the actions of those who were intent on using and spreading lies in order to gain or retain power--the power of a political position which could be used to help America...or to gain personal power. It was obvious as we learned about the "unhinged" meeting that we have two distinct groups of people in relation to all that is detrimentally happening now... Those that will do anything or say anything in order to gain personal prestige and recognition from an individual in power... And those who actually believed in that individual in power.

It's the latter group that was truly heartbreaking to listen to and consider...

I watched as two men spoke about their involvement. The first was a past member of a known militia group who participated in the Insurrection. He spoke about the leader working to increase his own exposure and power...

The second man spoke of his believing the president as he lied about election fraud, stating that he went to the Capitol because his president told him to, but once he got there he began to question what was going on...and finally left when the then president told them to leave. He told of being charged, losing his job and how his life had been turned upside down. I couldn't help but notice how his wife would often lift her lip as in derision or contempt... Perhaps she felt that the committee--or somebody--should have stopped Trump from his actions, before it was too late...? We may never know just how many lives have been affected detrimentally by the former president...

And, for many, things are still occurring that are initiated by the far-right republican party members... They have seen how "easy" it is to dupe some Americans and so they keep on trying to lie and steal our lives in one way or another...That is the real theft happening daily!

For me, for instance, it is hard to get excited about the supposed changes related to guns...while, at the same time, it was being negotiated, there were more children and adults murdered by assault guns in particular. It is hard to get excited about some small measure of change, while at the same time, the very real danger is still happening daily! Both related to guns and personal women's health and other types of freedoms once gained but now being targeted!

                     11-year-old rape victim couldn't have abortion under new Ohio law

It's hard, I know, trying to watch, look, and listen...striving to determine the facts, the truth... But, like Joe Biden said at one time, Get up! Allow yourself to doubt, to face the idea that you can be wrong...and it's alright to be wrong...as long as you then look for the truth... Let's work on that idea...together! O.K.?

God Bless

Glenda