Politics

Indictments from the January 6th Uprising

|

Indictments from the January 6th Uprising

The GW Program on Extremism has been tracking court cases from the January 6th Uprising where angry pro-Trump protestors overwhelmed the US Capitol Police, swarming the building, damaging property and leading to heart attacks and other injuries of government workers ill prepared for such a large angry crowd. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at this data and make a random dot-plot map of the indictments to see where the criminal cases were, and provide an interesting visual perspective on the wide-spread participants in the protest from across the nation.

You can get the source data here: https://extremism.gwu.edu/Capitol-Hill-Cases

To be clear, Donald John Trump is one of our nation's biggest jerks, and he got a lot of ordinary, often working-class people in trouble with the law over his asinine protest, over the election he lost, mainly due to his incompetent handling of the Coronavirus Pandemic that lead to hundreds of thousands of Americans dying and millions getting sick. Competence matters in our elected officials, especially our President, and I can't imagine Joe Biden would ever get such an angry mob of protestors amped up to the point where they destroyed property or cause personal or other injury. Protests are an important part of democracy, but they shouldn't result in protestors getting injured, arrested, prosecuted -- nor should they lead to property damage or injury and death to the government workers.

Do you support Trump?

|

Youtube Ad from the Donald Trump Campaign: Do you support Trump?

The answer is absolutely not. The guy has proven himself to be a complete buffoon, really not worthy of the presidency. Some people grow into the job, including celebrities and the alike. But the president has proven that he is unable to grow into the job and he’s hardly a reliable conservative to boot. His response to COVID-19 has been a disaster, his stance on the international stage has made our country a laughing stock. We need somebody who listens to scientists and experts for guidance, not somebody who is more interested in ideology then practical solutions to our problems.

Kathy Houchul’s Upstate Problem

|

Kathy Houchul’s Upstate Problem

New York State rarely elects governors from Upstate, especially not Western NY. The last elected Upstate Governor was either George Pataki or Franklin Roosevelt, depending on what you consider to be Upstate and both lived in the Metropolitan-area, just a short ride on the Metro North to New York City.

There is no law prohibiting Governor’s from hailing from Upstate but the population is heavily downstate, with nearly 7 in ten 10 New Yorkers residing in the metro area, which George Pataki and Roosevelt, along with all other governors in the past century hail from.

Western New York is far from New York City. Not just distance wise but culturally too. It’s becoming more and more Republican too, especially the rural areas. Kathy Houchul doesn’t hail from Buffalo or Niagara Falls, she was a town council member in Hamburg, and she went on to represent a fairly conservative suburban district in Congress with the endorsement of the NRA.

With political polarization these days I doubt many Western NYers will end up crossing party lines to vote for Houchul just because she is a local favorite. She will probably do as well as Cuomo did in Western NY but but not much better. But can she motivate people in New York City to vote for her in the numbers she needs? Or will many democrats just sit this one out, at best indifferent to that sort of conservative Upstater on the top of the ballot? After all, the New York State elections will be largely decided in the suburbs as that is where the most swing voters live.

New York City suburbs are getting bluer although recent off year elections see that trend slowing. Crime is up in the suburbs, especially property crime and nobody wants their hard earned property stolen or damaged. Hometown advantage and decades of knowledge of suburban politics for Lee Zeldin may help him better connect with voters fed up with incumbents in these inflationary times with high gas prices.

Politics is for loosers 🤡

|

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again – politics is for losers.

Often, I see people posting on social media about politics. People are angry; they want change, they want their voices heard. But they are just shouting into the wilderness – yelling at their television or leaving snarky Facebook comments won’t change a thing. It might feel good to be morally virtuous, but it’s ultimately a self-defeating behavior.

Now, it’s not to say that one shouldn’t pay attention to politics in the sense that one should always be gleaming for ways to advance their own interests. Government has a lot of money and offers a lot of little-used services, often a bit hidden. It’s always good to look at new angles to see how you can maximize your own advantage. But it’s not a big piece of legislation that will make your life better or a specific party winning a political office. It’s the little things that you can exploit for personal advantage.

When your not a loser, your focus is about manipulating the system in small ways to make your life better. Maybe it’s a patronage job that brings home the big bucks. Maybe it’s the zoning or permit you get by developing a relationship with the planning or zoning board. Or the one denied to your competitors, giving you a strategic advantage. There is a lot out there in the system, if you know how to play it.

People should stop thinking about how they can improve their community, and focus more how they can improve their own lives. Maybe more people need to ask the question, not what can I do for my country, but instead, what can for my country do for me?