Here I post my thoughts that don’t necessarily relate to the arts or to creativity, but instead deal with those topics that we don’t speak of in polite company.

Review of The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy by Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter

Added April 25, 2023

The last decade or so, I’ve been increasingly disillusioned by the way major candidates are chosen in United States national elections. It seems no one has a chance of winning unless he/she is the nominee of the Republican or the Democratic party. And also the party promotes not the best candidate, but the one who has the best chance of beating his/her opponent.

Before the 2016 election, the Republicans had a huge field of candidates, all of whom bowed out under pressure from the party to defer to Trump (although several would have made a better president). Similarly, in 2020, numerous candidates for the Democrats were weeded out to promote Biden (though some might have been more effective as chief executive).

It feels like we hardly get a choice. Most often, we’re stuck voting for the lesser evil of two unfavorite nominees.

And each new Congress, instead of implementing and improving legislation, repeals and replaces the work of the last Congress, or worse—produces gridlock and inaction.

We’re stuck. How do we get out of this rut?

In The Politics Industry, which was published in 2020, Gehl and Porter promote two innovations that they believe will improve out elections system. They call the book “a road map for breaking partisan gridlock and saving our democracy.”

The first innovation involves primaries and is called Final-Five Voting. Instead of voting for one of your party’s pool of candidates, what if you got to consider everyone who’s running, regardless of party affiliation? Lots of Americans vote for candidates as opposed to party, meaning that they choose the person whom they feel will have the most positive impact on our country, regardless of whether they are blue, red, green, or whatever. Final-Five primaries are non-partisan open primaries that send the top five finishers to the general election.

Final-Five Voting nullifies both the spoiler effect and the wasted-vote argument that discourage competitors from within the major parties and outside of them from running. Five slots ensure a broader slate of candidates, allowing candidates typically eliminated upstream in party primaries to make their case to the general electorate. The media is motivated to cover all five candidates with all-important “earned media” because each candidate has a potential impact on the outcome.

The second innovation involves the general election and is called Ranked-Choice Voting. One of the problems with our current system is that the winner often has less than 50% of the popular vote. In ranked choice voting, the candidate must pass the 50% threshold. How can that happen, especially with five names on the ballot? With five candidates, it’s more likely that you will see one whom you can wholeheartedly support.

Under Ranked-Choice Voting, when you cast your ballot, you rank the five candidates, indicating your first choice, second choice etc. After the polls close, the first-place votes are counted. If one candidate receives more than 50% of the first-place votes (a true majority), the election is over. If no candidate gets a true majority (50% + 1), the candidate in last place is eliminated. But the votes cast for the last-place candidate get transferred to the voters’ second-choice candidates. And so on until a true majority winner is chosen.

States have the power to set their own election policies. In 2018, Maine became the first state in to adopt Ranked-Choice Voting for national elections. Alaska adopted it in 2020 and employed it in the 2022 midterm elections. Several cities, such as Minneapolis and San Francisco, also use RCV for municipal elections.

Gehl and Porter predict that adoption of these two innovations will unlock “the forces of healthy competition in American politics to restore a system that fixes real problems in real people’s lives—more choice, more voice, better results.”

In The Politics Industry, Gehl and Porter discuss how the “duopoly” of our two-party system has in essence become a private industry devoted to eliminating fair competition for elected office. They talk about the two currencies of this industry, votes and money, and how they each manipulate the other.

The Politics Industry is well-written and well-notated. Gehl and Porter thoroughly discuss the problems of our present electoral system and give a history of American political innovations of the past. I won’t try to summarize the whole book, but I want to give you a few more nuggets to think about:

• There are just six paragraphs in the Constitution about how the House and the Senate should work, but the House and the Senate rulebooks have multiple hundreds of pages each—and senators and congresspersons wrote them all.
• Between 1985 and 2015, congressional committee staff who help research issues were cut by 35%, forcing Congress to rely on opportunistic suppliers of data, such as lobbyists.
• Final-Five Voting increases the potential for innovative ideas to become part of the public debate.
• A 2017 evaluation of seven US municipalities using RCV to elect city officials found that candidates focused on the issues of the campaign rather than on denigrating their opponents. (Wouldn’t that be a nice change for the US?)
• There is no independent regulation of the politics industry.

I highly recommend The Politics Industry to every American citizen who is unhappy with the way our government operates. I leave you with one last quote from the book: “We citizens have the power to shift the nature of politics and shape the architecture of our democracy if we can create a widespread understanding of how our political system actually works and galvanize action accordingly.” Gehl and Porter have shown us in this book what ordinary citizens can do to accomplish this shift. Let’s get on with it.

The Cost of Not Voting

Added November 5, 2022

The Cost of Not Voting

Don’t you see what’s happening here?

Our former leader is systematically
Placing supporters in positions of influence
In preparation for a takeover of our country.

His many supporters believe a lie
That he planted before his loss.
They are unable to see beyond his reality show façade.

They are unable to see his true identity—
A narcissist with an insatiable appetite for power.
He will never give up, never back down.

If he is what you want, it is your privilege to vote for his cronies.
Your fate is your own.

But if you don’t want future elections to be no election at all,
You must vote now.
Vote for his opponents all the way down the ballot.
You can’t afford to be indifferent.

©ARHuelsenbeck

Anti-Abortion Activists, Your Job is Just Beginning

Added June 24, 2022

For the record, I am anti-abortion. I believe life starts at the moment of conception and that society has a responsibility to protect that life.

I just don’t think we need to write laws that prevent abortion.

Does that seem contradictory? Let me explain my logic.

We live in a society that views sex as a recreational activity with no limitations. Just turn on a television set if you don’t know what I mean. The idea of abstinence is shot down as ridiculous. I don’t agree that without abortion women are being forced to carry babies (except in the case of rape). If you consent to engage in an activity that is known to cause children, you shouldn’t be surprised if you become pregnant. Both men and women who don’t want to immediately become parents should practice birth control. It’s widely available and free in many places, although it has been known to fail occasionally.

Although some women’s reasons for having abortions seem frivolous (it’s a girl and we wanted a boy), many feel they have no choice. The timing of the pregnancy may mean financial hardship or lost opportunity. Let’s face it, having a little person depend on you for the next 18+ years means a large investment of time, energy, and money.

I hate to say it, but in the almost 50 years since Roe vs. Wade, abortion opponents have done very little to lessen the economic burden of raising children in this country. I have the horrible feeling that the people who are celebrating in the streets today are congratulating themselves that they got their cause through the Supreme Court without giving thought to what this will mean to women who find themselves inconveniently pregnant.

It’s not just their problem, it’s ours.

If we do nothing, more children in this country will grow up in poverty. The divide between the few rich and the many who are not will just grow.

There will be a baby boom, requiring better access to prenatal care and more obstetricians and birth centers. We will need more schools and better funding for them, and more teachers and other staffers who need to be paid a decent salary (which we have been failing to do in many places in the US, especially in my own state of Arizona). We will need better access to child care with good facilities and many more qualified caretakers, so that parents can afford to work. We will need more pediatricians and children’s hospitals. These need to be in place almost immediately. Oh, and it will cost money. Thank you so much, anti-abortion activists, for raising our tax bills.

Not that the government can or will provide all these things.

I am reminded of the African proverb: it takes a village to raise a child.

So I am asking you anti-abortion activists, do you just want everybody else to live by your high ethical standards, or do you really care about women and children and struggling families? Because you have an obligation to be part of the solution. Your activism is just getting started.

What can you do? Give. Give your money and yourself.

• Give to organizations that help families in distress and need. In Arizona (and maybe in your state, too—check your state’s revenue department website to find out) there are state tax credits for donations to organizations like pregnancy centers, food banks, foster care and adoption support, public and private schools. They will cost you nothing (unless you exceed their limits, and shouldn’t you, since you care so much about the babies?), so you have no excuse not to take advantage of them.
• If you are retired, why not befriend a neighbor with kids? Offer to care for their children during the period after school until the parents come home from work. Make them a snack. Help them with their homework. Play board games with them. You will be so blessed.
• Plant a garden so that you can share your tomatoes, zucchinis, and flowers with families who are struggling to put food on the table. I’ll bet you can find someone in your own neighborhood who will really appreciate it.
• When your own kids outgrow their clothes, look for someone who can use them. When our own children were growing up, people often helped us in this way. It was a lifesaver.

Another Perspective on Abortion

I am against abortion.

That said, I don’t think we need laws against abortion.

We need to change hearts and minds.

You’ve heard it said that suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem.

Abortion is also a solution for a temporary problem, a solution that has generations-long ramifications.

The fetus is not an undifferentiated mass of cells; it is not a potential human being; it is a human at its earliest stage of development. No human mother has yet given birth to a kangaroo or a chair; the fruit of the womb is a human being. Every human being has inestimable value.

Most babies grow. Soon they’re children, then teenagers, and before you know it, they’re adults who are driving cars and holding down jobs and supporting families and contributing to society.

Granted, some babies grow up to be serial murderers.

Some become criminals. Some, extremists. Some, drug addicts.

But some grow up to be teachers, or hairdressers, or philanthropists, or leaders, or soldiers, or inventors, or composers, or architects, or firefighters, or baseball players.

Every time a fetus is aborted, we are deprived of another stitch in the tapestry that is humanity. What if the person with the perfect genetic makeup to figure out how to prevent and cure cancer was aborted from her mother’s womb? What if the person who should have become the United States president in the 2016 election was aborted 50 years ago? We have been robbed of a tremendous amount of human potential, and of all the descendants of the aborted.

When I consider the history of the United States, I wonder how anyone could have thought that slavery was a good idea. It is so obviously evil.

Two hundred years from now, people will look back on us and wonder how anyone could have thought that abortion was a good idea, for the same reason.

Every time I hear a woman declare she has a right to abortion, I cringe.

Every time I hear a woman say she has a right to control what happens to her body, my heart goes out to the body within her body. That could have been me. That could have been you.

How many infants must be sacrificed on the altar of abortion rights?

From 1970 to 2015, 45,789,558 abortions were performed in the United States, as reported to the CDC. From a high of 1,429,247 in 1990, the numbers have steadily declined to 638,139 in 2015. (Actual numbers may be higher.) Where is the outcry against this systematic genocide of our most vulnerable segment of society?

606,880 people in the United States are expected to die of cancer in 2019, and each year people send more than $800,000,000 to the American Cancer Society to fight cancer. Where are the dollars to fight an epidemic just as deadly?

The Crisis Pregnancy Centers sometimes get a bad rap, but the one in our city does not prevent women from getting abortions; it just tells them the truth about abortion.

You will not get the truth from abortion mills. They only make money when you have an abortion. It’s a big business. (Have you heard of the movie Unplanned?)

You know what else is a big business? The fertility industry. Right now people you know are being injected with hormones or attempting invitro fertilizations or surrogacy alternatives at great expense in an effort to have a child, sometimes requiring multiple procedures. If more babies were available, childless people could opt to build their families through adoption.

Crisis Pregnancy Centers are funded by donations. The counselors are trained volunteers. Many of the people who work there are people of faith. They offer help that Planned Parenthood won’t. If you don’t want to raise a child, CPC will help you through the adoption process. If you feel unequipped to deal with parenthood, they will help you with childbirth and parenting classes and will give you credits redeemable for new donated baby items. (I belong to a church ministry that donates handmade baby quilts.) CPC plans to provide prenatal care in the future.

In my state (Arizona), donations to qualifying charitable organizations can be used as a tax credit, up to $200 a year for individuals and $400 a year for married couples. My husband and I take advantage of that credit every year by donating the maximum to Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Phoenix, one of the qualifying charitable organizations. I urge you to check with your state if such an opportunity exists for you. You will be saving lives.

Sometimes abortion looks like a viable alternative when faced with rape, incest, maternal health problems, a disabled fetus, an interrupted education, poverty, or other seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Sometimes you could come through the pregnancy if you only had someone to help you temporarily. Please ask for help. Please don’t kill your baby.

If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircle us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.  – Gandhi

The God of Israel spoke, the Rock of Israel said to me: “When one rules over men in righteousness, when he rules in the fear of God, he is like the light of morning at sunrise on a cloudless morning, like the brightness after rain that brings the grass from the earth.” ~ 2 Samuel 23: 3-4 NIV

Why I Won’t Vote for Either Major Candidate

2016’s presidential race has convinced me that our political process is no longer viable.

I would love to vote for a moderate conservative. By rights, that should be the Republican. However, out of the huge pool of candidates this year, Republican voters picked Trump to be their nominee.

If Republicans think Trump espouses their vision for America, then I cannot vote Republican. My gut tells me Trump’s motivation for running is something other than the desire to serve our nation. I don’t believe he has the knowledge, wisdom, or skill set to lead the country. I doubt his integrity. Nearly every time he speaks, I am offended. I would be embarrassed to have him as my president.

As Trump gained followers, the other Republican candidates dropped out one by one, and later pledged (reluctantly?) to support whoever became the party’s nominee.

Even Ted Cruz took the pledge. After he told the assembled Republican National Convention to vote their consciences. I wonder if Cruz and the other candidates were coerced by the party to endorse Trump.

I’ve been told that if I examine the platforms of the two major parties, the clear choice is the Republican. But I can’t vote for the Republican platform if it is attached to Trump.

People try to convince me that my only other choice is Clinton, but I can’t vote for her, either.

My distrust of Clinton was cemented by her reaction to the revelation that she used her personal email account (housed on her own server) for government business. When the press first confronted her about it, she shrugged it off. Her body language said, it’s no big deal. I was First Lady, a Senator, the Secretary of State. The rules don’t apply to me.

Yet every lowly clerk who’s ever used email knows principle #1: you use your work account for your work emails and your personal account for your personal emails.

Clinton denies she ever received any such training. However, I worked for the Department of the Interior for five years, and I remember my first day at work, when I read, filled out, and signed lots of paperwork, including a memorandum about use of government computers which also outlined the official email policy. Somewhere in the Capitol Human Resources office is a file containing Hillary Clinton’s signature on a similar document. Yet, for months, she denied she’d done anything wrong.

If, during my tenure as a federal employee, I had misused email in the same manner, at very least a disciplinary note would have been filed in my HR folder, and I would have been passed over for promotions until I proved for an extended period of time that I could follow procedure. If it was determined that classified information had fallen into the wrong hands as a result of my actions, I would have been terminated. Yet Clinton still believes she’s fit for the highest position in government. Her admission that she’d made a mistake, and her apology, didn’t come until it was clear the American people were not letting her off the hook.

So I’m not voting for the Democratic candidate, and I’m not voting for the Republican candidate.

The Trump camp says if I don’t vote for him, it’s the same as voting for Hillary. And the Clinton camp says if I don’t vote for her, it’s the same as voting for Donald. Prevailing wisdom declares I’m wasting my vote if I don’t cast it for one of those two.

In 1824, the House of Representatives declared John Quincy Adams the winner of the election; he received 30.5% of the votes. Bill Clinton won with only 42.9% in 1992. Our Electoral College system confuses me; it seems possible to manipulate it. (Yeah, I know, that sounds like a conspiracy theory.)

Here are a couple of articles related to how our system works. Maybe you can understand it better than I do:

• The Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral College
• Presidents who received less than 50% of the popular vote

What if neither Trump nor Clinton received a third of the popular vote? Wouldn’t it at very least force our legislature to explore ways to improve the voting process? I wouldn’t call that a wasted vote—I’d call it sending a message that the two-party system is dead.

The leadership of our country is too important to leave to the less objectionable of two candidates. (This year, I can’t even determine who the less objectionable one is.) We all know lots of people who would make a better president than Clinton or Trump. Why is our race limited to two candidates? We live in the age of the internet—anyone can get their message heard.

The Bible tells us that God establishes our government. “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1 NIV).

Being a Christian, every election year I ask myself how God is establishing our authorities through our election process. In the United States, we have free choices, and we suffer the consequences of those choices.

I think we are being tested. Will we elect a president with integrity? God saw to it that we had a broad and diverse field this year. We expressed our desire for someone different, someone who wasn’t a politician, someone who wouldn’t conduct “business as usual.” Think of the wide variety of people we had to choose from: governors, women, a socialist, Senators, a physician, a real estate magnate. And we whittled the field down to Trump and Clinton. Are either of them God’s best intention for us? Are they examples of unimpeachable character? If we elect Donald or Hillary, I believe we’ve failed the test, and we’ll miss God’s blessing on our country.

In an interview with Time magazine conducted more than a year ago, Ben Carson revealed he prayed to know God’s will about him running for president: “I said, Lord you know I don’t want to do this, but if you open the doors I’ll do it.” Think about it—we asked for someone different, and God put Ben Carson into the ring. My first reaction to his candidacy was that he was too soft-spoken to be president—especially if you compare him to the nominees, who have been described with words like strident and loudmouth.

Dr. Carson thinks carefully before he speaks. I like that. Carson also has a quality both Clinton and Trump lack—humility. How refreshing to see a humble candidate, who has a reputation for integrity.

I will be writing in Ben Carson’s name on my ballot this year. Won’t you join me?

I wrote this article for Doing Life Together:

The Battle Belongs to the Lord . . . by ARHuelsenbeck