I grew up in Hickory, N.C., during the fifties and sixties, married during the Vietnam War, and moved away in 1968 with my veteran husband. When I come home to visit my family, I am always reminded of the beauty of this area of the state and the generosity and southern hospitality of its people. Many people in the southeast can trace their family genealogy back to the 1600s and 1700s when western Europeans came over to escape religious persecution or to seek a better life and an opportunity to own land. I am proud of my southern heritage, but I have also learned a lot from the people in IL where I now reside. Many of my friends there trace their genealogy back to eastern European countries like Poland and Russia where they also escaped persecution in the early 1900s or during the first or second world war. Their stories point out that there will always be power hungry dictators who do not care about the people they govern but are interested only in their own wellbeing.
In IL and also in the South, I am disturbed by the hateful signs that I see and the fact that families are torn apart over disagreements about politics. We need to be able to discuss politics in a civil matter with respect for each other, especially our families. This morning on a walk, I saw a sign that said “I love Trump because he pisses off the people I cannot stand.” It made me stop and think about the anger and unrest in our country that convinces someone to post signs about anger. That sign expresses anger toward people and political parties who are not doing enough to help the working people. To help ourselves, we need to put that anger aside, look at what the candidates are saying and doing, and vote in our best interests by taking the time to figure out which candidate will work for laws and policies that help our families.
How can you help people discover the truth? First, evaluate and decide for yourself what is true. This week I talked to my sister’s neighbor and some cousins of mine who told me they always voted Republican because their families had always voted Republican. Others told me they always vote Republican because their church friends vote Republican. Unfortunately, that is what a lot of people do, but the world keeps changing rapidly, and political parties change too. It’s hard to convince someone to change family voting patterns that have lasted for years, but it’s still possible to do it.
If you have Republican friends, ask them why they want to vote for the candidates on that ticket. Does the candidate have a platform that will improve their quality of life and support issues such as a livable wage, secure jobs that will stay in the area, a fair salary and benefits, support for public schools that provide a good education for every child, and reasonable housing prices that provide an opportunity to buy a home for your family. The 2024 election is a chance for us to show that our party has the wellbeing of the people in mind.
As you may have heard during the last few days, NC and some other states have been devastated by Hurricane Helene. Fortunately, I have seen people in my sister’s neighborhood pull together and try to help everyone. A neighbor loaned my sister a generator, and other neighbors have come over to help when we have trouble trying to refuel the generator with heavy gas cans. I was encouraged because no one was arguing about politics for a few days. Today, I happened to find a news station while I was driving. (Since the internet is down everywhere, we have to get in the car and drive to hear the news.) Unfortunately, a Republican commentator was stating that the federal government was not helping people in Asheville when other people have told us that both FEMA and the National Guard are all over NC trying to help people. A few minutes later, the commentator contradicted himself by saying that the federal government was stopping people from going into dangerous areas to help people, so obviously, the federal government is in Asheville and trying to prevent other people from putting themselves in danger.
How do we convince people to do research and verify what they hear on cable? First, here are some facts that might help. Much of the Fox News Cable network is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian born businessman who decided to become an American citizen so that he could purchase media outlets and control the news that Americans hear. These actions backfired when Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic sued Fox in a defamation law suit in 2022 for claiming that the companies that administered the voting machines in the 2020 election had committed fraud. The day before the trial was supposed to start, Fox settled out of court for a defamation payout of $787.5 million and also fired some of its commentators. Then Fox declared that it was an entertainment network instead of a news network. Currently, Murdoch is in his nineties and going through the courts to change an irrevocable trust that he set up because some of his children do not agree with his political views and actions.
CNN and MSNBC are cable networks that present a more balanced viewpoint than Fox, which is shown by CNN’s research and reporting about comments and posts that Mark Robinson, who is running for governor of North Carolina, has made on porn sites. Fortunately, there are less Mark Robinson signs up now.
Second, know the Democratic platform. Democrats want to do the following and build an opportunity economy: raise the child tax credit to $3,500 so working families with children have the money they need to provide for those children; give parents of newborns a $6,000 one-time credit to help with the expenses to buy baby equipment, formula, and diapers that are very costly; provide tax incentives for builders of homes for first-time buyers and apartments so more affordable housing can be built; provide a $25,000 tax credit for first time homebuyers to help with downpayments; cap the cost of childcare to 7% of a family’s income; enact a federal ban on price gouging of food and groceries; and increase the tax deduction for new small business start-ups.
Republicans will ask how the country will pay for this. The answer is by taxing the wealthy. Households that earn less $400,000 a year will not see a change in their tax rate. Most of us cannot imagine earning $400,000 a year, so we do not need to worry about tax increases. Harris’ proposal includes a 25% minimum tax on people with fortunes over $100 million, including on unrealized capital gains. This would make the tax laws fairer for the average American. Presently, average Americans are taxed on their 401K capital gains when they are forced to take out the money during retirement, but wealthy people are not forced to withdraw their capital gains or pay taxes on them if these gains are in stock or capital assets. Often, these assets are passed on to heirs and the gains are never taxed. According to Oxfam, a 2021 White House study concluded that the wealthiest 40 billionaires in the U.S paid an average tax rate of 8.2 % compared to the average American who paid a tax rate of 13%. A ProPublica investigation showed that the 25 richest Americans paid a tax rate of 3.4 % on $401 billion of income. If everyone, including billionaires and big corporations, paid their fair share, taxes on working Americans would not rise and the quality of life would improve. The child tax credit helped more than 60 million children in 2021. Raising it to $3500 would help to lift all of America’s children out of poverty.
The Republican economic plan is very different from the Democratic plan. Former President Donald Trump is focusing on tariffs and says he would “steal” jobs from other countries and bring them back to America with tax cuts for wealthy corporations and tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. Many economists and some Republicans say that tariffs will hurt the American economy because tariffs lead to higher prices on products coming into the U.S., and other countries will also fight back by raising tariffs on American goods, hurting the sale of our products overseas. The former president also wants to lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies who make their product in the U.S. We have learned in the past that lowering the corporate tax rate does not help the working class. Instead of passing the extra money on to workers, big companies reward their CEOs and stockholders or invest the money back into the company.
It is up to us to get the message across to our family and neighbors, and we have a month left to do so. It is difficult for the average American with work and family responsibilities to find time to research each candidate online. However, democracy is on the line this year, and we need to take the time to listen to people and talk with them about finding the truth. Until I am able to return home, I am going to do all I can in North Carolina. Let’s make the most of this opportunity next month.