So the OP asked for a Democrat’s view. I appreciate all those who are not democrats who chose to answer.
I am a Democrat.
born in NY to a middle class working family on LongIsland who paid more in taxes than most of you could imagine. The property taxes alone were astronomical.
I then went to a four year university in Michigan.Studied, lived worked with and eventually married someone from a small conservative town in northern Michigan. 17 years I lived in Michigan working and living from areas around Detroit to super rural small towns to Uber religious and conservative western Michigan.
I’ve now been in Texas for the last 5 years.
I give you this info be cause context is important.
neither I nor my family have ever regretted taxes. Not once. I make a middle class living. Being in texas I dont have state income tax but I pay higher than average property tax higher than average sales tax and besides gas which is generally below the national average (I commute 100 miles a day to work and drive a Prius as aweekday commuter car and can careless about gas prices) everything else food, water, electricity is higher than the national average. I still don’t care about taxes. Not once! My property taxes have nearly doubled in the last 5 years. My home value has also gone up $80k in those same 5 years.
the own I grew up in, my parents paid nearly $15k a year in property taxes. I also received a world class public school education with more resources available to mein high school than many colleges.
I’m a democrat because I believe:
The minimum a person should get paid for a full days labor 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year should be enough for that person to have 1. A basic home for themselves with utilities (not every cable channel) but the basics (which in this era includes internet)
2. Basic transport. Reliable simple transport (not a new sport car or monster truck, think civic or focus) with gas and insurance. 3. Food. 4. Healthcare (more on that later) 5. The ability to put a reasonable amount aside towards retirement/rainy day fund (not a cruise not a vacation. )
Education benefits all of us. One helped us achieve that which we did in the work is education and it was the public schools that helped this nation thrive. The solution for troubled schools isn’t charter schools and private schools. Good administrators with good teachers make good schools. And teachers should be paid as if they were the people shaping our children’s futures and guiding them because they are! Not paid like overpriced babysitters. When you treat them like professions and pay them like professions you can make demands of them like professionals. And those that can’t do it will leave and there will people plenty of people in the wings waiting to prove they can get the job done.
healthcare: forget about if it’s a right! Healthcare is t in the constitution. The right to own a fire arm is! Healthcare is not! But as a society we all have a vested interest in our team being the healthiest team. And we are not. We are way at the bottom. Sick, fat dieting employees cost companies money. They are a drain on our society. The easiest way to keep people from getting there is keeping them from going if therails to start. Healthcare is too all of our benefits. I work in an industry where I see the backend of medicine insurance and all the shit people think they know about. The fact is the money is there To cover it. What isn't there right now is the infrastructure to support it. As we live longer it is to all our advantages for the working class to be healthy enough to work longer and at a higher level.
social safety nets! Yes! Again it is to all of our advantage to know that when a plant closes or a person gets laid off that there is something to help them along till they can get going again. If not they will generally to turn borrowing what they can’t pay back, drugs crime alcoholism you name it. This does not however mean that people should live years off this nor should it be generational. 6-12 months sure. Depending on your work history and how much you paid into the system sure. 6-12 years no at some point the reality is you are not contributing to our society so figure it out or move on and good luck.
prison reform. Either you are a criminal who is too dangerous to be part of our society or you are a member of our society. This permanent scarlet letter shit is counter productive because we are creating a sub segment of our society nearly guaranteed to never have a job and never being able to pay for themselves. Other countries have us beet big time on this topic and we need to explore what works elsewhere. Either your a full citizen or your not.
immigration: yes. Clean up the system. Streamline it. Some simple facts like it or not we need immigrant labor. Find me a million Americans willing to work as migrant labor on farms for the pay they get...good luck. I look around dallas and love listening to bigots talk about lazy Mexicans while I watch mostly Hispanic crews working on housing developments before the sun comes up till after the sun sets 7 days a week. We could all hope to be that lazy. Illegal immigrants are not a major problem they are a small percentage and mostare college grads skipping on their visa. The fact is republican run farms and factors need immigrants and the same people stoking the fires of nationalism are the ones responsible for most of the hiring of undocumented immigrants!
I can go on for days but I’m a democrat because they talk amour the elitist things like the value of public education and public health crisis and the indentured state of most Americans because of predatory lending and systems designed to trap people.
but just because I’m a democrat it does not mean I am against border security. Absolutely we should know who comes and goes. And no I do not believe in gun control it’s nonsense.
Donald Trump is a life long Democrat from NYC born with millions. He squandered billions of his fathers money and investments and went bankrupt 3 times and only for the fact that CHase so over leveraged themselves on his investments they were forced to forgive 100s of millions in bad depression for fear of going insolvent themselves and ironically he was financially saved by a reality TV show. What I do t understand is a republican who otherwise stood on what they believed to be the high moral ground voting for this man. That I don’t see. Fact is the economy is continuing to rise at about the same rate as it was 6 years ago and will likely run this way for another 2-3 before the next major economic adjustment.
Your parents paid stupid high property taxes and you received a "world class" education that didn't include a single class on grammar, composition or writing.
As a Republican, I challenge you to find a single person living in America today who works 40 hrs a week, 50 weeks a year and cannot afford a basic home, utilities, healthcare, food, clothing, a small IRA and transportation. I do not doubt for an instant you will fail and when you do, you will add caveats to explain away the drugs, alcohol, tatts, gambling, pay-per-view, parties and garbage they wasted their money on.
Speaking of education. The average teacher works about 160 days a year and makes more than the average non-teacher. The average teacher rarely works 5 days a week for more than three weeks without a holiday. The average teacher gets 4-5 days for Thanksgiving, two weeks off for Christmas, a week off at the end of March and if they can struggle thru until June 15th, they get 12 weeks off to relax. They are paid professionals, every damned one of them and yet they have failed to improve a single test score in the last 50 years. Graduation rates are flat for decades now. Kids today are practically retarded when they graduate high school. They know almost nothing about civics or history, their physical condition is garbage, they have no work ethic and for the most part have been unaccountable for their actions. Adulthood confounds them.
A "social safety net" has turned into a hammock for the sick, lame and lazy. In some homes there are three generations of trash people who have never held a full time job and never plan too. These dregs do not care about healthcare as they have never paid a dime anyway. Under Democrat leadership, the mere idea that people should be encouraged to work and support themselves provokes rage.
Healthcare is not a right, especially for people in our country illegally. Like everything else on earth if people are allowed to use healthcare without responsibility, the costs spiral out of control and the quality drops dangerously. People value something they pay for or invest in, that is a fucking fact of life champ. Everyone should have to pay something or do something to earn "free" healthcare.
Trump worked hard and got prison reform done. Try watching something other than CNN.
Trump is getting immigration under control. Again stop watching CNN.
Trump has managed to get black and minority unemployment to historic lows, the exact opposite of an Obama accomplishment.
Trump has received dozens of awards from foundations belonging to Muhammad Ali and several Jewish groups, so much for the "racist" crap.
Trump was and still is for all practical purposes a Democrat and you hate him, you despise his pride in America and you go nuts when he does something Democrats have only paid lip service too over the last 50 years.............................like prison reform.
So here we are, you are far left of Trump and you called him a Democrat. That means you are a communist.
AND, you cannot spell firearm. So I guess you are just another paid leftist shill out here on a gun board spreading your bullshit.
PLEASE, take a moment and explain why voter ID laws are bad? Do you really think black people cannot find the driver's license office? I'm a Republican and I bet you money black people are smart enough to have ID. Why? Because without ID they are not allowed in a DNC meeting.
