Congressman Jeff Denham’s Town Hall Meeting April 17th, 2017 Denair, California

By Gaetana Drake

I arrived at the location of the meeting at 4:00 pm, willing to stand in line for an hour in order to get a good seat. There were about a dozen people there when I arrived. Some of them were wearing “Be The Change” t-shirts, some were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. I was wearing my “Nevertheless She Persisted” t-shirt.

I stood in line next to an elderly couple who were Trump supporters. We had a pleasant conversation and it turned out that he was a military veteran. I thanked him for his service and we shook hands, while he smiled and said, “Obviously we will disagree on many things tonight, but we respect each others’ right to our opinions.”

The auditorium was packed and many people were standing in the back after all the chairs were filled. A prayer was offered and the flag presented and the crowd stood for the Pledge of Allegiance.

County Supervisor Vito Chieasa then introduced Congressman Denham, State Assemblyman Heath Flora and Turlock Mayor Gary Soiseth. Mr. Chiesa was moderator and asked questions from papers that were filled out prior to the meeting. The questions could be asked of all four speakers (including Mr. Chiesa) or one or two particular speaker. The majority of the questions were directed to Congressman Denham. We were also assured that if our question didn’t get asked, we would get an email response or follow up phone call.

From the first question it was obvious that the vast majority of the crowd was not going to like Mr. Denham’s answers. After several questions we became aware that Mr. Denham is very skilled at answering a question without really answering the question.

He was asked about the republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and he did say there are some things about the Affordable Care Act that he thinks republicans should keep in their proposal, like coverage for pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s insurance until age 26, but he is not supportive of mandatory birth control coverage.

When questioned about immigration reform, he repeatedly said that our immigration system is broken and we need comprehensive immigration reform. It took the audience several minutes to force him to be specific about “comprehensive” reform, telling him that he was just throwing out buzz words, when he finally stated he supports allowing young adults brought here as children to stay, supports a worker program to protect farm workers, but also supports building a wall.

He was asked if he thought President Trump should reveal his tax returns. Again, he deflected by saying that just like he wouldn’t ask the previous president to reveal his birth certificate, he wouldn’t ask the current president to reveal his taxes and there was no law requiring that. The audience loudly protested that answer, shouting out comments about past practice, conflicts of interest, etc.

Throughout the night there were many very specific questions about health care, immigration, social security and other important issues facing the country. Mr. Denham continuously gave very non-specific answers, prompting the crowd to repeatedly yell, “answer the question, answer the question”, or “yes or no, yes or no.” The longer it took for him to answer a question, the likelier it was that it would not really be an answer.

Many of the people in the audience were wearing “I Stand With Planned Parenthood” t-shirts, and when a woman stood up and asked Mr. Denham if he supported de-funding Planned Parenthood, he once again deflected. Members of the audience shouted that Planned Parenthood prevents abortions by providing birth control, that Planned Parenthood provides many health care needs such as immunizations, health screenings, nutritional counseling, and that Planned Parenthood does not use federal tax dollars for abortions. While the audience was in full support of Planned Parenthood, Mr. Denham refused to answer the question, and finally said that it was a “personal opinion and he must vote on his personal opinions”, meaning that he is anti-choice and supports defunding Planned Parenthood which would take away health care from thousands of low-income women and families in his district.

It was obvious to everyone in attendance that Mr. Denham is going to support whatever bill the GOP presents and he is going to support whatever President Trump wants to do, whether it’s starting a war, taking away health care, giving tax breaks to the wealthy, or cutting social security benefits.

Congressman Denham had delayed having a town hall meeting for several months and only scheduled this due to extreme public pressure. I can report that I personally called both his Modesto office and his Washington D.C. Office several times every week, asking when he would meet with his constituents. It was public pressure that brought about this meeting. And it was originally scheduled to last only one hour, but again, public pressure mounted and the meeting was allowed to continue for two hours and forty minutes. However, it was his refusal to answer the question about defunding Planned Parenthood that brought the meeting to an end. While the crowd was still wanting a specific answer, he thanked us for attending and the meeting was over.

Yes, it was loud. Yes, it was rowdy and at times the audience had to be told to quiet down and let him answer. But there was a reason for this. First, he delayed meeting with us for several months so our frustration kept building. Secondly, he deflected question after question and many times never really gave a true answer. And in spite of what many people think, we do have a right to be loud, a right to protest. And we will continue to do both.

What Will Happen When the Affordable Care Act is Repealed?

There are many benefits to the ACA and they have helped almost all Americans whether you have private insurance or are covered under the ACA.

*First, your young adult children can stay on their parent’s insurance until the age of 26.

*Pre-existing conditions are covered, this means if you are insured through your employer and want to change jobs, your pre-existing condition will be covered under your new insurance.

*Women can no longer be charged up to 80% more for insurance premiums than men are.

*Mental health conditions must be covered the same as medical health conditions.

*Free preventive care.

*Tax breaks for small employers.

*Prescription discounts for seniors.

*Birth control coverage.

*No annual or lifetime maximum benefit.

*Your insurance company can no longer drop you for getting sick!

There are many other benefits, but think about what will happen when/if the ACA is repealed?  If you have diabetes or some other chronic disease and you change insurances, your diabetes won’t be covered.  Ever.  If you are hospitalized with one or two serious surgeries, you won’t have to be concerned about exceeding your “lifetime” benefit, which was generally $500,000, in some cases $1,000,000.  Imagine that you work for your employer for 20 or 30 years.  In that time, you could have a serious injury, a couple of surgeries, on-going care for a chronic condition….but you could quickly exceed your annual or lifetime limit…then the rest of your care is out of your pocket.  If you’ve been healthy and paying your premiums, then are diagnosed with cancer, your insurance company can drop your coverage.

The ACA has also created hundreds of thousands of jobs.  When more people have access to health care, hospitals need more nurses, certified nurse assistants, Nutritionists, Radiologists, Lab techs, etc.    In the county where I live, it is estimated that 3,000 jobs will be lost if the ACA is repealed.  Not only will people lose access to health care, but people will lose their jobs.  How does this help any of us?

The ACA is far from perfect, but it’s a giant step forward.  Let’s work out the kinks instead of scrapping it and starting all over.

The Tragic Results of the War on Women

Texas slashed funding to reproductive centers across the state in 2011, cutting $73 million from a budget of $111 million for the reproductive health service. This budget cut resulted in 80 clinics closing their doors. Texas also closed Planned Parenthood clinics whether they provided abortion services or not. Those closed clinics had provided breast exams, pap smears, nutritional counseling, vaccinations, STD testing and a wide variety of health care services not only to women, but to children and men.  But Texas didn’t care about that.

So what was the result in this decrease of funding and closing of clinics? Texas now has the highest maternal mortality rate, not only in the U.S. but in the developed world! According to the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, this is unheard of when there were no special circumstances, i.e. “in the absence of war, natural disaster or economic upheaval.”

From 2000 to 2010, the mortality rate was from 16 to 17 deaths per 100,000 births. After the budget cuts, it jumped to 33 to 35 deaths per 100,000 births. The war on women and Planned Parenthood has resulted in the deaths of more than 600 women in Texas. Lives that could have been saved. Shameful. Funding has been restored, but it’s too late for those 600 young women, isn’t it?

THE EPIDEMIC OF BULLYING AND DONALD TRUMP

The bullying that takes place in schools across the country is on the rise.  Statistics suggest that nearly 30% of students are bullies or have been victimized by bullying.  160,000 kids stay home from school on any given day, to avoid bullies.

Many adults still see bullying as part of growing up.  We need to change this misconception. Young people who are bullies grow up to be domestic abusers.  A study published in “Pediatrics” reports that 1,400 men between 18 and 35 were interviewed…those that recalled bullying in school were four times more likely to beat their wives, girlfriends and children, showing that bullies don’t outgrow their aggressiveness.  They are more likely to lose a job, commit a crime, lie, and have a higher likelihood of cheating and stealing.

With today’s social media, bullies no longer need to be present physically to bully someone.  Facebook, Twitter, texting….all have become available for bullies to continue their behavior even when they are not in the vicinity of their victims.

Recently a student in my area received a death threat by text message.  The student stayed home from school (lost educational opportunities) while authorities determined where the text came from.  It was from a 10 year old boy, whose parents have obviously failed to teach him right from wrong.  The legal system will have to work out this particular case, but here is my biggest concern:

We now have a bully running for the position of President of the United States of America.  Look at the news clips from his rallies…”beat the crap out of him”, “I’d like to beat the sh*t out of him”, “get him out of here”, “throw him out, keep his coat, we’ll send it to him in a couple of weeks (this from a rally that took place in the winter”, “blood coming out of her wherever”.  He has even offered to pay the legal fees of anyone who attacked people protesting against him.  And worst of all, he physically mocked a disabled reporter.  Haven’t we all tried to teach our children to be kind and compassionate?  And now they see this.

Our children are watching a bully possibly rise to the highest position in the land.  What kind of example are we setting for them?

Is Donald Trump Presidential Material?

Do we choose our presidents based on honesty?  Based on past performance?  Based on personality traits?  Based on knowledge of the world and current events and policy?  I hope it’s based on a combination of all these things. In the near future I will write about Hillary Clinton, but today it’s all about The Donald.

Mr. Trump says he will fight for the American worker…I think it’s safe to assume he means you and me.  Here is how he has fought for “workers” in the past (and don’t forget, the vast majority of the many products he sells are manufactured in other countries):

He’s been involved in over 3500 lawsuits, the vast majority concerning him not paying people who performed services for him.  Wait staff that worked 20 out of 24 hours during a days long event at Trump Tower, and had to sue him to be paid their over-time wages.  A construction company that built custom cabinets for one of his buildings and almost lost their family-owned (started by a grandfather) business, because Trump withheld over $80,000 in payments.  A family-owned business selling pianos had to take pennies on the dollar owed to them after delivering over $100,000 worth of pianos to one of his hotels.  The owner had to use his children’s college funds to keep his business going.  An architect who designed a ballroom for a golf course in Florida, again, had to take pennies on the dollar.  When he finally managed a face to face meeting with Trump (in the ballroom he had designed), Trump showed up with fifteen lawyers, in an obvious (and unfortunately, successful) attempt to show the man that he could not fight someone with such resources. How can a small business owner compete with a team of expensive lawyers?  How can a small business owner outlast someone who can easily afford to spend years and hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting lawsuits?  The most interesting thing is that Trump’s own lawyers, who defended him in many of these lawsuits, had to sue to get their payments.  It’s Trump’s standard business practice to refuse paying those who work for him.  And just this week, while claiming he will bring jobs to America, it’s been revealed that he has hired 78 foreign workers for Mar-A-Lago, his club in Florida.  These are gardeners, cooks, dishwashers, wait staff, housekeepers….and he claimed that he couldn’t get anyone else to do those jobs.  Apparently, there are NO unemployed Americans in Florida!

He also claims that he “will be good for women”.  Are these the same women he refers to as “fat pigs” and “dogs?”  He recently said that “there must be some form of punishment” for women who have abortions.  Keep in mind, that when he was with girlfriend Marla Maples (while still married to Ivana) and she revealed that she was pregnant, his response was “what are you going to do about it?”  Some years ago he was pro-choice.  It’s a matter of record that he spoke out in favor of a woman’s right to choose.  But I recently heard him explain why he has changed his mind about that.  He said that some friends of his experienced an unplanned pregnancy several years ago and had considered an abortion.  But they decided not to do that and now the child they have is, according to Trump, “a superstar!”  So, in his mind, because that worked out for his friends, it should work out for every woman.  I think it’s safe to assume that his friends were people of a comfortable financial status.  Their situation is different from low-income women who choose to end a pregnancy.  Money does make a difference.

Would he be “good for women” who aren’t beautiful?  Because he seems to believe the only value women have is their looks and bodies.  Remember his comment about Carly Fiorina?  “Look at that face, who would vote for that face?”  Remember him tweeting a picture of his wife (and yes, she is very beautiful) next to an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz and telling Ted to be careful or “I will spill the beans on Heidi”.  What did he mean by that?  Does he know some deep, dark secret of Heidi’s?  Or do words just spill out of his mouth without any thought behind them?  He commented several years ago that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you’ve got a beautiful piece of tail on your arm”.

He has said he admires North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.  He also admired Saddam Hussein because “he was good at killing terrorists”.  Hussein was actually killing his own citizens, he just happened to consider them terrorists because they disagreed with him.  And now he has encouraged Russia to continue hacking American e-mails.  Can you say “engaging with the enemy?”

Earlier in his campaign, he said “I like veterans that weren’t captured” in reference to Senator John McCain.  Remember, John McCain spent five years as a POW in Vietnam and endured torture every day.  McCain also had a chance to be released a year earlier because he was the son of Navy Admiral, but refused early release because he wouldn’t leave his men behind.  While I don’t agree with Mr. McCain’s politics, I greatly admire him as a soldier.  And what has Trump done now?  He has insulted the parents of a Muslim-American soldier who was killed in action.

Is there any veteran or current service member who isn’t offended by that?  Any of their family members who aren’t offended by that?  Any one American who isn’t offended by that?

Mr. Trump also has the mentality of a second grade school yard bully (and I mean no offense to second graders).  Who can forget the image of him mocking a disabled reporter, simply because the reporter dared to report that Trump’s statement about seeing thousands and thousands of Muslims cheering on 9/11, was false.  Most of us have been subject to some bullying at some point in our lives.  We’ve tried to teach our children not to be a bully.  And now our children are watching someone running for the highest office in the land…bully a disabled person.

As many sources are saying, Mr. Trump has neither the intelligence, the knowledge nor the temperament to be the President of the United States.

More to follow…

 

WHAT ARE AMERICAN VALUES?

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Traditionally, American values are individual freedom and self-reliance, equality of opportunity and competition, the American dream and hard work.  My generation grew up at a time when we could all realize the dream of owning our own home, having plenty of food in the pantry, and with some effort, sending our children to college, even having a reasonably comfortable retirement.  All of that has changed.

While the salaries of CEO’s and other high-ranking employees have sky-rocketed, the salaries of middle and lower class employees have stagnated or even lowered based on cost of living increases.  No one can afford an apartment on a minimum (or even two minimum) wage jobs.  Achieving the dream of a college education no longer guarantees a good job and leaves hundreds of thousands of students thousands of dollars in debt.  We charge college students a much higher interest rate than we do Wall Street corporations.  We tell them they must get an education to obtain a good job, then we crush them with debt.  One-third of fast food workers have Bachelor’s degrees.  They are not lazy, they are not afraid to work hard.  They just have no opportunity.

In the 60s and 70s, we marched for racial equality and women’s rights.  Now we have voter suppression of minorities, women, and the elderly.  Reproductive rights for women are rapidly going down the drain.  Abortion is still a constitutional right, but in many states, it’s extremely difficult and expensive to obtain.  Planned Parenthood provides health care for 2.5 million women and only 2% of it is abortion services.  Yet, politicians want to close Planned Parenthood clinics.  Now elderly people and minorities who have never had a driver’s license can’t vote without a photo ID.  One state closed almost all of the DMV offices in a county (and left one open only a few hours a week) that is 90% African-American, making it virtually impossible to get a state-issued photo ID.  In Texas college students cannot use their school issued photo ID to vote, but you can use your gun permit….

There is no educational opportunity for school children in inner cities when their schools are infested with rats, the pipes are leaking onto their desks and funding for public education keeps dwindling.  Now some politicians are trying to eliminate the free breakfast program at schools.  How can you learn on an empty stomach?

America has always been about helping people … helping them get jobs, get an education, get health care and housing.  Now we have a new generation of military veterans suffering from PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, lost limbs… And yet the politicians are cutting funding for the health care we promised them when we sent them to fight and die half-way around the world.

So what are the new American values?  The republican party has created a list of American values as they see them:

*Protecting and preserving traditional marriage – even though 1 in 2 marriages ends in divorce.

*Creating a culture of hope: raising families beyond poverty – but they are fighting increases to the minimum wage and some have even said we shouldn’t have a minimum wage.  Donald Trump says Americans make too much money.

*Adoption and foster care – thousands of children needing a home, but according to republicans those kids are better off without a family than a family with two moms or two dads.

*Repealing Obamacare – but they have yet to produce a plan that would help Americans access health care.

*Protecting individual conscience in health care – meaning your pharmacist can refuse to give you the birth control pills your doctor has prescribed.

If you’ve been paying attention during this presidential campaign, here are what seem to be the new American values:

Racism, intolerance, bigotry, violence, misogony, discrimination, an ever growing divide between “us and them”.  We can do better.  We owe it to future generations to do better.