Category: Politics

A DUMPSTER LOAD OF THE SMELLY STUFF

Published by Richard Kimball on July 5, 2023

7 min read

Just now

Carole and I moved to Phoenix, where she studied for the Arizona Bar while I tried to do anything I could to help pay some bills. When she passed her Bar exam, I knew I was in trouble. My talents were miniscule, my education little better than that of a performing monkey, fortunately the one profession left to me needed no training and most monkeys could do it and actually do, do it — politics.

It was Christmas 1979, I was sitting in the living room with Carole, now a lawyer, and Steve, her former boyfriend, a talented artist, teacher, and good friend to us both. What should I do with my life was the question and run for office became the answer.

We knew a bit about politics, or at least enough to know that voters would elect just about anyone. None of us knew anything about local Phoenix politics or had any money. In fact, Carole and I had just moved to Phoenix, where her family lived, had no idea who the State Legislative incumbents were, let alone whether they were doing a good job or not. That not knowing, made us no different than you, or close to 100% of you who wouldn’t recognize your state representatives if they dropped in for dinner. Despite these impediments, we made 2 decisions that evening that 11 months later would remove a nice guy and pretty fair legislator from office.

First, was a catchy slogan. Every new, first-time, unknown candidate should have a good slogan I thought, some message that helps people remember the name. A very big deal when running for those little offices that few citizens ever go to the polls for. As with all local candidates we would largely be dependent upon the spillage from those on the top of the ticket, the Presidential, Gubernatorial or Congressional candidates who get the ink, resources, and attention necessary to be known and stimulate the electorate. All of which is completely backwards. The top of the ticket gets all the glamor while it is the bottom, those little candidates, the state legislators, city councils and school boards that have the power to impact you, and your family’s everyday life. Constitutionally the president may decide what to do with the people of Iraq, but he can’t do much about your neighborhood and most of us spend a lot more time there.

Anyway, after much discussion, I decided on, “Richard Kimball is Running.” An absurd slogan for sure, but political success is often built on the absurd. In this case, my name happened to be the same as a popular Hollywood TV series and later movie called the Fugitive, where an innocent man named Dr. Richard Kimble, is forced into running from the law. It was perfect. We even put a little running man logo on our signs so the point wouldn’t be missed.

It was an instant hit. And arguably, the only popular thing I ever did in my 7 years as a politician. The second important decision we made that night was that I would run for the State Senate against a popular Republican incumbent who also happened to be a local television personality. It would clearly be an uphill slog but a person who has a lot of energy and nothing else to do, can do a lot as a political candidate.

I would spend the next 11 months going door to door, thousands of doors, speaking to an amazing assortment of beings living in anything from dumps to palaces, but all with two things in common — They all lived in my district, and none knew who the Hell I was.

I distinctly remember the four doors I knocked on early that first morning. The first two, I was a little nervous and to my relief, no one was home, so I wrote out a note that as it turned out, I would write thousands of times on my campaign brochure. It said, “Sorry, I missed you. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call me at my home.” Signed Richard with my number.

She was home at door number three, and the image is forever etched in my memory. She wasn’t more than 22 or 23, with tangles of long blond hair sweeping over her shoulder and sleep still dozing in her beautiful round blue eyes. She stood barefoot, dressed only in a bathrobe that was gloriously snagged on the doorknob. This vision launched my desire to knock on door number four and the thousands to come over the next eleven months.

Door number 4 was different, a whole lot different, and a revelation that would steel me for all the doors to come that would close in my face, beginning and ending with me in mid-sentence about my running for office.

My mind still smothered in the delights of door number 3, I knocked. “Who is it?” the voice barked. Shocked out of my dreamy fantasies, “Sorry to bother you Mame,” I stammered. ”My name is Richard Kimball, I’m running for the State Senate. I just wanted…” Suddenly the door swung open. Her hand grabbed to secure the lock on the screen. “I just have one question for you,” she huffed. “Great, what is it?” I said. Glaring at me, she jammed her words into my ears, “If elected, will you promise to support a law requiring the castration of all men accused of rape?”

Now I had given a great deal of thought to many issues, but castration of the accused had not been one of them. We talked for quite a while. I was pleasant, sympathetic but never told her that I could support mutilation before conviction as a proper punishment. None the less my concern convinced her that I was a sympathetic friend, and as I imagined what horror this woman must have suffered, she became my first vote.

For a pitiful few, it is a most valuable lesson. It isn’t so much what you stand for as it is what you feel, the language you use and manner with which any normal human would instinctively respond. All of this came very naturally to me, I did not need to pretend, be bombastic or solicitous in any way. I needed to follow Franklin Roosevelt’s advice, “Be short, be sincere and be seated (or in this case quiet).”

Never liking to draw attention or talk, I was a gifted listener and empathizer with almost anyone’s view no matter what it was. It was where it came from that was of interest to me.

Going door-to-door suddenly became fun, often stimulating and endlessly educational. In fact, it would occur to me some years later that I may have been the only candidate ever who truly enjoyed campaigning but hated serving. When serving, I would learn, real people were part of your past.

In the months ahead, door after door, with my passion and interest clear to all I slowly gained support. I walked the streets of central Phoenix seven days a week, every week, from 8 in the morning to 8 in the evening for those 11 months. At some point a few people started to welcome me, they had heard I was coming from friends or relatives in neighborhoods I had been through weeks before. Sometimes they would offer me a soda or a sandwich and actually seemed to enjoy talking to me. One day a photographer showed up and wanted to take a picture of all the shoes I had worn out. I was having a good time. Most of the people were kind, thoughtful and full of all kinds of notions, and it was clear that no one had ever shown any interest in what they thought.

NEWSPAPER PHOTO OF MY WORN OUT SHOES

My little running man went up in yards and on street corners. On Election Day, State Senator Tim Hayes, a popular television personality, a good and decent man and fair Senator was gone. I don’t think he ever knew what hit him. For me, winning was one of those precious moments in life never to be repeated. The experience was pure joy.

Thousands of Arizonians took time out of their day to go to the polls, grab a ballot find my name and say, “Ya! You’re our guy!” That is the nonsensical notion that germinates the “BIG HEAD” all politicians grow. It is a complete dumpster load of the smelly stuff, as I said, people are drawn to the polls by the top of the ticket and just blindly vote for one party or the other on down the ballot. My funny little running man nudged me over the top in what had been thought a Republican district.

The experience of winning with family, friends, and supporters all about, was the purest joy but had sobered by morning.

Now what?

(New chapters will be added roughly once a week)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

WHO AM I? Conservative or Liberal?

Published by Richard Kimball on July 2, 2023

The person most qualified for the job should get the job.

People that borrow money should pay it back.

Limits should be placed on access to abortion.

Separation of church and state should be absolute.

Citizens’ access to weapons of mass destruction should be limited.

Collecting taxes to exceed the defense spending of the next 10 largest countries is a dangerous squander.

We should invest in knowledge and be guided by our discoveries.

WHO ARE YOU?

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

MAKE IT BIG

Published by Richard Kimball on June 18, 2023

Richard Kimball

2 min read

Just now

MAKE IT BIG

You will never hear a politician tell you,

“Hey, things are just great, we are doing just fine,” not even incumbents. Fear is what sells in politics. In politics the world is always about to end. Complain about your current circumstance to any survivor of the Revolution, the Civil War, The World War, Great Depression, World War II or a dozen other trials they somehow bested to give you the life you have, and you’ll know regret.

“No generation of Americans have had it easier, yet every successful politician knows that fear works, it’s what drives people to the polls to vote for the very savior making them fearful. Politicians are the very definition of the expression “Drama Queens.” They can sensationalize anything, it is what gets attention, creates audience sells product and GOD DAME IT, advances the very world they harp against.

Once a researcher noted, “You are four times more likely to die drowning in a bathtub than you are from a terrorist attack.” Bathtubs have been knocking Americans off for a very long time now, but no one suggests we commit the nations treasure and tens of thousands of lives in an all-out attack against porcelain producers and plumbers. Even though it could scarcely be a lesser undertaking than what we did in Iraq, Afghanistan, or any American war in my lifetime.

The most minor issues are blown enormous when enormous issues are not apparent…”

(Excerpt from my The Miracle of Me — Biography of a Nobody)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

CAPTURED

Published by Richard Kimball on June 15, 2023

Democracy Requires Free Will

What if there was nothing that molded you, nothing that pulled you this way or that, inclined you to like or dislike, you existed in an eventless void without the thinnest tinsel of influence? What would you think, would you even know to think?

That world once existed for each of us, at that split second our consciousness began. From that instant on, each of us has been led, guided to our thoughts, ushered to our judgements of all that surrounds us.

Each of us is the product of incalculable variations in experience. It is those variations that make me so different than you.

Those profound differences that developed, could once make mouths water at the thought of a nice slab of whale blubber in Alaska or a pile of fried or nicely aged maggots in Italy.

Starting slowly and now accelerating to starship speed, our world is homogenizing into manageable clusters of conformity where one can easily forecast what the members of one cluster or another do, want, think, and believe.

The deletions in experiences and the bundlings of commonalities are increasing in most every aspect of our lives, whether it be in how we live, what we do, where we buy, what we see and listen to. One can now easily forecast what the members of one cluster or another do, want, think and believe.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in politics, where we are captured in clusters of like view, all pulled and inclined to identical judgements, shaped by today’s unscrupulous sources.

With the loss of trusted sources of information and the growing inability to know what is so and what is not, there is no escape. And now with A.I.’s foot on the first step of the human ladder the end of unmanaged thought or what we think of as free will is near.

All that is left is the uncontrolled molding of billions of malleable minds.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

HAVE YOU WOKE UP YET?

Published by Richard Kimball on April 28, 2023

No one seems certain what WOKE means. All words have a life, like people, they change with age and never more so than a newly born one.

It is how a word is used that defines its meaning. Right now the use of WOKE seems most like a synonym for political correctness particularly as it applies to any class of disadvantaged.

If it stays on that track I hope that one day it will get its due: That is to say, every single one of us owes a debt to WOKE. If there were not enough WOKE, no one would have the vote, certainly not women, we would still have slavery, ovens for Jews would still be in operation and Christians could find themselves lion food in the Colosseum.

WOKE works. It pushes us to be better.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

SEX and POLITICS

Published by Richard Kimball on April 3, 2023

To preserve a modicum of sanity and friendly relations if I take a walk when someone talks politics. I have found there is comfort in not knowing another person’s views.

However, this week as so many liberal friends celebrate Trump’s indictment drawn from a sexual affair, I just want on the highest hill to scream how dangerously desperate that inditement will be made to appear.

Is paying off a prostitute really the important issue?

When the conservatives wanted to impeach Clinton for Whitewater, found nothing but Monica Lewinski and so impeached him for that, was the world made right. Does anyone really think men in power won’t follow the urge to pollinate the flowers that gather about them. Hell, even Jimmy Carter “lusted in his heart.”

Be careful what you wish for? You better.

This celebration will play the key role in turning what is an imbecile into a martyr with his millions of nymphlepts. He had sex. He tried to hide it. Ya, that’s unusual, let’s get him for that and engorge his line, “The liberals are on a witch hunt and will do anything,” with real value.

This indictment helps build him a silken cushion to fall upon when it comes to the serious issues that truly matter, like insurrection, election interference and tax fraud.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Comments closed

UKRAINE

Published by Richard Kimball on February 27, 2023

Sanctions will not succeed and rarely, if ever, have been the deciding factor in conflicts.

American media continues to push narratives that suggest the sanctions have real teeth and suggest the Russian people will rebel as the bodies return home.

The reality is that the Russian economy continues to expand, even out pacing Britain and Germany and will continue to do so as their trade with powerful economies such as China, India and Turkey explode, none of which support sanctions.

The Russian people’s support for the war does not faulter as had been hoped, but grows in patriotic fervor as their sources of information pitch the West as working toward Russian destruction.

The end game we hope for and need:

The West recognizes roughly 7% of Ukraine as Russian, including Crimea and the Russian-speaking areas of Donetsk and Luhansk — roughly the territory Russia claimed in 2014.
Ukraine, whose economy has crashed, gets to retain all of the territory they had prior to the 2022 invasion, gets peace, and the funds to rebuild, substantially but not solely provided by Russia.

Neither Russia nor the West can lose in this conflict. Anything much less or much more than such a compromise will put world disaster on the table.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Comments closed

.

Published by Richard Kimball on February 15, 2023

^{TO: CANDIDATES}

^{FM: VOTERS}

^{The GREATEST GENERATION is Going, Going, GONE.}

^{Now we, as the LUCKIEST GENERATION, choose to live unearned lives on the gains made by our fathers and their fathers before them. Lives that all previous generations in human history could never have imagined.}

^{Yes, we spent much of what was earned and saved in the past and much of what has yet to be earned in the future, all to enjoy today.}

^{Mention rational adjustments to our spending on Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid or defense and we will butcher you.}

^______

^{Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder}

^{Sign up on my blog at RichardKimball.org}

^{or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016}

Comments closed

GOOD COP / BAD COP

Published by Richard Kimball on February 2, 2023

Brandon and Saudia would have been in jail instead of on a plane headed for home if my wife and I hadn’t been there. Two brilliant students just finishing internships working for us. One was headed back to work for the governor of Indiana and the other into health care in her native Georgia.

With an early pre-dawn flight, we decided to give them a lift on the two hour drive up to the Portland airport.

Now this gets a little tricky to explain, it is a “you had to be there” kind of thing. But here is my best effort: I was driving and Adelaide, my wife, was sitting in the back seat directly behind me, while Brandon was sitting shotgun and Saudia directly behind him. In the dark of the night, we came up to a stop sign before turning left on to a main but poorly lit street leading out of town and to the Interstate. Off in the distance, parked under a tree, I noticed what I thought was a parked police car. I turned left, drove five or six blocks as the police car slowly approached from the rear and then suddenly hit its lights and siren at the same instant that another police car came screeching around the corner in front of us, hitting its siren. I pulled over.

I was completely fuddled and asked Brandon what I had done. I knew I hadn’t been speeding. He shrugged his shoulders and Adelaide said, “Maybe one of our brake lights is out.” Two police cars for that?

I didn’t think so. I watched as the policemen that pulled up behind us quickly jumped out of his car and put his hand on his holster, while the other car put on its brights and blocked the road in front. “Wow! What the Hell is this?”

The officer with his hand on the gun quickly approached me from behind, then seeing me, slowed as his hand dropped to his side. Now it was he who looked fuddled.

Nervously I asked him what I had done. In an odd, suddenly cautious and disappointed voice he said, “Never mind, you can go,” and blurted out an inaudible something to the other police car and briskly walked back to his. Both cars pulled out and disappeared into the night.

Brandon, Saudia, my wife and I just sat silent for a minute or so. I glanced over at Bradon and then back at Saudia. Neither would look at me and then I got it.

I just exploded. When we had turned left onto the main street the police car down the block only saw Brandon and Saudia in the windows. with two others in the dark shadows next to them. They saw a car full of black people.

Apoplectic would be the word to describe my reaction. I had never seen it up close and personal, but now that I had there was blood in my eyes. I wanted floggings or at least a couple of badges.

I ranted about how I was going to some friends in the local press and city council. When I finally came up for breath Brandon and Saudia just looked up and stared at me, and then as if in tag-team manner asked that I not do that.

I was now the student and to be taught by two who had clearly earned their PhDs.

They told me that if I did those things, it would only make it worse for other blacks. Their suggestion was simply this: “If you really want to do some good, if you want to be helpful, Richard, sponsor some community discussions on racism and tolerance. It will bring it out into the open and maybe strike a note with a few who will make such things less likely.”

The effect those two had on me came in level parts of shame and awe. Of course they would know, this was no first time for them.

Yes, some community discussion, it was the thing to do, the smart, effective, helpful, proper thing to do. But I was none of those things, and by noon I could be found in the mayor’s office unrolling an obscenity-laced review of the night’s events.

She, of course, promised to have a stern discussion with the Chief of Police who would make sure everyone was properly chewed out and made all the more hateful.

There were more important pressing things to do with my time than sponsor forums on race. Besides I had stirred up a nice angry pot and could now, like most of the self-righteous, point my countenance skyward and arrogantly walk on, confident that I had busted some ass and created peace on earth.

Score one for me on the Mutant’s team.

The other side of the coin is this — a defense that will upset some who read this. Not a defense of those policemen in my story, but one that knows they are not the norm. I could give you equally vivid emotional descriptions of the hundreds of ethical, honorable police officers slaughtered on America’s streets each year, putting their bodies between you and real evil.

It isn’t a desire to hurt others that generates generations of police cadets. It is a desire to do good, to serve, to be of value to their community, friends, and family and to feel value in themselves.

It isn’t unusual, it is normal for some in any profession to turn to the dark side, particularly in a profession that finds a few hundred of its number murdered on the streets every year.

Could it be that showing more value and far better screening might be a more fruitful response?

You do not want to give up the protection of those willing to protect you, but we might fork over bigger salaries and a lot more training to avoid those on the dark side.

— –

(Excerpt from Kimball’s Autobiography of a Nobody — The Miracle of Me)

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Comments closed

Are you a New Wave Republican?

Published by Richard Kimball on January 22, 2023

Deny elections, deny vaccines, deny climate change, deny wages, deny all abortions and health care for the poor. Defund social programs and public education. Support assault weapons, a paralyzing defense budget, and a Christian nation.

Eisenhower, Nixon, Goldwater, Ford, Reagan, the Bush’s, and every other Republican leader in history weren’t!

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Comments closed

Say it isn’t so!

Published by Richard Kimball on January 4, 2023

Decades ago, my congressman boss would joke: You know what the difference is between a cactus and a congress? With a cactus all the pricks are on the outside.

Give me a switch and it would be tough to choose who to smack first: The Republicans who cower at the feet of their lowliest, or those Democrats acting joyous at the spectacle.

This is what happens when the mindless self-obsessed of our number, once only seen in the crassest of local politics, are elevated to the highest offices in the land.

This is the opportunity, for what is left of reason, to come together from both sides and put our nation back on track. Not Republican vs. Democrat, but the rational/thoughtful vs. the galactically stupid.

Richard Kimball — Vote Smart Founder

Comments closed

E = mc2

Published by Richard Kimball on December 16, 2022

A simple equation of enormous significance to anyone that understands it and now with this week’s useful proof of it, stand ready to save the world.

equation by Vote Smart

Democracy equals education/facts multiplied by infinity.

You simply cannot govern yourself without unlimited education and access to facts.

It is that equation that you must focus on and why Vote Smart began. Vote Smart: a simple idea, where people get the facts and citizens have enough knowledge (education) to use them successfully.

At its core, it is not difficult to understand. If you support turning over the rules that govern your life to millions of strangers that you do not know, who you will never know, you must struggle to insure they have access to education and the facts. That is what was began begun at VoteSmart.org.

Comments closed

Entertainer for Mass Murderer

Published by Richard Kimball on December 11, 2022

Griner for Bout — Huh!

What are we thinking?! We get an entertainer if we free a mass-murdering thug selling arms to our enemies, anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down our pilots, someone convicted of conspiracy to kill Americans.

What a deal!

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

Al Gore for President !!!

Published by Richard Kimball on November 25, 2022

“Raging moderate”

Won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Created the Internet — Yes, he pretty much did.

Devoting his life to stop the Global Warming that is frying the future.

Actually, won popular vote for president but didn’t tear the country apart to gain power.

Very young, by current presidential standards.

Good enough for me.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

BIDEN SAYS “HAND ME THAT BONE SAW”

Published by Richard Kimball on November 20, 2022

Yard Sale on American Ethics

If you, as an American citizen are captured, tortured, murdered, and dismembered with a bone saw it’s A-OK with Joe.

That is precisely what your President said last week when he gave immunity to Prince Muhammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, in an obviously agreed to subterfuge using international precedents.

That would be the same Prince that imprisons, tortures, and kills dissenters in Saudia Arabia and sends his agents elsewhere in the world to torture and dismember our fellow Americans like Jamal Khashoggi.

That would be the same two-faced Joe who previously called the prince a “thug” who had “shocked him to his very core.” The same Joe that promised he would make him a “pariah” on the world stage.

Want to celebrate American backbone Thursday by eating some off a turkeys? Just go to Joe’s house.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

VOTE THE BEST YOU CAN

Published by Richard Kimball on November 5, 2022

It is too bad you didn’t run!

I have employed hundreds of people over my years helping to run a company called the United States of America.

In the old days most applicants I reviewed made a real effort to impress me. They were often pleasant, always seemed to appreciate my time, sometimes nervous but always smiling through it, and to a person, each would struggle to answer the questions I required answers to.

Questions that always had to do with their experience, and how much they knew about the job they were applying for, or issues I was concerned about. More often than not, they would give cogent responses about what they would do if they were given the responsibilities.

Today, that is all gone. Now I am not given time to talk and must listen instead to each one moan on and on about how horrid the other applicants are.

I, of course don’t feel very good about hiring any of these kinds of people. Hell, I wouldn’t hire a dishwasher that behaved that way, but what choice do we have when those are the only ones applying?

I will tell you why: Because no respectable member of your community would put themselves up or push their families into such a bloodbath. So, you are left with NO choice.

These people do not make your causes right, they just use your anger to claw their way to power.

Now, the end of this round is coming Tuesday, and most of us will toss in the towel, knowing it a mess and we’ll simply vote for what money we imagine can be kept for ourselves. To paraphrase a famous line, “My money, stupid, my money.

For those of you that still believe in the dream, I would suggest you try VOTESMART.ORG, an organization that has collected the facts about those craving the power to control your life.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

OUT WITH THE OLD

Published by Richard Kimball on October 24, 2022

IN WITH THE NEW

CUCKOO BEES vs SHREWS

CUCKOO BEES lay their eggs amongst the eggs in another bee’s nest, hoping their larvae hatch earlier, allowing its young to feed on the provisions stored for the other’s eggs. Then with their extra-large mandibles they dessert on the others’ eggs as well.

Feeding on the haves to engorge the have nots with little demanded in return.

SHREWS don’t look like much to worry about but are total bastards. They secrete venom from their jaws, paralyzing prey, not to kill but to keep alive for prolonged feeding.

At first, Shrews look like a joke, no real threat but now they come for November 8th where democracy will be paralyzed, and the main course served.

EXTREMISTS now control the dialogue, the considerations, and in the end, the actions with too few remaining to bring reason.

Get the facts at VoteSmart.org and good luck to us all this election.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder Sign up on my Blog at: richardkimball.org . or Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

THE ASCENDANCY OF STUPID!

Published by Richard Kimball on October 17, 2022

First, they took my civics education.

Then they de-funded my school.

Then uneducated, ignorant of democracy and unable to think critically, I was set free and found my faith in what I wanted to believe rather than what I should believe.

Once American education was the envy of all, our student performance second to none, our skill at self-governance a beacon the world over.

The attack on education, truth, and the facts is no accident. The dimmer we become, the more malleable we are.

The only remedy is to sustain at least one source for trusted facts that any citizen can turn to in confidence — facts without interpretation and protected from influence.

VoteSmart.org is exactly that, but requires a people’s will to use it, believe in it, and to support it. A source to which all conservative and liberal citizens can turn in confidence for the facts and the truth that is dependent upon those facts. Without that, we cannot sustain an ability to self-govern successfully.

It can be done, ensuring its integrity with an elected board balanced between the multiple sides on major national issues. Supported without dependence upon self-serving interests and operated by those willing to commit their time and expertise in the national interest and not financial self-gain.

That is what VoteSmart.org strived to be. As a young man, my boss once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.” Without VoteSmart.org or an organization very much like it, it is not the meek that shall inherit the earth, but the stupid.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

ARE YOU PEOPLE?

Published by Richard Kimball on October 10, 2022

You decide on November 8th.

If you are not white, male and don’t own land, you can’t vote. That is the way we introduced self-governance to the world, with most people still not being actual people, as in “…of the people, by the people, for the people.” Women and most non-whites were not really defined as people in that wonderous American phrase.

It wasn’t till 1920 that most Americans would finally be considered people and allowed to vote — but not all, including the first Americans, native Americans. For those that were first, one or maybe two gazillion years before anyone else — well for them, it would take a tad longer.

The freedom and the liberty that comes with that vote, has been a slow, torturous march for most of us, with barriers erected by the people, against those not yet people, all along the way.

Your vote is your personal hard chunk of power, fought for through the suffering of others, and finally giving you a say. If you do not use it, your power doesn’t go away, it simply marches over and adds its power to those other chunks that are used, by the people who get to order you about.

VOTE !

And use VoteSmart.org to vote smart.

Richard Kimball

Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

PATSY I AM AND SO, ARE YOU?

Published by Richard Kimball on September 25, 2022

You Must Be Rich

“If you’re young and conservative, you have no heart. If you’re old and liberal, you have no brain,” a favorite Churchill quote and spot-on description of me.

For me the money I earn is a super-efficient warehouse where I can store my future needs, food, clothes, shelters, etc. And the taking of it (taxes) a levy I willingly pay for the items I need but cannot afford on my own: roads, schools, protection from fire, crime, war, and yes, even my desire to assist those amongst us in trouble who cannot take care of themselves.

But why should you be forced to give what you earn to those choosing not to earn or those taking and not repaying? Those that demonstrate no sense of responsibility or value you. There are all kinds of bailouts, some given before they’re needed or requested. You experience and pay for bailouts of banks, insurance companies, the health care industry, military contractors, right on down to students, the poor and even a member of my own family.

Expectations of paying back, performing better or even a thanks are not required but should be. Requiring those we give to, to participate in the giving or to pay back as their conditions advance does not sell well, as you have seen with all that “Too Big to Fail” nonsense, but it also applies to some you may not have thought of. I remember one of my old bosses, Sen. Daniel Moynihan of New York saying that millions would be plunged into poverty, and we would “find children sleeping on grates,” back in 1993 if we changed welfare programs that simply gave away cash into less generous, time-limited, work-required programs. It is hard to argue that that switch had nothing to do with child poverty and family welfare rolls being cut in half.

Politicians — Democrats and Republicans — all like bailouts for their friends or those they hope will become friends, blue collar or white. It is just easy to spend other people’s money and amongst politicians your money is just other people’s money.

Richard Kimball, Vote Smart Founder

Medium.com at: https://medium.com/@daffieduck2016

Comments closed

Subscribe To Blog

Category: Politics

NEWSPAPER PHOTO OF MY WORN OUT SHOES

WHO ARE YOU?

You will never hear a politician tell you,

Sanctions will not succeed and rarely, if ever, have been the deciding factor in conflicts.

Decades ago, my congressman boss would joke: You know what the difference is between a cactus and a congress? With a cactus all the pricks are on the outside.

“Raging moderate”

Yard Sale on American Ethics

It is too bad you didn’t run!

IN WITH THE NEW

CUCKOO BEES vs SHREWS

First, they took my civics education.

You decide on November 8th.

You Must Be Rich