Echo: A muted evangelical call from Iowa - shout out to scold Donald Trump

This is an unusually interesting opinion letter to the editor published in the Iowa The Hawk Eye newspaper. This echo message contains some Christian overtones in criticism of the Donald Trump tyranny.

‘This Is Not of God’: When Anti-Trump Evangelicals Confront Their Brethren- headline in The New York Times

Shane Claiborne at an early morning meeting before a Christian revival in Lynchburg, Va. To the leaders of Liberty University (he was seen as a menace to the campus). Credit Travis Dove for The New York Times

From Iowa:  Here is why the press deserves commendation for digging into Trump, the great deceiver. 

We continue to hear the Fox News pundits, aka white talking heads, who blame everyone except Donald Trump for the Russia investigation. Enough.

James Comey’s re-opening the Hillary investigation was the trigger that pushed the Democratic uncertain vote toward Trump.  And he is one of the fall guys because he had the legal training to document every word of suspicion the President threw at him? 

And of Hillary’s evil deeds, why was she cleared by full Senate probe? Assuming the story holds up, why was WikiLeaks acting in harmony with the Republican National Committee? Collusion exists, though the trail may be difficult to document in the layered deceptions, Trump’s dirty deeds done dirt cheap team of scofflaws Trump surrounded himself with, have spun.

Here is why the press deserves commendation for digging into Trump, the great deceiver. No national leader in our history has had such a history of cloistered business deceptions, trickery, and outright criminal fraud stealing hundreds of millions,from his horrendous history of rip off businesses. No one at this level has not been revealed by his tax trail, which we still need to crack open at year 3. Trump U, four casino bankruptcies, hundreds of small business contractors screwed, real estate investors in Panama for just one case, documenting gouging, lies, and outrageous over runs. Chronic profiteering conflict of interest from the misuse of Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago used to profit from state business, illegal security approvals to the highest placed number 2 in the Cabinet, his own son-in-law, who from the git go engineered a for personal profit giving away of top level Nuclear development technology to Saudi Arabia, a horrendous violation of National Security Council, and Congressional laws.

This is arms dealing, the game ending arms of nuclear annihilation, straight from Trump’s direction from the oval office with Prince murderer of Saudi Arabia (Kashogi was onto this racket), the first foreign visitor to Washington, who single highhandedly decimated Muslims of Yemen, conveniently tagged as terrorists. And where were 13 of the 911 terrorist attacks from? The same dictator we just empowered with nukes?

No doubt, 100 percent of the due suspicion aimed at Donald Trump was driven by his storm cloud of distracted diversions he drives daily, while he perpetrates the greatest criminal theft of national resources, oil, gas, coal, and Uranium in Utah and Alaska arctic shelf right in front of your noses, yet ever so carefully smothered by “National Shutdown” over the fake crisis at the border. Except that a small army over at Department of Interior were called back to hand over national resources in rigged bid dirt cheap auctions to his energy cronies he really works for.

Real Americans, like my parent who served, like my cousin 30 foot from 911 Pentagon impact, like my Daughters of the Revolution connection to civil war, fighting to liberate a gang run breed of unpaid slave laborers, would be flocking to the Southern border to help the Christian and Catholic immigrants from strife torn Central America, be saved. God commanded this, to aid our fellow Christians, the poor, the weak, and the babies. That is your calling, your God commanded duty, not propping up the greatest deceiver who the light is absolutely going to call out as sure as the sun is going to rise. God ordered love your neighbor, not hate. Chew on that, then spit the liar out.

Steve Klein, Burlington Iowa

Guns in America - Citizens United

Echo opinion published in the The Hawk Eye newspaper in Burlington, Iowa ~ Calling for a Constitutional amendment to recall Citizens United.

IOWA Opinion ~ The easy availability of assault rifles in America is rooted in is our political system’s failure to rein in the out sized influence of money in politics.

Limits on political donations by individuals, businesses and political action committees are rendered moot by the unlimited spending by so-called Super PACs, which can marshal the resources to relentlessly attack or boost candidates of their choosing.

In its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court held it unconstitutional to limit the amount of money that unaffiliated groups, or so-called Super PACs, could spend on political campaigns. 

Other groups, often funded by corporate interests, spend money on political messaging without registering with the election commission at all because electoral politics isn’t their primary function.

As a result, more than 20 percent of the $6.4 billion spent in the 2016 presidential and congressional campaigns was from groups with no limits on the amount they could raise or spend, according to OpenSecrets.org, an online database of filings with the Federal Election Commission.

In the case of the National Rifle Association, its affiliated super PACs spent more than $52 million in the 2016 election campaign, most of it to support Donald Trump and six Republican candidates for Senate, five of whom won. Individual donors were limited to giving $2,700 to candidates in 2016.

In the wake of the tragic shooting deaths of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many people have tried to shame politicians for accepting contributions and support from the NRA, which advocates for Americans’ rights to guns, including the AR-15 rifles that have become the weapon of choice for domestic terrorists.

Had those candidates not taken the money, the NRA would have found a candidate who would, and thrown their weight behind them. Then their Super PAC could spend as much as they wanted to get that person elected.

Unfortunately, the NRA, the pharmaceutical industry, trial lawyers, or other groups spend as much as they legally can to advance their interests.

The blame lies with the political system that grants them this outsized power and influence.

It is within our power to change the rules. This could require a constitutional amendment imposing strict limits on campaign contributions and spending, something that will preserve the rights of individuals to advance their views, without allowing a few people or interest groups to dominate.

Only by imposing stricter limits on the role of money in our electoral process will average Americans be able to reclaim the power that is rightly theirs.

Shaw Media