President Elect Donald Trump
US Senator Kama D. Harris
US Representative Karen Bass
CA State Assembly Member Sebastian Ridley-Thomas
LA County Superior Court Judge Debra R. Archuleta
LA County Superior Court Judge Efrain M. Aceves
LA County Superior Court Judge Susan J. Townsend
LA County Superior Court Judge Kin L. Nguyen
At the closing of an election that was filled with hate mongering, a rise in the visibility of the American Terrorist Group known as the Klu Klux Klan and a Presidential candidate that will go down in infamy for his statement “grab her by the pussy,” I feel compelled to write you all so that you understand my views as a tax paying constituent, as a mother, as a former small business owner, as a volunteer, as a woman, as a member of the “99%,” of what my expectations are of you in your role as an elected Government Official and how you legislate and adjudicate the law.
The idea of Government Officials as Public Servant and what is expected in that capacity can be misguided by people in general. From my perspective you are my employee, it is my tax dollars that pays your salary and affords the employee benefits that you reap from retirement and pension plans to medical benefits. In many cases in your capacity your employee benefits are more substantial than the average worker across the country. As your employer I want to make clear where I stand on various issues and as my Elected Official I expect for you to legislate and adjudicate laws that are reflective of my expectations of you. I will be reviewing your performance and I will continue over the next four years to see where you have deviated from representing me while under my employ.
1.) America was founded steeply under the idea of there being a clear understanding of “Separation of Church and State.” It is part of the First Amendment and states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Individuals of the Muslim faith have a right to worship and dress according to their believes in the same manor as individuals of the Christian faith or the Jewish faith. I saw a Tweet yesterday where a Muslim woman out of fear encouraged her fellow sisters to not wear their Hijab head coverings out of fear that they would be assaulted. That is unacceptable and the messaging that comes from your respective offices needs to reflect that.
2.) Women’s Reproductive Rights and the proposed de-funding of Planned Parenthood. I personally do not believe that men in general should have an opinion on this subject because they do not have a uterus. In the realm of “Separation of Church and State,” I do not believe that any public official should be allowed to cast votes on these matters based on their religious views, because they are effectively legislating their personal religious views and imposing them on people who may not have the same religious view or who may not even identify with religion all together. Men have no idea of what the emotional side of making the decision to abort a fetus feels like or what the physical recovery after such a procedure feels like. In many cases particularly with young people and not so surprisingly, adult males will ask their girlfriend or bed buddy or wife to abort a child because they are not prepared as men financially or emotionally to parent. These are personal choices that should not be mandated by individuals with a religious agenda who happen to be seated in a governmental position where they can influence the law. Rae Carruth was convicted of killing his girlfriend for not aborting their child. Leave Roe V Wade in tact. Planned Parenthood is an excellent resource for family planning ie birth control, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, breast cancer screenings, prostate cancer screenings, male infertility, and fibroid discovery and treatment for low income individuals. When I had my business and could no longer afford $750 medical insurance coverage for me and my children, Planned Parenthood is where I turned for OBGYN Care. The care I received was invaluable and lead to quick treatment of fibroids that had returned to my uterus. De-funding of Planned Parenthood to meet some religious agenda is completely unacceptable.
3.) Obamacare – I personally do not like the way this plan was written. I do however believe it was a necessary step in the right direction in creating a Universal Health Care System for the country. This particular legislation has room for improvement as it heavily benefits medical insurance companies to the detriment of people in need of health care. Repealing it, particularly when you have a great medical benefits package as an Elected Government Official is not acceptable. The years leading up to the roll-out of the law, the medical insurers in California increased premiums at a rate of 20% for five years each year leading up to January 1, 2014. They systematically doubled their profits because they did not know how the law was going to impact their bottom line. The goal of Obamacare was to get people insured so they could get medical treatment. I think the goal should be for people to be able to afford medical treatment, not for medical insurance companies and their shareholders to make profits that are not shared with members. I believe that 20%-40% of annual profit should be returned to members and mandated by law. I believe another 10% should go to a Student Loan Payoff Account for Doctors. Doctor’s graduate with enormous debt and should have an assisted way to pay that debt down and the American people deserve to not go bankrupt by having a medical emergency. It will take me 2 years to pay off an a single trip to the emergency room that I experienced in October of 2015. It is ridiculous that wellness can put you in the poor house over night. There should also be a sliding scale for when people go from poverty level income to their earning potential where they supplement State run programs until they are fully employed and no longer need state programs like Medi-Cal.
4.) The 13th Amendment; Laws in general. When people have served their time in jail for a crime they committed, including a felony conviction, their debt to society has been paid. They should be entitled to vote, they should be allowed to work without their criminal record being a factor, unless it is a sex crime or a violent crime. Stop and frisk should apply to Wall Street in the same way it applies to “inner city” neighborhoods. The NYPD’s July 2016 cocaine drug sting led to the arrest and almost slap on the wrist charges for elitist, young, wealthy Chipotle Executive, Merrill Lynch Banker, Wall Street Accountant, Huffington Post Blogger, Fox Producer these people are not above the law and apparently random stop and frisk will work on Wall Street as effectively as it will in the inner city. Teenagers convicted with hard jail sentences for selling crack cocaine should be forced into mandatory education with emphasis on business and then released. There is part of our legal system that should be punitive, but it should also rehabilitate where it makes the most sense. Male youth in particular that sell drugs do so to feel like the man, to provide usually under circumstances, where their earning potential is minimal based on existing education and or circumstances. You cannot slap the wrist of someone that sells cocaine, and then throw someone under the bus when they sell crack. Felons that have done work programs while incarcerated should have guaranteed employment with the agencies that employed them in jail. Working California wildfires while in jail, but being unable to be hired by any State/ Municipal Fire Department after serving your time is ludicrous.
5.) Electoral College – New System please as it undermines voting democratically.
In closing white men in particular that seemed to support President Elect Trump are full of rhetoric and entitlement. The United States of America’s first immigrants arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. Since then people have come from all over the world, Ellis Island in New York saw many immigrants from Germany, Ireland, Britain, Scandinavian countries, Hungarians, Poland, Hungaria, Syria, Turkey, and Armenia. Forty percent of all Americans can trace their ancestry to the 60 year period where Ellis Island was open. It closed in 1910 before women could vote, before the end of Jim Crow, before the Civil Rights Act and the people that came from these Eurocentric countries had a leg up on enslaved African descendants by merely arriving on America’s shores. The idea that anyone needs to go back to where they came from as seen in some of the Klu Klux Klan sentiment shared during this election is based on some ill conceived notion of superiority. The deficiency that these white men seem to feel in their lives and the white women that voted for President Elect Trump is a result of their life choices and they should wake up look in the mirror and understand that they are responsible for their situation. Blaming others that are of a different ethnicity for not being where you hoped you would be in life is escapism at best. For the immigrants that have crossed the border and are working illegally and who have children born in this country, they should be fast tracked for work visa’s so they can work above the table and be taxed like the rest of us and it should be mandatory that they apply for citizenship the “right” way and be allowed to go through the current process or face deportation. When people say my grand-parents immigrated the right way – this typically means they arrived through Ellis Island when America was open to European Countries. We no longer live in that world, and people are not immigrating from European countries only. Securing borders is another issue all together and I will save that for another time.
To the President Elect, I sincerely hope you are able to deliver on a better economy, more small business opportunities, more job opportunities, better healthcare, etc. for the masses of people that voted for you. I am not sure if they can handle a shortfall as there was so much hate and negativity expressed in their values, that they will look to continue to blame fellow Americans for their life circumstance. That is a brew for civil war, the one thing I do not think any of us wants. May God Bless America, the land that I love!
Unapologetically,
Friday Jones
Twitter @IAMFridayJones
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