The important political news high lights of 2018

By Steve Otto

It is  time, once again, for a year end round up. This is that time of year I write about the high lights of the last year.

This year the biggest news story was the election. Polls predicted that the Democrats would retake the house and they did. The Democrats did terrible in the Senate races. They lost most of the tight senate races, leaving a lot of power in the hands of our idiot President Donald Trump. But Trump will not control the US House and that allows the Democrats to put the breaks on some of his stupidity.  

Here in Kansas we had mixed results. We avoided having Kris Kobach as our next governor. That  means we finally see an end to the disastrous Sam Brownback years and his horrible ideology. Democrat Laura Kelly will take control of the Governor's mansion in January. On the other side, Brownback style congress people won more seats in the Kansas House and Senate. Our lackluster slacker Republican Ron Estes won the fourth district over James Thompson, so he will continue to be a yes man for our Idiot and Chief Trump. He will also continue to support doing nothing on behalf of our health care. He is one of the laziest politician Kansas has ever produced. The one bright spot here in Sedgwick County was the win by Lacy Cruz, over far-far-far right-wing bigot Randy Ranzau. Cruz is one of our local progressives so it will be interesting to see what she does.

Kansas also elected Democrat Sharice Davids, a member of Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk Native American Indian tribe and defeated four-term Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder in Kansas' 3rd district. Davids is also a lesbian. 

The Democrats did much better this year than in the last election two years ago, when the Democrats lost all the major elections, governor, US House and US Senate.

In December Claudia Amaro, a leading activist and organizer in the Latino community of Wichita spoke to the Peace and Social Justice Center, for their Annual Dinner on the problem of immigration.

Amaro discussed many of the bad laws that have been passed over the years that have contributed to the immigration problems of today. She gave the example of NAFT (North American Free Trade Agreement).

“It created great hardships,” Amaro said.

Some other problems she added included that fact that US Corporations went to Mexico to avoid taxes and to dodge paying workers minimum wage. NAFTA undermined labor laws.

Amaro reminded people that it was Ronald Reagan who attacked the countries of El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as Honduras. That kind of interference has made life for some citizens of those countries almost unlivable. That is why they are coming her.

In November Trump ignored critics from both parties, Democrat and Republican, and announced that he was going to ignore all the crimes committed by Saudi Arabia and continue to sell arms to that country. Saudi Arabia is probably one of the worst foreign policies of the US. Both People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Saudi Arabia have handed down political power from father to son, a monarchy type situation.

Every time some one has any kind of relationship to or with Kim Jong Un, the leader of DPRK , reporters are quick to point out that Kim is a “murderer.” He has a “horrible human rights record,” as any politician or celebrity will be reminded by mainstream reporters. But Saudi Arabia is no better. Saudi Arabia has about the same type of human rights abuses. People are executed all the time in that country. Our own CIA has figured out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a murderer and responsible for the murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

And yet Trump defied the nation’s intelligence agencies to declare his

unswerving loyalty to Saudi Arabia and its Crown Prince Salman. He made the ridiculous claim that “the killing of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi might never be known.”

This October some right-wing nut sent pipe bombs to Democrats and progressive politicians. What is not surprising is that Fox News tried to blame the Democrats and liberals for the attempted bombings.

This September we witnessed the spectacle of the Republican Party doing everything it could, often without a single shred of decency or fair play, to get their right-wing ideologue Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court bench. Not only is this guy far-far-far to the right, he was also accused of attempted rape and other ill tempered actions towards women. The Republicans in the Senate ignored the accusations. Also Kavanaugh gave a speech defending himself that demonstrated him to be arrogant and hateful towards the Democratic Party.

In August we realized that a new progressive wing of the Democratic Party was beginning to influence the upcoming elections. The Wichita Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) promoted a number of candidates for office including Lacey Cruse, a folk singer and political newcomer whose campaign poster proclaimed “NO MORE OLD WHITE GUYS,”  She then faced off against incumbent Richard Ranzau in the race for Sedgwick County Commissioner. She won both the primary and the general election. She beat Michael Kinard, a Democrat established activist and former Wichita school board member, in the primary. DSA also supported James Thompson who faced off with Republican Ron Estes for the 4rth district representative seat. He did not win, but put up a really good campaign.

In July a large group of Wichitans protested and occupied the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE) center at 555 N. Woodlawn, About 90 people attended the rally, which began as a response to Trump's actions that led to separated families. 

In June, long time mainstream Democrat Representative Joe Crowley was ousted from his Queens district by a card carrying DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina running her first political campaign. She and Bernie Sanders traveled around the country supporting the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

I have been following the activities of Wichita's DSA Chapter all year. In May DSA held a campout, which was attended by DSA members from nearby states, such as Nebraska and Kansas City, MO. I was very interested in a talk by Phil Brown, from Omaha, Nebraska, who gave an excellent speech on "Combating anti-communism." It was a relief to hear a DSA member explain the drawbacks and dangers of supporting some of the liberals and mainstream Democrats who campaign against communists who are involved in various progressive causes.

Every few years this country has a drug epidemic and that is followed by overreaction that can cause problems for a lot of people. During the 1980s we had a crack cocaine epidemic and that caused a lot of young black men and some women, to receive ridiculously long prison sentences for possession of small amounts of crack cocaine. Now we have the opioid epidemic. A lot of this is caused by a street version of a synthetic opioid known as fentanyl. It is a cheap easy to make drug that is 100 times stronger than heroin and is present in most of the opioid deaths that are fueling this campaign. The worst thing about this epidemic is that the press and politicians are focusing on doctors, claiming that over-prescribing pain medicine has caused this epidemic. The results is that people who need pain medicine are finding it hard to get. I have a friend who has two forms of cancer and he spent months looking for a doctor that would prescribe the pain medicine he needs. In April I wrote an article on this hype and hysteria; " The opioid epidemic is really a fentanyl epidemic—and we don’t need all the hype"

In March we had a March for Our Lives, in Wichita, and it was probably one of the largest marches I've seen in several years. It was run mostly by, and largely attended by high school students. A few thousand people Marched from Park Elementary School to the old Sedgwick County Courthouse. This coincided with students across the country who are sick and tired of seeing students shot down in their schools. They are tired of seeing all the politicians who consistently do nothing to pass laws that will deal with gun violence. Since the dominant party in this country is presently the Republican Party, they have seen a government of politicians who are determined to listen to the NRA (National Rifle Association), which opposes any kind of gun regulations at all. This generation is fed up with the NRA and all politicians (Mostly Republican) who are so in dept to them. A lot of these students are presently too young to vote. But that will change over the next few years. When these students come of age it could change the political landscape. We could see a real back lash against these pro-gun Republicans and some real problems for the NRA —who seriously deserve what they will get.
After more than six years of strangulation due to the tax cuts for the rich, by our past Governor Sam Brownback, we attained relief from Republican miss-management, in February. Our schools were underfunded. and every program designed to help the poor were slashed to the bone, so wealthy business owners could enjoy a massive tax break. The economy was in shambles before he went off to be an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom around the world for our idiot and chief Trump.

Brownback admitted he was running an experiment in Kansas and that experiment has failed and failed miserably. He slashed taxes for wealthy businesses, and as most conservatives he tried to balance the budget on the backs of working people. Kansas's budget has for years resembled a wallet with a hole in it—every time the state's bookkeepers peek inside, they find less money than the government thought would be there. He took a lot of money out of our education system as if it had no value.

Last January I wrote about the problems of the US anti-war movement. That problem lies mostly in the hands of the Democratic Party which has largely ignored the peace movement. Since the election of Barack Obama to the presidency, the Democratic Party has been as hawkish on foreign policy as the Republicans. Today there is no mainstream party and very few persons that a peace advocate can vote for. I wrote an article called; " Code Pink has a morale problem: It’s called Democrats.:

The last few decades have been extremely conservative. That iron grip the Republicans have had one the nation and world are slowly starting to slip. But we have a long way to go to stop the tide of conservatism. This is a new year, so we can keep trying.