A Letter from a East African Immigrant Citizen

 Don’t be a victim, be an American. Vote 'YES'

The Democrats seem adept at making promises but inept at following through

Yosseph Budle

GOP, SD36 Delegate

Minority Liberty Alliance, Member

Having recently read the piece at WardbeerNews.com by Jamal Abdulahi dated 24 September, it became evident that in order for communities to get the full perspective one must be presented both sides of the argument. While Jamal gave his perspective of this election cycle, as he noted, it is the perspective of a Democratic activist and needs to be filtered through that mindset.

The Democratic mindset tends to perpetuate a victim mentality in which everything wrong that happens could have been avoided if we had better laws and a larger government to care for us, and it usually blames someone who has more money, power or influence as the cause for those wrongs. (Somehow rich Democrats like our Senators and Congressmen do not fall in this category.)

While that may be the case in a few instances, the majority of these situations are the result of a poor choice, difficult times, or an unintended consequence.  Putting more laws and restrictions to control behavior has two adverse consequences. First, they restrict future choices which translate to restricting freedoms, and second, it means someone has to have oversight and enforcement of the law.  The result is more state or federal workers to ensure that the law is being enforced and consequently more tax money needed to hire workers to restrict your choice.

While I understand that Jamal’s intent was to bring attention to the elections being held this fall, I think that a clear discussion of the issues he addressed is in order.  He spoke of President Obama and his policies on the international scale.  His assessment of foreign policy is from the perspective of a staunch supporter of the President and those policies. An objective assessment of the foreign policy would give quite a different view than he conveyed.

Take the “Arab spring,” for example.  Obama ran his 2008 campaign on having more diplomacy and communications with the Middle East powers.  The result of his lack of experience and misguided approach has concluded in virtually complete upheaval of governments in the Middle East with a chaos that has put in question the economic and political stability of the region (we see and feel this everyday with increased gas prices and subsequently food due to the increase in transportation costs).  Rather than use the considerable diplomatic resources backed by military strength to influence and stabilize, Obama has chosen to watch and see, a dangerous strategy that undermines, not only US interests, but the economic stability of the world.  World leaders have a responsibility to lead by definition. Failure to act leaves all nations vulnerable.

Another point of interest to the East African region is the issuance of the Patriot Act and enforcement of monetary sanctions to restrict money flow to terrorist organizations like El Shebab.

While the intent of the law is correct, its unintended consequences, like so many laws, are devastating.  Inability to wire money to relatives desperately in need of those resources has put undue burden on taking care of families in the homeland.  This happened in 2001, and shortly after the implementation of the restrictions, exemptions were made to allow the free flow of monies to relatives by the Bush administration with the help of Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Why haven’t Obama, Senator Klobuchar and Congressman Ellison done the same to help ease the burden on our Minnesota families?

The Democrats seem adept at making promises but inept at following through.  They are good at making promises to help us before the elections, but these promises seem to vanish like a wisp of smoke once the election is over.  How many times will the East African communities fall for this line before waking up? 

Jamal talked about “trickledown economics” of the Republicans. His misstatement is that they are only protecting the rich.  In truth, they are protecting all of us, because the tax burden falls on us all.

How many times have you seen the price at the gas pump go up or watched your sales or property tax increase.   The truth is that with bigger government comes a bigger tax. That means less money for business owners to invest in their business by hiring more help or buying much needed equipment to expand.

He also stated that Republicans will take away resources from the poor and elderly by reducing monies to Medicare and Medicaid.  The truth is that Medicare is on a path to bankruptcy without reform, as is Social Security.  While speculating on impending doom and worst case scenarios, he ignores the fact that we cannot continue to borrow money to pay for services we cannot afford.  We can reform them now and minimize the impact or do nothing, which is what Obama, Klobuchar and Ellison advocate for, leave nothing but debt and chaos to our children.  It is not only irresponsible, it is immoral.

Jamal also addresses the voter ID constitutional amendment.  The lies and misinformation used here are staggering.  He neglects the fact that even most of the poor have ID’s, as do the elderly.  In fact, if a person is on Medicare or Medicaid, that person must have an ID and if you are too poor to afford an ID, one will be given to you for free.

Was there a requirement to have an ID to vote in elections in Somalia, then why not in Minnesota?

He also neglects to say that the United States Supreme Court has already ruled twice on this in recent years and found that it does not disenfranchise anyone.  The courts response to the argument was that “any inconvenience that might be experienced by a voter is far outweighed by the need to secure the integrity of the vote.”  Additionally, the League of Women Voters could not come up with one legitimate instance where a voter was unable to cast a vote. The two states that have already implemented Voter ID (Indiana and Georgia) have seen increased turnout in voting since putting Voter ID into practice.

Once again, the Democrats use fear tactics to block meaningful reform.

Jamal also is untruthful when he says there is zero fraud in voting in Minnesota.  In fact, Minnesota is the number one state in the nation for voter fraud occurrences.  Over 1000 felons cast votes that counted in the 2008 election but weren’t legally eligible to vote. They voted because the Secretary of State Mark Richie, a Democrat, failed to do his job by properly in screening the voter lists.

College students from Wisconsin voted in both Wisconsin and Minnesota and there are over 17,000 ballots from the 2008 election that still are in question that were counted but no one knows who they belong to.

The county attorneys who are responsible to investigate this potential fraud have refused to do their jobs.

So who loses when all of this happens?

We, the voters, do. We are disenfranchised more by these actions than any supposed inconvenience of showing photo ID.

When a sitting US Senator looses by 312 votes and 17,000 ballots were most likely fraudulent, East Africans loose.  Senator Norm Coleman was a champion for the community and his election was overturned by a broken election system.

Photo ID brings accountability to our election process and the democrats are justifiably afraid of it because they lose the ability to cheat.

Significantly, Jamal fails to mention is the constitutional amendment of defining Marriage as a between one man and one woman.  He fails to mention this because he knows the community is solidly against the homosexual life style.

More importantly, the implications of defeating the amendment by not voting for it or voting no on the ballot is that you are saying “Yes” to promote the homosexual life style in our schools. In Minnesota, leaving a vote blank equates to a “No” vote. By not voting or voting against this amendment you are saying that now the teachers will be required to teach homosexuality as a normal life style and there is nothing you as a parent can do about it.  The education system will say parents are out of touch and parents don’t understand, undermining the family influence and structure under the guise of “fairness.”

If you are concerned for the future of your family and to protect your children from this wrong, vote yes on the Marriage amendment.  Jamal intentionally did not address this in his article because he could not defend it.

Lastly, I would like to mention an occurrence at this year’s Democratic convention.  An amendment to take God out of the DFL platform was voted on three times on a voice vote and was passed three times, but was ruled to have “failed” because it would have sent the clear message that democrats are godless and out of touch with much of their following.

Democrats are out of touch with the African community and most importantly, out of touch with the East African community.

We strongly embrace religion as core to our culture, and embracing a godless political party is not only counter to our beliefs. It is destructive to our culture and, at its core, un-American.

I strongly encourage everyone to do the research, find out where the candidates stand and vote your values.

Don’t be a victim, be an American.