Hearing the Falconer #53 ~ 24-Jun-2019 ~ Amy Klobuchar Starts Her Run

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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24-June-2019
Amy Klobuchar Launches Her Campaign
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On Sunday, February 10, 2019, U.S. Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar stood in swirling snow and announced she is running for President. Remarkably, she is now the fifth woman running for the White House in this 2020 campaign.

I saw an interview later where Klobuchar joked about the snow: she said it looked like she was aging during her speech as her hair got whiter and whiter.

I have heard a pundit say there should have been some sort of roof over Klobuchar, but others have said that standing in the snow showed her strength and determination. I think the latter is true, especially since she is competing for the chance to run against a man who once canceled a trip to a veteran's cemetery because of rain.

The crowd waved solid red "Amy" signs or solid blue "Amy" signs as the new candidate said she is running "for every parent who wants a better world for their kids" and promised that she is "running for every American."

One of the themes of the announcement was restoring democracy and Klobuchar called on the American people to "organize, galvanize, and take back our Democracy." She described her plans to:

• Automatically register young people to vote when they turn 18,
• Restore the Voting Rights Act, and
• Push for a Constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizen's United decision so we can get "dark money" out of politics.

Another theme of the speech was protecting the environment and Klobuchar promised that within her first 100 days in the White House she would:

• Restore clean power rules,
• Restore gas mileage standards, and
• Invest in green jobs and infrastructure
• And, she also promised that on "day 1" she would rejoin the International Climate Agreement the current President has pulled the United States out of.

On the themes of technology and jobs Klobuchar promised to:

• Promote new rules to protect privacy on the internet
• Promote net neutrality
• Promote the training of workers for new jobs with a focus on certificates and two-year degrees
• And, most dramatically, the candidate called for having every household in America connected to the internet by 2022.

Turning to health and safety Klobuchar outlined plans to:

• Allow safe drugs from other countries to be sold in the United States
• Lift the ban that currently prevents Medicare from negotiating cheaper drug prices
• Require universal background checks for gun purchases
• And, in another big move, Klobuchar called for universal healthcare.

In simultaneous nods to fiscal responsibility AND populism the candidate called for bringing down the national debt by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy while still making it easier for workers to afford childcare, housing, and education.

There was not much about foreign policy in this speech but, in a statement that also poked the current president, Klobuchar promised to respect our troops, our diplomats, and our intelligence officers by not running her foreign policy with tweets.

One of the closing remarks sounded like a very good over-arching theme for Klobuchar's campaign right at the beginning: "We all live in the same country of shared dreams."

It was a good announcement. Let's see how Senator Amy Klobuchar holds up in the political battles to come.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Independent Thinkers and Political Moderates

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Washington: A Life

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides

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Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Wayne Gadway