The Harris vs Trump choice, by the evidence

An article I wrote, below, and sent to the leading newspapers in swing states Pennsylvania and Michigan. This election - support democracy in the United States by using your freedom to choose who you will vote for - and equally, respect the right of others to make that choice as well.

My article discusses why I am making the voting choice I am making. I won't ask you to agree with me. But I will encourage you to consider what I have to say before you choose. When we vote, it should be based on choice - but not influenced by information that is untrue.

Most people aren't voting to support a desire to hurt their fellow Americans, this is untrue. They only want to vote for who they feel will best protect their livelihoods and the safety of their communities. Some claims that have been made this election cycle, are false - and these are misleading people significantly. So please, consider what I have to say. But in the end, please choose who you feel would help our country and its people the most after all has been considered <3

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I know right now, many of us are tired of politicians telling us who we should vote for and why. Americans on both sides are told that those across the aisle vote for their candidate, for reasons that aren’t accurate. Liberals are told that those who support Donald Trump are doing so because they support a vision of a white America, that doesn’t respect the rights or presence of nonwhite groups. Conservatives are told that those who support Kamala Harris support communist institutions, and open, unregulated borders.

Neither are true, and respecting our fellow Americans means respecting their intelligence. The reality is that Americans in different regions face distinct challenges, and people who are not familiar with these areas may not understand these challenges, or the concerns raised by the people living and working there.

Those who support Trump generally do so for two reasons: they see a loss of American jobs in manufacturing, and fossil fuel sectors, and they feel he will bring these back for their families. And they see rising crime in their communities, and feel immigration is a key cause that Trump will curb more effectively. Needless to say, these are understandable concerns for any American facing job losses or increasingly unsafe communities for their families.

Conservative and liberal commentators alike express fears regarding the implications of a victory from the other side, and many of these are the result of claims sensationalized by the media that are not supported by the evidence. The reality is that if Harris and the Democratic party supported open borders, no control over American crime, and policies that prevented our economic recovery – they would not have the broad support of so many Americans right now, who are struggling with all of these issues.

On the flipside, while liberal commentators are certainly guilty of taking statements out of context as well – myself and many Americans do have gross concerns for the safety of our nation in the event of a Trump victory, not based on exaggerated claims by biased commentators but based on his prior actions and statements that are on the record, and their implications for the safety of our people. Whereas the purported strength of Trump that many feel outweigh his flaws – strengths that it is suggested would make him more suited to securing the border, reducing crime, and fixing the state of our economy – do not seem supported by the evidence and his prior record as much as he claims they are.

The foundation of our democracy is on the freedom of every American to vote as they feel best for their nation. I won’t ask you to share my view or my vote if you still don’t after you hear my concerns. But let me explain my concerns, so you will at least hear and consider them before you make this crucial decision for the future of our country and its people.

After the recession of 2008-2009, the US economy grew steadily, and jobs growth continued consistently for next 8 years under Barack Obama. These trends continued for the next three years under Donald Trump as well, before pandemic closures and ensuing recession of 2020. Yes, the economy and US jobs were growing during Trump’s first three years in office – but this was only a continuation of the trajectory of US economic and jobs growth that had been continuing for the prior 8 years under Obama. Collectively, this was an 11 year period of consistent and nearly uninterrupted economic growth, begun under Obama, of which Trump inherited the last three years. So it does not make sense to credit Trump for this growth trajectory, since his administration only entered in the final three years of it and only continued the same trends seen for 8 years under his predecessor.

On the flipside, Trump supports disproportionate tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, as he oversaw with the Tax Cuts and Jobs act of 2017. It has been shown that these do not help the average American, or help to create more jobs; they only benefits the wealthy. Tax cuts for the wealthy have also been shown to burden the US economy and increase the national debt – indeed, the national debt increased by 18% as a result of these tax cuts, largely for the wealthy, before the COVID pandemic began; it would ultimately increase by 40%, nearly $8 trillion, by the end of Trump’s 4 years in office. That’s a 70% higher increase in the national debt per year than during Obama’s years in office. It isn’t clear that Trump appreciably helped to prevent the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries compared with his predecessor during his term in office, either.

During the Biden administration the economy and US jobs gains stagnated initially, but gradually rebounded; by 2021 the US GDP and unemployment rates returned to their pre-pandemic levels, and inflation has been in steady decline since 2022, now almost returned to pre-pandemic levels. It is not clear that the Biden administration could have spurred this economic recovery any faster than they did given the magnitude of the recession and inflation from post-pandemic reopenings; by all measures, it seems that the Biden administration did everything any administration could have to get the US economy back on track.

As for immigration as a contributor to crime in our nation’s communities, I want to be clear that a majority of Democrats and Republicans alike all agree that a nation needs a secure border with vigilant screening of all entries to maintain our nation’s security. This is common sense, and neither side supports or is encouraging open borders. Claims that Democratic leaders in power or running now support open borders, are simply untrue – supported by neither their statements nor their actions. All persons wishing to enter our nation, can and should do so legally.

That being said, despite increased border encounters in the past few years after the pandemic ended, the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States today, 11 million – is roughly the same it was 20 years ago. So there has been no overt change in the number of illegal immigrants living in our country in the past two decades.

But more importantly, over 50 studies in the past two decades from multiple different sources have looked at the relationship between immigration and crime in communities across the nation – and it turns out, the outcomes of these studies have all supported the same conclusion: immigrants don’t cause a rise in crime overall, despite coming from nations with higher rates of poverty and crime. In fact, there is some evidence that in American communities with large numbers of first-generation immigrants from countries south of the border, crime is actually lower than the US average.

Use of illegal drugs has also been found to be less common among immigrants compared with native born US citizens – and even 80% of all people who traffic illegal drugs into the US are American citizens, with 90% of those drugs smuggled through legal checkpoints. Two studies even looked at littering rates in immigrant versus non-immigrant groups – and it turns out that even litter is less common on average in community with larger numbers of migrants. Similar studies have been conducted in Europe as well, and they show the same trend with their immigrants. Will there never be an immigrant who commits a crime? Of course not. But, by and large their rates of crime appear to be much lower. The general thinking is that this is because migrants are the people – families with children – who were fleeing crime in the first place, not causing it. It also seems to be a major part of the culture and faith among Latin American families to instill a sense of respect to any country and community welcoming them.

In reality, US homicide rates reached a low of 4.5 per 100,000 people in 2014 during the Obama administration, the lowest they had been since the 1990s – and comparable to the all-time low of the 1950s. They remained below 5.0 until 2016, then rose to 6.5 by Trump’s final year in office – the highest US homicide rate since the 1990s. They never dropped below 5.0 in any year during Trump’s tenure. The US also maintained total law enforcement officers numbering between 680,000 and 700,000 every year during Trump’s administration – numbers roughly identical with his predecessor’s 8 years in office. So it is not clear that Trump’s policies helped to curb violent crime – or increase law enforcement jobs – In the US in any way.

When it comes to jobs and the economy, while many immigrants do accept support from welfare and do take American jobs, the money from earned income and welfare alike is then used by these immigrant groups to purchase products for daily living at American stores – which adds to the profits of American companies, allowing these companies in turn to create more American jobs. Even those who bring some money back home, inevitably perform most of their purchases here in US stores because they have to as long as they live and work here. It also turns out that on average, even for every migrant accepting American welfare a larger number of their children have been shown to ultimately enter the American workforce as opposed to subsisting off welfare. As a result, the numbers are well-established that immigrants to our country actually grow our economy and cause the creation of more new American jobs than they take. Importantly, economists have also established that immigrants have not driven inflation either; because they add to the pool of people purchasing American commodities and increase demand, they’ve actually driven inflation down, lower than it would have been.

A leader has a responsibility to speak truthfully of the causes of our nation’s challenges: if they do not, they not only betray the trust of the American people, but by assigning blame falsely they are making innocent people targets of unjustified blame and, in extreme cases, hatred or violence as a consequence of that misplaced blame. Before 2016, hate crimes in our nation occurred at a rate of less than 7000 per year, the lowest rate since recording began in the early 1990s. But starting in 2016, the year of Donald Trump’s first campaign for office in 2016, hate crimes began a steady increase to almost double that number, now topping 11,000 incidents per year. If we look specifically at murders and acts of violence motivated by hatred against specific groups, these also rose significantly during al of Trump’s years in office compared with prior years. The Needless violence and murder against groups of innocent people is never acceptable in our country; and when blame is wrongly assigned to these groups for crime and other problems in our communities, hate violence is always the consequence. Blaming immigration for crime in our nation was a cornerstone of Trump’s campaign, as it is today; the sudden reversal in this trend to increasing hate crimes starting in the year Trump first ran and continuing through his administration raises significant concerns that his comments are driving unjustified blame, hatred and violence to ethnic groups. This is all the more troubling since attributing the blame to these ethnic groups, isn’t even correct.

And then, there was the riot of January 6, 2021 – that brought violent protestors within feet of assaulting our nation’s lawmakers and vice president. Did Trump take part in the riot directly? No. But Trump did wrongly claim that he only lost the 2020 election due to fraud, despite no evidence for this claim. He claimed that Nancy Pelosi removed security that day, that liberal protest groups riles up the crowd – again, with no evidence beyond his own words. But Trump’s claims of election fraud, without evidence, were what encouraged his supporters to act with violence against these individuals if they didn’t overturn the election in his favor that day. And it is on the record that in the three hours that followed, Trump made no effort to stop them; it is even reported that Melania Trump denied requests by Trump’s own staff members to encourage the rioters to cease violence.

This is on the record – we can all view it for ourselves. A president who lies about the outcome of an election to spread false claims in his favor, thereby encouraging violence among those who trust his claims against our own lawmakers and law enforcement officers who were only following the law to protect our institutions, resulting in their injuries and even deaths – should not be permitted to resume office, for any reason.

If it was believed that Trump’s policies could protect us from economic hardship or provide more safety in our communities, I would understand where many Americans would be tempted to overlook these actions for the sake of their families’ well-being. But as there is no evidence that Trump’s policies did or would provide greater economic relief or safety from crime, it is difficult for me to see a reason to justify supporting him, in light of the disregard he has shown to truth or the safety of Americans protecting the American people and rule of law that day – all for an attempt to retain his own personal power.

Kamala Harris has not encouraged overturning a legal election, or encouraged violence against our lawmakers or law enforcement officers for upholding the law. She is a longtime prosecutor herself, which by definition means she supports law enforcement. She supported a bipartisan bill that would have strengthened security at the US border – before Donald Trump led a movement to vote against that bill, all for political reasons. And, she does seem genuinely committed to helping the poorest Americans. It is not clear that any of her economic policies would hurt them, certainly not when compared with Trump’s economic record, or history of favoring the wealthy over the average American.

This is why I personally have concerns about a second Trump administration: he has already demonstrated a willingness to lie, and even encourage violence against law-abiding Americans for his own sake. These are not qualities in a leader that can, or should, be trusted. At the same time, his suggestions on the causes of the nation’s economic challenges, and claims that he is uniquely positioned to fix the economy and lower American crime, do not appear to be supported by the evidence, or by his record. Therefore, I can see no justification for supporting his return to power, and I have gross concerns for my fellow Americans if he does.

Whomever you choose to vote for in this election, I ask only that you consider the concerns I have raised – and select our leaders based on the evidence of what they have done, not their words. Because like you, I want our nation to be a safe place for our families, and a prosperous place for our families’ futures. But I fear from the evidence, that Trump will only make the country less safe for our fellow people, not more – while doing nothing to help the security of our people, or the prospects for our jobs or continued economic recovery, that hasn’t already been done.