I stayed with my old party until I was 50, becoming Independent in 1996 when I saw they were not refuting the disgusting Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" and the shunning of any who dared socialize with or hire nonpartisan lobbyists. It was very near the same time Elizabeth Warren left the part…
I stayed with my old party until I was 50, becoming Independent in 1996 when I saw they were not refuting the disgusting Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" and the shunning of any who dared socialize with or hire nonpartisan lobbyists. It was very near the same time Elizabeth Warren left the party for what seems the same reasons.
I considered supporting some like Christine Todd Whitman, who at least tried to get more reasonable EPA actions than the rest of the Bush 43 administration (even resigning in 2007 since she could not defend the administration's attempt to allow major modifications to power plants without new pollution controls. (To me, she had better sense of benefit/cost ratios to provide the needed benefits to the environment at a necessary cost that could be a well defended priority.)
Though I, too, will not vote (and have not voted for), any Republican or anti-Democratic Independent candidate since I wrote in Sheila Bair in the 2004, I do appreciate some of what Todd Whitman has tried since she resigned from the EPA.
"...Christine Todd Whitman, a onetime Republican and former governor of New Jersey who served as the administrator of the E.P.A. during the George W. Bush administration, said that environmental regulations sometimes could go too far and needed to be tempered by courts. But she said she saw the Supreme Court’s recent decisions as an alarming new precedent..."
(Hyperlinks within the portion presented here have been removed, see the article for the detail hyperlinks.)
“…In 2011, Whitman was named to the board of Americans Elect.
In February 2013, Whitman supported legal recognition of same-sex marriage in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As of 2015, Whitman is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. The group, which included 100 other former elected officials advocated for campaign finance reform.
In 2016, Whitman was named the co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.
On February 26, 2016, she endorsed John Kasich in his bid seeking the GOP nomination for presidential candidate. She said that Donald Trump was using "fascist" tactics in his campaign and after Chris Christie's endorsement of Trump said that, in the case of a Trump nomination by the GOP, she would vote for Hillary Clinton. In 2018, Whitman wrote an op-ed calling Trump unfit for office and urging other Republicans to pressure him to step down.
In February 2020, Whitman endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld for president in the Republican primaries, in which he was challenging incumbent president Donald Trump. Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Republican nominee Donald Trump in the general election.
Whitman co-founded the States United Democracy Center in 2021. and, as of 2022, serves as its co-chair. In her States United capacity, she was among the former state officials who submitted testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, arguing that the attack was part of "a sustained and coordinated effort by the former president and his anti-democracy allies to suppress voting rights, delegitimize free and fair elections, and subvert the will of the voters by overturning election results deemed undesirable to their movement." In July 2022, Whitman was among three former Republican governors who submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to uphold provisions of the federal Voting Rights Acts of 1965 that protect minority voters from having their voting power diluted.
In 2022, Whitman joined former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang to create the Forward Party, a centrist third party…”
I would rather have seen her helping start an Opposition Coalition similar to the one that won the majority in the 34th Congress (elected in 1854) when the anti-Nebraska Act candidates started campaigning before any actually ran as the too newly named Republicans.
In reviewing what she has been doing before and after 2007, I came across her husband’s Yale of 66 45th Reunion Essay (perhaps a case of behind a great woman, a great man).
I believe that the members of the Class of 1966 will, in aggregate, see more change in their personal, professional and global lives in the next five years than they have experienced in the past four decades.
I have been married to a beautiful, smart, loving and successful wife for 37 years. We have two attractive children who have exceptional spouses of their own and three grandchildren. Ours is a classic 20th Century American family, but it is going to change. Since it is impossible to know what those changes might be, it probably isn’t worth worrying about them much.
However, I believe we better do something about our country and our World. There are many issues to discuss but for this brief essay I would like to mention two.
The Americans, who rescued Europe and the World twice in 30 years, came home with the American Dream which simply stated said: If you work hard, you can succeed at just about anything you want to do. This dream lasted until the 1990s when a number of politicians discovered that they could get and stay elected if they promised to provide an unsustainable standard of living even if they never delivered it. An important corollary to this was that all Americans “deserved” this standard of living whether they worked for it or not. Unless we reestablish the original American Dream in the hearts and minds of our people, our children will see a continuing erosion in their prospects for success.
America’s dependence on foreign oil erodes its moral standing in the world and pours billions of dollars into the coffers of terrorists. Until we become energy self-sufficient, we will be forced to follow an inconsistent foreign policy that not only makes a mockery of our fundamental ethical strength but emboldens our enemies and enriches our competitors.
*
I also remember John for his generosity of spirit, his invitations to Drumthwacket for several Yale football games against Princeton, his being (with Christie) the breeder who gave our country its famous First Scottie, Barney of the Bush White House, a Commandeur de Bordeaux, a Pilgrim, and just being a loyal friend.
John Whitman was, through and through, a patriot and a devoted American. From 1967 to 1972, he served his country with honor as a First Lieutenant in the United States Army stationed in Vietnam and then in the reserves. John always identified his birthday as “D-Day plus two” and, as a lasting memorial, Christie and the family have established the John R. Whitman Normandy Scholars Fund at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. This perpetual endowment, supported by many of John’s classmates and friends, will educate deserving students, with a preference to New Jersey residents, about World War II and send them to Normandy to study and return to their communities to share the lessons of the Normandy campaign…”
I stayed with my old party until I was 50, becoming Independent in 1996 when I saw they were not refuting the disgusting Newt Gingrich/Frank Luntz GoPac memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" and the shunning of any who dared socialize with or hire nonpartisan lobbyists. It was very near the same time Elizabeth Warren left the party for what seems the same reasons.
I considered supporting some like Christine Todd Whitman, who at least tried to get more reasonable EPA actions than the rest of the Bush 43 administration (even resigning in 2007 since she could not defend the administration's attempt to allow major modifications to power plants without new pollution controls. (To me, she had better sense of benefit/cost ratios to provide the needed benefits to the environment at a necessary cost that could be a well defended priority.)
Though I, too, will not vote (and have not voted for), any Republican or anti-Democratic Independent candidate since I wrote in Sheila Bair in the 2004, I do appreciate some of what Todd Whitman has tried since she resigned from the EPA.
Some examples:
Most recent - see https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/climate/supreme-court-epa.html
"...Christine Todd Whitman, a onetime Republican and former governor of New Jersey who served as the administrator of the E.P.A. during the George W. Bush administration, said that environmental regulations sometimes could go too far and needed to be tempered by courts. But she said she saw the Supreme Court’s recent decisions as an alarming new precedent..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Todd_Whitman
(Hyperlinks within the portion presented here have been removed, see the article for the detail hyperlinks.)
“…In 2011, Whitman was named to the board of Americans Elect.
In February 2013, Whitman supported legal recognition of same-sex marriage in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As of 2015, Whitman is a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. The group, which included 100 other former elected officials advocated for campaign finance reform.
In 2016, Whitman was named the co-chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative.
On February 26, 2016, she endorsed John Kasich in his bid seeking the GOP nomination for presidential candidate. She said that Donald Trump was using "fascist" tactics in his campaign and after Chris Christie's endorsement of Trump said that, in the case of a Trump nomination by the GOP, she would vote for Hillary Clinton. In 2018, Whitman wrote an op-ed calling Trump unfit for office and urging other Republicans to pressure him to step down.
In February 2020, Whitman endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld for president in the Republican primaries, in which he was challenging incumbent president Donald Trump. Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, endorsing Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Republican nominee Donald Trump in the general election.
Whitman co-founded the States United Democracy Center in 2021. and, as of 2022, serves as its co-chair. In her States United capacity, she was among the former state officials who submitted testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol, arguing that the attack was part of "a sustained and coordinated effort by the former president and his anti-democracy allies to suppress voting rights, delegitimize free and fair elections, and subvert the will of the voters by overturning election results deemed undesirable to their movement." In July 2022, Whitman was among three former Republican governors who submitted a friend-of-the-court brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the court to uphold provisions of the federal Voting Rights Acts of 1965 that protect minority voters from having their voting power diluted.
In 2022, Whitman joined former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang to create the Forward Party, a centrist third party…”
I would rather have seen her helping start an Opposition Coalition similar to the one that won the majority in the 34th Congress (elected in 1854) when the anti-Nebraska Act candidates started campaigning before any actually ran as the too newly named Republicans.
In reviewing what she has been doing before and after 2007, I came across her husband’s Yale of 66 45th Reunion Essay (perhaps a case of behind a great woman, a great man).
See https://yale66.org/john-r-whitman/
“…*
John R. Whitman’s 45th Reunion Essay
I believe that the members of the Class of 1966 will, in aggregate, see more change in their personal, professional and global lives in the next five years than they have experienced in the past four decades.
I have been married to a beautiful, smart, loving and successful wife for 37 years. We have two attractive children who have exceptional spouses of their own and three grandchildren. Ours is a classic 20th Century American family, but it is going to change. Since it is impossible to know what those changes might be, it probably isn’t worth worrying about them much.
However, I believe we better do something about our country and our World. There are many issues to discuss but for this brief essay I would like to mention two.
The Americans, who rescued Europe and the World twice in 30 years, came home with the American Dream which simply stated said: If you work hard, you can succeed at just about anything you want to do. This dream lasted until the 1990s when a number of politicians discovered that they could get and stay elected if they promised to provide an unsustainable standard of living even if they never delivered it. An important corollary to this was that all Americans “deserved” this standard of living whether they worked for it or not. Unless we reestablish the original American Dream in the hearts and minds of our people, our children will see a continuing erosion in their prospects for success.
America’s dependence on foreign oil erodes its moral standing in the world and pours billions of dollars into the coffers of terrorists. Until we become energy self-sufficient, we will be forced to follow an inconsistent foreign policy that not only makes a mockery of our fundamental ethical strength but emboldens our enemies and enriches our competitors.
*
I also remember John for his generosity of spirit, his invitations to Drumthwacket for several Yale football games against Princeton, his being (with Christie) the breeder who gave our country its famous First Scottie, Barney of the Bush White House, a Commandeur de Bordeaux, a Pilgrim, and just being a loyal friend.
John Whitman was, through and through, a patriot and a devoted American. From 1967 to 1972, he served his country with honor as a First Lieutenant in the United States Army stationed in Vietnam and then in the reserves. John always identified his birthday as “D-Day plus two” and, as a lasting memorial, Christie and the family have established the John R. Whitman Normandy Scholars Fund at the World War II Museum in New Orleans. This perpetual endowment, supported by many of John’s classmates and friends, will educate deserving students, with a preference to New Jersey residents, about World War II and send them to Normandy to study and return to their communities to share the lessons of the Normandy campaign…”