Common ground with discussion, compromise needed
I, like many of my fellow Americans, fell asleep not knowing for sure who our next president would be. In the morning the answer was clear: Donald J. Trump.
Trump was clearly not the choice of a significant number of my fellow Americans, and was not my first choice of the candidates put forward, but conservatively there was really no other choice. To my fellow conservatives, I would say that it’s fine to breathe a sigh of relief, but there is still a lot of work to be done. We must find common ground with those who opposed Trump and the agenda he put forward.
This shouldn’t be as difficult as it sounds. Many of the positions Kamala took in the latter part of her campaign reflected many of Trump’s positions. And while I think our country has lost its way in many areas, I believe that the majority of citizens believe that we need a secure border, that biological males should not be involved in women’s sports, and that we need to make a living, and not one piece of information.
Let us continue to discuss and compromise and bring the country closer together. God bless America!
R. J. Myers, Bloomington
Complete transparency is the best solution
It has always been a normal part of politics to examine the motivations of elected officials who vote on legislation and budgets. Indiana law requires candidates for elective office to disclose conflicts of interest if they run for a “lucrative” position, and the threshold for labeling a position as “lucrative” is very low. This applies to both national and local offices.
These transparency requirements, along with rules for when elected officials must recuse themselves from voting, are intended to prevent corruption and ensure that citizens have all relevant information.
This is also something that happens informally through political debates. At a Bloomington City Council meeting last month, a staffer in the mayor’s office questioned two council members’ interest in a department budget because of family relationships. One of the targeted councilors subsequently imposed stricter restrictions on what can be said at council meetings, under the guise of maintaining “decorum” at council meetings.
The problem with suppressing speech in any way is that the message you were trying to suppress ends up being amplified much more than it would have been if you had simply left it alone. The controversy was covered in The Herald-Times, the Indiana Daily Student and the B Square Bulletin precisely because a city council member had tried to use procedural rules to stop such criticism in the future.
The best solution, as in any debate about public policy and public resources, is full transparency. Rather than silencing a deputy mayor who argues about a perceived conflict of interest, address the criticism directly and explain why there is no conflict or how it is being exaggerated. Allow both the public and city officials to present their arguments (without allowing things like obscene language) and then discuss the argument openly.
Invoking “Roberts Rules of Order” seems like a cover-up, rather than a legitimate attempt to increase civility in public discussions.
Scott Tibbs, Bloomington
This article originally appeared in The Herald-Times: Letters: America Needs Compromise; transparency is needed towards civil servants
