Dan Hemesath's Blog

Dear President Trump,

As a 78 year old retired farmer/priest/photographer, I have some serious thoughts about what would be good for all of us including the Trump administration.

While I don’t agree with you on some issues, you are the president of the most powerful nation on earth. I think that you want to make a positive difference and that you want to be loved and respected, especially by wise and thoughtful people.

If you hope to go down in history as a good president, you will need to step away from the rhetoric that got you elected, and start to work with the thoughtful, people in the electorate from both sides of the isle—in other words, get back to the truth and get away from much of the nonsense that got you elected. I know that you know this.

You will need to prove your words that “no one loves women, blacks, and latinos more than you do”.

One example: An approach to deal with the immigration problem, that will show your understanding and concern would be focusing on causes, rather than symptoms of the problem.

Let’s look at working on the cause of the flood of immigrants entering the US rather than putting a band aid or a wall on symptoms.

What is the cause? Why are so many people leaving Mexico? One of the main causes, is our farm bill. By enticing our farmers to produce way too much corn, we have this huge surplus which we export to Mexico at such a low price that the Mexican farmers can’t survive. Many have committed suicide and many others in desperation come to the US.

Also, by using trade with Mexico as leverage, pressure the oligarchs in charge to treat their poor and underprivileged more fairly and they won’t be forced to leave their country to survive.

Both here and in Mexico, another result of too much cheap corn is the massive production and marketing of corn sweeteners which are cheaper than sugar. The problem is that corn sweeteners , found in practically every processed food, are one of the main causes of the obesity epidemic. No wonder both the US and Mexico lead the world in obesity.

Also, the emphasis on chemically based monoculture agriculture has thrown millions of farmers out of work and made our food supply less nutritious, one of the main causes of health problems and the high cost of health care.

I suggest that the farm bill be changed to make it profitable for farmers to move away away from too much corn and soybeans, to the production of other, healthier products, and a crop system that relies more on biology rather than chemicals.—a farm bill that levels the playing field for small farmers, benefits consumers, and makes the population healthier.

To follow through in these areas would show your depth of understanding and could make you a much loved and less hated president.

By the way, one of the very good things that you did even before the oath of office was to stop the Republicans from doing away with the ethics committee.

I also agree with you on your plans to rebuild our infrastructure.

sincerely,

Dan Hemesath

This entry was posted on January 25, 2017 at 3:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.