Public Comment

Eleven presidential candidates had three prime-time hours on the national stage to offer their vision for the country. What followed was extremely disappointing bordering on the surreal – no effort to adhere to the truth, perhaps a new game of no truth, no consequences! It was a pity CNN who seem very adept at slick visuals, didn’t offer a fact check for viewers. The issues glaringly omitted were income inequality and race relations. A recent Gallup poll ranked these two issues high on Americans concerns. Police brutality has soured relations among blacks and Hispanics. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was right in accusing former Florida Governor Jeb Bush of hypocrisy in his position on marijuana legalization. Jeb Bush admitted taking marijuana but escaped punishment because of his privileged position and appeared to be quite content letting poor people languish in jail for the same crime. Paul correctly stated that far too many poor in our inner cities are jailed for relatively minor drug related offenses and called for rehabilitation and less incarceration. 

For the record, Trump was right when he accused Carly Fiorina of grossly mismanaging both Lucent and Hewlett Packard. In the same vein, Fortune magazine rated Trump’s companies at close to the bottom by every category as measured against 500 large companies. 

Following the debate, at a town hall meeting, Trump got into hot water by failing to challenge a racist spectator who ‘wanted to rid the US of Muslims’.