[Kit Gerhart]

I am voting for Kerry for a number of reasons, among them:

1) Kerry will restore fiscal responsibility. Bill Gates didn't really need a multi-million dollar tax cut, but we, as a nation, do need schools, and many older people will need social security and medicare in the future, and we don't need these huge deficits. Bush touts his "No Child Left Behind" legislation, but guess what? He doesn't want to pay for it. State and local governments have to pay for it, and will need to raise their, generally "regressive," sales and property taxes to do so. There go any tax cuts the low- and middle-income people might have seen from the Bush tax cuts.

2) Kerry will help the US re-join the world community, rather than turning the US in a a "rogue state" in the eyes of much of the world as Bush has done. Kerry, being a diplomat rather than a cowboy, will be able to work with the UN, and, yes, Germany and France, to help put Iraq back together. He will also work to restore the trust of the world regarding treaties signed by the US, helping fix the damage of Bush's having abrogated about 30 years worth of treaties signed by previous presidents.

3) Kerry will restore civil liberties that have been taken away by Ashcroft.

4) Kerry will not use our most sacred national document, the US Constitution, to try to shore up a core constituency, like Bush is doing with his "marriage amendment" for the "Christian Right."

5) Kerry will restore environmental protections that the Bush administration has been chipping away at since they took office.

6) Kerry will not get us into ill-conceived wars as the obsessed Bush has done. As many will remember, during the campaign, and for his first 8 months in office, Bush was obsessed with "star wars" missile defense. Then, after the events of 9/11 demonstrated the REAL threats we face, he briefly got on track and went after the bin Laden organization in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, he soon got sidetracked by his old obsession with Iraq. Now that we're in Iraq, we're stuck with putting it back together, but Kerry would be able to do a much better job than Bush at getting help from the rest of the world.

That's just a start of a case in favor of Kerry, and against Bush. I realize that many of my FIRST team mates and former team mates are fans of Bush. I don't hold that against them. I suspect, though, that they are as unlikely to convince me to vote for Bush as I am to convince them to vote for Kerry.


Also, as a proud liberal, I have the following beliefs that others may not hold:

1) A certain amount of "redistribution of wealth" is good, as with graduated tax brackets.

2) A certain amount of "socialism" is good, as with public schools, public highways, and even tax-funded health care and subsidized public transit.

3) Discrimination is bad, whether because of color, national origin, religion, or sexual orientation. For some things, we need to go beyond "opinions of the majority."