I have voted for Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. I have never voted a straight party ticket in my life. If that makes me hard to categorize, good. That is exactly the point.
I grew up probably pretty liberal but not necessarily political. I loved JFK. Like every American, I cried at his murder. I was a sophomore in high school when Oswald was shot and I remember sitting in front of the television watching it happen. It had a profound impact on me -- not just grief, but a dawning awareness that the world was more complicated and more dangerous than I had understood.
When I was old enough to vote I started doing what I have done ever since: researching candidates, splitting my ticket, voting the person and not the party. In local races -- school board, county board, judicial elections -- I do my homework. If an incumbent deserves re-election they get my vote regardless of party. If they don't, the better candidate gets it regardless of party. That is not a complicated system. It is just paying attention.
I supported Trump in 2016 because I thought an outsider might bring needed change. Four years later, the chaos, the division, and the disregard for basic democratic norms changed my mind. January 6th wasn't a wake-up call -- it was confirmation.
I have been a registered Republican. I have been a registered Democrat. Today in Texas I am unaffiliated -- and that word fits me better than any party label ever has. I did not walk away from Trump because of party. I walked away because of what I watched with my own eyes over four years -- the dishonesty, the cruelty, the contempt for institutions that I believe hold this country together. And when a sitting president encouraged a mob to march on the Capitol and then watched it happen on television, that was not politics to me. That was a line. I do not apologize for where I landed and I am not going to pretend I am neutral about January 6th. But I am also not going to let that become the only thing Plain Citizen is about. The work here is bigger than one man.
I am 79 years old. I am on Social Security and Medicare. I live in East Texas with my partner Lora in a 55-plus RV community. After five years of traveling this country full-time we have a home base now, though we still hit the road when the urge strikes. I have seen a lot of this country up close and I have talked to a lot of Americans in a lot of different places with a lot of different views.
What I found everywhere I went is that ordinary Americans are smarter than Washington gives them credit for. They know when they are being played. They know when the numbers don't add up. They know when the people making the decisions are not living by the same rules they are imposing on everyone else.
They just do not always have the time or the tools to document it properly. That is what Plain Citizen is for.
I put this here because I think you deserve to know who is talking to you. Anyone can claim to be independent. This is what mine actually looks like across six decades of voting.
I started writing the America First series because I got fed up watching dangerous ideas go unchallenged in public discourse. The arguments being made about NATO, about the military budget, about childcare, about what the federal government can and cannot afford -- they were going largely unanswered. Not because the answers don't exist, but because most people don't have the time to dig them up.
I do. And I have something most professional commentators don't have -- no employer to answer to, no political party to protect, no advertisers to keep happy, and nothing to sell. Just a retired American with strong feelings and enough time to do the research properly.
Plain Citizen is not a news organization. It is not a political organization. It is one person's documented, sourced, fact-based attempt to ask the questions that ought to be getting asked and give ordinary Americans the information they need to form their own conclusions.
Make up your own mind. That is all I am asking.
I use Claude AI as a research and writing partner on everything published here. Every idea, every editorial direction, every decision about what to include and what to cut is mine. Claude helps me find the facts, organize my thinking, and say clearly what I have been feeling. Think of it the way you would think of any writer working with a skilled editor -- except the editor is artificial intelligence.
I disclose this because you deserve to know. And because I think it makes a point worth making: ordinary Americans now have tools powerful enough to compete with the spin machines. You do not need a media empire or a political party behind you to make a documented, researched, honest argument. You just need something to say and the willingness to say it.
The facts in every article are real. The sources are documented. The conclusions are mine.