WCGreen
WCGreen's JournalSteal some hubcaps and go to jail...
Steal a country's future and you get a slap on the wrist.
Make no mistake about it, what happened over the last fifteen or so years with rewarding speculation at the expense of prudence and diligence has been sucking the soul right out of our country.
People are in a daze, wondering what to do, being bombarded with mixed messages about the future while staring in the abysmal situation that lies ahead.
Seriously, if I was in college right now with a ton of relentless loan payments facing me, I don't know what I would do.
When I went to college, I borrowed about five thousand dollars for all four years. I was able to start paying while still in schools and had paid it all off in three years.
Back then, in the not so distant past, you could work your way through college.
Now, well, the costs are so high...
I think they are so high because there is no real supply and demand equation. Think about it. You sign a paper when you are a teenager promising to pay back money years down the road...
There is a tremendous disconnect between the true cost of education and the price tag that is offered when you sign on the dotted line.
People go to school with high expectations for the future. That clouds your thinking. It has too.
Anyway, I started off thinking about kids in the inner city being warehoused in jails while other people are committing crimes a million times more detrimental to the country and they whine and whine and whine like little kids sent to their room.
Only the kids being sent to their room are receiving at least some punishment.
The best way to turn the Congress back toward Blue is to, for once, pay attention to redistricting..
Too often, the national party sucks energy, volunteers and money out of the state and local party's. The volunteers want to play in the big leagues and look at local and state elections as an afterthought.
You want to know why the GOP took the House in 1994?
Simple, the GOP captured more statehouses starting in 1990 and culminated in 1992 when they took control of drawing the districts in states such as Ohio.
The same thing happened in 2008.
By localizing the message, by bringing it down to the visceral level, Republicans have captured statehouse after statehouse and so they redrew districts.
Again!
It’s expensive and it takes time and effort from the national level to address the situation at the state and local level.
Take this Birth Control issue. Didn’t they think it would cause a problem?
And it really isn’t a problem at the national level. It is at the local level.
And it play right into the GOP's Heavy Handed narative about the democrats being out of touch.
I can guarantee you it is probably being discussed at those same kitchen tables that Ronald Reagan talked about back in 1980 that personalized the national budget and took it right to the people.
That took time and effort at the local level. And right there to exploit it were church groups, Rotary Clubs who were ready willing and able to fight the Democrats and paint them as out of touch and heavy handed at the national level.
The Democrats had someone who was willing to localize every election with Howard Dean and he was seen as a threat to the national political operatus and the special interests the surround and define the party in DC.
I’ve seen it firsthand as I served as the Treasurer for Cuyahoga County for eight years, from 1994 to 2002. The state was only concerned with the Governor because that was where the Jobs were.
They couldn’t raise the money that the GOP could and so they were relegated to being a one trick campaign that left every other democrat on their own.
And Howard Dean got it.
Then Howard Dean got it.
With the way demographics are changing...
Will the GOP be even a credible party in four, six or eight years from now...
There was a post that claimed over 70% of the people under 35 believe that same sex marriage is ok by them.
That is one of the big wedge issues they use to drive the blue haired ladies crazy.
What are they going to use to divide people who aren't interested in being pidgeon holed anymore.
So is the US going to slowly slide back to a center left leaning nation that is more concerned with quality of life than the quantity of things...
I surely hope so because that would be the kind of country I wanted to live in and, if it ever came to that, die for.
I truly get it, I really do see why people turn to faith in order to find their moral compass...
After all, it's all laid out there for people to follow.
(Now if all the people who claim to follow the teachings of their particular higher power, the world would be A LOT more peaceful, don't you think?)
And it doesn't bother me if candidates say that he/she bounces ideas off of god, or uses god as a moral dip stick, so to speak.
Having said that, after all their postering, I want people of religion to promise that they will put the needs of the country over the needs of their denomination,
In other words, plain words that they can understand, you are an American first and a ___________ second.
You must swear to recognize that we live in pluralistic society where all sorts of ideas, practices and worship routines come together to make us a country.
The only thing that ties us all together, and what makes us unique, is our system of government.
It's tough enough already to fit all the pieces together without purposely dividing people even more with the quirks of worship that have developed over the centuries.
The one true document that defines us is the Constitution. It isn't the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, the Big Book, the Moon Book...
So, I really want to zoom back to 1960 when people questioned then Senator John Kennedy if he would swear not to take his marching orders from the Vatican.
We all know what he said. He was an American first and a Roman Catholic second.
Candidates today get away with a lot. I have heard far too many candidates say they turned to god to make their decisions that their pastor is their guide. (Why is it right to have some mail order preacher as a moral guide but not the pope? JFK MUST have asked himself that question.)
What does that really mean? Especially to someone who knows some fundamentalists with really crazy ideas.
I want an American in the oval office. Preferably a democrat. I could care less if his/her moral compass points to god. After all, history is full of characters who shielded some awful behavior in the name of God.
Bottom line, I don't trust anyone who panders to believers just to get something they want.
I've seen it first hand when I ran for office.
I really think I would have done better as a politician if I went back to the family religion, Catholic, instead of looking toward the Unitarians for my spiritual guidance. (I actually overheard someone say she didn't trust Unitarians, they think too much.)
I just had to be true to myself.
It scares the bejeebies out of me that the GOP has a hard time separating P form D in their nickname.
Bottom line, I respect those who are true to their moral compass where ever iit comes from.
But as an American, it is my right to get my moral backbone from anywhere I see fit.
We are a country of laws, laws inspired many time by "God". But in the end, we are all just mortals who should really take a lesson from Icarus and not try to become a god. It's much better to be firmly attached to the bedrock of the Constitution, the higher power we all answer to in front of our peers.
The Much Ado About Nothing Party....
That seems to be what the GOP has turned into these days.
Getting all upset about the Designer Bags being used to raise funds for president Obama is just the latest in a whole slew of Fox hysteria.
And since the GOP is always interested in petty little things to get their base excited, that is all I can see them as now.
Meaningless slogans and petty controversy.
Yep, the GOP should just call themselves the Much Ado About Nothing Party...
I am watching a show on PBS about the Underground Railroad...
I look at what was happening and I wonder what I would have done, wonder if I would have had the courage to do what thousands of men and women did for people they didn't know...
When the Fugative Slave Law passes, with much help from northern politicians eager to keep the South in the Union, no slave was safe until they were on Canadian soil.
I wonder what I would have done.
Engaging in protest is easy. Putting your life and limb on the line for a cause...
I learned that the Spiritials were all coded and about the Underground Railroad.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, coming for to Carry me home....
The Chariot is the Underground Railroad. The River Jordon was the Ohio River.
It's amazing that the Republican Party here in Ohio was once fighting for freedom for the Slaves and that now, they resort to coded racial slurs in order to garner the votes of those who still view African Americans as inferior to the White race...
I still can't understand why anyone with half a brain still believes the GOP is fiscally responsible
Every time they get a chance, they increase spending and cut taxes...
How many times do they have to do this before people catch on?
I know it has a lot to do with the media focusing on the visceral instead of the intellectual, but it is more than that.
I firmly believe the GOP does everything to reinforce that misguided perception.
I wonder why the democrats don't get to the gut level and just call 'em like they are.
I mean, why don't the democrats, at every breath, repeat that the GOP is the party of deficits and tax cuts for the rich?
The GOP still uses that hoary old Tax and Spend liberal crap and still gets away with it almost 50 years since Reagan et all embraced that moniker.
Why do Democrats always make it hard to define a simple concept?
The GOP, the party of deficits.
Something about running for office still bother me 16 years after the last time I was on the ballot
There was such an enormous disconnect between what people believe can be done via the political process and what actually is possible is huge...
I blame it on the expectations that slogans go a long way toward dumbing down the American people.
I also was really bothered by people wanting to know what denomination I was as if that would tell them how I would comport myself once I was elected to office.
Somehow people who vote believe that if someone is a "good" Christian, Catholics need not apply, btw, they will stand up for what is righteous and good. We all know how well that has worked out over the years.
And the interest groups that are there to determine if you are worthy enough to be an officeholder.
Take the cause of abortion.
The first district I ran in was very catholic. I went in front of one of the women's organizations that offered an endorsement as well as financial assistance to all of the candidate.
This organization wanted me to introduce or at least cosponsor legislation to get government assistance to poor people seeking an abortion.
Now I had thought this out before going into the interview and when that came up I said in deference to the overwhelming catholic make-up of my district, I would not feel as if I was representing the that district if I introduced such a bill. I added I would vote for the bill in committee and on the floor but I would not introduce the bill.
Cuyahoga County said yes. I replied if I lived in the districts that they represent, I would be glad to. But the key here is I would be representing the people who sent me to Columbus while also taking into consideration your concerns.
Needless to say, I did not get an endorsement.
Another part of the process that bothered me was how the press viewed political figures. Since the news depends on advertising for their revenue, there is a conservative pro republican slant to the news, especially on the local level. What has happened over the years is the political beat is more about politics and less about governing.
This is why it costs so much money to run for office. The news outlets have no interest in covering political stuff especially if it about someone who is going to upset the cozy relationship between the advertisers and the people own the papers.
I had some dirt on one of the guys I was running against and gave it to the Plain Dealer and all they said to me it was up to me to get my message out.
The papers still endorse but that is no longer as important as it once was.
I just wanted to put a few things out there that I experiences in the three times I ran for office.
Those are just circumstance, Ma'am and do not determine his charactor....
What a wonderful way to explain some persons lot in life at times in that life when circumstance overwhelm a persons life.
It's how I wish people hold to as they go about observing and then commenting on the world around them...
Right now, I am watching the movie Elmer Gantry....
It's unbelievable that nothing has changed since the twenties and the sixties and now....
There were bearded men, foreign men, outside the high school selling French Postcards....
These outsiders who worship at Harvard, Yale and Princeton....
These Unatarians....
I mean this is what they were pushing even back then.
Nothing changes for these people, nothing.
I guess it's easier to latch onto an image than to create a whole new set of boogey men
Profile Information
Gender: MaleCurrent location: Cleveland Ohio
Member since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 45,558
