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Past Twilight the back story

Authors List

 

Spring 2011 

 

  Below are areas that I feel strongly about. As time goes forward and I learn more about what is important in life this list and my positions on the list may change. What won't change is the core values that I think are important. If you are a voter and you don't have a list that reflects your core values than you are nothing more than a pawn that can be used by anyone, especially bad politicians.   

 1  Defense: If we spend more on defense, then the next five countries like China, Russia and India, then we are spending way to much money. I want someone to look into the reason why we have bases all over the world. Our most important war zone is on the border with Mexico. If we can't have troops fighting narco terrorists because of the posse comitatus law, then we need to create a small international area along the border to Mexico. Call it Libya or Iraq, that will get war hawks like Joe Leibermen and John McCain foaming at the mouth in support. We need to cut defense spending, especially on overpriced weapons, some that even duplicate what we already have.
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 War: I want the children of the rich and our political leaders fighting side by side with the middle class and poor. I want a surtax on every war we fight, no more borrowing from countries like China, who do their best to ensure we won't have full United Nations support for our wars, but are happy to put us in dept for our follies. If we can't do these things than we have no business invading another country.      What has the average citizen gained from our adventures in Viet Nam, Iraq and a prolonged stay in Afghanistan? What has the average citizen gained from our being the world's only super power and world's policeman? Please give me something concrete that a simple person such as myself can understand.

    War is something we pay for long after the last bullet has been fired. Even though our country does a decent job in trying to keep our soldiers safe(certainly better than our civil war where 600,000 soldiers died.) soldiers will die and become either physically or mentally damaged. Relatives and people who love our soldiers will go through the agony of trying to adjust their lives after something has happened. That is the personal price of war and it is hard to measure except for the price of burial, medical and physiological treatment for our soldiers. What is easy to measure, if someone bothered  is what our country could have done with the money had we not wasted it on wars without value. From infrastructure, research on new technology to improving the welfare of our citizens: all these things can be measured for success or failure. I'm still waiting for someone to measure, not for rich people who certainly profit from wars, not for other countries who hide behind the united states every time something happens, but for the average citizen. What has the average citizen gotten out of all those lives lost and money spent?

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 Education: My view on college professors is that a lot of them are overpaid for what they do. Especially in grad school where the students do most of the work. The rest of our teachers have a hard time in trying to compensate for crappy school systems and some parents who are more of a hindrance rather than a help to their childrens' educational development. And yes, some teachers are not worthy of being called a teacher and should be fired or spend time in the slammer. No easy answers to the education problems in this country. If our educational system was a for-profit company, it would have closed years ago or moved to China. Maybe that is the answer: Walmart expands its' big box and creates an education aisle where students learn via the internet from some low-paid  teacher from China. Isn't technology wonderful?

   Does our educational system prepare most of its' students for entry into the workforce and what it takes to live in our society?  When I watch TV, I seem to hear more no's than yes's. My own gut feeling is that our educational system only prepares a tiny part of our student population to fit into todays work force. The liberal part of me says we have to spend more money on education. The conservative part of me says someone has to audit whether we are spending our money wisely. And the auditors, should not be the local school board, teachers union or some group set up by local politicians. We need a real national education department that leads, sets standards and enforces those standards. Years ago we learned that in order to have high standards in law enforcement, you have to separate law enforcement personnel away from political control. Yes, the local mayor picks the chief of police and gets rid or him or her if the chief isn't enforcing the law and keeping the peace. But the mayor isn't supposed to order the chief to break the law or violate community standards.  The same could be said about the educational system, some educators spend a lifetime learning how to improve the educational system. We need to give them a chance. Maybe they don't have all the answers, but they have a lot more answers then the local politicians who think throwing away money or not investing enough money into the problem will make our children ready for this century..

 4  Alternative Energy: Why do we give tax breaks for big oil companies who seem to make big profits every year?  Why do politicians seem to find ways not to give incentives to alternate energy like wind and solar power? Why are those same politicians against funding money for research in alternative energy? Just listening to the media, I have heard many ways of creating energy from many different things. In the county, I live in(St. Lucie) they are going to create energy from trash. You can also create ethanol to fuel our cars from trash. Lot of stuff is happening, but the process of making these discoveries into something you or I can use for energy never seems to get to point where they can complete with big oil. It may take years of funded research and tax incentives to produce something that can compete with big oil. But if we don't start sometime we will never finish at another time. How many of our soldiers are going to get killed in places like Iraq or Kuwait, before we realize we need a variety of energy sources that can compete with big oil. Maybe when the price of unleaded goes to $5 a gallon, enough people will get angry enough to stop wasting energy(yes, you my fellow citizens are just like addicts who cling to their drugs until their life get ruined enough so that they finally realize they have to change their path away from destruction.) and start to punish enough of our lackey legislators who do their best to make big oil filthy rich. 
 5  Welfare: No I am not talking about living on the public dole. I'm talking about the health and welfare of every citizen in this country. If you can work, get off your ass and look for work. If you can't find work: move to where you can find work, take a low-paying job, train for other jobs. The government doesn't owe you the lifestyle you would like. If you have honestly tried and failed, then there should be some basic things, your government can do for you. Certainly, your government should stop insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies from getting filthy rich from your medical problems. A country as rich as ours should provide health care to its' citizens without putting them in the poor-house.  I believe a real conservative might think that is the right and efficient thing to do. After all your fellows, citizens are resources we need to conserve.
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 Social Security: I'm over 65 and I'm not wealthy.  Social security plays a large part in how I live my life. If you are a younger person, you just can't fully grasp what I am saying. But trust me, when you get to be my age, you will be saying the same thing unless you are rich and in that case social security is nothing more than chump change.  Our social security system will be in trouble someday because our politicians have borrowed money from the social security trust fund to run many of our government activities. I don't know which ones, but I am willing to bet many of them. I wouldn't like. Sooner or later we will have a problem because the government is going to have to pay back the money it took from the trust fund to pay my benefits and several million other benefits.. We put our money into social security and we want what was promised to us.

Republicans: want to figure out a way of getting rid of social security, like enacting a law that says anyone over 62 can't vote, and still get elected. Democrats: want to up the tax rate on everything. My solution: The same percentage is taken out of your earning no matter how much you make. To those eligible for social security the systems pays out at the same rate as if there was a much lower ceiling on how much was withheld from your earnings.  Yes, the wealthy help the system to survive by getting less than what they put into the system.  Call if socialism if you must. I think of it as the 'little people' getting stuff back from the people who became rich by making money off of their backs.

 

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 Immigration: I come from a law enforcement background and one thing I know: bad laws have to be changed, but until they are we have to live by our laws, when we don't - nothing good ever happens.  If we have a problem with illegal immigration and this clearly violates our laws than something should be done to correct this problem. I don't see how you can begin to solve the problem until you plug up the border. I have a security background, so there is no doubt in my mind that this can be done. It will take money, but more important the will of the American people will have to trump politics.  Once this is done then you can give our present illegal aliens some type of legal status where they can work, pay taxes and pay into social security(We do have a large under-the-table  economy where legal and illegal citizens don't pay taxes or social security.)  In the end both  groups suck up the services of our safety net, yet don't contribute to pay for the net.

    Illegals, won't be citizens and can't vote, but they can be put on the back of the list to become a citizen. Nobody will probably like my idea, but we have several million illegal aliens living under the radar, not paying taxes and sucking up limited resources. Worse the ones who are criminals are like ghosts in our criminal-justice  system. Hard to catch a ghost when you have no record that they exist.Everybody living in this country needs to be counted and itemized. We don't need to know your personal stuff, we just need to know you are here. There is a fine line between freedom and lawlessness. This is where I am drawing my line on this subject. 

 14th Amendment 'SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  

 I'm not a legal scholar, but it seems clear: if you were born here and your parents are illegal - you are a legal citizen.  You can even become a president of this country. Contrast that to your mother is legal but you were born in Kenya - bye - bye your chance of being the top guy on Air force One.  Now we have woman coming from all over the world just to give birth in our country. It used to be that these women were poor and looking for a better deal in our country. Now we have rich woman coming from places like China, who want to hedge their bets in case things go south in their home countries. In both cases, these women are exploiting a mistake in our constitution to get what they want. Does anyone really think that the people who wrote the 14th amendment ever envisioned or even wanted their amendment to be used by people(and by this I mean not only the illegals, but the illegal industry that makes political points or money out of this law) as a way to motivate aliens to enter our country illegally or overstay their visas. Yes, it tugs at the heart to watch another TV interview with some family who is about to be deported, but is ready to leave their legal children here. But there is one question the interviewer never asks: did you really think that if you had a child born here, that would stop you from being deported? 

   I don't know what the intent was when they wrote the above amendment, but I can guess that since this law was passed after the civil war. The amendment was created to address the question as to whether blacks were actually citizens. Yes, it is sad, the same groups of people who profited from bringing blacks to this country as slaves, would use Jim Crow laws to deny blacks citizenship. Can we find an honest politician, who isn't a bigot, to say that the people who wrote that amendment may have thought that it only applied to former slaves and couldn't foresee what would happen over a hundred years later? Don't hold your breath for an honest politician, nothing will change until enough citizens get angry and say this isn't about what is fair - this is about who shouldn't profit from this amendment.

 

 Social issues   

   These are issues that are not prominent budget issues but issues that result in laws being passed.

8  Unions: I believe the decline of the middle class and decline of unions are two things that are marching in tandem. I won't support political types that try to destroy unions by making it harder for unions to represent their members.  Most of these political types are Republicans. I certainly understand their motivation. Most union members are more knowledgeable than the average citizen, and most union members vote for the democratic party.  If employers always treated their employees fairly few people would join unions. Maybe unions need to take a good look at themselves. When you have presidents for life or until time in the slammer, you have unions where the focus is on what keeps the leaders in power, not what is best for that union. But even a crappy union knows one thing. If they want to survive they have to deliver more to their members than the members would have received have they not been union members. This is a rough time for unions. I stand with our unions even the ones that really need to take a good look at themselves.
9 Sexual Preference: I see no evidence that says same-sex marriages even those with children are harmful to this county. I do see plenty of examples of non same-sex marriages where adults and children get abused or murdered. Does this mean that the country should enact a new defense of marriage act where heterosexual couples are not allowed to get married?  I am basically a loner. The biggest failure in my life is that I have not found someone to love who would love me back. If I thought I could accomplish that by turning gay, I would become gay. Unfortunately, I am hard-wired to be non gay. So if someone can find a little love in this increasingly ugly world, I am all for them, no matter what there sexual preference is.  I am especially angry at politicians, especially gay politicians, who use gay people as a way of diverting attention from the real things we need to do to fix up our country.
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Race:  All of us are prejudice to some extent. I'm prejudice against criminals. If I see one coming I'm going to run the other way. I'm white and have mostly white friends. But if I meet you in a bar, where most of my socializing take place - and you aren't a scum bag and actually have something to say. I'm going to put you on my friends list. When it comes to a good drinking buddy, I don't give a damn what your color is.

   Where prejudice gets irrational and wrong is when prejudice has no rational basis and is directed at a group of people. Sad to say groups of every color engage in this type of prejudice. The results are pretty much the same. If you're looking for a job, job promotion or inclusion into a particular club or group and the job or group is one color and you are another color, you face an uphill fight to get what you want. No one will ever tell you that you are the wrong color, but just look around and see who gets what position. If all the lucky people are the same color, it is either time for a lawsuit or time to find a place where your color matches the other colors. Of course that is no guarantee, hot people always climb ahead of hot deficient people(yes, I know all the PC terms).

  No politician will say that they favor one color over another color. Although there was one mayor who was elected during my time in New York City, who tried to get around the civil-service  laws and tried to promote people of his color for supervisory positions in the cities' welfare agency. I didn't vote for him and he lost his bid for a second term. One way to find out if your local politician is prejudice is to see who that politician appoints to key positions within his or her government. You also need to see who these agency heads appoint for key positions within their agency. Good people who will make your organisation shine are hard to find and even harder to recruit. This is even more so, if you decide to get your best people from only one color. I won't vote for someone who relies on only one race for their key appointments. The same could be said for someone who puts only conservatives or liberals in their key positions. The best is always the best, no matter where they come from.

And finally, all elected officials have to deliver services. Who gets what services and what amount often will tell you who your elected official cares about and who he doesn't care enough about. One thing to remember, if another color is getting less than what you are getting, try to remember that eventually when another politician comes along if may be your turn to get less. The policy of treating people unfairly knows no color or religious affiliation.  If your not bright enough to understand the implications of the last sentence then maybe you need to leave this site.


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http://www.house.gov/representatives/

 http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

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