Vote for Joe

Rural El Salvador missions trip

Catching up on the summer of 2025 (part 2)… I wrote a newspaper article about a local couple, both trained paramedics, who go to rural El Salvador every year to help with various medical missions. They are motivated by their Christian faith. “This might well be the only chance many of these people have to receive any type of formal medical care during the year,” said Rachel, who is pictured here. The poverty is staggering in these areas, yet America is currently spending $140 billion on deportations. Think what that money would do in Mexican, and Latin American, rural areas. Our position paper on Hispanic Immigration is a much saner, and much more spiritually sound, approach to this issue. See… One of the village council meetings I reported on, included the village administrator talking about her participation in a new, and local, Housing Coalition effort. The coalition will be undertaking an initial housing study, to tabulate figures on such dynamics as to, for instance, what local home buyers are looking for in the way of, say, duplexes, versus single family units, versus tiny homes… And to the latter, one of our platform proposals is suggesting local zoning commissions change zoning codes to allow for tiny home structures to be built on more properties — as part of a multi-dimensional approach to significantly impacting homelessness. That is, besides providing a physical, permanent tiny home structure, things like church care teams could form around a person, as they are getting on their feet, and getting established. The care team could plug the formerly homeless person in with social services, with a church, with job training, with education, with counseling… As opposed to just sweeping people off the streets and into over-crowded shelters, what we propose would be a much more thorough, systemic, and exceedingly more spiritual approach. For a look at how we would approach poverty in general, see…

Migrant children organize for a soccer game in Ohio

As I type this, the deportation riots rage in LA. Meanwhile, this photo is of migrant farm worker children who are going to a bi-lingual school while their parents work in the fields here. (I just wrote a newspaper article about this Migrant Education Program.) In the winter, the kids will be in California with their parents during harvest season there, then down south to Texas, Georgia, etc. Poverty and insecurity follow them everywhere. Cart blanche just deporting as many “illegals” as possible, people who, for the most part, have come here to escape poverty, to escape violence… is absolutely nuts on a spiritual level! Many who hold this highly protectionist sentiment, whether political officials, or those who voted for them, won’t have to worry about being deported from Heaven. They’ll never get in — the wall will be that high for them at the border of Heaven. For more on our Farm Worker position paper, see…

elawtalk.com photo

I was recently talking with a local law enforcement officer who is in the early stages of trying to develop an initiative to get statewide mental health coverage for all first responders. He said that currently, some municipality insurance plans cover mental health services, and some don’t. This officer said he sees it as essential that every first responder has access to these vital services. He noted, as just one example, that statistics show that every three days in America, a first responder will take his life. Concurrently, statistics also show some 22 military veterans take their lives every day in America. Our administration would concur that stepped up mental health coverage, for both first responders, and for military veterans, should be a ‘front and center’ priority. Note: Our family spent five years doing outreach work in a hardscrabble area of Cleveland. And those police officers, for instance, are regularly confronted with life and death situations. And it only stands to reason, as with war veterans, that incidence of PTSD would be high among these officers. For more on our position paper around crime/law enforcement, see… And for more on our time in Cleveland, see…

Trump just hosted the president of South Africa. During a press conference, the president said that his country is replete with poverty (…a 40% unemployment rate currently), and as a result, riddled with gang violence, and such. *It was noted that some 75 people are killed in that country every day now. That’s more fatalities than some war zones. The Catholic Catechism explains that First World countries have a grave responsibility to help Third World countries which are struggling. This is Exhibit A, with an exponent… American lifestyles, as a whole, revolve around nice, well-appointed houses or apartments. We eat three square meals a day, with snacks, and with, often, never giving a second thought about eating out regularly — as many of these Third World people are tremendously food insecure. We purchase the latest in automobiles, with all the options. And I could go on, and on… with all this. In modern day apparitions from the Blessed Virgin Mary, she, regularly, talks about “unbridled materialism” plaguing the First World. We (many of us), in turn, default to looking at Elon Musk, Jeff Bazos, Warren Buffett… as being plagued with “unbridled materialism,” without looking at ourselves in the mirror. And that is especially germane in comparison to our lifestyles versus the abject poverty lifestyles of many of those in, say, South Africa. *See: Luke 16:19-31. Hint: Many of us are the “rich man,” and many in South Africa are “Lazarus the Beggar.” Our Foreign Policy spins around carrying out the essence of what the Catechism calls for. See… *Note: The reason for the photo of the baby in the womb with this? With abortion, the killing around the world is absolutely off the charts. Concurrently, and as a result of abortion, it seems God is incrementally taking His protective hand off the world, as we devolve into war in Gaza, Ukraine, the Sudan, Haiti (gang war), South Africa (gang war), and on, and on… Stay tuned for full-blown World War III.

worldatlas.com photo

Our Bible Study last night looked at Isaiah: 31. The cliff note is God tells the Israelites He’s going to protect them supernaturally against the formidable Assyrian Army, but the Israelites collectively don’t trust and look for help from the Egyptians. God, in turn, says to them: “What sorrow awaits those who look to Egypt for help, trusting their horses, chariots, and charioteers, and depending on the strength of human armies, instead of looking to the Lord, the Holy One of Isreal…” And later: “The Assyrians will be destroyed, but not by the swords of men. The sword of God will strike them, and they will panic and flee.” And that’s exactly what happens… Modern day corollary: In our travels, I met Fr. Tom McCaslin, who was the Social Action Coordinator for the Omaha, Nebraska Diocese at the time. He said that America spends $50 billion just maintaining its nuclear arsenal each year, while meanwhile around the world, 24,000 people starve to death each day, and some two billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water and live in deplorable slum conditions. The priest continued that America should unilaterally disarm its nuclear weapons, take the massive savings and help the poor worldwide. “We should do the right thing, and trust God,” he said. [*Instead of relying on the modern-day chariots (nuclear missiles), well, you get the point.] “America First,” as a sound spiritual principle? Hardly. For more on our Foreign Policy, see…