Buckeye Back Road Tour continued… On a campaign stop in Columbus Grove, Ohio, I was met at the village square by, of all things, a “Ten Commandments” display. A majority of the people in Columbus Grove were saying, in essence, that these “laws” were at the heart of their community. Refreshing.
I covered a village council meeting the other night for the local newspaper. Some political science class students from Bluffton University were in attendance (as a class assignment). Afterwards, I interviewed one of the students. She said she is from Columbus and had attended several city council meetings there. What struck her most about this small village council meeting was all the nuance and discussion on even the smallest of points. Note: Our platform calls for a shift, with much more power/decision making happening on these local levels — where people are more in touch with he issues they face.
I was in a conversation today with a local banker who said he believed the Federal Reserve lowering the interest rate last week was, indeed, tied to the recent emergence of the “inverted yield curve,” which is often the harbinger of a recession. He said the volatility of the markets tied to the evolving trade war is a major concern. What’s more, and this is not often talked about in economic circles, or at least not talked about enough, is that, yes, there is an extremely low rate of unemployment. However, conversely, this gives a distinct advantage to laborers, who in turn, are often demanding higher wages. While this, indeed, is good for the workers, reciprocally, it sometimes hurts business owners — with this equation also rippling into the economy.
Now that I’m one of the presidents of the United States (I just “declared” that. Why not, huh.), you can count on this not happening again in the aftermath of something like “9/11,” which today happens to be the 18th year anniversary. What you specifically can count on not happening is a “cycle of retaliation” that is tremendously disproportionate. As president, it’s my job to protect the American people — and what I would be most concerned about protecting, is their souls. It’s my contention that what George W. Bush set in motion in 9/11’s aftermath (and that the American people blindly, and wholeheartedly, got behind), was a tremendous, even sinful, retaliation that unnecessarily killed many innocent people — all the way up until today with the war still going on. Note: My tact would have been to rely on intelligence and Special Forces to surgically target the terrorist groups responsible, and if possible, capture them and bring them to trial in an international court. Note: The is a newspaper column I wrote a few days after 9/11 in 2001.
In the last month, among a number of newspaper stories, I did an article about “Alice.” She’s 103 years old. Tremendously spry, and lucid, she was living on her own in a house, until she fell and broke her hip. (Now she’s temporarily in an assisted living facility.) She got around fine before then, with the help of “Meals on Wheels” and some caring neighbors. What’s more, she had (is having) quite a life. When asked where she grew up, she winked and replied: “I never did.” Like with Native American cultures, and such, we should be valuing our elderly, much more than we do. Our Social Security position paper revolves around that.
On the way back from my kid’s soccer game in Archbold, Ohio, I stopped at the McDonald’s in Defiance, Ohio, to do a little “populist stumping.” While passing out campaign cards, I got in a conversation with this guy, Jay Solether. He’s a personal trainer, was on his way to a Revival Rally in Defiance, and told me he’s also been part of the Bill Glass Prison Ministry. (Glass, who just passed away, was a well-known,Cleveland Browns lineman during the ’60s, who parlayed his notoriety into creating a nationwide prison ministry.) Solether’s enthusiasm for his faith was palpable. Note: I also got in a conversation with a couple older gentlemen, one of whom said that while he’s a Democrat, he didn’t vote in the last election. He said everything was getting so crazy in the country he didn’t feel much like participating.
A library “Adult Book Study” in Ada is currently reading this book. I sat in on the group last night for a story for the local newspaper. The crux of the book is that there is a relatively new, elderly “houseless” population that has sprung up in the past 10 years, or so. These aren’t seniors out there doing RV retirement leisure travel. These are seniors who lost jobs in their professions during the Great Recession of 2008, lost their homes, and lost most hope of being hired back into their professions at another place at their age. So they travel in old campers, and such, doing tough seasonal jobs in warehouses, in farm fields during harvest, and so on. Meanwhile they park their small campers, vans, and so on, on side streets, in Wal-Mart parking lots, etc., just trying to get by. The ages of these nomads range from 60 to 80. Our administration would address this, in spades, by increasing, exponentially, the “social security” safety net for elders in general. See the following… https://www.voteforjoe.com/social-security-c2wv
While other presidential candidates are campaigning across New Hampshire, and such, I’ve decided upon Ohio. Not only because I live here, its a low budget campaign, and so on; but because when you look at presidential politics — if you don’t carry Ohio, you’re not going to carry the country. On the way to my kid’s Regional Finals Track Meet one evening recently, I stopped in the small town of Bascom where I stumped with a cashier in this general store. She said, in turn, that she’d put some of my campaign cards on the store’s front counter. Yet another “Joe campaign coup”! Note: Our Jonathan’s 4 x 400-meter relay team qualified for State this night! I’ve got to have the fastest of any presidential candidate’s kids — yet my poll numbers show I’m, oh, still a bit behind the front runners. (Pun intended.)
I just wrote a local newspaper article about a special group of students who just graduated with their Masters in Law from Ohio Northern University. They are all from the country of Kosovo. What’s more, one man told me that when he was four-years-old, he was in a refugee camp during the Kosovo War. He said the only thing on his mind then was: “staying alive.” Now he’s got a lot more on his mind, like, for instance, going back to his country to help increase the “rule of law,” as Kosovo continues to stabilize after the war. He also told me he has tremendous empathy for the plight of refugees worldwide these days. Our campaign does too…
At the Memorial Day Parade in Bluffton yesterday, I took this photo. Most of these guys are Vietnam Vets (there was just one WWII veteran at the event). These guys’ sacrifices can’t be quantified, but it can be honored. And that’s, exactly, what our position paper on the military calls for in the Veteran’s Affairs section (topic #11).