Vote for Joe

Okay, if (some) of the scientists/meteorologists are right, global warming looms like a scary doomsday scenario. First World lifestyle changes would, indeed, be good, whether the threat is, ultimately, real, or not. Stay with me on this… To curb CO2 emissions, we need to, as an example, bicycle, and walk, way more than we currently are. This will entail some “sacrifice” for many. Sacrifice is what the Catholic Church calls “mortification.” And mortification, in turn, is good for the soul. So, ultimately, we end up with a cleaner world, and cleaner souls. It’s a win/win.

I just interviewed a local Vietnam Vet who weighed in on the War in Ukraine. He was a helicopter flight mechanic near the front lines during the war. This veteran said he sees the Ukraine War paradigm, basically, the way the Vietnam War was framed. That is, “containment” of Soviet Union (now Russia) style communism. The atrocities taking place in Ukraine at present are, indeed, absolutely horrific. And the ‘communism containment of today and yesteryear’ is, very much, an apt corollary — on one level. But, and here’s a corollary that’s not being made (yet), abortion has been legal in Ukraine for decades, and Zelensky, as an example, is a strong proponent of “choice.” What happens in an abortion is absolutely horrific as well. What’s more, abortion is now legal in almost every country worldwide. Do we think God is just going to stand by and allow this Holocaust to continue unabated? What we are looking at in the Ukraine, I believe, may be just one of the opening salvos of World War III — where God merely takes His hand off the world, and mankind reaps the grave consequences for abortion, (and other) grave sins. In fact, we may well be seeing the “pale green horse” of the Book of Revelation ‘coming around the first turn,’ so to speak.

I regularly cover village council meetings in small communities throughout the area. And the issues that come up are tremendously varied. For instance, one of the towns is doing a water tower rehab project this summer. The Village Administrator for this town also recently outlined a multiple road asphalt repaving project slated for this summer, in tandem with a municipal pool painting project. While, okay, not seemingly momentous on the face of it, these projects, these council decisions, do, indeed, impact the local populace in significant ways. In fact, our campaign calls for much more power to be put in the hands of these local officials who, ultimately, and intimately, know their towns’ specific needs.

I recently interviewed a local librarian who is the youth reading coordinator. She doe story time sessions at the library and at an elementary school (using books like the one pictured here). She has a master’s degree in Library Science. She noted that in this modern age of screen videos, and such, reading among youth is becoming more and more out of vogue. This can, indeed, be detrimental. That is, reading books, for instance, is akin to aerobics for the brain. One has to actively picture the plot line, the characters, the background scenes… With a video, well, the imagery, what the characters look like, etc., is all right there in front of your face. In adopting all this new technology, cart blanche, have we, indeed, made a mistake? An important question. Note: I also recently interviewed a local sociology professor who posited that technology actually drives culture in recent centuries, not the other way around. And he used the example of the Industrial Revolution. Steam power was initially harnessed, factories went up, mass production started happening… and people moved from the country to around these plants (which became “urban areas”). And many people traded a small farm, agrarian-based existence, for a much more fast-paced, crowded, polluted… existence. The professor said that unlike the Amish, who go through prayerful, studied discernment in regard to adopting a new technology, mainstream America usually just accepts the newest technology — and labels it: “progress.”

Nov. 2018 edition

Just finished reading the cover article… Excerpt: “Western lands have been a subject of intense dispute ever since the U.S. Government seized them from native tribes.” Who took over were homesteaders, railroads, livestock barons, ranchers, mining syndicates… with little thought of conservation/land- management. The “common good” eventually became a thing “…and the notion of public lands, managed in perpetuity by the federal government for the good of the nation” became more than just a concept when President Grant, in 1872, signed a bill creating Yellowstone National Park — the world’s first. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management eventually evolved for forests, grasslands, deserts… And the federal government, at present, owns 575 million acres across the west. Now… On the front end, we should have never initially “seized” (broken treaties, et Al) the land from the native tribes. And, frankly, we should give some of it back. Secondly, our administration would lean, considerably, toward preserving as much land as possible in its natural state, while not caving to financial interests that would want otherwise. We would place a premium on being good environmental stewardship. Note: During our research, we stopped in Rawlins, Wyoming, where we met with someone who worked for the Bureau of Land Management there. Part of that interview is inserted in our position paper on the environment. (*See section 13.)