Vote for Joe

Being in close proximity to Bluffton University, I’ve been exposed to a lot of student and professor research over the years — some of which has been woven into our positions.  At a recent BU Student Research Fair, I talked with a woman who had done a display on Multi-Cultural Adoption.  She noted that multi-cultural adoption still comes up against a good deal of “social stigma” at times in this country.  She said social workers advise parents of multi-cultural families to work on making their children feel as secure as possible with their cultural identities, explain about the dimensions of racism to the child, and be open to allowing the child to ask questions and process their feelings around issues related to their identities and problems they may be experiencing with, say, peer prejudices, and such.  Note:  Our education position paper proposes that multi-cultural classes be taught much earlier in the education process (significant multi-cultural classes are currently primarily taught at a collegiate level).  We think introducing this much earlier makes sense, common sense, given how diverse America’s population is and how this would help promote so much more understanding and camaraderie. Note 2:  At the same Research Fair, I interviewed a woman who did a display on abortion.  She is an advocate for much more adoption in regard to crisis pregnancy, as she is an advocate for a stepped up approach in regard to changing the societal factors (poverty, broken homes, abuse…) that sometimes leads to abortion.  To be pro-life, she said, one must be: “pro-people” in general.  Our administration would agree.

I stumped in downtown Arlington, Ohio (pop. 1,455), today.  While passing out campaign cards, I ended up in a conversation with a local, retired teacher.  He said he was particularly flummoxed by Federal Education Department standards as they relate to, say, the standardized tests tied to initiatives like No Child Left Behind, Common Core…  But even more than this, he said there was a lot of extraneous learning.  He said, for instance, studies show that what’s learned in Algebra is hardly, if ever, used on the job later.  “Yet we keep teaching it,” he said in an exasperated tone.  Good point.  It’s actually my contention that a significant portion of what is being taught these days, across the (subject) board, is extraneous.   On the far end of this continuum are four year college degrees — the current American “gold standard” — that are chock full of courses that are exceedingly extraneous.  For instance, Business majors fulfilling “elective requirements” with such courses as: Intramural Recreation Methodology.  I mean, c’mon!  So these students are spending tens of thousands of bucks on, say, 40 to 60 hours of electives that aren’t directly applicable to their major.  Meanwhile in the Third World, many youth can’t even afford the basics in high school education.  And the money we’re wasting here, could go such a long way in helping them.  Note:  For more on our position on education, see…

Met recently with Dan Kremer in Yorkshire, Ohio.  He is an organic farmer who is an absolute evangelist for Catholic Rural Life Association teaching.  He grows organically because he believes the artificial herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers are bad for the environment and bad for peoples’ health.  (On an earlier stop at Oberlin College, we met with David Orr who is an author and the director of the college’s Environmental Science Department.  He believes the ingestion of the toxic farm chemicals are creating “chemical cocktails” in our systems that are exploding into things like cancer.  Note: One in three Americans now get cancer in a lifetime!)  Our administration, in concert with the EPA, would work to get many of these artificial farm chemicals banned.  I once told the Bellefontaine Examinar in Ohio that this could actually be construed as a lethal form of “chemical warfare.”  Incidentally, Bellefountaine is in the heart of rural America.  That’s right, I’m willing to take tough stands in tough places.  For more on our agricultural stance, see…

In the last couple months, I’ve written a number of stories for my wife’s magazines.  Just a few of them include:  I did a story about a youth who has autism and uses art therapy, in a pretty phenomenal way, in order to help express himself and communicate with others.  I also did a story on a local man who gave up pursuing a professional baseball career because he said he felt God calling him to be a pastor.  The title:  Batter Up! …for God.  For a “green living” section, I did an article on a new “Wind Campus” going up in Findlay, Ohio.  It highlighted a new industrial park that is going in, with each business being tied electrically to wind turbines.  In addition, I did a quite poignant story about a local couple who adopted the baby of a teenage girl who was in “crisis pregnancy.”  I also did a story on Rally Point, which is a Youth For Christ outreach program to kids living in quite a rough, hardscrabble area of Lima, Ohio.  Note:  Each of these stories express some of the ethos, to one degree or another, of our campaign.  And the overarching essence is that it is, for the most part, about local people rolling up their sleeves to make a difference locally.

I’ve picked a 75-mile radius to campaign in on nights and weekends in Northwest, Ohio.  [And we’re asking our supports to do the same in their areas.]  Last Saturday I stopped, first, at a Pilot Truck Stop about five miles down I-75 from us.  I passed on campaign cards to people from West Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma… and I approached a guy who turned out was from Canada, but he wished me luck anyway.  I smiled…  The people from West Virginia had a Sierra Club sticker on their car.  I, in turn, said I was “pro-environment” — which I am.  See our position paper on the environment…  I then headed to Gomer, Ohio (pop. not much).  At Uncle Al’s Pizza there, I talked with Cody Woods, who had recently graduated from Columbus Grove High School and was going in the Navy next month to serve on submarines.  He said a vet he works out with at a local gym discovered a tumor, but it seems it took him the longest time to get in to see a VA doctor.  Woods said he’d definitely like to see improvements in the VA around healthcare for vets.  I passed on a campaign flyer to Cody and said when I got to D.C. I’d work on that.  He smiled…  In Middle Point, Ohio (which is in no way close to the middle of the state), I dropped in unannounced on a volunteer firefighter meeting in the downtown station.  This turned into a town hall meeting of sorts, with the main topic being: guns.  Two of the firefighters were adamantly opposed to the government banning any sort of weapons — which, they said, would be a “slippery slope” in then banning more, and more… types of guns.  Because we saw the gun violence up-close-and-personal in a rough neighborhood in Cleveland for five years, I’m in a different camp.  While I back the Second Amendment, I believe (as does President Obama) that there should be more “common sense” gun laws to cut down considerably on shootings in America (we have an astronomical 100,000 a year now).  For more, see our position paper on guns.  After the conversation with the firefighters, I passed on some campaign cards and asked them to tell others about the campaign — since we’d decided to use word of mouth instead of millions of dollars in TV advertising.  Call it a hunch.  They smiled.