The national debt is now $13.7 trillion. The interest on it is approximately $387 billion, a day. The package that was just tentatively approved in D.C. will cost about $900 billion more over the next two years — to be financed entirely by adding to the national debt, according to a New York Times article. Ok, I mean it wouldn’t take a Ph.d from MIT to figure out that, oh, we might want to subtract from the national debt at this point. On a campaign stop in Delphos, Ohio, I told the Delphos News it is our belief that we should have “someone in D.C. with a calculator that works.” Given this latest development, prior to even using the calculator, it might be good to have someone in D.C.: who understands the difference between subtraction and addition. Note: The $387 billion in interest each day means our urban war zones are being tremendously shorted help; our environmental programs (to reverse imminent threats like global warming) are being tremendously shorted; people starving to death, dying of malaria, etc., in the developing countries are being tremendously shorted… We, most of us, should be tightening our belts and paying this national debt off as quickly as possible.
‘Tao of Traffic’
The Oct. 23 edition of Science Magazine noted that Germany is experimenting with a new type of traffic light system. Sensors are placed in approaches to traffic lights (from both sides). The light then responds, not automatically like they normally do, but rather to the incoming and outgoing traffic flows. In a test of the system in Dresden, it was estimated waiting in traffic was reduced by 9%. Just the next phase in keeping traffic going, and going… faster, and faster… Meanwhile, in America 33,000 people were killed on the roads last year. (That’s like half an airliner going down, every day.) And even more people are maimed each year on the road. For instance, I was talking to a man in Atlanta recently whose son was paralyzed for life from a car accident on a highway in New Mexico… Common sense would say, instead of continuing to speed things up out there on the roads, maybe we should be (Are you ready for this?) slowing things down. In the middle part of last century, the speed limit on the highways was 40 mph. The speed limit in the residential areas was 25 mph. At those speeds, a whole lot less people were getting killed, and a whole lot less people were being maimed. Call me “retro,” but wouldn’t we be much better off with a slower ‘Tao of Traffic’? Note: I just heard a country song about the “old days.” A time when if someone said they were “down with that,” it meant they had the flu.
Could we be sacrificing way more?
We’ve stopped at the Open Door Community in Atlanta. This is a Catholic Worker House that does outreach to the homeless. Liz and I will be on staff here for several months, while also looking at urban poverty issues and interviewing a wide variety of people who come here from all over the nation to volunteer… One of my first discussions here was with Brian Schaap, 24, who came from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to volunteer for a couple weeks. Several years ago, Mr. Schaap had volunteered for a year in Tanzania through the Mennonite Church’s SALT (Serving And Learning Together) Program. He helped set up a community garden at a church there. He said the poverty was staggering. What’s more, he said there was a particular tension there in regard to teaching small scale sustainable agriculture vs. importing large scale agricultural impliments which could, in the long run, push many small subsistence farmers off their land as corporate farms start to take over — as has happened in the U.S. Note: Mr. Schaap said experiencing Third World poverty first-hand tremendously impacted him and got him to question, much more, American lifestyles (including his own) by comparison. One of the things he began questioning is: Could we be sacrificing way more to help those in dire straights worldwide? It is a question our campaign poses regularly.
the guy with the orange hair
After Belmont Abbey College, we headed out of North Carolina, through the northwest tip of South Carolina and crossed the border into Georgia at Lavonia (pop. 1,845). And all (well, most ) of the 1,845 residents were on the downtown streets for a town Halloween celebration. And if there was ever a time for some average Joe campaigning, it would be now. So while the kids played some basketball at a local park, I walked up town — amidst witches and goblins — dressed in my costume. I was dressed as (You guessed it.) a: presidential candidate. Original, huh. I eventually stood on a heavily foot trafficked corner and passed out campaign cards. (I probably would have done better passing out Tootsie Rolls.) After a time, I walked about a bit continuing to pass out cards. It was then I came across a full grown man with bright orange hair standing straight up, a rubbery kind of ghoulish-looking mask and some clothes with odd looking patches. I gave him a card and said I was looking for a vice-presidential candidate. He said he’d think about it. I then turned and came face to face with a woman wearing a t-shirt that read: “Yet despite the look on my face, you’re still talking!” And from the actual look on her face, I could tell the t-shirt wasn’t part of a costume. Note: After Lavonia, we headed west into Atlanta traffic — which is often described anecdotally as a “stream of ants at an anthill.” And boy was it.
Got Monks?
We headed south through North Carolina on Rte. 77, stopping in Statesville, Mooresville, Huntersville and Charlotte. We then started to head southwest, stopping in Belmont, North Carolina. Belmont is the home of Belmont Abbey College. The kids and I walked about campus, finally stopping in “Holy Grounds Coffee Shop.” At a table of about eight students, I approached and said: “I know this is going to be coming, oh, a bit out of the blue, but I’m running for president as an independent candidate.” They let out variations of a collective: “Cool!” I passed out some campaign cards, then got some coffee. I mean, how many times are you going to get a chance to try some “holy grounds.” Note: There is also a rather big Abbey on the grounds of the college. A bumper sticker on a car in the parking lot read: “Got Monks?”
good old-fashion frugality
Still in Mt Airy, North Carolina (aka Mayberry ): The boys and I walked about downtown here looking at Andy Griffith Show memorabilia and passing out campaign cards. We came across three older women gathered around a park bench. I passed out some cards and one of the women, who was a retired school teacher, said rather tongue-in-cheek: “I know, when you get to D.C. you’re going to lower our taxes.” I responded: “Not exactly.” I said the current debt is almost $13 trillion dollars and I didn’t want our seven-year-old son inheriting it. I also said I just read that there are currently some 173 different types of tax breaks written into the tax code. And if a number of these were eliminated, we could actually balance the budget in a relatively short time. I then added that we were in “Mayberry.” And one of the attributes “Mayberry” represents is good-old- fashion frugality. So wouldn’t this frugality mean we should tighten our collective belts in America, do without some of these tax breaks, and (Are you ready for this?) actually pay the debt off. Note: I learned all three of these women were retired school teachers from Cumberland County, North Carolina. One of them, Leigh Furmage, was a science teacher who regularly spent her own money on lab equipment, and so on, to get things the school budget didn’t allow for.
America’s hometown
We finished our Virginia Commonwealth Tour and headed into North Carolina. First stop: “America’s hometown.” Or, well, that’s how it’s billed in Mount Airy, North Carolina. This is the small town where Andy Griffith grew up. This is the small town that inspired the Andy Griffith Show’s Mayberry. Now while for the most part, we’ve raised our children without television. We have, in recent years, allowed them to watch some episodes of the Andy Griffith Show, to their delight I might add. So the stop in ‘Mayberry’ was going to be a big thing for them. Funny, crossing into the town limits, I actually think the kids thought the town was going to be in black and white. (By the way, it isn’t. Which, ok I’ll admit it, was a little disappointing even for me.) Our first stop was Opie’s Candy Shop downtown. We got a half pound of mix and match chocolates for three bucks. As with the black and white thing, you also always want Opie to remain, well, Opie. But time inevitably marches on and Opie aka Ron Howard was recently featured on the cover of an AARP Magazine. If that doesn’t burst your nostalgic bubble… Anyway, it was a nice afternoon and a lot of tourists slowly meandered about the downtown taking in ‘everything Mayberry.’ I said to the candy store owner that I couldn’t help but think a lot of these people would really like the country to go back to Mayberry. She agreed. “It’s just getting from here to there,” I mused. Note: I just read an article about how “medical marijuana” is catching on in a good number of states. What’s more, it’s questionable how much is really being prescribed for, say, pain; and how much of it is really being prescribed for: pleasure. Does anyone actually think medical marijuana would fly in Mayberry? that was an era when right from wrong seemed a lot more distinguishable. Can I get an amen! Or rather, can I get a shazaaam! (My spell check is telling me that’s a misspelling. But I’m pretty sure that’s how Gomer spelled it.)
…saves 40,000 gallons of water a year.
We headed further south through Virginia on I-81, stopping at the Radford Rest Area. I love rest areas. I must have passed out campaign cards to people from at least 10 different states. At one point in the campaigning, after several cups of coffee that morning, I had to, well, urinate. And that’s another thing that’s great about rest areas, there’s a readily available place to, well, urinate. Turns out, not only were urinals readily accessible here (that is, after several truck drivers got through), but these urinals were also rather unique. They were no-flush “Sloan System Urinals.” According to a sign above the urinal, which you inevitably have time to read because, I mean, you’re just standing there, one Sloan urinal saves 40,000 gallons of water a year. There apparently is a cartridge at the base of the urinal that collects uric acid from your urine. The remaining liquid, which is not corrosive, then just flows down a pipe. Whenever I urinate, I always feel better. But this all made me feel doubly better. (If my wife Liz knew I was writing the blog entry like this…) I recently gave a talk at Notre Dame University. During the talk, I noted that some one-sixth of the world’s people don’t have access to clean drinking water. What’s more, we’re increasingly polluting the fresh water we do have. But with much more of this new sustainable water technology, we could begin polluting way less, and saving money to boot. Money that could be funneled into Developing World clean water projects. Note: The late Pope John Paul II once said that economic justice is about considering the universal destination of the earth’s resources, especially in regard to the “common good for society’s weakest members.” Translated, those of us in the Developed World, must do everything we can to get clean water to our brothers and sisters who don’t have clean drinking water. And there are tangible steps we can take to do that.
Go Hokies!
Our Virginia Common Wealth Tour continues… We headed out of Verona and on to rural Buchanan, Virginia. We stopped at the Buchanan Quick Stop (that didn’t seem all that quick ). A slow country music song was playing in the background of the store and some older African Americans were milling about out front. I passed out some campaign cards to them and noticed a rather large store marquee over one of their shoulders. It was out by the road. It didn’t read 2 Liter Coke 99 cents, or 2 Gatorades for $3. It simply read: Go Hokies! They take their college football seriously here. And this is something else we should be taking seriously… Note: The Obama administration has called for millions of dollars in federally guaranteed loans to build a whole new generation of nuclear power plants here. According to Z Magazine, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted that 27 of the nation’s nuclear power plants have had radioactive tritium leaks. These leaks, like the one at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, can get into the groundwater, then rivers, then lakes, then us… Nuclear power has the potential to be: just too darn dangerous! I mean, would you want your kid drinking water with tritium in it? I don’t even think it’s too great that they’re drinking Coke, even at 99 cents for 2 liters.
Aren’t a lot of us ‘Zacchaeus’?
We launched our Common Wealth Tour through Virginia… We arrived at a city park in Woodstock (no relation to the Woodstock), Virginia, just before sunset. A local kids soccer team, “The Tigers,” was practicing. They let our Jonathan, 7, practice with them. The coaches couldn’t have been friendlier and Jonathan, while not Pele, held his own… The next morning a Jehovah’s Witness approached me in Woodstock and asked if I’d noticed the world was getting progressively darker. I said yep. (Wouldn’t take a moral theologian rocket scientist…) We talked for awhile about spiritual philosophies. It was a friendly exchange, and probably a first for me. That is, this Jehovah Witness was actually able to laugh a bit in regard to his religion. He told me Johnny Carson, after one of the major earthquakes in California, joked that Jehovah Witnesses probably fared the best in the quake. “Because they’re always standing in doorways.” …Before leaving Woodstock, I passed out some campaign cards to a group of guys talking in front of a Sunoco station, all dressed in camouflage outfits. And not one of them (Are you ready for this?) asked me my stance on gun control… We then headed south on Rte. 81 through the Shenandoah Valley. Fog shrouded the mountains, pierced at times by scattered rays of sunlight… Down the highway, we campaigned in Harrisburg, Staunton and Verona. In Verona, we spent the evening with the Maggie and John Nilo family, including their 10 children. Our kids paired up with some of their kids and had an absolutley great time (except for the BB gun incident). This evening, several other couples stopped by for a Bible study. The reading was about the story of Zacchaeus (the tax collector). The Bible study leader said tax collectors in those days were scorned, in part, because they were known to skim some of the tax money off the top for themselves. I enjoined that with 173 loop holes in our tax code in America, don’t many of us (who really don’t need the money) skim tax money off the top with these deductions? Money that could go to schools, social programs for the poor, to pay off the $12 trillion National Debt… It got somewhat quiet in the Bible study room for awhile. There goes a few votes. But isn’t it time a politician called a spade a spade?