Liz and I gave a campaign talk at the Open Door Community in Atlanta today. The Open Door is an outreach to the homeless. We said that as a family over the years, we have regularly taken homeless people into our home. And what’s more, we had moved into the urban core of Cleveland for the last five years. And when we’re not on the road, we work with a group of Catholic Workers who have rolled up their sleeves trying to make the neighborhood a better place. They’ve set up a drop-in center for the poor, established an urban farm, coach at the Rec Center, give out micro-gifts to neighbors… This is the real hope for our cities… I started the talk today with an excerpt from an AOL News article about our campaign. It notes that as president I’d open the Lincoln Bedroom to homeless veterans living on the streets of D.C. And I would. Note: We are readying for our next campaign tour and we are trying to raise campaign funds. (Has anyone seen the price of gas lately?) We will be leaving Atlanta April 1 and donations can be sent to: Schriner Presidential Campaign, c/o The Open Door Community, 910 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30306-4212
Health Care
We have been volunteering at the Open Door Community in urban Atlanta, Georgia, this winter. This is an outreach to the homeless on the streets of Atlanta. On Wednesday nights, there is a free Health Clinic staffed with a doctor and medical students from nearby Emory College. That night they will see on average about 15 people. The patients are people who are homeless and have no health care insurance. One of the volunteers here tonight prayed the day after the clinic was held that the country would evolve to such a state where: If a person had a medical need, it would be met. That simple. Our healthcare position paper reflects that philosophy. *Note: We are in the final stages of readying for a five-month campaign tour and we need donations for the next leg. You can make checks to: Schriner Presidential Election Committee, 910 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE, Atlanta, GA 30306-4212
Space: The Final Frontier?
We traveled to Reinhardt College in Waleska, Georgia, over the weekend to watch our daughter Sarah’s team win the State Finals for JV homeschooling basketball girls. After the game, I stopped in the college library where I read part of a book about various U.S. presidential decisions. I was particularly struck with President Kennedy’s “Sputnik moment” (which President Obama recently referred to in his State of the Union address). After the Russians were able to put a satellite in orbit, Kennedy’s campaign promise was he would ramp up the Space Program. President Eisenhower disagreed, believing the money would be put to much better use in the form of humanitarian aid. During his administration, he nixed giving more money to the Space Program. Some average Joe common sense: We’re going to places (Mars, the moon…) where we can’t breathe the air, there’s no water to speak of, no food… Wouldn’t the billions of dollars be better spent on getting food to the 24,000 people who starve to death every day on this planet? Note: President Obama has said we need to go into space in a “smarter” way. Given the dire needs we have, again on this planet, wouldn’t not going into space be ‘smarter’?
stuck on stupid
According to Gwynne Dyer, author of the book Climate Wars, for each year we don’t “come up with an adequate climate deal (Copenhagen Accords was a bust),” it is probably costing somewhere on the order of 50 million premature deaths between now and the end of the century. One of the more offending fossil fuels is: coal. So today I’m reading in Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine that while America is starting to steer away from coal a bit with more proposed nuclear power plants, more green energy sources, and so on… reciprocally, we’re tremendously increasing our export of coal to other countries — the biggest percent going to China. China is a country that’s pollution control is abysmal. This all begs the question(s) for America: Are we stuck on stupid? Do we think global warming is going to stop at our borders? Note: During Campaign 2008, our family did a 300-mile End Global Warming Bicycle Tour. While being interviewed by a newspaper in Wellington, Ohio, I posed this question: “What kind of parent would even consider risking leaving a planet of climate chaos to their children?”
an “American Revolution”?
Hosni Mubarak has stepped down and the “Arab Revolution” gathers steam across the region. The Egyptian protesters, as with the protesters in Tunisia, had grown weary of entrenched regimes that shared the wealth with upper levels of society, while a significant portion of the rest of society lived in poverty, and fear… Meanwhile across the sea in America, we primarily have two political Parties that have been entrenched for more than 100 years. These Parties are tremendously influenced by lobbyists employed by such interests as: banks, mortgage lenders, stock brokers, big retail companies… These lobbyists have tremendous influence in the crafting of legislation (by either Republican or Democrat representatives). In turn, this regularly generates big tax breaks, subsidies, and so on, for the wealthiest sectors of America. The end result is the top 20% of Americans own 84% of the wealth; while the bottom 20% of Americans own 0.1% of the wealth, according to Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine… So, in essence, what we have in America is a “corporate dictatorship” that pulls the strings of both Republicans and Democrats… Maybe it’s time for millions of protesters to show up on the Mall in D.C. for the “American Revolution.” Note: I’m just reading the book Run the Other Way by Bill Hillsman, who was a campaign consultant for such independent candidates as Jessie Ventura and Ralph Nader.
…sea of $35 trillion in debt
Despite all the complex financial hyperbole around the current recession, it’s actually fairly simple to understand at it’s roots… If you’ll allow me an ‘average Joe’ explanation: The U.S. is adrift in a sea of $35 trillion in debt, according to Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine. Many people are in debt because they bought more stuff than they could afford. A lot of this was lubricated by easy credit. (For instance, the average American household now runs on 12 credit cards.) How did all this domino? Because of being so over-extended now, people can’t afford to buy as much stuff anymore. Because they can’t afford to buy as much stuff anymore, businesses aren’t making as much profit anymore. Because businesses aren’t making as much profit anymore, a lot of people have been laid off. We now have a whopping 14.6 million Americans who are unemployed. Note: Over the weekend, I was in Roswell, Georgia. A banner downtown read: “No Government Bailout Here, Support Your Downtown Merchants”… One of those downtown stores is named: Outspokin’ Bicycle. Get it? Outspokin’. Took me a minute, too.
Common sense ‘Average JoeCare’
I was reading in a recent AARP Magazine that actor Dennis Quaid has gotten behind an initiative to work for less human error in hospitals across the country. The article alluded to the case of a nurse in a maternity ward who had been working some 18 hours straight when she mistakenly hooked up an IV bag to an expectant mother — with the wrong medicine. An emergency C-section saved the baby, but the mother died. This dedicated nurse was initially charged with manslaughter, but it was eventually reduced to a misdemeanor… The day I read the article, I found myself in a discussion with two Emory University medical students in Georgia. They said it is typical for these types of nurses, emergency room doctors, and so on, to work quite extended shifts. And while this provides more continuity of care for people being treated (as opposed to, say, a new doctor coming into the ER every eight hours), the down side is common sense says their efficiency levels drop concurrent to each extra hour they work. Common sense also says, well, you want your doctors and nurses as fresh as possible when they’re working on you. (I mean, I even like to get our vehicle to the mechanic as early as possible in the day for the same reason.) Under ‘Average JoeCare’ (ibid. ObamaCare), we would propose a limit on how many hours a doctor or nurse can work in a day — something like eight. For example, the Interstate Commerce Commission only allows long-distance, truck drivers to drive something like 10 hours in a day, and they have to keep logs to verify it. It only stands to reason that there would be less ‘human error’ in hospitals, and other medical settings, if the personnel weren’t overworked. Note: While working out in the weight room at the YMCA in Decatur, Georgia, yesterday, I noticed a man with a t-shirt that read: Waffle House: No grits. No glory.
“…isn’t going to ask me for my papers.”
We’re in Atlanta for the winter volunteering at the Open Door Community, an outreach to the homeless in the area. Recently our family was helping serve at a meal here for the people on the streets. One Hispanic man struck up a conversation with our daughter Sarah. He said he was undocumented and was having a tough time making a go of it as a day laborer. He was quite thankful for the meal and said to Sarah in broken English: “Well at least when I’m standing at the final judgment, I know God isn’t going to ask me for my papers.” …We have extensively traveled the country researching immigration issues, including a trip in Juarez, Mexico (which has turned into the ultimate flash point for violence in that country now). As a result of this research, we have crafted a quite in-depth position paper on Hispanic immigration. One replete with common sense, and compassion. Note: Yesterday I talked with a woman who works at the Center for Disease Control, which is headquartered in Atlanta. She works in a department devoted to “violent injuries” from, say, a terrorist bomb, a gun shot, an earthquake, a car accident… In regard to the latter, she said computerized cars are now being developed that can send data in the aftermath of a crash that is so specific (based on the velocity at impact, etc.) that, for instance, the EMT’s en route can get a good take on what to prepare for (brain trauma, broken bones, amputation…). I said our platform calls for heading some of this off by simply lowering the speed limits tremendously. I mean, if you’re going 40 mph on a highway versus 75 mph, it just stands to reason there’s going to be a lot less brain trauma, broken bones, amputation… Just common sense. Incidentally, about 33,000 people are killed (and hundreds of thousands are maimed) every year on America’s roads. That’s like half an airliner going down in this country, every day.
Joe’s State of the Union Address
Last year at this time, I gave a “State of the Union Address” at the University of Notre Dame just an hour, or so, before President Obama’s address. My talk that night is just as applicable to our country today. As you will view, it is short on political hyperbole and long on directness and common sense. The gist of the talk is that in the face of some tremendous dramatic problems (50 million abortions, global warming, world starvation, nuclear proliferation, inner city war zones…), much of the legislation coming out of D.C. — for quite some time — has been like “…rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” What my talk outlines is how to steer the boat away from the iceberg altogether, before it’s too late.
biophobia and boycott
I talked with Alan Jenkins who is involved with the Earth Covenant Ministry through his Presbyterian Church in Atlanta. (Earth Covenant focuses on trying to promote more environmental stewardship in the face of some tremendously bad environmental practices these days. For one, Earth Covenant exhorts people “…to use food, water, energy and other natural resources in a mindful way.”) To get people thinking this way, Jenkins said we have to expose them to more encounters with nature. To that end, he is taking a group of local youth on a canoeing and camping week soon. He noted that environmental author David Orr uses the term “biophobia” to describe a lot of the populace in America at this point. We interviewed Orr at Oberlin College in Ohio several years ago for our position paper on the environment. Orr notes that biophobia is basically a fear of ‘anything nature’ anymore. And how many respond to nature now, for the most part, is we ensconce ourselves in temperature controlled office space, temperature controlled homes, temperature controlled cars… Nature, in essence, has become the “enemy.” Note: Weighing in on China… Among other things, America is concerned about a trade imbalance with China and the perceived need for their currency to appreciate. We also pay at least lip service to their human rights record. In that vein, our administration would go beyond lip service and, for one, focus on the 130 million abortions in China in the past 30 years, many of them “forced.” Example: The World Magazine recently reported on Wujian, who become pregnant “…without the necessary birth permit” under the China One-Child Policy. The magazine reported: Wujian went into hiding, but was tracked down. She was then forced into a “grizzly hospital” with other women facing the same fate. She begged for her child’s life, as doctors pulled the baby apart with scissors. She caught a glimpse of the bloody foot of her nearly full-term child. “Through my tears, the picture of the bloody foot was engraved into my eyes and into my heart… and so clearly I could see the fine, small, bloody toes,” she lamented. “Immediately the baby was thrown into the trash can.” Note 2: In essence, America has allowed this type of horrific human rights abuse to be trumped by economic concerns. Our administration would ‘draw a line in the sand’ saying until this kind of thing (along with jailing and torturing of pro-democracy advocates, religious persecution, etc…) stopped in China — there would be a complete trade boycott with that nation. And yes, I realize the economic domino that might happen as a result. But sometimes, well, you’ve just got to do what’s right without all the complex geo-political rationale (read: rational lies).