{"id":1087,"date":"2010-10-23T02:41:14","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T02:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=545"},"modified":"2010-10-23T02:41:14","modified_gmt":"2010-10-23T02:41:14","slug":"stimulus-money-alternator-bolts-and-toast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"stimulus money, alternator bolts, and toast"},"content":{"rendered":"

We went over the Washington Bridge out of Long Island and headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike. \u00a0 At a Service Plaza, I passed on a campaign card to a man from Massachussetts. \u00a0 He said he would have liked to \u00a0see the general citizenry \u00a0in various areas voting for where the government stimulus money would go locally. \u00a0 Good idea… \u00a0 Some of it, for instance, \u00a0could have gone to our engine. \u00a0 Shortly after leaving the Service Plaza, a loud clanging noise started up in our 1978 camper. \u00a0 The bolt holding the alternator in place had shaken loose and was hitting the fan. \u00a0 With trucks rushing by at 75 mph, the camper \u00a0noticeably swaying \u00a0each time, etc., I found myself under the hood working \u00a0feverishly to get \u00a0the bolt back in place. \u00a0 I was able to fix it just enough (the threads were partially stripped) to get it to a garage in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where a guy named Tony actually welded the bolt in place, no charge. \u00a0 Just a: \u00a0 “Good luck on your mission.” …We then went to a YMCA in a rough section of Elizabeth. \u00a0 While the kids played basketball upstairs, I found myself in a no frills, basement free-weight room working out with a good number of Hispanics and Blacks. \u00a0 Some were tattoed with what looked like various gang insignias, and the like. \u00a0 I’m sure, just like in the inner city of Cleveland where we come from, that many down here are just trying to survive under extremely tough circumstances… \u00a0 The next morning we stopped in Westfield, New Jersey, where I stumped with a table of eight out on the sidewalk in front of Panera Bread on Broad Street. \u00a0 (They meet there every morning and are part of the town “brain trust.”) \u00a0 The banter was lively and we covered a number of issues. \u00a0 One man, lightening things up a bit, said his main “issue” was two slices of toast at Panera had recently been raised from 69 cents to 99 cents. \u00a0 Shortly after, this same man said he’d like the country to go to a much shorter work week, like just two four hour shifts — \u00a0every week, that’s all \u00a0 “I can see why you’re concerned about the price of the toast going up,” I smiled. \u00a0 Note:<\/strong> \u00a0 I just read that Charter Schools now make up 4% of the schools in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went over the Washington Bridge out of Long Island and headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike. \u00a0 At a Service Plaza, I passed on a campaign card to a man from Massachussetts. \u00a0 He said he would have …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}