{"id":1109,"date":"2010-10-31T02:18:52","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T02:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/voteforjoe.com\/wheresjoe\/?p=549"},"modified":"2010-10-31T02:18:52","modified_gmt":"2010-10-31T02:18:52","slug":"arent-a-lot-of-us-zacchaeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/?p=1109","title":{"rendered":"Aren’t a lot of us ‘Zacchaeus’?"},"content":{"rendered":"

We launched our Common Wealth Tour<\/em> \u00a0 through Virginia… \u00a0 \u00a0 We arrived at a city park in Woodstock (no relation to the<\/em> \u00a0 Woodstock), Virginia, just before sunset. \u00a0 A local kids soccer team, “The Tigers,” was practicing. \u00a0 They let our Jonathan, 7, practice with them. \u00a0 The coaches couldn’t have been friendlier and Jonathan, while not Pele, held his own… \u00a0 The next morning a Jehovah’s Witness approached me in Woodstock and asked if I’d noticed the world was getting progressively darker. \u00a0 I said yep. \u00a0 (Wouldn’t take a moral theologian rocket scientist…) \u00a0 We talked for awhile about spiritual philosophies. \u00a0 It was a friendly exchange, and probably a first for me. \u00a0 That is, this \u00a0Jehovah Witness \u00a0was actually able to laugh a bit in regard to his religion. \u00a0 He told me Johnny Carson, after \u00a0one of the \u00a0major earthquakes in California, joked that Jehovah Witnesses probably fared the best in the quake. \u00a0 “Because they’re always standing in doorways.” \u00a0 …Before leaving Woodstock, I passed out some campaign cards to a group of guys \u00a0talking in front of a Sunoco station, all dressed in camouflage outfits. \u00a0 And not one of them (Are you ready for this?) asked me my stance on gun control… \u00a0 \u00a0 We then headed south on Rte. 81 through the Shenandoah Valley. \u00a0 Fog shrouded the mountains, pierced at times by scattered rays of sunlight… \u00a0 Down the highway, we campaigned in Harrisburg, Staunton and Verona. \u00a0 In Verona, we spent the evening with the Maggie and John Nilo family, including their 10 children. \u00a0 Our kids paired up with \u00a0some of their kids \u00a0and had an absolutley \u00a0great time (except for the BB gun incident). \u00a0 This evening, several other couples stopped by for a Bible study. \u00a0 The reading was about the story of Zacchaeus (the tax collector). \u00a0 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. \u00a0 I \u00a0enjoined that \u00a0with 173 loop holes in our tax code in America, don’t many of us (who really <\/em>don’t need<\/em> the money) skim tax money off the top with these deductions? \u00a0 Money that could go to schools, social programs for the poor, to pay off the $12 trillion National Debt… \u00a0 It got somewhat quiet in the Bible study room for awhile. \u00a0 There goes a few votes. \u00a0 But isn’t it time a politician called a spade a spade?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We launched our Common Wealth Tour \u00a0 through Virginia… \u00a0 \u00a0 We arrived at a city park in Woodstock (no relation to the \u00a0 Woodstock), Virginia, just before sunset. \u00a0 A local kids soccer team, “The Tigers,” was practicing. \u00a0 …<\/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-1109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109","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=1109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voteforjoeblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}