I’ve had a couple conversations recently about politics with people more conservative than I am and all of the reasons given about why they supported John McCain had to do with fear of an Obama presidency. The amount of fear(most based on misinformation) should be a cause of concern, but that that fear is people’s primary reason for making a decision is very sad to me. There are many reasons to support a John McCain presidency. Maybe his ideology and worldview line up with yours more than Barack Obama’s do. Maybe you think we need someone with a lot of experience at this point. Maybe you think we need someone with a military background. Maybe you are a one issue voter and he is with you on that issue. Those are valid reasons. Fear is not. Fear is not a valid reason to make any decision. Luckily John McCain himself has spoken out about this a couple times recently. Senator McCain said “I want to be president of the United States and obviously I do not want Senator Obama to be, but I have to tell you — I have to tell you — he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States.” And I would hope we can all say the same about Senator McCain. There is no reason to be scared this election season. These are both decent men who we don’t need to be afraid of.
I suggest 2 good blog posts(first and second) that tell what the reaction to his speaking out has been. The first one also talks about the smear campaign John McCain endured in the South Carolina primary 8 years ago. Interesting read.
You’ve probably seen something on the news about the violence in Kenya since the election. If not then you should really follow a better news source(I suggest The Real News and/or CNN). This type of story is always more real when you have a personal connection to it. My friend Jake was over there doing photography work when all hell broke loose. To hear his story and see pictures head over and read his blog post about it. It’s a crazy and amazing story that includes getting attacked with a machete and being surrounded by an angry mob. I’m so relieved that he is home safe. Pray for peace in Kenya.
I’ve been quiet on here about politics. The reason is that I’ve gotten angry about national politics on here in the past and want to avoid that. My political opinions are a bit strange generally. I recently took one of those online surveys of issues that match you with your top candidates. My top three came up as Mike Huckabee, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. I don’t think you could handpick answers that get that top three. The problem I normally run into is that no candidate ever talks about the things that I care about. So I thought I would take a few minutes and tell you what I think would solve America’s problems. Brace yourself.
National Security: Get our hands out of everyone else’s business and become self-sufficient and sustainable. That will mean cutting our dependence on oil from the middle east(and elsewhere) and cheap crap from China(and other sweatshop countries). Once we aren’t meddling anymore than 95% of their reason for hating us goes away.
Health: It’s generally talked about as health care, but it’s much larger than that. Our current system is disease care. Fixing our insurance system will not fix our problems. We need to move our food subsidy money out of meat and dairy and into healthier grains and fruits/veggies. We also need to move it to smaller organic farms and away form large factory farms. That will correct this(ht: SVN):
It will also make it so that cheap food is much healthier. If a decent salad was on the dollar menu but an okay burger cost $5(like a decent salad does)… then this country would be a lot healthier. Also we need to be more active. How about moving a large chunk of the automobile subsidies to subsidize bicycles and bike roads and lanes. Make it safe and cheap to get and ride a bike instead of a car. Now we are getting exercise much more regularly.
Once Americans are getting healthier instead of sicker the health insurance and doctors/hospitals issues would start getting better. To make it even better I’d advocate a law that prohibits you from advertising a drug that requires a prescription. The doctor should be telling you if you need to get on a drug, not commercials on tv. Throw in a law setting a max limit on the dollar amount you can sue a doctor/hospital for and we are in very good shape. For the finishing touches I would suggest state-level and state-sponsored cooperative health insurance plans.
Economy: Obviously my above thoughts already greatly change our economy. It will hurt some industries and help others. I’m totally fine with that. There are plenty of industries that we should want to put out of business(predatory lending, things that destroy the environment and promote unhealthy lives, etc, etc). We should also shape policies to favor small business and entrepreneurial ventures instead of large corporations wherever possible. There is much more economic stability in a metro-region if it’s economy is not 95% dependent on a handful of large companies.
There you go… that would be my plan for fixing America. I know that for many people that doesn’t touch on “their issues”. Sorry, but get your own blog and write about them yourself.
Day 2 of the Charrette was also a pretty neat experience. There were 19 tables of people there to work on ideas for the city. After a recap of the night before we dug in and started brainstorming ideas with our group and drawing them on the maps we had. My group was an amazing mix of people. We had a bigtime developer(did The Jefferson, is doing Echo Harbor and lots of other projects), and architect, an urban planner, a historian(or two), a genealogist, a chaplain and myself. Needless to say I was quite a bit out of my league. I was amazed that most of them knew just about every single building in the city and people were pulling out stats on the number of cars per day on certain streets and average speeds. I liked most of their ideas and didn’t have a ton to offer besides them so I did some floating and got some photos and video.
After the design time each group presented their ideas to the whole group. My camera’s memory card filled up without me getting much from the presentations(need to get a real video camera) and I had to leave a little early anyways so I rolled out after a couple of them. Seems like it was a good experience all around. Here is the video I took from day 2:
I went to the kickoff of the city’s Downtown Master Plan charrette tonight. I biked over and got there a little early. I caught up with Jon Baliles for a little while when I first got there. I also got to sit with Ross and Justin during the meeting. Good peeps. There was a very good turnout, thanks in no small part to John Sarvay’s hard work publicizing it. He estimated 400 people showed up and I’d say that was about right. Great to see that kind of community involvement!
The city hired Dover, Kohl & Partners to be the consultant for this update of the plan. They were very impressive. Not only are they VT grads(go hokies!), but they seem to know their stuff. They did a nice presentation about new urbanism, focusing on walkable communities, non-car transportation, maximizing the river as public space, mixed use everything and other cool stuff like that. They had a lot to say about the good things in Richmond(James River, Monument Ave, some very good architecture and neighborhoods) and the bad(some “brutal” architecture, one way streets, large paved areas, etc)… they seemed to have gotten a pretty good grasp on the city so far. They have been out on the streets taking pictures and getting a feel for things and dealing with lots of maps.
There was a open mic time at the end where the public was able to voice their concerns and interests about the city. I was impressed with how progressive most of the ideas expressed were. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s interactive time and getting to work with others to come up with good ideas!
My biggest disappointment tonight was that Church Hill was outside of what was considered “downtown” and isn’t a direct part of the plan. I wish this lovely neighborhood up here could get some attention as a part of this. Seems to me to be more of a part of “downtown” than Manchester is, but whatever.
Here is the video I took and edited quickly of tonight’s meeting:
