This Election My Vote Matters

As I look forward to November and the upcoming elections I ask myself, does my vote really matter, does any one person’s vote matter? Can my vote affect the outcome? Why should I even bother to vote?

When I ponder these questions I think about all of the different ways a single vote is analyzed. Age, sex, race, religion, political affiliation, state of residence, education level, income level, and the list goes on and on. With all these factors being analyzed it would seem on the surface that one vote does matter. However for many politicians it seems your vote only matters if you are voting for them or support their agenda.

Look at some of the issues, and what Washington is doing, do you wonder if you vote does matter. A good example is the Health Care Reform issue. The majority of Americans did not want this bill to pass, yet Congress, in spite of public opinion passed the bill anyway.

I know, these thoughts and questions are sporadic and disconjointed. But many voters have a similar jumbled view of the entire American Electoral system. The system is complex, the money spent insane, the commercial adds negative, and the differences in the candidates skewed by false information. It is no wonder that few Americans feel an obligation to vote, and of those who do vote almost 40% believe their vote does not make a difference. And this generation is no different than those which have preceded this one.

Americans over the years have been hot and cold about voting. It seems to take an extreme issue to get voters out. In only three Presidential Elections have more than 80% of the voting age population actually cast their vote, and all of those elections occurred in the 1800’s. In the last 50 years there have only been three elections that have had better than 60% voter turnout. In 1996 Americans could not motivate 50% of voting age people to voice their opinion. Even when women earned the right to vote, the percentage voter participation plummeted. This year based on current Presidential Primary voter turnout, experts are projecting that voter turnout in November will only be around 52%. That is five percent lower voter turnout than four years ago.

With all the issues which Americans are concerned about, and an incumbent president with less than 47% of Americans approving of the job he is doing; how can so few voters be projected? There are a number of factors. First in Presidential Elections where there is an incumbent, the perception is that the current president will be elected. Only twice in our history has the incumbent president, running for re-election, not won. Second voter confidence in government will affect voter turnout. Our current president has low approval numbers and Congress has less than 30% approval rating. Voter perception is, “What will my vote matter? Washington will never change.” Another major factor which affects voter turnout is the economy. A strong economy will lull voters into a false sense of contentment. Voters become less worried with the political landscape when the economy is good. However when the economy is down then voters are more attentive to what Washington is doing. We are coming off of three years of economic rescission, and the first part of 2012 has seen some economic recovery. If the economy continues to improve, some voters could become complacent which could in turn favor President Obama. These factors and several others currently point to a low voter turnout in November.

There is one economic sector which could however cause voters to head to the polls. Gas prices! If gas prices continue to rise between now and the election; the economic recovery will falter, families will have less money to spend on groceries, clothes, vacations and getaways, and retailers will see sales plummet. Should this scenario play out, then the Republican Nominee would benefit from the angered voters who want a change, who want the economy to improve.

There are many important issues before America that are affected by the person who occupies the White House. The growing budget deficit, the future of Health Care Reform, the war in Afghanistan, the efforts to pass the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, are just a few of the issues Americans are concerned about. But not all Americans vote. The challenge is to motivate more people to get out and vote. To get people to vote they have to see and understand that their vote does count that it can have an effect in Washington.

Each person’s vote is important. Each vote has a message. Who you vote for says what your values are based on the usually similar values of the candidate. Likewise your vote represents where you stand on the issues, because you should be voting for the candidate whom you agree with the most. Even if your candidate looses, your vote still has a voice. In a close election, the winner will many times have to moderate their stance on certain issues because of a narrow victory. Your vote for the losing candidate caused the winner to change, to listen to the constituency. Your individual vote is powerful, but only if you cast it.

There are two sides to each of the issues before America and each presidential candidate has chosen a side. We must each choose the candidate whom we agree with most on the issues, and then we must go out and vote!

I was taught from a very young age that voting was a privilege not to be abused or ignored. And while I was in college I met a wonderful person who helped me see how truly special our right to vote is.

During the 1988 Presidential election season while taking a college course entitled ‘Campaigns and Elections’ I participated a presidential election poll. Every student had to randomly call 100 people in the county we were assigned in eastern North Carolina. I was given Bladen County, a rural farming area east of the college I attended. One evening while making calls I interviewed a Mrs. B. Oxendine. At the time Mrs. Oxendine had just celebrated her 81st birthday and she was glad to answer my questions. Somehow I sensed this call would be different. As I asked Mrs. Oxendine about the local and state races, she would tell me who she was voting for and why. When I got to the question of who she would vote for, for President I could hear the excitement in her voice, and I commented to her that she sounded as excited to vote as I had the first time I had been able to vote. Her answer shocked me. She said “Young man this is going to be my first time to vote.” She went on to explain that her husband had recently passed away and that he had always kept her from voting. The Oxendines were married very young and Mr. Oxendine was from the old school of only men should be allowed to vote. Also Mr. Oxendine on several occasions had told his wife that only single women could vote, and that married couples only got one vote and that was the husband’s job. Mrs. Oxendine knew that women had been given the right to vote, but she was also taught that the husband ruled the family. She wanted to have the freedom to vote. She never made an issue about voting until the Oxendine’s two children had grown and realized that their mother did not vote. With the encouragement of her children Mrs. Oxendine tried for several years to change her husband’s stance on women voting, but he would not budge. The children offered to help their mother vote without her husband knowing, but she would not sneak behind his back even though he was in the wrong. In the end she had submitted to his will and had not voted for over 60 years. Now that her husband had passed away she was ready to do her part in choosing our leaders. Her story has always helped me remember how precious our right to vote is.

In November I will vote in my eighth Presidential election, and I will vote. I will remember Mrs. Oxendine and all her lost years; I will remember all those issues that are important to me and my family. I will make my voice heard, even if in defeat. Because I know that if I fail to vote. If I remain silent, I will be ignored.

What Is An Education? – The Failure of Public and Private Schools - My Story

I have never claimed to be the smartest guy around, but if you asked many of my school teachers you would get a wide range of answers. Everything from “You will never be admitted to college”, to “He’s a great student, has a real love for history”, and “If you are going to pass this class you are going to have to read more each night”. Why the range of opinions, simple. I had a learning disability that affected my grades in some subjects more than others and some not at all. So sit back and enjoy my education story.

For Kindergarten, First, and Second grade I went to school in Bradenton Florida, about an hour south of Tampa, Florida. This was where I got off to a bad start. My kindergarten teacher was very nice, but taught very little. She never covered phonics, and never really looked at any of my hand writing papers. How do I know this? My mother kept all my school work to be used many years later to show all the warning signs that many teachers missed or ignored over the years, instead of looking for answers to my problems. So without a foundation in phonics, and ignored warning signs I got a very shaky start to school.

During the summer between Second grade and Third grades my family moved to Americus, Georgia, which in rural South Georgia. It was 1973 and Southern Georgia was still struggling with desegregation issues. Most white families had put their children in private schools, a fact my parents did not know. I spent Third grade in a class of 40 students, and being one of only two white students. Add to this the white teacher, who was against desegregation, trying to prove that blacks and whites could not learn together. The result was I learned nothing that year. The next year my parents enrolled my sister and me in a private Christian School where I repeated Third grade. I also spent Forth grade and Fifth grade at this private school. The teachers knew something was holding me back, but they blamed my problems on the Third grade public school teacher. Again no one was seeing countless warning signs of the problem.

Then my luck changed. My dad’s company transferred him to Bossier City, Louisiana, where we spent the next five and a half years. Bossier City is a military town and has an excellent public school system. Sixth grade through the middle of Eleventh grade were very good years. In those subjects where I struggled the teachers took the extra time I needed to help me catch up and pull my grades up to C+’s and B-‘s. Also in Ninth grade I entered the Air Force Jr. ROTC program at my high school, and gained two very important teachers and mentors. First was retired Coronel James Huggins the Senior Instructor of the ROTC program, the Second was retired Senior Master Sergeant Billy Yount. Both of these men looked past my academic problems and focused on the areas I excelled in. They both realized that grades were not the true measure of intelligence, and they opened so many doors for me to learn in unconventional ways. Both of these men encouraged me to pursue college, something no other teacher had ever done. For the first time in school I did not feel like a misfit.

But as is with all good things, they must come to an end. And in January 1984 my dad’s company once again transferred him to a new city. This time to Laurinburg, North Carolina, this is about an hour south of Fayetteville. At that time North Carolina was ranked 49th in education, and from my point of view Laurinburg had to be one of the worst in the state. None of the teachers were concerned with whether or not I learned anything. Once while having more trouble than usual with a certain subject, I asked the teacher for help and was told “If you haven’t learned this by now, then you will never be admitted to college, and if by some miracle do get accepted, you will flunk out the first semester”. Great encouragement don’t you think? In spite of this discouragement, I did graduate from high school, I did get accepted to a small State University, and that was when everything changed.

I was accepted to the Pembroke State University, and because of my low SAT scores had to go through the University’s College Opportunity Program. A program designed to give marginal students the chance to go to college and succeed. Pembroke had assembled some very talented and committed instructors for this program, and these instructors immediately picked up on my problem and began to identify my disability. My instructors asked if had any papers of my work in grade school, for which I produced the box of papers my mother had saved over the years, and the papers from twelfth grade that I had not yet thrown out. One instructor in particular was shocked at seeing all the warning signs that had been ignored over the years. You see I am not ADD or ADHD, I have Dyslexia. I have a form of the disability that only reverses certain letter and number combination. It gives me extreme headaches people that “I flunked spelling and I’m proud of it”, and then I explain why. For the next year my instructor (Mrs. Straital) worked with me three times a week to relearn Grammar, and learn how to overcome the Dyslexia.

Because of Pembroke and the College Opportunity Program, I finally received the help I needed to get an education, and I have never stopped learning.

Most of my teachers in school simply missed the signs of my problem, not because they did not care, but because of lack of training. Schools are so busy trying to make the different shaped student/pegs through the one curriculum/round hole that they cannot actually tell the difference between a peg that does not fit and one that is bent.

Yes there are two teaches which took many years to forgive their cruel remarks, but I have and I pray that they changed.

I have told this story so that you will understand that I truly understand the problems of our education system, and that I yearn to prevent others from going through what I went through. Education is knowledge, and without knowledge you cannot succeed.

Never stop learning.

Gerald

Education Reform Or Educator Reform, Which Does America Need?

In the coming weeks the President is going to be addressing Education and how the Federal Government can improve the quality of education your child or children receive. The President wants to throw more money at “No Child Left Behind”, and give more power to the local school systems. Is this what is needed? Will it work? Or should we be totally rethinking how we as a country approach education?

The answer starts with defining what an education is; with understanding the needs of the individual child, and should be the responsibility of the parent not the State or Federal Government. After all who knows your child best, who is most concerned about the development of your child; you of course. So you should have the most say in the education your child receives.

Yes, yes I hear all of you screaming about those parents who do not care about their child and his or hers education or welfare for that matter. But I maintain that my rights as a parent should not be infringed upon because of the shortcomings of a small minority of parents, those parents should be punished and you and I should be left to do our jobs as parents without government interference.

So, what is an education? Webster defines education as; the action or process of educating or of being educated. But what does that really mean? Simply put it is the time and effort taken by a person to learn a subject, set of subjects, or skills of a trade. It involves everything in life that you have to take time to watch, read, or be instructed in order to learn. Education is a lifelong process that one should never end until you breath your last breath.

What an education is not, is the “assembly line” production method of having students memorize facts and formulas to be reproduced for a test and then forgotten, which is used by all public schools and a few private schools today. We must see education as more than a one dimensional problem, as more than a one size fits all solution. We must look outside the box for answers; we must actually look at our past for unique answers. Starting with our Founding Father, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brother, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and many other successful men like them. Read about them and see how they were educated. You will be surprised by what you learn.

Over the next several weeks I will be addressing education from several different angles, giving you different things to think about, different options to consider, different answers you will not hear anywhere else. I will tell you my story of the public school system failing to recognize my education needs and challenges. I will talk about the many different education options available to you today without any Education Reform. And I will shock you with how simple and affordable true Education Reform can and should be.

I hope you will join me as I reveal the secrets to not just a good education, but a great one.

Gerald

China – The Consumer Nation

February marked the first time since China started exporting manufactured goods that China has experienced a trade deficit. China has crossed the threshold from being a producer nation to being a consumer nation, and there is no turning back.

The westernization of China is nearing completion. We, the United States, started in the late 1950’s taking advantage of the low worker wages in China, and we have continued for almost 60 years. But China has changed over the years. The people of China started liking and wanting the products they manufactured. They demanded higher wages to afford the niceties. Then Hong Kong was returned to China control, and the inhabitance of Hong Kong would not surrender their western freedoms. These western ideals spread to Beijing and other large cities. China now has an emerging middle class. The emergence of the middle class will cause wages to increase even more, to the point that most countries will find it no longer practical to import goods from China. Then the westernization of China will be complete. Then what country will the world exploit to get its goods produced cheaply? Who will be the next China?

The answer is not simple or safe. India is out, they are the World’s out source for customer service not manufacturing. South America is already well on its way to modernization. That leaves the poor countries of the Middle East, and the unstable countries of Central and Western Africa. However the Middle Eastern countries hold many problems with the restrictions on the products they will produce due to their religious beliefs. While the corrupt and unstable governments of the African nations hold many safety, and investment loss issues to deal with. In short there is no good option at present to replace China as the world export mecca.

Replacing China is not a pressing issue today in the headlines, but I assure you that thousands of companies producing products in China today are already hunting a new location for their product. These companies have read the signs of the coming need to relocate, and they do not want to be a product without a cheap country to exploit.


Gerald

The US Senate – The Fly In The Healthcare Ointment

The House has passed the Senate Healthcare Bill, and separately passed a package of amendments to the Bill to be sent to the Senate for approval. But what if the Senate decides to not consider these amendments? What if the GOP mounts a successful filibuster? THEN WHAT?

Months ago when the Senate passed its Bill, the Senate was unwilling to negotiate with the House in Conference Committee. Now there is nothing to stop the Senate from allowing their Bill to be signed into Law by the President, and then simply ignore the House Amendments. The House has passed the Senate Bill without any changes, and sent it to the President to be signed. This is the process the Constitution calls for. And the Senate would not be wrong if they ignored the House Amendments.

Why? You ask. Simple The Constitution states that both houses of Congress must pass an identical bill, which is then presented to the President to be signed. The House did not like the Senate Bill, the House wanted changes. What was supposed to happen is the House was supposed to Amend the Bill to reflect the changes the House wanted, and then send the Bill back to the Senate to be voted on for agreement, before sending the completed bill to the President. Of course this is not what happened. The system, which has worked for more than 200 years, was taking too long for the President and the Party in control of Congress to get what they wanted, so they decided to work outside the rules to get this Bill and a host of amendments passed separately; all in the name of the “good of the American people".

Now we have a Bill passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President with all these amendments waiting on the Senate to approve to make the House happy. The Senate for its part was already happy, and their Bill is now law. So what reason do they have for any further debate? NONE!

Or the Senate could take up the amendments from the House, and the Republicans block a vote by the full Senate. Then we would again be without the House amendments making the, now Law, complete.

If the Senate fails to pass the House Amendments, the scenarios are too numerous to consider.

No matter the outcome we as a country have ventured down a path that our forefather took such great care to help us avoid. The Constitutional questions this bill and amendments present our country, and our Judiciary, are mind boggling.

What Pandora’s Box have we opened, and can we ever get it closed again?

Call and tell Congress this cannot happen again; I have!

Gerald

Health Care Reform – Washington Not Addressing the Real Problem

For more than a year Congress has argued, fussed, accused, demanded, and spread general rhetoric over the Health Care debate, and has manages to not once actually address the real problems in our health care system which need to be fixed. One of those issues is the problem of hospitals and doctors over charging for their services, and I recently experienced this problem first hand.

Three weeks ago I had to take one of my employees to the emergency room of our local hospital to be examined after being injured on the job. The employee’s injuries were in no life threatening. We spent six hours at the hospital while the doctor ordered a series of ex-rays and MRIs to be performed. In the end my employee was told he has a sprained wrist, and a bad bruise on the back of his head. He returned to work the next day.

Last week I nearly fell out of my chair when I received the hospital bill of more than $11,800.00 and the doctor’s bill for $3,900.00. I was shocked to say the least. I knew the bills would not be cheap, but I never dreamed the bills would exceed $15,000.00. I was enraged by these bills. I wanted to scream at the hospital, and the doctor. There were no broken bones, no need of stitches, no over-night stay, this was out-n-out highway robbery, and I was going to let the hospital know what I thought of them.

After giving myself a couple of days to get over being angry so I could ensure that I could convey my message to the hospital without yelling I called and spoke with the hospital’s Patient Relations Supervisor. The supervisor was very patient, and listened to my objection to the outrageousness of the bill. Once I finished the supervisor informed me that since this was a Worker Comp. Injury and would be handled by my insurance company, the hospital was discounting the bill to the insurance company down to $2,600.00. On the one hand I was thrilled that the amount owed had been lowered, but on the other I was even madder than before. Just to make sure I heard the supervisor correctly, I asked. “So let me get this strait, because an insurance company is involved, the bill will only be $2,600.00, but if I did not have insurance the bill would be the $11,800?” The supervisor told me that I had heard correctly. I then spent the next ten minutes wasting my time explaining, to the hospital supervisor, all of the ways that their billing practices were simply wrong, and bordered on legalized theft. I have been told that I can expect a similar discount form the doctor, but I have not yet had this confirmed.

Let me break this issue down for you, and point out all of the ways the hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies work together to try and force you to buy health insurance, while lining their pockets with huge profits.

The hospitals like insurance companies because they insure the hospital will collect the majority of their funds quickly and will only have to worry about collecting a small portion form the patient. With this in mind the hospitals and doctors have conspired with the insurance companies to encourage you and I to purchase health insurance. The hospitals and doctors now inflate their bills for services by 500 to 600 percent, present the bill to you. If you have insurance, you’re insurance company, going along with the plan, then requests and receives a sizeable discount on your behalf bring the bill down to the actual amount that should have been billed in the first place. By doing this the insurance can show you the insured, that they are working hard for you and saving you money. However if you do not have insurance, then you are forced to pay, without discount, the highly inflated bill for the treatment you received. And if you are unable to pay the over inflated, undiscounted bill, then you have to file bankruptcy, and the hospital gets to legally write-off the overstated bill as a loss and deduct the loss on the hospital’s taxes. To further their cause the hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies all pay millions every year to lobbyist to lie and convince Congress that the problem is that not enough Americans have insurance. Congress being the lazy entity that it is, and has failed to fully investigate and analyze the problem. Therefore this and many other issues in the Health Care problem are not being addressed by the current Health Care Bill; nor have any of the amendments that have been offered, by either party, to the Bill.

Now Congress is so happy that the hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies all support the Health Care Reform Bill, and it is no wonder that they do. The insurance companies know that the Federal Government will have to have the insurance industry underwrite the Government’s Plan, and all three will be able to continue the operate their over inflated billing racket and have it legitimized by the Federal Government.

We must speak out my friends. We all must tell Congress that we will no longer put up with flimflam bills that do not address the core issues of a problem; that We the People demand to get our monies worth from their representation.

Speak out my friends, and be heard; do not let the rhetoric of Washington drown out your voice. To remain silent, is to say you don’t care what happens.


Gerald

Protect Your Homeschool Rights

On 3/10/09 the Georgia State Senate voted to approve SB 239 by a margin of 36 to 18 with 2 Senators not voting. SB 239 - Education; mandatory attendance; provisions; require new residents in a local school system to enroll a child within 30 days, is harmless at first glance. But as you read deeper you will find some very disturbing provisions.

First of all I must tell you that this is one the most poorly written pieces of legislation I have ever read. I cannot believe that a State Body actually voted on this grammatically butchered group of words. Many if the subsections ramble on line after line without having a coherent message to be found. I am ashamed to admit that my Senator actually voted for this bill. I will be telling him how upset I am at the next County Republican meeting.

The First Readers Summary reads like this is just putting into law that which should be common sense. The summary reads as follows:

A BILL to be entitled an Act to amend Part 1 of Article 16 of Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to school attendance in elementary and secondary education, so as to revise certain provisions relating to mandatory attendance; to require new residents in a local school system to enroll a child within 30 days; to provide for reporting violations of mandatory attendance requirements; to provide that a local school system official who fails to make certain reports is guilty of a misdemeanor; to provide that a person who fails to enroll a child is guilty of a misdemeanor; to provide for related matters; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.

Sounds pretty harmless right? Yes. But now let’s look a little deeper. First off the summary says that new residents will be required to enroll a child in school within 30 days of moving into the state. However, when you read the actual text of the bill (SB 239 Text) you will see that the bill does not set the number of days to register your child or children at 30 days, but rather a much shorter 10 days. Not a big deal you say? Read the fine print. Subsection (G – 2) says that any parent or guardian who does not enroll a child within the stipulated 10 days is subject to being imprisoned for up to 30 days. Big deal if you ask me.

Next the nuts and bolts of the Home School or Home Study Program is the Legislature’s attempt to invade your Home Classroom to ensure that you are teaching in a manner that they approve of. In Subsection (H) the bill states:

(h) Nothing in this Code section shall be construed to authorize the State Board of Education, local boards of education, or any officers thereof or appropriate enforcement agencies to impose any additional requirements on private schools or home study programs beyond that specifically included in subsection (a) of this Code section and in Code Section 20-2-690.

This sounds good, right? Well not when you read Subsection (C) which states:

(c) Local school superintendents in the case of private schools or home study programs and visiting teachers and attendance officers in the case of public schools shall have authority and it shall be their duty to file proceedings in court to enforce this subpart.

This Subsection specifically states that local school superintendents have the authority to file proceedings in court to ensure that private schools and home study programs are in compliance with the bill. How will they do this? The superintendents will send Special Teachers to visit you to observe your school day and the superintendents will send truancy officers to investigate your attendance records. And if the superintendents deem that you are not giving your child or children a proper education, they will bring you up on charges under the powers given them under this bill. Then you could face up to 30 days in jail while the state enrolls your child or children in public school.


I know this sounds like I am taking this bill to the extreme, but the Superintendent’s office in our county is very hostile towards home schooling, and she takes every opportunity to harass the families of our county. For her this bill would be a blank check to abridge the rights of the home schooling community in this county.

I urge you to take the time to contact your State Representative to urge him or her to vote against SB 239. On 3/26/09 the House Committee favorably reported on this bill. Unless we speak out and let them know how we feel; they will pass this harmful bill into law. To contact your representative Click Here. Tell the Georgia Legislature that you will not have your rights as a parent taken away. Also I suggest that you call the Governor’s office and ask him to Veto the bill if it is passed. Governor Perdue has supported Home Schooling in the past and we need to ask him to support us again by Vetoing this harmful bill.

Thank you my friends for standing up for your rights.

And remember, if you remain silent, you will be ignored.


Gerald