A salute to the Military

Today is Memorial Day. I hugged my father good bye this morning as I left to return to Atlanta. He was so emotional about Memorial Day. His frail body shook as he cried about the people who served in the military and who have died or been injured as a result of their service. He asked me to remember them today.

When I was very young, Dad was in the Air Force and we were stationed in El Paso, Texas at Biggs Air Force Base. At that time Dad was part of a squadron of Tanker planes that refueled other planes in the air. I’m not sure about what happened, but one of the planes exploded and the entire crew was lost. As a child, I went with my mother to make condolence calls on the families of the crew members. The flags on the base were flown a half mast and there I felt as if the entire base had become a place of mourning. When the grieving family members weren’t present, there were hushed conversations and quiet remarks made by the wives expressing not only sorrow but relief that it wasn’t one of their husbands.

Growing up in a family where duty to country was honored, I have a great respect for the members of today’s military. They face a greater challenge than generations of military before them. They have to fight on foreign territory without knowing who the enemy is. They fight to stop oppression and build sustainable democracies. Most of all, they fight to protect us from attacks against our own country.

The members of the armed forces leave their families and risk their lives and their safety to eliminate the training grounds that breed terrorists.

I am thankful that they are willing to serve their countries, to risk their lives for me. I know that when a member of the armed forces falls in combat today, the hushed conversations among family members on our military bases are still filled with sorrow and at the same time relief that it wasn’t their husband or father who was killed or wounded.

Members of the military deserve to receive pay and benefits that keep their families off of food stamps. They deserve to go into combat situations with the best equipment and intelligence possible. Most of all they deserve our gratitude for doing a difficult job with honor and for the sacrifices they make on a daily basis.

In the name of Jesus

I have a strong belief in God and my spiritual life has played an important part of my adult life so I don’t want anyone to take this as making fun of religious belief. That is far from my intent.

I went over to someone’s house, years ago, and she asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. “Yeah, sure that would be good.” I answered. She went over to the coffee pot and pulled the basket out to put in a new filter and coffee. As she pulled the filter out, roaches ran everywhere. She raised her hand and said “In the name of Jesus, be gone. Roaches be gone!”

I am a believer, but I was shocked at her actions. I told her to get a can of bug spray and not to call on Jesus. To me this was something that she needed to handle and not something that needed to be turned over to the Almighty.

Why is it that we expect God to handle every thing? Common sense tells me that there are some things that I have to take care of myself. While I frequently pray about actions I am going to take, I cannot neglect to take care of the basics responsibilities of living.

As a country, we use the expression “In God We Trust” but I wonder if God can trust us to take care of things that need to be done. There are expectations that we will act with honor; that we will take care of things that are within our realm of responsibility.

I should not expect others to pay for my foolishness and I certainly don’t expect the government to step in and take care of me when there is a problem that I should be handling myself. The government, like the Almighty, should be called on to protect us when we can’t take care if ourselves. In both relationships, I have personal responsibility.

I cannot protect myself from industries that pollute the water and the air. The government has a role in protecting me in this instance. I like to know how many calories are in foods and what the ingredients are. Organizing disaster relief is a function of government, but why in the world do people expect the government to take care of everything?

People live in flood zones, but don’t have flood insurance. They expect the government to help them after a flood. People bought houses they couldn’t afford. With their knowledge, mortgage companies falsified applications so that those mortgages would be approved. When the economy went south, those same people expected the government to step in and help them. I could write a book about other examples but I’ll stop with these two.

We need to handle some things our self.

Dealing with mess

One of my best friends came to Atlanta today so that she could ride with me to see my parents in South Alabama over the Memorial Day weekend. My youngest son cleaned up the condo so that it would be clean when she got here.

He picked up everything and put it in my bedroom. The rest of the condo looks great, but I almost had a stroke when I saw my bedroom. Papers and files that I had sorted and was working with on the dining room table are lumped together and dumped in the floor. Dirty clothes are in a Rubbermaid tote next to the dresser. Boxes and bags of books that I had brought home from school, because I was afraid they would get misplaced over the summer, are in the middle of my bed.

As I lift things and sort through them, I expect to see a box of dirty dishes at any minute (I hope I’m wrong). It reminds me of when my daughter cleaned her bedroom before company. She put the lid down on the toilet in her bathroom and stuffed everything into the bathroom then locked and closed the door.

When my stepfather took his knife out and unlocked the door, piles of stuff fell out on him.

If you don’t do things right when you clean up a situation, you create a bigger mess or you just make a mess in another area. It is impossible to hide mess. You have to deal with it or it re-emerges in a different place.

There are several rules about dealing with a messy situation:

1. You can’t hide it. It eventually comes out.
2. The more you stir it up, the worse it becomes.
3. To eliminate it, you have to start with the root cause.
4. Sometimes you have to get rid of things.

Our government has become so dysfunctional that all we get from Washington is mess and messy situations. We have corruption, bribery, lobbyist and unethical behavior as the political norm. The media goes beyond reporting and they stir the situation to sensationalize the news (they don’t have to stir much, the news is pretty sensational without help). The root cause of the problem is embedded in a polarized Congress and a party system that chains members to party lines. Additionally, we have a system of political pressure groups and lobbyist who only look out for themselves. Sometimes as citizens, we need to use our power of the vote to clean house so that we can maintain a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The Cookie Jar

When my children were little they played the blame game. They would blame each other for whatever happened. One day one of them broke my cookie jar. It really didn’t matter who broke the cookie jar, the results were the same. All of the cookies, along with the shards and slivers of glass that had been the cookie jar, went into the trash can.

Living on a tight budget, I could not afford to buy more cookies until payday. I loved cookies as much as the children did. All of us suffered the consequences for one person’s actions. It did not matter if they intended to break the cookie jar or not. It was broken and the cookies were gone.

Listening to Transocean, BP, and Halliburton blame each other during the recent public hearings didn’t make me feel warm and cozy. They sounded like older versions of my children shifting the blame and saying “not me.”

Halliburton with its history of cheating the citizens of the United States with cost-plus contracts and with its corruption charges in the Nigerian oil industry is one of the usual suspects in contract corruption. It reminds me of my sneakiest child; the one who was usually at the bottom of the trouble. Add to this the information that government inspectors and employees of the agency charged with protecting environmental interest were dipping their hands into the pockets of the oil industry in exchange for not doing their jobs. My youngest son would charge the other two to keep his mouth shut.

Halliburton might be completely innocent of any wrongdoing. BP might be innocent. Transocean might be innocent. Wrongdoing should be determined by an investigative panel with knowledge of best practices in the oil field and not by speculation of the media and the public.

At this point, it doesn’t matter which of the children was responsible for the oil spill in the Gulf, we all have to pay; however, we should ultimately hold those responsible for the accident accountable. The time for childish blame games is over. This isn’t a cookie jar.

The kids will pay

Today is a furlough day. All teachers in my school system are taking today off without pay. Of course all days off are without pay unless it is one of our accumulated sick days. Teachers only get paid for the contracted days they work. In spite of popular opinion they do not get paid holidays. Teachers take reduced salaries through the months they work, so that they can receive equal paychecks during the calendar year.

President Obama and the economic officials are telling us that we are now in a state of economic recovery. It doesn’t feel like a recovery to me. It isn’t that teachers are being given furlough days that bothers me. It is much more than that. Besides the furlough days, the metro area school systems have been in the process of laying off teachers and support personnel, increasing the number of students in the classroom, reducing the music and art programs in schools, eliminating effective programs and closing small schools in an effort to make the budget work.

It is proven that children do better in smaller classes and that the arts enhance education.

Teachers will do what they have always done next year. They will go into the classroom and teach to the best of their ability with the resources they have available but in the long run children will still pay the price.

This situation is not something that is happening only in the metro Atlanta area. School systems across the nation are finding it more and more difficult to meet the needs of children in woefully underfunded educational systems. According to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, all powers not granted to the federal government nor denied to the states is reserved for the states. This includes education; however, the federal government has already stepped into the domain of education through several funding programs that could be relaxed a little in light of the current economic situation.

The federal government, in an effort to provide educational opportunity for the poor, provides funds for reading and math through Title I programs. The use of these federal funds are tightly regulated and closely audited. It is probably the only government program so tightly regulated. Since these are time of unparalleled difficulty as state tax bases and sales tax collections decline, it would be appropriate to liberalize some of the Title I spending to allow school districts to offset funding shortfalls from state and local funding sources. This should not be a permanent solution but could be used to temporary offset the loss of available funding.

Remember that the children we educate today will be drawing your blood at the hospital tomorrow, fixing your vehicles, and inventing the machines that might save your lives. They will be the artists, musicians, engineers, doctors, nurses, scientists, teachers and lawyers in our future. We cannot let them down.

Bubba can save America

I want to talk about Bubba. In the south, Bubba is an endearing nickname for the man who can fix almost anything. Today, more often than not, Bubba is a college graduate with a degree in Agri-science. Anyway, if something is broken, Bubba can fix it. He welds. He engineers and rigs equipment that he needs. He modifies what he buys to meet his specific needs. He is a natural born problem solver.

Look at those two southern gentlemen who proved that putting bahia and bermuda grass on the oil spill would absorb the oil. The hay absorbs the oil and can be scooped up like sea weed. While this solution only works for the surface oil slick and not the deep water oil plumes, it is only one example of the problem solving that occurs when there is a need.

My father is most certainly a “Bubba.” Until recent health issues occurred, if something broke, he would fix it. He is undoubtedly one of the smartest men I know. After a plane crash, instead of stopping work, he built machines that would help him continue to work. It was as easy for him to build an addition on the house and to engineer an elevator outside so that they would not have to climb the steps or carry groceries up the steps at their river house as it was for him to fix a car or airplane.

Inside the average American, Bubba’s spirit lurks. There is an unharnessed creativity and ingenuity that could change the future of this country. Somewhere, some Bubba has ideas about how we can solve the energy issue but because he is not from a doctoral program at some research laboratory, his ideas are not taken seriously. I would like to challenge every Bubba in the United States to work on their ideas and to put the oil companies out of business. This is a matter of national security and our future economic stability.

Responsibility and Entitlement

Today, I was listening to a CNN broadcast and they were interviewing a man who could afford his mortgage but he decided to return the house to the mortgage company because the house was no longer worth what he had paid for it. He said that he did not feel that the mortgage company had made any false claims. For him, it just made sense to default on the contract because he could rent the same house for $500.00 less than he was paying for his house.

When he was asked if he understood that it would make it harder for other people to get mortgage loans, he said that there was no difference between him defaulting on a contract because it was best for him and for banks to default on their obligations. Basically, if it okay for a business to dump a bad contract for financial reasons, then it was okay for him to do so.

I have made many trips up fool’s hill and I have learned the signs that I’m beginning to take the trip again. When I make a mistake, I own up to it and face the consequences. I cannot get out of personal debt without admitting that I have made mistakes and taking painful steps to correct them. I don’t expect an obligation to go away because I don’t want it any more.

There is great sense of entitlement developing in this country. What has not developed at an equal rate is a sense of responsibility. Every right comes with an equal responsibility. Peter Parker’s (Spiderman) grandfather told him that with great power comes great responsibility. We have great power as individuals in this country. We have the power of the vote and power of influence. We should use it wisely and we should also hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect businesses and government to be held to. We need to make sure that we are exercising personal responsibility. I understand that is not possible to legislate morality. We cannot force business or people to do things that they don’t want to do, but failing to do the honorable almost always results in taking a trip to the top of fool’s hill.

Response to President Calderone

I listened to parts of President Calderone’s speech to Congress yesterday. I admit I have to agree with him on some issues but I disagree with him on others. I don’t believe we need immigration reform. We need immigration enforcement and legal immigration procedures.

The United States has not always been a good neighbor to Mexico. We have a history of invading Mexico. Once we even invaded it to protect our oil interest in the country. Imagine that! There is an old saying that good fences make good neighbors.

This is my solution to the problem.

We build a 10 –15 foot wall, with electrified barbed wire at the top, across the whole border and place guard towers every ten miles as suggested by others. This would create jobs. I think we could probably build it for less than the billion dollars plus that we pay to Mexico to fight the drug traffic.

A secondary benefit to this plan is that the flow of weapons into Mexico from the United States would be greatly reduced. This would help Mexico.

Although, I am in favor of closing the border, I believe that the racial profiling that is going on in Arizona is unconstitutional. I understand Arizona’s frustration with the increasing flow of illegal aliens into their state and the drain on resources. Arizona would not have passed this law if the federal government was doing its job. The law is a cry for help and Washington needs to listen.

There are approximately 10,000 students from other countries living in Dekalb County Georgia and the economic burden of educating them is huge. I can only imagine what type of burden the illegal immigrants are placing on the schools and hospitals in Arizona where the issue is more severe. Many of the illegal immigrants have come to the United States to escape dire poverty and war in their home countries. Like many of our ancestors, they have come for a better life.

I have found that the children from foreign countries who are in the schools where I work are hard working. Generally they take school seriously and want to better themselves. I do not find fault with that. Each of us would do almost anything to make our lives better and we would do more to make our children’s lives better.

What I find fault with is the ease that people can just walk into this country. We have historically granted amnesty to illegal aliens. The next year we had more illegal aliens. It does no good to grant amnesty if we are going to continuously have to do it. Let us do it one more time. Close the border then grant amnesty to illegal aliens who meet certain criteria. The ones who have proven their willingness to assimilate, who contribute to society, pay taxes and obey the laws of the country. After that, deport everyone who is found to be here illegally. (Hint: Do not announce the plan for amnesty until after the wall is built!)

My daddy did it!

A few years ago, I kept my grandson for a week. We had bought marshmellows to roast when we went to spend the fourth of July at the River. When I woke up on the fourth, the bag of marshmellows had already been opened and some had been eaten. Knowing the answer before I asked the question, I asked, “Who opened the marshmellows we were going to take to the river?”

Logan didn’t even look up from the television when he told me that his daddy had eaten them. His daddy was almost eight hours away in Alabama. I thought it was funny that my cute little baby was so quick to come up with an answer. I wanted to share it with his daddy.

I walked over to the phone to dial my son's phone number. Talking to myself loud enough for Logan to hear, I said I was going to talk to his daddy about taking our marshmellows. Just as I finished dialing the number, my grandson had moved close to me and pulled on my shirt. “Nana, Nana. Daddy didn’t take the marshmellows, I did.”

On the verge of being caught in a lie, my grandson confessed because he thought he would get in trouble. Isn’t this frequently the case with our elected officials? They lie because they think it is acceptable and that no one will find out the truth. Initially they deny the charges, then they blame other people, and finally they apologize for their bad behavior to a public who doesn’t believe the apology is sincere. We understand that they are apologizing for getting caught not for committing the act.

Research with small children has proven that they are not able to understand that lying is wrong. Unlike children, adults do understand and they lie with deliberate and purposeful reasoning. They know their actions will have consequences. The simple truth is that many politicians do not respect their office and they do not respect the public they represent.

There is an old joke that you know a politician is lying because he is talking. When did it become acceptable for a person to lie. Candidates have had to drop out of political races or resign from office because they were caught doing something they shouldn’t do and then they lied about it. They have been caught in affairs and they lied. They have been caught with their hands in the state or federal cookie jar and they lied. They promised to represent us in office and they lied.

If they are caught doing something they shouldn’t be doing, they hire a spin doctor who twists the events. This is simply another way of lying.

I watched the old movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It makes me long to have someone in office who is honest, even if they are a little idealistic.

I have one lamp by which my feet are guided

Have you ever wondered what tomorrow would hold? I used to wish that I could see into the future. Now I’m glad I can’t.

To semi-quote and partially paraphrase Patrick Henry, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the” American Congress “to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves.” The members of congress pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves on taking care of us, the poor dumb average citizen. When protests have risen at the grass roots level, they have insulted the citizens as being uncivil and refused to listen to our petitions.

The lamp that is currently guiding my path tells me that the representatives and senators who have made a career of helping themselves at our expense have sold their souls to different lobby groups in order to maintain their base of power. We have gone to war to protect the oil interest and allowed them to pollute our environment instead of developing alternative fuels. We have given in to the banking industry and bailed them out after they performed in a fiscally irresponsible manner and jeopardized the financial security of our country. We offered bail outs to the automobile industry when they made poor business decisions and failed to recognize the need to manufacture vehicles with greater fuel efficiency.

The list goes on and on.

I will have a furlough day next Tuesday and next year I’ll have ten furlough days because of the economic situation. I didn’t create the economic mess, and I guarantee you that the government has not heard my concerns regarding it. I know that I’ll have less money, costs will go higher and elected officials will continue to fight each other rather than problem solve and find a solution to the problem.

I can’t see the future. The only light shining from my lamp is one of hope that we can replace elected officials with some who are reasonable and understand that they are in Washington to serve us and not political lobby groups.

You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em

I remember when Rowlf the Dog sang the song "You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em" with Kermit the Frog. They were singing about women. Today, I'm singing about health insurance companies. I am definitely waiting for something better to come along.

As a teacher, I have had increases in premiums and decreases in benefits. Every year it is worse. My children all had health issues and while raising them I spent a considerable portion of my income on health costs. I made enough money to provide for the needs of my family and to pay health costs but there was never enough to save. Many years I was tax free because of medical bills. Charles had brain tumors, Katherine had a very mild form of cerebral palsy

Last fall during open enrollment, I received a recommendation that I should change insurance plans with the same company based on what I have previously had as medical expenses. Today, I received a medical bill for a little over $1100 from a hospital for my portion of the deductible.

When the conservatives tell me we don't need a national health care plan, I think of my son who can't afford health insurance and I think back to the many times that I have had to fight with the insurance companies to pay claims for basic services. When you break a leg, they don't pay for the cast. They don't pay for this medicine, or that medicine that a doctor recommends. They don't pay for out of system doctors. If you go to an in-system hospital, the anesthesiologist, pathologist and radiologist might not be in-system and you can't choose them, because they are on staff at the hospital. It is a constant struggle to understand what insurance companies cover and what they don’t cover.

The conservatives also tell me that I don't want government bureaucrats making medical decisions for me.

The liberals tell me that I must pay for health insurance for everyone. As a member of the working class, I see my tax bill going up significantly to pay for everyone. I understand that when the government in our country gets involved, mess happens.

This is what I know. Bureaucrats are already making my medical decisions. Instead of government bureaucrats, they are insurance company representatives. I am already paying a considerable portion of my paycheck for health insurance and my employer is paying large insurance premium for me and my family. For full health coverage, I would gladly pay what I'm paying to insurance companies into a government health plan if it was well run.

Lawyers have encouraged law suits regarding medical malpractice and many insurance companies pay malpractice claims because it is cheaper to pay the claim than it is to defend the suit. The insurance company increases the doctor's premium, the doctor increases our medical bill, and our medical insurance companies choose how much they want to pay. It really sounds like the insurance industry is calling all of the shots for medical care and coverage. They make a fortune while the citizens pay the bills.

What we really need is to reform our insurance industry, create medical arbitration panels that decide if medical law suits have merit and we need to have understandable insurance policies.

In their rush to put a health care plan in place, the government acted without careful consideration of all of the parts of the health care plan. In fact many of the senators and congressmen only read summaries of the bill and not the bill itself. The legislation was passed with more emphasis placed on damaging the public opinion of the other party than on solving real health care issues. The sides were so polarized that it wasn't the content of the bill that was being voted on as much as it was the political party. Pelosi threatening to pass it whether the American people liked it or not and Republicans who negotiated to create the bill refused to vote for it. In the middle of the great debate the insurance lobby kept pressure on the members of Congress telling them how it would damage their industry. Frankly, I wouldn't mind damaging the insurance industry a little (okay, so I mean a lot)

How can a bill that is 2409 pages long be understandable to the general public? The number of lawyers needed to interpret it, and the legal fees spent trying to make sure that employers, businesses etc are in compliance with the bill will be passed on the consumers. The insurance companies will make more profit, the government hires more workers, and more lawyers will be needed to handle the issues. I'm sure that the costs of health care will once again go up and that the red tape and bureaucracy of a combined federal and insurance company effort will hurt the average working class American.

Right now we can't live without insurance, but we certainly don't want to live with what we have. We're waiting on something better to come along. That means we need to get to work.

Do I need it? Do I need it now?

I love jewelry. I love expensive and inexpensive jewelry. I love unusual and classic jewelry. It doesn’t make any difference. I drool over the jewelry counters and feel this enormous need to have what is on display.

Sometimes I justify the purchases. I can give the jewelry as gifts; I deserve the jewelry as a reward for something I’ve accomplished. I need the jewelry to go with an outfit. As my sister says, “accessorize, accessorize.”

There are problems with this type of addiction. My budget is one of them. I have had to learn to cope with the jewelry problem. I have learned to ask my self three important questions that one of my best friends told me about: Do I need it? Do I need it now? What do I have to do without or get rid of if I buy it?

The federal government needs to do a similar assessment of purchases. I understand that it is hard for me to do it and that on the government level it is more difficult. I admire Dr. Robert Gates for his attempt to do that when he told Congress last week that they needed to give him less money.

Pork barrel politics has required that the military buy equipment that they don’t need in order to keep jobs in their states. The federal money could be spent on other job projects instead of airplanes that are not needed. Federally funded contracts could be switched to other projects such as mass transit, infrastructure improvements, and communication innovations.

If Gates feels that there are too many generals, then some of them need to go. I know it is easy for an organization to get top heavy and become bloated with people that are not really needed. A careful assessment of needs must be done, a plan developed and then executed.

What I do not believe is acceptable for the military to do is reduce the salaries and benefits of the soldiers who are fighting on the front line. It hasn’t been long since, the families of soldiers were on food stamps. That is not acceptable. Something else that isn’t acceptable is for us to send our troops into combat with inferior equipment. These are cuts that should not be made.

My son in law is in Afghanistan and my nephew is in Iraq. My father is retired military. I grew up on Air Force bases. I believe in a strong military but not in a bloated military industrial complex. Gates is right about some of the areas that are bloated in the military budget, but he needs to be very careful where he applies the scalpel.

Why Me

Why do I feel that you should vote for me for President. Why me?

Just to let you know why I feel I am qualified for President.

Here is a list:

I am not a career politician. I've made my money the old fashion way. I work.

I am not in the pocket of any lobby.

I live in the same economic mire that the rest of the average citizens live in.

I am moderate. I believe in working in the middle.

My son says that I would not make a good politician because I do not like to hurt people. I believe this is a plus and not a minus. It would be nice to have someone in office who doesn't like to see people hurt.

I live from pay check to pay check just like the rest of Americans and understand the issues faced.

I believe we should protect our children and our elderly. The children are our future and the elderly have paved the way for us to have what we have.

I believe in securing the American borders.

I believe in a strong military and in making sure that we provide a living wage for those who serve our country. While I was against the invasion of Iraq, I believe it is necessary to finish the mission there and in Afghanistan.

I believe in providing quality medical care for veterans.

I believe in working for a living.

I believe that our government representatives should eat at the same table we eat at. They should recieve the same retirement and the same health plan that other government workers received.

I believe in investing in technological innovation. It results in jobs.

I believe that legislation should be understandable to the average person.

I believe our law makers should have to read the legislation they vote on.

I believe that riders should not be placed in legislation.

I believe in open debate of the issues and compromise.

I believe in free, public education and accountability, but not in high stakes testing.

I believe in alternative energy development and that dependence on oil needs to be eliminated.

I believe in living on a budget. When I've gotten myself into a financial mess, I've dug my way out.

I believe in a nationwide mass transit system.

I believe that people are tired of paying the bills for pleasures they can't afford and are tired of bailing out irresponsible big business.

I believe in the strength and goodness of the American people.

There are many other issues that I haven't addressed, but if you would like to know how I feel about any particular issue e-mail me at DeboraYoumans@bellsouth.net

I believe I need getting the word out. Please discuss me in your blogs, e-mails, facebooks, tweets. Also, watch for my upcoming website.

Can you hear me? Can you hear me now?

The commercial for the telephone company where the man walks around and asks "can you hear me now" is funny to me because when we call the very same company we get put on hold and have to navigate a menu for services. Invariably we wind up on hold and punching buttons as we listen to computers give us all choices except to speak with a customer service representative.

Have you ever just wanted to speak with a person regarding the problem? I have! I want a real person on the other end of the phone line caring about what I need. A friend of mine told me that a social security representative hung up on her today when she called to get generic information about how she could help her in-laws who don’t understand all of the social security issues. She didn’t want specific information, only guidance on what she needed to do to help her in-laws.

When our government employees no longer understand that they work for the people of the United States there is a problem. I don’t know about you, but I want to feel that the government hears me, that the employees of the government understand the issues that I am facing and that the representatives of the government are working for my interest.

When I write this blog, I wonder whether I am writing it to vent, or whether I really expect change to take place. I believe that change can occur and I want to see a government that is responsive to the needs of the majority of the people and not just a few on the extreme ends of the political spectrum. I don’t expect that I’ll ever be perfectly satisfied with everything the government does, but I do expect the government to be responsive to the will of the majority of the people. Does anyone else feel like I feel? Does the government hear me now? I don’t really know, but I believe that the American people can overcome great obstacles and will go through great struggles to keep a democratic society flourishing in times where they do not felt that they are heard by the representatives who are elected.

Wait til Dad gets home

My oldest son has always been different. He is a funny and loving person but from the time he could crawl, he was independent and wanted to do what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. Mule headedness runs in my family. There is a saying that you can always tell a Clark, you just can’t tell them much. This certainly held true for him when he was young. I am thankful that he has grown into a fine man.

When he was about ten, I told him he couldn’t do something and he looked at me and boldly said, “Wait til my father gets home. He’ll straighten you out.” At ten, he thought I was totally unreasonable. To him, I didn’t know anything and he was certain his father would back him up and set me straight. This situation did not develop without me allowing it to. For years I had given up my position of authority and had allowed the children’s father to handle everything. Since my son had been a baby, I had failed to assert myself as a figure of authority. I had no backbone.

That night when his father came home from work there was a great deal of straightening out done and I was one who did it. I had reached my limit. For the first time in years I demonstrated backbone and began asserting myself as an authority figure and as a person. It hasn’t always been an easy journey and I certainly wasn’t comfortable with it at first. Taking control and establishing your right as a person of authority requires that you exercise it regularly and that you become comfortable with it.

Like me, many citizens have sat back and let the government run the show. We have failed to exercise our authority and have allowed the government to take greater control of our lives. As voters we have not sought knowledge about the backgrounds of the people who run for government. Frequently, we vote for the party rather than the man or woman. We have become complacent with being party members instead of American citizens and independent thinkers. Many times when I was younger, I voted on someone without knowing anything about them and what they stood for. Sometimes, I didn’t vote at all.

It appears that the only requirements for someone to run for office is that they be approved by their party, be able to afford an advertising campaign and a publicist who can spin things. How hard headed are we that we want to continue to elect the same type of people and that we expect different results. We need to straighten things out in government, but not by electing different names with the same qualifications. It is time to do some research about the candidates show electoral backbone. Don’t expect someone else to straighten out the problems for us, it is our responsibility to elect better candidates.

Singing

When my youngest son was in fourth or fifth grade he was suspended from school for fighting. I took three days off work because I didn’t have anyone who could keep him. More importantly, I wanted to teach him a lesson he would remember.

It was December and he was old enough that he knew I was Santa Claus. I took his game boy away from him and cancelled all TV for him. I made him cut the grass with the push mower, took him to the church and had him vacuum and mop it and he cleaned the house. The whole time he was working, I walked behind him and sang “There goes Santa Claus, There goes Santa Clause right down suspension lane” to the tune of the Christmas song “Here comes Santa Claus.”

I’ve often joked about being a professional singer. People pay me not to sing. I have been kicked out of every choir I’ve joined. When I took voice in college, the stunned professors who listened to my voice jury debated and decided to give me a “D” on the condition that I would not take another music course. They told me that everyone has a talent, mine wasn’t in music, and that I should start looking for my talent.

After three days of working and listening to me sing, Charlie turned and looked at me with tears streaming down his face. “Mama, I promise not to get suspended again if you won’t sing to me anymore.”

I had made an impression on him. He had to follow civil behavior. He could not enter into brawls and call names just because he was mad and disagreed with someone.

When I listen to some political commentators, I feel like singing to them. They are mean to people who disagree with them. There is great effort placed on creating a sensational news story and generating anger little effort placed on conflict resolution. Through the use of radio and television, they create a public enemy of all opposition and use people’s fears to gain a power base.

I believe the American public deserves more and I also believe that we want more. Democracy is based on consensus building. We cannot always have what we want, but together we build something that we can all live with. The right keeps us from changing too fast, the left stirs our conscious. Going too far right or too far left is dangerous. It is in the middle that we create greatness.

BOM, BOD and BOC

Yesterday, I went to the laundromat and washed 15 loads of my son’s clothes. He had used the trunk of his old car as a storage bin for his clothes when he moved in with me temporarily last August. Those clothes got wet at some time during the storage. When his car died and we had to get rid of it, he emptied the trunk and brought all of those clothes into the condo. The smell of clothes was noticeable in the living room. Since my washer is still waiting for a timer, I took all of those clothes and washed them.

Today is Mother’s Day, but yesterday was too. I am a mother every day. As mothers, we clean up after our children because we love them and we can’t stand to live in mess. It weighs on our souls. When the children need money they call on BOM (Bank of Mom) or BOD (Bank of Dad). We fork over the cash, knowing that it probably won’t come back to us. We don’t loan anything that we can’t afford to make a gift of.

I don’t like to clean up after my children and to give them money but I do because my parents did the same for me. We give what we have to those we love. Love is a powerful motivator but even so, there are times when you have cut your children off and practice tough love. You need to say no sometimes.

The politicians who have been in charge of running this country, have not been doing a good job. They argue with each other rather than negotiate. They take mule headed positions and have “refused [their] assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” I have taken the quote from the Declaration of Independence and substituted “his assent” for “their assent.” Members of Congress have negotiated bills and then refused to vote on them because of their party affiliations.

Additionally, they have passed laws that have angered the majority of the American public. The use of BOC (Bank of Citizen) has been without the consent of the majority of the citizens of this country and without the loving kindness of BOM or BOD.

Congressmen and Senators are so heavily embedded with lobbyists that they do not see any problem with this. Vice President Joe Biden was nicknamed the Senator from MBNA, a large credit card bank that was bought by Bank of America, because of his close ties with that banking industry.

When the people we elect to office are in cahoots with the people who are taking advantage of us, it raises many questions of ethics and integrity. Members of both houses of Congress are out of touch with the reality of the average American and because of this we need to take the electoral vacuum and clean house in Washington. When we clean house, we must be equally careful of whom we elect to replace the current members or we will be back in the same position.

It is time to show tough love and vote not for a candidate because he or she is Democrat or Republican. Vote for people of integrity who are moderate and can understand the views of both the liberals and conservatives. We need to choose people whom we believe will represent our interests rather than their own, lobby groups or the interest of their party. If we do not place effective people in office who will negotiate for our best interest, the use of BOC will be out of control.

I would like to add a request that you forward this blog to everyone you know. It is important to build the reform movement.

Hope in times of trouble

Within the past three weeks my son’s car died, the washing machine died, my dryer would not dry the clothes, my internet has gone out twice and the air conditioners quit cooling. The repairman who came for the washer and dryer told me that the timer on the washer was out and that he would have to order another one and that the dryer wasn’t broken. The dryer vent, which goes into the wall of the condominium complex and goes upward to the roof, needed to be cleaned. I called a chimney sweep to clean the dryer vent out. $159.00 later the dryer worked.

When the air conditioner repairman came, he suggested that I might need to buy a new unit. I told him that I would just be hot. Then, he told me that he might be able to just replace the coils (I think that’s what he called them) for about $950.00. I told him to just add coolant in the unit and if it didn’t stay in, I would just be hot that I could not afford to replace the coils.

He followed my directions and put the coolant in the unit. For three days, I have been cool. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m thankful for everyday that I come home from work and it is cool.

I’ve been waiting for the past two weeks for the timer for the washing machine. When I spoke with the repairman today he told me that the machine was so old that it was hard to find the part. I guess I’ll be buying another washing machine sometime within the next few weeks if the repairman cannot find the part.

I refuse to use credit cards and I’m committed to using cash. Sometimes it is painful to face reality and handle problems that need to be handled. I will not take the easy way out and use credit to solve the problem. I know in my heart that this difficult time will pass and that my future will be better if I sacrifice now. This is hope. It keeps me going.

The United States in now in the same position. Everything is breaking down. There are dangerous bridges, deteriorating dams, aging power grids among a few of the problems. There are also reoccurring disasters requiring large infusions of cash. Flooding has devastated large sections of the U.S. within the past few years. Even here in Atlanta, areas that haven’t flooded before have flooded this year. I feel pain for the people in Tennessee who are now digging out from the disastrous flooding.

If the government cuts spending, it is always someone else’s program that we want to cut. Not the programs that benefit us. There is also a huge amount of fraud committed within government programs. We need to address the issues of fraud and require that government agencies do a better job of money stewardship.

Unfortunately, it is also time for the citizens of the U.S. to face the bleak reality that we cannot live on credit cards any longer. We will have to either pay higher taxes or accept fewer services from the government. We might need to fix some things instead of replacing them. It will be painful, but it is necessary that we admit the truth of our runaway spending or we shall surely face bankruptcy. Even in difficult times, the American people, knowing up front that sacrifice is required, will bear the burden because they know that ultimately things will be better. Hope remains. Hope is within US.

Two piglets in a croaker sack

When I tried on a pair of pants last night to see if I could wear them today, I looked over my shoulder to see how the back of them looked. Frankly, when I moved, my behind looked like two piglets in a croaker sack fighting to get out. The pants were too tight and were not flattering at all. For those of you who are not from the south a croaker sack is a burlap bag. When carrying piglets in one, the movement is significant.

I am a woman of substance. A friend told me that I didn’t have the slick smooth look of a politician. Thank goodness. I enjoy food and only exercise if someone is chasing me with a board. My body has definitely kept up with my character and both have grown over the years. Although I have developed some size in the last fifteen years, I wasn’t always this big. When I was young, I was thin and had firm muscles from dancing, swimming, walking and playing. I ate healthy foods as well.

When I went to school, children with weight problems were the exception. That isn’t true today. Go into any school and it is evident that even very young children have obesity issues. This bothers me. I feel strongly that we are neglecting our children.

A popular school lunch at the school where I work is chili cheese fries with a roll. It makes my arteries clog just thinking about it. I don’t even have to eat it to gain ten pounds. One student at a school I used to work at asked the curriculum director if they had a nugget machine in the back. The school served beef nuggets, chicken nuggets, and hot dog nuggets (ugh) with fries daily. Why do we think it is okay to feed our children junk food at school?

Recent studies have found that children in this new generation frequently have diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol problems as a result of their unhealthy diet and their lack of exercise. It is estimated that our children (or grandchildren in my case) will have shorter life spans than we do. This is sad and in a country where we produce plenty of food, I believe it is wrong to provide low quality school meals.

Our school nutrition program is far from nutritious. I want to know how we can morally continue to provide students with meals that have few vitamins, are high in fat and high in carbohydrates. When I ate in the cafeteria on a regular basis, I would gain at least ten pounds in a school year. We seriously need to revisit the school nutrition program nationwide and change the regulations that allow highly processed, low nutrition foods to be served. French fries with cheese sauce and chili and other meals like these must go.
There is an obligation on our part to prevent health issues where they are preventable. Providing healthy meals will prevent health issues that we will have to pay for through lost productivity, increased medical costs, and disability benefits as these children move into the adult world. We will also have to bury our children before we die if the research is true.

Monster Spray

When my daughter was about three years old, I had trouble putting her to bed every night. She would cry and beg to stay with me because “the monsters will get me.” She was afraid of “the monsters.” This isn’t uncommon for small children to have these fears. One night, in desperation, I asked her if she remembered when I had used bug spray to kill a bug. When she answered yes, I told her that I had bought some monster spray and it would kill the monsters. I went and got the can of Lysol out from under the kitchen cabinet and I sprayed under her bed, in her closet, and around her windows.

She went to sleep immediately with no problems. I sprayed her room every night for several years before she realized that it killed germs and not monsters.
Sometimes fears are irrational and it is okay to use an irrational solution, but today we are not facing an ungrounded irrational monster in our home. A reasonable parent locks the windows and doors at night, has a burglar alarm or a small Chihuahua to bark and alert them to noises outside. The more dangerous the neighborhood, the more extreme the measures people take to keep themselves and their families safe. Older people frequently have bars on the windows.

The incident with the car bomb in Times Square has once again reminded us that we have monsters living in our home. It isn’t just the extremist Muslim, it can also be an extremist Christian or any other extremist group. It can also be the Mexican drug cartel that has expanded into our country and created such violence in the Mexican border towns.

I commend the veteran who noticed the smoke in the SUV on Times Square and the police who immediately took action to evacuate the area and to prevent the car bomb from exploding. The slogan “if you see something, say something” really paid off in this instance. While the terrorist in this instant did not cross into the country illegally, recent news reports have shown that many people from countries that export terrorism have been caught trying to enter the country through Mexico. The border patrol cannot possibly stop all the people trying to enter the country illegally. The question I ask is how many terrorists have entered the United States with the help of the drug cartel who were not caught by the border patrol?

We live in a dangerous neighborhood and it is time to lock the windows and doors to our country. Monster spray is not enough and our national security is at stake. We need a burglar alarm to let us know when someone with dangerous intent is trying to come in to steal our sense of personal safety, peddle drugs and weapons, and commit murder.

The best dam project in US history

Last night I let you in on my belief that we should invest in technological development because it would create jobs. People who have jobs pay taxes. Look at the Tennessee Valley Authority. It built dams. Building dams created dam jobs. People with dam jobs had money to spend so they wired their houses and hooked them up to dam electricity. This employed electricians and power company linemen. The need for bucket trucks increased because you had to have them to run the lines. After the dam workers wired thier houses, they used their dam money to buy appliances to run on the dam electricity. Applicance manufacturers hired more people to meet the need. Those people, although not paid with dam money, paid taxes. (As a side note, all references to dam are to hydroelectric dams.)

Inventions and technology create jobs. Every dollar invested in technological development pays off in more jobs, different types of jobs, more taxes being collected from more people. When people lose their jobs, tax revenues go down. This has been happening in most states for the past few years. Georgia has had a steady decrease in tax revenues due to people not buying stuff and paying sales taxes and not having jobs to pay income taxes.

We have invested billions in building the infrastructure in other countries. The stimulus package was passed into law. I don't know about you, but I don't see the job creation that was suppose to have been generated. The unemployment rate is still high. One US company that manufacturers blades for the hugh windmills seen on wind farms has people laid off and the stimulus money is spent in China to buy Chinese equipment. This doesn't make sense. I have nothing against the Chinese, but I don't believe the intent of the stimulus money was to stimulate the Chinese economy.

We need to hold members of Congress accountable for reading the bills they pass into law. It is their job to protect our interest. We need to use government stimulus money to repair our decaying infrastructure and to increase our techological advantages. Without jobs here, we can't afford to buy any Chinese products or to pay off our Chinese debt. Without jobs, there is no tax collection.

during the

Oil spill, technology and energy policy

Before I begin, I need to apologize for the misspellings and misuse of words in last night’s blog. I typed it without proof-reading it and then I hit post. Since I am my own writer and I do not have a secretary to proof materials for me, I frequently make mistakes. I should have spelled campaign correctly, I should have used the word “threw” instead of “through and I should have said “more important than their” instead of “more important that their”….. “Should have” is a catch all phrase which seems to be part of the language of attack. I am human. I make mistakes so forgive me my errors in yesterday’s blog, the one’s I’ll make in today’s blog and the mistakes I make in future blogs. The typos are there but the message remains unchanged.

Speaking of “should have” we are thinking that there should have been a working cut off valve on the oil well in the Gulf. As a mother, I learned early to have multiple backup plans. Things never went as I expected them to. BP should have considered that same idea. We are now looking at an uncertain time of oil leakage, damage to the environment, losses to the shrimping and fishing business, loss of tourism to the Gulf Coast beaches and loss of income to the thousands of people who work on the Gulf Coast. With loss of tourism it is safe to say that many businesses will not need as many employees. Waiters and waitresses will not make as many tips. Stores will not sell as many goods.

The oil leak is the pebble hitting the pond. The rings of economic issues will grow steadily as the ripples of income loss spread through the Gulf economy. There is no way to effectively predict how bad it will be until the oil leak is plugged.

Today, on the way home from work, I listened to the news. BP is going to give money to shrimper’s for income lost as a result of the oil contamination on the Gulf of Mexico. This is really a great gesture to the shrimping industry. BP is demonstrating that it is a good corporate citizen.

I still have some questions about the oil spill and BP’s generosity. When Katrina hit and all of the refineries were shut down in order to do massive repairs, oil companies still had huge corporate profits because they raised the price of the gasoline they sold. We paid almost $4.00 per gallon in Atlanta. BP’s stock holders did not suffer because we pulled the money out of our pockets. I suspect that once again BP stock holders will not suffer. BP will pay money to the state governments, shrimpers and then pass those costs of doing business along to the people who buy gasoline. Gasoline here in Atlanta rose 5 cents a gallon over the weekend.

It doesn’t matter where the money for the clean up comes from, whether from BP or from the government, you can expect to pay for it. If BP picks up the cost of the clean-up, they simply pass the cost on the consumers. If the government pays for it, they borrow the money from China, and raise your taxes to pay the debt. Either way the American Public has just been handed the bill.

When John F. Kennedy started his race to the moon program in the early 1960s, the nation was facing a growing unemployment problem. Using the need to protect the nation against Soviet attacks, Kennedy’s plan created the largest technological boom in history. When we consider some of the products that grew from the space program the list is so long that it is mind boggling. Computer technology, computer games, laser medicine, communication technology, laser industrial tools, robotics are only a few of the areas that have benefited from the technological investment.

The space and flight simulators that the military developed have become the video games of today. In my lifetime, science fiction has become science reality. My eyes were operated on using laser technology. I use a cell phone with blue tooth technology. The computer on my desk is already out dated but it will do more than a computer that filled a room in the early 1970s. All of this from the technological investment this nation spent to put a man on the moon. Placing a man on the moon wasn’t as important at the development of the technology needed to do it.

Imagine what could happen if the government turned the same effort and financial support toward the energy issue that it turned toward placing a man on the moon. Energy is as serious a problem today as Sputnik was in the cold war. While we faced nuclear destruction then, we face life style destruction today if we cannot maintain a sustainable energy program. Few people in America could survive (or would want to survive) without the energy supplies we are currently using.

During the oil embargo in the early 1970s we realized that we could not continue to rely on other countries for oil. We are right back where we were then. We need an energy policy that supports the technological development of alternative and renewable energy supplies. Right now we are using some biofuels, some wind power, some solar power. The utility companies would do well to invest in the development of new energies. The government has a key role in developing alternative and affordable energy solutions. This investment would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and provide cleaner and safer energy sources for an environmentally endangered planet. It is something that we could pass on to our children with pride. We need to fix the problem while it is still fixable and before it becomes a critical situation. We had trouble getting gasoline in Atlanta after Katrina. If we’re not thoughtful and don’t develop a plan now, then we are placing country and our futures at risk.

I can see it now. Houses used to have windmills that pumped water. Could it be possible to go back to this and have the windmills generate power instead of pumping water? I don’t know. Maybe some of you would have some suggestions.

We can’t change the oil spill problem now. That horse is already out of the barn. What we can do is reduce our dependence on oil.

My first blog in my campaing for president

My name is Debora Youmans and I've decided to run for president of the United States during the next election. I'm starting now because I don't have any money for a campaign. Like many of my reader's I live from pay check to pay check. My greatest qualification is that I am not a politician. Although I recognize that I became one the moment I threw my hat, or should I say my scarf, into the ring, I am not a professional politician. I have not made it a career as many of those in our state capitals and in Washington, DC have done.

I'm a commoner, if I may use that word in the United States, and I have worked most of my adult life. In fact I'm still working.

I was born in Idaho and reared on Air Force bases all over the country. I love my country and I love the richness of life in the United States. I am not talking about the financial richness, but the diversity of culture and the spirit of can do that has been so much a part of our history as a nation.

When Thomas Paine wrote "The Crisis" he started with the phrase "These are the times that try men souls." These words have never been truer. Today, many Americans are feeling an overwhelming and growing frustration and anger with the American government. We are looking at a dysfunctional congress with members who failed to learn one of the primary lessons taught in kindergarten. They did not learn to play well with others. Congress is failing their primary role of making laws that are beneficial to the American people. They have made party politics and party loyalty more important than their constituents. They have passed bills that they have not personally read.

As the tea parties happen all over the country many of the politicians in office consider that it is simply a few hot headed rightist complaining.

I believe it is more than that. People like me feel that our government has left us behind and we feel that we do not have an effective voice. We can't afford lobbyist, we can't afford to run for office, and we struggle to survive financially in the society that we support with our taxes.

Many young people cannot find jobs. Young college graduates like my son are happy to find any job. Many of those jobs are in the service industry or are commissioned sales. Older Americans have to go back to work because their retirement investments have dwindled or disappeared.

My mother will be seventy-six on Mother's Day. She substitute teaches at a school to supplement her income.

What has happened to the America that was once a place of hope? We used to be neighbors. All of us. If you attacked one of us, you attacked all of us. Today's warfare is of a different nature. It has become one of vitriolic attacks against anyone who disagrees with a position. In our politically correct society I cannot disagree with President Obama on his political, economic or social positions without being called a racist. I am not a racist; I just disagree with some of his positions. I admire his perseverance and believe that some of his ideas have merit, but I do not agree with everything he believes.

If I disagree with the right, I am un-American. To be a "great American" I have to agree with every word that comes from the mouths of the self appointed guardians. I wish for a forum where there could be open dialogue and discussion of the issues. The American people deserve this.

I believe fully in the power of the American People and I believe they deserve better than they are currently getting. I don't know how many people are as disgusted as I am with what is going on in government, but it is time to vote out the people who are in office and search for people who will listen to the people.