American Aspiration

I realize I've been dormant for a long time on this front.  Since last I wrote, Representative Scott Garrett is still representing the Fifth District, Gov. Chris Christie is still the governor, but Papa Joe was convicted on racketeering.  

I'm writing not because I've moved back into the Fifth district, but because I've published a small book on politics.  I missed writing about politics, and decided instead of a new blog I'd release my thoughts in book form.  American Aspiration: Where We Are and Ways to Get Where We Want to Be is now available in the Kindle Store, with additional formats coming soon.  A little sample of topics and the introduction is below.  Enjoy!

Here's the table of contents:

Introduction. 2

Part One:  Where We Stand. 4

• Facts to Keep in Mind
• Government Deficit & Spending
• Household Wealth and Debt
• Our Lack of Information

Part Two:  Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. 12

• Political Industrial Establishment
• Privatization of Essential Services & No Bid Contracts
• Congress & Our Lack of Participation

Part Three:  How We Begin to Make Things Better. 19

• Vote in the Next Election, and the Next, and the Next
• Get Informed in 10 minutes a Week
• Buy American like Your Job Depends on It
• Take a Breath and Think
• Start Talking To Each Other

Part Four:  Nice Things We Could Have. 30

• Infrastructure
• Vocational Training & Higher Education
• Honoring Those That Serve
• Stuff Others Already Have
• Where Do We Go Now?

Notes. 37

And the Introduction:

Introduction

This began innocently enough as my latest blog creation, and became this collection of short essays.  Like many, I see the direction the country has been moving as troublesome.  Politics has always been a bit of a love/hate relationship for me, I have always believed better things are possible when our system works the way it should, and have rarely seen that happen.  I was a Boys State Senator, ran my county’s Republican office, went to the New Hampshire primaries, ran for Congress as an Independent, wrote a blog visited by the press, as well as staffers in Congress and the White House, and attended President Obama’s Inauguration.  As one of my former Political Science professors noted, I like to get my hands dirty.  

Probably where I felt I had the most impact during my run for office was during my classroom chats.  You got the sense there was optimism and energy in students, despite the cynicism of some of the adults in the room.  Years later, through conversations around the lunch table at work, I realized optimism or even a basic understanding of government is lacking.  It’s not just the millennials, many of my peers and elders have been so overwhelmed by the 24/7 political sniping and institutional ineptitude that they’ve thrown up their hands. 

So, I sat down with the hope/intention of writing something that would make it easy to find the information to make decisions and (hopefully) have readers feel more comfortable participating in the system.  It honestly isn’t that hard if you know where to look, but as I wrote I realized some background and context would probably be helpful.  The idea of telling people to go to such and such a website blind didn’t feel right, so here we are.  The collection is broken into four parts:

• Where We Stand covers some interesting facts like how we’re spending money, the United States ranking 25^th in median income, and how little we know.
• Why We Can’t Have Nice Things reviews special interests, privatization and our lack of participation as it relates to our “leaders” in Washington, our states and school boards.
• How We Begin to Make Things Better dives into voting and becoming informed with an e-mail a week, as well as buying Made in the USA, digesting information and talking politics with others.
• Nice Things We Could Have goes over items many nations ranking higher already have, and asks about the things we could have that we don’t.

 My hope is that you’ll read this, talk about it, and gift it to friends and family on your way to a more involved citizenship.  If you’re already involved, I hope you will recommend or gift it to someone you know is not involved but would be receptive.  While I could have put it up as “just another” blog, the grand experiment is that the insights in this book are enough that it is gifted and paid forward to others. 

While I tried to make it approachable, some of it may seem technical.  I’ve been told by some it’s a quick read, and by others it’s very heavy, so I believe it’s probably just about right.  It’s not intended to be an overly scholarly piece, more of a conversation starter, but I do have lots of end notes for those who may wish to dig deeper.  If nothing else, my hope is that you benefit in some way from reading this.  

Moron for Kansas 1

I realize I haven't been writing much of late, but this was just too much to pass on. Somehow I got on the mailing list for Rob Wasinger, who is running for the House in Kansas's 1st Congressional District.

One of the things that started my running and writing about our Representative Scott Garrett was his blatant misrepresentation of facts a few years back. To his credit, he and his new staff seem to have dropped the habit of late. However, that doesn't mean others won't mislead voters in order to win favor.

Such seems to be the case with Mr. Wasinger. In a roughly 500 word diatribe against Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Wasinger drops a few gems ignoring a fundamental fact: The House Doesn't Vote on Judges.

Here's what I mean:

I am running for Congress because of our shared conservative values,especailly our belief in a judiciary that upholds the Constitution and does not legislate from the bench.

I've been in the Court battles. As the former chief-of-staff to Senator Brownback, a member of the Judiciary Committee, I've seen first-hand the growing power of the judiciary and know how to stop it.

And I pledge to you: I'll always put principle above politics.

It'd be nice if one of his principles wasn't to misinform voters in the process.

My personal favorite is this one:

Let's weaken Obama in 2010 by taking back Congress to ensure we have enough votes to block liberal appointments to the federal judiciary.

Not only does the House not vote on Judicial appointments, but Kansas 1 hasn't had a Democrat holding the seat since 1955.

This is exactly the sort of partisan misinformation campaign that really destroys our ability to move forward. Who knows, Wasinger could be the next Representative from Kansas 1. But at some point, we as a people have to stop electing people who blatantly misrepresent the truth.

And Republicans, should they ever want to gain national trust again, have to stop accepting this kind of behavior.

Must See Film: Election Day

PBS did the broadcast premier of Election Day, a documentary by Katy Chevigny. I originally saw the film as part of the Stranger Than Fiction series a while back, and it instantly became one of my favorite films of all time.

The film takes an amazing look at our electoral process by observing 11 different stories all shot on Election Day 2004. The good, the bad and the ugly are shown as they happen.

The film covers important aspects regarding registration, voting rights, and ballot verification. It also has very touching scenes, including those covering individuals voting for the first time.

PBS will be streaming the entire film on-line for the month of July, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. Anybody that wants to help organize a screening let me know.

I Voted Today

And so should you. I'll be mailing my unaffiliation form tomorrow, but I participated. It's super easy, and if you have a preference you should take the five minutes to make sure it's heard.

Congratulations to All the Winners

It was one of the uglier campaign seasons in recent memory, and some hard fought battles were won. My hope is, going forward, those of you with the calling of public service will also hear the call of the electorate asking for substance. I'll write more tomorrow.

Help A Voter Out!

Recently, candidates in both the 24th and 39th Legislative Districts had debates. In this modern age, I had hoped to find a video or audio of the debates on-line. However, it does not appear to be in the works, and it would be a great service to voters if it was.

The debate in the 24th was moderated by Fred Snowflack of the Daily Record, and was covered in the Daily Record and New Jersey Herald. Yet no audio seems to be available. As required by the Clean Elections campaign, there will be a second one on Oct. 25 at the Sussex Bank Theater at Sussex County Community College. Maybe somebody could plug an MP3 recorder in the sound board and throw it up on the site. Even a transcript would be nice to have.

Unfortunately, here in my 39th District it seems we have all missed the chance. The candidates debated the other night, with the Record and the League of Women Voters as the sponsors. From the Record's account, it seemed like a feisty affair but only those in attendance really will know. The Record didn't mention another date, so the boat may have sailed without us.

The more information voters have to go over the better informed and comfortable with their choices they'll be. Help a voter out.

Candidate Sites

I'm in the process of putting up the candidate sites for next year's race, as well as this year's races. If I'm missing a link, please send it to me.

Partisanship Incarnate

Part of the problem with Rep. Scott Garrett is that he sees everything in Republican party against Democratic party terms. In response to the President's State of the Union Address, Rep. Scott Garrett had the following to say:

"He did not pander to the Democrats and independents as some thought he would," said New Jersey Rep. Scott Garrett, a conservative Republican who told The Washington Times that his House colleagues expressed a similar assessment.

The blatant hypocrisy in his statement is the fact that in order to fend off Aronsohn painting him as "too conservative" for the district, Garrett's campaign ripped me off by claiming he was "An Independent Voice". This amused me then, but to see him magnanimously complimenting the President on not "pandering" to people like me or the vast majority of our district is particularly disingenuous.

If our District is to have a voice in Congress, Scott needs to get off his high partisan horse and get to work at crossing the aisle. The Republican majority, particularly the 109th Congress, did very little to actually help the majority of the people in our District. The majority of the tax breaks they passed, which are targeted at our District's income levels, are lost because of the AMT. Nothing was done about the rising cost of college tuition. On top of all of this, our annual return on the tax dollar went down every year he's been in office.

That was all while Scott was in the majority. Now that our "voice" in Congress is in the minority, his stands on issues, his highly partisan comments, and the rigidity of his partisan voting are going to cost us in a very real sense. The issues we face are not Republican or Democratic. Gas prices, health care shortfalls being picked up by the state (which raise property taxes), unfunded mandates for education (which raise property taxes), and the war in Iraq need solutions more than they need rhetoric. Personally, I don't care which party comes up with the way to actually fix the pinch most people feel, like most folks I just want it fixed.

For a guy who represents a District where Independents outnumber Republicans and Democrats combined, he might not want to discount what we want to hear. But more than what we want to hear, it is about the results that we want to see that he should be most concerned about. Sitting on his hands with a continued indifference to the Independents and Democrats will be what undoes him, simply because an awful lot of Republicans in our District already think beyond partisanship. The majority of the Republicans in our District fall into a results oriented, fiscally conservative and socially liberal category. It's this philosophy that is part of the reason Rudy Guilliani's social views (pro-choice, pro-moderate gun control, pro-gay rights), while repugnant to Scott, have Rudy leading the polls in New Jersey for the Republican nomination for President even though he hasn't declared he's running.

Scott better watch it with his rhetoric, or someone in the '08 primary or general is going to nail him with it, make it stick, and send him back to his "farm." There are a lot of Republicans in our District who are unhappy with Garrett, and statements like the one above coupled with continued ineffectiveness, will not help him if he faces a sensible moderate or commonsense conservative in the Republican the primary. And if he doesn't, and the Democrats put up something other than a sock puppet, they might find themselves winning the seat.

Certified Vote Count and Spending

So, the final totals appear to be in. There's a minor discrepancy between the State's numbers for Bergen and Bergen's numbers for Bergen. For the purposes of this blog I'll use the State's numbers. This is a rough chart of things, but you should get the idea.

Scott Garrett - 112,142 votes - $1,050,722 spent - $9.37 per vote
Paul Aronsohn - 89,503 votes - $535,448 spent - $5.98 per vote
Me - 2,597 votes - $1,879 spent* - $0.72 per vote

I'm very happy with the way things turned out and how efficient we were with our donors' dollars. Thanks again to everyone for their help.

*We didn't raise/spend enough to have to file with the FEC, which is why I don't have a page.