Friday, June 27, 2008

The Karate Kid


My oldest son, Austin is in Karate Camp this summer. He's actually getting pretty good at it. He's learning a lot. For example, just yesterday he learned that if you karate kick a metal chair it will hurt your foot. He has also learned that if he kicks his brother, his brother kicks back. Austin has quite a ways to go before he becomes a black belt, but at least right now he's hanging in there. And next month the two of us are doing a magic show for the kids at Karate Camp. That will be fun.
he looks pretty cool in his karate outfit. In fact he hasn't taken it off in four days. He sleeps in it. It was white. It's the color of dirt now.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Town Meeting


I went to my first town meeting tonight since the topic of discussion was the school budget. It seems that the commissioners want to cut the budget by about half and they want to raise taxes.


Since about half of my hometown is out of work because one industry (the biggest employer in town) went bankrupt trying to keep up with foreign prices and the other industry, a textile mill moved overseas (thank you government), and gas is now $4.00 a gallon, we don't need a tax increase.


And why are they cutting the school budget. Every one of the commissioners' big thing when they were running for office was, "I'm going to push for better education. I going to fight for better funding for teachers and schools." Now I clearly see that was just a bunch of crap to get them elected. And two of the commissioners I voted for just for that reason.


Our children are our greatest resource and they have no say in this. We can either keep spending more and more and more on law enforcement or spend more on education so our children won't grow up and become criminals.


I've already lost faith in our national government thanks to Bush and Cheney and I've lost faith in our state government here in NC thanks to Jim Black and now I'm losing faith in our local government. Every one of the commissioners tonight sat up there like they could care less what we thought. Their minds are made up. They're in office and they don't care what we think. And I think that none of them will be elected next term.


I have two children in school and I want them to get the best education possible. The U.S. isn't number one in education, Finland is. The U.S. isn't even in the top ten. I think that's reason enough to get the government out of our schools.


Where does it stop. what do we as citizens have to do to claim our government back?