Posts Tagged ‘charity’
Jenny just may be the smartest 13-year-old in America. In fact, I thought her analysis in comparing and contrasting the two presidential candidates was so brilliant, I was compelled to transcribe and share the full text of her video here as well, so you can share this webpage complete with video or you can just email the text. However you share it, please do pass along Jenny’s grading of the candidates with every undecided voter you know.
I need to talk to you about something very important. My name is Jenny, and I’m thirteen. My future, and the future of Tommy, Heather, Kelsey and all the other kids in my class is in your hands. Here in Mrs. Jackson’s class, each student gets to be the teacher for a day and today is my day and as the teacher, I decided I wanted to talk about the election on November 6.
In school, we track success by the grades that show up on our report cards, so I decided we should look at the report cards for President Obama and for Governor Mitt Romney, and since I’m not old enough to be a Democrat or a Republican, I’m just going to look at the facts.
For the president, let’s look at the war on terror. President Obama has been doing some good things to keep us safe, he got Osama bin Laden and he’s gotten many Al-Qaeda leaders using unmanned drones. But in the Middle East, there are lots of problems. The recent tragedy at the U.S. Consulate where the American ambassador and three other Americans were killed is horrible. Hopefully we’ll find out why they weren’t protected.
I’m not so sure about the president’s leading from behind strategy. How does that help us?
Now let’s look at Governor Romney. In 1984 he started Bain Capital. It’s a great American success story. They helped companies that I like, like Dominos Pizza, Dunkin Donuts and Staples. My parents buy from all three of them. They’ve created jobs, thousands of jobs, and sure, some companies didn’t do so well and laid off employees, but this is a free enterprise system and some companies do not make it.
Good companies that take care of their customers do well and the not-so-good companies go away. Competition is a good thing, it makes us all better. That’s why America is so successful compared to other countries.
Some people talk like profit is a bad thing, but it’s really a good thing that makes more jobs possible. My dad owned a company that went out of business when he was younger. He says he learned from his mistakes and now his company is doing really well with lots of employees. The marketplace is exciting and full of opportunities but there are risks and there’s no guarantee of success in any business. This is free enterprise at work.
Okay, what about the economy? It’s not looking too good. There are twenty-three million people unemployed today. That’s horrible. Business owners have too many new rules and regulations to follow. The president wants small business owners to pay more in taxes. My dad said there’d be more in demand and he’d hire more people if things weren’t so shaky.
Did you know that corporations are sitting on over $500 billion in cash? That’s “billion” with a “b”. If our president supported business, these companies would invest that money and create new jobs and lots of opportunity.
Let’s talk about the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games. In February 1999, Governor Romney was called in to be Mr. Fix-It when out of control spending threatened to sink the games. It was a mess, sort of like our government’s money problems. He brought much needed transparency and opened meetings to the public. He cut spending on just about everything – no more catered food for board meetings and instead, pizza at a dollar a slice.
The games were a great success. It was difficult yes, but Governor Romney has a track record for tackling very difficult problems and finding simple solutions.
And hey, he donated his $1.4 million salary to charity.
What about health care? In January 2009, Obama had control of the White House, the House and the Senate. We were in the worst economic crisis since the Depression. Instead of helping businesses create jobs, the president poured our country’s resources into creating Obamacare. In class, we call it the bill that nobody read. Does that make any sense?
The majority of the citizens said no, and the other party said no, and the doctors said no. Today, the bill that nobody read is becoming one of the largest tax increases in history.
How about being Governor of Massachusetts? After fixing the problem at the Salt Lake Games, Mitt Romney was elected governor. That was an accomplishment by itself, a Republican governor surrounded by Democrats? The legislature was 87% Democratic, but he worked with everyone there from 2003 – 2007. It was difficult, but he didn’t blame the previous governor. He focused on the future, he turned a budget deficit into a surplus and held the line on taxes. He didn’t knock it out of the park, but he did a good job.
Now on energy – in 2009, gas was $1.89 a gallon, now it’s around $3.83 a gallon and that’s a bummer, because I’ll be driving soon. Everyone agrees that energy independence would make us safer and improve the economy. President Obama stopped the Keystone Pipeline that would bring oil to the U.S. from Canada and make us less dependent on the Middle East and he stopped drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and gave tax dollars to other countries like Brazil to drill offshore. I need help understanding how this helps the U.S.
How about free enterprise? So if I can get an idea about how to help people, I can start a business, hire workers and play a part in the success of other people. The United States is about opportunity and personal responsibility.
Free enterprise is what created all the wealth in the United States. That’s why people from every country in the world dream of coming to America.
The president has made it hard for people to do business in America. Governor Romney is pro-business and pro-America.
Now, let’s look at the deficit and out-of-control spending in 2011. Government spent $3.6 trillion but only brought in $2.3 trillion, so we spent $1.3 trillion more than we brought in. Do that math. The president promised that he’d cut the deficit in half and he’s doubled it. Mr. President, that’s fibbing.
My dad says, if you want to get a difficult problem fixed, you’ve got to hire a guy with a proven track record of success. Mitt Romney has a proven track record of success.
So based on all of the facts, here are the report cards:
You decide who should be the next president of the United States. Your vote is very important and remember, the future of Tommy, Heather, Kelsey and all the other kids across America is in your hands.
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So you may have heard, Donald Trump just offered Barack Obama $5 million dollars to release his college transcripts and passport records.
We all know that Barack Obama is a big fan of charity, of course, not the kind of charity where it involves his own money (he only gave one-percent of his income to charity in 2011) but the kind of “charity” where he takes other people’s money and spends it.
Regardless of how Barack Obama defines charity however, what a wonderful gift Trump just handed Obama because by simply releasing his transcripts he can accomplish three things: one, help a worthy cause with a $5 million check, two, make Trump look like an ass by calling his bluff, and three, make up a bit for the miserly 1% of his income he donated to charity.
Granted, it was a day game, day games can never draw the attendance of a night game, in fact, from the owner’s standpoint, day games might be some sort of charity, a gift to the smaller number of people who can cut work or cut school to enjoy the sunshine and catch the game, because it really is the best way to see a ballgame, out in the warmth and the heat and the bright shining sun, so those ten or twelve dates on the calendar really do feel like the owners giving the fans a gift, knowing that there’s no way the attendance numbers are going to match the numbers of a night game . . .
So yeah, you get used to a day game and seeing quite a few empty seats, and I have been to quite a few daytime Dodger games and seen probably a hundred of them on television, but I have never, ever seen as many empty seats as I saw at the game yesterday. A shot from the first inning:
The Dodgers – this is the team that hit the three million mark in attendance for the first time in baseball history. Think about that, the first team in the history of baseball to have three million people show up on an 81 game schedule of home games. It was only after the Dodgers hit that mark six more times that one or two other teams that ended up joining them there (Cardinals, Yankees? I’m too lazy to google it) in years after that, but for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, almost like a marital contract, L.A. fans stuck with their Dodgers and they were showing up three million strong in good years and in bad, year after year.
Now it looks like a Florida Marlins game. First time I’ve ever been to a Dodgers game, and they didn’t even announce the attendance! It’s that bad! What was it? 20,000? 15,000? Holy crap, we are seriously encroaching on minor league attendance numbers! It’s one of the most dramatic turnarounds I’ve ever seen, a major league ball club turning itself into minor league attendance numbers.
So how did this happen? How do you explain it?
I can only attribute it to the year starting off with two asshole gangbangers beating a Giants fan into a coma, an act of such stupidity and assholishness that I can’t even begin to address it here, but that was maybe the worst thing we’ve ever seen at Dodger Stadium and then compound that with the McCourts divorce and how their finances have become such a disaster that Major League Baseball has decided that they must wrest control of the ball team from the owners themselves . . . and yet with all of that, somehow that still doesn’t explain it.
It’s hard to explain, it’s hard to fathom, but it’s so sad to see a team that used to draw three million doesn’t even announce the attendance any more.
Oh dear God, someone please resurrect my beloved Dodgers.
Road tripping it on a rainy Christmas day from The OC up to the Raiders game in Oakland, it seemed the perfect time to give a listen to Tim Curry’s reading of the Charles Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol”. After having watched a fair share of the dozen or more movie and TV adaptations over the years, I figured it would be nice to finally appreciate Dickens’ work, word for word, for the very first time.
Curry gave a brilliant read, and as the early morning fog transitioned seamlessly to an afternoon sky of grey brooding skies and then later, a slow, heavy rain, it made for the perfect driving weather to accompany this story of spirits from the grave and ghosts dragging chains.
In one of the first scenes before his other worldly visitations begin, the old miser Scrooge sends two away volunteers soliciting Christmas charity for the poor by asking them if there aren’t prisons and workhouses to accommodate all the indigents.
By the second of two visits from the three ghosts of Christmas, old Ebenezer has quite a change of heart towards the unfortunates of the world.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.
“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried Scrooge.
“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”
“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit, are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.”
“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge.
“Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?”
The boy is “Ignorance” and the girl is “Want”. The ignorance is not a slight against the child, but an indictment against all mankind for the number of children in our world who do not grow up with any chance of a meaningful education. The child of want is self-explanatory. They are both the children of all mankind. They are not just someone else’s children, they are all our children.
As we enjoy, what I imagine for most of the readers of this blog, to be a Christmas of privilege, I wish, in the words of Tiny Tim, “A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!”