Third Party?

Washington warned us about political parties (they drove him out of politics) and he warned us about foreign alliances. I heard on the radio today that the approval rating for Congress is at 11%. How can a nation survive the political power politics we now are struggling with? The leading Democratic front-runner has never been in control of anything. . . .no experience running a business, no having to sweat it out day in and day out to meet a payroll, pay the bills; no experience as governor, secretary of state, heck, township supervisor. We may elect a person whose experience is two terms in the Senate, I'm not sure that experience gives you the reality check necessary to run the country. Don't get me wrong, I don't see the other political party as having any great options. We need a flashier Ross Perot, I know, I know, third party candidates don't win but at least they can be honest. Remember Ross talking about that "sucking sound" if NAFTA passed? That sound of jobs leaving America, I may be wrong but it sure appears to me that our manufacturing jobs (the ones that paid a livable wage) have, for the most part, left.

We have the interstate manufacturing jobs, you know, the little companies all up and down the interstate leading into cities that used to be home to the big manufacturing companies that paid decent wages. Now we have multiple small manufacturing companies that pay smaller wages (except to the owners who build huge homes with their profits) and they send their products off to companies like Caterpillar who used to make them in house but now to satisfy stock-holders they farm out that work. I'm sorry for digressing. We need a third party candidate, honest, working class background, not a Democrat or Republican but the best of both. We can surely find someone in this country who is fiscally conservative but willing to help the poor, willing to protect our resources, willing to think outside the box to get more dollars to our ailing National Park system. I think we can balance fiscal responsibility and social responsibility but I don't think the top candidates in either party will lift a finger to change the current mess.

One final comment regarding education (see previous post). Illinois has two wonderful days of testing at the high school level. Day one is the ACT and day two is called work-keys (I think). Work keys is a wonderful example of the state dictating a test. My department co-chair, who shall remain nameless but who has two advanced degrees and is a National Board Certified Teacher, and I took the sample level 4 (out of 7) reading test. The sample consisted of reading a memorandum from some business (remember work keys are about real life working environment examples and we have a lot of morons running businesses who can't write a clear paragraph so we have to train our students to read random moronic paragraphs so they can work for these moronic companies that can't communicate in clear, simple English) and then answering ONE question about the reading. My co-chair read the paragraph, the answer to the question was clear except for one problem . . . the correct answer was not one of the choices! I independently took the same practice test, same situation, the answer was clear but it isn't a choice. Not allowing ourselves to give up we took the sample to the chair of the English department and asked for their opinion. Easy to read paragraph, the answer jumped right out at them (same as it did to us) BUT the answer that three teachers (dept. chairs with nearly 50 years of combined teaching experience, graduate degrees from Illinois State and Bradley University) selected as CLEARLY being correct was not even an option. The other wonderful thing about the work keys practice booklet is that the state of Illinois did not give us the correct answer with an explanation so we might understand where our error in logic appeared. It's time for change at the state level as well.