7 Reasons to Vote (and 1 Reason Not To)

Reasons to Vote:
1. It is not a right, it is a delicate privilege
2. It is the best way to protect your freedoms
3. It is the easiest way to speak your mind (Easier than protesting, petitioning, assembling, rioting, rallying, marching or striking. Not to mention, the two party duopoly is a myth that we continually chose to believe in, but that‘s a different blog, to come soon.)
4. You have twelve hours to vote on election day
5. You can register for your Voter Identification Card online
6. You can vote early and they accommodate deployed soldiers
7. You can vote absentee online, through the mail or through faxA Reason Not to Vote:
1. Your religious, political or philosophical beliefs find voting to be pointless, useless or detrimental.

Poem #3

Pain like lightening cracks the soul.
All the dismal memories
Resonate in your heart like thunder.
The storm rages in your mind.
You try to conquer the world.
Yourself.
You try to conquer love
And life,
Reason and thought,
Emotion.
You want to be the master,
And this, this is why the pain, like lightening, cracks your soul.
Because you try to control too much.
Not too much in the sense that your being obnoxious,
No,
It is just a simple truth,
Too much more than you can bear.
We are all given the death sentence of mortality,
All given the seismic burden of morality,
And like the little kid,
Trying to impress their parent,
We take on too much,
And when we cannot succeed,
As we’d like to,
We punish ourselves.
We come down on ourselves like the greatest mountain, crushing the weakest man.
And still, we do not deserve this,
We deserve better than this!
If we shall all be fated to die,
Than we all deserve happiness,
And should there be thunder in our lives, it should be the greatest thunder of laughter,
Chasing away all the self - conscious doubt.

Poem #2

My heart breaks,
It bleeds,
When I need you the most,
You walk away?
You challenge me,
And anger at my acceptance?
What I say isn’t perfect,
I don’t always say it right,
And it might make the boys at Oxford choke on their crumpets,
But I bleed my heart,
And drain my soul,
Out,
Onto paper,
For you…
And everyone else that has nothing to say to me.

Poem #1

I take my glasses off so I don’t have to see the pathetic world around me,
No use in them,
Even when I'm wearing them,
I still couldn’t tell you about the man in the mirror that I see,
He blinks and his eyes go from empty and void,
To angry and inconsolable.
Is he mad like me?
Angry like I am?
Does the same sorrow weigh heavy on his heart too?
Without my glasses on, I lean in to see him.
Bags under his eyes,
Anger in them, too.
He wants the world to see him,
But no one does,
Will,
Has to.
I’m blind to the world by physical imparity,
The world is blind to him by apathy.
There is no money in him,
Nor fame or fortune.
They choose to be blind to him,
Because he holds no material advantage.
He could kill himself in the silence of the night,
And the world would wake up in the morning to march toward hedonistic apathy.
I pull away from the mirror.
The man inside it knows what I know,
And the idea, the decision,
Weighs on his mind.
Tempts him.
I start to cry and turn from him.
I want to console him but I have no words,


What do you say to the suicidal man in the mirror?

Smart Shopping: Wal-Mart

You shouldn’t shop at Wal-Mart.

“Wait! Red flag!” You exclaim. “Wal-Mart offers the lowest prices and the highest selection! Why shouldn’t I shop there?”

            I hear this argument on a regular basis. To counter it, let us set up a scenario. Let us say your brother, John, works in a manufacturing plant making televisions. The company that owns this plant makes, let us say, 20 – 30% of its profits from selling to Wal-Mart. So, when Wal-Mart comes to the owners of this plant and tell them that they have to cut the costs of their televisions or lose Wal-Mart, what do you think they do? That’s right! They shut down the factory. John and all his co – workers get the boot and the plant moves overseas.

            Have you ever considered WHY the prices of Wal-Mart’s items are so cheap? With the multi-national corporation making no less than three billion a quarter, it is not because the people at the top are taking pay cuts. So! Let us look at it, shall we? Let us first start at observations made here in America, about American Wal-Marts’ impact on Americans. A Study in Nebraska looked at two different Wal-Marts, the first of which had just arrived and:

“..was in the process of driving everyone else out of business but, to do that, they cut their prices to the bone, very, very low prices.”

In the other Wal-Mart:

“They had successfully destroyed the local economy, there was a sort of economic crater with Wal-Mart in the middle: and in that community, the prices were 17% higher.”

            Okay, so we know they utilize VERY low prices to dry up competition, so that they then can raise prices without fear of aforementioned dried up competition taking their consumers away.

“So what?” You may ask, “That’s just part of the healthy capitalist system isn’t it?”

           

But I ask you still, how can they afford to get prices so low to begin with? Well, remember, they pressured John’s bosses to export all of its factories over seas. And once there where did they hire? Well, all over the world, but Asia, mostly. In fact, Wal-Mart’s profit margins were four times to six times higher on Asian imports than on American made goods. This exportation of American jobs is so profitable for the Wal-Mart elite, that not only did they export John’s job, but they now import half of all their non-food products.

            I think we’re starting to see how Wal-Mart can afford cheap products and big profits. But we’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg. Wal-Mart has had “Extensive violations of child-labor laws and state regulations requiring time for breaks and meals.” Says an internal Wal-Mart audit and a New York Times report. This paired with the corporation’s use of sweatshops and prison labor is how they can afford to sell you products at such a low price. Now, if you ask me, it is not worth saving money if there are teenagers in Bangladesh working in sweatshops for 80 hours per week at $0.14 per hour. This, added to the fact that Wal-Mart also hires illegal immigrants here in the United States, directly into their stores, and indirectly in the contractors they work with, seems plenty of reason not to shop at Wal-Mart.

            If you are still convinced at this point that Wal-Mart is your place to shop, then I have two last points to make. Firstly, Wal-Mart is consistently shown to pay below minimum wage, which is unlawful and immoral, whether it be here or abroad, humans are humans and they deserve to be paid living wages. Secondly, Wal-Mart is a recipient of public subsidies. That is right! That means your government gives your tax dollars to Wal-Mart so that Wal-Mart can export jobs, open factories over seas to manufacture ‘in-house’ brands, utilize sweatshops and prison labor, and hire illegals here at home. Are those the kinds of things you want to support?

Encouraging Smart Shopping

            -Alexander Fisher

Email: J.fisher2028@yahoo.com

Twitter: @JAFThrasher

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alexander.thrasher

Blog: longhairedpoet.blogspot.com

An Argument

     I started researching for a piece on the debt ceiling. I was pulling from all arguments on all sides of the spectrum. It was going to be a full and complete informative piece on a subject I am sure I am too ignorant to officiate over. About halfway through reading my third or fourth article, the piece that follows demanded to be written, and so it was. I’m glad I’m not some big, popular, Mainstream Media type. If I was, everyone nationwide would take this piece as a challenge to label and relabel me, completely missing all of my points. At any rate, I hope you enjoy what you are about to read, I hope it is educational and inspiring. Feel free forward this and to fill my inbox with feedback.

- Alexander Fisher

     Some people say the government is too big, and I agree! Big enough to tell me I’m too poor and too old to have health insurance. Big enough to tell two consenting adults, gay or straight, that they can’t perform sodomy or oral sex in the privacy of their own bedrooms, even while giving pregnant sixteen year olds the right to marry. (Both of these based on Georgia law. I go off of Georgia law because I know it best, but do any of your local or state laws make you scratch your head?) Big enough to tell homosexuals they do not, can not and will not have the same rights as heterosexuals. And I apologize to my federalists and my 10^th Amendment - ers. But the government is too big on all levels: Federal, state and local. In my home state of Georgia, in the name of supporting law abiding citizens and future citizens, Governor Nathan Deal passed a law that would kick out all the illegal immigrants and replace them in working situations with EX - CONVICTS! Now, do not get me wrong, I’m all for second chances and things like that, but what we are facing in Georgia, a state heavily dependant on Agriculture, is a total loss of $1 billion stemming from spoiled and unpicked produce, according to the Georgia Agribusiness Council, because of this switch from migrant to ex-con workers. And this in a time when HOPE, a program designed to help students pay for their college tuition, is being cut.
    
     So, let us see what the government has done fore me: J.fisher2028@yahoo.com

1.) Deemed me too poor and too old for health insurance

2.) Deemed me too stupid for full HOPE. (A program that helps me pay for my college tuition.)

3.) Deemed me too stupid to make the personal decision of whether or not to participate in sodomy and/or oral sex. (Even though they’ll give condoms out for free and again, sign a marriage license to a pregnant sixteen year old.)

4.) And lastly, offered a job to an ex - convict over a high school educated, college bound student desperate for work. (Refer to point 2 above.)

(Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not against free condoms or marriage at the age of sixteen, I think the government is just clunky, selective and hypocritical. You can get married in the state of Georgia if your pregnant, but not if you are in love?)

     And while the government is growing nationwide, we are glued to our computers and televisions, fighting over whether or not Casey Anthony is guilty or not and whether or not we should raise the debt ceiling.
     Look, if we need to cut spending, let us bring all our troops home tomorrow, stop bombing Libya, stop nation building and stop playing as the world’s police! Want to raise revenue? Let gays get married and pay for marriage licenses and put tariffs on U.S. corporations who have factories over seas. (And consumers, if they try to pass that down to you, protest and don’t buy their goods/products!)
     Conclusively, you can be smart about it! Every vote you cast, every penny you spend, supports something, do you know what you support? When you vote for the ‘small government’ Anti-gay candidate, are you really voting for bigger government? You can afford to do that, you are probably not gay. But would you want someone to vote for the ‘small government’ anti-woman, -man, -old, -young, -educated, -veteran candidate? Something tells me not, and I wouldn’t want to vote for that candidate, either.
     Oh! And one more thing, an after thought, if you will, to my fellow anti - abortionist pro - lifers. I ask you to consider this the next time you are voting for the next ‘pro-life’ ‘small-government’ candidate: Are they giving the government the right to take a life? “Now wait!” You say, “I voted for that candidate so the government wouldn’t have that right.”
     You are half right, you half did. You support the right of someone to be born, but in voting for that candidate, you also more than likely supported the right of the Big (Brother?) Government to kill someone, whenever they see fit. Is that truly being pro - LIFE?

I suppose it is all just some food for thought.

Email:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/alexander.thrasher

Twitter: @JAFThrasher

Blog: http://longhairedpoet.blogspot.com/