Average Joe

Look out, they're going after Joe now. Well, duh. Of course they are. The Obama campaign is not of the people; they're not for blue collar. Just ask Joe.

All the media concern about his license, and his income is cute, but I've noticed nobody is answering (or probably even remembers) Joe's concern. He was thinking of owning his own company one day, and possibly buying an existing business. He wondered what the incentive to become successful is if Obama is going to 'spread his money around' once it happens.

Joe is in exactly the situation I was (minus Obama) 25 years ago. I had become skilled at repairing electronics and specialized industrial equipment, but I wasn't happy making other people wealthy and I wondered if I could go out on my own. I knew one or two guys who had done it but it was still a scary move.

Working against me was:

• Money. How much did I have to save before I would be safe from running out. What would happen if I did? Would anyone extend a new business credit?
• Customers. Could I sell myself to them. I had no faith that I could.
• Regulations and Taxes. Would I find out that I forgot to get some license or pay some tax and lose everything?
• Parts. Would the suppliers sell to me?
• Law suits. How much insurance did I need, and would I lose it if I got sued?
• Competition. I worked for people who would jump through hoops to take work away from people they didn't like. And if I left them, I'd be on that list. Would they take every customer I got?
• Uniforms. Tools. Vehicles. Business cards. Invoices. Phone lines. Wouldn't customers expect me to be 100% as professional looking as the big companies?
• Help. Who could I get to help me when the job was too big for one person to handle?

And really, those were just my first concerns. I knew there would be other problems if I got big enough to hire people. Government regulations, the EPA, OSHA, ASPCA, a whole slew of concerns.

On the up side, there was:

• No bosses. I would no longer have to work for someone else.
• Vast riches, possibly. Potentially having them name elementary schools after me. Maybe I'd become so successful that I could wear a crown in everyday life and no one would remark upon it.
• Or moderate riches. Maybe just becoming successful doing something I really enjoyed.

Really, thinking back on all the fears, it's a wonder I ever did it. But I did do it. I took moonlight work to save money. I began buying tools, then a truck, then uniforms... And after probably two years of working two jobs, I screwed up my courage, closed my eyes, (possibly even peed a little) and jumped into being my own business. In the beginning it was hugely hard work. And scary. And I found out that when you're a business, you no longer have a boss, it's true, but every single customer becomes a boss.

I'm really glad I did. I have been successful. And I've made as much money as I wanted to, doing what I enjoy. I could probably have made more but once I found my groove, I was happy with just doing what I do. I have employed others but I found I didn't like being a boss any more than I enjoyed having one.

You look at Joe's situation today and he's got it even worse. I'm sure he's got all the concerns I did, and probably many more. But on top of that, he has to wonder if after all his work, one day, should a miracle happen and he really becomes successful, will the government take most of it away from him? Would Obama take so much that it just wasn't worth it to Joe? He might.


Just look at Obama's history. Socialism seems to be the one common thread. Forget William Ayer's terrorism. The man is, was, and most likely always will be a socialist. This is the guy who trusted Obama with the Annenberg Foundation money:

I began teaching when I was 20 years old in a small freedom school affiliated with the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. The year was 1965, and I’d been arrested in a demonstration. Jailed for ten days, I met several activists who were finding ways to link teaching and education with deep and fundamental social change. They were following Dewey and DuBois, King and Helen Keller who wrote: “We can’t have education without revolution. We have tried peace education for 1,900 years and it has failed. Let us try revolution and see what it will do now.”

I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position—and from that day until this I’ve thought of myself as a teacher, but I’ve also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: you can change your life—whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: we must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!

I taught at first in something like a Simoncito—called Head Start—and eventually taught at every level in barrios and prisons and insurgent projects across the United States. I learned then that education is never neutral. It always has a value, a position, a politics. Education either reinforces or challenges the existing social order, and school is always a contested space – what should be taught? In what way? Toward what end? By and for whom? At bottom, it involves a struggle over the essential questions: what does it mean to be a human being living in a human society?

And look at the others in Obama's past. See any unabashed capitalists? Only Rezko, and it's not really capitalism when you steal.

No Joe, your concerns aren't unfounded. It sounds like you've got the same spark I had many years ago. And it's really a great thing to act upon it. I hope you do. And I hope that, on top of all the brutally tough work, you aren't also burdened with a government that has forgotten how important that spark has been for this country.

Sheesh, sorry this got so long.. kind of got away from me. I'll end with a Joe quote:

When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.
-Joe Namath

Hope that doen't change.