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Vote for your candidate


Kopaka's Ice Engineering

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Hello.

 

Remember me?

 

I used to be a moderator here on these boards, but life has happened over the past 7 years. If I hadn't rotated off the forum circuit by the time Katrina hit, I was awfully close to doing so. I'm thankful, however, for the time I've gotten to know people with color-shifty masks. I'm honored to have been one, and I do not regret the time spent, for more reasons than making friends scattered throughout North America and beyond.

 

Gee, it sounds like I'm leaving the site. I'm not leaving the site: it's just been 10 months since I've gotten around to posting anything of consequence. Maybe if I were more studious about posting, I wouldn't feel like I have to reintroduce myself each & every time I duck my head in the door.

 

"What has happened in the past 10 months?" you may wonder. Well, I live in the "country" now. My house is on an acre and a half, and the nearest full grocery store is some 10 miles away. My office in downtown New Orleans is 50 miles away from the carport. I spend about 2½ hours a day commuting. (What's more, the computer is usually reserved for my daughter to watch Jay Jay the Jet Plane episodes on a popular website for video in the evenings.) I find myself getting up at 5 AM to get to work, and am rarely home before 6:15 PM. I'm not complaining, per se: this is just where I am now.

 

Anyway, I have more to address than the two tanks of gas I buy in a week. No, today is an important day in the USA.

ELECTION DAY!

 

 

Forty-five months ago, I set forth an auspicious challenge. A vote is a grave matter, and not something I should have thrown around so haphazardly. Of course, I felt that I was shielded by the fact that it would take a southern Democrat (see: Carter, Clinton) for Louisiana to light up any color other than red on the map, regardless of my ballot. I made my gambit not having a clue what the next years would actually have in store.

 

And oh, did those next years have a curve ball.

 

I confess, I felt as though this criterion was open and shut within 3 months. The passage of the second half of the stimulus package was a big deal, and we at the Jefferson Parish Sewer Capital Program sought to put in on the money being made available. Not a one of our projects was selected, and I thought that this was going to be it for my January posting.

 

Then life happened.

 

Not 4 months after the wedding, I leave the Yenni Building and end up getting laid off after 4½ years at DEII. Miraculously, I am hired before my severance runs out, and a countdown clock of sorts starts: with this job, of which 60ish% of the funding is footed by the ARRA, I am going to have to move my wife & I to Illinois for almost 2 years. As the calendar switches from March 2010 to April, we're driving a UHaul north on I-55 (figuratively: a good chunk of it was I-57).

 

Not long after we leave, the Deepwater Horizon accident happens, and the Oval Office puts a moratorium on all deep water exploratory drilling. My father is laid off from Halliburton after 35 years, some 2 years away from his planned retirement. People in Illinois ask me what the big deal is, why drilling on the shelf alone isn't enough: I inform them that, by and large, the shelf is tapped out, and no one has expected to find anything new there for the past 15 years.

 

Over the course of two years, my wife & I acquire a set of close friends in Illinois. We learned who we are as a couple, independent of our respective families. We learned how much we can rely on the other, for there were times (before the friends) we had no other person there. We become parents to a wonderful, adorable little girl.

 

I say all this, needing to circle back around to the original question I posed myself forty-five months ago: are my life and surroundings better off than they were four years ago, and if so, are they a direct result of Barack Obama becoming president and his policies becoming law. To the first part, I say yes, absolutely. Certainly it is not in the manner I thought it would be "yes" when I typed that four years ago, but the fact remains: yes, despite my father losing his job, I and my family are better off. (I suppose there's a tangent here about when or where the definition of "family" shifted from "my parents & brother" to "my wife, and now daughter." Even though it doesn't seem to be long, I'm not going to chase it here.) To the second part, I credit my family's fortune to God's provision. However, I feel compelled to further elaborate. I'll save the full text of the story about God, the flood victim, the news, the boat & the helicopter and say that Divine Providence takes on many forms. It would be remiss of me to ignore the very real possibility that ARRA was God providing a way for me to provide for my family, even though none of it went to the sewer projects I helped submit for in the first place.

 

Is this two years of northern exposure mellowing out my hard right lean? (Maybe)

Is this all an exercise on how one shouldn't throw one's vote around? (Maybe)

Is this going to make a real, appreciable difference? (Not really. It wouldn't have made a difference if we weren't back from Illinois yet, either.)

 

Am I going to own up to my statements? (Yes)

 

From the outskirts of Chocolate City will vote for the following candidates for the Louisiana Electoral College for the November 6 election:

 

2012 Electoral College

  • Karen Carter Peterson
  • Shane Riddle
  • Gilda Warner Reed
  • Jay H. Banks
  • Diana Hamilton
  • Cedric Bradford Glover
  • Leslie Dandridge Durham
  • Kyle Gautreau

pledged to vote for Barack Obama of Illinois and Joe Biden of Delaware.

 

From the outskirts of Chocolate City endorses the following candidates and positions for the November 6 election.

 

United States Representative, First Congressional District of Louisiana

  • Steven Scalise (R)

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #1

Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly

  • AGAINST

because we don't need to solve problems that don't exist

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #2

Strict Scrutiny Review for Gun Laws

  • AGAINST

because we don't need to solve problems that don't exist (didn't I just say that?)

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #3

Earlier Notice of Public Retirement Bills

  • AGAINST

not when the bills are going to get changed in the legislative process anyway.

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #4

Homestead Exemption for Veterans' Spouses

  • AGAINST

not interested in changing the state Constitution for the benefit of less than 5 people.

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #5

Forfeiture of Public Retirement Benefits

  • FOR

as toothless as this may be, since it's usually the USAO that prosecutes these

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #6

Property Tax Exemption Authority for New Iberia

  • AGAINST

Nope. There are better ways to do this, City of New Iberia. If there aren't, you just got unlucky and are going to have to deal with it.

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #7

Membership of Certain Boards and Commissions

  • FOR

because it won't make sense otherwise

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #8

Non-Manufacturing Tax Exemption Program

  • AGAINST

because I honestly believe we have too many tax exemption programs out there now

 

Louisiana Constitutional Amendment #9

More Notice for Crime Prevention District Bills

  • FOR

...because nobody needs "concerned citizens" end-running around their neighbors. I mean, come on.

 

Local Option Vote #1

Term Limits for St Tammany Parish School Board Members

  • FOR

because incorporating new blood is important

 

My vote is my vote, not yours. That said, I am a registered Republican, and will remain a registered Republican. I would appreciate no further thoughts about, as a Republican, my supposed inability to empathize with views not my own. Bring back the melting pot: this composed salad bowl mentality isn't healthy for us as a nation.

 

-KIE

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In Illinois, I sort of feel the same. It's been a guaranteed blue state for a while, even though where I live, in the Central portion of the state, it's almost solid red. Chicago's strong enough to choose where Illinois' electoral votes go.

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