I've said it before and I'll say it again....Time Magazine offers some great articles for those of you who like to read but don't have more than 30 minutes at a time. This week there were a couple of articles worth reading. The first was about Arnold Schwarzenegger (
Governor of California) and how he has really been one of the leaders to bring measures to combat global warming to his state (and others!). The most interesting part is that he has gone completely away from the party line (Bush just started even
acknowledging there might be a problem this year). What I loved about him was he basically said, look, the federal government just isn't getting anything done, so I decided I would do it. How can we get more of these guys in office is what I'm thinking. The second part of the same article was about Michael
Bloomberg (Mayor of New York City) and how he had also gone against party lines to draw up gone control. I can't imagine how hard it must be to go against the NRA as a Republican but he has done it - - and violence in New York City has gone down since he's been in office.
Coincidentally, today he left the Republican party to go
Independent (presumably to run for President). I like the sound of that, another qualified candidate!
The second article was one writer's perspective on what things we should look for in picking our next president. I won't give away the whole story but he basically tackled 5 issues and talked about how one might go about solving them. For example, education. His basic thought was to take the school system away from the local districts, manage it at a state level, pay teachers who want to work in poorer neighborhoods more money, pay teachers by merit instead of across the board raises, and make them work year-round (like every other job in the country). Gotta tell ya, I've got no complaints about any of that. But the part that sold me on his entire article was not all the specifics...the best part was that in most every case neither Republicans or Democrats liked the ideas. I'M SOLD! One things I've learned so far in life is that more times than not if both parties don't like something, then the idea is right on target. The education example holds true. Republicans hate it because well off students can't get better treatment than poor students (they wouldn't phrase it like that, but that's the gist of it). And Democrats wouldn't go for it because the Teacher's Union is so powerful and they want their workers to be treated entirely differently than just about every other job in America (they would phrase it differently too but that is really what it comes down to). So there you have it - - just like so many issues, the 2 major parties are out at the extremes and it leaves moderates stuck in the middle. Thankfully, the candidates for both parties seem pretty reasonable this go around.
So back to the point, if you want to read about everything from terrorists in Africa to what Paris Hilton is doing in jail, you won't be
disappointed with Time.
I'm visiting my family this weekend but I'll still have an
Ebay auction start tomorrow. Have a great weekend!