2018 CONGRESSIONAL PLATFORM
The Signature issue of my congressional campaign will be education, especially third-grade reading scores for rural and urban children. It’s an issue that should transcend party boundaries, and without that, 100% of third-graders reading at grade-level, domestically nothing else matters much. Other efforts are like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There are other things we can do with education, but early childhood reading is the game-changer. It solves your crime problem, and your economic problems as it will lead to an educated workforce. Admittedly it will take some years to matriculate. So we better get started soon, while we implement other shorter term initiatives. Like 8th grade initiative with the business community to increase graduation rates from 50-70% to 100% with commensurate increase in skills. That will take 5 years, maybe after piloting for a year or so.
“As long as I was here I thought I should try to swim fast.”
Michael Phelps after setting a world record in his first preliminary of the 2004 Olympic trials when asked by the media if he thought it was good to swim so hard so early in the competition.
“Success is the ability to go from defeat to defeat with no loss of enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill
Leadership is action not position.
I know where I want to go, but I will go where God takes me.
Bill Haas
Emil Zatopec: He didn’t know he couldn’t win the Olympic Marathon he had never run before, so he just got out there and won it.
“You’re never too old to chase your dream.”
Diana Nyad after finally completing the Cuba to Florida swim after more than 30 years of trying.
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Thoreau, Walden
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Frequently attributed to Mahatma Gandhi
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Albert Einstein
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Frequently attributed to Maya Angelou