Everyone in the Meadows sees the empty land just east of Liberty Park, on the corner of Williams and Speckled Gecko.  When the community was planned this land was set aside and donated to the Peoria School district with the intention that PUSD would build a school on that land.  Years later this land is overgrown and has an ugly fence around it, a blight on our community, and a menace to nearby homes. 

It costs about 30M at a minimum to build a typical elementary school. Money that the PUSD can not find in their budget. In 1911 a land trust was created in Arizona for the funding of schools. Most of the schools in Arizona and in Peoria were built with money from this trust.  However PUSD does not qualify for money from this trust because the district needs to have enough students to be above 90% of capacity.  PUSD has a lot of schools in the south part of Peoria that are well below capacity currently.  In fact in all of PUSD only three schools are at Capacity, Sunset Heights, Lake Pleasant and Liberty HS.  (Source https://www.peoriaunified.org/site/Default.aspx?PageID=7167) In fact in the last 10 years the number of students in PUSD elementary schools has dropped 18.5%, and we are at 70% of capacity as a school district and there is little chance the land trust will be giving PUSD any money to build a new school unless this changes.  Of the 35000 or so students, 4400+ are from open enrollment from other districts.

For this reason the school district has asked for bond money for the last few elections.  This is money the school would borrow using future taxes on your home as the collateral.  They would pay back the debt over the next 20 or so years by putting a tax on your real estate. The way that property taxes work is that the taxing entity asks for a specific amount of money, the county accessors office then taxes everyone in the jurisdiction of the taxing entity proportionally based on the assessed value of their home. Because there are more homes, and because older bonds have expired, the amount you pay for taxes for PUSD has declined in the last few years.  Passing this bond will bring the level of taxes back to the rate it was in 2020.  If the bond fails, your taxes will continue to go down. 

In the last few attempts the bond has failed due to a lack of support, most from an aging population with less kids in school and from parents who educate their children outside of the Public District system.  The last time a bond passed for the PUSD was in 2012. If the bond passes the school district plans to spend half the money fixing and upgrading current schools, and they have said they will build an elementary school.  The proposed bond has no money for new high school expansion. For the average home in our area, worth about 700k, the passing of this bond will cost you about $230 a year more than if it fails.  Because of the complex way we figure property tax in Arizona this is not exact.  The tax is based on your “Limited Value” which is based on the price you paid for your home when you bought it and how long ago you bought it among other things, so two identical homes next to each other could easily be 20% or 30% different.  The best way to figure your estimated burden is to look at your LPV total on your tax bill and multiply that number by .00057.   Luckily these tax bills were just mailed out to everyone at the end of September, or you can go to the assessors website. Remember that commercial buildings pay 170% property taxes on the same valuation as residential homes, so any taxes will cost local businesses more and they will pass those costs on to their customers.

For me personally, on my main home it will cost me $299 per year, for my former home I rent out it will cost me $83 per year, for my business it will cost me $217 per year, a total of $600 per year.  You need to do your math on your properties and see if it is worth it to you.

Of course there is nothing in the bond that requires a new school to be built but the current board says they will build one. The board is 5 people, one spot is currently vacant, 2 spots are up for election in 2 years, and the other two spots are up for election this election.  The two incumbents whose terms are up are running for reelection, along with 4 other people.  There will be 3 winners this year. We could see a quite different board though there is no sign any of them would change the plan for the bond money.

The land donated by the developer of the Meadows will be given back to the developer after 10 years if substantial progress is not made at building an elementary school on the land. The deed was recorded on Feb 28^th 2019, so the school must be built by Feb 2029.  In the documents the definition of substantial progress is that the buildings are completely built with just finishing touches left to go.  In case you are wondering, the land gift is very specific, and that land cannot be used by the school to build anything other than an elementary school.  During the time before a school is built the district is also responsible for maintaining the land and can be reported to code compliance if they don’t.  If the land reverts to the developer they are free to build on it, and can get it rezoned to whatever use the city will approve.  It could be more homes, or it could easily be apartments, or even a small shopping center, whatever the developer wants to do and can get approval for.   

There are a total of 4 communities that have donated land.  These other parcels have a longer time frame before they revert back. There was a study done and the committee that did the study suggested building a smaller Elementary School in the Meadows with the bond money.  At the May 9^th 2024 meeting this was talked about and presented and the board took no action or made any commitment to a planned location.  (Source https://go.boarddocs.com/az/pusd11/Board.nsf/files/D9FSSJ7415C9/$file/Facility%20Master%20Planning%20Sept%2026%202024.pdf)  Bond elections only can happen every two years, if this bond fails then there will likely not be enough time to plan and build the school in time if the board waits until the 2026 bond.  The board would have to either not do it at all or do it out of existing budgets. There is always the chance that the board could lobby for legislative action to get a special release from the land trust due to this rare situation but that is also highly unlikely.

So keep all of this in mind when you vote. Your vote can determine the future of that land, and if you want it to be developed into something or have a school there can be part of that decision.  You must also decide if this tax is something you are willing to pay.  That is a personal decision based on what you feel is best.  I just wanted to share the information with you.

There are 10 propositions on the upcoming election.  I know some people are confused by them, and there is a lot of misleading information about them.  I am going to try to wrap that all up.

First some structure.  Propositions are a 3-digit number, the first digit tells you the type.  1 means a state constitutional amendment.  2 means something that that people collected signatures for and got on the ballot that way.  3 means something that was proposed by the legislature and referred to the ballot.  Ones that start with a 4 are city and county ones, which there are none this year.  The last two digits just go up with each one, year after year until it hits 99 then resets.

So lets get into them.  I will try to explain what each of them does.  I am not going to tell you which way to vote, but I do feel that some are obvious. 

128.  In Arizona if a law was passed from a proposition the legislators cannot change it at all unless it goes to the ballot again. That has made some problems when it was written poorly. This law would allow changes to propositions with invalid provisions.  Arizona is one of only 2 states with this restriction.

129.  This will limit future proposition that are citizen-initiated to focus on just one subject.  Bills in Arizona already have this requirement.  This is so you can’t put something that most hate in a bill that most people like, and then only focus on the good part to get the other part passed.  Many people are low information voters and without this protection someone unscrupulous can sneak something into a popular bill. 

130.  Property tax Exemption for Veterans who are disabled or whose spouse has died. This was a law previously but was removed over 30 years ago.  This had unanimous support from the legislature. As with any property tax the taxes are a set amount for each year, so if less people pay then everyone else pays more.  Under 2% of the population will qualify for this, so you should see your property taxes go up around 2% if this passes.

131.  Create a new office of Lieutenant governor.  Right now, if the Governor leaves office before the end of their term the Secretary of state becomes governor.  This has happened 6 times in our history.  The sec of state oversees elections so this could be a problem during election season. 45 other states have this office while the rest do not, Arizona is the largest state without.  This is the 3^rd time this has been put on the ballot with 1994 and 2010 being the other two times.  The governor and Lt governor would run together as a team.  Over 70% of the legislators in Arizona voted yes to put this on the ballot. 

132.  Supermajority required to raise state taxes.  This would mean that any bill that raises taxes will need 60% to pass.  There has been much argument in the past about bills and if they raise taxes or not.  9 states have this law on their books.  

209. Debt forgiveness on health debt.  This would make it harder for debt to be collected and easer to be forgiven if that debt is related to healthcare services.  It would limit the interest rate to 3% or less per year on such debt.  It would eliminate late fees. It would also raise the limits for protections of exempt assets.  For example, if currently if you own a car that has more than $6000 equity a judge could force you to sell it to pay the debt, this will increase it to $15,000.  On homes that exemption will go from 250k to 400k, and from $6k to $15k for personal property like electronics, guns or jewelry.  If this passes, then it is likely people and companies who provide these services will charge more to everyone to offset the ones who do not pay.

211. Campaign Finance Disclosure. This requires that anyone that make an independent expenditure of $50,000 or more on a statewide campaign or $25,000 or more on a local campaign must disclose the names of the money’s original sources.  This could cause a chilling effect and limit free speech, it also could be used to harass people who donate, who would have remained anonymous without this. An independent expenditure is money that is spent outside of the campaign, by a group not related to the campaign.  Donations to campaigns are already reported, and for much smaller amounts. 

308. In state tuition for everyone who went to school in Arizona for two years and graduated from High School in Arizona.  Currently if someone is not a US citizen, they pay out of state tuition even if they went to school in Arizona, this would change that. The in-state tuition does not cover the cost of education and is subsidized by those that pay out of state tuition with any deficiency made up by the state.  Private colleges don’t offer in-state tuition.  Currently in state tuition is about 12k per year while out of state is about 30k per year.  

309.  This would increase ID verification for people who vote by mail. It would require that a voter put their birthdate and any number from any government issued ID, or the last four digits of their SSN, for their ballot to be counted.  It will also make getting an Arizona state ID Card free for anyone who needs an ID.  For in person voting only photo ID will be accepted, currently non photo alternative ID is still accepted. 

310.  Fire district fund.  This would add .1% to the state sales tax for 20 years.  This money would go to the 141 rural fire departments in Arizona.  1.5 million people in Arizona live in these districts while all 7.2 million and any visitors will pay the tax. 

I have often wondered about the source of human intelligence and the ability to do something.  After decades of observation I have found that  most humans have decent innate ability, however some are made to push this innate ability into true ability more than others. 

The to make it easier lets look at the human brain like a computer CPU chip. Not all CPUs are made the same, some have less processing power, more or less cores and operate at various speeds.  There can be powerful CPU’s with the ability to do deep instructions but they could be at a slow speed.  There can also be very weak ones that do one thing very well, but most of the rest not too well, but can do it very fast, more like a CUDA core.  But to keep the CPU metaphor there can be strong and powerful CPU’s that just run idle most of the time.  Think of the genesis stuck in a third world nation, who does not have access to information or higher education.  

Humans in general rarely live up to the potential within them.  Most are far lacking, and for most it is not their fault, they simply are not challenged, they are not pushed hard, they are not confronted with ideas that cause them to grow.  The true sad part is that many are never even given the chance.  Some need to spend their mental energy just to survive.  How successful can you be if you must spend hours each day to get food and water?  Some live in a rigid culture that does not allow them to grow outside of the box, their rank, or families rank in society does not give them the opportunity to move up.  Others are given everything to them on a silver platter, and even then many don’t have the innate ability for success. 

People observe the world around them and rarely think about why it is that way, or even if it is changeable, they simply operate within the rules they are given.  They do what they are told, they strive to learn, get good grades, maybe get higher education and then get a good job.  That is exactly what society needs them to do.  If not enough people do this track then society could start to break down, we need people to do many millions of various jobs.  So society entices them, shows them a standard of living that is beyond what their station can provide, and puts them in the bondage debt trying to get that.  Debt is the is the strongest tool of modern society to keep people in line and keep people working.  People want that dream house, that nice car, the nice phone, to eat out almost daily, and for that they give up the majority of their waking hours.  It is a never ending cycle for most people of trying to earn more so they can buy more and look more successful to their friends and live what society has shown them as a happy life, but the more they buy to be happy, the more they owe, and the more time and energy they have to give to pay for this.  It is getting worse year after year, and the younger you are and the lower you started the harder it is for you.  Now half of our workforce can not even afford housing, they cannot afford the lifestyle that they wanted for themselves.  They blame the system for not providing enough of an opportunity for them, but not the system that wanted to put them in bondage in the first place, causing them to live beyond their means. 

There are many people who have taken the red pill, who have seen the world for what it is and have opted out of this world.  There are two main paths that these people take, one is highly destructive, and the other leads to success.  Many have chosen to just give up, let the system destroy them, give up on the dream, give up on being more, being better.  Our new society lets them do it, with free money, easy government assistance and endless entertainment or chemicals to keep them numb about their situation. 

Then there are the others that also reject the system, and they rise above it, looking at how to use the system as a tool to get what they want in life.  The first step is usually to reject the idea of working for others.  Then to find a way to make massive profits, to buy themselves out of debt and bondage, and then to live their dreams.  Unfortunately these people are quite rate, and the ability to do this has much to do with the origins of the person trying to do it.  If you are born in a nation like North Korea, Nigeria and even most of China you have very little opportunity to rise up, you are given a set of rules to work with and all the tools you need, even basic tools like being able to buy and sell something are taken away. There is little way out and little hope.  In other places like India and most of Africa the vast amounts of poverty, and cast systems, make it very hard to get ahead.  For this reason, when people are desperate they resort to breaking the rules in a bad way by scamming people.  Therefore, many people in places like India and much of Africa are so eager to scam the rest of the world. They see is as their way of rising above a very broken system that keeps them down. They have rationalized the idea that the rich and the “West” owes them, and that we are open prey for them.  They use the internet and phone system against the “West” to get ahead.  They are so in need of money that they are willing to say and do almost anything to take their success, mostly because they are in a position where earning it is almost impossible. 

Most everyone in the world sees on their TV’s and on their computers that their best hope for success is to get to the successful places in the world.  For many decades this was mostly America and western Europe.  America, keenly aware of this has severely restricted access, there are 100 times as many people who want to come to the US each year than are actually allowed to do it. Most waiting lists to get the USA are decades long, so out of desperation, and exhaustion from the process, for the hope of a better life and a better system people take the arduous task of coming to the US without permission.  In recent years other bastions of freedom have popped up in places like South Korea, Singapore and the UAE, however in many of these places you must be a member of the right race, or the right religion to be given full access to the success the place offers. 

In the last 15-20 years there has been a great shift.  Many people in many places have pulled up from squaller, and pushed up to a lower middle class life.  If they can’t go to a different place they will make the place they are in better.  Bold and eager people all across the world are trying to rise up, and take their countrymen with them.  The sleeping giant of America has had their middle class eroded because this is the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen.  America is trading its success around the world by buying the worlds resources and products.  We are giving them our currency, something that still has values, not because it has been protected, but because we are just slightly better as managing it than the rest of the world.  Yes, America prints money, and is in high debt but the world economy works as a comparison and America is printing less and is more able to manage its debt than most of the rest of the world.  For this reason places like Taiwan, Philippines and China have pulled up millions of people from poverty and have put them into a lower middle class existence, and a few into even better levels.  They have had great building booms and the health, education and tech level of these cultures is vastly improved.  There are whole cities popping up all over China, all over Africa, the middle east and other places with new modern places for people to work live and shop.  American, 60 years ago was 60%+ the GDP of the whole world, now it is under 24%, still not bad for being under 4% of the population of the world, and anyone knows who has been to America that most of that wealth is in the hands of the top 20% of the population.

However not all nations have done this with the same eye on freedom that America has.  Many nations have done it this fast by using force, and totalitarianism to make it happen.  China is the prime example of this.  There is very little you may do without the government as your partner.   Many other nations are starting to reject the ideas of freedom, fairness, and capitalism.  They are looking at a socialist version of capitalism.    Different nations do this to various degrees, and even the US does it at different times.  The freedom to be successful is also the freedom to fail, but we do not want to see people fail so if someone is close to failure think that it is best to step in and save them.  We have entire nations that have taken this to the extreme.  They have decided that no one may be to successful and no one will be too unsuccessful, they are trying to build a nation where everyone is middleclass.  Nations like Denmark, Norway, New Zealand or more recently Germany come to mind.  Where there are high taxes on success, to the point that beyond a certain point there is no reason to try.  But on the other hand there is a basic standard income, so even if you don’t work you still have money.  There is free health insurance, housing allowance from the government, free college education, massive spending on clean energy.  The goal of life in most of these places is to just get along, be happy, be content and live a good live.  Which, for most people on earth sound like a great idea.  But for someone who is driven, freedom loving and entrepreneurial, this idea sounds like torture.  And that is the fundamental difference in America, you have half the nation looking at Norway and wanting to move us in that way, and the other half looking at freedom and our past and wanting us to keep that and go back in that direction.  That, to me, is what the fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Republicans in America is.  As someone who has looked at Macro economics and the fact that if we do a Norway style entitlement program, we will no longer have the strong currency that we have grown to use as the blank checkbook we buy everything we need with.  If we go that way, and hurt our currency along the way, where will that leave us?  Is that a risk we are willing to do?  So how does Norway do it, well they pump and sell massive amount of Oil.

For all these social economic reasons the experience and opportunity for one person to another varies considerably across the globe, and even from house to house within the same city.  So this forms the input on the mental health and the brains of each person.  The ability to create success, and to rise above this system that we have built is mostly determined by the mindset you carry.  The thoughts and ideas that come to your head.  With different inputs you get different outcomes, and the differences can be staggering.  I often talk to people about topics such as this, and I can tell in a few seconds if they are someone with their mind open or if these concepts are beyond them.  

You need to start early in the life of most people.  Where people invest their time is usually where they will go.  Some spend countless hours reading, studying and trying to figure out the world.  Recently the entire world of knowledge has become available online, with just access to YouTube you can learn almost anything you want, but what do the vast majority of people do with such a powerful tool?  They use it for entertainment, for watching the latest dance craze, for watching mind numbing entertainment.  For most people there is not eagerness to learn or to grow.  I see this as the biggest failure of the education system.  Education is not there to teach you facts, it is there to give you a passion for life long learning and for knowing how to learn the best, then you will learn for the rest of your life.  A third of Americans have not even read one book after leaving their last year of school. 

There are only so many hours in a day, and so many days in your life, what you choose to invest these hours into will define what you become.  If you need to spend half your day trading manual labor just to earn enough to pay for food and water, how can you ever spend enough time to gain the skills and knowledge, this is where over half of the world finds itself.  They are in a system that eats up all their time, and takes whatever is left and focuses on entertainment, games and socializing.  If you are a female you may easily spend an hour a day trying to make yourself look better to the world, trying to keep up with cultural beauty norms that zap your time and earning and learning potential.  Many systems discourage advancement, and if you try to get ahead people pull you down.  Many places are too hot and people spend their time just trying to stay cool.   There are cultures, even within the USA, that are destructive to their members, they tell people to not get ahead.  They encourage poor choices, getting into debt, taking drugs to fit in, being drunk daily, spending all your excess on entertainment.  No matter what you say to fit in an be successful in America you need a good grasp of English, yet millions in our nation are so embedded in their “community” that they have handicapped themselves by refusing the learn English.  The more they shelter themselves with the community and the larger the community the worse it gets.  There are non-assimilated groups of immigrants all over America.  Very few other nations have this problem at all, and none as bad as America.  This causes distrust and putting the ideals that that community over the ideas of being an American.  America needs to melt a bit more, to mix, to not focus on these communities.  In recent years the melting of America has been significantly slowed.  We need to stop doing things to address these communities and focus more on helping everyone melt into the American culture.  These culture differences are one of the primary things that are tearing America apart.  It if find to love your culture, and embrace it, but you also need to function well in the greater America.  So many people are willing to divide the cultures and find anything to put a wedge between people.  There is so little unity in America, so many want to define themselves by this identity culture, and it has been common to ask people about their identity.  It has even moved to what sex you feel like you are at that time, and who you choose to love, and of course their race.  All these things have become part of the conversation because identity has become the thing that defines us more than what we do in life.  This is tragic for the evolution of the American society.  If you want true success you need to reject this pull, and focus on your dreams.

What you focus on you get better at.  If you want success in life first you need to define what success looks like for you, if success is having a home, a spouse and a few kids then that is all you need to focus on.  If success is just getting by then you have sent a low standard and can probably get it.  If success is being a self-made deca-millionaire, then you got to get working, less than .1% of the world’s population will ever reach that goal.  If success is to have all your bills paid, just figure out how much that will take and work to get that much in cashflow or assets.  Once you figure out what success looks like to you then you need to have specific goals and make a plan to getting to them.  You need to free up your time and your resources to focus on these goals.  So many people don’t do this, and by just doing these basic steps you are far ahead. 

Most people take the lazy, or comfortable path, they don’t plan, they just let the world loft them around with little firm goals or plans as they move.  They don’t take the time to learn every day, to meet people to make them better, to stive to do what it takes each day to gradually get to the next level.  They want to do what is fun, what feels good in the moment, time is of little importance, they have no drive.  Maybe having fun all the time, is their definition of success. 

I think that most humans have the innate mental capacity for success. There is a small part of the population that have a mental defect, that will make it much harder for them to have great success.  There also another small part that have great mental abilities and for them things just come easy.  It does not matter your race, or your sex, humans are given brains that are capable of almost anything from the start.  But then the environment kicks in.  For many this happens even before they are born, they grow based upon what their parents consume, maybe nutrients are scarce, maybe the culture encourages drugs or alcohol.  But once they are born the differences from the environment have massive differences.  The economic situation of their parents, the time their parents have to nurture them, the ability to get quality food, quality housing, the ability to send the kids to a good school, to provide educational tools, the mindset and culture of the family, the town, the nation….all these things have great effect on the development of the brain of the child.  Early development is the key and quite often things start getting engrained, making it harder and harder has times goes on to reject the system the child is born into.  A high level of travel and exposure to different cultures is shown to vastly improve the life of someone later on.  But again how affordable is this, and if you come from a country with little power you are not even allowed to leave.

The fundamental problem is time, very few people use their time to reach their goals.  So many spend 40 hours a week working a job they don’t like, and usually 10 more hours getting ready for the job and getting to the job.  That same person could use their spare time, learn a few new skills and move way up in life, be a leader in their company, or even start a whole new company.  But most people are exhausted, they don’t look at it this way, have no drive or vision to move up, and spend their time in ways that don’t move them forward.  Time if your greatest asset and choosing how you spend it each day, each week, each year is one of the most important decisions that you will make in life, it is a decision that we make daily, and it takes the dedication and will to make it happen.

Because of this I have tried to expose my children to as much different information as they can.  They have already been to many different nations, we focus on education in our home, watching videos of other places.  One child has taken a deep interest in Japan, and has done countless hours of study into the culture of that country.  One told us he wants to spend his next summer traveling to the Philippines. 

When you learn you need to not learn in a bubble, you need to get knowledge from people who actually challenge your current thoughts and concepts. You may move your position, or you may better understand your position. Try to get your news from different sources, try to listen and follow people who you don’t agree with. 

Another hugely impactful thing to remember is the 80 20 rule, this is a shortcut to doing so much more in the short time you are hear on earth.  It is quite easy to become decently good at something very quickly.  There is a saying that it takes 10,000 hours to master most things.  If you want to play the piano very well 10,000 hour are needed….but with just 2,000 hours you can play decently and enjoy the piano.  The same goes for almost anything you may want to learn.  You want to make videos, or be a web designer, a coder, a graphic designer, or good at almost any task, you don’t need to master it, you simply need to understand it and be proficient.  You can probably be a good drone pilot in just 100 hours of practice.  You can start a great career in sales with 100 hours or less of training.   There are very few things that you need to master to be good at them.  They key is that you can be broad, learn a ton of different things in your life, and soon you will start seeing patterns in how the world works. 

I see how business works, I and see patterns in how marketing works, but also how systems are important so that you can duplicate your self and buy your time back.  If you create a good system than any capable person should be able to step in and run that system to a adequate degree.  Once you do this your goal is to make systems for everything, replacing yourself out of every aspect of your business that you want to.  Soon you have bought back almost all of your time, and can go onto other ventures, repeating the process.  Finding out what works, making systems and finding people to run those systems.  That is how someone like Elon Musk can run 5 different companies and they are all successful and on the fast track to success.  This is exactly how someone like Warren Buffet is able to buy companies that are in distress, and quickly turn them around and make them successful.  It is simple get them to focus on what the company is good at, relieve them of most debt, make everything a system and implement the system.  Running a business is not too hard when you understand how it works. 

Well 4000 words later, hammered out in 2 hours in the middle of the night, it is good to get my thoughts into the internet, I hope they inspire someone down the line, I hope that someone gets some good out of it.  Thanks for reading my ramble and I hope to do more soon.

As a PC in the Republican party it is part of my job to help educate voters about the elections. The Primary is coming up on Aug 2^nd.   I have spent about 30 hours listening to candidates and trying to decide who I will vote for any why.  So here are major races in Arizona.  Every candidate I am suggesting is someone I have meet in person, and shook their hand.  I have listened to all sides in each case, as much as I could, and these are the conservative choices I have found.  For me it is important how a person carries themselves, and how they get their message across, this makes it easier for them to win the general and to be better when in office. I also look for fighters, they will fight to win and will fight for what is right when in office.  We have way too few of them. 

The most important thing is that no matter who wins in the Primary that we will help them in the general election.

Az Governor: Keri Lake.  I have been on the fence for her but after talking to her in person and going to three events with her I think she is the best choice.  Very much a fighter.

United State Senate: Jim Lamon, the only one to build a business, he understands what it is like to be an entrepreneur, he know that government gets in the way more than it helps.  If we were at war I would choose General McGuire, but we are not at war, and it is way more important for us to focus on the economy and business right now than the military.

Az Sec of State:  Shawnna Bolick, Another bold fighter, and a great speaker.  Has passion for helping the state.  Her opponents have great resumes but she was the only one that was a great fighter.  Honestly any of them in this race would do a great job, but I have seen Shawnna more and she has more passion I feel.

Arizona Attorney General: After listening to them all I feel that Rodney Glassman would probably do the best job, he knows who he serves, and he is the only one who has actually ran a law office, and this role would be running the largest law office in Arizona, we don’t need someone who never was the boss.

Superintendent of Public Instruction: Shiry Sapir, has the most passion by far, comes to a ton of events and is a great speaker, she ticks all the boxes.  She also is a business person and knows how to get things done.

State Treasurer: Kimberly Yee, a great speaker and someone who has done a great job building and watching our state funds even in this down stock market.  I think she deserves another 4 years.

Corporation Commission (2 open seats): Kim Owens and Nick Meyers.  Kim has been an important part of the Republican party for years and would do great in this position.  Nick Meyers knows the job well and has worked in this area for years. 

Maricopa County Attorney:  Gina Godbehere, another fighter and passionate person.  After listening to all of the candidates Gina clearly stood out and will get my vote.

All the other races only have one person running, or is too local for this post. 

So for the last 9 months this blog had been offline. My server got hacked and this blog was the source of that hack. It was a bad plugin. So in order to get all my sites up again I needed to delete this blog. I killed the folder, but the database was intact. After 9 months of neglecting I was able to get the site going again with about 30 minutes of work, and all of the posts and pages are still here. 173 of them that I wrote over a 10 year basis though most were written in 2005-2008. Blogging gave me a way to get the ideas out of my head. and to share with people these ideas.

In this failure I lost the folder that had all of the photos, so now we don’t have photos for historic blog entries. My average post had two photos so that is a big loss and lots to rebuild. I also lost all my plugins, these were the cause of the failure, but I will add them back in soon once I know they are OK. The data in these plugins is likely also lost.

During the last few years I started to vblog on youtube, but I feel that it rambles and it was hard to edit it. I like the written word much better. I don’t know how much I will be blogging but at least the site is up, you can read the things I wrote long ago, and I can post new things.

So why do I do this.   Why do I want to be in the tea party and why am I involved politically.  Why did I take time and money away from my family for office.  I think it all really boils down to one principle.  Freedom.

When I was growing up I was told time and time again that we live in a free country.  I went to private school and I was not there to be indoctrinated by the public school system.  By the time I was in high school it was too late for me.  I was already a staunch conservative.  I remember during high school staying up late each night to catch the Rush Limbaugh show.  I grew up living a fairly free life, a life with few rules, but I had morals so I did not stray away from the proper path.

I went to the business school at NAU, and in business school they teach you to be creative and to be a business leader, they teach you that the world is yours if you just go out and grab it.  The funny thing is that in the management track of business school they never tell you about the Government and how they control business, how the restrict business.  I graduated and was eager to start being an Entrepreneur, start my own business and get the success that I was promised, and right away I was hit with Government.  Many pages of paperwork needed to be filled out and many different government offices.  And along with this paper came so many rules that they offered free classes on how to follow all of their rules.  I ran across a few rules when I was in school about running a business out of my dorm room but now I needed to file reports each month to 3 different government offices telling them about all of my sales, if I paid someone to do something for me then it was much more paperwork, all in this free country.

After a while I moved to Phoenix, and my business got larger and larger, I rented a store and started hiring people.  Soon the paperwork was so much that I started to just ignore it all, believing I lived in a free country I figured that the Government was not entitled to this information.  I still got larger, opened up a second store, and even had a huge area at the state fair.  And for this success I was rewarded by being audited.  Nothing much ever came of it but it shocked me at how much control our government has over us.  That you must do what they say, no matter how stupid or unproductive, or else they could eventually go so far as take away your freedom. All just for doing nothing more than seeking your happiness by offering a service that people want and giving people jobs, without letting the government be your business partner.

After all of this I was just depressed by it, burned out I sold my business and move on.  I had a friend who invited me to see the world with him so I did and left the united states.  Soon I was in the Philippines, and I saw a level of freedom that surprised me.  They have the freedom to do what they want to be successful with limited influence from the government.  The government is very weak there, with most of the power in local government not federal.   With the freedom to have success they also had the freedom to fail, and many more failed than succeeded.  It was not total freedom, there was still some fairly major places that the government made it hard, but at least you knew all of the rules, they were simple, and mostly fair.

Then I went to Hong Kong, you know, the former British enclave that is now owned by China, and for the first time I saw what I would call real freedom.  Success was everywhere, I never seen a place with so many nice cars and buildings.  By almost any measure it is the most successful city in the world, and they did it by making business easy.

I came back the US, and by that time the business I built was gone, so I decided to rebuild it, it was the easiest thing I could do to earn a living.  I started to educate myself more on Freedom, and what makes a culture flourish.  I quickly came to the conclusion that we have lost our freedom.  I became active trying to talk to people and try to wake them up to this fact that we don’t have freedom in the United States.  I watched the presidential race with passion, and I was always telling people who I would vote for.  I was very unhappy with the person that my party chose, but after seeing the other guy I was very afraid for our nation as to what would happen if he won.  I spent months talking about it and telling everyone I could of the dangers that our nation was facing.  The people then chose the worst of the two of them.  Who would blame them, it was able bodied, charismatic and most people never really knew where he stood.

Soon after this I was shocked at the direction he and his congress were taking the nation and I decided to become very active with the Republican party.  I was really inspired by Glenn Beck and I educated myself on the real history of this nation and about all the freedoms we once enjoyed. After a while the tea parties started up and I quickly joined them also.  And a bit later I found out that I could run in 2010 for city council in Peoria.  I figured that it was time for someone with my views to be able to win.  What I did not count on was an unemployed, charismatic and much more liberal opponent who would use my non compliance with our unconstitutional and overbearing government against me.  It was a very close race, and we actually technically tied the first time and had to run a second time.  I had 100’s of people telling me I was on the right track, and that I was just what was needed for this time.  My opponent took huge amounts of money from special interest groups and unions and was able to spend twice as much money attacking me as I spent on the entire race, by the end of it he spent over 20k to my 3.5k, and he won by a few hundred votes.  The unions and special interest groups bought him the seat, and I wonder who he will owe when he takes it.

I was depressed about this and how I felt that it was so unfair.  For all my work trying to make the city a better place I was rewarded a week later with an audit of my business by the city.  This made me almost lose hope in the system, there is no fairness in our government.  At least the guy at the city who was auditing me was nice and said he did not like this audit and would make it very easy on me.  It really made me feel bad about the future of our nation, that even if you stand up and try to do the right thing there are more people trying to preserve the status quo, and block you.

I decided that I needed to keep trying but on a much different level.  It will be very hard to change government, and I don’t see that we can go down this path much longer.  I decided that now is the time to talk to people about how to prepare for the future that is likely to come.   A week later the chance game, the leader of my tea party group got a job in a different state, and basically it was up to me to lead the group or the group would be disbanded because no one else would take the role. I took it, I am excited by what will happen.  I also decided to change my business and actually develop some ideas that I feel are really good.  And I decided to focus on services so that I don’t have to deal with any future sales tax audits.

From here I think the future for me is bright.  I have a great skill set, great connections and even if everything falls apart I am confident that my family and I will be able to endure it, even if we have to move back to the Philippines.