The Town Hall Archives

Rachael Blackgaard · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 6:56 pm Post subject: My mayoral speech

"Citizens of Odyssey, my campaign is one of dignity, integrity, and honesty. If elected, I will fight to provide our children with a better public school education, comparable to that of children in private schools. I will provide better medical care for the sick and elderly, and fight for patient's rights. If I am elected mayor, NO sickly or elderly person will be wronged or mistreated by a medical personnel.
"Also if I am elected, I will do my best to set up houses for the homeless, the domestically abused, and the neglected children of Odyssey. As a woman, these issues are very close to my heart. I will also fight to keep the government from nosing it's way into your business. There will be no issuing of tickets for not wearing seatbelts. Anyone over the age of 21 will be considered an adult and will not be ticketed for not wearing a seatbelt. I will, however, enforce the strapping of children under the age of three years old into child safety seats.
"Every parent should have the right to discipline their child in a correct manner; I firmly believe in the Bible principle of spanking children. No parent shall ever, except in extreme cases, such as burning, profuse beating, or suffocation, be questioned by government agencies such as the CPA about the discipline they administer to their children. In the role of mayor, I would treat every citizen of Odyssey as I would wish to be treated. The children will be treated as I would want my daughter to be treated. If we can restore Godly priniciples to our town, Odyssey could truly raise the church of tomorrow. That is all."

Jared · Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 7:14 pm Post subject:

Hmm...

Allow me to repeat that: Hmm...

In another thread, you talk about your Republican-style campaign. However, your talk about improving schools, expanding health care, fighting for "patient's rights" and increasing the welfare system don't sound all that Republican to me.

Of course, you said you want to improve schools and perhaps I should give you the benefit of the doubt that you will make improvements by changing things (requiring higher standards, forcing standardized testing, restricting teacher's union abilities, etc.) rather than just throwing more money at the problem. Then again, you're running for mayor, not head of the school board. (And please: no one use that sentence to say that I'm in support of a position of school board chair of Odyssey... I am NOT!)

But expanding health care? Our current system is already an out-of-control monstrosity. How precisely are you going to expand it further? Raising taxes, I presume? Charity should be the job of individuals, not the government.

The "patients bill of rights" concept is absurd and if what you are advocating is a scaled-down, local version of that, I must oppose you on that as well. Patients are PEOPLE and people have rights. These additional "rights," such as the right to sue for malpractice at any amount, are crazy. Sorry, but surgery CAN be dangerous. Doctor's can't survive if they're sued after every treatment that doesn't turn out perfectly. And sorry, but no injury is worth $100 million. Caps make sense.

Also, a patient's bill of rights entails the "right" to certain coverage, forced to be payed by the individual's business. That's nonsense. No, I can't support "patient's rights."

Setting up homeless shelters is needed to a degree, but Odyssey isn't a very poverty-stricken town and the people give generously enough. This is a job for charitable organizations, not the Odyssey government. Of couse, the government does have some responsibilities in this regard, specifically in the case of seriously abused children. But a TOWN doesn't take care of this; a COUNTY does.

Also, seatbelt laws are state laws and cannot be changed by a town. While a town can make laws unenumerated in state and federal statutes, they cannot override or overrule them.

And while I agree with what you are saying in your last point, allow me to point out that child abuse is not on the town level and investigation into such matters is out of the town's hands as well.

You end with "That is all." Strange... Were you addressing all citizens... or just "calling all cars"? Wink

Eiram · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 5:12 am Post subject:

Is Odyssey not a part of the whole world? Start small and work your way up.

Rachael Blackgaard · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 8:47 am Post subject:

Ferder- · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 10:04 am Post subject:

I don't have the attention span for long speaches so I didn't read it.

Jared · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 11:51 am Post subject:

Rachael Blackgaard · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 12:54 pm Post subject:

Why would a doctor give someone medicine that was not tested? TO TEST IT. They wouldn't give them the medication if they knew it would kill them; only if they didn't know how it worked.

Blurred the line? I haven't blurred it at all. This is Odyssey, and in Odyssey I'm 27 years old, married, with a six month old. At any place on an Odyssey based board I'll say something like that. I don't see anything wrong with that. In real life I'm fourteen, with no interests in getting married or having children. I don't currently work with the NSA as a molecular biologist, neither do I personally know Tasha Forbes and Jason Whitaker. I know these things. And Felicity Carden is not my sister-in-law, as far as I know. And I also don't think she's six months pregnant, although I wouldn't know anything about that. And I seriously doubt that even if she is pregnant, she's married to Edwin. I may have a lot of problems, but I can still recognize what's truth and what's Odyssey.

In real life: No, I've never known anyone personally whose kids were taken, but a friend of a best friend was taken from her house because her parents homeschooled her. She was returned, but she still is traumatized by it.

Calm down, Jared! You don't have to get upset over a pretend election. As you said, this isn't even real. I'm not sure why you're so upset, unless it's from my utter lack of knowledge about anything related to politics. Everything in my campaign speech is assuming that Odyssey has those kinds of problems, and none of us (except the writers, maybe) can prove that there aren't sections of Odyssey that would have these things going on.

My closing comments: I think you need to relax for a little while. You're getting worked up over a fictional election that has NOTHING TO DO WITH REAL LIFE. Politics may be energetic, but there's no reason to get so upset. Your position as mayor isn't even at stake, from the looks of my poll. THe only reason I have ANY votes is because I voted for myself.
Smile

The only reason I was running was to take over Odyssey, but I can't fool the smart citizens of Odyssey. I believe I'll step down, and the citizens can have some legitimate candidates. Next time I'll know to stay out of politics, especially when the only reason I want to win a campaign is to take over a town.

Jared · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 2:24 pm Post subject:

Well, doctors are NOT allowed to just arbitrarily test new medicines. First, a drug must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration after substansitive laboratory tests done by that administration -- tests not involving humans.

Then, once the drug is believed perfectly safe, then, and only then, can it make its way into the hands of doctors for use. And even then, at first it is only on a voluntary basis. Since I presume we're not talking about your average allergy pill here, let's use the example of a new potentially life-saving drug. An individual with no other real hope of surviving might be given the OPTION, knowing the risks fully, of trying the medication. But doctors do not even have access to medicine until thoroughly tested, nor may they use non-approved drugs at any time. They don't give untested medicine to a person "just to find out if it works" without complete knowledge and express approval of the person involved and even then, only after thorough FDA tests.

Any violation of this is already criminal and if a person died from a medication he did not agree to use, it's voluntary manslaughter. At best.

So, new laws wouldn't stop this... It's ALREADY a crime and a severe one.

As for the other parts, well, since you readily admit that what you said is just an "on the board identity" of sorts, I have no real problem... Sadly, though, some people have made up information about themselves and I know it to be false. I thought this was another case of that and I'm glad it's not.

Jeremy · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 5:09 pm Post subject:

Dave · Posted: Thu May 22, 2003 5:22 pm Post subject:

It was a good speach...until Jared stomped it down! Very Happy

Are you married to Regis? I thought he was dating Margaret Faye... Wink

Could you possibly abrige that? Some of us (like Ferder) don't have long attentipon spans for things like that.