"I'm Politically Homeless," and I'm inspired to do something about it. Will you join me?
"I'm Politically Homeless," and I'm inspired to do something about it.
Would you join an independent movement in South Carolina to promote legislation primarily in education, jobs, and healthcare that impact you and your family personally and are crucial to a modern economy? If you would, say so below. If you are uncomfortable doing that publicly, private message me.
The core of this movement is talented people with outstanding assets in South Carolina who can make considerable progress in South Carolina. We all benefit from living in an affluent, educated society surrounded by skilled people, from the mechanic who maintains our car to the surgeon who operates on our heart. What holds us back are the cynics and naysayers who say there are too many problems and corruption to move forward. We’re not dismissing that there are challenges, but we’re politely asking the cynics to get out of the way so the rest of us can help everyone realize their full potential. The priorities are:
- Transforming public education by treating teachers like professionals so they can be innovative in meeting the needs of their students, and empowering parents to choose the best of these options for their children by money following the child.
- Ensuring that everyone after high school has access to affordable and excellent higher education and life long learning, from apprenticeships to research universities.
- Enhancing economic development by building on our outstanding global relationships to attract high paying innovation facilities and headquarters to take our strong industrial base to the next level.
- Improving the health of everyone to bend down the cost of healthcare which is becoming unsustainable and crowding other priorities out of the budgets of many organizations.
Last year I published the article below, "I'm Politically Homeless," which has been supported more across social media than any other article I have written. Since then, the discontent has grown in the country across the political spectrum.
If we get enough support for this independent movement, we will do something about it.
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"I’m Politically Homeless" By John Warner
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“I'm not represented well by either political extreme and feel politically homeless.” I posted that to Facebook in 2014 in response to an article in which the author analyzed the country’s political polarization “by examining how Democratic presidential candidates performed in counties with a Whole Foods...and in counties with a Cracker Barrel." I asked, “I wonder what he did in a county like Greenville with a Whole Foods within walking distance of a Cracker Barrel? I live on this divide, meeting people for breakfast at Cracker Barrel in the morning, and stopping by Whole Foods to pick up something for dinner in the afternoon.”
We all benefit from living in an affluent, educated society. It is in our enlightened self-interest to ensure that everyone can reach their full human potential, from the skilled mechanics who service our cars to the skilled surgeons who operate on our hearts. Virginia Postrel in The Future and Its Enemies said, “a dynamic civilization allows its members to gain from the things they themselves do not know but other people do… and to develop, extend, and act on their particular knowledge without asking permission of a higher, but less informed, authority.” That’s the free society I want to live in.
That society requires an educated population. Recently South Carolina was ranked last in education. Let that sink in. I served on the Education Oversight Committee for several years. At the highest levels in our state, teachers are not respected as professionals so we pile on more high stakes testing and bureaucracy. We’ll never transform K-12 education into the system our children need and deserve until we treat teachers as professionals with the flexibility to innovate in their classrooms, and allow money to follow the child so parents can choose the best education options for their children.
85% of Legacy Charter School’s students live in poverty. If students come to school hungry or sick, they’re not going to learn. Legacy meets students where they are, feeding them and providing access to healthcare before they enter the classroom. Legacy delivers results. 100% of Legacy’s students graduate and are accepted to college, and 76% are still in college two years later. Educational entrepreneurs must lead the transformation of education.
Economic development must create good jobs so smart young people and other talented folks can stay here and thrive. Because our economic development strategy is designed primarily to recruit branch manufacturing, wages per job in South Carolina relative to the country have fallen for fifteen years. In the past decade we built from dirt one of the world’s best graduate engineering schools at CU-ICAR, but most graduates leave the state. We need to create their best career opportunities here by growing more entrepreneurial companies and attracting more innovation facilities and corporate headquarters. We attracted Michelin branch manufacturing which led to attracting Michelin R&D and finally the Michelin North America headquarters. Economic development must be reinvented to do more of that.
During the technology bust of 2000, I was the public face of KEMET announcing the layoffs of thousands of people. If you were a 55 year old capacitor maker with a high school education who just got laid off, you were screwed through no fault of your own. Your KEMET job wasn’t coming back, and it was going to be very difficult to find anything comparable in our highly globalized and automated economy. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump, but I understand the frustration that led many to vote for him. We can’t leave anyone behind.
We can’t have a free society until we have a just society. Recently I was stopped by a police officer at 11:30 pm who gave me a ticket for not using a turn signal despite almost no other traffic. I’m white, and while respectful I wasn’t concerned about sharing my intense displeasure. Last year on the US Senate floor, Tim Scott shared how his experience of being stopped by police was different because he is black. I appreciate the anxiety and frustration this causes my black and Hispanic friends, especially when it is their children who are stopped. It’s self-evident that we’re all created equal.
Demagogues on both extremes blame our problems on others. Most 1% I know worked hard to build the wealth they have. Most Hispanic immigrants I have met are hard working people who risked a lot to taste the freedom the rest of us take for granted.
Where is the political movement that celebrates the success that many have achieved in America, while at the same time recognizing that all of us must be treated fairly and that no one can be left behind?
When I find that movement I’ll join it. Even better, if this resonates with you, contact me and let’s create it together.