Hiring the Convicted
There are so many posts going around stating if it is OK to hire a convicted felon for President, it is OK to hire a convicted felon for any position. This is true. If it took you the conviction of a privileged, high-status man to come to this realization, you are part of the problem.
I have worked with, worked for, supervised, and hired people with criminal records. In fact, if there are two resumes before me, one with a conviction and the other without, all other things being equal, I will pick the felon. In my experience, felons work harder. It is that simple to me. Which one of these people can I trust - without knowing them fully - to do the job better? The felon wins.
When I was a youth and without status or reputation, I took odd jobs to make ends meet. One of them was in a warehouse and brought me into contact with all manner of person: robbers, assailants, murderers, illegals. These people worked the hardest I have ever seen anyone work. They had lived inside the system (in a 20 sqft cell) and were determined to never become dependent upon that system again; it fueled them, and they were successful.
One of the hardest working people I know - one of the people I would entrust ANY task to because I know it would get done if accepted - was tried, convicted, and punished. I would trust this man with the keys to the kingdom because, I know he would do right by me. All of the snakes in the grass, all of the slimy sales types, all of the say-it-behind-my-back, all of the petty people I know have no criminal record outside parking and speeding tickets.
These are the facts of my life. Maybe other people have different experiences, but these are mine. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and don’t judge a person by his rap sheet.
Children with Guns
This is a good thing. I take my children to the range often. They learn rifle and handgun. They love to shoot especially on steel targets; the ding really gets them fired up!
We have children’s dirt bikes. We have children’s swimming. We have children’s beauty pageants. We have children’s crossbow. We have children’s anything and everything in America because, in America, a parent gets to direct and rule the life of a child. The Government does not rule, it merely governs as indicated by its name. The Government does not come into the family. The family is sovereign.
This is one of the salient points made by our founders. They set for us a Governmental system that made parents and families stronger than Government. This is why they located men who abandoned their families and put them to use in workhouses; a practice that we (in my opinion) should bring back. It is not just a parent’s right to raise his own family without interference, it is a parent’s duty to do so.
I shoot at the range; therefore, my children shoot at the range. It is part of our culture. It is part of our life. You handle your family as you see fit, I will handle mine. We read. We write. We shoot. There is nothing wrong with that.
Term Limits
One of the larger (ongoing) topics swirling around is the topic of term limits for elected officials. This is not likely to get done any time soon. An act of law limiting the power and influence of the lawmakers themselves is a hard sell for anyone. However, a de facto limit can be imposed within a political party.
At the Texas GOP Convention, much thought was put into this. We were pitched the idea of effectively using the Right of Association to impose term limits on our own candidates. If a person has held office for a certain number of terms, they are ineligible to secure a Republican nomination from the Republican Party of Texas. they would be welcome to run as a Democrat or as an Independent, just not on the Republican ticket.
We all know a person who ran, won, and worked as a Republican has little to no chance of securing a nomination on the Democrat ticket. We also know Independents secure 10% or less of the vote. This policy effectively drains the Texas GOP swamp.
This may not be a sweeping policy to fix the entire issue, but we can clean up our side of the street at the very least. Even the people who have no time to research candidates and vet policymakers should have some guidance from their party and their party’s delegates. This mechanism forces that to be the case.
Career & Technical Ed
I am a member of the expert elite class. I hold degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Women’s Studies. These degrees have served me well mainly because I am STEM-based and the world compensates STEM. Although I would not trade my degrees, this way, I understand, is not the only way.
Career and Technical Education has taken a back seat in recent memory. When I was in High School, CTE was extremely important. In fact, I was well-studied in computer network engineering in anticipation of going the CTE route after High School. This option was concrete, reachable, understandable, and approachable for a young high school student. Further, a CTE certification commands high compensation. Many of those who take CTE seriously can earn $60K or more without going $200,000 in debt to a university.
This is one (among many) reason I made my way to Ellis County, TX. CTE is well respected and well-supported in this area. When I was young, I had the option of CTE and I would not have done as well as I have in life absent that option. I want the same for my children.
The choice to get the training necessary to complete a certification and enter adulthood with a title is a great choice. The people I know who have certifications did far better than those without in the COVID lockdowns. When your set of skills builds and maintains the infrastructure relied upon by today’s society, you tend to weather storms well.
Here in Wacahachie, high school students have the express option of taking up a technical education path. They can leave high school certified and ready to work. The main differences between CTE and college are
CTE starts you the day after high school graduation if you are successful in your certifications
CTE incurs significantly less debt
CTE is more hands-on and focused on the vocation whereas college is more general
Both CTE and college can be foregone in early life and taken up later if one would like making both a good option after a life event or for a change of pace.
The generality of college can give some pause to families. Not all colleges are created equal. Some colleges have been referred to as “indoctrination camps”. The breadth of agency a college is given in the shaping of our youth is a factor these institutions have been tuning for quite some time. Some colleges are more liberal and provide just about everything imaginable as a focus area, minor, or major so the student can choose the education they seek to receive. Other colleges have a more classical interpretation of their place in society and have tailored curricula that has been curated mercilessly to provide the precise education they seek to provide.
All of this fluff is left to an individual’s own reading and curiosity when taking the CTE route. As far as I can tell there are no gender studies or critical race theory CTE programs offered. CTEs provide a focused program to the very pursuit for which it has been written.
This is all to say there is a choice students can make. College is not the end all be all. For some careers (like software, data, and AI) college makes a great deal of sense. For other things, it may not make sense. I know a lot of people paying off student loans for programs they don’t use in jobs they could have gotten without the debt; I don’t know anyone certified in electrical or pipefitting who is in that same position.
Contract With Texas
This is one of the most important movements in Texas at present. It is effectively asking our Republican political candidates to pledge they will do their jobs. We all know they have not been doing their jobs. We can all feel the weight of their failure to perform. It is common sense they should be doing better, but they overwhelmingly do not pledge to do better.
A full list of signatories and abstainers can be found on the website. We can see why failing to sign would send a powerful, anti-liberty, anti-grassroots message upon inspection:
Only solicit support for Speakership from Republican members
End the practice of awarding Democrats with committee chairmanships
Ensure all GOP legislative priorities receive a floor vote before any Democrat bills
Replace the current liberal Parliamentarians with staff committed to only offering advice on adherence to House rules, not to advancing their personal ideology
Limit the Speaker to two terms to reduce their power over individual members
Ensure there are no longer any Democrat-majority committees
Stop parliamentary abuse by requiring only substantial adherence to House rules to keep hyper-technical points of order from killing good legislation
Allow audio/video recording of all House proceedings, including point of order debates
Start substantive work as soon as Session begins to end delays that kill priority legislation
Reform the Calendars Committee to increase transparency and accountability
Select a Republican as Speaker Pro Tempore
Decentralize power by prohibiting the distribution of political funds from the Speaker.
If you ran on the Republican ticket, you were, through Freedom of Association, endowed with the ability to do so by your Republican constituency. This implies you are accountable to the Republicans who put you in that position. you are not accountable to the Governor of TX; you are not accountable to the President of these United States. You are accountable to We, the People. Things do not work backward here; we are not Democrats. We do not worship Government. We do not wait for Government to fix our problems. We do not kow tow to the current order. This was made clear the last round of primaries where 15 incumbents lost their seats.
If you do not represent our values, we will remove you from the ticket. This is plain, simple, easy, and understandable.
Trying Job Market
The job market is really rough these days. I have done plenty of hiring in the past, and this is the worst I have seen. I am in tech so this may vary, but there are two salient threads from my perspective:
Experienced people are staying put a lot longer than usual
Inexperienced people are flooding recruiters and HR reps with resumes
Since the market is so weak, the experienced stay where they are. This means the firms who have the experienced people, are not hiring the way they used to. It was once that a person could use a mid tier position to get a good salary while awaiting a high-tier opening at another firm; now, if the job is “good enough” no one is willing to take the risk leaving for whatever grass might be on the other side of the fence. With this backup in employee churn comes significant headwinds for those looking to break into the industry.
The more difficult it is to break into an industry, the worse it feels to those at the bottom. We are seeing 100+ resumes per open position. One’s chances of success are marginal especially if there is nothing special about the applicant. The longer someone has on their resume between graduation and their first employment, the more questions it raises in the recruiters’ heads making things even worse. These difficult times call for new and varied approaches to get one’s foot in the door.
With 100+ applicants, HR needs some way of knowing how to pick the “1st one”. The easiest way is by referrals; they take the referrals first. Those searching and finding themselves at a dead end should show up to meetups and conferences. Some of these events are free of charge, and if you are not working, you should be able to find one to attend nearby. Talking to people and shaking hands is the fastest way into a job. The people you meet will likely know of an open position or know of someone who is searching for candidates. You don’t need to work for a fortune 500 company to earn a fortune; anywhere that pays enough should do just fine.
I also see a lot of people clout-chasing and title-choosing. None of this matters. No one cares if you are a Widget Designer I or a Widget Designer II; they only care that the widgets work and you only care that you are fairly compensated. Apply for everything, even if it looks out of reach. HR people often write the job descriptions, and as a result, you can usually get through an interview process successfully without everything on the list. Even if the job is not the one you want, once you work inside of an organization it is easier to transition to a different department if you play your cards right. The biggest drag on a candidate is a long period of non-employment; do not fall into this just because the words on your name tag might not be what you want. Take what you get and put a plan together to make your pivot.
While you are not working, do some community service. It will fill in the gap and get you in front of more people, shaking more hands, and potentially lead to a fruitful connection with a job at the end of the tunnel. There is no rule that you cannot socialize and network while volunteering; you might as well be getting something out of it.
The real point is, no matter what is going on, one cannot wait around for random happenstance or the Government to fix the job market. A successful person adapts and moves with the winds of change. Be your own hero.