Daily Record/Sunday News file
We had a meeting to talk about questions for a poll, and were trying to come up with issues to ask about that could help us guide coverage into November. I feel like my answers are based on what I do for a living — read and edit stories.
I can tell you about the voter ID law. I can tell you about a bunch of facts through a partnership we have with Face the Facts. I can tell you what I’d like to see stories about, and what I think the readers want to know about after having attended the debates we’ve hosted.
But what does this generation care about? A hot topic heading into this election? Who knows.
I guess I can start with what I care about. I worry about health care. I worry about money and saving for my future. I worry about having rights and freedom.
I don’t have opinions on school vouchers or charter schools. I don’t have children, so I don’t worry about my public schools. I don’t put a lot of thought into property taxes because I still rent.
Should we increase funding for schools or transportation? Yes. But where that money is going to come from, I don’t know. I don’t have ideas for cutting the deficit or changing the political world. I just report on it.
I’m asking the candidates this year in our election coverage what they think the biggest issues facing the U.S., state and York County are and how they’d fix it. But I’m not sure I have the answer if someone were to ask me that today.
Maybe that’s why I’m in journalism and not politics.
What do you think our generation cares about the most going into November?
Our state is giving away our natural gas resource, and that should be used to educate funding.
VA’s DOT was awarded an additional $52 Million in Federal Money as a reward for having infrastructure projects ready. Their efficiency was rewarded.
Instead, we are having fights about Ultrasounds, Voter ID and property tax elimination. If our legislators would DO THEIR JOBS and REPRESENT ALL OF US, we wouldn’t have to “worry” or “fear” for the future.
Invest here, with good technical jobs. Why can’t we build the iPhone here? Why can’t we offer better customer service call centers here? Why can’t we be at the forefront of preventing cyber-warfare? Why are we even in the Middle East? They hate us, and rightfully so.
I know it’s a bit of a rambling, but we need to get our house in order first, stop with the partisan bullcrap and then worry about the cold war.
I was 20 something a while ago. I’d like to suggest an issue that cuts across all issues, and reflects the fractured politics of today and my generation’s greatest failure. It affects health, food production, safety, economic and social justice, animals and species extinction. That issue is global warming. You and your peers have grown up in a warming world, where extreme weather is becoming more common, so it’s not surprising you’re not aware of the change that the extreme weather represents. You’re not aware because we’ve let oil and coal corporations replay the tobacco industry playbook of denying that cigarettes were harmful for decades when they knew full well of the dangers. This poisoning people for profit also happened a bit before your time, but it’s been redone by fossil fuel corporate lobbyists and politicians. 98% of climate scientists agree that global warming is manmade, it’s happening now and is worse than forecast. One of the worst greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, remains in the atmosphere for 1000 years. We need to move to renewable energy like solar and wind, and efficiency now. The good news is there are great jobs to be had making this change, and if we let your generation attack the problem, you’ll clean up the air and lower our energy costs as you create a new 21st century economy based on energy that doesn’t harm people or the environment. If we don’t change now, by the time you are my age the US Southwest will be a PERMANENT dustbowl, sea level will be a foot higher and rising to 3-7 feet by the end of the century, and there will be more cases of asthma among many costly effects. I recommend following Climate Progress. It gives the latest in climate news in layman’s terms with links to the science. Here’s the website link. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/issue/?mobile=nc