My name is Joel Goodman and I am running for Congress.
I am running for Congress because I want my country back.
I want the country promised to me by my forefathers; those guys in silk and satin, with long hair, who had the guts to hide out for years from the Redcoat cops just so they could leave me a country resplendent in freedom.
I am that posterity that Madison and all those other guys talked about, "Ourselves and our posterity." You dig?
You see, there really is a great country out there, I've hitchhiked across it, and up and down its coasts, diagonalized it by car and jetted into parts of its middle. And most of this country is filled with good people; decent folk who work hard, and take pride in their lives.
But something's wrong.
The country is bleeding to death.
We are losing our children in a war that no longer makes any sense any way you look at it. We are losing our jobs, our national treasure, our liberty and our self-respect.
It is not business as usual in the United States of America, and it can't be business as usual in Washington D.C.
You see, the joke is that while everything I learned about America isn't entirely true, those who painted those rosy pictures for me did too good a job for me to want to trade in the canvas of my American Dream for a great car, a blinking stereo and cocaine sex.
I'm gonna get the America I was taught I was going to have - and damn them try and stop me. You see there's more of me than there is of them, and we're grown up. We're not about to get our heads broken at Berkley, our asses shot off at Kent Police State, nor arrested in blood in Chicago.
I don't know exactly how "We the people" are going to get our country back but we're gonna do it. Why, if we have to throw tea in Boston Harbor, we might just do that.
I don't know exactly how. But we're gonna get it back from them.
We might even retake the Congress, and give it back to the people - to whom it belongs.
It is Congress that must do the work of bringing the country back to balance. It is the Congress that must do the work of "promoting the general welfare." It is Congress that must say `no' to more deficit spending, and wars built on untrue facts and invasions into our liberty.
This is the work of Congress. And that's where I intend to be come next January.
The war must be ended now. Our liberties must be restored - now.
Our troops are not needed to rebuild Iraq.
Our troops are not needed to teach Iraqi children.
Iraqis built the roads the roads and bridges that we have destroyed. Iraqis built the buildings that we have bombed into oblivion. The Iraqis built their own power plants.
What the Iraqis knew how to build once, they can build again.
We cannot afford the cost in lives and money to support what we are not needed to do in Iraq - and all for no good purpose - at least no good purpose that benefits the average American who can hardly pay to heat his home or drive his car or pay his doctor's bills.
When the founding fathers put this country together under the Constitution they limited the term of the House members to two years because the House was to be responsible for the budget, and they felt that if the citizens didn't like the way their Congressmen were spending their money, they wanted the citizens to have the option to get rid of them quickly. But when a Congress spends so much money as to obligate several Congresses to come to a monetary debt, they are spending money without authority because the people have no say over their taxes if their tax money is already spent before they get a chance to vote on their representatives. Deficit spending is spending without authority. Deficit spending is taxation without representation. And I say that what was tyranny two hundred years ago is tyranny today.
The war in Iraq is eating us to death, and it is the distraction that is keeping us from dealing with the major domestic issues of our times.
I want the war stopped now; not tomorrow, not next month, not next year.
My neighbor in the second district is a popular Republican, and he was one of the 133 House members who voted against the war resolution in 2003. I believe my district wants the same from their next representative. Whatever the people in the Tennessee 1st felt about the war when it started, the majority now feels it is wrong.
This race can be won if the 12 disparate counties are formed into a cohesive Congressional District, and that is what I have been working towards for the past several months.
I truly need your help to get the job done. If you live in TN-01, please contact my campaign and we'll put you right to work. I need volunteers in all 12 counties in this district in order to go up against a heavily-financed Republican machine.
Respectfully,
Joel Goodman