HambackerforUSCongress.com
This I believe . . .
1. EVERY individual is equal
2. government gets its authority from
the people
3. we are a nation of laws and not of
men
4. we must protect against the
military-industrial complex
5. our environment is a sacred trust
6. PEOPLE, not business, are our #1
priority
7. children are our greatest resource
and unless they are nurtured, we
have no future
8. the elderly are our heritage and
deserve our respect, honor and care
9. the poor and disabled must be
provided for properly &
10. all elected officials must live by the
laws and regulations they impose
upon the citizenry.


As your Congresswoman, I promise to
work to . . .
1. ensure that our children are nurtured
so they might achieve their full
potential
2. ensure that EVERY citizen's personal
and private rights and choices are
protected
3. increase the minimum wage
4. put in place a decent health care plan that will ensure coverage for EVERY
citizen
5. ensure that EVERY citizen's
retirement is one of dignity and worth
6. root out the influence of mega-
business in government
7. put in place stringent safeguards to
protect our environment and
8. restore transparency and honesty in
our government

This is a topic-comment article I submitted to Parabola Magazine when they were planning for their next issue of their magazine. Some bloggers have called me "way out" religiously for this article. I reprint it here for you to see that it is a thoughtful, insightful piece of writing and is, in no way, "way out."

Life is filled with contradictions. Human beings themselves are complicated, mixtures of physical and spiritual, rational and irrational, good and evil, id and ego. Inherently contained within each of a pair of seemingly opposite concepts are the component parts of the other, co-existent. Therefore, either each of the opposites springs from the other, or one lies dormant beside its active other half.

This is most evident in the homes of solitary geniuses. In the workroom seeming chaos reigns with stacks and rows of data-containing references, tracts, books, quarterlies, and discipline journals arranged in no apparent order. Any person entering those premises would be struck by the utter chaos. But there is no chaos here for the individual to whom the material belongs. He knows exactly which article containing what information is in which magazine in which stack. Such is the order contained within the chaos of this situation.

Mothers who enter their child's room and look on the jumbled, chaotic scene are often astonished when the child comes bouncing into the room and goes directly to a desired item that the mother would have believed forever misplaced amid the tumult of toys and clothes.

Ancient people, gazing at the heavens, probably thought the lights in the night sky were simply a chaotic array. However, years of mathematical calculation, study, watchfulness, and dogged processing of recorded information allowed astronomers to bring order to our universe.

For meteorologists, weather prediction, especially of tornadoes and hurricanes, was virtually impossible only a few years ago. Understanding the patterns, paths, and predictability of these storms required them to bring order out of chaos. As with astronomy, this science was developed through persistence, perseverance, study, and observation.

Eighteen suicide bombers turned the American mundane status quo and total order into utter chaos. Not only were pristine, symmetrical, orderly structures, twin bastions of the modern architectural spirit reduced to rubble, but all of Wall Street, all of New York City and America's sense of financial, physical, and psychological security and order was shattered, even if temporarily. Out of order sprang chaos, roiling, snarling and snapping until it completely replaced our serenity.

The order and stability that was the Catholic Church was recently hurled into chaos by the pedophilia that sprang from the imposed order of the priesthood. All of these recent events lead us to believe that chaos and order are indeed coexistent. What prompts the rise of one over the other? Random acts, perhaps. Whether planned or serendipitous, well-timed events can certainly turn order into chaos, as we have so painfully witnessed. Study, observation and thoughtfulness can bring order to chaos, as all of history attests. It therefore appears that neither exists in the absence of the other, for each gives meaningful definition to the other.

Veronica Hambacker

Many Republican blogs have begun to carry highly critical statements about my stand on the rights and choices of every American. While they wish to paint me as a left-wing nutcase, what I hope to protect is the Constitutional right of every American to pursue life, liberty and happiness. Is this pursuit not the right of every American? I believe it is. Unlike my Republican opponent, I believe that no bigotry or discrimination should ever become a part of our nation's laws, ostracizing and disenfranchising any of our fellow Americans for their ideas or choices. We must preserve and protect our Constitution and all of the rights and privileges it guarantees to every citizen of the United States.
While Republicans continually try to paint any and all Democratic candidates into single, wedge-issue corners, you will not hear them talking about those issues that are important to every American: bringing our young men and women home from Iraq and adequately caring for them once they are home, providing health care for everyone, nurturing and educating our children while not overburdening them, as Republicans have done, with taxes necessitated by giving huge tax shifts back to the wealthiest Americans, and preserving our Social Security system so that elders in America will have dignity in their retirement. We must be about providing quality, well-paying jobs for everyone, the rights of unions to organize, bringing down the high cost of energy, providing funds for energy research and development instead of giving billions in subsidies to the oil companies, living within our means by not continuing to add to our debt burdens with our mindless, escalating budget deficits and whopping debt, continuing contempt for science and its evidence of environmental degradation and global warming, and halting the erosion of our Constitutional rights and privileges.
Sincerely,
Veronica J. Hambacker