Why Steve
If you, the voters of the NC Tenth District,
elect to send me to Washington to represent you in the US House of
Representatives, I promise to do my best to serve your interests. I
promise never to put the agenda of any special interest group or major
campaign contributor ahead of your interests. I promise to be visible
in the district, to listen to you, to be accessible, and to be honest.
Congressional staffs are limited to a fixed number. I promise that at
least half of my staff will be assigned directly in the district to help
people with problems and to assist in job creation/preservation and economic
development. I promise to work to create, identify, and propose
positive changes, especially in the areas of budget/tax, better jobs, fair
trade, healthcare, veterans affairs, energy, and education. I promise
to put problem solving ahead of party interest. I promise to be a
bridge-builder, to be bipartisan, to make friends in both parties, and not
to be controlled by party machines.
Dear friends and supporters,
I am running for the Democratic Nomination and
Congressional Seat for the Tenth District of North Carolina. Democrat,
Independent, and Republican, I need your votes and your support.
Together we can make a difference. Together, with vision for the
future, but knowledge of the past, we can face the dramatic challenges of
the coming years.
The seat I am seeking is currently held by Mr. Patrick
McHenry. Mr. McHenry, at 31 and with little life experience outside
politics, has allowed himself to be used by zealots in the Republican Party
as an abrasive attack dog against anything that Democrats might propose.
In many cases, he has been on national television doing this in ways that do
no credit to our District or its people. Many in his own party find
his behavior unacceptable. Earlier this year when he attacked
Democratic use of the “Earmark” program (created by the earlier Republican
Majority), his own party punished him by voting down a proposed Tenth
District earmark.
Mr. McHenry was raised in Charlotte. A review of
his funding sources makes it clear that he owes more to wealthy interests in
that city than he does to the voters of the Tenth. He moved to nearby
Cherryville just to grab a vulnerable NC House Seat. Later, to win the
Tenth District Congressional seat, he used his influence with Young
Republicans and other techniques that still have many Republicans upset.
Many of his tactics and associates have now come under public scrutiny
and/or legal review.
Why me, a native born son? Without in any way
shortchanging new arrivals to the Tenth District, I claim that my knowledge
of the territory, the communities, the people, the environment, the
resources, the industries, the agriculture, the infrastructure needs, the
history, the culture, the cultural values, and the various religious values
gives me a distinct advantage in balancing the ever-changing needs of our
District. For the new arrivals, I went to college and graduate school
and lived for a time in the Northeast. I know what it means to be in a
new area and the associated feelings and issues. Since January of
2007, I have been actively working on this candidacy in all ten counties.
I have shaken hands with, talked to, and listened to literally thousands of
voters at fairs, festivals, block parties, parades, party events, lectures,
etc.
For the past two years, I have been a county delegate
at all state-level Democratic Party conventions. At the state
Democratic Convention last fall, as a potential Congressional Candidate, I
addressed the Progressives Organization with some thoughts on Healthcare.
I am a grassroots candidate for the Democratic
nomination. I am not “wired-into” or “beholden to” any
group--regional, professional, religious, or commercial. I am fiscally
conservative and socially moderate. Other candidates have “special
attention from” or “bases in” Raleigh, Charlotte, or Washington. Those
two NC metropolitan areas seem to get the best bite of every apple coming
into NC. I will focus my representation on the interests of the
citizens of the Tenth District.
I am confident that the “golden age” or “best years” of
our nation are in the future. However, in the short/mid-term, we are
facing economically stressful times. The recent devaluation of the
dollar has implications for inflation that cannot be avoided. The
conflict in Iraq is being paid for with debt and the printing press.
No special tax or other universal citizen contribution (US Savings Bonds,
for example) is being used to fund it. This same course was followed
with Vietnam, and it took a major currency devaluation and the complete
collapse of the savings and loan business sector for our economy to recover.
There will be a real balancing act to get our national
economy back on solid footing without foreigners owning all our land and
industry. Those Asian and off-shore petroleum dollars are not going to
sit idly by as the US Dollar devalues and artificially depressed interest
rates are imposed. They will be bound to transfer that wealth into
real assets. Daily we hear about major companies or their divisions
being purchased by private investment groups of unknown ownership, probably
foreign. Some foreign governments maintain funds dedicated to
purchasing US businesses. Foreign-owned or controlled REITs (Real
Estate Investment Trusts) are being set up. The latest issue of the
Progressive Farmer covers this phenomenon of foreign open land
ownership and its effect on farmland costs.
My parents and grandparents told me about the Great
Depression of the 1930’s, and I know how my life was directly affected by
it. In Business School, I learned more about its underlying causes.
Having lived a little longer than some other candidates, I have witnessed a
number of economic cycles and energy shortages. Business education and
experience will have more relevance to the coming economic period than
either legal or political training.
Current efforts to maintain employment levels by
"overheating" the construction industry with artificially depressed interest
rates/terms are beginning to collapse. After all, construction is
basically a “service industry.” Domestic construction projects are not
shipped offshore to help with our very unfavorable balance of trade and to
pay for computers, cheap textiles and toys, oil, etc. The sprawl
created by this effort is eating up our farmland and environment with no
improvement in “quality of life” for our citizens. We must shift our
labor hours and investment dollars to items that can be sold in
international markets and away from building and overbuilding shopping malls
and massive, monotonous, housing developments.
The idea of a purely “Service Economy” is a cruel myth
and deception, and we must not allow it to destroy our nation. This
means we must develop and encourage new industries or make our traditional
industries more competitive. It also means negotiating and
renegotiating international trade to give our established, evolving, and new
industries a level playing field--Fair Trade, rather than Free Trade.
My training and experience in science and high-tech gives me the tools to
help identify and encourage the best industries for our Tenth District.
My business training and study of Foreign Affairs/History prepare me to
review and recommend trade policies.
Our education system, legal system, and healthcare
system are in complete disarray. There was a time when these systems
worked far better. We need to review and change some mistaken policy
choices that have been made. Knowledge of this earlier time gives a
base from which to review what works and what does not work. We cannot
go back, but we must go forward with confidence that things can work better
than they are working today. I have particular concerns about
healthcare, and I strongly support a move to a Universal Health Care System.
We need to avoid labels like “Socialized Medicine” and leave a single payer
system as an option to be considered along with other options. Among
nations, we are first in per capita healthcare costs, but thirty-seventh in
health of all our citizens. A healthy nation is a prosperous nation.
With a 40% dropout rate in some local school systems, it is clear that new
directions are needed in Public Education. Felonious breaking and
entering cases are taking up to two years to come to trial. Clearly,
our judicial system needs major changes. I will do my homework, listen
to all of you, and fight for change to fix real, and not imagined, problems.
Early on, the leaders of my undergraduate college, The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, saw that engineers and scientists
could not avoid ethical issues. This became even clearer in WWII and
the Cold War. As a result, my first two undergraduate years included a
strong foundation in literature, philosophy, and history. I have
continued this start with a lifelong interest in and study of military
history and foreign affairs. This interest, combined with my
experience with and in other cultures, prepares me to evaluate and create
laws that affect our national relationships with other countries and our
strategic national positions.
I am very concerned to create Middle East peace and
security, and thus make us safer in our own country. I think our
Occupation of Iraq is not helping us in these goals. It is diverting
attention from more important objectives, like some of those in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and elsewhere. Foreign affairs are, by their nature,
multi-faceted. We appear to have effectively abandoned all but
military solutions, such as our handling of Iraq. I stand firmly
behind our troops, but strategic and tactical changes are needed by our
Department of Defense and our State Department. Historically, the
combat military has been a smaller part of a successful occupation. To
date, our military has done everything asked of it in the Middle East.
The failures have been in police work, economic restoration, political
reconciliation, and statecraft.
A year after graduation from MIT with a Bachelors in
Mechanical Engineering (BSME), I took leave from a military-deferred
industry job and signed up for three years of active duty as an Officer in
the US Coast Guard. After my active duty tour, I continued on unpaid,
call-up reserve for seven and one-half more years. I took advantage of
the far-better veterans' benefits of that time to help with the cost of
attending graduate school at Harvard Business School, where I earned a
Masters of Business Administration (MBA). I am personally concerned
about our returning veterans, their health, and their reintegration into our
economy. We are just beginning to understand the effects on long-term
health from head trauma, such as that produced by Improvised Explosive
Devices (IEDs). We are not putting sufficient emphasis on educational
opportunities for veterans that will allow them to move into the jobs they
deserve. For example, as a member of the recent Hickory Airport Task
Force, I have actively encouraged an Air Traffic Control program
specifically targeted at returning veterans to be part of the Aviation
Program at Caldwell Community College and the Hickory Airport. I will
work actively in the interest of our veterans in educational and other
benefits, and particularly, in health care.
I have worked as Product Development Engineer, Inventor
(ten patents), Corporate Chief Engineer, Marketing Manager, Business
Planner, Business/Technical Consultant, and Owner/Operator of my own
measuring device manufacturing business. I have traveled in Europe,
the Caribbean, China, and South America. I am a licensed Professional
Engineer in North Carolina. I am an active Instrument-rated Pilot with
3,500 hours of flight time. I currently fly myself all over the
Eastern US on business and pleasure. This working in a variety of
disciplines and travel has allowed me to see many cities and regions, and to
see what works for other places that might work here in the Tenth District.
Man does not live by bread alone. My wife, Judy,
and I weekly attend local events related to regional music, classical music,
theater, literature, and regional crafts. My wife regularly attends
the local Catholic Church. I am a member of the First Methodist Church
in Morganton. For the past year, I have tried to attend different
churches (urban and rural) and denominations every Sunday. Our
traditional music, our classical music, our theater, our artists, our
crafts, our industry, our agriculture, our concern for quality, our work
ethic, our care about conservation of the environment, our ability to accept
others (legally and in moderation), our care for family and neighbors, our
attention to good government, and our unique spirit make the Tenth District
of NC a place where the best of human values and culture reside. Let
us work together to maintain, build, and improve our region and our nation,
both in economy and in spirit.
Sincerely,
Steve Ivester