it's about to get political up in here.

Up to about six weeks ago, my vote was decided. I passionately supported and advocated for Ron Paul throughout the primaries and was even a delegate to the Cherokee County convention, and selected to be a delegate to the State and alternate to District. I have a friend who went to the National convention. I saw and heard firsthand accounts (videos, photos, first person updates) of the corruption there. I do believe so very much in everything Ron Paul represents. I respect the momentum that he has gained over the last couple of elections. It saddened me that he was squashed and silenced by the ignorance of the American voter, the media, and even by his own party. I was determined to write him in yesterday, and leave it at that. I thought I would respect myself more in the morning. 

But then the first Obama/Romney debate happened. I didn't want to pay it any attention. And then I watched it later, and saw how Romney really spoke clearly and articulately about the state of the economy versus the state of things in the last four years. It wasn't that he swayed me with his words. He made me do some serious thinking about my life and what it meant to stand for what I had been standing for. That the issues and things that I was passionate about really may have contradicted the way we ACTUALLY live... I had the realization that on one hand I was shouting about how we need less government and a return to the Constitution, and on the other hand, we were on unemployment, food stamps, WIC, and Medicaid all at once. We took advantage of the available government benefits and those benefits seriously floated us through the hardest times...

I began to recognize that my political mentality was extremely disconnected from my actual reality. I was in a sort of political denial about how the last four years had affected our family... 

All the things that had happened to our family since September 2009... somehow those things were not in the forefront of my mind when I considered how I would be voting this election. Why? I don't know. You see, in September 2009, I was laid off from my fancy corporate job. I'd been there for 9 years, had been laid off once and brought back during the 2001/2002 recession. Our income dropped by about 70% after that layoff. After I went on unemployment, our income was still down by about 50%. I started my cake business and took care of my nephew to make a little money. Things were tight, but okay. Then my husband lost his job in late July 2010. I was 7 months pregnant with Noah. He was a contracted worker at that job so he couldn't get unemployment. There was no two week notice. He was simply told not to come back to work. He worked in the health insurance industry. After the Affordable Care Act was passed, the health insurance companies he worked for didn't want to pay the same commissions, so he was laid off. 

So around the time our baby boy was born, we were down to living on just my unemployment, and on food stamps. My kids had been on Medicaid for over a year. Once Noah was born we were on WIC too. We were probably receiving the equivalent of $2K in government benefits each month. My husband was trying his hand in the insurance industry but without salary. I was taking care of very small children during the day and night and couldn't see how I could work and do cakes and take care of my nephew (well, I guess that was working). There was no income outside of these benefits. Eventually, the mortgage stopped getting paid. Eventually, we started getting foreclosure notices. We scrambled to get out of our home into a place where we could live and try to get on our feet and try to sell the house. We were receiving handouts left and right from concerned friends and had an amazingly supportive family. There were many hard times during that period.

The truth is, the benefits we received from the government were a lifesaver. I understand why people want and need government help to get by through hard times. So many benefits... SO wanting to not need them, but so desperate.  It truly saved us and took the edge off of our financial strain. I understand where the need comes in for these benefits AND I also understand how being on them can make it hard to see a way out of poverty and welfare... when you receive $700 a month in food stamps, $1300 in unemployment, $200+ in WIC vouchers and untold medical costs covered by Medicaid, and you sit down and realize that you need to make $40K+ a year just to have enough cash after taxes to cover these expenses WITHOUT the benefits in place, it can be a daunting thing. It can make being on welfare VERY comfortable. It means that neither my husband or I had to work two jobs (even though maybe we should have been), made us available to our children, meant we had time to work on the place we had to move into when foreclosure was imminent... meant that Jason could pursue a commission only job because the unemployment was there... It became -- not comfortable... it was always slightly uncomfortable paying with the EBT card... I was always grocery shopping late at night to cash in all my WIC vouchers so I didn't hold up the line during busy hours...  always a little pride swallowing going on every time I had to drag my kids to the Labor Department or WIC Office... always explaining away to family and friends why things weren't better... It was never comfortable... but inside, we had the safety net and all of those experiences were worth the security of health care for my kids, food on the table, and money to keep the lights on and gas in our cars. 

If we hadn't had the option of being on these benefits, I wonder how we might have handled our desperation differently. Would a greater level of desperation have caused us to fight harder for our family's financial future? Would that pain have been worth it and would we be better off now than we actually are? Part of me thinks we would be, but the other part of me thinks it helped us maintain some sort of dignity. Would having absolutely nothing have triggered a drive within us to do anything and everything to get out of this hole? The answer is obvious. Although I know we would never have been left homeless, I still think that fire would have been hotter under our butts to get the cash flowing and provide for ourselves.

So when I really started thinking about what it would mean for me to write in Ron Paul... what it would mean for our family, for our economy... what it means is that the bailouts and propping up of the economy through TARP that happened in 2008/2009 and further stimulus that has happened since might not have happened... it would have meant that the economy would have been allowed to hit rock bottom... something that many economists say might have been the best thing for this "free market". For the market to have tanked the way it should have and rebuilt itself on its own would have ensured a real robust and stable recovery for the economy. On a micro level, it would have meant the same for our family... I am pretty sure. But that vote literally would contradict the very way we had been living... looking the gift horse in the mouth so to speak... saying "lower taxes! no more government handouts! smaller government!" while being the quintessential recipient of government welfare benefits... again, can we say DENIAL?

So, I stopped certifying for unemployment in August 2011 because of the weight on my conscience even though I was eligible to continue certifying. I stopped getting WIC for that reason too. Honestly, it has been hard to let go of food stamps and Medicaid for my kids. But the thing with us is that WE WANT TO BE OFF OF THEM. We talk about even letting them go... allowing our family to struggle without taking anymore from the government... to rebuilt in a way that means we fight for every penny that we have. Even though it's comfortable, WE DON'T WANT TO CONTINUE RECEIVING HELP FROM THE GOVERNMENT. We want our little micro-economy to thrive and flourish. We want to be done with this season, even though we know that even if nothing ever changes, God is still good, and he still loves us, and is still for us, and we can trust him no matter what the outcome... whether things change or they don't change... he is still so good and that he is ENOUGH. Coming to a place of acceptance of where we are, and not wanting out has been one of the hardest lessons to learn, and one that I continue to learn. 

In order for us to get off food stamps, outside of just telling them we don't want them anymore (VERY hard right now with only $1000 a month income and I am sure very hard for others in the same position, so I DO understand people who want more government and voted for Obama), we need income. We need Jason's efforts as a sort of investment broker for OneCare to continue to be fruitful. We need a stronger economy. We need investors who feel confident enough to invest in the company my husband has been trying to raise capital for... We need corporations - large and small - who feel their futures are bright enough that they want to hire, not freeze hiring or God-forbid, lay people off because they are on the docket for being taxed to death to pay for Obamacare. 

And as I speak, the DOW is down 360 points. The markets are sliding. The confidence level of investors now that Obama has been re-elected is not there. In conjunction with the fact that Obama has plans to tax the hell out of the rich - BTW - the folks that EMPLOY PEOPLE and INVEST in small business and fuel the growth of new business... this also means that the Dodd-Frank bill is here to stay, and the banks are going nuts. 

If this isn't an indication on whether or not the free market feels like they're going to be in a climate for growth in the next four years, I don't know what is. 

And I'm scared.

And it was this fear that led me to change my vote a few weeks ago. A friend of mine said something that really resonated with me when I was on the fence about things. She said, "we have to stop the bleeding". And it really caused me to reflect, not only on where my family is and has been, and the precipice we are currently on that is directly contingent on the confidence of investors, and where we hope to be going in the next year, but on the fact that we are NOT better off than we were four years ago. The Federal Reserve remains unchecked, pumping the economy full of printed money, artificially propping things up... and this will eventually lead to further recession, further struggle for Americans, the devaluing of the dollar and inflation.

This is all that Obama has offered my micro-economy... artificial prop-up and hand-outs. Hear me right - we applied for them and are thankful for them and we understand how hard it is to let them go, but the reality of what this has meant for us on both the micro and macro level is really starting to hit me... and we are realizing decisions need to be made. To do on a smaller level what we hope to achieve on a larger level... 

I voted for Romney yesterday... something I swore up and down that I would never do. But I did. And I am proud that I did. I voted for the future of my family. I am proud that I voted for where I want to be, and not where I am. I am proud that I voted for someone who had the credentials and experience to take something broken and turn it around. Bain Capital is a private equity firm... they took public companies, acquired them and bought out their shareholders, fixed them up to make them profitable and brought them public again. That's capitalism at work. I didn't want to admit it, but he was the lesser of the two options provided ... the current road meant the chances of more struggle were real. The option of Romney meant an increase in confidence for the folks that could directly affect our family's future. That's what I feel that this country needed. That's what I believe the more promising option that would give us the confidence to get off of food stamps and Medicaid and get back on our feet again. Where it would have hurt my pride to admit that I voted for Romney in the past, now I feel like I woke up to the reality that sometimes you have to work the  imperfect system in order to get the best results with the options at hand. Romney was the option at hand to help turn this thing around. But America wanted something different. 

And today, I am reeling from it. The market is reeling from it. This is what America wanted. And this is what they'll get. All of the social issues mean nothing if the basic well being of the people of this nation can't feed and clothe themselves and have the dignity of employment and housing. In which case, they might want the bigger government and all of its benefits. And my fear is that "they've" got us right where they want us. Dependent and stagnant with nowhere to go. 

And that is all I've got to say about that. 

But before I close... please know, I understand why people voted for Obama. I get it. I get why his "plans" appeal to many. I get all the social issues attached to being a Democrat vs a Republican that get people all riled up. I am neither Democrat or Republican. I chose this platform to share my thoughts on the outcome of this election and how I feel it will affect my family's future. And your future. God have mercy on us all. 

Read more posts about this last year here.