Jay,
Front page is updated. If it is ok, I will set up the other pages. I think every page needs pictures. If you have pictures you want to use you can e-mail them to me, or bring them by. (I have your flash drive). I am going to try to find some pictures that fit on each page and then replace them when you get them for me.
It would be best if the pictures were from the counties in which you will be running, but some generic pictures will be ok until you get them to me.
I know there are two pictures of you on the front page, the top one will be replaced when you get the family picture to me. I think it is important that the military picture of you is on the front page about where it is. It gives some valuable information right away. Let me know if it is alright.
Tom Willis 576-6566
About Me
I was born on April 17, 1974 to Roger and Sheila Belcher of Elkhorn City, Kentucky. Most of my family is still in or around Elkhorn City, although my parents now work in Pikeville. I love and I’m very proud of my parents. After graduating from Elkhorn City high school in 1969 my dad earned a full scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1973; he now works for the department of labor in Pikeville. My mom finished nursing school when I was in grade school, and now she’s the assistant vice president of pediatric nursing at Pikeville Methodist Hospital. I grew up close to our family, with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents as regular visitors to our house. Family roots run deep with us, and its one of the reasons why I want to raise my two sons in the same place I grew up.
I’ve had, by any account, an exciting life. In seventh grade I went to Space Camp, and at the age of 16 I flew a little Cessna piper-cub solo for the first time from Pikeville’s then single strip airport. The day I flew my first solo I didn’t even have a drivers license; I only had a learners permit. I could fly a plane by myself but couldn’t drive a car alone! Next year I attended a month long course as part of the Talent Identification Program from Duke University. We spent a little over a month studying Japanese in Toyama, Japan. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, I really stood out in Japan. I missed the first week of classes for my senior year in high school since I was still in Japan. After graduating from Millard High School in 1992, I attended the University of Kentucky for the next four years, graduating in 1996. I played tenor saxophone in UK’s marching band and in the basketball pep band my freshman and sophomore years. I had courtside seats to every UK home basketball game and I loved it.
I joined the Air Force in the end of 1997, and finished officer training school in February of 1998. I loved my time in the military and I had a number of challenging jobs, from air weapons officer, section commander to flight commander, Chief of Military Equal Opportunity and most recently as the team commander for Combat PERSCO in Iraq, which stands for personnel support for contingency operations. I met my wife Elaine on my second assignment, and we were married a year later. We have two amazing sons, Sam who is two and Ian who is seven months old. Ian was born during my deployment to Iraq, but I was lucky enough to get a week of emergency leave and just made it in time for his birth. For handling two kids while I was gone, my wife is my hero.
During my time in the Air Force I used the military’s education assistance program to complete a Masters Degree in International Relations. From my own money I completed four more years towards a PhD in Political Science, and I’m presenting a paper on Iraq in August 2007 to the American Political Science Associations national conference in Chicago. I’m also a big believer in physical fitness, having run a half marathon and completed an Air Force desert adventure race, which was like a triathlon. I’m training for another triathlon which will take place in the summer of 2007.
Even though I was selected for promotion to Major, I left the military because I wanted to continue serving my country by starting a career in politics. I love a challenge, I love serving my country, and I’m excited about the prospect of becoming a candidate for Congress.
Education
Education is a vital national interest; it would be my #1 issue as a candidate. I’m a graduate of the Kentucky public school system and the University of Kentucky. In addition, I have six years of experience in higher education beyond the bachelor’s degree level, including four years of PhD level work in Political Science. My goal is to make Eastern Kentucky a model of education success; simply meeting national averages in standardized test scores or graduation rates isn’t good enough. You don’t become an NCAA champion by aiming to win as many games as your neighbors; you win by making it your goal to be a champion. In the same way, my goal for Eastern Kentucky education is to make us #1; #1 in Kentucky and #1 in America. I support making college tuition tax deductible and increasing federal funding to secondary schools by way of freezing property taxes used to fund education and matching them with federal dollars. This will provide needed funding to schools and give parents a significant tax break. I’d favor a test program of paying a salary to high school students who perform well enough in the classroom. One problem we have is young people from poor families leaving school as soon as they can to make ends meet at home; we can solve two problems at once by keeping students in school and adding income to those families.
Supporting education is simple economics. High school graduates earn more over a lifetime than non-graduates, and college graduates earn even more than high school graduates. There is no reason why our high school graduation rate should be anything less than 100%. There is no reason why we shouldn’t use every resource we have to help those graduates go to college. The future of Kentucky and our country depends on how well the next generation is prepared to handle the challenges they’ll face.
Iraq
My goal would be to bring closure to the situation in Iraq. By that I mean being smart enough to protect the victories we’ve already won. Keeping our military in Iraq too long will make us less safe at home, not more. Here’s why: Our military forces have accomplished what they were sent to accomplish; they removed Saddam Hussein from power, thus eliminating any chance of his regime being a threat to the U.S. Iraq has a new government because of the security provided by American forces.
To reduce Iraq to a single factor, namely the presence or absence of U.S. military forces, ignores the larger problems there. The Iraqis have had four years to get their government and security forces together. There are problems in the Iraqi government, but they are Iraqi problems and they need Iraqi solutions; this includes dealing with insurgency. I don’t support keeping our combat forces in harms way to do Iraqi jobs for them, especially when keeping our forces in Iraq hinders any progress they can make. I served in Iraq and I’ve seen this firsthand.
Our entire policy in Iraq has to be viewed within the larger context of our overall policy towards the Middle East. We’ve given the Iraqis a chance at democracy; if we keep our forces in Iraq indefinitely then most Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East will conclude that we planned all along to rule Iraq ourselves and that democracy was just a pretense for invasion. You can pick up any Arabic newspaper today and see the threads from this line of thought weaving themselves together. Such widespread views will nurture the ideology of terrorism and provide terrorist groups with new recruits. In other words, keeping our military in Iraq too long will make us less safe at home, not more. If on the other hand we show the world we’re serious enough about a democratic Iraq to let the Iraqis handle things themselves, our credibility and our security will improve dramatically. The current administration and its supporters lack the expertise and the courage to institute such a sorely needed policy change.
Afghanistan is a different challenge than Iraq, but I’d strongly favor sending significant forces from Iraq to Afghanistan to finish off the Taliban resistance there. Remember, the Taliban, unlike Iraq, had a direct link to the attacks of September 11th since they housed and supported Al-Qaeda.
Welcome
Welcome and thank you visiting my website. I built this site because I want to tell you who I am and why I’m considering becoming a candidate for Congress.
A member of the U.S. House of Representatives should be someone who is an experienced, proven leader dedicated to serving the United States of America. My interest in Congress started with a love of our country. That love led me to join the Air Force back in 1997, and for the past 9 and a half years as an officer I’ve had the privilege of leading some of the finest men and women in uniform. I’ve been all around the world from Japan to Iraq, and no other place can match the magnificence of the United States. I want to be clear: our form of government is the best there is. But there are serious problems in our government and our country, and taking a new approach to solving those problems is my goal.
The way I want to do that is not just by discussing policy issues and choices. As Albert Einstein once said, "problems cannot be solved with the same level of awareness at which they were created." My solution is to create a new system of ideas for how we approach government, how policies are formulated, and how government can best serve our country. The first thing we need is to change how members of our government do business.
I agree with Wendell Berry, who wrote that he "prefers conversation to communication." Communication is a one way message whereas conversation involves an interactive discussion. I’m a Democrat, but I don’t consider Republicans to be enemies. On the contrary, we’re all Americans. Gridlock is such a problem because legislators do too much communicating and not enough conversing. Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you, I can converse all day with the best of them. I hope to hear from and meet as many people from my home district as possible; contact me and judge for yourself if I’m a good conversationalist. Good conversations require listening, flexibility, creativity, knowledge, and quick thinking. Those are the qualities I would bring as a potential candidate and Congressmen.
Once we start talking to each other instead of at each other in Congress, we have a lot to do. Too many laws and policies have been written without taking into account the impact on the large majority of the people. I appreciate the value of business, but when corporate America writes its own regulations into the law, it’s the rest of us who suffer. When small groups with narrow interest are given the bulk of congressional attention, the rest of us get left by the wayside. When those at the top, whether they’re the attorney general or head of the World Bank, think the rules don’t apply to them they must be held accountable for their actions. Above all a strong commitment to ethics, accountability, and dialogue are what we need in future legislators.
As a father, a husband, an officer, a scholar, a believer in God and a citizen, I’ve made it personal responsibility to live up to those ideals. No one is perfect and I don’t claim to be; but I do claim a perfect love for my country and my home in Eastern Kentucky. I gladly put my life on the line for America in Iraq, and now I’m ready to put myself to work building a better future for the country that’s given me so much.
Jason Belcher