Why Am I Running?

I am seeking the Republican nomination to be a candidate in the November election for Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

I am running because the country is rapidly heading in the wrong direction, Washington is out of control, and the nation is being spent into bankruptcy. We need a new direction based upon the Founding Fathers’ first principles of limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, personal responsibility, faith in God, and a strong national defense. In Washington, I will work to move the country in this new direction.

Jessee B. Ring
Feb. 1, 2010

Biography of Jessee Bane Ring

My father and grandfather were coal miners in Virginia and West Virginia. My father was born and raised in the coal fields in Dante, VA, where his father worked. My grandfather left Dante when he bought some land in Russell County near Castlewood where he started and ran a working, self-sufficient farm for many years.

My father worked at the mine in Caretta, WVA for twelve years before getting a job at the Virginian Railway power plant in Narrows, Virginia. I was born and raised in Narrows, Virginia. I mean literally “born in Narrows”; I was born at home, not in a hospital.

My parents saw education as the way to a better life for their children. All five of my siblings and I had an opportunity to go to college, even though money was very scarce. My father never graduated from high school, but was well read and realized the value of an education.

My mother was a teacher when only two years of higher education were required. Upon getting married, she became a housewife and raised six children. When my father lost his job, my mother went back to teaching in order to feed her family. She foresaw that the day was coming when a person could not be a teacher without a four year college education, so she took classes during the summer at Radford College and graduated at the age of 44.

I graduated from Narrows High School in 1965 and went to the University of Virginia. I received a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering with Distinction in 1969. After working for a year, I went to graduate school on a full fellowship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York, receiving a Master’s Degree in electrical engineering in 1971.
Upon entering the work force, I quickly got into the emerging field of computer applications. I worked in Pennsylvania for ten years in the electric power industry. Then I was in California for twenty years working in the aerospace and semiconductor industries. I held various management positions and ultimately became vice-president of a small software company. While in the semiconductor industry, I traveled extensively in Asia, making multiple trips to Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. I also started a company office in India.

In 1998, I decided to become an independent consultant/contractor, which I did for seven years. My consulting clients included Compaq Computers, Charles Schwab Company, NASA, Lockheed Martin, Tokyo Electron, and others. I also did work for software companies on-site in Vietnam.

In 2005, my wife and I decided that all the conditions were right for us to fulfill a life-long dream of moving back East. We now live in Pulaski County near Radford.

Since moving back to Virginia in 2005, I have started the first vineyard in Giles County, hoping to make it into a commercial operation. I also write bi-monthly columns for The Patriot, a local newspaper in Pulaski.

I have been active politically for many years. I have written letters to the editor, volunteered for campaigns, walked door-to-door, participated in phone banks, manned headquarters, hosted “meet the candidate” events, and contributed financially. I have worked hard for the Pulaski County Committee and attended Ninth District Committee meetings. I have campaigned tirelessly for all of our candidates, local, state, and national. I have been a delegate to state conventions, and I was a Delegate At-large for Virginia to the Republican National Convention in 2008. I am a member of RPV Chairman Mullins’ Chairman’s Advisory Council, as I was for John Hager when he was RPV Chairman. I attended the inauguration of Gov. McDonnell, Lt. Gov. Bolling, and Attorney General Cuccinelli.

My wife of 34 years is a registered Nurse Practitioner. She served in the Navy Nurse Corps during the Vietnam era and then in the Public Health Service. She is now a retired Captain and is currently teaching part time in the Radford University School of Nursing.

I have two children. My son, an Eagle Scout, will graduate from Longwood University in May of 2010, and my daughter, a 4H All Star, is a freshman at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.

I proudly serve as an Elder in the First Presbyterian Church of Narrows, which was founded by my great-grandfather.

I do volunteer work through Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley where I currently tutor a student who needs to improve his reading and writing skills in order to be promoted to supervisor. This is one of the most meaningful endeavors I have ever undertaken.

Virginia's Ninth Congressional District

8205 Little River Dam Road
Radford, VA 24141
540-250-7291 fax: 540-639-2709
jessee-ring@att.net

January 31, 2010

Michelle Jenkins
Chairperson – Ninth District Republican Committee
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Michelle:

As I have discussed with you, I am announcing my candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Ninth District Congressional seat.
I am a true Reagan Conservative and have been unwaveringly so for many years. I completely support the Virginian Republican Creed:

- That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice;
- That all individuals are entitled to equal rights, justice, and opportunities and should assume their responsibilities as citizens in a free society;
- That fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraints must be exercised at all levels of government;
- That the Federal Government must preserve individual liberty by observing constitutional limitations;
- That peace is best preserved through a strong national defense;
- That faith in God, as recognized by our Founding Fathers, is essential to the moral fiber of the Nation.

Attached is my bio that will tell you more about my background.
I would consider it an honor and privilege to represent the people of the Ninth District by bringing their values and principles to Washington.
I want you and everyone to feel free to contact me in this matter.


Very truly yours,

----signed on original-------

Jessee B. Ring
Attachment

A Commonwealth of Opportunity

On Saturday, January 16, shortly after noon, Robert F. McDonnell was inaugurated as the seventy-first Governor of Virginia, following in the footsteps of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson. The day in Richmond was warm and sunny, in sharp contrast to the severe winter weather we have been having lately; the gods smiled that day.

Bob McDonnell took the forty-word oath of office with his hand on a Latin Vulgate Bible that was given to his great-grandparents in Ireland on their wedding day in 1876. William T. Bolling was sworn in for a second term as Lieutenant Governor, and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli took the oath of office as Attorney General. After the swearing in, there was a nineteen-gun salute from a large artillery battery, and a fly-over by four F-22 jets.

Having attended such an event for the first time, I was very impressed.

There were about 8000 people present. Dignitaries included seven former governors: Charles Robb, Linwood Holton, L. Douglas Wilder, George Allen, Timothy M. Kaine, Gerald L. Baliles, and Jim Gilmore. As I sat in the stands before the proceedings started while the Williamsburg Fife and Drum Corp. marched in and played, I noticed some of the people walking by: Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas (one of my heroes), a four star army general and his one star companion, Republican Party of Virginia (RPV) Chairman Pat Mullins, former Lieutenant Governor and former RPV Chairman John Hager, evangelist Pat Robertson, Congressman Eric Cantor - minority Whip in the U.S. House of Representatives. I saw the seven (yes, seven) Cuccinelli children.

In his speech, McDonnell talked about the sweep of history that has played out in Virginia, starting in 1607 with the one hundred and four men and boys who established the  first permanent English settlement in America, Jamestown, that would ultimately spread from sea to shining sea as the United States of America, the richest, most powerful nation in the world. He made reference to the eight Virginians who have become President of those United States, and whose busts were behind him in the Rotunda of the state Capitol. He recounted how in this same state capitol, Robert E. Lee, the son of a Virginia governor and Revolutionary War hero, accepted command of the Commonwealth’s military forces as the young nation slipped into civil war. He noted that Abraham Lincoln walked these same streets pondering how to heal the torn nation after Richmond fell to the Federals in 1865, marking the beginning of the end of that catastrophic period in our nation’s history.

McDonnell also remembered that it was in this same capitol 125 years after the civil war that the grandson of a slave, L. Douglas Wilder, became the nation’s first African-American governor.

And on this day, as McDonnell put it, an average middle-class kid from Fairfax, a grandson of Irish immigrants, became the seventy-first governor of Virginia.

McDonnell then turned to the issues and stayed on a theme of opportunity founded in our country’s first principles. He talked about the government’s responsibility to provide equal opportunity to all, but recognized that it is not the government’s responsibility to ensure equal outcomes for all. He said all Virginians must have the same fundamental opportunities to work hard, live free, and succeed. He talked about “fulfilling Virginia’s promise”, and  creating “A Commonwealth of Opportunity”. He outlined plans to utilize innovation, privatization, and consolidations to deliver government services more effectively, thus reducing the size and cost of government. He restated his plan to make Virginia the “energy capitol of the East Coast” by utilizing the state’s coal, natural gas, nuclear power, and off-shore oil resources, which will create thousands of high paying jobs and increased tax revenues as well as meet the country’s energy needs. Educational opportunity will be expanded via charter schools and pay-for-performance for teachers. Finally, he said we must seize the opportunity to improve Virginia’s transportation systems by getting long overdue projects going and utilizing innovation, without raising taxes.

In closing, McDonnell said that people who say that America’s and Virginia’s best days are behind them are wrong. He said, “Let us heed the words of the Father of our Country, employ these eternal rules of order and right, and get to work for the good of the people of Virginia”.

Then the parade started. There were marching bands from around the state, colonial re-enactors, veterans groups, ethnic dancers, students, Boy Scouts , Girl Scouts, and others. Also, a group of Washington Redskin Cheerleaders alumnae marched by, in honor of one of their own, Maureen McDonnell, now First Lady of Virginia, who was a Redskinette in the 1970’s.

Saturday night, the Inaugural Ball was held in the Richmond Convention Center, with over 5000 tickets being sold. Governor and First Lady McDonnell had the first dance to “You’re Still The One”, sung by their daughter, Jeanine. They looked very elegant in his tuxedo with tails and white tie and her ice-blue evening gown. Very graceful, too. I wonder if they practiced.

One of the truly great and remarkable aspects of our form of government is that we have an orderly and peaceful transfer of power via elections. Outgoing Democrat Governor Tim Kaine has now turned the governorship over to incoming Republican Governor Bob McDonnell in a cordial and smooth transition. We do this better than any other country in the world. It was a privilege to be a small part of  the events.

 

Jessee Ring

Jan. 18, 2010

Obama and National Security

On Christmas Day, we had another “man caused disaster” when a Muslim fanatic tried to blow up a plane full of infidels heading for America. I’ll bet you thought it was a terrorist attack.

For three days after the attempted bomb attack, President Obama said nothing. When he finally did speak, the first thing he said was that the bombing attempt was an isolated incident. Now we know that the perpetrator had affiliations with Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack. We also now know that Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Yemeni cleric, was in contact with both the Christmas Day bomber and the Fort Hood killer! And yet the President’s initial statement was that the bombing attempt was an isolated incident. How could the President of the United States be so clueless? The fact that the President would make such a statement without any reason to think it is true, even though he has now backtracked on it, speaks volumes about his naivety on national security.

After the bombing attempt, Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said that “the system had worked”. She is also now backtracking on that. But again, you wonder how someone could make such a statement regarding an actual bombing attempt.

One year into the Obama administration, there have been two terrorist attacks on the U.S.: The Fort Hood attack that killed fourteen people and injured twenty-three others, and the Christmas Day attempt that came close to killing three hundred people.

Keep in mind that in Obama’s world, there is no such thing as a “global war on terror”, but rather there are “overseas contingency operations”. And his Secretary of Homeland Security won’t speak of terrorist attacks; instead, she calls them “man caused disasters”.

The Fort Hood massacre happened even though the perpetrator, an Army psychologist, had raised the concern of his superiors, peers, and patients about his oft expressed radical anti-American views. He tried to convert his patients to Islam. He gave a lecture to the medical staff about jihad. Yes, here was an Army officer openly spouting off anti-American venom over many months, and nothing was done about it.  The U.S. has become so lax on terrorism and national security that a Muslim radical was able to infiltrate the U.S. military and go on a killing rampage on a military base, in spite of his known extremist views!   Astonishing.

The Christmas bombing attempt happened even though the perpetrator’s father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria twice to warn them about his son’s radical views and his desire to try to do something against the U.S. Yes, we were warned by his father, and it turns out that there is also a corroborating “paper trail” of his terrorist associations.

Think about the radical regime in Iran getting ready to nuke-up, and their threat to “wipe Israel off the map”, among other nasty things. There is every reason to believe that Iran will use the nuclear bomb if it gets it. Don’t forget about those missiles they are also developing. What is Obama’s response here? To cancel a missile defense system in Europe, and to threaten to “sanction” Iran. I’m sure the mullahs in Iran are quaking in their boots when Obama says he’s going to sanction them. That’ll show them that we are serious. That’ll let them know that they better not mess with us.

Think about North Korea, which already or soon will have nuclear weapons and is now also developing missiles with which to  send them around the world. Here is a regime that is so corrupt that it’s ordinary citizens are literally starving in the street so that the government can have all the money to develop nuclear weapons. What is Obama’s response? To send the evil North Korean dictator a personal letter begging him to talk to us about nuclear weapons.

Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, has decided to treat one of the 9-11 masterminds being held in Guantanamo as a common criminal rather than an enemy combatant.. Mr. Holder intends to bring him right to New York City, only blocks from ground zero, to have a jury trial in civilian courts. Think about what kind of message this sends to other terrorists: Attack the U.S. and murder thousand of our innocent civilians, and we’ll handle you with kid gloves. When asked if he had consulted with the President before making this supremely important decision, Mr. Holder said no, but he had consulted with his wife and his brother! Let me make sure I understand this. Mr. Holder wants to give Constitutional rights to a 9-11 terrorist, give him a trial by a jury of his peers , bring him to New York City for the trial, give him a national stage to spew out violent, hate-filled rhetoric, but in his decision making process, Mr. Holder did not consult with the President, the Secretary of Homeland Security, anyone in the courts or Department of Justice, anyone in Congress, anyone in the military, the Mayor of New York City, the Governor of New York, or anyone else in the government, but he did consult with his wife and brother. This is incompetence beyond comprehension, and it is extremely dangerous with regards to national security.

The Obama administration wants to treat the Christmas bomber the same way. By so doing, Obama is sending another message to potential terrorists: If you attempt to blow up a plane and kill three hundred people over one of our cities, the first thing the U.S. government will do is read you your rights and give you a lawyer.

Obama is now, several days after the event, telling us that the Christmas bombing attempt was a “catastrophic breach” of security. Really.  How long did it take him to figure that out?

The response of the Obama administration to this catastrophic security breach is not to start an all-out military program to find radical Muslim anti-American terrorist wherever they are hiding in the world, and root them out before they are able to strike us. The response of the Obama administration is to talk about “connecting the dots” and to subject everyone in America, including grandmothers and children, to ever more intrusive and time-consuming searches before getting on an airplane. Never mind that every terrorist attack and attempt has come from a radical Muslim extremist. But we don’t dare target them; people in Asia or Europe or somewhere might not like it. Rather, we waste our effort on the 99.999% who pose no threat whatsoever.

If all of this sounds like insanity to you, you’re right. Here’s what you do about it. Start a special bank savings account, and put a few bucks into it every payday between now and November, 2012.  Then donate that money to the campaign of whoever runs against Obama.

 

Jessee Ring

Jan. 5, 2010

 

 

Senators Warner and Webb Perpetrate An Outrage On Virginia Citizens

In a despicable betrayal of the people of Virginia, Senators Warner and Webb recently voted for the monstrosity of a health care bill in the U.S. Senate. This bill will be a total disaster for the best medical care in the world that we currently have here in America, and this bill is a real slap in he face to the people of Virginia.

This bill is ostensibly for the purpose of reducing health care costs nationwide. But the government has never run a program, any program, in a cost effective manner, because the government wasn’t designed to be efficient. It just doesn’t think that way. Look at the Postal Service, where in my lifetime the cost of a stamp has gone from three cents to forty-four cents, a 1367% increase, or at Social Security, which everyone acknowledges will go bankrupt at some point, despite the many social security tax increases over the years. What about Medicare, which is $37 billion underfunded because costs are out of control.

The Congressional Budget office says the Senate health care bill will cost $2.5 trillion over the next ten years. Let me make sure I understand this: We must spend $2.5 trillion more on health care than we are now in order to bring costs down?

Aside from the cost issue, there is the matter of rationing. There will be rationing of health care under this bill, as there is in every government health care system in the world. In Great Britain, there is a board of bureaucrats that was set up for this specific purpose.

Our very own government run health care for seniors, Medicare, already rations care in many ways. Here is just one example. National Coverage Decisions (NCD’s) are issued by Medicare’s medical staff; these NCD’s define who is and is not eligible for new and often expensive treatments. You and your doctor don’t decide that; the Medicare bureaucrats do.

But the Senate health care bill doesn’t include a government option, we are told. Well, I say that if it looks like a duck and it waddles like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck. When the government passes a 2100 page law covering every conceivable aspect of health care, such as the Senate bill, then that’s government run health care.

In any event, the Democrats pushing for the government take-over of health care know that it can’t be done in one fell swoop. They have to first get the camel’s nose in the tent, and that’s what this bill does. The liberal Democrats fully admit that this is just a start on the road to a complete take-ever of health care by the government. They have said many times that universal government-run health care is their goal.

The promoters of this scheme will say that insurance companies ration health care now, so what’s wrong with the government doing it. The very significant difference is that you can change insurance companies if you’re not satisfied with the one you have, but you can’t switch to a different set of bureaucrats if you don’t like what they are doing.

Oh, and what about the death panels we have been told repeatedly will not come to be? Guess what: They are already at work, a la the government mammogram report that told women not to have a mammogram until age fifty instead of starting at age forty because starting earlier resulted in “too may procedures”. That is, it cost too much to start at age forty, never mind that it unquestionably saves lives. This report was withdrawn after a public firestorm broke out over it, but expect more such reports in the future if we get expanded government run health care.

Something as important as health care, which represents one-sixth of our total economy and which affects us all in a very personal and direct way, should be given due consideration, for as long as it takes. Why does a 2100 page bill have to be passed tomorrow? The reason is that the liberal Democrats don’t want you to have time to find out what is really in all of those  2100 pages, and how dramatically it will affect you.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that, nationwide, 56% of the people oppose any sort of a government health care bill, and only 40% approve. Why is Congress in a wild panic trying to ram and jam something through that most people don’t want? Maybe Congress thinks they know better how to run our lives than we do. Maybe they just don’t care what the people think.

But the most outrageous aspect of this bill is that some Senators from states such as Nebraska, Louisiana, and Vermont put their votes up for sale. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada then eagerly bought their votes by putting special provisions in the bill that benefit only those Senators’ states. Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana bragged that she was able to extort $300 million for her state from Harry Reid. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska held out to the last moment in order to get the juiciest deal possible for Nebraska.

If all of this outright corruption in the U.S. Senate wasn’t enough, our two Senators approved of it all by voting for the bill. It gets worse. Since all of those billions of your taxpayer dollars will be funneled to other states in special programs for those states only, you will pay even higher taxes than you otherwise would under this health care bill if those special provisions were not there. That’s right, Virginians will pay even higher taxes under this bill so that people in Nebraska and Louisiana and Vermont can be shielded from the ultra high cost of the bill.

Senators Webb and Warner agreed to all of this.

Jessee Ring

Dec. 23, 2009

An Open Letter To Congressman Boucher

When I called your Abingdon office last August to schedule an appointment with you while Congress was in recess and you were in this area, I was treated in an exceedingly rude and disrespectful manner by your office staff, one of whom even hung up on me.  I guess this is because I have differed with you substantially on the issues and I have been outspoken in that regard.

My wife has been waiting since January to get an appointment with you. She has made this request to your office staff repeatedly, only to be totally ignored. Never in almost a year’s time has she so much as even received a response from you or your staff, much less an actual appointment.

At the town hall meeting in Dublin, you arrogantly told one person who asked a question that they were incapable of comprehending the health care bill. At another town hall meeting earlier this year, you laughed at an attendee who disagreed with you on cap and tax, apparently trying to publicly humiliate him.

Mr. Boucher, I have something to tell you: You work for us. We are not your subjects. You do not rule over us, you represent us. You are not His Royal Highness Boucher. We have the right to disagree with you, and to speak to you about the major issues currently facing our country. We have the right to be treated with dignity and respect by you and your staff even if we disagree with you on the issues.

Let me remind you that our hard earned money pays your very high Congressman’s salary. Our money pays your gold-plated health care coverage; your generous travel budget; your plentiful staff and offices; and your lucrative retirement plan. While we are having to cut our household budgets and find ways to scrimp and save during these lean economic times, you do not. Have you given yourself a pay cut, cut back on your staff, cut back on your travel, cut back on expenses, or cut back on anything?

Perhaps your twenty-seven years in Washington have put you out of touch. Perhaps you now think you are above us.

You thumbed your nose at us by voting for cap and tax, a bill that is specifically designed to bankrupt the coal industry and cause electricity rates to skyrocket (as stated by President Obama). You will no doubt eventually vote for some form of government take-over of health care, even though we have made it clear  we don’t want it in any form. You support abortion; we don’t. You supported the trillion dollar boondoggle stimulus that we were told would keep unemployment no higher than eight percent but it is now over ten percent; we didn’t and still don’t. You supported the multiple bailouts costing hundreds of billions of dollars each; we didn’t. You believe in the global warming hoax; we know that it is a hoax. You support the radical policies of Obama; we don’t.

Last summer when the tea parties were going on, your colleagues in Washington called us a mob, nazis, astroturf, dangerous people, and other vile names; you stood idly by and said nothing in our defense.

You work for us.

Jessee Ring   

Dec. 9, 2009