{"id":4914,"date":"2025-05-07T08:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T04:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4914"},"modified":"2025-05-07T08:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T04:15:08","slug":"toldja-so-22-years-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4914","title":{"rendered":"Told&#8217;ja so, 22 years in the making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Most times when someone says\u00a0<em>I wrote the book on that<\/em> it&#8217;s just an expression. Me? I&#8217;ve got a few. But this one isn&#8217;t what you&#8217;re thinking.<\/p>\n<p>It was more than 20 years ago, I wrote what I guess was my first book, a published version of my senior honors thesis at Binghamton University. Like a young John F. Kennedy I turned my school project into something a little more, perhaps not gaining the traction of JFK&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Why England Slept<\/em> but it made its mark in Binghamton in 2003.<\/p>\n<p>I called the book\u00a0<em>While Federalism Slept<\/em>, I thought a clever play on Kennedy&#8217;s book and a description of my own theses: that the federal Community Development Block Grant program begun in the 1970s was in fact harmful to the communities it supposedly helped and should be eliminated.<\/p>\n<p>Fell on deaf ears at the local and national level.<\/p>\n<p>Fast-forward 22 years, and imagine my surprise that one Donald J. Trump, president of this fine nation, is proposing elimination of the CDBG program.<\/p>\n<p>A part of me is a little disappointed I&#8217;m not getting any recognition in this, but like most school projects, I&#8217;m not in it for the glory or the money, just happy to help.<\/p>\n<p>And getting to say I told&#8217;ja so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most times when someone says\u00a0I wrote the book on that it&#8217;s just an expression. Me? I&#8217;ve got a few. But this one isn&#8217;t what you&#8217;re thinking. It was more than 20 years ago, I wrote what I guess was my &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4914\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4915,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4914\/revisions\/4915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}