Evaluating the Candidate

The hands of these three voters show their reaction as they evaluate

a candidate in Ukraine's Sunday election. Your ratings and critiques

are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment; please

share your superior photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

Another wonderful image John.

As politics is obviously an integral component in many of your striking images, I hope you don't mind the question to follow:

Based on your extensive observations-What are your thoughts on Socialism?

Cheers.

My thoughts on Socialism

That's a loaded question because I am not sure what 'Socialism' is.

Is it Communism? That's a failed political experiment that both raised the Soviets by their bootstraps and its authoritarianism ended up with more victims than Hitler's rise to power and his war.

Is it being a Democrat as many Republicans would have one believe?

If so, I'm a registered Republican, but that does NOT mean I vote for Republicans.

In Ukraine, I keep a giant step away from political party affiliations; I am interested in the photography only.

I believe there are places where government can and should do a better job than private industry, and in George W. Bush's book, that would make me a Socialist; I don't believe in 'outsourcing everything' including our military (viz.: Blackwater), so in his book that's a Socialist idea, but in mine, not doing so is just common sense; I want accountability to the voters, not to some anonymous board of directors governed by profit only. Not everything can be driven by the profit motive and claims that 'outsourcing everything is better (which means a profit for many, many companies where no such thing existed before) and is to me, heresy in most circumstances, but not all.

And I am afraid also of many things governments do, but I have watched the US Postal Service develop from a hidebound government-only institution to one that actually gets the mail through as it operates more like a private company.

Is that outsourcing, since it is a hybrid private-government institution whereas before it was public-governmental, or is it Socialism because it has a government monpoly that's spelled forth in the Constitution?

I care about the faces and lives of the people I photograph, but don't go into special political analysis. I found out early as a reporter, it's hard to mix reporting and photography together.

Very hard.

So, I take photos, and I hope moving ones, for which there is often a political componenet, but I just don't take sides (outside the US at least).

I hope that answers your question . . . .

John (Crosley)

You have impeccable taste, not because you give this photo a high rate, but because you always pick the best and only the best of my work to rate. Although you rate highly, I am sure you just pass over the lesser impacting work, and it's also what I do when (seldom) I rate.

While not my best shot, I do like it very much, and especially its repetition of 'hands' in two of the subjects.

I waited for that and chose (edited) for that.

Best to you Ruud,

John (Crosley)