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About Applegater. (Jacksonville, OR) 2008-current | View Entire Issue (July 1, 2010)
22 Summer 2010 Applegater My OPINION FROM BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR Help wanted APPLEGATE FIRE PLAN UPDATE We’re still working on the update of the Fire Plan. Once the potential projects are mapped, we’ll be able to hold localized meetings to discuss our ideas with residents and get feedback. Having priority fuel reduction projects listed in a recognized CWPP (or Community Wildfire Protection Plan) opens opportunities for federal funding and support. I have a running list of those of you who are interested in attending the meetings, and I welcome anyone else to send me an email if you’d like to be notified. Watch for notices this summer for the meetings! Sandy Shaffer 541-899-9541 Applegate Fire Plan Coordinator sassyone@starband.net By CHRIS BRATT When I was a school boy in San Francisco back in the dark ages during World War II, I always had a job. In my preteens I delivered newspapers before school and groceries after school. Near the end of the war, I worked in a wooden boatyard after school and on Saturdays helping build seagoing tug boats as part of the war effort. The last two years of high school were spent picking up and delivering tailor-made suits on foot every afternoon in the city’s downtown area. I worked my way through college by starting a carpenter apprenticeship during the summers and was a part-time, swing- shift employee sorting mail at the U.S. Post Office during the regular school year. I was a busy boy at a time when it was relatively easy to find a job. It was a time in history when most working class family members had to contribute in some financial way just to make ends meet. It was also a time of active industrial manufacturing, lower consumption of goods, self sufficiency and simpler living. Although people generally had no promise of a job, various occupations were available and there was an assumed prosperity in the country’s future economy. Most of us never thought there was a risk of our economic system collapsing or of not being able to find a job. In fact, many working people had an economic safety net like social security and unemployment insurance. Still others had health care benefits, pension and vacation plans, and strong union bargaining agreements with employers. Well, as you may have noticed, times have changed. Our free enterprise market economy is in free fall. You don’t need an economics degree to know our nation’s prosperity has shrunken abruptly. Our economic system is in the hands of and being run by an elite group of corporations and wealthy individuals whose power is based on usury, purchased politicians, endless economic growth (unrestrained consumption of stuff) and unconstrained accumulation of wealth (piles of money). These folks have a corporate economic plan that Adam Smith (the father of modern capitalism) identified as “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind...all for ourselves, and nothing for the other people.” At this time, we all know most HOT FRESH PIZZA! Open Late 7 Days A Week Sunday Brunch–Local Organic Ingredients 10 Draught Beers – Local Wines Free Pool – Live Music New Pub Menu Come enjoy our patio under the stars! 7360 Hwy. 238, Ruch, OR (541)899-8700 people in America are unhappy about our collapsed financial system. They are fearful for their family’s future, distrustful of the government and worried about losing what they already have. This situation is the result of unregulated corporate investment bank rip-offs with unparalleled profits for brokers, while their clients and the federal government are left holding the bag. Presently, we have an estimated 15.7 million Americans out of work (7.6 million of these people are newly unemployed), record high home foreclosures and business bankruptcies, trillions of dollars of lost savings and approximately two trillion dollars in bailout money that the government is giving to failing banks and businesses and for job creation. These are the lingering and ongoing effects of runaway corporate abuse of the financial we can’t figure out a more stable economy for our nation and Chris Bratt the world. The answers to solving these social/economic problems can be worked out, but they have more to do with the determination of aware people to make the effort to change the status-quo. Presently, our nation is fragmented, especially over recommending ideas and solutions to this crisis. So we must become more unified in our requests for action before we can make any significant changes in the structure of our society. I do have a few modest ideas for a future economy that’s conducive to sustaining our planet. I’ll mention the easiest ones I think can be achieved first: This situation is the result of unregulated corporate investment bank rip-offs with unparalleled profits for brokers, while their clients and the federal government are left holding the bag. • Ban commercial banks from speculative investment. Write, tighten and enforce new regulations for Wall Street. Pass tougher disclosure rules for financial services. • Use public funds to finance needed work projects across the country (as Paul Hawken says, “Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment”). • Ultra-rich corporations and individuals have the ability to pay plenty more in taxes, so why not? (I read that Ross Perot is worth 3.5 billion dollars and he is only the 85th richest American.) • Su p p o r t i n d u s t r i e s b a s e d o n ecologically sound use of resources. • Get out of the war business. • Assert the need for corporate responsibility in maintaining healthy ecosystems and communities. • Restrict the mobility and globalization of capital. • Seek alternatives to growth. Discourage p o p u l a t i o n g r ow t h , e xc e s s i v e consumption and the idea of letting market forces determine the needs and costs of products. Stop subsidizing growth. • Consider a balance between free- market capitalism and state-run capitalism. system and the immoral actions of reckless overconfident brokers. I know the economic pickle we’re in looks pretty grim to most of us. It was predictable, though, since recessions and bank failures have happened here many times before, just in my lifetime alone (capitalism is definitely a boom or bust system). That fact brings us to a lingering question for our democracy to ponder. Are we capable of constructing a society with a financial system that has more equal and humane objectives for every citizen than the one we now have? For example, can we maintain full employment with meaningful work for anyone who wants or needs it? Can we continue to provide public goods and services like fire and police protection, transportation networks, public schools and help for the indigent to the expected degree required in a modern democracy? Or will these basic benefits be accessible to middle- and upper-income Americans and dropped completely for the less fortunate? I can tell you what I’d like to see. In this great age of ever-increasing knowledge, abundance, communication, science and education, there is no plausible reason why Develop your own bailout plan and let elected representatives and me know your opinions. Chris Bratt • 541-846-6988
