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.”
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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
