I am on the ballot for Board of Selectman
Monday April 06, 2009
I have decided to run for Board of Selectman, to see what I can do to stem the crisis.
My citizen's petition contains a lot of abolition proposals for the State, but at the heart of it is new power and responsibility at the local level.
In general, people are unnecessarily jaded toward local government. It is in local government that we receive most of the benefits of government. The State and Federal government primarily just move money around, and do so as inefficiently as possible.
Like all government, the Board has to deal with a lot of pre-existing issues, and responds to complaints and procedures more than being a source of new solutions. This stability is both a curse and a blessing. Nevertheless, I hope to bring about changes in the way the town and the townspeople handle money.
Budgets, I believe, are a symptom of our economic problems, not the cause. Because the economy is so volatile, all plans are dashed. Whether it be the town's annual budget or somebody's college education, job expectations or retirement, we cannot function in an economy with this much volatility.
Tip O'Neil said that all politics are local. I believe that all economics are local. We are creating the volatility locally that we witness on the broader stage. This is most obvious in regard to housing pricing. The so-called crisis was the drop in housing prices, but it was the rise in housing prices that was the first crisis. Housing prices must be stable for their to be a stable economy. Yet, most people think rising home values is good; it isn't!
As we have witnessed, when people cannot afford housing, the most basic of all human needs, then we have reached rock bottom in an unravelling mathematical system. When the state is evicting people from their homes, rather then helping them get into homes, then everything is upside-down.
My citizen's petition contains a lot of abolition proposals for the State, but at the heart of it is new power and responsibility at the local level.
In general, people are unnecessarily jaded toward local government. It is in local government that we receive most of the benefits of government. The State and Federal government primarily just move money around, and do so as inefficiently as possible.
Like all government, the Board has to deal with a lot of pre-existing issues, and responds to complaints and procedures more than being a source of new solutions. This stability is both a curse and a blessing. Nevertheless, I hope to bring about changes in the way the town and the townspeople handle money.
Budgets, I believe, are a symptom of our economic problems, not the cause. Because the economy is so volatile, all plans are dashed. Whether it be the town's annual budget or somebody's college education, job expectations or retirement, we cannot function in an economy with this much volatility.
Tip O'Neil said that all politics are local. I believe that all economics are local. We are creating the volatility locally that we witness on the broader stage. This is most obvious in regard to housing pricing. The so-called crisis was the drop in housing prices, but it was the rise in housing prices that was the first crisis. Housing prices must be stable for their to be a stable economy. Yet, most people think rising home values is good; it isn't!
As we have witnessed, when people cannot afford housing, the most basic of all human needs, then we have reached rock bottom in an unravelling mathematical system. When the state is evicting people from their homes, rather then helping them get into homes, then everything is upside-down.
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