Organizing for America TWO-POINT-OH!

I have been remiss contributing to my own journal, this political blog. In part it is because my family's circumstance and the other is that I needed some kind of breather and the last was I didn't know where to go. In the meantime a couple of things:

1. Sue and I joined the National Day of Service on Martin Luther King's birthday and ironically the last day of GW Bush's last official day as President. We symbolically cleaned up a roadside/hillside on west Unitah Avenue as an off shoot of the big group that Marty Caldwell organized to clean up Monument Creek at Monument Park. We filled 14 or garbage bags, found car bumpers, needles, GW's silver spoon, a pair of shorts, McCain/Palin political signs among the debris tossed out of cars or windblown from neighborhoods. The six-person crew included John Atkinson led by his wife Nancy Bentley, and their neighbors Al and Carolyn Cyr along with my wife Sue. The CS Indy made a small mention of it in this weeks edition in the article Obamanos. All told our two groups appeared pick up over 36 bags of trash and that did not include another group picking up trash in the Rockrimmon area, while also painting a free medical clinic, cleaning a literacy center, organizing the new Care & Share facility, setting up a foreclosure volunteer service among other projects.
   
2. The final weekend of the month the El Paso County Democratic Party's Central Committee met to reorganize and elected an Obama campaign leadership fronted by Jason DeGroot as the County Chairperson. Alice Hines was elected Secretary, while Judi Ingiledo was elected 1st Vice Chair, Lois Fornander as 2nd Vice Chair and Tom Martin as Treasurer.
   
3. At that meeting I was honored to be selected to the Democratic Party's State Executive Committee, its Central Committee and El Paso County's Executive Committee. I intend to run for House District 21 leadership when we reconvene in March.
   

Now after the euphoria of the Inauguration it is time to go back to work on freeing this society from its own self-inflicted pains and collective ignorance. This weekend I participated in two Organizing for America house parties regarding the Recovery and Reinvestment Package also known as the 'Stimulus Bill' and there was great consensus, which I was not surprised. In short the consensus was why so much in tax rebates and so much less in investment spending. I have told everyone to call our Senators and express your opinions. You can access their contact information on my sidebar links.

Okay some points on economics: Are you aware that we are standing over the abyss of a 21st Century Economic Depression right now? It is possible that we have already fallen in, possibly on September 15th when the financial markets crashed not unlike when we had fallen into a recession in December 2007 during the sickly holiday shopping season. Some simple points to make you aware how precarious the economy is.

• Debt to GDP at historic high and the same as in 1929
• Real Estate bubble has burst with paper values 100% over actual values
• Flat wages are now descending due to climbing unemployment and underemployment rates. Real unemployment rates estimated to be between 14-15% and climbing.
  
• El Paso County is losing 1000 jobs a month since August with a full percentage point increase in the unemployed insured rate climbing from 6% to 6.9%.
  
• Estimated continued job loss will be unabated until the 3rd quarter national and locally where an estimated 4 million jobs will be lost nationally and 6000-8000 or more locally. This will move local insured unemployment near 9% and underemployment/permanently long-term unemployed near 18% and nationally approach 10% insured unemployed.

The causes if you are interested.

• Debt has increased substantially since the Reagan Administration where the successive Bush Administration increased it to this historic levels. Clinton reduced it temporarily, this is known as the neo-conservative's era. Lowering taxes on upper incomes and increasing spending is the primary culprit.
• Supply side economics is never valid but it is historic, prior to this era, it was in the 1920's, early 1890's both resulting in deep recessions and the depression. In the 19th century supply-side economics was called the "Horse and Sparrow Theory". If the horse eats enough oats the sparrow gets its share after the fact.
  
• Flat wages occured through three forces, loss of manufacturing sector, loss of jobs to off shore, lack of genuine economic expansion outside of speculating financial markets.
• The Real Estate bubble was purpotrated by two forces, cheap cash or debt fostered by the removal of regulations in the banking industry allowing commercial banks to merge with investment banks and creating the real estate bundles (AKA Trusts) and infusion of cash at the top of the social ladder.
  
• El Paso County job loss is due to the loss of the high tech job/industry sector where manufacturing and high end service positions were shuttered.
  

What can you do? Organize and get involved making noise and making things happen locally. Help out Rob Andrews and Jim Gardner.