sunonwater

Bio:
Concerned citizen, resident of Ballard, trying to envision a very different future in a world beyond oil. I know that our region and state will play a vital role in national politics, global economies, and social relationships among the world's hemispheres in this century, and perhaps even sooner in the coming decade. Here's Washington State today: We have antiquated and unrealistic expectations of government's ability to deliver services compared with government's ability to generate revenues to deliver those services. We are a populist citizenry with progressive values who simultaneously believe in social responsibility but do not believe in paying taxes to deliver socially responsible policies to ourselves, the people. We also have a healthy but rigid degree of skepticism about government accountability and transparency: on the one hand, we assume government is incompetent but perhaps well-meaning in its incompetence; on the other hand, we demand full-time accountability from our elected officials despite the fact that most of them are part-time and virtually not paid. We want citizen government, composed of people who earn their living from separate paying jobs while serving as elected officials, but we believe that part-time elected officials have inherent conflicts of interest. When we build and perpetuate forms and rules of governance that undermine our ability to trust our elected officials, we get a government that is destined to fail. With a presumption of failure, government cannot harness the support of the people to change direction for a different future. None of us raises our families believing that our children will fail. None of us builds our business assuming it won't succeed. None of us hires people thinking we're hiring incompetent employees. None of us take jobs or volunteer in our communities expecting that the system will inherently undermine our success or the success of the people around us. I am exploring how we change the equation to create an expectation that government and the people are in this together, and that, despite all odds, we can build a very different future.

Active since February 2009

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Let's seize 'the opportunity of this crisis'

Posted Sat, Jul 11, 6:39 p.m.

Rep. Carlyle does here what all our legislators should be doing: making us think about what comes next. The economy that comes out of this deep recession will look very different than the economy of the 1990s. All the changes Reuven explores will not happen all at once. They shouldn't ...

Is it King County's moment for change?

Posted Wed, Jun 10, 10:27 p.m.

Why would the same voters who hired "seasoned candidates" with proven track records in 2007 now turn around and hire a TV personality with no track record in hiring people, delivering services, providing for the public health and welfare, and dealing with the conflicts between growth and environmental protection? Elections ...