Day One after I made my blogging declaration, and I almost forgot my blog existed. They say it takes two weeks of consistency to form a habit, so I'll have to power through the next 12 days.
Today was an interesting day, Jessica and I volunteered to help our friend and supervisor Ben with his political campaign and we met with him this evening along with his political advisory board. He's planning to run for City Council Supervisor of Spokane, which is a significant political post for a mid-sized city and I think he'll do a superb job. It seems likely Jessica and I will coordinate social media, photography, and videography, though I'm sure we'll get a chance to see a little bit of everything through this campaign process. This is my first inside view of the politics, and I'm very excited to get started.
In other political news, I've been shocked to read that the Republicans in the House have passed a bill which would completely eliminate AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Teach for America, and many other crucial programs that support community health, public education, and the impoverished neighborhoods of America. One Republican Senator from Minnesota goes so far to declare AmeriCorps and similar programs to be "re-education camps" (which her son promptly decided to join -- oh teenage rebellion). Apparently caring about our communities is something only liberals do, which is inherently evil. I get that Republicans are trying to focus on trimming eliminating Obama's budget, but have they so quickly forgotten that we are in a recession? This bill would result in thousands of people out of work (80,000 in AmeriCorps alone), a chilling job outlook for recent college graduates, and a vacuum of educational and not-for-profit services that our strained social infrastructure desperately needs. The cost of this bill is far greater than the savings in budget -- Goldman Sachs estimates that these eliminated services would reduce our economic growth (in GDP) by 1.5 to 2 percentage points, when it's already estimated at only 3.4% - 3.9% - possibly reducing our economic growth rate in half. Luckily this bill has yet to get past the Senate, and would likely be vetoed by President Obama if it somehow survived the Democrats. While it's likely this is merely a superficial show of force by the Republicans, opportunistic due to their nearly undisputed control of the House, it's frightening how radical their party politics have become. I propose liberals respond with proportionate radicalism.
Unrelated, this is my view right now.
