SOMEBODY PASS THE MONKEYWRENCH

Just some ideas that came to mind during the past few days. Any improvements or suggestions would be welcome. Can you imagine what the journal community and their friends can do if they work together? Imagine a flood of letters and e-mails reminding the folks claiming a mandate that 48,000,000 million people did not vote for George W. Bash and will not be ignored.

This idea started with Amy of Hippies in Yuppiedom. She was planning to quit smoking anyway and tried to go cold turkey earlier this week. She mentioned that one new factor was not giving Philip Morris any more money to pass along to the Republicans. That got me thinking why not take it further?

First suggestion. We can take stock of our major appliances and vehicles. Can they last for another six months or so? Good. We can let the headquarters of both parties, our representatives in the legislatures and Congress, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s offices know that we won’t be buying any big ticket items for a while and why. They both have official web sites with mailing addresses fax or e-mail information. Just call in another way of voting. At first I was just aiming at the Republicans. Frankly the Dems have plenty of room for improvement. Much of what is wrong started long before Bush became president. But, it’s reached the point where the boil has to be lanced. Both sides come looking for support when they need our votes. Too often, many of them they can’t be found the rest of the time.

Personally, I’ve been looking forward to replacing my Frankenputer, but I think it can wait. Get my printer cleaned and replace the fire wire ports-keep my faithful blueberry IMac going for a little longer.

We can take a walk through the yellow pages (paper and virtual) for local suppliers for as many of our need as we can. Buy in bulk where we can. If nothing else, it cuts down on the garbage. We do most of our shopping at Winco. It’s a northwest, employee owned company. Luckily a local company also supplies their bulk products. My theory is that the local guys don’t have as much money to throw around on political contributions, they have ties to the local community and their jobs aren’t as easy to outsource.

If we can't find it locally, look for good family owned businesses on the net. The Earthmother's Cupboard springs to mind.

Let’s talk this over with our families. Perhaps start some new traditions for the holidays. Shop thelocal gift fairs and craft sales. Mom has already announced that we are “buying Oregon” (your state name here) for gifts this year.

Many of us are already doing some or all of these things. For some of us it’s the only way to get by. The important thing is to let the politicians on both sides; especially those claiming a “mandate” know that you are doing it. Let them know that you refuse to give the corporations supporting them any more of your money than you absolutely have to.

Maybe it’s time to push for vote by mail nationwide. Why do we keep making it more difficult and expensive to cast our votes? Despite attacks by pundits like George Will, vote by mail appears to be working here in Oregon. The objection I hear most often is that the stamp is a form of poll tax. The state does provide drop boxes where ballots can be dropped off.

We don’t have to stand in lines, the poll workers aren’t late, there are no poll watchers from either party in our living rooms, and no questionable electronic voting machines that don’t leave a paper trail. Since we get our ballots two or three weeks before election day, voters with registration problems would know about it much sooner and be able to contract the election boards to check on their registration.  

To anyone who likes these ideas, feel free to copy any or all of this posting. I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface. Even if each of us gets one other person on board and they get two, and they get two........Let’s let the hired help know that we are not satisfied with their job performance.