The so called "mayoral debate" at the Women's Club last night that excluded most of the mayoral candidates was pretty much what I expected. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb bragging about their work fighting crime and all three candidates telling us we need more housing and job opportunities. All three candidates were handing out their stickers, buttons, T shirts and pamphlets with their names and listing the issues and the problems but short on details of how we solve those problems. I wish housing and job opportunities were all that was needed to solve our growing problems of crime. Now brace yourself. You won't hear this from any other candidate. The painful truth is that we not only have too many people working, we have too much housing. WHAT????!!!!! Yes, we actually have too many people working too hard and too long at jobs that are unnecessary, destructive, wasteful and do nothing more than create pollution, inflation, resource shortages and greenhouse gasses. Our entire economy, our entire culture, our lifestyles are wasteful, destructive and obsolete. By continuing with "business as usual" we will only speed up the process of global climate change and global calamity. As far as housing goes we waste it just like we waste everything else. We don't use what we have efficiently. Millions of people have too many houses with a maybe a lake home up north or a condo in Florida that sit empty most of the year or maybe a four bedroom house for a two person household. We don't need people to continually crowd into our cities. We need more people in the country working in organic farming or building efficient housing and renewable energy technology or maybe doing nothing for a while but the last thing we need is more people crowding into our city making more bombs and guns and lipstick or parking ramps, more cars and car culture or more jewelry, tattoos, leaf blowers, power lawn mowers and endless unnecessary nonsense. Our housing laws are too restrictive with ordinances that prohibit housing that might be a few inches short of space or outlawing people who might want to sleep in an available loft or carriage house or guest house. We have landlords that buy up affordable housing and turn them into unaffordable housing and we have police that are harassing homeless people who might want to sleep under a bridge. Of course a huge number of people sleeping under a bridge can be a problem but this is not what I'm talking about. Believe me I've been there and I know what the humble and the frugal people and the people who live with minimum resources who leave a small "footprint" on this planet have to go thru. Let's create essential life saving and earth saving industries. Let's create and encourage stem cell research and hydrogen fueling stations, organic victory gardens, organic vegetarian prisons, grid tied photovoltaic arrays on our freeway sound barriers so we can reduce mercury and greenhouse gasses, better walking and bicycle accommodations, more L.E.D. lighting, efficient technology and let's maximize efficiency everywhere especially in city government so we can reduce taxes. Scale back some of the extremely expensive and destructive school busing boondoggle that squanders our education dollars and destroys the health of our children and our city. And we can do so much more. We don't need a mayor who will perpetuate business as usual or who will not tell it like it is or who will not lead us off of this path of death, decay and destruction. We don't need a leader who uses 20th century solutions for 21st century problems. Minneapolis has more educated and more progressive and enlightened people than any city in the country. We not only can but we must show the world what can and should be done to reduce the poisons that pour into our air and most important try to slow the global warming progression, a crisis that will likely b our last.
Sincerely, Don Johnson, Candidate for Mayor, 3808 Grand Ave So. Minneapolis, MN 55409 (612) 824 1111 _www.DonJohnsonMayor.org_ (http://www.donjohnsonmayor.org/) REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[email protected] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
