Candidate for
Supervisor; County of Humboldt; Supervisorial District 2

MY POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY:

I consider myself a populist. Being the owner of a small woodworking business, I am well aware of the difficulties associated with small-scale endeavors. While big business can readily take care of itself politically, small business--being for the most part unorganized--finds itself more and more at the mercy of legislation enacted to benefit the larger, more powerful business interests. My belief is that small business, being the major employer in our county, would do a lot better if we had more supervisors at the county level looking out for them.

There are examples of what I am talking about everywhere. For instance, if a person can buy a piece of furniture at a big box store for less than the wood costs here in Humboldt County, how does that help our economy. How can the craftsman survive? If the price of land is so high that a farmer cannot buy it and produce the food that we need, what are we supposed to eat? What becomes of the woodworker and the farmer? Yet another example is the rancher who must cut timber to boost his income yet finds the o\costs of complying with regulations too prohibitive. The regulations were designed for large, industrial timber operators, not small, family-owned companies. These examples underscore a very big problem with the structure of our economy. What we are witnessing is the death of the family farm, the small woodworking shop, the organic farmer, and the small retail outlet.

If elected supervisor, I will stand up for small business whenever the situation and opportunities arise. I would also convene, with the approval of the other supervisors, a series of strategic planning meetings throughout the county to tap into the ideas and solutions which may already be out there but until then had not had an arena in which discussion could take place. I think we need a strategy to deal with the effects of globalization, privatization of public resources/utilities and deregulation. Change is happening at such a rapid rate that we need to do more than react to each new disturbance in the economic waters; we need to have a better plan.

As supervisor, I would do more than raise my right hand and swear to defend the Constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic. WE need leaders who will stand against the efforts of some to relieve us of our freedoms. It is much easier to sit back and allow our free speech and right to privacy to be taken away. It will be much harder to gain them back. Somerset Maugham once said, "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose that freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that is values more, it will lose that too."

I want to feel protected by my government. I think the citizens of District two and Humboldt County in general want to feel protected. We need protection from outside interests who would exploit our resources and us; land, water, forest--and leave us in the dust and the trash they leave behind. People are beginning to wake up to the threat that we face her in Humboldt County of being robbed of our way of life. It is our small businesses that provide most of our employment and we need to make sure they survive and thrive!