2016 Republican Primary Predictions

2013-2014 Political Memes

All memes created in 2013 and 2014

See more recent memes at the following addresses:

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/03/2016-2017-political-memes.html

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/02/2017-2018-political-memes.html

Privatization and Industrial Combinations

Party for Mutualism and Cooperation: 101-Point U.S. Parliament Platform

GENERAL GOALS

1. Promote cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity, and voluntary action in political society and in interactions between citizens and government.
2. Promote social purpose, small scale, and locality of enterprise and property ownership.
3. Build a perfect and complete market free from monopolies and state intervention.
4. Increase transparency in government.
5. Build a party that represents the bottom 99%.
6. Achieve economic independence for the voluntary / cooperative / non-profit “Third Sector”.
7. Invest in local government (and reduce costs thereof) by networking with non-profit, mutual, cooperative, and community banking, credit, and finance agencies.
8. Promote mutuality, reciprocity, cooperation, voluntarism, consent, independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy in interactions between workers and enterprises.
9. Reduce domestic property losses to foreign banks through increasing local self-determination over banking and investment policies.
10. Increase the extension of credit to people and businesses.
11. Improve the access to a wide variety of social, common, and public goods and services, to the homeless and non-homeless alike.
12. Especially improve the access of housing to the homeless (through reforming homesteading, settling, rental law, etc.).
13. Grow and promote the self-sustainability of the Third Sector (the sector of voluntarism, cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity, and community).
14. Allow the peaceful economic secession of bioregionalist states and nations.
15. Create a peaceful, amicable competition to provide consumers and citizens with the best public, private, common, and club goods.
16. Build coalitions between independent business alliances, labor unions, trade organizations, economic and industrial unions, social welfare agencies, and charity groups.

GOVERNMENT

17. Increase voluntary public service, and increase transparency, responsibility, and responsivity between citizens and government.
18. Increase autonomy and independence of communal, neighborhood, and unincorporated governments and associations.
19. Increase decentralization, localism, subsidiarity, and diffusion of the authority to make and enforce decisions.
20. Promote sustainable investment of public funds through credit unions, cooperative and mutual banks, non-profit banks, and independent no-collateral social-purpose financing agencies.
21. Promote local economic interests through increased cooperation between local associations, enterprises, business alliances, and consumer groups (including locavore groups).
22. Promote cooperation between advocacy groups, PACs, and political parties and party caucuses that promote consumers' and citizens' interests.
23. Allow and encourage local communities and private communities to experiment with Land Value Taxation (taxing the unimproved value of land, and the blight, abuse, and unsustainable development of landed property).
24. Defeat any attempts to tax pollution in an institutional and general manner, and especially attempts to base citizens' dividends on the taxation of pollution.
25. Promote understanding of bioregionalism and Cascadian independence in government.
26. Reform jurisdictions and borders to bound watersheds and follow mountain ranges rather than water features.
27. Grow Cascadian and other bioregionalist economies through creating local business alliances and networks thereof.

BANKING / FINANCE

28. Perfect competition, and complete the systems of market-oriented distribution.
29. Free the markets from coercive, monopolistic, and distortive market actors.
30. Promote equal access to the factors of production as a requirement for free competition in markets.
31. Prohibit deceptive profit-calculation, externalization, high leverage, debt collateralization, pernicious lending, insider trading, manipulative speculation, and short-selling.
32. Restore Glass-Steagall (or implement similar legislation) at the federal level, and implement similar legislation at state and local levels of government.
33. Obtain easy credit and low interest rates through decreasing and eliminating unjustifiable transaction costs and externalization, and through establishing the principle “cost the limit of price”.
34. Promote cooperation between non-profit and cooperative banks, companies, and financial services agencies.
35. Extend the federal tax exemption for credit unions.
36. Require that for-profit enterprises which lack a stated social purpose in their charter, surrender 100% of their profits to a social, community, or citizens' dividend fund.
37. Build independent and alternative networks and systems of community and social credit.
38. Promote cooperation between credit-union leagues, cooperative interbank networks, and other non-profit and mutual finance networks.
39. Prohibit usury and fractional reserve banking.
40. Permit the establishment of state and local public banks.
41. Allow experimentation with local and alternative currencies.

HOUSING / PROPERTY

42. Improve the ability of the homeless to access public and common utilities (including and especially housing).
43. Increase penalties for deception and fraud by landlords.
44. Reform homesteading, by reducing the time-frame of duration-of-occupancy requirements, and by abolishing the requirement that property owners practice exclusive ownership.
45. Sustainably improve the development of abandoned, unoccupied, and underdeveloped commercial and residential properties.
46. Repurpose any abandoned properties which are not improved for occupation and residency by the homeless.
47. Sustainably improve the development of abandoned transportation infrastructure properties, repurposing them for occupation and residency by the homeless.
48. Repurpose some public farm, park, forest, and camping lands for occupation and residency by the homeless.
49. Provide shelter to the homeless by building cooperative housing, promoting cooperative finance of public housing projects, and restoring and repurposing abandoned properties.

SOCIAL WELFARE

50. Improve the image and reputation of the homeless and disadvantaged among civilians and public employees, by promoting C.O.R.E. (Clean, Organized, Respectful, and Energetic) values in social activism.
51. Require the government to pay for any good or service it requires citizens to have in order to exercise basic freedoms (such as state IDs, voter ID, travel documents, legal paperwork and representation, health insurance, etc.).
52. Improve access to public facilities, by the homeless and the general public alike, by promoting mutual aid and voluntary charitable giving, and cooperation between charitable and direct action agencies.
53. Work with mutual aid and charity agencies to distribute maps to the public (whether homeless or not) detailing where free food, shelter, public restrooms, and electrical outlets are located.
54. Improve the coordination and efficiency of delivery of personal social welfare.
55. Build a mutual aid society by facilitating cooperation between charity agencies, mutual aid networks, benefit associations, and non-profit and social enterprises.
56. Build a mutual aid society into an Aid-and-Trade association.
57. Build Aid-for-Work agencies - through coordinating with veterans' and retired persons' groups, social welfare agencies, etc. - in order to improve access to employment, job training, and immediate on-the-job family aid.
58. Improve access to education through volunteer provision, Aid-for-Work, cooperative education, and restoring abandoned schools.
59. Fight for the unity of families by re-evaluating standards of child care so as not to judge proper care based on degree of access to certain conveniences wrongfully presumed to be necessary.
60. Fight for the unity of families by promoting awareness of the corporate personhood implications of birth registration.
61. Promote the independence, mutualization, and syndicalization of social service bureaucracies, through abolishing all compulsory taxes on all productive behavior (earned income, investment, sales, and savings).
62. Base all government revenue not deriving from voluntary contributions only upon the punitive taxation of unimprovement of the value of land.

BUSINESS

63. Promote sustainable improvements to the development of occupied and unoccupied business offices and logistics properties and private-sector landed property.
64. Perform the finance, planning, and regulation of business and commercial banking at the state and local levels.
65. Require enterprises' charters to contain specifically stated social purposes, with compliance assured through the establishment of independent licensing boards and the promotion of regulatory competition.
66. Improve the social benefit of trade and commerce, by coordinating activity between profit-sharing agencies, social enterprises, fair-trade businesses and organizations, and agencies supporting the creation of social and Citizens' Dividend funds.
67. Promote the idea of government as a business, by embracing business-oriented solutions to social problems; not through privatization to the private sector, but through “privatization to the non-profit sector”; through social entrepreneurialism, and through non-profit, mutual, and cooperative enterprises, and networks thereof.
68. Build independent business alliances by recruiting non-profits, mutuals, cooperatives, social purpose enterprises, and charities as members.
69. Coordinate cooperation between sympathetic enterprises across stages of production: (production/manufacturing, trade, and consumption), by partnering with and promoting wholesale stores, consumers' cooperatives, and purchasing cooperatives.
70. Build business alliances into coalitions thereof, confederations of cooperatives, cooperative wholesale societies, trade associations, and trade confederations.
71. Promote coordination with cooperative corporations and cooperative business associations.

LABOR / EMPLOYMENT

72. Promote the proliferation of egalitarian management by labor in enterprise.
73. Promote the operation of workplaces on cooperativist, mutualist, syndicalist, and social-purpose-enterprise principles.
74. Offer tax incentives to enterprises to transition to Egalitarian Labor-Managed Firm, consumer-driven, worker cooperative, and worker-consumer cooperative (i.e., mutual) models.
75. Support the rights of individual workers to form unions by reviving the Blue Eagle.
76. Promote collective bargaining agreements which support individual workers' rights, by eliminating the social cost and free-rider problems which result from compulsory unionism.
77. Augment and broaden the collective bargaining rights of workers and non-workers alike.
78. Create homeless persons' and welfare recipients' unions, and coordinate activity with and between these unions, and freelancers' unions, and New Mutualist groups.
79. Revive the International Brotherhood Welfare Association traveling workers' union and mutual aid society.
80. Wage a general strike in order to end exploitation, and to raise awareness of the Party's coalition building.
81. Achieve secession of the Third Sector economy from the establishment economy and the Private-Public Partnership.

JUSTICE

82. Oppose tort reform that inhibits the rights of juries to award compensation to victims as they see fit.
83. Make large-scale class-action lawsuits possible in order to compensate citizens for takings by government and its beneficiaries.
84. Abolish mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for non-violent crimes.
85. Liberalize drug laws.
86. Remove obstacles to non-violent felons voting, traveling, finding employment, and purchasing and qualifying for health insurance.
87. Fight tyranny, coercion, and the disproportionate and unaccountable use of force.
88. Increase public transparency into police activities.
89. Keep weapons of war (such as tanks and drones) off American streets and out of American skies.
90. Restore 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th Amendment liberties, through augmenting Miranda Rights.
91. Ensuring that juries and the accused are fully informed of their rights (such as refraining from entering a plea, and jury nullification), and prohibit the suppression of the spreading of such information.
92. Increase public transparency of the regulation of the legal professions.
93. Ending the self-management of the legal professions by bar associations and attorneys' guilds.
94. Ensure that all public officials provide evidence of their identity, oaths of office, and anti-corruption oaths, immediately upon citizen request.
95. Ensure that judges enter evidence of their anti-corruption oaths in court.
96. Ensure that judges and prosecutors submit their oaths of office in court.
97. Ensure that, in court cases, the judge, prosecutor, and witness do not all represent the State.
98. Promote the idea that indictment on information by the police may not be sufficient for a finding of guilt, especially if there is no Verified Criminal Complaint (V.C.C.) by a real person of interest, who is not the prosecutor, nor whom in any way represents the State.
99. Acquit all persons charged with violating statutes and ordinances, in whose violation no real criminal damage to personal property exist.
100. Prevent the unfounded dismissal of prospective jurors by attorneys in the voir dire (jury selection) process.
101. Replace multi-colored police, ambulance, and fire engine lights, in all jurisdictions and locations, with single-colored lights, in order to avoid triggering epileptic seizures.

Originally Written in August 2014 under the title

"Party for Mutualism and Cooperation: 100-Point U.S. Parliament Platform"

Originally Published on August 7th, 2014

Edited and Expanded in late May 2017 and March 5th, 2019

Anarcho-Communists vs. Anarcho-Capitalists: Views on Property

Inspired by a comment by James Weeks II.

Letter to the U.S. House Ethics Committee

The following was written on August 2nd, 2014,

as a response to a Financial Disclosure inquiry

by the U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Committee

about my 2014 candidacy for the U.S. House in Oregon's 3rd District.

The Honorable Karen L. Haas, Clerk

Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives

Legislative Resource Center

B-106 Cannon House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515-6601

Dear Madam Clerk:

     This is to notify you that I have not yet raised (either through contributions or loans from myself or others) or spent in excess of $5,000 for my campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives.

     I understand that when I do raise or spend in excess of $5,000 for my campaign, I must file a Financial Disclosure Statement with the Clerk of the House of Representatives according to the deadlines set out on pages 2 and 3 of the Financial Disclosure Instruction booklet, a copy of which has been provided to me by the Clerk.

     Additionally, I intend to request a waiver of the late filing fee, because my Campaign Committee bank account has not been opened and has not received or spent any funds, and because I did not open a bank account, receive any campaign donations, or even finish verifying my candidate and committee registration until several weeks after the FD Statement was due.

     I failed to file the Financial Disclosure Statement which was due on May 15^th, 2014, but I did not do so knowingly or willingly (nor did I falsify any information), because between May 14^th and May 26^th, I was still in the process of verifying my candidate registration, Candidate ID Number, and the name and ID Number of my Campaign Committee, with the Federal Election Commission.

     After I filled out and mailed FEC Forms 1 and 2 (between March 24^th and the 29^th, the day they were postmarked), the Federal Election Commission received the forms in April. It received Form 2 (Candidacy) on April 3^rd , and Form 1 (Committee) on April 23^rd. However, it was not until May 14^th – just one day before the Financial Disclosure Statement was due – that I confirmed with the F.E.C. (via telephone) that they had processed any of my paperwork.

     I had spent the previous month and a half checking the F.E.C. website, www.politics1.com, www.thegreenpapers.com, and other websites, to find out whether the F.E.C. had received or processed my paperwork, but I was not able to find any information. I did not discover until mid-May that the way I was supposed to verify this information was to make a phone call to the F.E.C..

     Between May 14^th and June 7^th, I was in the process of verifying my candidacy with the F.E.C.. Between May 14^th and May 22^nd, I made multiple attempts to verify that I was registered, and verify my Candidate and Committee ID Numbers. At no point during any of these three phone calls did anyone inform me that I needed to file a Financial Disclosure Statement.

     These three attempts to verify that I was registered occurred on:

• May 14^th, the day the F.E.C. told me that they had received and processed my paperwork. I did not verify either my Candidate ID Number, or find out the correct name and ID Number of my Committee. The F.E.C. did not inform me during the phone call that a Financial Disclosure Statement was due on the following day.
• May 16^th, the day the F.E.C. informed me that I was a registered candidate, and explained to me that the Committee ID I had when I ran in Wisconsin in 2012 still applied to my run in Oregon in 2014. I had not yet discovered whether the name of the Committee had changed or stayed the same. The F.E.C. did not inform me during the phone call that I had failed to file a Financial Disclosure Statement the previous day.
• May 22^nd, the day the F.E.C. told me that the name and ID Number of my Committee would not change. The F.E.C. did not inform me that I had failed to file a Financial Disclosure Statement one week prior; in fact, they told me that I would not have to file any more paperwork unless and until I file to end my committee.

     It was not until May 26^th that I mailed FEC Forms 1 and 2 again, in order to make sure that both forms were filled out properly. I did this on the advice of the Elections Division of the Oregon Secretary of State's Office.

     On May 15^th, the day the FD Statement was due, I had only been aware that I was a candidate for one day. I had not yet performed any of the following actions:

• Confirmed that I had an active Campaign Committee ID Number.
• Confirmed the name of my Campaign Committee.
• Opened a bank account for my Campaign Committee.
• Contributed or loaned any of my own money to any bank account.
• Received any campaign donations.
• Re-sent paperwork to ensure that FEC Forms 1 and 2 were correct.
• Been informed that I had to file any paperwork until I decide to withdraw my candidacy, aside from re-submitting FEC Forms 1 and 2.

     At the time of this writing, I have still not opened a bank account for my Campaign Committee. I have neither contributed nor loaned any of my own money to any account. I have not received any campaign donations, nor have I exceeded $5,000 in donations. I have also not spent any funds.

     I would like to request a waiver of the late filing fee for the following reasons:

1) I was not able to fully confirm my candidacy – complete with Candidate and Committee names and ID Numbers – by May 15^th, the date the FD Statement was due. I made attempts to verify and re-submit this information on the 16^th, the 22^nd, and 26^th; however, I did not verify and compile all the information until June 7^th.

2) Between May 14^th and May 15^th (the day I discovered that the F.E.C. had received and processed my information, and the date the FD Statement was due), I did not open a bank account for my Campaign Committee.

3) I have still not opened a bank account for my Campaign Committee, which has not received any donations and does not have any funds to report, nor to disburse.

     If I had been aware that the Financial Disclosure Statement was due on May 15^th, I would have filed and mailed the FD Statement on May 14^th. However, I most likely would not have had enough information to complete the form, because I had not yet confirmed that the name and ID Number of my Campaign Committee were accurate, nor did I do so completely until June 7^th, more than three weeks after the FD Statement was due. This is why my failure to file the FD Statement was unknowing and unwilling.

     If I had been able to fill out and mail the FD Statement at the moment I discovered that I was a registered candidate (on May 14^th), not only would the form have failed to arrive by the May 15^th deadline, I would not have even had the time to open a bank account the next day, nor receive and/or spend any campaign funds, nor to inform anyone that I was ready to receive funds.

     As I explained, I was not yet ready to receive funds, because I did not yet know either the name or ID Number of my Campaign Committee. It was not until June 7^th that I was able to verify the Candidate IDs, Committee IDs, and the name of the Campaign Committees for both the 2012 and the current 2014 race. This is because the F.E.C. had not been able to provide me with all of this information during the course of the three phone calls and the multiple correspondences by mail, so I had to find this information on the internet.

     I regret that I am unable to include a $200 check or money order, but I do not have a personal checking account, nor any campaign funds with which to do so. Please inform me as to what is the next step that I should take in this process.

Sincerely, Joseph William Kopsick

Signed, Joseph William Kopsick

State: Oregon District: 03

Date: August 4^th, 2014

Daytime Telephone: 608-417-9395

Millennial Political Hub

The following is a description for the Facebook group "Millennial Political Hub."

Written by Joe Kopsick and Trevor Tidwell in May and August 2014.

By Joe Kopsick:

     A page for a big-tent, multi-partisan coalition for a new American republic and a new social contract.

     The Millennial Political Hub (formerly the United Freedom Alliance) is a coalition that caters to the voice of the people.

     We know that the people of the world, of the United States, and especially the Millennial generation (the generation born between approximately 1982 and 2000) want to think and work together peacefully to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the world over the next several decades.

     The American Dream is in shambles. The Baby Boomer generation will not only out-earn the Millennial generation; they will also live longer than Millennials. Generational debt has resulted from our government's financial mismanagement. Homelessness, hunger, poverty, and economic disparity still plague the world, and in America the authorities brutally crack down on the poor, and brutally crack down on everyone else for unbelievably minor non-violent offenses. Life-threatening but preventable chronic diseases are on the rise. By 2025, the North Atlantic will be almost completely devoid of marine life, and by 2030, carbon dioxide emission trends will reach the crucial turning point.

     Our governmental institutions and processes – even our fundamental notions of what justice and the rule of law are - are in disarray. The stark divide between political camps which was evident during the Culture Wars of the 1990s has given way to increasing factionalism and sectionalism, which threaten to eventually tear apart not only the two major parties but the fabric of society as a whole.

     Simply put, the world has a lot of problems, and each person or faction in it has its own views about what justice is, and what standards people ought to be held to.

     That's why Millennial Political Hub invites you to join our group, chat with administrators, discuss in our threads, meet fellow members, and vote in our polls. Seek your own justice, wisdom, and freedom, through peaceful discourse and polite discussion. We do this in order to encourage free thought and speech, facilitate cooperation and brainstorming.

     Our desire is to build a broad coalition that would support a platform based on what we aim to create: a working model for a personalizable, customizable form of government (or style, or institutional framework for, governance) that can be all things to all people. A style of - or institutional framework for – governance, that can hold people to their own professed moral principles and behavioral standards, not to the principles dictated by some elite claiming to represent them.

     We believe that the people of the Millennial Generation – and of the Millennial Political Hub – are up to the challenge of improving government and solving war, hunger, pollution, poverty, unemployment, collapsing public infrastructure, education, disease, and so on. Millennials are well-educated, globally aware, culturally and ethnically diverse, and politically conscious, yet relatively untainted by partisan politics.

     The Millennials are not content to become a silent, ignored, mistrusted generation. The Baby Boomers seem certain that we are going to save them, but they don't seem willing to accept any of our terms. Our generation may volunteer in record numbers, but we don't always work for free.

     We demand little more than the tools to do our jobs: our fair share of opportunity, a peaceful and free society, a safe workplace, a truly social safety net that extends beyond the scope of government welfare programs, and a basic guaranteed standard of living to provide a level playing field.

We want more reasonable licensing requirements and more widely accessible job training. We want it to be easier to volunteer and to work, and we want those labors to be more effective and more profitable. Likewise, we want our government to spend our money more wisely and more efficiently.

     The Millennial Generation cannot take its place in history as a proud and accomplished generation unless and until the political, societal, and economic values systems of the Baby Boomers are no longer imposed on us. We know that society cannot survive when groups and individuals impose foreign values systems, customs, and traditions upon one another, not without dire consequences.

     Millennial Political Hub urges its members to read The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Strauss and Howe teach us that generations and history shape and influence one another, and postulate that generational societal change occurs in cycles.

     Millennial Political Hub hopes to find ways for our generation to get along with the dying members of the G.I. and Silent generations, and the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers. We also want to ensure that the next generation does not fall victim to the same war, nationalism, and depression that afflicted the Silent and Progressive generations.

     Collectively, we stand for:

     - Subsidiarity and localism: increase governmental efficiency and efficacy through the decentralization and diffusion of decision-making and enforcement power down to the lowest possible level without compromising competence.

     - Household choice of legal community and location (for single-person households and family households alike).

     - Self-determination of households and consensual legal communities (whether or not the lands that such communities are contiguous and connected).

     - Egalitarianism and isocracy

     - Civic republicanism; an emphasis on written law

     - That a social contract should be written, signed, sealed, delivered, and acknowledged by all parties involved, just like any normal contract conferring mutual obligation and surety.

     - That breaking a social contract, or changing its rules without sufficient cause and/or notice, should merit ostracism, and compulsory exile and self-dependence; rather than forced submission or violent retribution (unless democide or mass mayhem is risked by not initiating violence in the face of an imminent threat).

     - That consensus- and coalition- based democracy are preferable to majoritarian democracy (even based on a majority of those who participate) because majoritarianism is insufficiently supportive of - and insufficiently deferential to - individual rights, cultural differences, the self-determination of legal communities, competitive provision of justice, and non-cooperative pacts and truces providing for non-aggression.

     - Separation of powers in dispute resolution: eliminate corruption in jury selection; promote full information of juries; reinstate common-law grand juries; ensure that no dispute resolution or arbitration agency has the authority to license any other (s), nor to compel any person or agency to always and exclusively come to it for dispute resolution; and ensure that police witnesses, prosecutors, and judges (who all represent the state) and court-appointed public defenders cannot collude to keep jurors and the accused ill-informed of their rights.

     To learn more about the inspiration for this group - and about the history of Western political philosophy - the original three authors of the group recommend viewing the following 12-part video series, a course that was filmed at Harvard that covers Locke, Nozick, Rawls, Aristotle, and others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

By Trevor Tidwell:

     The Millennial Political Hub is a place for Millennials to gather, discuss, brainstorm to create mutually agreeable solutions across partisan and ideological lines, and form a big-tent, multi-partisan coalition for a new republic and social contract, that all may have justice and freedom for themselves, rather than having values and ideals imposed on them.

     We invite you to join our group, chat with administrators and other members, vote in polls, and participate in peaceful discourse and polite discussion. We encourage free thought and speech, and want to facilitate cooperation and brainstorming.

     As Millennials, we are not content to become a silent, ignored, lazy, and mistrusted generation. Our Boomer parents and grandparents once seemed certain that we were going to save them, and with the proper guidance and negotiation, we will rise to the occasion. Gen-Xers have distrusted us, but we will build bridges of mutual respect, appreciation, and teamwork. We will end the conflict between generations, so we can face our challenges together.

     We believe that Millennials, together with Xers and Boomers, are up to the challenge of improving government, solving war, ending hunger, cleaning up pollution, eradicating poverty, ending unemployment, renewing collapsing public infrastructure, improving education, curing disease, and meeting all the challenges we face with all brightness of hope that we can overcome them. We are well-educated, globally aware, culturally and ethnically diverse, and politically conscious, and reject partisan politics.

     We want our markets, corporations, and businesses to have a conscience and be socially responsible, as well as productive and profitable. We want education to be freely accessible and affordable for all people. We want fully integrated lives, where our jobs and work do not take us from our families or prevent us from enjoying the fruits and rest of a productive society. We want strong, healthy, and happy children, families, and marriages. We want our homes, neighborhoods and communities to be safe, friendly, clean, well connected, and open. We want our government to be efficient, responsible, and responsive, and our taxes invested and dispensed wisely. We want an end to debt-slavery and wage slavery and the building of true wealth for the benefit of all people. We want peace and freedom.

Request to join now!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/692220487515678/

Monopoly and Competition

Designed in February 2014,
Edited in November 2014

The Impact of Globalization on Highwood, Illinois

     Although one may not expect a city of only 5,000 residents located on the North shore of Chicago to show much evidence of international influence, the history of Highwood, Illinois has a rich multicultural heritage that is reflected in its mix of foreign-born and immigrant-descended residents and their restaurants, grocery stores, and other businesses which have put Highwood's economic success level on par with that of the mostly white and Jewish communities around it.

     In 2000, the population of Highwood was 4,143. It is located in southeastern Lake County, 28 miles north of downtown Chicago. The City of Highwood is connected to all cities on the shore of Lake Michigan from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Chicago by the Metra / Union Pacific North Line. It is bordered by Lake Forest to the northwest, Fort Sheridan to the northeast, and Highland Park to the south.

     Highwood was founded in the 1880s by Swedish settlers. Phone service in Highwood began in the 1930s, and cars became available in the 1940s, though they were difficult to afford during the war.

     Today, 38.6% of Highwood residents are foreign-born and 38.2% are Hispanics of any race. Italian immigration to the city began in the early years of the 1900s decade, peaked during World War II, decreased dramatically in the late 1940s, and rose again in the 1960s. Highwood has been importing pasta, olive oil, cookies, candy, and panatone from Italy since before the 1930s. The city hosts the annual Highwood Days in August, which began as an Italian cultural celebration in the 1980s.

     The economic blending between Highwood and the affluent, predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Highland Park has become more apparent since World War II through the 1960s, when Highwood experienced a business renaissance as several dozen taverns were replaces by better buildings occupied by restaurants. Since then, Highwood has seen an increase in white residents and property values. Over the last five to seven years, several antique stores and art galleries have opened.

     In the mid-1950s, Highwood's numerous Italian-owned landscaping companies, of which today there are at least five, began hiring Mexican immigrants. The influx of Mexican immigrants to Highwood has spread to Highland Park and Lake Forest. There is also a significant Mexican population in North Chicago, ten miles north of Highwood.

     Most Highwood residents work within the city, although train service to Kenosha and Chicago is readily available as it goes straight through the center of the town, which is less than one square mile in area. In the 1930s, many people living in Highwood worked as housekeepers and gardeners for residents of Lake Forest, Highland Park, and Lake Bluff. Today the most common occupations are landscaping, carpentry, stone masonry, electrician work, food service, plumbing, and family businesses such as auto body shops.

Today, downtown Highwood has many Mexican- and Italian-owned grocery stores and restaurants. There are two Mexican-owned grocery stores, called “mini-supers,” including one that cooks food to order. There are currently three Italian-owned grocery stores - one of which is a butcher shop that has been in business for 35 years – another is a bakery, and two of them make food to order or to go.

     There are three or four Mexican-owned restaurants, which mostly employ Mexican cooks, busboys, and wait staff. There are at least nine Italian-owned restaurants, some of which employ Mexican cooks and busboys. The wait staff, hosts, and bartenders at restaurants and bars in Highwood are mostly Italian or white.

     The Walgreen's store in Highwood offers specialty items that most other Walgreen's would not have, such as Mexican candy, pastries made by Mexico-based company Bimbo, and El Milagro tortilla chips. Walgreen's was built after Highwood's main pharmacy and convenience store, Laegler's Pharmacy, closed after about a hundred years of operation. The owner, William Laegler, became a pharmacist at Walgreen's. In Laegler's place is an upscale Italian-owned restaurant called Miramar.

     Gabe Viti, the owner of Miramar – and Froggy's, which serves French cuisine – opened a Mexican restaurant called Pancho Viti, but it was unsuccessful and closed after several years. There is also a Chinese restaurant and a Greek restaurant called Yianni's Opa, which closed last year after about ten years of operation.

     North Shore Estates is a 200,000 square-foot, 252-unit apartment property comprised of three four-story midrise apartment buildings located on the northern edge of Highwood's business district. It houses several hundred, perhaps a thousand residents. Since the early 1980s, the building has been known to be overcrowded and there are numerous health and safety concerns. What to do about the building has been a topic of concern in City Hall for the past few years. The building may be sold, but citizens have voiced their concern for the health of the residents as this would displace about 20% of Highwood's work force.

Another apartment complex north of North Shore Estates along Sheridan Road is the nearby Hotel Moraine, which has closed and is planned to be torn down and replaced by a condominium with retail space on the bottom floor, although logistical and population-density issues slow its development.

     Across Sheridan Road from northern Highwood is the south end of the U.S. Army base Fort Sheridan. Fort Sheridan and Highwood belong to North Shore School District 112, which today includes Oak Terrace Elementary and Indian Trail School, which teach kindergarten through fifth grade, and Elm Place Middle School, which teaches sixth through eighth grade. Students attend high school in neighboring Highland Park. St. James Catholic School, which teaches kindergarten through eighth grade, has been open for at least 75 years. It has been developed since its construction, adding new classrooms and converting old classrooms into rental spaces for events.

     After about a hundred years of operation, Oak Terrace School was rebuilt as Oak Terrace Elementary in 1999 and 2000 and has since become a dual language magnet school, owing to the increase in Mexican immigration to Highwood. Fifty-two point one percent of Highwood residents over 5 years old speak a language other than English at home. For each grade, the school offers one English-only class and one or several dual Spanish and English classes. As the grades advance, Spanish and English use in the classroom is blended. Kindergarten dual Spanish and English classes begin with Spanish immersion.

     Recently, there has been an increase in the number of white students enrolled at Oak Terrace Elementary, the dual-language elementary school, as non-Spanish-speaking residents have become aware and have realized the need for their children to be aware of the Spanish language. Some residents believe that Oak Terrace's emphasis on dual language skills causes the content to be covered less in-depth. Sherwood School in Highland Park also offers dual language classes. Residents are free to choose which of Highwood's elementary schools their children attend.

     In a study of Highwood, Illinois, one can find evidence of influence from Mexico, China, and most of Western Europe including Italy, France, and Sweden. It has been active in trade with Italy for at least 75 years. Residents celebrate their Italian heritage on an annual basis, and Hispanic heritage is reflected in one of its educational institutions, each contributing to the prevalence of multilingual people in the area. Highwood's status as a diverse immigrant neighborhood has shaped its distinct identity among cities on the North Shore for over one hundred years.

Written in February 2008 for a course on geography,

Edited in July 2014

Land Ownership: Thomas More vs. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

     [Thomas] More's character Raphael Nonsenso says that nobles “have grown dissatisfied with the income that their predecessors got out of their estates. They're no longer content to lead lazy, comfortable lives, which do no good to society – they must actively do it harm, by enclosing all the land they can for pasture, and leaving none for cultivation.”

     [According to More, t]he sheep market is “almost entirely under control of a few rich men, who don't need to sell unless they feel like it, and never do feel like it until they get the price they want.” [He continues,] “These few greedy people have converted one of England's greatest natural advantages into a national disaster. For it's the high price of food that makes employers turn off so many of their servants – which inevitably means turning them into beggars or thieves.”

     [According to Jean-Jacques Rousseau,] “The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: 'Do not listen to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”

     More and Rousseau agree that inequality arises when a person with a claim to land forbids other people from living on it or working the land for food. More says that for an employer to kick his servants off of his land causes them to become beggars and thieves. Rousseau believes that all people have the right to the fruits of the earth and that the land belongs to no one.

Written in April 2008 for a course on political theory,

Edited in July 2014