crisis effects here in washington state

after attending a forum regarding the economic crisis at the university of washington yesterday, a few things were brought up that i found very interesting.

the historians were walking us through what had happened between 1929 and 1930 here, and although the state approved to increase large projects to boost employment, it appeared that the governor tied their hands by not raising taxes. photos were provided of "hoovervilles" shantytowns, while mentioning the current homeless "nickelsvilles" (named to spite mayor nickels). i found this thought provoking as such a reality is hard for me to believe had existed and the photos really kicked the reason "home". they feel that the situation today is not much different than in the past, and i hope that we can make good long-term decisions. we can reduce the effects locally by continuing governmental investment in "human capital", such as education, job retraining, and they argue through further unions and worker mobilization to ensure that policies will be aimed towards the people and not corporations. the way that we emerge out of a recession, or a depression for that matter, is to keep people employed to continue to be able to consume and thus prop our own industries up. not through cutting taxes and canning workers, which seems to be the direction many are pointing.

realistically, after seeing an article in the new york times confirming what the historians were saying by college being more and more expensive, i think it will be hard to balance out the short term solutions (which seem rather tempting to most, such as bailing out the auto industry, etc) with the long term solutions (such as keeping or upping taxation levels to keep retraining or education high, ensuring that after the resolution of the crisis we're to re-emerge well). i wrote a message to governor gregoire this morning to note that we will need to convince the people to keep all the social services that we can alive, at a time that we'll be more than ever tempted to hatchet spending.

any comments are more than welcome to ponder through what should be done.
abraços,

Please Discuss: The Shark

I am posting this for those who were not able to attend but would like to see the show.

I'd also love to discuss the play, as I've not really had a lot of meaningful discussion about it.

Please, if you would like, watch the low-quality streaming video of "The Shark" at

www.youtube.com/user/natejp

I apologize for the quality.

The written script, if you wish to keep along, is available here

Sample discussions:
The logic of cannibalism.
self-destruction vs human nature
the logic of murder
anti-logic.