Campaign message 8:

Health care financing is an embarrassing disaster 

and threatens to undermine the fine quality 

of our health care system.

                                                     m.rosenzweig 2009

Campaign Message 7

                                                                    m.rosenzweig 2009

Community. 

Wow, besides jobs and families, is there anything more 

important than community? 

I grew up in Morris Cove.

 That community has changed,

 and changed and changed back in those seven decades 

since I trapped muskrats in the creek behind the airport there. 

New Auburn, during that time, has changed as well 

and is now in the process of resurrecting itself again.

Government must do everything in its power to help 

communities be the place 

where residents can nurture their children 

and enjoy this fleeting world we find ourselves in.

In fact, our communities continue to be quite good. 

Look around the world and you will quickly see 

a lot of communities that we would all be thankful 

not to be a resident of.

There are two things, however, where this world of ours 

might be improved. 

At first glance, they may seem in conflict.

I never felt unsafe as a kid even when crossing the runway 

while walking my trap line before school each morning. 

Today there is a climate of fear that adversely affects us all. 

It is very complicated and I don’t think it is possible 

to make it go away from above. 

It is, however, possible, I think, to assuage its impact 

from the bottom up.

One of the things that has been happening is that communities 

have been forced to reduce the budget bottom line. 

This is a hateful process. 

It turns good people against each other and undermines 

the capacity of people to feel safe.

It does not take much of a world view to see that we have 

a superior public safety component 

as do the communities to our north and east 

along the IAT. 

Unfortunately, as we cut back resources from public safety, 

they tend to come from the protection side 

of the two major functions of that government component. 

Not only does this leave us feeling a bit less safe, 

it makes the job of enforcement less safe as well.

This is another area where I think it would be wise 

to transition resources from the federal government 

to the state and local governments. 

Unarmed, uniformed folks who get to know me 

as a community resident 

have some idea of my potential as a threat. 

I, too, gain some comfort from their smile 

as I see them on the street.

The other piece is a bit more difficult to appreciate 

and may initially seem in conflict with feeling more safe.

 Audre Lorde, a black woman, very clever with words, 

urges us to think differently about diversity. 

“Difference must not be merely tolerated", she says, 

"but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between 

which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”

Maybe, with more protectors on the streets, 

we can feel a little more comfortable with the diversity 

that has evolved with our more globally defined community.

Audre suggests, “Difference is that raw and powerful connection 

from which our personal power is formed.” 

What that means is that diversity is one of the ingredients 

that enable the actuality of full potential 

both for individuals and for the communities we live in.

                                                                                                m.rosenzweig  2009

Video on jobs: part 2

Good evening!

I've just completed a second video on jobs,

this time looking at jobs in the private sector.

I welcome you to have a look.

Let me know what you think!

You can find that video here.

Campaign message 6:

Families are the fundamental unit of society. 

They are where the best things that happen to us, happen. Unfortunately, they are all too often where 

the worst things happen as well. 

I would like to think that government could 

just get out of the way and let families be, 

but everywhere we look government is 

deeply involved with families. 

Maybe we can develop some sort of a measure 

by which we can gauge the extent 

to which government is involved with families 

from one community to the next 

so we can alert ourselves as to 

when that involvement becomes counter productive. 

I’ll work on such a measure.

                                                                         m.rosenzweig 2011

Campaign message 5:

Maine, like all other states, is an economic unit. 

This is not well understood, so I will do my best

 to help us appreciate the consequences 

of resource flow in and out of the state. 

For example, we buy 9 billion kilowatt hours 

of electricity each year through CMP. 

For this, we send $115,500,000 to POB 11752 

in Newark New Jersey each month. 

Obviously, we need the electricity 

and maybe this is even the best price we can get. 

What we don’t have a good sense of 

is the total resource flow in and the total out. 

Just like a check book, this is important 

as an indicator of our economic health 

as a well as a gauge of where and how 

we might do better. 

This is not that difficult to develop 

and once in hand, we will have a better sense 

of the true costs of this or that policy.

Campaign message 4

We must be ever vigilant to ensure that

the power of government not be used against the interests 

of the least powerful of our citizens. 

We did this to women in general for decades with disastrous results. 

We now allow/encourage government 

to treat TANF (our national welfare program) recipients with disrespect. 

I don’t understand this, 

but since I believe we are good, caring people, 

I suspect our intentions are good and our behaviors misguided.

Since TANF started in 1996,

 the average family has needed the program for only 20 months. 

These families used it as a temporary support 

while they returned to self sufficiency. 

This is what the program was designed for.  

We should be applauding them. 

                                                                                                m. rosenzweig 2012

Campaign Message 3

Our stickiest problem is the extent 

to which good jobs are tied to weapons development. 

Most important, these weapons may not be relevant 

to our national security. 

My sense is that war has changed. 

We have no way of realigning resources 

to accommodate this change. 

If we are looking at a new definition of war at all, 

it is behind super sealed closed doors 

and we are probably only including past warriors in the discussion. 

This is like the British Ministry maintaining it as top secret 

that their red uniforms make great targets 

in the New England woods 

and then holding Burgoyne personally responsible 

for the outcome at Saratoga. 

We need to open up the discussion of what war is 

and where in it are our best interests. 

This is too important to leave to the Pentagon, 

and certainly not to the various congressional committees 

which ensure chaos. 

Each state needs to be involved in the discussion 

and subsequent conclusions need to become 

the foundation for future planning. 

In the mean time, we need to transition jobs 

and their supporting resources 

to other more sensible things as soon as we are able to be sure 

their relevance to war has become obsolete. 

We are not very good at transitioning large segments 

of the workforce to new endeavors, 

especially in the public sector, 

but we know how to do it with minimum disruption 

to either the workers or to their output.