Larisa Alexandrovna: Welcome to the final stages of the coup

Let me first point you to the Bush administration's so-called Wall Street bailout bill, here http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2008/09/20/treasurys-financial-bailout-proposal-to-congress/, so that you can see for yourself that this treachery is being conducted in the light of day. Fascism is finally and formally out of the right-wing closet even if the F word is not yet openly being used (although it should be, and often). The door has been opened to Fascism. read more

Tipping Point Ahead: Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip

Beautifully made, informative and alarming ten-minute animated film about climate change.
These are extraordinary times. Preventing runaway global warming is the single most important task in all of human history – and it has fallen to us to do it. If we don’t, then everything else we work to achieve in our lives will be destroyed, or become meaningless. Those who came before us didn't know about this problem, and those who come after will be powerless to do anything about it. But for us, there's still time! We'd better get a move on though. read more

The relocalization process of restoring the Tujunga-Pacoima Watershed

The objectives of restoring the Tujunga-Pacoima Watershed point to a green jobs based economy arrived at by a process of Relocalization involving some key concepts featured in Biologist Jason Bradford's Relocalization: A Strategic Response to Climate Change and Peak Oil:

Relocalization is based on a systems approach that doesn’t solve one set of problems (peak oil) only to make another problem (climate shift) worse.

Relocalization is based on an ethic of protecting the Earth System--or Natural Capital-- knowing that despite our cleverness, human well-being is fundamentally derived from the ecological and geological richness of Earth.

Relocalization starts from the premise that the world is a finite place and that humanity is in a state of overshoot (relying on an oil-based economy and resource consumption levels beyond the planet's carrying capacity). Perpetual growth of the economy and the population is neither possible nor desirable. It is wise to start planning now for a world with less available energy, not more.

While we can’t know future threats precisely, scientists do agree that creating a carbon-cycle neutral economy should be the dominant task occupying our minds. This is exactly what Relocalization aims to do.

Relocalization advocates rebuilding more balanced local economies that emphasize securing basic needs. Local food, energy and water systems are perhaps the most critical to build. In the absence of (past) reliable (but now exhausted) trade partners, whether from peak oil, natural disaster or political instability, a local economy that at least produces its essential goods will have a true comparative advantage.

Relocalization takes a different perspective altogether. Instead of working to keep a system going that has no future, it calls us to develop means of livelihood that pollute as little as possible and that promote local and regional stability. Since much of our pollution results from the distances goods travel, we must shorten distances between production and consumption as much as we can.

Then given the processes involved, What is Relocalization?

Relocalization is a strategy to build societies based on the local production of food, energy and goods, and the local development of currency, governance and culture. The main goals of Relocalization are to increase community energy security, to strengthen local economies, and to dramatically improve environmental conditions and social equity.

The Relocalization strategy developed in response to the environmental, social, political and economic impacts of global over-reliance on an oil-based economy. Our dependence on once cheap non-renewable fossil fuel energy has produced climate change, the erosion of community, wars for oil-rich land and the instability of the global economic system.

Urban planning and design must be ordered by the watershed. One needs to insure that survival of civitas will be dependent on having close-at-hand access to (work, food, water, energy, shelter, clothing, health care, education, culture). Bio-regional determinism effected by the process of Relocalization will define watersheds as the basic political governing, economic and social units where the grassroots governs from the bottom up.

State Democrat Pundits Bet on Payola to Win

One-party town, 'payola to the developer,' top-down politics may predict a lock-down win, but his opponent is a long-time architect and grassroots, neighborhood advocate, co-author of the award winning Panorama City Commercial Area Revitalization Study which has spurred pedestrian-friendly remodeling and face-lifting and is the one who has the name recognition and community-based reputation to win with a third of the votes plus one.

Run Jack Run. This contest is one Green Party Jack Lindblad will win!

Neighborhoods can help decide the State Assembly Contest

To insure a free and fair election in which each candidate can state their own case to the constituents, the 39th District's neighborhood councils (being grass-root representatives of constituents in the District) are provisioned to step up to the plate and offer forum for dialog with all of the candidates appearing on this November's ballot.

The hallmark of my term in office will be to do the neighborhood's bidding, to be the neighborhood's advocate in Sacramento for sensible growth, driven not by developers, not top-down, but rather from the bottom-up. My long-standing commitment to the community have been proven by my co-authoring and presenting the Panorama City Commercial Area Revitalization Study as approved by City government, assisting the formation of neighborhood councils, and numerous stances to insist developers conform to the community plan.

The issues this year are more pronounced than ever before - but more important, with my campaign getting the word out, the ineptitude of my duopoly opponents, my only opponents - will act in a big way to defeat themselves. The duopoly's all-out assault on working people - as witnessed by no-end-in-sight financial freezes, foreclosures, hikes in fuel, energy and food prices has fractured any voter loyalty to follow the Democrat or Republican. Those who have led us into oblivion cannot be trusted to lead us into our green future. We must 'hike up the mountain,' live closer to the land, conserve and be frugal. The path out of this descent to consumption-driven human extinction will be full of patriotism - making sacrifices, taking care of and sharing each other in the transition off the oil standard and forward to a green-jobs and 100% renewable energy economy.

The current office-holder has proven to be undermining the implementation of AB 1493 (Global Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act) - by not only scandalously allowing developers write their legislation to build more sprawl - but also evidenced by his fence-sitting which defeated Assemblymember Ruskin's 'Feebates' consumer credits given toward the purchase of energy-efficient, small cars from surcharging purchasers of SUVs. His political initiative to advance new small car purchases shows shows only a politically-expedient concern for his small car lobbyist.

Conditions in my Assembly election contest in 2008 are entirely different than most of those past contests which have brought us here. The one-issue message-framing republican will get 20-30%, and the democrat is not independent-thinking, but a freshman who employs payola over the public interest, and who in doing so, raises the ire of neighborhood council activists, other elected political office-holders and the rank-and-file constituent.

The Green Party does not (nor do I) accept donations from corporate entities. We favor banning of all corporatist lobbying and campaign spending with implementation of public financing of elections. Once elected, I will bring the ethical and moral imperatives of the Greens' Ten Key Values to Sacramento.