Come to my Community Celebration/Fundraiser

Bob's Community Celebration/Fundraiser

When:  Sunday, August 8, 2010, 5:00 to 7:00 pm

Where:  House of Hong, 409 8th Ave. So., Seattle, (206) 622-7997

I hope you can come to our celebration of progress in political organizing within, and between, our communities, and help us plan how to best use our political power in the future for the benefit of all our communities.

When:  Sunday, August 8th, 5-7pm

Where:  House of Hong, 409 8th Ave. So., Seattle, (206) 622-7997

(Donations to "Bob Hasegawa for State Rep." are gratefully accepted, but do come help us celebrate, regardless.)

Click on the Events Calendar link on the left column of this page for more details.

Welcome

Dear Neighbors and Friends of the 11th District,

I am grateful that you've chosen to trust me with representing the interests of our very culturally and economically diverse district.  I've focused my attention on making sure the needs of working families, small businesses, and disadvantaged communities are met.

By far, the story of the last two legislative sessions has been the economic recession and the resulting fallout in dramatically reduced state revenues that forced a huge reduction of state services, in lieu of having to raise taxes to balance the budget.  I've tried to view this economic crisis more as an opportunity to reform how we do things.  It's an opportunity to make government more efficient, but its also an opportunity to build equity, fairness, and social responsibility into a system that's lost its way due to the excessive corporate lobbying efforts and money that's found its way into our political system.  With optimism for the opportunities, I've sponsored and passed bils that support our local small businesses, protect our civil rights, public safety, higher education, broadband equity and access, and fair taxation reform.

• We need family wage jobs and sustainable economic development.
• We need a tax system overhaul that is fair for working families and small businesses.
• We need a health care system reform that provides for everyone equally well.
• We need an education system that produces creative high level thinkers of every child.
• We need safe streets and communities that nurture families and residents.
• Most of all we need you – to reach our goal of a healthier, more socially responsible vision of the future for our children.

Creating a state owned bank of Washington

HB 3162 creates our own state owned bank of Washington. Imagine providing low or no-interest student loans, access to capital for small businesses, investing in public infrastructure like roads, water/sewer, schools and housing, targeting economic development initiatives, or otherwise leveraging our public resources for the benefit of our state instead of having to do it exclusively with tax incentives or other revenue give-aways. Imagine no more debt service appropriations. Imagine keeping our resources local instead of exporting them as profits to multi-national banks, never to be seen again.

HB 3162 is modeled after the Bank of North Dakota, which has bi-partisan support and is the only state-owned bank in the nation.** It's not just coincidence that North Dakota isn’t going through a financial crisis right now and has the lowest unemployment in the country--the Bank of North Dakota is credited with being a large part of the reason for that. I'll be working to perfect the bill during this legislative interim.

** Order the Prairie Public TV documentary on the Bank of North Dakota HERE

Short video of BND

Please click HERE to be added to Bob's state-owned bank stakeholder list.

Other Links:
Bob's Official House Democrats homepage
Bob's Official Legislative webpage

Chipping Away At The Edges?

Yesterday I spoke on a panel hosted by the MDC to share my thoughts about the budget process, the current economic crisis, and ideas for addressing them.  Rather than speak on technical fixes, I tried to focus on the problem from a systems perspective at a more fundamental level which I feel is imperative that we address before we can move forward as a society, i.e. we need to rebuild our collective social conscience.  If we can re-establish our foundational principles of justice, equity, compassion, solidarity of humanity, and intergenerational sustainability, then the solutions (budget solutions included) will present themselves accordingly.

Our current social and economic situation is simply a manifestation of what must be as a result of current fundamental conditions, meaning that we've allowed uber-capitalism, deregulated greed and profiteering, and unrestrained corporate power to overwhelm our political structure and foundational principles.

I'm not sure my presentation was very satisfying for attendees as most of the problems I spoke of have to be addressed at the national level.  We at the state level have chosen (in some cases we really don't have a choice) to chip around the edges which amount to little more than temporary band-aids while not addressing the fundamental problems.  We're trying to promote economic development while we're caught in a no-win global race-to-the-bottom competition not just with other countries, but with other cheap labor (so-called Right-to-Work) states like South Carolina.  We tried, not very effectively, to eliminate some corporate tax breaks, implement less regressive tax increases, and do as little economic damage to the sick economy as possible with our revenue (and appropriations) packages.

Yes, in addressing the problems of our current economic crisis, we can and should do things like fighting to make our tax system more progressive and fight to create family wage jobs, and support small businesses.  But, the basic problem is more fundamental than that.  We're fighting a long-term losing strategy against a prevailing social current that gains strength as corporations spread deeper and broader tentacles throughout the world, rather than organizing and mobilizing to change the political current so it is working WITH our core foundational principles.  This requires political leadership, courage and organizing capacity. 

The Obama campaign proved we can still organize and mobilize to a level necessary to effect change, but he too has failed to re-initialize our foundational principles.  His campaign was hopeful and at times visionary, but much of it was also just reactionary, building on anti-Bush sentiment, rather than progressive.  Post-election opportunities to effect real change have been squandered by his administration's embracing much of the status quo and amalgamating with many of the old Bush people and their corporatist ideals instead of taking progressive organizing and mobilization to a higher level.

So the real solution to our current economic and social crisis is to organize for social justice that's grounded in our fundamental principles, motivated by hope and vision, on an Obama scale.  Or, we can just continue to chip away at the edges.
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Held at the Seattle Labor Temple, Wednesday, April 29, 2010
The Metropolitan Democratic Club of Seattle presents A Panel Discussion on the WA State Budget Crisis and Ideas for Economic Reform in the Aftermath of the 2010 Legislative Session with panelists UW Professor James Gregory, former Governor Mike Lowry, State Treasurer Jim McIntire, State Representative Bob Hasegawa, and I-1077 Spokesperson William Gates, Sr.