Interview with Democritus Blantayre
Q1: What motivated you to run for the city council # 2 position?
A: I have always liked the idea of direct democracy, ever since I read about it in a high school civics class… In 2003, I had seen the way that George Bush was going to war in Iraq in spite of the record number of protests against it. That lead me to think that maybe direct democracy would be the solution. I was developing a series of writings independently. In 2007 I was at Evergreen (The Evergreen State College) and I was working in The Age of Irony program. I decided to enter into an independent learning contract with the faculty during the course of that, and I tried to take all of the little bits and pieces of writing and assimilate it into a whole.
[… ]I tried to call a constitutional convention, to establish a directly democratic system, and only one person showed up. I gave up on it for years, though I still thought it would be a great idea. [… ] In 2011 I was pissed off at some of the policies that were passed in city council that were about homelessness. These tried to illegalize certain protected forms of free speech like panhandling. I figured out how these particular laws were against the constitution, I presented it to the city council, and the city council ignored me. That really angered me. So I thought: I’ll run for city council then.
[...]Another reason I’m running I guess is because I think there are a lot of huge problems today in the United States. I think that direct democracy—this might sound somewhat naïve to say—could be something of a silver bullet. It solves so many of our political and social problems in one broad stroke… That’s why I want to run.
Q2: Why do you believe you are the best candidate to be Olympia’s next city council member?
A: Because of my unique platform, I’m going to begin the transition towards a vastly superior political system. It so follows that when you have the largest possible number of people participating and rendering a decision that you have the best possible decision that gets made… These virtues are maximized in me, not because I’m a great guy, but because I’m trying to empower the people. In Olympia, but also elsewhere in our old, archaic, backwards political system.
Q3. As a city council member, what would be your top priorities, and how would you accomplish change in these areas?
A: I only have one priority, and that is working on transitioning to having a directly democratic government. The plan is this: I get elected, then in the intervening time between when I get elected and when I get into the city council, I and other people working with me on my campaign call a convention… First, we’re going to figure out the specific mechanism that will enable people to propose legislation, to vote on it, in a very rudimentary and skeletal form… It will then be established in a skeletal form, and then every single thing that I do in the city council is under the direct control of the simple majority of the people of… But instead of controlling a directly democratic government, people will only be controlling me.
That’s an unfortunate product of how we currently exist in our so-called representative system, which is backward. I would basically make myself the avatar of the people of Olympia and this is all a transitionary phase… …the original mechanisms are going to be fleshed out, they’re going to be adapted by the people of Olympia to more perfectly suit our needs and preferences. There is going to be working out of all of the kinks that are currently present… It will happen sooner if people vote for me.
Q4: How do you plan to address the economic crisis?
A: Specific questions like these, what specific policies I’m going to engage in, I have to put forth a caveat that I don’t know what I’m going to be doing because ultimately the people of Olympia are going to take control… Ultimately I reckon its going to be a better decision than anything I could individually come up with.
[… ]That being said, I have my own ideas about what I will propose. …I’ll propose that we’ll have a renewal of the guild system, but with some modern twists. We get a whole bunch of local businesses… to pool their funds together and purchase a facility that will house, feed, and provide medical and dental care to the homeless. Its not just for free, in order to get these amenities… the person who’s homeless has to agree to work without pay for one of these member businesses they choose to operate under as an apprentice. …They’ll be receiving training in how to conduct the given business… The business, what’s in it for them? They get cheap labor that’s going to help them become more competitive, its going to help them to stay afloat through any economic shocks… Everybody benefits, and what’s beautiful about it is that two groups that have historically been antagonists towards each other will be working together for common prosperity. ..
Another solution that I have… Let’s get off the dollar; the dollar is just this massive conspiracy to exploit people. The dollar is not based off of anything tangible, its not backed up by gold or anything else… Not only that, its issued by a private entity, the Federal Reserve Bank; not a publicly owned entity. This is the only entity that has the capacity to create money out of nothing… I think we should have an alternative one that’s based off of gold that’s based off of something tangible, that you don’t have to run off the printing press, the temptation to run off the printing press won’t be there. If we were to do that and also have it be issue by the government, instead of by a private entity, that makes a lot more sense…
Q5: What are your views on how individuals should be taxed and the allocation of tax revenues?
A: …I dislike taxes because… the more you tax an economy, the lower the net level of material prosperity. There’s a term for it… dead weight losses. […]With the tax revenues that you get you end up reducing the incentive of the producers to produce and you also end up… reducing incentive for the consumers to work in exchange for money…
I would also say that there are a lot of virtues to a flat tax, I don’t like progressive or regressive tax. I think a flat tax is simpler, more predictable, and its fairer for everyone. I’d say, instead of taxes, its better to do things like issuing bonds that get you money, use those to build infrastructure, and charge users fees to use the infrastructure (ex. A bridge). And then use those fees to pay back the original bonds, and then after you’ve paid the bonds you can bring in the additional revenue…
There would probably have to be some kind of taxation. Taxes are a complicated matter… I would want all the people to decide on it.
If you want to learn more about Democritus Blantayre and his campaign, you can visit his website at: http://www.oly-wa.us/democritus/
Interview with Steve Langer
Q1: What motivated you to run for the city council # 2 position?
I was appointed to the city council in May of last year, and I was appointed position # 7. I wanted to stay on city council, but the seat would have required me to run again in 2 year. By running for seat # 2 it allowed me to a 4 year position rather than a 2 year position.
A: Do you have any personal motivations for running for this different city council position?
There is really no difference between the positions, this is an at large position, so there isn’t a particular district in town you’re running. So there’s really no difference between the positions except the time difference.
Q2: Why do you believe you are the best candidate to be Olympia’s next city council member?
A: A number of things… I was appointed honored to be appointed unanimously by the city council, although there were 10 very good city council candidates who were running last May. When I got on board, I got right with trying to preserve the Legion Way tree corridor; which was the old oaks that were planted in honor of the veterans of the Spanish War and World War 1. The trees had a number of problems, and… We figured out a way to preserve the tree corridor for the city, instead of having to remove trees.
I’m a clinical psychologist by profession, so I’ve dealt a lot with folks who are homeless, mentally ill, a combination of the two, and people with drug and alcohol problems. I felt I could contribute to helping with that problem by being on city council, so that I could apply the knowledge and expertise I have in my profession. I have worked with Stephen Buxbaum to tackle homelessness prevention. We were able to get about 2.1 million dollars worth of federal monies to help people to stay in their homes, as well as resources to help the homeless get off the streets.
Since then, I was elected land use and environment committee chair by the rest of the city council, and we’ve tackled what we call the downtown project. What we’ve been doing is developing a comprehensive plan to deal with the issues that downtown has… Just in general, making sure that we make downtown safe and welcoming for all… So that we have a comprehensive approach to dealing with the problems that downtown is facing rather than just doing things in a piecemeal fashion. I’ve been working with the planning commission and they will be coming forward with their recommendations to us to really find the best expression of what the Olympian people…
Q3. As a city council member, what would be your top priorities, and how would you accomplish change in these areas?
A: …I think that making sure that we take care of the folks that are needy and that need a hand up, and helping those people because ultimately they are just people like the rest of us. Dealing with some of the social problems we have downtown. Including (as part of the downtown project) having bar and tavern best management practices so that we reduce the fights and police problems downtown. Making sure that we have the social services needed for the people who need that help.
Two weeks ago we started an intake center for adult homeless so that we can provide some coordinated case management for them, rather than having people stay and not get help. In addition to that, I think we need to deal with the downtown Isthmus, the area between the Capital Lake, and the bottom of Butte Inlet. That’s been a controversy here in town, and I’m interested in helping create a park there and having a good view corridor from the capitol down into Butte Inlet…
Q4: How do you plan to address the economic crisis?
A: As a city council member, I don’t have control over international banks or the federal policies or the state policies… For example, the State is really responsible for social service issues for the State of Washington. The cities aren’t really equipped in terms of revenue sources to deal with those things. In spite of that, because the State has abdicated a lot of responsibilities in my opinion, for taking care of social needs, we’ve stepped up and done what we can with the very limited resources we have to actually get the biggest bang for the buck, and help out those who need help…
We’ve tried hard with the various projects that we’ve had to make sure that we do things to keep people busy and to provide some jobs for people building the infrastructure that we need here anyway. We really try to do things that improve the amenitities and the quality of life here in Olympia, so that jobs will be here… people will want to live here, companies will want to come here and therefore provide the kind of jobs that people can live on.
Q5: What are your views on how individuals should be taxed and the allocation of tax revenues?
A: How they should be taxed is really not something that I have a lot of say over, that is something that is determined by State law. I think what we need to do as much as possible is to try to support progressive taxation where we don’t pick on people who have fewer resources, and instead have those of us who are better off to carry our share because of the fact that we have more than the people at the bottom of the heap… I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask that question, I think something that the state representatives or the state senators could respond to better. We have to work with pretty much whatever they tell us we can do.
If you want to find out more about Steve Langer and his campaign, you can visit his Facebook website: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Steve-Langer-for-Olympia-City-Council/1872...