for State Representative
Some thoughts from Tim Knue:
It is said that we must do our work and then let it go.
That is just what we did during this campaign we did outstanding work and shared our vision of state government with the people of the 10th Legislative District.
The holidays are behind us and we begin the new-year with all of our hope and excitement for what is to come. We now begin to work on the challenges of our economy.
Many of you heard me speak last year in Coupeville in a speech titled ‘A return to Common Sense’, at that time I spoke of the differences between conventional wisdom and common sense. To solve our economic problems as a nation will require us to challenge conventional wisdom and apply common sense to the solutions & programs we choose moving forward. Our state leaders will have to react to those choices when they cannot influence the outcome of those choices at the federal level.
We are a market driven economy and must do what it takes to ensure that our markets prosper in these tough times. What we have seen in our markets in recent times is the collapse of the ‘free market’. The conventional wisdom that created this situation in housing and finance was a trust in the conventional wisdom that the free market would do the right thing to ensure its existence. We are now finding out that we have to ‘save’ banks and manufactures because they are ‘too big to fail’. So conventional wisdom says that the free market will correct its self, businesses will come and go. That is true, but what will be the cost? This is truly where more than just ‘the bottom line’ of economic viability of big business has to be protected. We must address the ‘triple bottom line’ of economic viability, resource management, and social responsibility.
The panic and argument about what has to be done now is because we are addressing the issues related to the triple bottom line after the fact, when it is much more difficult if not impossible to fix.
As we address the solutions to todays economic woes common sense says that what is truly needed is a ‘free and fully competitive market’! A fully competitive market is defined as one where a business can come and go within the market without having an effect (adverse or not) on the rest of the market. No business within the market is large enough to create a major shift in supply or demand when it leaves the market or fails. Business today does not necessarily fail in markets today but are absorbed by larger companies/corporations.
We are where we are today as a result of de-regulation and as we go forward in correcting where we are and creating the regulatory environment to insure that we create, foster and promote ‘free and fully competitive markets’.
Some favorite quotes...
"The history of every nation is eventually written in the way in which it cares for its soil", US President Franklin Roosevelt, 1936.
(read September 2008 National Geographic for more soil stories)
"The ultimate test of man's conscience may be his willingness to sacrifice something today for future generations whose words of thanks will not be heard." Gaylord Nelson
"Conservation is the foresighted utilization, preservation and/or renewal of forests, waters, lands and minerals, for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time." Gifford Pinchot
"Why is it that we judge development on what we have built rather than what we have preserved? We strive to protect what was built by man, but give little thought to protecting what was made by God." Juanito G. Cambangay
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." Aldo Leopold
"Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe." John Muir
"Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents. It was loaned to you by your children." Kenyan Proverb
Some favorite quotes...
Bill Beattie:
The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.
Carl Rogers:
If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.
Arthur Koestler:
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Edith Hamilton:
It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated.
Goethe:
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Pablo Picasso:
All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Rabbinical saying:
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
Rachel Carson:
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Skill to do comes of doing.
Susan B. Anthony:
If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.