Dear Jim:
This posting is in response to this piece of writing of yours to myself.
First, Thanks for the compliment Jim. I think the laws local governments pass to address the issues are laws that directly effect our local area. Sometimes there are standardized laws passed for all states that don't work well in local areas. I guess these laws that are standardized by external government parties would be federal laws. I think some of our utility laws, forestry laws, etc. could be better made by local people than by far removed government parties who no little or nothing about a state. I remember seeing an OPB program about Thomas Paine. Apparently, their used to be more localized governments who used to coordinate through the executive and administrative or legal branches of a centralized U.S. government. The story went something like this and Thomas Paine was involved in speaking about this. I was thinking that there may have been some good original idea about how to run each state and how to coordinate the business of each state through a centralized government, like Thomas Paine was talking about, but somewhere along the line this idea got mistaken and corrupted. I just need to better understand how government works to better be able to name specific local laws to be changed and how to do this. I have the big concepts and principal ideas I think but I need to technically know more about our governmental system to answer your questions in more specifics. Do you have any comments about Thomas Paine's ideas and what I'm getting at?
I don't think local governments are necessarily any less susceptible to corruption than any others. I just think that government ought to be more localized and local governing ought to be structured into more cooperatives and community efforts etc. If things were set up this way, people would spend less time pressuring the rich to make the changes and would rather spend more time running our communities ourselves.
Did I answer your questions at all? Let me know. Ask me more questions.
Thanks Shaunasi

Jim's Words:
"Excellent argument. I'd like to comment on two points. First, I'm wondering what laws you might suggest that local governments pass to address the issues, why these should be done at the local rather than the national (or international!) level, and whether the local governments are any less under the sway of the powerful economic interests than the national government.

Second, I think you make a good argument that "The way the rich will change things is by pressure from the poor." This certainly is what happened in the 1930s and 1960s. Of course, another alternative is that the poor try to gain political power themselves, and thereby not have to pressure the rich. That isn't a very easy thing to do, of course, but it would represent a profound shift and challenge to social inequalities."