Beyond Labels

There will be no Beyond Labels meeting on April 21; the Blue Hill Public Library will be closed in observance of Patriots Day.

At our last meeting, we briefly discussed the “out-migration” of residents from California to states such as Texas and Florida.

It was also asserted that California’s GDP is shrinking (which I don’t think is correct–see the chart at the bottom). Anyway, that prompted us to consider California’s circumstances:

• Does California have a long- (or short-) term economic problem?
  • What are its key strengths and weaknesses as an economy?
• What are the biggest issues that California can realistically address?
  • Regulatory environment?
  • Mix of industries and services produced in the state?
  • Affordability/housing?
  • Resources–such as water?

We’ll see if the topic gets traction–we have more than a week to do our own research and prepare.

We agreed to revisit our two-party system and elections:

The Two-Party System

• How’s it working?
• Is it broken, or operating as designed?
• What structure/system would we prefer?
  • Ideally?
  • Realistically?
• How can we get there? (Or closer?)

Here’s a link to one of my “go-to” articles on the subject.

Money and Politics

There’s been a lot of talk about Citizens United, but the real issue seems to be how best to address the value of money (as distince from policy positions, charisma, etc.) in politics–whether that money comes from corporations or from individuals.

Here’s a recent article on Elon Musk’s interest and activities in Wisconsin.

(And maybe we’ll spend a bit of time discussing how we feel about elected vs. appointed judicial positions.)

Last week’s edition of The Ellsworth American included a commentary by Peter Sly proposing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. At the end of today’s session, we identified this as a possible topic for next week’s meeting, if Peter is able to join us then (or if not, at a later meeting) and tell us more about how he sees this working.