economicmultipliers_63

Economic Multipliers (63)

Do you know what these are?

They help CREATE wealth in systems.

Believing that you can make a difference is an economic multiplier for your community and nation IF you take the time to make that difference.

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I’m running for office. I have just announced my candidacy for the U.S. Senate race (in this article).

If you are an eligible voter in the State of Wisconsin AND you DID NOT PLAN to vote in the November 6, 2012 election OR if you CANNOT CHOOSE among the candidates who will be on the ballot because none of them seem to represent what YOU stand for,

VOTE for ME: Lisa L. Osen:

• • You’ll have to write my name in on the ballot so make sure that Osen has only 4 letters and

  • for it to count, you’ll have to check off a box or fill in the gap between the broken line next to where you wrote the name … and

  • you can’t check off the box to vote ballot-wide for a single party … (some people actually do this without thinking about the choices).

The Republican candidate is Tommy Thompson. The Democratic candidate is Tammy Baldwin. I should list the other party candidates but I think it’s more important that you know that I have little political experience: I am not a career politician.

As to ANY political experience, at one time I did serve on an audit committee (as a volunteer who sat in on multitudes of committee meetings, toured multiple facilities and wrote the final report) for a $323 million bond project for new school construction and existing school renovation and expansion in Jefferson County, Colorado. Columbine High School was built as part of that comprehensive project. (See correction ... P.S.P.S.) Under construction, the school was beautiful and I expect it still is today. I mention that merely because beautiful buildings and the best facilities (anywhere) oftentimes hide underlying community problems.

I also served as Secretary and Treasurer for the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce during those same years (also as a volunteer) and encouraged the organization to set up annual financial audits … not because I thought the organization had any accounting problems … but because I didn’t want them to ultimately have any. As one of the early board members, I noted that the organization would have fulfilled its mission on the day that women no longer thought they needed separate support to develop leaders or do well in business.

Over the years, I’ve spent my time working on engineering, environmental, educational and economic projects, research, writing, a little bit of public speaking (some at national conferences … I’m not the best speaker so I’ll assume they were interested in the content), and a little bit of consulting. Today, I do a bit of ePublishing, have a series of ‘empty books’ at Amazon.com (you need a bookreader application to access material like this although it’s possible to view samples without one for free) and have been transforming a book project I started on ‘alternative design’ into this community development web site. Perhaps I’ll turn this community development web site back into a book project someday.

To my specific knowledge, there are no ‘scandals’ tied to my name (although amazingly I sometimes hear ‘rumors’):

• • Is it possible for a person who spends the bulk of their time going to the library, reading, doing research and writing to have any problems in ANY community? I can’t imagine a person who used to read Federal Reserve Reports (among others) in their free time having time to even think about creating scandals (but they may know a bit more about some economic issues than the ‘average’ person).

  • Likewise (because I sometimes hear ‘rumors’), if any person picked a kid up in the community once a week from their parent’s house or school for approximately 8 years (a bit of a loner for different reasons than I but a ‘loner’ none-the-less) and took them to the library, swimming, sledding, biking and fishing and encouraged them to read, do homework and get exercise and then told them when they got older and were no longer interested in those things (with you anyway as they reached the age where adults are 'less cool') that they should just give you a call if they ever needed anything, could you imagine anyone in a community ‘mocking’ that particular process?

  • I’ve rarely dated and always wished the guys I did date or just do things with (like hike, roof, bike, etc.) the best (even after we were no longer dating) so I wouldn’t expect any problems in that area.

  • To my knowledge, I’ve never ‘hit on’ any married guys or ever gotten confused as to the difference between a working relationship and a personal relationship so that area should be ‘clear’ too.

  • If I had ever asked a guy to date me and they said no, I would have just assumed that they weren’t interested in me and they had every right not to be (I lacked ‘boldness’ in my youth so that wouldn’t be a problem).

  • I rarely drink, never ‘did drugs,’ and don’t gamble (although it’s likely that I’ve spent around $300 in the last 30 years on lottery tickets, a few slot and nickel poker machines, etc. in the course of doing and observing things … a useful exercise is to see how quickly you can lose $10 in quarters (one roll) to a slot machine … and then ask yourself if you still feel the ‘need’ to feed quarters to ‘get your money back!’ … and then estimate how much you’d lose over time … or need to feed in … if the machine didn’t ‘pay off’ until the following day … or the next … or the next … or never (for you)).

  • To date (8/21/12), I have never set up any ‘social sites’ and virtually all my emails pertain to economics, engineering and education. In fact, if anyone ever received anything ‘exciting’ or unusual from me, they’d know for sure it wasn’t from me (unless it was something that could change an individual’s or community’s ability to create wealth … which in and of itself is exciting … I send out ‘stuff’ like how you could control/capture the oil if you couldn’t immediately shut down a well if you had a spill in the Gulf …).

  • A multitude of ‘projects’ over the years have kept me so ‘occupied’ that most recently I’ve been trying to ‘catch up’ on injecting more ‘humor’ and ‘free time’ into my life … which might be my most worthy ‘project’ to date …

I don’t believe I have any particularly bad personal habits other than biting my nails, refusing to wear heels (a practical consideration at my age) and picking up (curbside) over the years many things that I thought shouldn’t be thrown away: Much picked up went into use, much was cleaned and repaired and sent to thrift stores, some is being ‘downsized’ even today as I rethink ‘projects,’ and some has been showing up in these pages on economic multipliers and a Picasa photo site I set up to encourage people (especially young people) to take advantage of existing wealth (versus throwing it out) as they work to create more wealth in their communities. Since I rarely pick anything up anymore and even myself have thrown things out that I felt should have a proper ‘home,’ I know that if someone else doesn’t, the wealth is ‘lost.'

I do believe it would be possible to ‘misquote me’ or even accurately quote me in almost every political area of consequence because I am opinionated. Not only that, over the years as I’ve become more educated, I’ve changed my mind on several issues.

I don’t live in the same world that my parents knew. The generation coming after me doesn’t live in the same world that I grew up in. Adjustments are required.

As a simple example, as a one-time member of the Green Bay Press Gazette's 'volunteer' editorial board, I once said that the United States needed to rethink how people saw themselves ‘participating’ in the nation (and the world) because during WWII and WWI (my parents and grandparents generation), I believe it could have been shown that approximately 70 percent of the population was involved in some form or fashion with wartime efforts but today, even if a war was fought on that scale, I believed that less than 15 percent of the population would be ‘involved.’ (This comment was made pre-9/11). Participation rates change many things.

If I won the Senate race, I wouldn’t have a ‘staff’ or a bunch of paid political consultants that I’d bring with me. Is that good or bad? I’m known for being a bit of a loner and sometimes speak too quickly but do try to take the time to make sure data and facts can support words: I’ve occasionally had to retract words and even apologize.

I’d want as many people who served on Senator Kohl’s (the retiring Senator’s) staff to stay on although I expect many wouldn’t because ‘junior’ Senators usually get much less prestigious committee assignments and I’m not specifically affiliated with any political party. I tend to vote ‘independent:’ I won’t (or try not to) vote against any incumbent who’s doing a good job (regardless of party) and I try not to vote for candidates in areas where I’ve done no homework (for school boards usually).

'Independence’ is good for ideas although not always good when you need to get work done but placing the quality of the job above politics or personal preference or affiliations usually yields better long-term results for any community. Likewise, the ‘educated choices’ (of others) are almost always better than my ‘uneducated choices’ (if I’m uneducated).

I’d want at least one ‘staffer’ representing every political party that was listed on the Wisconsin ballet. If I managed to beat Tommy Thompson or Tammy Baldwin, I’d want to regularly hear what they had to say. If they wanted to be ‘on staff’ (hard to imagine but always possible), I’d welcome finding a way to use the political skills of either. A ‘blended’ (and multi-opinionated) staff might be harder to deal with but I’d expect that any decisions would be based upon broader and deeper sources of sometimes conflicting data.

I don’t really like business breakfasts, lunches and dinners where hundreds are in attendance (although I’ve been to many). I’ve never even personally hosted a large party although I did set up some small dinner parties as economic roundtables where, after a meal, economic issues were discussed over wine … and the attendees came just for this … very strange … I know. Those things alone should ‘nix me’ as a candidate.

But here I am:

VOTE for ME … Lisa L. Osen

(as Wisconsin’s write-in candidate for U.S. Senate).

But, ONLY if you DID NOT PLAN to vote in November OR CANNOT CHOOSE among the candidates who will be on the ballot because none of them seem to represent what YOU stand for.

Even if I don’t win (in a Presidential or Senatorial election, a high percentage of Wisconsin voters vote which means that the remaining percent (if they showed up) couldn’t carry an independent write-in candidate), you will have said (to whoever does win) that YOU want to be heard.

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Believing you can make a difference is the first step to making one.

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P.S. In this new world we live in, social networking is going to make it much more possible for people to get elected as write-in candidates. Do NOT take any election lightly if you ever decide to run for office as a write-in candidate:

• • Make sure you are qualified: A U.S. Senator must be versed in global and national security issues. Over the years I’ve done things like read foreign policy journals and write on some of those issues.

  • Make sure you can do as good a job or a better job than any of the candidates you see running.

  • If you run on a platform of change, make sure you know how the systems that you want to change were originally built. ANYONE can destroy things. It takes masterly strokes to maintain existing systems while making changes so things don’t ‘fall apart.'

  • Make sure that you are a ‘builder’ … not a ‘destroyer’: If you can make decisions that would benefit your (and others) great grandchildren that also do not diminish the value, wealth and opportunity that existing generations have, I hope that if you’re not listed on the ballot, you take the time to throw your name into the mix as a write-in candidate (for something).

P.S.P.S. To show how easy it is for any person to err, particularly when many years have gone by, a woman who served on the Jefferson County School Board during those years noted that it was Conifer High School that was built and toured during that project while Columbine High School was renovated. Although I toured several schools which were under renovation, Columbine High School may or may not have been one of them. My confusion stemmed from a photo I had at one time seen of the cafeteria area at Columbine High School which featured a stage ... I make an effort NOT to view problems and disasters because I feel they are bad for the psyche and when the incident occurred, I was living in a different state, knew the school had been part of the project and my mind perhaps leaped 'too far' when I saw the photo. Not only that, I should be advertising the success of students anywhere who do amazing things ... because THAT is what any institution or community wants to be known for ...