By Margaret Liles

Yes there are Democrats in Escondido, and yes, you can fight City Hall, even a predominantly Republican City Hall. Thanks to the efforts of Lisa Prazeau and the Escondido Chamber of Citizens, and the support from many of you, City Councilman Dick Daniels has had a change of heart about the Hotel Project.

Lisa (with a little help from her friends) put together an amazingly powerful presentation that even Sam Abed praised. It was effective because it wasn’t just a list of decisions made by the City Council that added to the City’s current financial crisis, but had many suggestions about what the City could do to save money.

We are now in a fight to improve Health Care in this country. Though some of us believe that the best solution would be a single-payer, tax-based system as in every other industrialized nation, that’s probably not in the cards at present. But, we need to make sure that any health care plan includes a government option. I encourage you to write and/or call your Congressman (yes I know he’s a Republican,) but the more he hears from people like you, the less likely he is to offer staunch opposition to a government option.

The State of California’s financial crisis seems hopeless. The governor is suggesting $24 billion in additional spending cuts, hurting our neediest citizens and closing down our public parks. Again, you can call or write your Assemblyman and State Senator, asking them to revoke the tax concessions made to businesses in September 2008 and February 2009, and tax oil extraction, and to rewrite the rules that allow so many commercial property owners to avoid reappraisal after a transfer of property. These are suggestions from an organization called Working Assets / CREDO, they seem very reasonable to me.

Keep the pressure on your elected representatives. You can change minds—even Republican minds.