VISION

I was looking to follow a political career when I discovered an amazing inverse relationship between military spending and manufacturing productivity growth rates by Ruth Leger Sivard in 1981.  In 1985, I noticed the world was overlooking this great work, so I investigated it extensively in dozens of frameworks and found nothing that significantly contradicted the basic finding.  In fact, just the opposite, I found the relationship to work in many many different ways all of which tend to prove the relationship by showing the absence of contradictory findings.  I began to share my findings by writing manuscripts and books.  Then I tried teaching college classes, followed by monthly columns in a peace newsletter for nine years, followed by another university class, followed by a website and new book, followed by 9-11 and becoming a major part of the Madison Wisconsin peace movement for five years.  Then I went back to school and got my doctorate, followed by dozens of conference presentations and founding PeaceFest and now blogging for the last two years.  This has all been richly rewarding with many honors, but just like Ruth Leger Sivard, the world has not "caught fire" with these far reaching findings.  I have extended the work into an explanation of empire and the related cause of the decline of empire, of which the Midwest economic crisis is a perfect example of how this can be shown to originate in prolonged high levels of national military spending.  Yet the flaws in economic thinking lead to blaming all this on trade, ignoring the more significant cause of lost capital investment diverted to the military instead.  That's where the blogging comes in, trying to deepen the understanding of this profound new science so that everyone else can reach to my understanding of this condition, the socioeconomic decay of empire come home to roost.  Trade is probably about half the story, not the whole story as many believe, probably including those who read this.  I am still looking at many ways to raise the visibility of this vision.  Along those lines, the utility of a new macro economic theory that represents a significant improvement on the outdated Keynesian and monetarist theories should be taken up by the investment and banking industries, but over caution and scepticism are the nature of today's investment markets.  Another key finding to share is the direct relationship among nations of the murder and crime rates being proportional to the military spending levels in a nation's economy.  Even though none of the current criminologists can explain the sudden drop in crime rates in the nineties, this finding would account for that drop due to the similar drop in military spending rates in the US economy.  That is the peace dividend that some people think we did not get, that and the economic boom in the Clinton years.  These are the priceless findings I need to share with the Toledo group,  my award winning lecture on Empire Economics.

BACKGROUND

EACH OF THE FOLLOWING AREAS OF MASTERY WERE ESSENTIAL TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF PEACE AND EMPIRE ECONOMICS

1)  Math was my first mastery and love, in a four way tie for highest state math contest and developing math formula's on my own before they were taught to me in school.

2)  Wargaming my second mastery, introduced me to the future inventor of the Dungeons and Dragons craze.  This lead to a mastery of World War Two history, reading dozens of books about various battles.  I developed a knack for using the tools given to me in different ways.  I held elected and appointed positions and the top rating as a wargamer in the largest club.

3)  Science my third, I was the best in my college prep high school in math, math and science, art, and tied for the most trips to the head of the class on senior awards day.  Physics gave me the insight into how to fix macroeconomics from the disastrous current condition.

4)  Engineering my fourth, I asked for the toughest four year program at UW Madison, and graduated from the 3^rd ranked nationally electrical engineering program in the top fourth of my class making four honor societies.  Showing my versatility, I answered Industrial Engineering questions on my Professional Engineering exam, with a 95 out of 100 score.

5)  Accounting my fifth, allowed me to organize and present numbers systematically and for the purposes of good presentation, with "present fairly" a part of the accounting ethical code.

6)  Business my sixth, as an MBA CPA, as president of 11 stores for thirteen years, I learned production, marketing, quality control, budgeting, hiring, firing, and organizing.  These skills were crucial as headquarters office manager of a governor's race candidate.

7)  Politics my seventh, as a participant in three state legislative sessions and five years in the peace movement after 9-11, these were the greatest learning experiences of my life.  Skills also developed in many state platform conventions and political campaigns, including my own.  I had 20% name familiarity in Eugene at the start of my last campaign.

8)  Peace Economics my eighth, pleased the vice chair for research John Moseley of the University of Oregon and later taught in Bob O'Brien's Sociology Department there.  The award winning Eugene Register Guard newspaper loved my monthly letters to the editor. 

Wrote three books, blogging to 42,000 views on Expertclick.com last two years.

Reached top 2% on academia.edu last December, 1842 views in last sixteen months. About fifty major presentations in my career, half since 2006, about 80% academic.  I forecast economic collapse January 2007 at a local Martin Luther King party due to the surge military buildup of George Bush.

9)  Global Warming my ninth.  I served for two years on the statewide Interfaith Climate Change Campaign.  My activism caught the attention of Radio For Peace International head Richard Schneider, who asked me to tape and put together the Weather, Wealth, and Wars class.

HOPE TO LEARN

I hope to learn how to adapt peace economics to the thinking of others in these areas.  Listening is the key to understanding where the peace and justice community is located on the spectrum of peace education.  How is peace education defined by the peace and justice community, what are the terminologies and what are the biases of this special community.  Urban environments of cities less than one million are where I have lived most of my life, and when I have sought party offices, blacks were always a part of my coalition.  I worked on both of Jesse Jackson's campaigns, as canvassing coordinator for the Eugene Oregon county of Lane.  I carried my precinct in 1984 and the whole county in 1988.  Still Detroit is outside my experience and I hope to better appreciate the urban environment of larger cities.

CONTRIBUTE 

I have always been a leader in questioning and offering statements related to any discussion. When I ran for county commissioner in 1980, I attended four hundred meetings the year before.  I have kept up that pace throughout my life, a perpetual learner, so I am widely aware of many things in the public sector especially.  I am always watching the news channels or C-SPAN or educational programs, I'm not much for prime time shows.  I have excellent small group skills, once earning a certificate in small discussion group leading for divorced people where I lead such groups for several years. I have lobbied, I have campaigned, I have written letters to the editor, blogs, monthly columns, I have taught, and I've debated formally and informally for years.  So I have many skills to draw from.  Peace Economics and Global Warming Cycle offer many insights you just don't get any where else.  Of all my many presentations, Empire Economics is the best according to my peers.  I would like to offer a workshop on that topic in particular.  It is hugely relevant to the urban situation today.

APPLY

Rather than try to learn too much and then forget it all years from now, I hope to pick up a few good nuggets of wisdom from the gathering.  It sounds like encounter groups I've been in in the past, and URPE, the Union of Radical Political Economists, uses the format you plan as well as a Ralph Nader meeting I hope to attend in May.  Radio for Peace International has extended board meetings of a similar nature.  I always find such experiences deep and powerful.  This meeting should inform several of my blogs in the coming year I expect.  Perhaps I will emulate the style in workshops of Peace Economics I've been thinking about for some time.  The urban industrial Midwest is central to my work.  I chose the Midwest as the area to study in my dissertation because it is the least militarized region suffering the major impacts of empire and the Cold War.  The rust belt was drained in favor of the Sunbelt for many decades now.  To take an up close and personal look at those impacts will be very important in my work.  About half of the military budgets since World War Two represent a drain from the North and Midwest to the militarized Coastal and Southern states.

For an academic class on peace economics in your institution:

Cover Letter, Proof of Concept, Nine Areas of Mastery, Creating Model, 31 Class Sessions: https://www.academia.edu/11786950/FRAMEWORK_For_Academic_Class_six_pages