“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”
If the above is the current “condition of political speech” in America, we suggest a different path. Have all political representatives publish their test results in a manner that sustains transparency and honesty.
Implicit Association Test
Would you take a test to discover the arrangement of biases you may maintain? In high school, I asked my father about race and why people protested for equal rights. A four-word response ended the conversation when he said, “They are not ready!” The interventions to produce readiness continue to this day. The actions necessary to break down thousands of layers of bias implied in his words remain continuous. Still, the effort to do so is a law leveled as us all in the U.S. Constitution. Because of this nation’s founding document, testing the attitudes and beliefs of people that are harmful to others reveals the actions necessary to reduce or eliminate that damage. However, the Constitution cannot stand alone in responding to the call for justice. New methods other than the law will be required. The following will explore strategies and techniques that can reveal the personal and interpersonal structures of bias, beginning with the individual and then to the millions of groups that form a diverse nation.
Scientists from the University of Washington introduced the scientific community to the Implicit Association Test (IAT) in 1998. With over 25 million tests and hundreds of peer review papers, it offers insight into how groups of people perceive the world. The IAT assesses the strength of mental associations stored in memory by measuring how quickly a person can categorize and associate specific stimuli. (here).
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) design reveals “the attitudes and beliefs people may be unwilling or unable to report.” One objective of the IAT is to assess whether one can learn and unlearn implicit attitudes. If that becomes a fact in science, then we are beyond doubt capable of examining the unconscious roots of thinking “right out loud” and our feelings “deep inside.” The website is old code, but numerous scholarly articles are available to sidestep personal experience.
Given this capacity to continuously learn, the next question becomes, how can that level of practice in self-awareness occur and recur in building a nation? Click the image below, explore the idea, and take the test. See how it works and comment on the experience.
Click the Logo to Explore Project Implicit
The authors encourage participation in the test by saying, “The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about.” In addition, the difference between not knowing and being unable to learn is crucial to ending a relapse. It is more so if the recurrence damages others. Proof of control over a process is the ability to produce repetition, but if the action occurs due to an unknown source and is detrimental, how is an intervention possible?
Today, selecting participation in a group has fewer resource implications that affect the individual or the group. One can be a nonmaterial participant with basic expressions of loyalty. Services in exchange for these expressions may range from subsistence aid to offers of great wealth. In other settings, participants may seek full-blown forms of self-actualization. These services are provided by social entities such as governments, university societies, and religious organizations.
These institutions can be a physical presence in a community or, more recently, in digital space isolation. The underlying implicit associations in these digital environments have a massive data stream capable of establishing proof. Data looks into the past. First, it reveals the facts about post-trauma damage and leads to questions such as, “how did we get this condition?” Then, “what are we doing to remove harmful impacts?” and “where can solutions be demonstrated?” After that, the queries on “who” and “why” lead to actions that produce the political resources needed to deliver tangible change.
Implied Change
In The People’s Constitution: 200 Years, 27 Amendments, and the Promise of a More Perfect Union(here) by John F. Kowaland Wilfred U. Codrington III, we read all the changes from the initial document produced over the last 230+ years. To sustain it as a living document capable of recognizing new challenges, the authors present all of the flaws and extraordinary power of the founders’ dream to create a system of governance that is incapable of accepting authoritarian concepts of power. It is a story of system change from Prohibition (18th Amendment, 1919) to its repeal (21st Amendment, 1933) that recognizes the limits of power to the ongoing rise of the Equal Rights Amendment (27th Amendment) ratified by 38 States but well after Congress’ deadline of June 30, 1982. In January 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA leading to legal challenges. The authors eagerly criticize the idea of Constitutional originalism in recounting many accounts of the grand American experiment.
New methods are needed to reveal the implicit associations established in the desire to strive for controls that would inhibit the ambitions of kings and their makers. But, of course, the advancement of zealots, liars, and racists are free to exhibit and promote behaviors capable of destroying Democracy as ideologues. The American assumption is they remain at the outer boundaries of political discourse until the events leading up to the attack on the Capital provided proof that authoritarian power can be marshaled from the fringe into the action of a mob within weeks.
Consent of the Governed (as an “all of us”)
The ease with which the few govern appears surprising to those seeking change. The President, Vice-President, 435 Representatives, and 100 Senators are the few. Yet, they expect the public to absorb their attitudes, policies, and sentiments. Government work at all service levels in America represents about 15% of the labor force (20 million). We believe a new approach is needed if the electorate remains independent of the manners particular to these leaders and workers.
First, voting will become a mandatory box checked for every federal, state, and citywide election. This requirement can include abstention. See the discussion (here Brookings), (here ASH) (here IDEA), and (here Standford).
In 1924, Australia started issuing fines to citizens who didn’t show up to vote. Turnout increased from 47% of eligible voters to over 95%. A test of this approach has a century of experience and that nation did not implode or self-destruct. Ours can.
Second, use the Charlie Chaplin request (quoted above) if you worked through a couple of Implicit Attitude Tests. Not only can a person improve their “read” of character, but it can also be done with an improved “both sides” bias detector. Suddenly, a long list of choices becomes available to challenge or correct errors. Examples could be the presumed unchangeable structure of the Supreme Court, the antiquity and usefulness of the Electoral College, and the thousands of painful micro-failures and malfunctions possible during periods of rapid change. Exciting and interesting times indeed, but many curses to be cauterized nonetheless.
Third, you must pick one of these significant issues and work it out in every way you can imagine. Thanks in advance for sharing your ideas, actions, and choices. We would have never imagined thirty percent of them submitted to date. Wow. You are a clever bunch.
Adam said it best among the hundreds of writers like David Pepper working to discover a “fix” to our fear of a problem getting out of control.
We must, indeed, all hang together or most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. AND You don’t make progress standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.
Benjamin Franklin and Shirley Chisholm
The glass shape on the five maps below is the rough outline of a Congressional District (CD9). Within it, the district numbers of the City Council, State Senate and Assembly, the Community Board, and School Districts within CD9. Using the links below encourages a broader discussion of representatives regarding their power. The local politics to the global concept is introduced (here). We will focus on one district for now to examine the possibilities of a broader application of engagement practices.
City Council
The 40th District is led by Rita Joseph replacing the term-limited M. Eugene. A city council member can provide small amounts of funding for nonprofit organizations in their districts. See the discussion in “connect” below.
Larger community development projects proposed by City Agencies such as EDC and HPD consistently defer to local reps, however, it is usually as a “take or leave” proposition. One such deferral on new housing is discussed (here).
The Empire State is rightly named as it has the same GDP as Canada (sourced here and discussed here). Over half of its population live in its major urban centers. Often debated corruption issues (here) have weakened public trust. The dollars involved are extraordinary.
The annual budget for NYS is $212 billion. In comparison, NYC’s budget is $98 billion. Both come under intense scrutiny from independent analysts. However, the primary interest of the ordinary resident is not in these mind-bending amounts, but in whether or not the representatives are presenting a clear picture to constituents regarding the quality of life in the places where they live and that their power to influence spending is is being used to focus on equity and fairness.
The Report
State Senate
The 21st Senate District is led by Kevin Parker His tenure as a representative is approaching 20 years (2003 – Present) His current term ends in 2023.
The Fourteenth Community Board and all of the city’s community districts are composed of people nominated by Borough Presidents and various combinations of city council members. While the participants are solely advisory, a good District Manager and small staff can provide important information. For example, a large development site at the Church/Bedford Avenues the process for leading up to investment in the property will be found (here). A review of issues (here). A brief look at the reasons community boards are often considered dysfunctional is (here).
“The purpose of this section is unified by one-word ‘extinction.’ It is a daily event all over the earth. It is a difficult word to absorb as a part of life. Like air, it is only noticeable as a threat during high winds and storms. It is the nature of creation to give and take environments settled by life quietly. I go to this section to see what people are up to. Mostly this section reminds me of Hattie Carthan and Joan Maynard. All Hattie wanted to do was save a Magnolia Grandiflora from a “tiny-extinction” on Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. Today that tree is one of two living landmarks in New York City. All Joan wanted to do was to save three tiny woodframe buildings from an extinction of their meaning. I was honored to work for both of them and to inject a few community development block grants (CDBG) along with a lot of undergraduate design students and dedicated staff. Thousands of struggling community organizations like the Magnolia Tree Earth Center and the Weeksville Heritage Center conduct education programs for next-generation organizers. These are new institutions in NYC that took decades to build. They can be strengthened by the growing network of national groups listed below and our support. Please get to know them. They are likely to be the most important leaders to follow in this century, if they survive.”
Rex L. Curry
The following list is of sixty national organizations attempting to inform policy in all sectors of the national economy. Additions and corrections are appreciated. Build your local network partners that help serve their mission and share the link.
Works to inspire all Americans to explore, enjoy, and protect the Earth’s wild places, to practice and promote responsible use of the Earth’s ecosystems and resources, and to work to restore the quality of the natural environment that sustains us.
Uses non-violent direct action and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and to promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
An organization founded by environmentalist David Brower that fosters the efforts of creative individuals by providing organizational support in developing projects for the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the global environment.
Uses law, science, and the support of its members to protect the planet’s wildlife and wild places and ensure a safe and healthy environment for all people.
Works to stop environmental pollution by encouraging business, labor, government, and citizen groups to cooperate and identify practical policies to protect the environment.
A federation of state-based, citizen-funded environmental advocacy organizations that use time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposes grassroots organizing, door-to-door canvassing, and litigation to raise awareness of environmental issues and promote sensible solutions.
Unites 12 of our country’s largest unions and environmental organizations and advocates for more and better quality jobs in the clean economy by expanding a broad range of industries, including renewable energy, energy efficiency, the substitution of safer, cleaner chemicals, modern transportation systems, and advanced vehicle technology, domestic manufacturing, high-speed Internet and a smart, efficient electrical grid, green schools and other public buildings, improving our nation’s water infrastructure, recycling, and sustainable agriculture.
Shows urban communities locally and all across the country how to develop more sustainably: showing that development that is good for the economy and the environment makes better use of existing resources and community assets and improves the health of natural systems and the wealth of people
An affiliate network of the Climate Action Network (CAN), a worldwide network of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working to promote government, private sector, and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.
Facilitates and publicizes local and national climate actions that draw attention to the climate crisis and the strong measures needed to address it and organizes forums and events designed to broaden climate action constituency beyond the traditional environmental movement.
Grassroots advocacy organization using a respectful, nonpartisan approach to climate education and focused on national policies, particularly advocating for a Carbon Fee and Dividend proposal.
Launched by former Vice President Al Gore, presents the facts about climate change and its solutions to the general public in an accurate, clear, and compelling manner.
An information and networking center for citizens and environmental organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation, and sustainable energy issues.
A non-profit organization dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the destructive impacts of mineral development (mining, digging, and drilling) in the U.S. and worldwide.
Works to protect the Earth’s rainforests and supports the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action.
A national citizens’ organization working for clean, safe and affordable water, prevention of health-threatening pollution, creation of environmentally-safe jobs and businesses, and empowerment of people to make democracy work.
Works to win specific and concrete policy changes to reduce pollution and to prevent the irreversible collapse of fish populations, marine mammals, and other sea life.
A coalition of environmental, conservation, religious, scientific, humane, sporting, and business groups around the United States that serves as the guardian of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA).
Works to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction, by means of science, law, and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive.
Conducts both domestic (US) and international programs to halt toxic trade in toxic wastes, toxic products, and toxic technologies, that are exported from rich to poorer countries and to ensure national self-sufficiency in waste management through clean production and toxics use reductions.
A diverse grassroots coalition that engages in research, advocacy, and organizing around the environmental and human health problems caused by the rapid growth of the high-tech electronics industry.
Advocates for progressive action to stabilize world population at a level that can be sustained by Earth’s resources. Formerly, Zero Population Growth (ZPG).
Documents human rights and environmental abuses in countries where few other organizations can safely operate through campaigns, reports, and articles and litigate in U.S. courts on behalf of people around the world whose earth rights have been violated by governments and transnational corporations.
Encourages collaborative approaches and cross-cutting solutions to environmental challenges by acting as a catalyst, facilitator, and mediator in cooperation with individuals, industry, and government.
Contributes to sustainable development by advancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment, economic policy, climate change, measurement and assessment, and natural resources management.
Uses policy-oriented research to design, monitor, evaluate, and improve the social and environmental commitments of responsible tourism, as well as to promote sustainable practices and principles within the wider tourism industry.
Works to protect the living environment of the Pacific Rim by promoting grassroots activism, strengthening communities, and reforming international policies.
Works to protect rivers and defend the rights of communities that depend on them by opposing destructive dams and the development model they advance and by encouraging better ways of meeting people’s needs for water, energy, and protection from destructive floods.
A research institute at Tufts University dedicated to promoting a better understanding of how societies can pursue their economic and community goals in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner.
An entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources to make the world secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining.
A project of the Institute for Policy Studies (Washington, DC) and the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam) that works in partnership with citizens groups nationally and globally on the environment, human rights, and development issues with a particular focus on energy, climate change, environmental justice, gender equity, and economic issues, particularly as these play out in North/South relations.
Uses the power of public information to protect public health and the environment, creating analyses, databases, and maps to help inform the general public as well as scientists and government officials.
Public policy research organization dedicated to informing policymakers and the public about emerging global problems and trends and the complex links between the world economy and its environmental support systems.
Convenes and supports those who might contribute to an economy that is restorative to people, place, and planet, and that operates according to principles of democracy, justice and appropriate scale.
Through workshops, leadership development, and consulting, provides tools of systems thinking and organizational learning to clients and partners working on issues of sustainability, helping them to be more strategic, engage multiple stakeholders, and learn continuously. Formerly, the Sustainability Institute.
Devoted to preserving wilderness and wildlife, protecting America’s prime forests, parks, rivers, deserts, and shorelands, and fostering an American land ethic.
Dedicated to protecting all native wild animals and plants in their natural communities, particularly focusing on (1) the accelerating rate of extinction of species and biological diversity and (2) habitat alteration and destruction.
The nation’s oldest citizen conservation organization, founded in 1875, has helped create the conservation movement and the National Park and National Forest systems in the U.S.
What are additional efforts needed to curb the American Super Power to make fools of ourselves? I came across Tech Against Terrorism that might be useful. It is an international organization that recognizes the one-world communication issue in which we now function. Americanizing Europe’s far-right problem is a mistake. The lesson here is to recognize the ease of manipulation a free society is willing to accept and take a deep, long breath before marching to anyone’s orders to do anything before taking a deep f’n exhale.
Another more serious and useful global super-power is revealed in the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic. It has given two lessons. If a little bug can bring capitalism to its knees and put some cash in our pockets, that bug is telling you something about national confrontations. By “our pocket,” I mean small businesses, your local public hospital, and so on, you get my drift. I say, get prepared. This is the beginning. The second lesson comes in the form of a question. How does a belief in a conspiracy address any of the underlying problems in your life? That brings me to the following post.
Rethinking the Fairness Doctrine
I was among many people in a school bus to D.C., ready to encircle the Pentagon to expel its evil symbolism. Along with many others, I crowed up and sat on its steps, surrounded by the ordinary national guard guys for a long cold night. People tossed sandwiches into our vigil, I ducked a pack of Lucky Strikes, saw socks and cotton gloves tossed in for added warmth. Our guards smiled at our efforts and our chants to end an unjust war. We were one people in the right to protest. Eventually, we were swept up into the reality of our trespass, asked to accept our punishment in the name of so many others in the search for justice, and we left. The Pentagon did not elevate. I was not that surprised. My beautiful companion was deeply saddened.
Do you remember the FCC’s “fairness doctrine?” It demanded balance from the broadcast networks until it was scrapped under by Reagan in 1987 via veto that sought to codify the following ideas in law.
(1) that every licensee devotes a reasonable portion of broadcast time to the discussion and consideration of controversial issues of public importance; and
(2) that in doing so, [the broadcaster must be] fair – that is, [the broadcaster] must affirmatively endeavor to make … facilities available for the expression of contrasting viewpoints held by responsible elements concerning the controversial issues presented.
The personal attack rule stated that when personal attacks were made on individuals involved in public issues, the broadcaster had to, within one week of the broadcast, notify the person attacked, provide him with a copy of the broadcast (either script or tape), and allow him an opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities.
The political editorial rule required that when a broadcaster endorsed a particular political candidate, the broadcaster was required to provide the other qualified candidates for the same office (or their representatives) the opportunity to respond over the broadcaster’s facilities.
For the details on the origins of “fake news” see Snopes
When the FCC established the doctrine in 1949, the national frequencies available allowed ABC, NBC, and CBS to exist. By the time Clinton’s Presidency concluded, everything changed, as along with the expansion of the cable providers, a robust digital network exploded. The Fairness Doctrine is a reasonable attempt at balance. Still, as technology expanded, it cannot be applied constitutionally to cable or satellite service providers as well as it can broadcast networks. I still watch “antenna tv” because it is free and still interested in fairness, and if not that, then I still sense an attempt at balance.
2021
1967
When applied to the print media, the Supreme Court has recognized that regulations like the Fairness Doctrine are not constitutional as law. Regulations aimed at others may be subject to the same opinion when applied to Cable TV, satellite, and digital platforms. The remedy is only available on a post-trauma basis. In other words, people are free to disregard content-based restrictions on speech and yell fire! Doing that creates an imminent threat to people only if there is no fire in a crowded theater. The least restrictive remedy for misuse of free speech is to await prosecution from the hurt and offended people or institutions.
Preventing further restrictions requires a government to use the least restrictive means of achieving an interest, such as assuring public safety. The people labeled far-right insurrectionists are perfectly within their rights to act and be punished for their actions.
Buy now because these are the top twenty Black Owned Businesses to celebrate the 2020 victory. Time Magazine did a cool thing and made a list; I’m passing it along because they checked it twice. (Full article here) New York Magazine lists 180 in NYC (here). Anyway, you get the point on your dollar this year.
Geopolitical challenges such as a pandemic or the multiple impacts of climate change instruct humanity’s genius to bring about systemic change and resist and reverse “them not us” policies and strategies. These are tests for leadership without national borders that rage against the intolerant behaviors most likely to kill or hurt anyone at any time. Again, anyone at any time.
Recognize human vulnerability as a powerful strength. It instructs societies on how to share a threat or resolve an issue. The logic that prevention comes at the cost of an ounce must also resist demands for buying pounds of warehouses to manage death. Science offers useful and lasting solutions to problems that often require decades of complex analysis. In the stirrings for a more robust form of global leadership, the nationalized political rush to cures and deficient reaction to climate change will cause death. In the process, it weakens the direction and leadership of science.
Finally, science belongs to us all. Darwin was a scientist without professional degrees; he was curious. That is all anyone needs. Significant global challenges, such as climate change and pandemics, are vast and complicated. What can one person or a small group of friends do? Here is a brief example.
Scientists will show you how inside of the big problems, there are hundreds of other smaller ones trying to get out. Those are the ones to work on, dig into, maybe even solve. The accelerated rate of species extinction puts all human life in peril. There are hundreds of ways it reversed by paying attention by the human hand at “wild urban interface.” The growth of citizen science through internet partnerships is the counterbalance. Sharing observations can connect our personal experiences with the reality of all Earth’s life forms. Think of something in nature that you enjoy, and it can be anything, a particular kind of tree, or bees and butterflies, ferns, and orchids. There are billions of life form interdependencies between you, your children’s future, and the community that is not understood and need ordinary people to discover, document, and recover the forgotten. To get started, have a look at these great ideas:
One argument often stuffed into questions on how to build common ground and a good society or even the capacity to sustain positive change in bad times is the proposition that logic with goodwill solves problems. Logic is science, goodwill, nothing but untrustworthy feelings that destroy the former.
American’s have simple-minded, or perhaps merely unexamined adolescent confidence about what and who we are among one another and in the world. The tension caused by this lack of examination may be psychological, political, or economic. The 19th century was said to be about Hope and the 20th c. of GreatExpectation. The paradox of this as a trend is how it tips the 21st century toward the claim of Despair.
We recognize in ourselves the hopeless questioning gaze in the distress of a suddenly wounded child. We also see that it is not a dishonest experience, but one capable of reversible insights regarding exuberant, competitive, playfulness of our growth into freedom. The principle that, it is only business or it is just politics, accepts harm without limits as mere spoils.
The day-to-day experience of our time has become distrustful, but not only of one another. We are becoming hostile toward human nature. We can see in ourselves and Nature a capacity for spreading acts of unrepairable self-affliction. Readily accepted public controls to reverse these conditions come with a moody resistance and the repression of irrational, empty of analysis, without one moment of reflection.
Because of that, “reflect” for a moment.
One cannot exhibit judgment if statistics dominate decisions. In this context, true judgment is lost. Organisms need energy, water, shelter, and reproduction to exist in one of two places. Some will travel thousands of miles across the earth to acquire resources. Others will glue themselves to rock to acquire needed resources. If an organism or a nation loses the mysticism and belief in a philosophy of hope and expectation in which each is born, the capacity to conduct strategy meaningfully evaporates into the dust of poor judgment.
Three factors have brought about the demand for global, multilateral change in national societies with varying impacts, and all of them are tragic. First, climate change is an umbrella disaster held over nasty little wars, floods, and firestorms followed by infectious diseases. Second, inevitability is well recognized as a fact for centuries leading to questions about when. The necessity to had context is important. For example, the entire universe will die in a few trillion years, give or take a few trillion. Third, the world’s leadership is beginning to understand that much of the horror on the path to the inevitable remains preventable in each new global cycle only for the lack of enforceable world-wide agreements.
RLC
Ironically, a fourth global factor is a conservative viewpoint expressed as the tragedy of the commons. The negative impact on a common pasture and the relationship among households raising grazing animals is real. The rules will change if the entire earth becomes that metaphorical pasture. Losing entire coastal cities worldwide to surging ocean tides and entire biomes (forest to coral reef) will become a lived experience. If millions of people could see billions of tons of waste that float and sink in the global ocean, would it feel like a shared resource? Would the “dead zone” of the Gulf of Mexico procure a voice? Instead, societies pay for these disruptions with children starving, the scream of a helpless parent, and the stunned dismay of families who falsely believe they are saved with compensatory access to wealth.
The global climate has been stable for only the last 2,000 to 3,000 years. There should be no expectation that it would remain constant. The global climate is in many ways barely stable as a system, and a single push of added gases, heat, would make change inevitable yet still feel inconsequential as a threat. The demand for alternative ways of living is unimaginable as the swell of cheap energy continues to make everything, including faith in a quick tech-fix, easy to expect. In this psychological climate, finding replacements is difficult. Forcing amelioration by changing the price with substitutes violates the status quo. When assessed in the “commons” framework, two new categorical thinking patterns emerge as environmental and emotional intelligence. Try to find the “commons” in “energy explained” (here).
Ostrom’s Answer is Occam’s Razor
A problem in the future has two elements, one to design a defense, the other is to alter the future to make that unnecessary. The leaders involved may have had the skills of the lawyer and personality for political leadership, but to produce solutions essential to create trust, the science professions will form a new commons. A scientist can tell you the future is already here, just not everywhere. To do that, the change in the mode of problem-solving begins with a process that Elinor Ostrom has already figured out in a Nobel prize-winning way.
Our ancient brains in various shelters for the night knew of beasts, enemies, and trouble. That sense of big trouble is real, but the community may never experience its pain because of that sense alone. From the cave to the laboratory, we have done what we have done to define problems we believe might be unlikely to occur, but we solve them anyway. The quality of thinking, in this instance, is an old tactic still in use by scientists today called Occam’s Razor. As Albert Einstein notes, a theory of a threat with the fewest variables requires problem-solving work where “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Ostrom examined the power of working with problems using a thing well understood – clearly defined boundaries.
The first of Elinor Ostrom’s core design principles began in Governing the Commons (1990). Regarding implementation, she is optimistic as an economist in her research for the World Bank. In 2009, her paper, A Polycentric Approach for Coping with Climate Change, considers a non-tragic global commons (pdf here). It is here that she gives her life-long partner Vincent Ostrom an attribution to a central observation. She quotes his definition of polycentric as “one where many elements are capable of making mutual adjustments for ordering their relationships with one another within a general system of rules where each element acts with an independence of other elements.” It is an excellent definition of the inner workings of catalytic cooperation and was written with Charles Tiebout and Robert Warren (Economic Base and Local Expenditure Theory).
Ostrom’s work with problems uses clearly defined boundaries because they are well understood. In economic terms. Boundaries are needed everywhere for everything but are difficult to implement without the consensus of the parties involved. On the other hand, this first rule is essential to working with big global problems such as thermonuclear war, climate change, and a pandemic threat. Defining a boundary categorically offers promise as the concept is simple and easily understood as a system condition altered from one state to another.
Because purely economic solutions are easy to argue and difficult to implement, start with a simple physical entity such as a city as that category. Cities are places with a fixed boundary and a legal process for expansion or contraction. Thus, the city is an excellent place to implement the remaining seven parts of Ostrom’s solution. It is a “back to the future” type of problem.
A city is an outstanding place to begin implementation. The city with a boundary offers proportional equivalence and a clear, constantly improving data stream to monitor processes beginning with measuring benefits and costs in every imaginable center capable of giving itself a boundary. It is ongoing but without mutual benefit consent. Proportionality within multiple geographies of a dense polycentric city of neighborhoods, cultural groups, ideologies, genders, and so on can become a transparent way to understand variables fully. In this way, it is possible to put the equality sign (or not) between two or more social and economic expressions.
The city also offers multiple platforms for “collective choice agreements.” The center of Ostrom’s argument recognizes the practical use of carefully implemented sanctions. The city’s boundary offers a set of measures from price restrictions to penalties, incentives, and subsidies designed to meet goals such as a good balance of affordable housing or lower per capita energy use. In New York City, neighborhood-level participation in governance is voluntary and advisory, but it expands the central government’s capacity to understand issues experienced locally. As these practices contribute to local autonomy, they are also capable of interpreting them globally. Coming to the resolution of problems begins with the kind of efficiency and quality of data feedback that empowers local autonomy through participatory governance.
The last piece of Ostrom’s change-the-world puzzle looks to resolve existential threats with the ability to grow a polycentric rulemaking authority so that global rules are instantly recognized because they are already well-organized and in use locally. The only element missing is the lack of political recognition of this as an urban fact. Ostrom’s groundbreaking approach is not built on how people think but on how they will eventually organize their thinking. Hopefully, this work will escape its decade of discussion where it floats in the partial oblivion and trappings of its academic Nobel Prize (2009). It needs to find a city to live in as a permanent place of proof. I recommend New York City, and you know why. If you can make it here, you can make it everywhere. Again, the city with a strong existing boundary has these systems in place. The only element is the lack of political recognition of this fact.
Long live Mother Jones. They know they cannot fix all of the new forms of corruption destroying American democracy, but they are going to give it a try. You already know this to be their honest work, so click here to make a tax-free donation to the Corruption Project. The goal is $500,000. Click (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="here (opens in a new tab)" href="http://<p class="has-small-font-size">A reasonable combination of the policymakers that appear to be conservative or progressive.
here) for an update on recent events.
Deciding to make a more significant difference, the Corruption Project will build a 1.2 million dollar investment to publish reports on the kinds of corruption that seem to define America today. They will examine the illegal and the legal kind (here). In the summer of 2020, it will be tuned to make an impact that year’s election. Perhaps the most important in the history of America.
The needs to be more sunshine on the
folks who pull strings behind the scenes. The Kaiser Family Foundation added “corruption” to the list of topics of great concern over health care and
the economy. Corruption is the rot beneath thousands of scandals, all seen as
perception or news cycle problems, ahead of the behavior of cancer that it
represents.
Symptoms:
If a demagogue benefits from the corruption,
they will run on a platform against it as a step to take full advantage in
office.
Financial systems that are consistently manipulated by those with money and power for personal gain.
In-depth, time-intensive reporting on the crisis of democracy requires an inward vs. outward look. First, the crisis must be recognized.
Where there is no clarity, transparency, and change, corruption is likely.
The incentive to bring forward a new media landscape requires more analysis of results. For example,
What are fines without admission of guilt other than the debasement of values?
Do hundreds of pleas of wrongdoing, and malfeasance cloud the senses?
Examples like these expose the substantial issue — attacking “systems” of corruption.
Getting
Started on a Cure
The thing about systems is they are best only understood in terms of larger and more complex systems. The earth and moon cannot be defined usefully without understanding the solar system and its place among a galaxy of galaxies. A single cancer cell is unknown without the organ in which it grows in the body of the person in which it becomes lethal.
Mother Jones has come up with a
strategy for putting the quality of life as a nation in the context of our
choice in 2020. Will it be a choice made in a system designed by those with enormous
economic power seeking to defend great wealth or a messy system formed in the
expression needs and concerns embedded in the great diversity of the United
States?
Send Mother Jones a few of your hard earned bucks and pay close attention with your sense of inner-guidance to the body politic
A modest step toward transparency began implementation in January 2019. Currently overseen by Seth Agata, Executive Director of the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), lobbyists in New York must disclose all the public officials they target. The purpose of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics is to eliminate conflicts of interest in lawmaking, campaign donations, and interrelated matters. The range of agencies involved in corruption and the creation of the JCOPE is described from a different angle in Corruption Compelled in which JCOPE is more of a foil and cop-out, sidestep, and skirt around the real cops.
JCOPE’s regulatory framework completed in 2011 but did not take effect until Jan. 1, 2019. There is a reason for this long road to implementation. The disclosure of names changes everything. They are of state lawmakers, agency employees and local unelected officials approached on questions of legislation, regulations, and billions of dollars related to most governmental matters. The new rules also allow those who watch the watchers get the names of lobbyists, their clients, and public officials and look for accountability. In the first required bi-monthly report Jan/Feb 2019, the Times Union reported the following lobbyists did not disclose adequately. Examples are:
Complying with JCOPE is less transparent and will remain so if JCOPE does not penalize lobbyists for rule-breaking and confront the issue in the courts. While the report from the New York State United Teachers NYSUT offered every detail, why the slow start among the big, multi-client players?
Why? A Catch 22? A Wrench in the Works?
David Grandeau filed a lawsuit against JCOPE claiming the regulations to be vague, illegal, and not based on a law passed by the state legislature. He also represents lobbyists about complying with state law. The suit has a SCRIBD Final, and under the terms of the settlement, Grandeau reached in December with the agency, if JCOPE seeks to penalize Grandeau’s clients for noncompliance with the regulations, JCOPE would have to rely on state law text and not rules. The settlement only applies to Grandeau’s clients. It’s not like people were unaware of this problem a Politico Story in 2015 highlighted Grandeau’s point (here). Twitter Feed (here).
A road map for lobbyist/client non-compliance is now available for all who seek to avoid disclosure. The collapse of the regulations for the lack of enabling legislation or statute requiring JCOPE to implement them is the game in play. If corruption is punished it could kill the law aimed at ending corruption a classic Catch 22. Just like the original. If you say you’ve been driven psychologically insane by war – the claim is a logical one and that makes you sane and you cannot be discharged.
Other reasons for NYS and JCOPE will do a poor job and develop a bad record is outlined carefully by the Center for Public Integrity. See their March 2015 article (NY State Gets a “D” for Ethics) for more information dating to 2012. A key criticism was any three members can kill an investigation among the fourteen assigned for service on the Ethics Board by the people they are intended to investigate. Catch 22 all over the place. There are others and the rules in 2019 are far more convoluted.
The first rule of power politics: If the public is upset — confuse them.
Follow-up
The route to a better state of New York looks directly at its annual commitment to $10-14 billion in capital budget spending and a large but tightening $180 billion expense budget. Corruption is not built into human nature — it is compelled. Participants in this process are needed to take on a role. One good idea is to volunteer with Represent NYC.
JCOPE Executive Director Seth Agata has said that the agency intends to enforce the regulations and that those who don’t follow them will be subject to punishment. A person to follow his activities, meetings, conferences, enforcement activities, and plea agreements is needed.
Walter McClure, Director of Communications and Public Information Officer.
Contact him regarding questions concerning the regulated community, lobbyists,
and clients of lobbyists regarding assurance of compliance with filing
requirements. (518) 486-7842 or by email at pr***@jc***.gov.
Chris Bragg (Times Union 4/27.19) the political and investigative reporter for the Capitol Bureau and contributor to Capitol Confidential it is “unclear if the rule issued by JCOPE would hold up if challenged in court.” Contact him at (518) 454-5303, (518) 454-5619 https://twitter.com/ChrisBragg1cb****@ti********.com Follow him.
The Office of the City Clerk website contains the Lobbying Bureau’s online filing application system, the site through which lobbyists and clients file reports under the Lobbying Law. For members of the public, Lobbyist Search, the public information database is accessed with reasonable ease. This is a black hole of data and people become exhausted A good example is New York Shame now very still and quite.
Support for (or against) members of the New York City Congressional, State, and Local Delegation requires paying attention. Change occurs rapidly through term limits, the high cost of running for office, and in NYS, change becomes likely for many reasons.
Vote
The idea is uncomplicated. Working quietly as a team with the resources available.
At the federal level, representation demonstrates political power through participation in committee structures of the House of Representatives and the Senate. The material developed here focuses on an analysis of that power. What gets out takes the study of the professional watch organizations because it is not about naming a post office. It is about following the money.
At the city and state level of representation, added attention is required. The state of New York has the same Gross Domestic Product as Canada. Its budget is xxx billion, and nearly half of the revenue is produced by the state’s largest cities, of which NYC plays a considerable role.
I recently met some smart people from RepresentUS-NY who focus on the question of corruption in all its forms and seek to remove its occurrence with the aid of law enforcement and community activism. I want you to join them, get the emails and subscribe.
Related stories are: “My Represent Us Story,” which includes Unbreaking America video with Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Silver. Nearly two million people saw it by February 2019.
A description of “Corruption Compelled” among New York State Legislators is very detailed and lists the main sources of enforcement. I have a piece on “Ranking Leadership” using a 21st-century innovation to improve our right to a useful vote.
Draft for Comment
The draft below is an attempt to examine the technologies of cooperation available to advance the work that needs to be done in the New York Metropolitan Region.
RepresentUs uses Nation Builder to provide a platform of protocols, specific “how-to” papers, and Discord as a resource to help build chapters and aid their membership in selecting useful strategies that discover or encourage the detection of corruption.
Political leaders and the administrators of government policies are being damaged and manipulated. As they old saying goes, “If you dance with a bear, you must dance until the bear wants to stop.” The members of Represent.us watch closely and find ways to cut-in.
Technologies that Support Cooperation.
Access to the statistical tools of digital platforms offers methods to measure the “connectedness” of readers and users to specific issues presented by RepresentUS-NY. An online interactive platform aims to aid in the development and support of volunteers, organization affiliates, and associates. This must be two-way communication. The Unbreak America video wants 11 million to see it, and when I visited in early May 2019 and it was approaching 1 million. That is is the kind of feedback people need, but there is a great deal more possible.
The terms are familiar: total clicks, views and time spent per page, post, or video, the use of search terms, and so on. Building trust in building large communities of strangers (and friends) requires reports to users. Building a reputation along dimensions that are appropriate to a specific context requires understanding specific interests and responding to them. To get at the technologies that foster cooperation I’ll use the following example.
The failure of the Citizens Review Board is its inability get accountability and improve civic authority. Reporting on the history of advocacy within this specific community can build relationships for common ground with RepresentUS-NY on police corruption, concealment and cover-ups.
Self-organizing web networks and community grids distribute the burden of corruption investigations through a defined population of issue-based participants. In this example, RepresentUS would establish a foundation for intelligence from people and devices on all categories of police or general authoritarian misconduct.
The term “grid” is used to recover resources from publicly distributed sources within a network of people and devices, who decide when and how to foster cooperation versus competition used to amplify specific reports organized by the community as peers.
Peer networks combine volunteer communities to accomplish a specific result. These networks are potentially unbounded communities. They create value by rapidly defining and solving problems that would be impossible for smaller workgroups.
The
example in this context would seek self-defining human rights participants such
as 1) Survivors subdivided as necessary, 2) Attorneys focused on civil
liberties and social justice, 3) Social workers and mental health professionals,
4) Activists and community organizers using standard methods as well as
innovations such as “playtivism”.
All offer a unique peer group process of social change actors to expose violence
by building ground for social change.
Social
mobilitytechnologies allow large or small groups of people, known and unknown to one another to act
in a coherent and coordinated fashion in a set place and time. It is supported
by information accessed in current time and space. In this example, the
organization ImprovNow has developed a playful group of constituents.
How should Represent Us approach them for advice
on on questions of political corruption or human rights violations? TED’s
Senior Fellow on the subject, Yana Buhrer Tavanier describes it is a very good
thing to try. They use Meet
Up as a mobility tool. The knowledge of that
experience could be useful.
Group-building
technologies assist self-organized subgroups within a
larger network. The possibilities for exponential growth of a network occurs by
shortening the social distance among members of the network on specific. In
this example, the work to produce greater accountability for holding police
offices accountable for serious crimes fits within the larger human rights
network and holds the possibility for sharing portions of their agenda.
Social software is known for informal cultural exchanges. It helps people to manage specific purposes like keeping in touch, sharing interests, or as a business for building a following and support participation in events like tastings, product sales or discounts, or get new product notifications. In this example, searching Twitter feeds, Facebook, Instagram, and other social software platforms are excellent searchable sources for readers interested in understanding how political corruption works.
Collective knowledge technologies help to use “all of the above” to manage a common resource. Securing this information and expanding its use for a wide range of uses and users builds consensus. For example, the work to produce a more Citizens Review Board with power goes right to one of the most serious forms of corruption in our society. A quasi-military police force with the right to use deadly force in the face of danger (real or supposed) is protected by prosecutorial immunity all the way from cops on a beat to state attorneys. A better path to the reconciliation of error on both sides of the law requires reform. A resource such as “a commission” to provides for the complete exposure of a human error is a far better route to pursue than a regime of punishment and the cover-up of misconduct. Wikipedia is a good example of a disciplined source under specific subject areas.
Imagine Yourself in an Animated TV Series
Here is an example of how to take the horror out of dealing with the apologists of brutal authority.
Writers Dan Povenmire and Swampy Marsh introduced us to Dr. Doofenshmirtz (pictured above) in the Phineas and Ferb series. The doctor engineers destructive machines and names them with the suffix “er” and “or.” Perry, a secret agent platypus, foils the doctor’s evil deeds. You can go only so far with a cartoon metaphor other than Perry is one of the only egg-laying mammals of the species of echidna and monotremes. The crossover of Dr. Doofenshmirtz into the cartoon series “Milo Murphy’s Law” brings in the power of Melissa, who is daring, loyal self-possessed, smart, and curious. This contrasts with how Candace (Phineas and Ferb), is gaslighted in every episode, not by the act of their brothers, but a kind of whimsical happenstance of her brother’s male privilege. It is up to us to pay attention.
Stay with the theme of play for one more moment. The suffix “er” and “or,” along with “ist,” make “agent nouns.” They also make words denoting action and identifies the entity of the action. “Driver” is an agent noun formed from the word, “drive.”
A lax and ineffective Civilian Complaint Review Board could be promoted as the operators of the Complaint Removinator under the orders of the Coverupinaters at 1 Police Plaza.
Is there a force capable of erasing all police wrongdoing in a single leap?
(Photo: Katie Meyer/WITF)
The “Where is Waldo Demonstration” is an excellent example of the fine art of truth-finding and enhanced awareness undertaken by a group of activists in Harrisburg, PA. Have a look. (here)
Seriously Corrupt
In the words of Senator Hirono of Hawaii, POTUS45 is a “liar and grifter who sits in the Oval Office” (source). (deep end @vox). Let’s say the facts outlined during that time sinks deeply into the American consciousness, and it becomes a key removal tipping point. Well, that did happen.
We are living with many of those tipping points now, so put them in rank order. The first most serious t-point occurred in mid-2019 and is known as parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere that guarantees irreversible climate change. But, unfortunately, some tipping points don’t slap you in the face until it is too late. This will happen.
RLC
It is not POTUS45 or Putin that will cause the collapse of stable climate conditions or the American three-equal-branch system of government. The process that led us to these two t-point situations does not occur independently of what governments can control. The issue is corruption. Nothing else will matter as we find ourselves adapting to this changing world. You might pick one of these strategies, and you might as well laugh along the way and fight corruption from your American political breakfast table.
Wait to discover what the new Democratic members in the House have in common. There are three unelected leaders working 24/7/365 to get more Democrats and Independents in the House and Senate. They are Nina Turner, the new president of Our Revolution, Maurice Mitchell, the new national director of the Working Families Party and Yvette Simpson, the new chief officer of Democracy for America. They share concerns for the dignity of the American worker and family, and they represent a unique political triumvirate. If they can protect one another, build an agenda for 2020 and start winning the future for the people left behind or pushed away it will be about more than politics. Whether conservative or progressive, that is all that should matter.
The depth of their shared experience as dynamic African-American leaders will be measured by how well they inject the people’s intellect into movements for change, but one other thing they have in common is a little scary. They seem woefully inadequate to the task and appear slightly ineffectual in the scraps of video available. Perhaps, it is the lack the money essential for digging into the demography and mysteries of votes and power. This kind of analysis can be replaced by the analytical skills of a grassroots organizational structure but, do they have it? Some of the poor impression is theirs to own, but the main problem is with us. What do they need to prove? They can lift their organizations into positions of great power, but when will we know? Winning elections is no longer sufficient. What will be? What must we do?
Most of the poor and struggling families around the world are in the outlying urban areas both near and far from the dense core of economic forces that push and pull people from the land. Homelessness is a production function cities. The vast ability of dense urban areas cities to create demand also cause a maze of economic disruptions that displace and break families. In much of the world, the human byproduct of this displacement is evident in large informal settlements. The housing market is failing to provide housing to one-third of the world’s urban population. Why do they get pushed? Do they know? No, and no one is telling them, even in America.
One person knows a lot about the economics of this is Bruce Katz, Director of the Center on Urban Metropolitan Policy at Brookings, a century old, centrist purveyor of fact. There are five short presentations and one long video by Katz (HERE). It will take about 30 minutes to watch this selection. He may sound libertarian, but he is just the messenger. I recommend listening to him before reading further. If you’d rather not, here is the super short version and why a triumvirate, such as the three imagined here is essential.
Our metropolitan centers are by far, the vital economic engines of America, and as such will continue to produce unrelenting displacement pressure on low-and-moderate-income households. They are the engines of learning, full of universities, colleges, advocacy organizations and training centers fully capable of creating a next-generation citizen fully capable of breaking down and eliminating gender, racial and ethnic barriers. Details are here.
Skilled civic engagement in regional growth is a cultural phenomenon with specific strategies. First, retain the residence of threatened populations in the core. Second, draw down every opportunity to inject the reality of displacement pressure into the political heart of leaders. Third, this is a “no news is good” issue. Capable leadership will flee, equity holders will cash out, take their young and move far too soon into lower-cost environments (south and southwest). You need them. Encourage them to stay and fight.
Lastly, the 535 people at the federal level of representative leadership are ignorant of this fact, or at least behave that way by deferring to state powers. The triumvirate(s) suggested here is a stateless organization, they are capable of creating policies, projects, and priorities that strengthen multi-state regions and agencies. The U.S. more than its 50 states; it’s a network of 363 economically integrated metropolitan areas (click map above). Regional development policies are thousands of times more relevant to the future economic and social health of working-class America than the set of lines drawn by cartographers to establish the Republic a couple of centuries ago.
The boundaries of the states were formed using an imaginary grid that stretches across the earth. The intent of this coordinate scheme is to locate or identify precise geographic positions. The idea dates to 190–120 BC, it was used to draw uniform boundaries of the American states, and today your phone knows where you are to within a meter. The states are arbitrary constructs of uniformity and similar size, the metro-regions are synonymous with the health of the nation and in a metaphorical sense they are “circles.” The circle looks inward. It is an object that shows its boundary to the world, the grid does not. This is the organizing principle upon which triumvirates will develop their power. The voters of these regions are majority blue, Democrats and Independents. The organizational realignment toward multi-state economic regions will take a while, in the meantime, several strategic components require special attention.
Multi-Cultural/Racial Politics
Is a “rainbow coalition” possible? The presumption that it exists is wrong; it does not exist. All the appetizers, entrees and fixings are laid out in the kitchen, but supper has yet to find the dining table, even the one that is in the kitchen. The foundation for celebrating this high quality of change within the American diversity spectrum is barely recognized or touched let alone stirred with any fondness. We have no language, no string of words for it and it dates to 1984.
Building a foundation for American diversity is developing in two places, universities with civic engagement policies for incorporation across their curriculum from STEM programs to the more traditional centers. The leaders are in law and political science who carry the strongest interest in a sustained discourse on democracy and its institutions. The second place occurs in the city where the language of diversity is improving followed by state and federal elections that exhibit serious divisions and therein lies the dark side of the social justice coin.
Counting over several years and multiple election cycles, the U.S ranks 27th out of 35 economically developed countries in voter turnout. Volunteerism in community service ranks low at 20 to 25% of households, and it is top heavy in the higher income ranges. More recently, threats to the well-being of working families have increased civic engagement activities, especially in urban areas. These facts were so widely apparent that it led to the creation of the American Democracy Project (ADP). It started with colleges and universities in 2003 and remains a nonpartisan initiative of AASCU in partnership with The New York Times. The knowledge resources on this subject are online and free for digital distribution (HERE). An author’s presentation on the 2017 edition is (HERE). As these efforts are failing, a viewpoint on why is outlined (HERE) for comment. American civic engagement practices for dealing with problems is the problem. The plug has yet to slip into the outlet, the power is there but the switch is missing and there appears to be no endurance limit on our knowledge of this fact of self-oppression.
Problems: Ships in the Night & The Lost Soul of the 60s
We have the radar for the existence of other ships in the Democracy, thousands of them but that is about all. Here is one example. To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960) is one of the most read books in America and widely assigned in schools. White people think the attorney Atticus Finch was a hero but to the African-American, he is a stone looser, yet Aaron Sorkin is willing to use his exquisite use of language and force that point into the debate of how we must “all rise,” the last two words in the play. The demand is to get to a better American place (read a PBS interview (here). Where is the language that makes it possible to call out or openly condemn people that tacitly support a culture of hate and malice? The American psyche is far too easily driven into little camps and throwing a “big tent” over it remains as unpalatable as always.
When thousands of people like the Mayor of Jackson Mississippi (first 5 min. only – on video here – 170K pop. 80%Black and a third Asian) enter your world the tent can get more interesting. Getting past platitudes and on to education and housing in Jackson will be his issue. New leadership like this will be watched and if possible assisted to see through the clouds that new leaders attract. After the 2016 election, many groups pulled big national lists together for study but they not useful. As the digital revolution began in the 1970s, the ability to study, think, act, and respond together became the more useful MOOC. The isolation remains and groups still struggle to form beyond encouraging references to Margaret Mead and her opinion on the subject.
Americans need an intervention regarding addictions to racial ignorance. Where is the tough-love slap in the face that makes everything right and gives us back our senses? This intervention is possible. It will be done with superb care on the ground yet to be found for a foundation unlaid and a building we can barely envision. It will be done as if all the oppressed, unlucky or struggling rainbow of people in this nation could stand all at once and scream NO to pandering leaders, and yell in one sweet sound, “we are the change we seek, we are the change we seek!”
Brokenhearted Fatalism
Nina Turner (Our Revolution) puts it this way. When “the hunter,” writes the story, there is no story of the lion. Political movements are similar. It can use filters that leave people out who think they are in. Like the term “hunter,” labels such as “neoliberal” or “self-reliant” simultaneously attracts people to power they cannot acquire. In tracking the lion, the hunter knows what the lion is willing to submit to and uses it to the exact amount needed to achieve the injustice of its death. The hunter’s brand is visible, control the narrative of bravery and therefore secure its benefits and power. The lion’s story is direct; death is food. Death is the gift of her pride’s survival.
If we are the lion, our revolution is underway but barely notice unless there are videos of a shooting. Being African-American and politically progressive should be a natural fit, “if” there is a family history of engagement in fights against social and economic systems that insist on a second-class citizenry defined by gender, income, color in the rainbow, one at a time or all at once. We do not forget the people who died in resistance to this condition. They are the builders; they own the long history of this change in the nation. We hold them as gifts and if we can, we will add chapters.
We do not speak of the blood horror, hopelessness and fear it took to get those moments that made the change. A great joy rests with its victories, each of them rings triumphantly in our nation’s history. Today we watch scrapings from historic speeches, we read books, listen to songs and examine pictures about the cost of resisting oppression. Today, over a half-century later it appears to many that there are those who take a black life are becoming unpunishable and at worst made legal actors in a much broader attack on all people facing the pain of a soft oppression, a sense that something was taken, an addiction and the threats of despair that each cause. of us have had “the talk” with the young about protests, lawful police orders, and standing ground. The hunter would have you fear the lion and drain you of compassion for her pride, yet all the while to the lion; death is a gift.
America’s history of death and pain rings painfully for each loss and because each bell we ring for them, tolls for us all and it is here and now. The bell rings if we resist the “lawful orders” of a cop, it rings loudest in friendly fire, and it rings until we cannot hear at all. Following difficult times, it is in our nature to bring out the good in ourselves and find reasons to celebrate our sacrifice but the movement today is very different. There are more ways to assure the story of the lion than I can count, and there are now thousands who can damn the old hunter’s lies. Is this not enough, what needs to be new, what needs to be different? Skip the ad and listen here for it from a collection called “Outskirts of the Deep City.”
Change Politics
The average, everyday person will talk about issues and events but often lack the will to act. Modern political analysts understand the events leading to changes that improve lives. Actions do not come easily without the experience of working for the prospects that succeed. Change politics can fool you. it will ask you to stare at the beak of the Eagle on America’s Seal and love your country. The new politics of change will put you in the grasp of her talons; make you the builder of her nest of arrows and hold you in her branches of peace and victory. What needs to be in the new politics?
A voice of unification for the working family that restates American values of fairness with justice. Better education for your kid? A wage scale that keeps up with costs? How about better protection from ill health, big pharma, and corporate greed? When we face threats to our well-being, who will be there? Look left, look right and say I will be there for you, I will be there. What needs to be different? We are the change we seek.
At this time in history, most Democrats and Republicans (save a few) can only equivocate and obstruct. If 2020 is going to be an opportunity, the “be there” time is now. Maurice Mitchel is now the National Director of the Working Families Party. (WFP). He is one of those “go” leaders with extensive experience in movements beyond, in front of and behind elections. He will continue to expand our understanding of what a democracy can do. He can see the irony when both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump say, “the system is rigged,” and it says one thing to him and me. We need very new politics.
What is exposed here? If we are to remain a democracy, we are challenged to do big things. First, increase the number of voters by 1,000%, crush all forms of voter suppression and stop playing short can-kicking games. There needs to be an ass where there is a can. Watch his mildly nervous presentation at NetRootsNation.org is here. All the right words are all in a row, but he needs the kind of heart that beats in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get the sound we need. He has the words, now give him the sound. Words are important, but how they sound is even more so.
There is a better sound in Maurice here as he defends the Working Family Party (WFP) from an attack by the three-term Governor of New York State because of WFP support for Cynthia Nixon in a primary. Challenging the governor happened for one important reason, it is time to say “No” to the oligarchs and those who say yes to them. At the heart of it, Maurice defines what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party in the nation as it is in NYS. Maurice would not be taking anything away from Alexandria if he repeated her reminder that New York leaders of the past had led the progressive movement with great courage. The entire WFP requires voices that do not speak of defenses against attacks to define injustice. The math is easy, the foolishness of the peacemakers exposes their failure as change makers. If you hear, “Five-hundred or so American billionaires are not the cause of America’s problems.” It is time to share everything, every strategy, and tactic. It is time to offend with relish and know all the actors who are firm in their purpose and who might face death in the anarchy we all detest.
After Yvette Simpson lost her bid for Mayor of Cincinnati, she acquired a new position as Chief Executive of Democracy Now (January 2019) as described in a news story interview (Here). Yvette Simpson’s membership of the Democratic establishment represents the party’s better self because individuals from diverse backgrounds who seek public service expect to be Democrats. The record is improving slowly, but the proof is the problem. The majority of every Congressmember’s senior staff is not diverse. This was not widely circulated news until the membership became more diverse.
Can a Democracy care for all people and meet unique needs without sowing division and discord? What I learned from Yvette was the calculus of a representative government requires a variety of navigation skills throughout a campaign without end. She knows no one on the progressive side of the equation is better at grassroots engagement. She notes that if you run you cannot knock on doors, you must walk the race. Winning is face to face, not face to the screen. She believes in the power of “we.” Her experience proved to her that the road made by walking is formed best with a bold and unapologetic agenda aimed at making changes that people want in their lives. It was once summed up as rights, first to the pursuit of life, second to liberty and third happiness. Winning a primary but losing a run for Mayor gave her insight into the challenges of 2020 hopefully aimed at the Senate as a priority. Will the triumvirate be up to speed and ready to respond?
Infrastructure
The growing economic success of central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan is also the story of large, diverse cities in multi-state regions that hold with a significant share of the state population. For decades disinvestment in the infrastructure of dense urban regions presents hidden dangers. Not spending where spending is needed exposes failures of transit services to and from these centers. Auto congestion where and when it is hated the most. A rising cost of housing, including deteriorating conditions in the suburbs, the displacement of low- and moderate income people into suburban neighborhoods, and sporadic increases in urban homelessness. The more significant sources of stress are evident in the protests of working poor teachers in decaying schools alongside troubled police and fire services and other first responders racing into a long list of preventable social and environmental problems of life-threatening severity. Pick-up a copy International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection and all of this is documented.
Death, Taxes and Social Justice
Putting added reduced tax cash flow into the hands of wealthy people and corporations are not coming to the resolution of any of these problems. They are without accountability; the board members of the super large foundations are out of touch with the broad national dialogue needed to keep our democracy responsive, instead of their wallets. Yes, new partnerships are there, but the old lines of privilege remain unchallenged and taxing them is failing because loop-hole land will never go away without reinventing America. If the horrible truth is super high tax revenues collected by the government don’t work, what needs to change?
We live in a society where the most important things go unsaid. For example, the question on the table in a substantial foundation’s boardroom is “Are we failing in our quest for social stability?”. What is known but never said aloud is, “Well, if large groups of the society get upset and start causing trouble with disruptions of the economy and endangering their own lives and the lives of others, we have fully equipped our police forces with enough riot gear and other tools that could conquer a country.” Can you hear that lungful exhalation flow across that confident conference table? Look again out of the conference room’s vast windows overlooking a landscape of terror that could be unleashed, then turn to the doorway as it opens. Meet your new master, the authoritarian who can only keep this crowd at bay with your foundation’s loyalty. Impossible you say? Not according to world history.
It’s Their Fault
If you hear, “Several hundred multi-billionaires are not America’s problem.” An economist in a rabbit hole is baiting you. Don’t go there. Of course, high taxes don’t work, government (city, state, federal) have never been able to get much above 20% of America’s GDP from the very beginning of this measure. Using the 20% rubric, the GDP in 2018 will top $21 trillion to yield on average $6 trillion in annual revenue. The interest paid on the national debt is $364 billion. (10/1/18, through 9/30/19). The total public debt is around $17 trillion. Individuals, businesses, and foreign central banks are its owners with 90 percent of it in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. (Details here.)
America’s “good faith and credit” is highly respected, 30-year “treasuries” sell with ease. Credit is another word for trust so, the bottom line, the money is there to do what we want. Therefore. We must ask, what does work instead of taxes? The answer, spending on the right stuff, followed by the right questions that get asked but never answered. What is the right stuff? Where you put your political brain requires you to find out.
In 2012, Jim Sorenson put $13 million into a business school in Utah and created the Sorenson Impact Foundation where they quietly work on a long list of projects that would make every candidate for sainthood happy. Other things like program-related investments (PRIs) vetted by the business school, “select and develop business models for high-impact, early-stage social enterprises capable of reaching underserved populations.” I love mouthfuls like that, but what is wrong with it, what is missing in philanthropy? According to Forbes, not a thing (Here).
If you read that Forbes article, then you know the objective of all foundations is to “go to scale,” and that means two things, the more obvious is to spread money all over the globe with a goodwill website to prove it. The other is to make wise social impact business investments and get universities to establish a methodology for measurements and publish the results. Highly respected multi-billionaires like Jim Sorenson and all the other billionaires in his moral class think they know what the right stuff is or needs to be, so he like many others create these hopeful puppy dog foundations. I can look up all the billionaires and foundation staff; I can know where they live, play and work nationally and internationally. They are the wealthy residents of a tiny planet.
Bottom line, what is wrong, what is missing? The hundreds of multi-billionaires are missing in the vapor of their wealth. A wrong-headed street-intellect assumption is they have formed an oligarchy and now vie to rule the world, distracting us with their wonderfulness. The truth is far dire; they have tucked themselves away in their boardrooms happily overlooking their private empires of goodness, adapting and maneuvering to sustain themselves among one another, while all the while the world is burning, slowly almost imperceptibly into ash and dust. So, bottom line, yes, it is their fault, and this is important, except for a few they didn’t mean it.
What is missing, I want you to join in this practice. Below is what I have so far. You can give advice or list wrongs, make rights, just click here.
Pay close attention to the big picture, I hear a staffer saying “It’s just so impolite to be alarmist,” They are wrong, rude is important right now.
Step on another charity’s toes, stop being so nice. One word, “Unjust.”
Spending fortunes on accountants, tax attorneys, and lobbyist only assure private capital will sustain the line that reads “goodwill,” on income statements and balance sheets. Think again, good will is insufficient.
Contributing to all 535 members of the legislative government (retirees and agency staff) enough to keep their campaigns afloat (or not) or to point them in other directions is thr nest way to control citizens, not unite them.
Not paying any damn attention to the small picture. Take a long walk through your community, and then to a place designated as underserved and in need of charity. Ask why? Get back to me.
Realize that despite amassing of billions of dollars in a personal fortune, no one person on this fragile earth could be that productive in any sense other than god-like.
I have no interest in tracking them down, although there is a project aimed at doing so. (here). Our charity must believe they will find the “right stuff,” otherwise they face incurable insanity. Our job is to be persuasive regarding the need to make course corrections essential to the survival of next generations. I know about the hideaways in the mountains and the means to get there. I do not know who is worse off, those without sanctuary or those forced to say, “Mine is full, you are not selected?” Want to add to the list? Click here.
Eponymous Politicians
The USA is not the America Tonight Show. The adjective (above) describes giving your name to something. It is also called identity politics, so you get people who are Trump Republicans. Identity is much bigger than a person, a color, religion, political philosophy or favorite late-nite TV show host. A claim of leadership in the name of dignity for all life produces a replaceable leader. Arguments are won (or should be) on the facts of the day, week, year and decade, not charismatic leadership, bullies or the learned helplessness of their constituents. For example, we win the war of words when we describe the death of young minds and the heart lost in persons beaten low by hate. We win when we force all to hear the frightened whispers from the mouth of hunger. We win when we describe the violence embedded in climate change or assault rifles and how randomly either can take anyone’s home or life at any time or place, one of them used to be in God’s hands, today, both in are ours. We win if all these voices are unified not by fear but in a single call to defend the dignity of the human person. Stand on this path and you will know methods that move all of us forward and away from the confusion that divides us.
The Triumvirate
The three organizations and leaders briefly mentioned here know these methods. In listening to them I know this is Our Revolution, we are the Working Families of this nation, and the demand for Democracy for America is now. We win when our unity is theirs and theirs ours. Calling for an accord does not create unity. The phrase, “the people united will never be defeated” begs the question. What is causing our downfall, our defeat? To keep our democracy, we must be the change we seek and to begin, form triads. Triangles form the strongest structures, tripartite coalitions are a step forward. So if our revolution is to be composed of working families working to assure our democracy remains useful nationally, these three among many others need to find and build local triads.
The voting record from any combination of election districts for offices in cities, states, and Congress by voter and candidate reveal a set of cultural signifiers useful to the practice of removing identity politics toward a healthier method of governance. If the triumvirate’s network is true, if the depth is there, it can conduct this analysis across state lines and recognize the issues of working people step across all the other lines used to divide Americans.
The traditional roots of the old identity way are made sustainable by the quiet assurance of a 98% retention rate among incumbent candidates all the way up and down the political spectrum. So, I am not talking about politics. This is about change. Being conservative or progressive comes naturally to people from low to high income for two reasons. Households are “conservative” because every change tends to be loudest when it is for the worse, and progressive because it is a way to seek out useful and if not, virtuous change that will protect the family. One of the more complex examples of change follows:
The retention of wealth by the wealthy began in 2016, it was legislated in 2017 and became law on January 1, 2018. The expectation of tax reductions for corporations an increase in wages, they have not. The bet is that a few extra dollars in the working families tax return suffice. That it is billions among the super wealthy remains an abstraction. The national revenue is increasing, but the federal budget is still ripping holes in the safety net that helps a growing number of households protect family health, old age, and their financial security. Why? Uncontrolled congressional spending.
The subtle implementations of the attack on so-called entitlements is unclear, but the lion’s strategy, in this case, is easy to spot, go for the slow and weak ones in the herd. The human problem with this kind of attack is the lack of fairness in compliance and the complicity of the herd. In these transactions, this failure should not be lost. Nevertheless, do not allow the debate to move away from the cap held by the hunter regarding issues. Taxes are not paid for social security from incomes over $138,000. Where is the security in that equation? If the answer remains, the revenue is still insufficient. What is missing?
Roots, Roots and More Roots
In my small part of the world, I have organized a tool to implement one of our best methods. I have one or more persons in every election district able to build or join a canvas team and be on the ground for a candidate. You can see an early version here. Security is a growing issue. Sign up here if you are in the district. Instructions follow.
This canvas method is easy to implement, more so in a blue majority city and state and it grows exponentially through a natural network of friends and family. It reveals the enormous power of democracy with personal decisions to work for a specific candidate (city, state or federal) on a routine basis for a limited period every two, four and six years. If tools like these are deployed in the metro-regions, with a clear understanding of the unique economies of each, the ability to produce change people need and want. If not, the answer is clear, try again, and again, and again because we are the change we seek.
The deep concerns of people are not articulated well by most current leaders, especially those who are dependent on identity politics and tenure in office. We should ask why but do not. Leaders acknowledge our concerns but we still allow them to remain fuzzy about accountability to benchmarks or criteria from year to year. There are no triggers or penalties in exclusive political alliances based on religion, race or social background. This tendency allows leaders who see a lack of basic employment with a living wage only pushing a few into desperation. The lack of health insurance protection bankrupts “only a few” families. Our safety in the community, the affordability of our housing, and the failure to educate our young, only hurts “a few families.”
Benchmarks
The promise to sustain the two largest safety nets American’s ever fought to acquire serves everyone even but even the vast “we” of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid is under attack. The subtlety of the attack, even the logic of it will read to divide not unite. I want to be able to say it all began in 2018. This is when just enough people realized the rise of opposition politics and the resistance found ways to diagnose all the reasons for a lack of movement on working family concerns and the honest needs of ordinary people. The first pronouncement is to put a number on “only a few.” We are now that few, there of millions of us and we vote. The second is to learn how not turn against “the other” in this movement, fight for scraps or fail to fight for the few. Those of us who can create moments and events, year after year will rip the mantle off the shoulders of the tenured leaders if needed. It all began in 2018. As it goes for the few, so it goes for us all.
At a political rally, I overheard a leader say, “We need more facts to make that decision.” It was the response that got my attention. “You’re a damn fool, we don’t need any more damn facts, just walk out that door and look around. There are your damn facts. We have got to get to work and it starts now. Do you hear me? If you walk out that door you can smell it. Tsunami’s don’t come with a warning until it’s too late.” The third benchmark for the growth of a progressive movement is swift decision making. Do not wait another day, rush to the defense of neighbors and all those struck down, stand in the light of MLK and seek his justice.
Reflections on Success and Failure
Some professionals study organizational development in such depth they have become almost impossible to understand. But I did come across one article in the reasonably accessible Harvard Business Review that gives me hope. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman use massive amounts of business data. On the question of diversity, they compared leaders’ self-ratings with their ratings by bosses, peers, and subordinates. These ratings reveal leaders assume they are better at valuing diversity than they are. Take that to heart, the social change movement is never doing as good a job as its leaders want, and there are good reasons to be aware. Defending the get woke movement demands exposure of our failures.
To understand the cause of poor decision making, Zinger and Folkman used data on leaders and compared the behavior of those who were perceived as making poor decisions with those perceived as making very good decisions. Whether leading a major international corporation or a scrappy nonprofit organizing committee, pressing for these traits tend to hold true. Here is a description of the common paths that led to poor decision making from the most to least significant. Laziness tops the list, some of the signs are not checking facts or confirming assumptions. Next, not anticipating negative events reduces the ability to defend. When a leader is indecisive it tends to be costly to an organization due to missed opportunities. Leaders that remain locked in the past will make decisions with assumptions that are no longer true. Lesson: Always look forward.
Among the lesser causes of poor decisions are in failures to align “dots” in an organization’s membership. The overall strategy of the organization often referred to as a lack of strategic alignment deals with the leader’s isolation breaking down important interpersonal relationships and dependencies. Similarly, over-dependence on one person who is waiting for another, who in turn is waiting for someone else leads to poor decisions. A leader’s lack of technical depth will reduce the use of high-level expertise within an organization, and if it is there, people need to know. It’s always the coverup. Statistically, the least named cause of poor decisions was found to be a failure to communicate the what, where, when, and how associated with their decisions. I wish Nina, Maurice, and Yvette all the success in the world as they head into 2020 with the capacity to produce swift and effective decisions for their organizations.
Next, I think it will be fun to have a good look at those that have shattered glass ceilings in their hometowns. They are inside the beltway for the next two years. Ordinary observers can find out what they have in common other than the obvious and if they can lay the ground and build the foundation for a significant change in the culture by the means necessary.
Social Impact Measures
The following three paragraphs are lecture-like. Nevertheless, they represent the standard by which I believe our glass breaking, culture changing, the newest members of Congress should be evaluated. I’m open to other ways, but I will fight for the following as I share in the spirit by which you now hold office.
The purpose of leadership is assurance that change is manageable.
You have entered Congress with a personal theory of change. We all use it to adapt to our environment according to need and want, as well as, evaluation of performance. Results are measures to indicate the quality of adaptation in one of three ways, positive, neutral or negative. Change through experiments reinforce the positive and reduce the negative. We are cognizant of the trial and error world in which we and our family, friends and coworkers’ function. From child play to professional practice we learn that we control what we can make recur. I can get Sally to laugh and Bill to chase me every time, and that’s as a grown up. I also know the reverse of that is impossible. The information gathered through experience is routine and enough. You can work through personal skill sets on this question by recalling past actions in getting (or not) a date with a person of interest back in your school days or a “contract” more recently. Knowing how to lead yourself is the prerequisite for leadership of others.
A business or a government agency must measure complex social impacts
The number of people and dollars involved in business and government require confidence to take action. There are consequences at every step. Seeking to alter a in negative society or to improve a positive one requires careful thought and experimentation. In this setting, dialogue gets to the capacity of individuals in business or government to collect reliable information, review methods of data acquisition, analyze and predict results. Confirmation of concrete benefits from people with these skill sets leads to investment decisions as mere possibilities. At this point, choice and timeliness come into play involving the number of options made available.
Confidence in research and planning allows trials and testing to proceed
The changes sought are thereby proven to the satisfaction of the decision makers and it becomes their legacy all the way through implementation. Comparison with alternative trials within or in opposition will minimize risk or advance the position of competitors. Given the period of work, in weeks or decades, the institutional response is to claim an impact and advocate for its continuation with confidence.
To reduce the abstractions of these three components, two recent events will illustrate the human problem inherent to the science of this practice. Science obscures additional motives by building silos. As 2018 ended, the incarceration practices of the federal government were reformed. In practical street intellect, this meant the 30+ year enforcement of harsh drug laws that achieved the re-enslavement (imprisonment) of African-Americans (mostly men) for nonviolent crimes would end (Watch 13th again).
The public investment in a huge federal prison system has consequences, however, accountability for this practice as a racial strategy is practically nil. Creating a big door through which cops and prosecutors could quietly push young men into federal prison (and still do in city/states) was easy to ignore due to a tacit agreement on both sides of the issue. Here it is in one sentence over the procession of two ounces of Marijuana. “We have 15 to 25 mandatory years on you that can go to seven maybe five with the name/location of your boss.” A generation of lives lost and for what, “El Chapo?”
The second event involves the language code that embeds a similar level of bigotry and racism. As the close of 2018, the word was “wall.” Create a wall to protect our borders from the demons to the south. Street-intellect reads that as keep out the Spanish speakers, the Mexicans, Hondurans and everyone else. The super short-term political trend exhibited here reveals consequences without the accountability to reason and practical solutions. An orderly process for dealing with immigration is consumed by the rhetoric of violence and a symbol upon which the 45th president can lean.
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrant’s scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
Persuasion is the responsibility of communication. The writer’s list project asks what writers can do with a list of billionaires coupled with some “hot button examples” and interest in shifting the narrative in ways that improve the focus of new media on questions of democracy and great wealth.Scroll or read down to see a list of billionaires.
Hundreds of writers focus on American democracy, yet the ability to conference meaningfully toward a collective capacity for persuasion has yet to be successful due to journalism’s “reporting” rule. It will be shattered soon. Examples of how and when the rule-breaking might begin are sought. Here are a few that interested me. I am sure there are many more to be found.
The Economist’s chief editor (Zanny Beddoes) maintains the anonymity of many writers, so they may “speak with a collective voice.” Kathrine Viner’s leadership of The Guardian seeks many readers’ participation using “be digital-first” and “free to the edge” strategies. Small groups snatch up specific issues organized by the Open Markets Institute. Mission: to “expose and reverse the stranglehold that corporate monopolies have on our country.” The Volokh Conspiracy (out of the Washington Post into Reason) is forming a conference of writers exposing the absurdities of journalism and the irrationality of law in a Democracy. The first family son at the New York Times (A.G. Sulzberger) will find new ways to speak truth to power about lies.
Important but,
After 160 years of publication, The Atlantic reflected on its 1857 mission statement and summed it up with a set of core principles. Knowledge is partial and provisional and subject to analysis, scrutiny, and revision. Reasoning guides opinion with facts; ideas will have consequences, sometimes with world-historical consequences. The long version is here.
When The Atlantic hired Ta Nehisi Coates, he managed to convince the editors that their enormous megaphone has been held by plundering thieves for all of its 160 years. It would be necessary to act on this knowledge long-buried, ridiculously rationalized, and intentionally forgotten. I would love to have been in the room for that one, but I can hope and wait for the movie, I suppose.
All journalists need to be understood in the context of action demanded in the vitally important vision of the world held by Ta Nehisi Coates. I spent some time with Vann R. Newkirk II, Adrienne Green, Adam Harris, Reihan Salam, Gillian B White, and Matt Thompson. Unfortunately, I cannot speak to Ta-Nehisis Coates’s experience. However, I can read his books or any essay and fully understand the power of his voice and my hope for his influence.
Am I Too Impatient?
The talent is not missing; there are many others. The big institutions in a democracy understand how governance’s quality weakens without writers’ fearlessness, but they also know they are often helpless in the din of voices. Where is the table for them to share a vision? They explore uncertainty with the creativity needed to fund that work. Where is the table?
Reinventing journalism in news organizations offers an opportunity to build a list of cooperative persuasion leaders. Starting with online publications is the short, natural step. However, the leaps needed to create an exchange between investigative journalism and longitudinal analysis of scholars remain. Before I get to some examples, let me add a personal story.
$45 to $65 in 2020
Big-brush/sweep machines clean the streets of New York on alternate days, and if a car is in the way, a “ticket” for $45 (pre-pandemic now $65 post-pandemic) is distributed. So people make way for the machines. I was late on one of those alternate-side days by exactly six minutes to see the fine laid on my windshield in its bright orange envelope. I said, “You guys are perfect!” The officer smiled and shot back, “Oh, no, honey, it’s just because there are so many of us!” Writers are like New York’s clean street officers with one exception, they are not as persuasive, and they don’t get results.
Here are those examples:
One: The Confidence Trap: David Runciman says Democracy favors complacency, especially if accompanied by trust. A crisis tests trust by producing an opportunity to muddle through just enough to make measurable improvements.
Two: In Nation of Devils, Stein Ringen describes “democratic government” as a contradiction defined by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). At best, the law displays a cloudy vision of an opportunity to develop policies for a healthier nation. The ACA’s details did not stop other capitalist democracies: Germany, Japan, UK, and Switzerland. All built national health care systems worthy of imitating. The U.S. “repeal and replace” quagmire spanned a decade only to reveal the mediocrity of American democratic governance.
Three: In The Last Vote, Philip Coggan describes how the social contract commitments made after WWII became bankrupt at conception. Nevertheless, the prospect of continued global chaos coupled neatly with interest in building a stable central bank system to sustain a permanent global borrowing cycle.
Four: David Post, like many writers on “the law,” has a different concern. His In Search of Jefferson’s Moose ties the importance of Democracy to that of the Internet, with the effect on the practices of democracy becoming a grinding combination of legal constructions built on precedent. Without national boundaries, cyberspace domains change the world every day.
Inclined to Take Action?
Being a witness to a homeless family being more economically creative with a $10,000 stake in a food truck than all of Goldman Sachs is heartbreaking. But, it should also be instructive and that it has meaning. Super wealth is an institution established through slavery and investment in it. It drives the first steps, makes the rules, and imagines why “bad” gets first dibs, and in the history of governance, it tends to get authoritarian.
Facebook’s network platform is free in trade for your customer data. Unfortunately, that use led to a violation of privacy norms. It was in the fine print. The classic elements of a crisis: shock, denial, depression, anger, and a final stage, acceptance, swept across our minds and changed our experience in its use.
The financial crisis after 2008 exhibited the last two and most worrisome stages that spill into the violence of despair. That is why Steve Brill’s or Eric Posner’s observation of economies cannot change the world or get agreements on steps over their lifetime. Ideas like “quantitative easing” are effective, yet in a word – academic. They are the managers of the climax in the hazy relevance of the denouement. Books prove good facts are no longer enough.
The anger/acceptance stages of the 2008 crisis continue to rip the sparkle off the per capita income metric, and the product moving forward appears in a long list of appalling disasters. Yet, this is where it gets interesting. The world map shows where wealth creation and democracy as linked. The map of the states indicates the concentrations of that wealth.
The Democracy Index (world map above) is worthy of a detailed look at motives using the filter provided by three issues, 1) energy by type of use, 2) concentrations of wealth by micro-location, and 3) careful attention to the discourse of nations in which events are arranged in the plot, also known as “wagging the dog.” Self-governing societies will find applications to internet communications that extend a democratic republics’ capacity once protections from intrusions posed by authoritarian regimes are established.
Highest Average Income Counties
Teton, Wyoming
$28,163,786
New York, New York
$8,143,415
Fairfield, Connecticut
$6,061,357
La Salle, Texas
$6,021,153
Pitkin, Colorado
$5,289,153
McKenzie, North Dakota
$4,709,883
Shackelford, Texas
$4,585,725
Westchester, New York
$4,326,490
Collier, Florida
$4,191,550
Union, South Dakota
$4,106,670
Teton? Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Harrison Ford, Sandra Bullock, Brad Pitt, Tiger Woods, Uma Thurman
The Brookings Institution (here) compiled a map of the United States to look at geographic areas of prosperity, using a combination of data sets to reveal an index of “vitality” as part of The Hamilton Project. The map combines a county’s median household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, prime-age employment rate, life expectancy, and housing vacancy rate. It presents a Vitality Index as a measure of a place’s economic and social well-being. I found it fascinating for comparison regarding the general location of the 1%.
The “red vs. blue” model of democrat and republican political party behavior by county or state tends to ignore sophisticated communication fraud levels at a global scale. Conflicting economic remedies from the political left and the right are abstractions aimed at preventing social conflict. Tension is natural to diversity and a good thing in many ways. Still, it can worsen when associated with the corruption of thought inherent to high concentrations of wealth and poverty.
The gap is more than economic (have and have not); it includes the “knowing” from the “unknowing.” The 1994 book Making Democracy Work by Robert D. Putnam (w/Leonardi and Nanetti) is a twenty-year look into Italy’s civic traditions. They found Democracy works by reinforcing regional identities and trust. The reach of ordinary ideas about how democracy works well draws out shared experiences.
The reach of reasonable self-governance they found no longer competes in a global economy. It is under attack. The evidence is in the range of experiences not shared. The range for this knowledge moves from mysterious offshore accounts to the helplessness of refugees that grow in total numbers and places. When a different way of life is upon a people, it occurs in one of two ways, creatively by the attentive or forcefully by the thoughtless. Both are embedded in the human heart and the sheer force of Nature’s DNA, the purpose of which is can only be understood in ten-thousand-year chunks of time. We witness distracting matches between authoritarian bullies and capital supremacists, the tolerance for which is unforgivable.
None of this is Persuasive
The worldviews formed by individual writers, small academic teams, and think tanks serving billion-dollar clients lack persuasive power. Demands to “lop off their heads” lack merit for most, and only a few rise above their own purposeful din. The result is a failure to communicate and implement remedies to a range of well-defined problems. So to soothe my own heart, I collected about a hundred individual Twitter feeds of the large social change institutions under subject headings (policy, voting, taxes, human rights) to prepare brief monthly summaries and evaluate their helplessness. Maybe a summary of 140 character statements over a period of time will reveal a pulse. So I put them together in what I like to call the Tweet-o-Rama.
What are the questions that lead to improved decision-making that results in effective action? We know writers such as Tom Friedman get his questions by extracting detailed accounts of global conditions. Wealthy Lexus drivers in aging cultures live alongside regions and nation-states that cherish olive trees because they are poor and young. Writers can take the market abstractions of global warming and climate change and make them concrete for the average person, not with facts but with hope. They can convince 80,000 people in Houston that floods will be routine in their neighborhoods. They can lead them to organize and join millions of other households in hundreds of other regions subject to firestorms, drought, pestilence, and addiction. Who are the writers that will lead people away from actions contrary to their well-being in the caveat emptor world of American Democracy?
What Can You Do? Name Writers & Develop Themes
I want you to pursue one idea as a member of a writers’ group (here when it is ready). The people on the writer’s list will focus on one group of people in America who function in an overlapping set of groups loosely defined by the phrase “political elite.” Why is this important? We know the terms; one percent of American households control more wealth than the ninety-plus percent of all other households and 38% of the nation’s total wealth. Statistically, the one percent represents 1.3 million households, but homing in on 12% (160,000 households) gets to the top of the elite pyramid. These are households with $25 million or more in annual wealth accumulation (2010), as nearly half of all billionaires are Americans. Researchers will find the others visiting just a few of its cities. The “roost principle” will connect people to the place with a bit of due diligence. The ten counties in the table above yield a significant number of opportunities. Wyoming has no income tax, so know that the celebrities listed are among the lower-income and are, for the most part, second-home ranch owners.
To find the top one percent, go to where the average household income is high and wait. Questions that cause the askance look, a hitch in the step, pupils widening of people in service to wealth work well. Chosen “birds of a feather” communities completely understood. Getting close requires hooks, levers, and some demographic imagination. The elite households in the $25 million and way above Paradise Papers group are definable (with exceptions) as people capable of creating a high office candidate (president, governor, senator). The “elites” shoulder tap is heavy – a military deployment to corporate interest areas, the management of armament/gun control emotions, even the disruption (or development) of the public interest in a sustainable and affordable system of healthcare could be a subject of interest.
Digging into the lives of people who own wealth feels personal. It isn’t. If the 1% is to be more than an economic abstraction, the work, purpose, and privileges of these super-rich members of our society require analysis beyond the “who and wow lists” available now. (See source: How Much.) For example, the wealthiest zip code is Fisher Island, located just off Miami. The island is accessible only by ferry or water taxi for its 500 households, and many of the units are investment properties with guest rents averaging $800 to $1,200/day. The island is just 193 acres, its tidy apartment buildings house at peak occupancy of about 1,400 people putting the population density at 46,000 per square mile. Nearby Miami Beach is only 5,000 people.
Who understands these contradictions well? More importantly, who are the best persuaders? Who or what injects actors onto the playing fields of social change. I want names that force a local debate. A successful dialogue often concludes with goals, objectives, and strategies. Local self-interest problems stimulate debate, and solutions will produce dialogue.
Two columns below the “Bumper Year Chart” provide examples. Of the wealthiest 100 people globally, there are 32 Americans ($12B to $100B) in the column on the left (1-32). On the right column (31 Americans), there is a list of the poorest of the rich ($4B and $5B)—the names on the list that follows a link to a Bloomberg.com profile. The task of writing thoughtful insights concerning the behavior of the elite holders of wealth is an impossible one. So, where is the starting point that discovers message controls? The third name on the list below is Buffet. He offers one idea on how to make some progress in understanding that facts are essential in how Senator Patrick Moynihan (NY-D) talked about them. The Senator often observed that we are entitled to our opinion, but we are not entitled to our own facts.
Warren Buffet’s factual logic makes him confident about the future. Despite challenges that link the concentration of wealth to the lack of engagement in reversing intolerable poverty, he and Berkshire Hathaway companies remain billion-dollar beneficiaries that prefer GDP growth over all other indicators. His argument for a positive future connects the rising tide of the annual GDP per capita. The optimism of “averages” draws from population growth of 0.5% (births minus deaths) and 0.3% through immigration for a total of 0.8%. A modest increase of 2% in real GDP without nominal gains produced by inflation would allow for a 1.2% growth in GDP per capita. Amortized over 25 years $59,000 GDP per capita in 2017 becomes $79,000. Buffet says, adding $20,000 is good news. His four words at the start of the 2020 pandemic were, “Never bet against America.”
The forces that continue to force wealth to the top to prioritize global wealth outside of a regulatory framework tend to discount the leading producer, a healthy and productive population. One can hear Buffet saying, ‘being blind to that is how you shoot yourself in the foot,’ but the following quote from his article in Time Magazine(1.15.18) are the facts he presents on why the nation could end up with a severe limp.
“…the Forbes 400 paints a far different picture. Between the first computation in 1982 and today, the wealth of the 400 increased 29-fold–from $93 billion to $2.7 trillion–while many millions of hardworking citizens remained stuck on an economic treadmill. During this period, the tsunami of wealth didn’t trickle down. It surged upward.”
Mike Bloomberg: Time Magazine(1.15.18)
The writer’s compensation is absolute freedom with no master other than the fellowship of those who seek a fragment of truth worth exploring. Thus, for example, Bloomberg reported in December that 500 of the wealthiest people on earth became $1 trillion richer in 2017. The louder point was that it was “more than four times” the 2016 increase. The chart below shows an average of $2.7 billion per day was added to the wallets of the wealthy from known sources.
Critics pointed to it as “shrugging off” growing economic, social and political divisions. The U.S. has a significant presence on the index, with 159 billionaires who added $315 billion, an 18 percent gain that gives them a collective net worth of $2 trillion. The total amounts to a 23 percent increase on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world’s 500 wealthiest people and compare neatly with a 20 percent increase in the MSCI World Index and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. One in every 20 Americans is a millionaire.
Note
The highest density of people who would consider a million a small amount live in a city-state known as Monaco, where almost 20 percent of households have assets totaling at least $30 million. The wealth tracking firm, Wealth-X, is a business that focuses on where the super-wealthy enjoy the privileges and benefits of tax havens along with the risk-taking of casino gambling.
The world’s residents are becoming the product of computational methodologies built to manage metadata on all forms of consumption. Example: Bloomberg has the power to keep himself off the list. The reason being “he’s giving it all away.” The simple truth is no one person could be as productive as his wealth expresses, and no one person, plus a charitable board, can be very productive in giving it away. That is what a democracy is designed to figure not, not fifteen well-intentioned people in a Manhattan boardroom.
The global aggregators of surveillance capitalism provide data loops requiring something in trade, with mouthful sentences like you need a box. The concealment of those on the list above is nearly total, but the wealth these individuals acquired in 2017 was enabled by invading your privacy. I have a box – it sits between me, my family, business, community, and network, and the rest of the world as I determine. In this box, I place my total data stream as I decide. Nothing leaves or enters that box without my permission. It was expensive but worth every penny.
A refined example of positive responsiveness is Browder’s DoNotPay. It offers “deep learning” artificial intelligence capabilities to help people in the U.S. and Great Britain prepare and file legal documents such as small claims suit against a credit report agency like Equifax. The AI will also write formal complaints to an insurance company and other related proceedings managed by law. Providing communal service platforms meeting a specific self-interest helps to put consumers in charge. The development of the GoodGuide and many other applications for that handheld computer called “phone” have similar interests in connecting the content of products to environmental impact and consumer preference.
These two forces – the data aggregators and consumption guides will continue to mature. However, as a nation of laws, American social and economic history illustrates the tension between these forces’ two regulatory structures. The first regulatory response focuses on the concentration of wealth with antitrust laws that expanded from the New Deal through WWII and concluded with public agencies such as the Environmental Protection Administration. Managing the growth and excesses of large corporate monopolies led to a need for a significant government response to assure public welfare. As a result, the environment and the economy improved.
The second regulatory structure sustains productivity with systems for economic fairness. Public resources such as Patent Law enforce monopolies on a product-by-product basis to support a wealth concentration process. Since the mid-20th century, the global integration of trade and communications is fast, and the regulatory framework is slow.
The exposure of absurdities in protected wealth as an indicator of productivity is sharply evident for the lack of results. For example, is it possible to believe an individual can be as productive as an annual increase of $2 billion in earnings suggests? Is it absurd to think a small board of directors managing $20 billion in annual charitable giving can do so with a few studies? They might usefully address a human need with effectiveness. Still, other than gaining a somewhat narcissistic sense of satisfaction, the processes are designed by tax law to support hundreds of small boardrooms incapable of concerted and coordinated implementation. Thus, they may feel “democratic” yet debate regarding the future of millions of people from these little hideaways of probable caring remain slaves to a sophisticated national system for establishing equilibrium.
National policies support local efforts to prevent dirt-poor households from getting above 15% in the nation but not by region. Those who find themselves on the short and foul end of the inequality stick are part of a continuous computational analysis under the Poverty Rate heading. The public policy concern focuses on containing and, in some cases, ‘hiding’ concentrations of poverty. The reasons were given, such as global competitiveness at the start of the 21st century, assure those on the long, pointed end of that stick will behave in the common interest. However, they no longer feel trustworthy, as wealth and self-interest are without inhibitors. Here is a chilling example. If the earth had 100 people – One person has 50% of all the money, 56 people have no internet access, 14 people cannot read, 13 people have no clean water (via Vala Afshar). Many of these “100 people” percentages to review (here), such as 86 can read and write, 14 cannot, or of 100 people, 5 speak English as a first language.
Overwhelming inequality is the breaking point of every society, whether a few thousand or a billion people. A half-century has passed since the University of Chicago’s thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s argued for economies of scale (Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and Richard Posner). As highly persuasive economists, they proved this practice would yield cheaper goods and services to consumers. The winning methodology altered the antitrust policy by placing measures of economic efficiency above all else. The counter-argument warned that top levels would produce large corporations and inhibit the decentralized development of a democratized society and impetus of reform movements in the overall economy.
The U.S./China rapprochement of 1972 and its aftermath neatly symbolize the result of this pathway. The Yale Law Journal examines the issue in a detailed analysis of Amazon’s business model as an antitrust paradox. The resulting excessive concentration of private power in nearly every category has continued since then. (See American Antitrust Institute).
Examples are:
Walmart gets 25% of all dollars spent on groceries in the U.S. In 2015 they began their online version of Amazon, knowing the problems of Sears.
Jeff Bezos (richest on the planet) started Amazon with investors in 1998. Low-profit margins ruled until 2017 when $60 billion in sales revenue yielded $1 billion in profit.
CVS, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid have 99 percent of the pharmacy market, and two of them want to merge; one is attempting to purchase Aetna, a large insurance corporation.
Each year Amazon’s online business model captures a growing percentage of online spending (40% – 2015). It is leading the revolution of spending from “brick to click.” More are on the way.
Google and Facebook claim 64 percent of online ad revenue.
Google claims 64 percent of all search engine traffic.
Bloomberg reported the top 500 billionaires added over a trillion dollars in 2017.
The extraordinary possibilities of capitalism exhibited in a democracy are evident in the list above. Strong contradictions form how one-person/one-vote struggles with dollars per vote, pay-to-play, and so on. The former is a central principle of democracy, the others of capitalism. The contradictions are deemed acceptable with one proviso, a free and unfettered press. Frightening.
Writers have a media consumption preference that bundles into silos. Some like finding dark Toffler-laden tea laced with culture-war confrontations, misleading data; others like the opposite. Media trends build on event coverage. From top-tier media to social media posts, data platforms “reason” by an algorithm with print, sound, and voice information. Its meaning eventually emerges in people, but plucking concrete data from the digital realm reveals a person’s name, named places, dates, times, and all other numbers hidden in a meta-group. Ideas are inherently abstract, but when directly associated with one or more people, they become authentic. With it, I can pick your favorite car, including the one you can afford, and the GPS coordinates of both.
Industry’s use of media is specific to the needs of its users in the digital revolution. Journalists prepare news with feeds; businesses prepare annual reports with technology, and both pull concrete data from a wide range of outlets to measure changes in the world. Each provides strategic opportunities to maintain accuracy, cross-referenced by time, date, place, and sources. In all fields, but especially in advertising, public relations, and corporate Wall Street, the actions are proof of persuasive communications down to the microsecond.
Time is everyone’s money. My analysis of media companies and their compilers focuses on the tiers of persuasion that want the public to trust government leadership. For example, the economics of political media services track and drive press-mentions and then analyze them for impact. Message repeat processes produce trust, even if the message is a lie. Confidence, on the other hand, requires a relationship with journalists in specific industry areas. The resulting “lists,” cross-referenced with legislation, not only provide opportunities for exposure but also produces alternatives in a vastly expanded media environment.
Building insight into competitor’s and partners’ strategies is the essential component of understanding the distinctions in messaging style. Building collaborative media relations occurs best by connecting experts in various industries to establish themes, niche components, and trending topics. Ways to stay on top of the television, radio, newspaper, or blog news cycles on politics occur by increasing interactions with journalists that purvey issues specific or parallel to their areas of interest. Vehicles such as e-alarms will demand responses as part of an item coverage process quantifiable for impact successes. The abstractions described above are the shrill whispers of many (list), so here are some concrete examples.
On the other hand, the confidence provided by this capacity for prediction includes a form of arrogance that fails to recognize the enormous power of the outlier within the overall data framework. Viewing a young man shot down in the street sustains substantial influence because it was repeated repeatedly by news producers. Documented improvements between law enforcement officials’ behavior and people’s conduct in confrontation with society’s norms have occurred. Our generation’s dynamics require trust derived from the balanced exposure of wins and losses, but always toward better ways to confirm human dignity during its failures. Trust remains a reasonable objective, and people such as Eric Liu are fighting to provide it as a product.
Thanks to media platforms such as TED, we can encounter Eric Liu and get to know him without ever meeting him. His mission (see him here) as the founder of Citizen’s University is to train people in the art of urban living as “pro-social, problem-solving contributors of a self-governing community.”
He says we must ‘find ways to “show up” as vital citizens of a community for one reason – the constant examination of our democracy creates the change essential to sustaining our freedoms to do so. Continuing this vitality in the city from suburb to dense core provides opportunities to explore change and power. Liu defines power as it relates to change and describes it unapologetically as the capacity to make others do what you would have them do.
Dr. Margaret Mead’s observation of how small groups change the world offers no guarantees on how well, thus the need to pay attention. The evidence is in one aspect of the need to build new kinds of political awareness. The congressional elite represents one of those small groups. Some of the evidence is the use of rules and legislation that contradict a constitutional promise of public well-being in trade for private security. The congressional median income is well over $1 million, but the annual salaries are under $200,000 for all 534 members apart from the Speaker of the House.
Moving toward a perfect union is confronted hostage and quid pro quo tactics as the source of power. That they appear directed by those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy is of great concern. Such dispensation will not bring peace to their society or ours. The ordinary citizen senses this as a kind of in their bones evidence. The raw competition for capital supplants the more useful search for agreements and compromises at the core of peace and security politics. The loss of democracy is at stake in The rise of authoritarian practices hints strongly at a loss of democracy and its principles of fairness.
More Hot Button Examples
The ordinary citizen can get updates when legislation is introduced and scheduled for debate or votes, even when it gets new cosponsors or hearings because outfits such as GovTrack will send them to you by email. Thus, with your “sign up” to a proposed law, notification of the entire process as it starts toward the POTUS desk is provided in your inbox. A good example is the quality of questions available when this is done by a small group of writers interested in a topic. For example, a few seconds will produce a map such as the one below.
Questions: Where are nuclear reactors in the Northeast? Why do you ask?
On Jan 29, 2018, Rep. Eliot Engel [D-NY16] introduced H.R. 4891: Dry Cask Storage Act of 2018 with co-sponsors from New York. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which will consider it before sending it to the House for consideration. With this, information a citizen can be ready to ask about Dry Cask Storage, what they are, how are they produced, where will they be placed over the next century, and most importantly, why this legislation is now? Casks are for spent nuclear fuel that has been “burned” in a nuclear reactor. They remain “hot” for centuries. Since Yucca Mt., NV closed in 2009. All those red dots still produce “burned” fuel rods. Local storage appears to be the necessary result. Citizens can seek out those who have determined that the development of nuclear electric power is a public dollar priority and decide what it means to include local storage.
Jamaal Bowman shocked the Democratic establishment by defeating Representative Eliot L. Engel, overcoming the old-guard party’s attempts to save a 16-term incumbent.
Disjointed energy policies create expensive highway repairs and inefficient mass transit. The fossilized power grids, roads, and rail in the United States symbolize growing income inequality and support hostile polarization. The time for a strong pull from the heart of people as Americans is now. It may stop them from pushing themselves into the falsehoods of “taking a side” on every aspect of energy policy. But, first, it will be necessary to examine this “taking sides” problem.
For example, litigators for wealthy clients use “due process” to stall reform, and they are winning. The guarantee of due process grinds down reform efforts through a maze of courts. Arguments for improving worker safety or regulating the discharge of chemical waste can last decades. Clever due process litigiousness in energy policy turns to high stakes trading and away from long-term community prosperity. Legislative and financial engineering results in two societies, a small, well-protected class and the hopeful. As the list of threats to human health and well-being grows, the nation’s trust in a better future is a factor held well past its due date—wealth streams to the top echelons at an astounding rate. The rate itself may encourage bankers and brokers to put the welfare of homebuyers and small businesses at risk simply to sustain trade. The darkest example is the exposure of the NINJA home mortgage scheme to bundle loan securities despite a “no income no job application.” Is there a “side” regarding this behavior, other than right and wrong?
The global overshoot problem is due to human consumption. Kate Raworth offers methods and arguments for a more beneficial economy. She sees it built on regenerative and distributive systems designed to meet individual and community essentials. The step toward essential from food and water to the production and shedding of complex materials, human use patterns extend beyond the earth’s ability to provide. The solutions to these problems have two expectations. The first is the apocalyptic solution. Individuals, communities, and nations build on fear of destruction and deploy a disturbing “fitness” for survival policy. The second is a hopeful focus on scientific and technological interventions occurring throughout history. Various direct actions and mitigations can leverage the overshoot problem into an opportunity for human advancements in global asset management.
A few minutes of her talk (here) leaves you with agreement on nine ecological crises facing human settlements. Climate change is an “easy one” with known solutions. Getting to effective implementation is the challenge. Even if it is incremental, it must recur and thereby exhibit control over a process.
Leadership organizations represented by the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Partnership for Public Service dedicate resources for performance-measured actions. Their politics deal with big issues such as ozone depletion (global) and deadly air pollution (local), while climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen, and phosphorous loading continue. They evaluate global threats such as freshwater withdrawal, land conversions, and the loss of biodiversity. All of this without a measure for a political change capable of demanding prevention as the alternative to repairs after the fact. Known ecological ceilings prove prevention works, but it also links to taxation, and the cost of living that leads to local bets on quality housing, health, education, public safety, as well as important protections from fraud, violence, and lies.
Comprehensive well-being remains a local power through specific actions. The lack of compromise, consensus, and political resolve for others’ well-being who are in trouble stands as a central problem nationally, but not in your neighborhood. However, other actors are taking a global gamble on the low odds of an active resistance capable of lopping off heads yet retain a capacity to sustain the commons’ morality.
A thought experiment. List all the things as regenerative components from the following priorities: water, food, health, energy, education, income and work, peace and justice, political voice, social equity, gender equality, and networks. Each has a social foundation defined by its participants to design requirements that meet their unique local locations’ demands. Then, apply a set of decision tree questions (Yes/No) directly linking a local or regional regenerative need and global concern. I like the idea of starting with the decisions produced by large corporations’ public powers and the private behavior of the super-wealthy.
Motivation and Instruction?
“The wealth of the “one percent” is a problem because their instructions to money managers are boring. Examples might be hey, “don’t lose my money,” or “assure my estate’s growth rate is ahead of inflation with minimized levels of risk.” There are exceptions, of course, but not enough of them to resolve the risk, gender, and racial wealth gap. The problems in ordinary working people’s experience are reminders that access to reasonably level playing fields are requirements. It used to be your favorite “Anchorman” could be trusted, leading to everyone wanting to be an anchor.”
RLC
The inequality of wealth and opportunity among different regions of the United States are like those across neighborhoods of the nation’s large cities or the earth. The city solves big problems in thousands of small ways. Aggressive efforts in the production and preservation of affordable housing, effective deployment of resources for immigrant families, an extensive re-investment in public education, and a diversity of people capable of standing shoulder to shoulder against forces that would divide are urban tools against intolerance and hatred. Subsequently, the security of future generations is possible unless they are asleep or put there.
I request the names of independent writers on American democracy and the names of the elite among the one percent of interest to them. Each writer will be interested in a specific set of these elite actors (via political position, corporate employment, or investment behavior). One or a combination of no more than two of the following subject areas will drive content: Human Health, Social Welfare, Banking, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Foreign Policy, International Relationships, Global Climate, Energy, and Defense.
Businesses understand goal attainment for ideas like sustainability. The elite are those who set out to acquire the enormous wealth held by Post WWII American people. The idea of compelling the formation of that wealth to benefit the rest of the world follows an established model – destroy, build, repeat. William Simon’s A Time for Action (1980) presents the financial details tested against long-term political experience and his core belief that governments that give businesses everything they want can also take it away. Regulatory relief and the aftermath of the 2008 recession proved that the government had to put back a ton of cash. Its many actors slipped into the financial fog of litigant confrontation. Insert expressions of freedom into this give-to-take governance problem, and you have a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and Independent dialogue. The Simon-vein of political give and take compromise is reason enough to implement a sustained “what’s next” analysis of the current situation, but this alone is not persuasive.
An elite household recently produced a candidacy and a presidency on an apparent disrespect for the politically elite and therein lays the new opportunity. The relationship that the elite has to the issues of the day will give writers a clear opening for a strategic narrative capable of turning the suppositions of the conservatives regarding political power into a set of unique American propositions based on an appreciation for reason and argument.
The political confusion summarized in Tom Sowell’s Economic Facts and Fallacies adds a lot of fuel to the idea that nothing matters more than winning the argument now. Creating this condition is the sole criterion for success. The ability to persuade in the moment or a few weeks or days before an election, a board meeting, or a declaration of war aims to release resources immediately. Such activities are the enemy of creative imagination; they feed thirst and hunger with no thought of drought. They satisfy in increments with a poor view of the fragmented structures that lay in the wake of every act of selfishness.
If American Democracy is no more than a flash in the history of human freedom, it will be a bright one. Alternatives to “he said, she said,” culture-war banter will reduce disdain and distortion and contentiousness. One source of this problem is the grouping of “people like us” in communities. Cultural segregation has been ongoing since WWII and encouraged through national urbanization policies, the practice of “steering” in real estate, and widespread support for belief systems that sustain the isolation of people. These highly selective forms of seclusion reduce the desire for tolerance and interest in moderation.
Determine Persuasive Capacity
Writers should not avoid using a tabloid-like approach regarding news of the elite and their link to the pocketbook experience of the 99%. Therefore, the use of dates, times, and numbers in ways that make sense. One example: the billionaire’s list shows wealth as a multiple of the national household median income to elites. Multiply 1.7 million times $60,000, and you have a wealth of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos around 2015. This forces one question. How is it possible for one person to be that productive? It won’t be easy to unite writers as highly trained paparazzi aimed at billionaires, but it will happen for two reasons.
In my Literary Criticism (Class 457), Prof. James demanded a thoughtful and thorough examination of written work. From the first sentence to the last, he asked his students to tease out themes. If we saw symbolism or meaning, our expressions had to come through each character’s experience as reflected in our time and place in Room 342 every Tuesday in 1972. In non-fiction work, the same principle is applied. I learned to reduce a three-thousand-word policy paper to 200 words or less with dates, numbers, named places, and people. An idea is concrete if linked to a person(s) by name; otherwise, it remains abstract. In concrete terms, you know that I took a class in 1972, where Prof. James taught lessons on using concrete data in literary criticism.
Writers know how to be concrete. The enemy of this effort in persuasive writing will be too many words. I know, I know.
The second reason is more complex and subject to the contest of assumptions. Over the last three decades, we have become accustomed to the world described best in Deborah Tannen’s 1999 book, The Argument Culture. Since then, hostility combined with the discipline of 140 characters and the power to broadcast them globally leaves one remaining issue – getting as many people as possible to pay attention for a few minutes. In a cross-disciplinary sense, the theme of her bestseller, You Just Don’t Understand, catches sight of the debate on the future of American democracy. Add Patricia Turner’s worldview (I Heard It Through the Grapevine) and Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and the reasoned and well-channeled description of sex and race in America provides the footing for moving writers forward like a force of history fully capable of persuading their readers to resist authoritarian “divide and rule” governance solutions.
The challenge to truth is not “the lie,” but algorithms that can target the people to act on a specific issue for the best effect quickly. A revolution in the revenue stream is how the bulk (99%) of new paid advertising in media is alongside user-selected content. No one is non-targetable or immune from a story, whether true or false. Producing stories from “news farms” based in like Macedonia will look the same as value-driven news agencies such as The Guardian, The Economist, The Washington Post, or the New York Times. Paywall or not, these and some 120 newspapers in the nation have begun a ready, fire, aim, and re-aim process to secure their financial and editorial independence and safeguard the journalistic freedom and the liberal or conservative values that free them of commercial interference or political control.
Access to an expanding list of recommended writers is (HERE). To suggest names, use this address: click here. As the file acquires thematic consensus (12-18 mo.) and an internal sense of balance, a process that looks to the quality of change described below might begin with persuasive skills.
“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun, the winds, and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And, we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do.”
President Barack Obama – Inaugural Address (1.20.2009)
250 on Electoral College
The purple, red, and blue of election districts, counties, regions, and states of the Republic reflect the people who vote. The election district image reveals a purple country. It reflects the diverse views and opinions at the neighborhood level. The overall appearance is of a non-decisive experience. Not until Congressional representatives become state icons are people encouraged to take a “with us or against us” experience into the red or blue silos. The left and right model is, therefore, bankrupt.
Political leadership will always be a force capable of producing extreme attitudes. It can also generate moderate views, rightful independence, and outright nonconformance. A new up, down, from the top-down or bottom-up image, is needed. It also needs to be as sideways and wiggle-waggle as possible to help us think and perhaps laugh at the absurdity in much of our discourse. An active localism result and its new and innovative approach will not eliminate the violent polarization represented by the depressed who find themselves lost, perhaps criminally insane in the malaise of disagreement. Animosity does not acquire political conformity or year-to-year compromise. Negotiation, tolerance, and kindness, on the other hand, work. Where do you find it? I know that because of one truth and one goal, the big cities yield a solid shoulder-to-shoulder acceptance of the work before us, and when cities get their power back, all the people of this nation will be healed.
“Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”
There are three leaders working 24/7/365 to get more Democrats and Independents in the House and Senate. They are Nina Turner, the new president of Our Revolution, Maurice Mitchell, the new national director of the Working Families Party and Yvette Simpson, the new chief officer of Democracy for America. They share concerns for the dignity of the American worker and family, and they represent a unique political triumvirate. If they can protect one another, build an agenda for 2020 and start winning the future for the people left behind or pushed away it will be about more than politics.
The depth of their shared experience as dynamic African-American leaders will be measured by how well they inject the people’s intellect into movements for change, but one other thing they have in common is a little scary. They seem woefully inadequate to the task and appear slightly ineffectual in the scraps of video available. Perhaps, it is their lack of money for digging into the demography and mysteries of votes and power. Standard polling analysis can be replaced by the analytical skills of a grassroots organizational structure but, do they have it? Some of the poor impression is theirs to own, but the main problem is with us. What do they need to prove? Can they lift their organizations into positions of great power? Winning elections is no longer sufficient. It is about winning regions and they are mostly urban. What will that look like? What will shift power across multi-state regions?
Homelessness/Displacement is a Production Function of Cities
Most of the poor and struggling families around the world are in the outlying urban areas both near and far from the dense core of economic forces that push and pull people away. The vast ability of dense urban areas cities to create demand also cause a maze of economic disruptions that displace and break families. In much of the world, the human byproduct of this displacement is evident in large informal settlements. The housing market is failing to provide housing to one-third of the world’s urban population. Why do they get pushed? Do they know? No, and no one is telling them, even in America.
“There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.”
One person who knows a lot about the economics of this is Bruce Katz, Director of the Center on Urban Metropolitan Policy at Brookings, a century-old, centrist purveyor of fact. There are five short presentations and one long video by Katz (HERE). It will take about 30 minutes to watch this selection. He may sound libertarian, but he is just the messenger. I recommend listening to him before reading further. If you’d rather not, here is the super short version and why a triumvirate, such as the three imagined here is essential.
The Megaregions of the United States
Skilled civic engagement in regional growth is a cultural phenomenon with specific strategies. First, retain the residence of threatened populations in the core. This is not about winning, it is about not losing. Second, drawdown every opportunity to inject the reality of displacement pressure into the political heart of regional leaders. Third, this is a “no news is good” issue. Capable leadership will flee, equity holders will cash out, take their young and move far too soon into lower-cost environments (south and southwest). You need them. Encourage them to stay and fight.
“Raymond Vernon, the Regional Planning Association’s Director of the New York Metropolitan Region Study turned to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Public Administration to interpret and publish findings for a broad audience in 1960. Its publication not only marked the emergence of the “mega-region” it denoted the arrival of “big data” – a vast supply of social and economic information that would lend vital insight into the workings of 22 counties and three states of the New York Metropolitan Region.” Density Prompt
RPA was founded in 1922. The idea of a “core” is assumed to be the five boroughs of New York City. It is not, it is composed of four New York counties and one in New Jersey (Hudson). For a quarter-century, the value of “a dense core” lost resilience and the physical deterioration of its neighborhoods tore through entire city blocks and ruined the lives of its most vulnerable families, but not the capacity of many communities to organize, adapt and fight back. During this period (1960-1985), NYC began to reinvent itself at every level of human interaction. Its institutions confronted complex questions of fairness and created positive results in social justice, economic and environmental equity. This was not a victory of national leadership in recognition of its urban future, this was a “peoples” battle and it was won hard and in blood.
The 535 people at the federal level of representative leadership are ignorant of this fact, or at least behave that way by deferring to state powers and urban leaders. The triumvirate(s) model suggested here can be reorganized as a stateless organization, they are capable of creating policies, projects, and priorities that strengthen multi-state regions and agencies of the urban core. The values born of these political alliances could build a useful federal response and end its retrenchment and failure to envision a new America.
America is more than its 50 states; it’s a network of 363 economically integrated metropolitan areas (click map above). Regional development policies are thousands of times more relevant to the future economic and social health of working-class America than the set of lines drawn by cartographers to establish the Republic a couple of centuries ago.
The boundaries of the states were formed using an imaginary grid that stretched across the earth. The intent of this coordinate scheme is to locate or identify precise geographic positions. The idea dates to 190–120 BC, it was used to draw uniform boundaries of the American states, and today your phone knows where you are to within a meter. The states are arbitrary constructs of uniformity and similar size, the metro-regions are far more synonymous with the health of the nation and in a metaphorical sense they are “circles.” The circle looks inward. It is an object that shows its boundary to the world, the grid does not. This is the organizing principle upon which triumvirates will develop their power. The voters of these regions are majority blue, Democrats and Independents. The organizational realignment toward multi-state economic regions will take a while, in the meantime, several strategic components require special attention.
Multi-Cultural/Racial Politics
Is a “rainbow coalition” possible? The presumption that it exists is wrong; it does not exist. All the appetizers, entrees and fixings are laid out in the kitchen, but supper has yet to find the dining table, even the one that is in the kitchen. The foundation for celebrating this high quality of change within the American diversity spectrum is barely recognized or touched let alone stirred with any fondness. We have no language, no string of words for it and it dates to 1984.
Building a foundation for American diversity is developing in two places, universities with civic engagement policies for incorporation across their curriculum from STEM programs to the more traditional centers. The leaders are in law and political science who carry the strongest interest in a sustained discourse on democracy and its institutions. The second place occurs in the city where the language of diversity is improving followed by state and federal elections that exhibit serious divisions and therein lies the dark side of the social justice coin.
Counting over several years and multiple election cycles, the U.S ranks 27th out of 35 economically developed countries in voter turnout. Volunteerism in community service ranks low at 20 to 25% of households, and it is top-heavy in the higher income ranges. More recently, threats to the well-being of working families have increased civic engagement activities, especially in urban areas. These facts were so widely apparent that it led to the creation of the American Democracy Project (ADP). It started with colleges and universities in 2003 and remains a nonpartisan initiative of AASCU in partnership with The New York Times. The knowledge resources on this subject are online and free for digital distribution (HERE). An author’s presentation on the 2017 edition is (HERE). As these efforts are failing, a viewpoint on why is outlined (HERE) for comment. American civic engagement practices for dealing with problems is the problem. The plug has yet to slip into the outlet, the power is there but the switch is missing and there appears to be no endurance limit on self-oppression.
Problems: Ships in the Night & The Lost Soul of the 60s
We have the radar for the existence of other ships in the Democracy, thousands of them but that is about all. Here is one example. To Kill a Mocking Bird (1960) is one of the most read books in America and widely assigned in schools. White people think the attorney Atticus Finch was a hero but to the African-American, he is a stone looser, yet Aaron Sorkin is willing to use his exquisite use of language and force that point into the debate of how we must “all rise,” the last two words in the play. The demand is to get to a better American place (read a PBS interview (here). Where is the language that makes it possible to call out or openly condemn people that tacitly support a culture of hate and malice? The American psyche is far too easily driven into little camps and throwing a big tent over it remains as unpalatable as always. It is the language in that “tent” that matters.
When thousands of people like the Mayor of Jackson Mississippi enter your world, the tent can get more interesting. (The first 5 min. or so on video here will give you the idea.) Jackson has 170K pop. 80% Black and a third Asian. Getting past platitudes and on to education and housing in Jackson will be his issue. New leadership like this will help others to see through the dark clouds others attract.
Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia (D) is the current (2/19) example of the potential for a zero-tolerance policy of racism and bigotry and follows the rise of murderous forces in America. A “Unite the Right” rally by white supremacists in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia (2017) and a church in Charleston, South Carolina (2015) are the most egregious examples.
Since the beginning of the digital revolution, the ability to study, think, act, and respond together became sets of very useful Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC). Gatherings of online learning communities can follow this model and search for the common ground that brings people face to face. If the self-isolation remains, groups will struggle to form beyond encouraging references to Margaret Mead’s opinion that it is the only way change happens. Maybe so, but it is not enough. Building the triumvirate(s) will work. Here are some examples
Intervention & Improvisation Planning
Americans need an intervention regarding addictions to racial ignorance. Where is the tough-love slap in the face that makes everything clear and gives us back our senses? This intervention is possible. It will be done with superb care on the ground yet to be found for a foundation unlaid and a building we can barely envision. It will be done as if all the oppressed, unlucky or struggling rainbow of people in this nation could stand all at once and scream NO to its pandering leaders, and yell in one sweet sound, “we are the change we seek, we are the change we seek!”
Parables of Brokenhearted Fatalism
Nina Turner (Our Revolution) puts it this way. When “the hunter,” writes the story, there is no story of the lion. Political movements are similar. It can use filters that leave people out who think they are in. Like the term “hunter,” labels such as “neoliberal” or “self-reliant” simultaneously attracts people to power they cannot acquire. In tracking the lion, the hunter knows what the lion is willing to submit to and uses it to the exact amount needed to achieve the injustice of its death. The hunter’s brand is visible, control the narrative of bravery and therefore secure its benefits and power. The lion’s story is direct; death is food. Death is the gift of her pride’s survival.
If we are the lion, our revolution is underway but we barely notice unless there are videos of a shooting. Being African-American and politically progressive should be a natural fit, “if” there is a family history of engagement in fights against social and economic systems that insist on a second-class citizenry defined by gender, income, color in the rainbow, one at a time or all at once. We do not forget the people who died in resistance to this condition. They are the builders; they own the long national history of this change. We hold them as gifts and if we can, we will add chapters. Do not accept the idea that we now live in unheroic times.
We do not speak of the blood horror, hopelessness and fear it took to get those moments that make the change. A great joy rests with its victories, each of them rings triumphantly. Today we watch scrapings from historic speeches, we read books, listen to the old songs and examine pictures about the cost of resisting oppression. Today, over a half-century later it appears those who take a black life are becoming unpunishable and at worst made legal actors in a much broader attack. The pain of soft oppression is a sense that something was taken and replaced with addictions and threats of despair. All of us have had “the talk” with our young about protests and lawful police orders.
Listen to the Songs of Dissent
America’s history of death and pain rings achingly for each loss. The bell rings if we resist “lawful orders,” it rings loud in friendly fire, and it rings until we cannot hear at all. Following difficult times, it is in our nature to bring out the good in ourselves and find reasons to celebrate our sacrifice but the movement today is very different. There are more ways to assure the story of the lion than I can count, and there are now thousands who can damn the old hunter’s lies. If this is not enough, what needs to be new, what needs to be different? I have an odd suggestion that worked for me. Skip the ads and listen for answers by listening to a collection of songs called “Outskirts of the Deep City.”
The “speechwriters” approach to change that follows may make more sense.
Change Politics
The average, everyday person will talk about issues and events but often lack the will to act. Modern political analysts understand the events leading to changes that improve lives. Actions do not come easily without the experience of working for the prospects that succeed. Change politics can fool you. it will ask you to stare at the beak of the Eagle on America’s Seal and love your country. The new politics of change will put you in the grasp of her talons; make you the builder of her nest of arrows and hold you in her branches of peace and victory. What needs to be in the new regional politics?
A voice of unification for the working family that restates American values of fairness with justice. Better education for your kid? A wage scale that keeps up with costs? How about better protection from ill health, big pharma, and corporate greed? When we face threats to our well-being, who will be there? Look left, look right and say I will be there for you, I will be there. What needs to be different? We are the change we seek.
At this time in history, most Democrats and Republicans (save a few) can only equivocate and obstruct. If 2020 is going to be an opportunity, the “be there” time is now. Maurice Mitchel (MM) is now the National Director of the Working Families Party. (WFP). He is one of those “go” leaders with extensive experience in movements beyond, in front of and behind elections. He will continue to expand our understanding of what a democracy can do. He can see the irony when both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump say, “the system is rigged,” and it says one thing to him and me. We need very new super-glue politics.Th
The Challenge: Do Big Things
What is exposed here? If we are to remain a democracy, we are challenged to do big things. First, increase the number of voters by 1,000%, crush all forms of voter suppression and stop playing short can-kicking games. There needs to be an ass where there is a can. Watch MM give his mildly nervous presentation here from a NetRootsNation.org conference. All the right words are all in a row, but he needs the kind of heart that beats in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to get the sound we need. Beautifully edited by MoveOn.org (here)
There is a better sound in Maurice here as he defends the Working Family Party (WFP) from an attack by the three-term Governor of New York State because of WFP support for Cynthia Nixon in a primary. Challenging the governor happened for one important reason, it is time to say “No” to the oligarchs and those who say yes to them. At the heart of it, Maurice defines what has gone wrong with the Democratic Party in the nation as it is in NYS. Maurice would not be taking anything away from Alexandria if he repeated her reminder that New York leaders of the past had led the progressive movement with great courage. The entire WFP requires voices that do not speak of defenses against attacks to define injustice. The math is easy, the foolishness of the peacemakers exposes their failure as change makers. If you hear, “Five-hundred or so American billionaires are not the cause of America’s problems.” It is time to share everything, every strategy, and tactic. It is time to offend with relish and know all the actors who are firm in their purpose and who might face death in the anarchy we all detest.
After Yvette Simpson lost her bid for Mayor of Cincinnati, she acquired a new position as Chief Executive of Democracy Now (January 2019) as described in a news story interview (here). Yvette Simpson’s membership of the Democratic establishment represents the party’s better self because individuals from diverse backgrounds who seek public service expect to be Democrats. The record is improving slowly, but the proof is the problem. The majority of every Congressmember’s senior staff is not diverse. This was not widely circulated news until the members in Congress became more diverse.
Can a Democracy care for all people and meet unique needs without sowing division and discord? What I learned from Yvette was the calculus of a representative government requires a variety of navigation skills throughout a campaign without end. She knows no one on the progressive side of the equation is better at grassroots engagement. She notes that if you run you cannot knock on doors, you must walk the race. Winning is face to face, not face to the screen. She believes in the power of “we.” Her experience proved to her that the road made by walking is formed best with a bold and unapologetic agenda aimed at making changes that people want in their lives. It was once summed up as rights, first to the pursuit of life, second to liberty and third happiness. Winning a primary but losing a run for Mayor gave her insight into the challenges of 2020 hopefully aimed at the Senate as a priority. Will the triumvirate(s) be up to speed and ready to respond?
Think About Mega-Region Infrastructure
The growing economic success of central Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan is also the story of large, diverse cities in multi-state regions that hold a significant share of the two or three state population. For decades disinvestment in the infrastructure of dense urban regions presents hidden dangers. Not spending where spending is needed exposes failures of transit services to and from these centers. Auto congestion where and when it is hated the most. A rising cost of housing, including deteriorating conditions in the suburbs, the displacement of low- and moderate income people into suburban neighborhoods, and sporadic increases in urban homelessness. The more significant sources of stress are evident in the protests of working poor teachers in decaying schools alongside troubled police and fire services and other first responders racing into a long list of preventable social and environmental problems of life-threatening severity. Pick-up a copy of the International Journal of Critical Infrastructure Protection and all of this is very well documented.
Death, Taxes and Social Justice
Putting added reduced tax cash flow into the hands of wealthy people and corporations are not coming to the resolution of any of these problems. They are without accountability; the board members of the super large foundations are out of touch with the broad national dialogue needed to keep our democracy responsive, instead of their wallets. Yes, new partnerships are there, but the old lines of privilege remain unchallenged and taxing them is failing because loop-hole land will never go away without reinventing America. If the horrible truth is super high tax revenues collected by the government don’t work, so what needs to change?
We live in a society where the most important things go unsaid. For example, the question on the table in a substantial foundation’s boardroom is “Are we failing in our quest for social stability?”. What is known but never said aloud is, “Well, if large groups of the society get upset and start causing trouble with disruptions of the economy and endangering their own lives and the lives of others, we have fully equipped local police forces with enough riot gear and other tools that could conquer a country.” Can you hear that lungful exhalation flow across that confident conference table? Look again out of the conference room’s vast windows overlooking a landscape of terror that could be unleashed, then turn to the doorway as it opens. Meet your new master, the authoritarian who can only keep this crowd at bay with your foundation’s loyalty. Impossible you say? Not according to world history.
It’s Their Fault
It is their fault, but it is not about money. If you hear, “Several hundred multi-billionaires are not America’s problem” an economist in a rabbit hole is baiting you. Don’t go there. Of course, high taxes don’t work, government (city, state, federal) have never been able to get much above 20% of America’s GDP from the very beginning of this measure. Using the 20% rubric, the GDP in 2018 will top $21 trillion to yield on average $6 trillion in annual revenue. The interest paid on the national debt is $364 billion. (10/1/18, through 9/30/19). The total public debt is around $17 trillion.
Individuals, businesses, and foreign central banks are its owners of America’s debt with 90 percent of it in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds. (Details here.) The five wealthiest counties in the Northeast surround Washington, D.C. In this case, wealth pays for weal to get the wealth. Four of residential counties are in VA (Loudoun, Fairfax, Falls Church, Arlington) and one is in MD (Howard). For more, see the U.S. Census press release, 12.6.18 (CB-18-18).
America’s “good faith and credit” is highly respected, 30-year “treasury bonds” sell with ease. Credit is another word for trust so, bottom line, the money is there to do what we want. The first question becomes what is the right stuff” How much investment in a secure future, maintenance of existing assets, and care for the vulnerable. Where the U.S leadership has placed its political brain is not helping the nation to find out. Why?
To challenge the status quo, what forces might rise that would seek alternatives to income taxes?
Putting Money in the Wrong Pockets
In 2012, Jim Sorenson put $13 million into a business school in Utah and created the Sorenson Impact Foundation where they quietly work on a long list of projects that would make every candidate for sainthood happy. Other things like program-related investments (PRIs) vetted by the business school, “select and develop business models for high-impact, early-stage social enterprises capable of reaching underserved populations.” I love mouthfuls like that, but what is wrong with it, what is missing in philanthropy? According to Forbes, not a thing (Here).
If you read that Forbes article, then you know the objective of all foundations is to “go to scale,” and that means two things, the more obvious is to spread money all over the globe with a goodwill website to prove it. The other is to make wise social impact business investments and get universities to establish a methodology for measurements and publish the results. Highly respected multi-billionaires like Jim Sorenson and all the other billionaires in his moral class think they know what the right stuff is or needs to be, so he like many others create these hopeful puppy dog foundations. I can look up all the billionaires and foundation staff; I can know where they live, play and work nationally and internationally. They are the wealthy residents of a tiny planet without a clue.
Bottom line, what is wrong, what is missing? The hundreds of multi-billionaires are missing in the vapor of their wealth. A wrong-headed street-intellect assumption is they have formed an oligarchy and now vie to rule the world, distracting us with their wonderfulness. The truth is far dire; they have tucked themselves away in their boardrooms happily overlooking their private empires of goodness, adapting and maneuvering to sustain themselves among one another, while all the while the world is burning, slowly almost imperceptibly into ash and dust. So, bottom line, yes, it is their fault, and this is important, except for a few they didn’t mean it.
What is missing, I want you to join in this practice. Below is what I have so far. You can give advice or list wrongs, make rights, just click here.
Pay close attention to the big picture, I hear a staffer saying “It’s just so impolite to be alarmist,” They are wrong, rude is important right now.
Step on another charity’s toes, stop being so nice. One word, “Unjust.”
Spending fortunes on accountants, tax attorneys, and lobbyist only assure private capital will sustain the line that reads “goodwill,” on income statements and balance sheets. Think again, goodwill is insufficient.
Contributing to all 535 members of the legislative government (retirees and agency staff) enough to keep their campaigns afloat (or not) or to point them in other directions is the best way to control citizens, not unite them.
Not paying any damn attention to the small picture. Take a long walk through your community, and then to a place designated as underserved and in need of charity. Ask why? Get back to me.
Realize that despite amassing of billions of dollars in a personal fortune, no one person on this fragile earth could be that productive in any sense other than god-like.
I have no interest in tracking them down, although there is a project aimed at doing so. (here). Our charity must believe they will find the “right stuff,” otherwise they face incurable insanity. Our job is to be persuasive regarding the need to make course corrections essential to the survival of next generations. I know about the hideaways in the mountains and the means to get there. I do not know who is worse off, those without sanctuary or those forced to say, “Mine is full, you are not selected?” Want to add to the list? Click here.
Eponymous Politicians
The USA is not the America Tonight Show. The adjective (above) describes giving your name to something. It is also called identity politics, so you get people who are Trump Republicans. Identity is much bigger than a person, a color, religion, political philosophy or favorite late-nite TV show host. A claim of leadership in the name of dignity for all life produces a replaceable leader. Arguments are won (or should be) on the facts of the day, week, year and decade, not charismatic leadership, bullies or the learned helplessness of their constituents. For example, we win the war of words when we describe the death of young minds and the heart lost in persons beaten low by hate. We win when we force all to hear the frightened whispers from the mouth of hunger. We win when we describe the violence embedded in climate change or assault rifles and how randomly either can take anyone’s home or life at any time or place, one of them used to be in God’s hands, today, both in are ours. We win if all these voices are unified not by fear but in a single call to defend the dignity of the human person. Stand on this path and you will know methods that move all of us forward and away from the confusion that divides us.
The Triumvirate
The three organizations and leaders briefly mentioned here know these methods. In listening to them I know this is Our Revolution, we are the Working Families of this nation, and the demand for Democracy for America is now. We win when our unity is theirs and theirs ours. Calling for an accord does not create unity. The phrase, “the people united will never be defeated” begs the question. What is causing our downfall, our defeat? To keep our democracy, we must be the change we seek and to begin, form triads. Triangles form the strongest structures, tripartite coalitions are a step forward. So if our revolution is to be composed of working families working to assure our democracy remains useful nationally, these three among many others need to find and build local triads.
The voting record from any combination of election districts for offices in cities, states, and Congress by voter and candidate reveal a set of cultural signifiers useful to the practice of removing identity politics toward a healthier method of governance. If the triumvirate’s network is true, if the depth is there, it can conduct this analysis across state lines and recognize the issues of working people step across all the other lines used to divide Americans.
The traditional roots of the old identity way are made sustainable by the quiet assurance of a 98% retention rate among incumbent candidates all the way up and down the political spectrum. So, I am not talking about politics. This is about change. Being conservative or progressive comes naturally to people from low to high income for two reasons. Households are “conservative” because every change tends to be loudest when it is for the worse, and progressive because it is a way to seek out useful and if not, virtuous change that will protect the family. One of the more complex examples of change follows:
The retention of wealth by the wealthy began in 2016, it was legislated in 2017 and became law on January 1, 2018. The expectation of tax reductions for corporations an increase in wages, they have not. The bet is that a few extra dollars in the working families tax return suffice. That it is billions among the super wealthy remains an abstraction. The national revenue is increasing, but the federal budget is still ripping holes in the safety net that helps a growing number of households protect family health, old age, and their financial security. Why? Uncontrolled congressional spending.
The subtle implementations of the attack on so-called entitlements is unclear, but the lion’s strategy, in this case, is easy to spot, go for the slow and weak ones in the herd. The human problem with this kind of attack is the lack of fairness in compliance and the complicity of the herd. In these transactions, this failure should not be lost. Nevertheless, do not allow the debate to move away from the cap held by the hunter regarding issues. Taxes are not paid for social security from incomes over $138,000. Where is the security in that equation? If the answer remains, the revenue is still insufficient. What is missing?
Roots, Roots and More Roots
In my small part of the world, I have organized a tool to implement one of our best methods. I have one or more persons in every election district able to build or join a canvas team and be on the ground for a candidate. You can see an early version here. Security is a growing issue. Sign up here if you are in the district. Instructions follow.
This canvas method is easy to implement, more so in a blue majority city and state and it grows exponentially through a natural network of friends and family. It reveals the enormous power of democracy with personal decisions to work for a specific candidate (city, state or federal) on a routine basis for a limited period every two, four and six years. If tools like these are deployed in the metro-regions, with a clear understanding of the unique economies of each, the ability to produce change people need and want. If not, the answer is clear, try again, and again, and again because we are the change we seek.
The deep concerns of people are not articulated well by most current leaders, especially those who are dependent on identity politics and tenure in office. We should ask why but do not. Leaders acknowledge our concerns but we still allow them to remain fuzzy about accountability to benchmarks or criteria from year to year. There are no triggers or penalties in exclusive political alliances based on religion, race or social background. This tendency allows leaders who see a lack of basic employment with a living wage only pushing a few into desperation. The lack of health insurance protection bankrupts “only a few” families. Our safety in the community, the affordability of our housing, and the failure to educate our young, only hurts “a few families.”
Benchmarks
The promise to sustain the two largest safety nets American’s ever fought to acquire serves everyone even but even the vast “we” of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid is under attack. The subtlety of the attack, even the logic of it will read to divide not unite. I want to be able to say it all began in 2018. This is when just enough people realized the rise of opposition politics and the resistance found ways to diagnose all the reasons for a lack of movement on working family concerns and the honest needs of ordinary people. The first pronouncement is to put a number on “only a few.” We are now that few, there of millions of us and we vote. The second is to learn how not turn against “the other” in this movement, fight for scraps or fail to fight for the few. Those of us who can create moments and events, year after year will rip the mantle off the shoulders of the tenured leaders if needed. It all began in 2018. As it goes for the few, so it goes for us all.
At a political rally, I overheard a leader say, “We need more facts to make that decision.” It was the response that got my attention. “You’re a damn fool, we don’t need any more damn facts, just walk out that door and look around. There are your damn facts. We have got to get to work and it starts now. Do you hear me? If you walk out that door you can smell it. Tsunami’s don’t come with a warning until it’s too late.” The third benchmark for the growth of a progressive movement is swift decision making. Do not wait another day, rush to the defense of neighbors and all those struck down, stand in the light of MLK and seek his justice.
Reflections on Success and Failure
Some professionals study organizational development in such depth they have become almost impossible to understand. But I did come across one article in the reasonably accessible Harvard Business Review that gives me hope. Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman use massive amounts of business data, solid regression to the mean stuff and much more (consultancy). On the question of diversity, they compared leaders’ self-ratings with their ratings by bosses, peers, and subordinates. These ratings reveal leaders assume they are better at valuing diversity than they are. Take that to heart, the social change movement is never doing as good a job as its leaders want, and there are good reasons to be aware. Defending the movement demands the public’s exposure to your failures.
To understand the cause of poor decision making, Zinger and Folkman used data on leaders and compared the behavior of those who were perceived as making poor decisions with those perceived as making very good decisions. Whether leading a major international corporation or a scrappy nonprofit organizing committee, several traits tend to hold true. Following is a description of the common paths that led to poor decision making from the most to least significant. Laziness tops the list, some of the signs are not checking facts or confirming assumptions. Next, not anticipating negative events reduces the ability to defend. When a leader is indecisive it tends to be costly to an organization due to missed opportunities. Leaders that remain locked in the past will make decisions with assumptions that are no longer true. Lesson: Always look forward.
Among the lesser causes of poor decisions are in failures to align “dots” in an organization’s membership. The overall strategy of the organization often referred to as a lack of strategic alignment deals with the leader’s isolation breaking down important interpersonal relationships and dependencies. Similarly, over-dependence on one person who is waiting for another, who in turn is waiting for someone else leads to poor decisions. A leader’s lack of technical depth will reduce the use of high-level expertise within an organization, and if it is there, people need to know. It’s always the coverup. Statistically, the least named cause of poor decisions was found to be a failure to communicate the what, where, when, and how associated with their decisions. I wish Nina, Maurice, and Yvette all the success in the world as they head into 2020 with the capacity to produce swift and effective decisions for their organizations.
Next, I think it will be fun to have a good look at those that have shattered glass ceilings in their hometowns. They are inside the beltway for the next two years. Ordinary observers can find out what they have in common other than the obvious and if they can lay the ground and build the foundation for a significant change in the culture by the means necessary.
Social Impact Measures
The following three paragraphs are speech lecture-like. Nevertheless, they represent the standard by which I believe our glass breaking, culture changing, the newest members of Congress should be evaluated. I’m open to other ways, but I will fight for the following in the spirit of the office.
The purpose of leadership is assurance that change is manageable.
They entered Congress with a personal theory of change. We all use it to adapt to our environment according to need and want, as well as, evaluation of performance. Results are measures to indicate the quality of adaptation in one of three ways, positive, neutral or negative. Change through experiments reinforce the positive and reduce the negative. We are cognizant of the trial and error world in which we and our family, friends and coworkers’ function. From child play to professional practice we learn that we control what we can make recur.
I can get Sally to laugh and Bill to chase me every time, and that’s as a grown up. I also know the reverse of that is impossible. The information gathered through experience is routine and enough. You can work through personal skill sets on this question by recalling past actions in getting (or not) a date with a person of interest back in your school days or a “contract” more recently. Knowing how to lead yourself is the prerequisite for enjoying the leadership of others. I like to say “no one is as smart as all of us” and do so often.
Measure complex social impacts
The number of people and dollars involved in business and government require confidence to take action. There are consequences at every step. Seeking to alter negatives in society or to improve positive elements requires careful thought and experimentation. In this setting, dialogue gets to the capacity of individuals in business or government to collect reliable information, review methods of data acquisition, analyze and predict results. Confirmation of concrete benefits from people with these skill sets leads to investment decisions as mere possibilities. At this point, choice and timeliness come into play involving the number of options made available.
Confidence in research and planning allows trials and testing to proceed
The changes sought are thereby proven to the satisfaction of the decision makers and it becomes their legacy all the way through implementation. Comparison with alternative trials within or in opposition will minimize risk or advance the position of competitors. Given the period of work, in weeks or decades, the institutional response is to claim an impact and advocate for its continuation with confidence.
To reduce the abstractions of these three components, two recent events will illustrate the human problem inherent in the science of this practice. Science obscures additional motives by building silos. As 2018 ended, the incarceration practices of the federal government were reformed. In practical street intellect, this meant the 30+ year enforcement of harsh drug laws that achieved the re-enslavement (imprisonment) of African-Americans (mostly men) for nonviolent crimes would end (Watch 13 again).
The public investment in a huge federal prison system has consequences, however, accountability for this practice as a racial strategy is practically nil. Creating a big door through which cops and prosecutors could quietly push young men into federal prison (and still do in city/states) was easy to ignore due to a tacit agreement on both sides of the issue. Here it is in one sentence over the procession of two ounces of Marijuana. “We have 15 to 25 mandatory years on you that can go to seven maybe five with the name/location of your boss.” A generation of lives lost and for what, “El Chapo?”
The second event involves the language code that embeds a similar level of bigotry and racism. As the close of 2018, the word was “wall.” Create a wall to protect our borders from the demons to the south. Street-intellect reads that as keep out the Spanish speakers, the Mexicans, Hondurans, and everyone else. The super short-term political trend exhibited here reveals consequences without the accountability to reason and practical solutions. An orderly process for dealing with immigration is consumed by the rhetoric of violence, but the truth was spoken by Hughes as follows:
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrant’s scheme That any man be crushed by one above. “Let America Be America”
