Twitter Democracy = Mobilize.org

I have been thinking for a while about making a project to rewrite the Constitution and Bill of Rights to be relevant to our time together in this country today.

Naturally the heart and spirit of the documents are vital and present, I believe that engaging citizens in the process on a wiki page will invite deep and thoughtful civic engagement.

I posted my thoughts on twitter about 10 days ago: "Rewrite wikipedia style - Constitution 2.0? Bill of Rights 2.0?"

And on Twitter - godemocracy just started following me and on their tweets I found out about a group working along the same lines with people 12-32 years old:

From their website:

"Mobilize.org is an all-partisan network dedicated to educating, empowering, and energizing young people to increase our civic engagement and political participation. We work to show young people how public policy impacts our lives, and more importantly – how we can impact public policy

"Our Theory of Change "

"Our theory of change starts with the individual citizen identifying problems at the local, state and national levels. Once problems are identified, citizens must engage in conversations searching for innovative solutions to the problems they have identified. Mobilize.org seeks to take the individual actor past the deliberation stage, enabling members of the Millennial Generation to implement their solutions. Through the success of citizen-generated initiatives, Mobilize.org's end goal is to institutionalize citizen-generated solutions as a staple of American governance at all levels."


"...With over 220 Democracy 2.0 Entrepreneurs on college and high school campuses and in communities across the country, Entrepreneurs organize around issues that are important to their local community."

"This is what democracy smells like" - students protest and demand SRI - in "1960's version 2.0"

A recent article in cited a student protest where students of "New School" in NYC where students occupied a university building and demanded the school's president quit over a number of issues.

The protest ended this week:

An article states: "Kerrey also agreed to allow students the use of the Fifth Ave. building, 'until a suitable replacement is secured and instituted, which would include the reinstallment of suitable library and study space.' The school president also agreed to provide new library space in The New School’s Arnold Hall and 7,000 square feet of quiet study space in the school’s Sheila Jackson Galleries by the end of the spring semester.

The six-point document also granted student participation in establishing a committee for socially responsible investing; gave the University Student Senate 'the ability to communicate with the student body freely' — something they said they had previously not been allowed — and granted access for a student senate representative to attend meetings of the school’s board of trustees.

'We weren’t being radical, we were being reasonable,' Emmad explained. 'We were simply trying to defend our school.'

As 4 a.m. approached, the ebullient crowd walked to Union Square. After two nights and a day inside the cafeteria, one participant, riffing on a chant from earlier in the day, said, 'This is what democracy smells like.' Then someone turned on a boom box and students began dancing.

After a peaceful climax to 32 hours of occupation, it seemed like the dawn of the 1960s Version 2.0."

How the bailout is supposed to work? Or is working?

Hmmm.... check out this image. click to enlarge

Indian Farmers Using Coke and Pepsi as pesticides

Watch this Video

Schwarzenegger tells U.N.: Green rules help markets

Schwarzenegger tells U.N.: Green rules help markets

POZNAN, Poland (Reuters) - Green regulations will help both the environment and ailing economies, California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told a 187-nation U.N. climate conference on Monday.

"Of course, there are some people who say that we can't afford the fight against global warming while our economies are down," he said in a video message on the sidelines of the December 1-12 U.N. meeting in Poznan, western Poland.

"But the exact opposite is true," he said.

California, which is the world's fifth biggest economy on its own, has been leading other U.S. states in the fight against climate change.

"The green rules and regulations that will help save our planet will also revive our economies," the governor aid.

The Poznan talks are reviewing progress toward a new global pact to fight climate change meant to be agreed at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. The talks have been overshadowed by the global financial crisis.

Schwarzenegger also said he would attend the Copenhagen talks to support U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

The Poznan talks are a step on the way to agree a new worldwide climate pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it runs out in 2012. The United States is the only industrialized nation that has not ratified the Kyoto treaty.

President George W. Bush said Kyoto was unfair because it did not set caps on emissions by emerging nations like China and India and he reckoned it would be too costly for the U.S..

Obama has promised much tougher action on fighting climate change and intends for the U.S. to be more involved in environmental efforts when he takes over the presidency in January.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Matthew Jones)

My Vision For America

Just posted this as my vision for America on change.gov

MY VISION FOR AMERICA
12 / 08 / 2008 12:13 AM

Our country's culture is thriving and well with education, spirituality, healthcare, leisure and commerce in alignment with the natural systems upon which we all depend for life.

Our healthy culture thrives with every person inspired by integrity with each other as we live recognizing interdependence and collaboration as the basis of our success.

Our green economy is a model and blueprint of regenerative economic activity which actually restores healthy ecosystems and natural habitat for plants and animals.

Our reverence for each other and all life is the basis for our system of ethics, our thriving green economy, and our culture's message to the other inhabitants on our Planet Earth.

America has renewed and restored it's Golden Destiny to serve the betterment and evolution of life on the planet."

Please input your own vision for America - www.change.gov

Wealthiest man in the world Bill Gates started out Dumpster Diving...

According to AnneAlexander of www.ecospace.cc:

"Tuesday was the birthday of the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, born in 1955 in Seattle. When Gates was in 8th grade, the Lakeside Mothers Club had a rummage sale and used the money to get computer equipment for the school. Gates and his friend Paul Allen got swept up in the excitement of this new technology. They rummaged through dumpsters at the nearby Computer Center Corporation to find notes written by programmers, and with that information, they wrote a 300-page manual. In 1975, they started Microsoft."

"This is a modern day example of the “diamonds in your backyard” concept, shared by Russell Conwell (1843- 1925), an American minister, lawyer, writer, and outstanding orator, in his book, Acres of Diamonds."

"According to Wikipedia, “The central idea of Acres of Diamonds is that one need not look elsewhere for opportunity, achievement, or fortune — the resources to achieve all good things are present in your own community. This theme is developed by an introductory anecdote, told to Conwell by an Arab guide, about a man who wanted to find diamonds so badly that he sold his property and went off in futile search for them; the new owner of his home discovered that a rich diamond mine was located right there on the property.” "

"Gates and Allen got their start dumpster diving in their own neighborhood. They were following their passion."

"They didn’t get distracted by the next “bright, shiny object” and lose their interest in computers. Moving onto the next thing too quickly is a common tendency in entrepreneurs. They get fixated on the next “bright, shiny object” that comes along, sometimes aborting the development of a current project. “Surely,” they say to themselves, “this amazing new (fill in the blank – product, program, guru, etc.) will mean my true success!” And they forget the diamonds in their own backyard."

"Maybe it’s time for you to do a little digging to rediscover the wealth buried in your own “backyard” - your community, your true talents and passions."

"Maybe it’s time to go dumpster diving in your own business, your relationship, your network. Without any doubt, there are many diamonds there, waiting patiently for you to pick them up, dust them off and bring them to a world crying out for them."

"We need your brilliance, and it’s not “out there.” It’s as close as your heartbeat. Let me know what you find."

"Anne Alexander helps small green business owners grow their businesses. Find out how at www.GrowYourGreenBusiness.com"

The Latest from Billionaire George Soros on Financial Crisis

I just finished George Soros’ latest book “The New Paradigm for Financial Markets – The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means”

He just wrote an article on his thoughts for the New York Times Review of Books – which is a great summary of the thinking outlined in his book and update on his ideas.

The article is of interest if you want to learn of Soros’ basic ideas on markets, financial theories, etc. and his views of how regulation should be moderated by a new paradigm of financial thinking which he calls “reflexivity.”

"The misconception is derived from the prevailing theory of financial markets, which, as mentioned earlier, holds that financial markets tend toward equilibrium and that deviations are random and can be attributed to external causes. This theory has been used to justify the belief that the pursuit of self-interest should be given free rein and markets should be deregulated. I call that belief market fundamentalism and claim that it employs false logic. Just because regulations and all other forms of governmental interventions have proven to be faulty, it does not follow that markets are perfect."

The ultimate moment of the breakdown of market fundamentalism was when Greenspan admitted that he was wrong in his pursuit of free market fundamentalism which allowed this bubble to get out of hand. MSNBC Reports, "Badgered by lawmakers, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan denied the nation’s economic crisis was his fault on Thursday but conceded the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a 'state of shocked disbelief.'"

Soros is clear that regulation is necessary - yet in the current situation he is cautious of the pendulum swinging too far the other direction.

Here’s a link - and here are last two paragraphs:
“Since the risk management models used until now ignored the uncertainties inherent in reflexivity, limits on credit and leverage will have to be set substantially lower than those that were tolerated in the recent past. This means that financial institutions in the aggregate will be less profitable than they have been during the super-bubble and some business models that depended on excessive leverage will become uneconomical. The financial industry has already dropped from 25 percent of total market capitalization to 16 percent. This ratio is unlikely to recover to anywhere near its previous high; indeed, it is likely to end lower. This may be considered a healthy adjustment, but not by those who are losing their jobs.”

“In view of the tremendous losses suffered by the general public, there is a real danger that excessive deregulation will be succeeded by punitive reregulation. That would be unfortunate because regulations are liable to be even more deficient than the market mechanism. As I have suggested, regulators are not only human but also bureaucratic and susceptible to lobbying and corruption. It is to be hoped that the reforms outlined here will preempt a regulatory overkill.”

My friend Dan Krimm responded to this and I thought he said it so well - I'll post his comments:

Cool. So, "reflexivity" amounts to a sort of feedback loop between
perceptions and reality (along the lines that some political elites
characterize as "perception *is* reality"...). Sometimes that feedback is
corrective, but sometimes it is self-reinforcing.

In other words, the financial system is rife with highly nonlinear
dynamics, and thus not reliably equilibrium-seeking. (This is what
Nicholas Nassim Taleb was getting at in his 2007 book "The Black Swan".)

Taleb points out at one point in *his* book that fully 50% of the gain in
the market over the last several decades can be isolated to *ten individual
days*. He points out that this violates the assumption that the randomness
of the market is "Brownian random-walk" randomness that tends to fit a
Gaussian bell curve (so-called "normal distribution" underlying
conventional statistical tools used for conventional risk analysis --
outliers are supposed to be unimportant in influencing the mean). On the
contrary, the variability in the market is self-scaling in a much more
extreme manner, like earthquakes, along the lines of Benoit Mandlebrot's
"hyperbolic scaling distributions" more commonly called "power-law
distributions" (where outliers can make a huge difference in the mean).

The fact that all the risk analysts were using an abjectly false assumption
about the distribution of variation in the market was one huge contributor
to the cluelessness in recognizing the potential for and strategically
avoiding this magnitude of disaster.

In short, market analysts have assumed that all the oddities of market
jumps are anomalous and external in origin. (Otherwise, as Soros points
out, the market would be assumed to reach equilibrium.) But in fact, this
nonlinear effect is internal in origin.

As the economists would say, not exogenous, but rather, endogenous.

I really hope that people in the market get this message loud and clear,
and the sooner the better. The orthodoxy is what got us into this mess.

And Alan Greenspan was "shocked, simply shocked"...

The solution: rein-in the nonlinear dynamics with smart regulation. Cap
the degree of risk leverage. Regulate things that look and behave like
insurance (credit default swaps) like other forms of insurance. Require
information transparency (trails of origin) in derivative securities, so
you can actually trace the behavior of the elements that comprise them.

Why do we care if some investor gets hit by the risk they take on, however
unwittingly? Because we are all invested in it, in the end, through
multiplier effects. The stability of the economy is a public good, and the
public deserves to protect itself collectively by regulation that
illuminates and contains risk.

It is patently unfair to society to privatize the upside while socializing
the downside.

Dan

B of A - stops financing Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining.

Yesterday, RAN celebrated a great victory! Bank of America posted a new coal policy on its website announcing that it will phase out financing of mountaintop removal coal mining!

Here's the commitment in their words:

"Bank of America is particularly concerned about surface mining conducted through mountain top removal in locations such as central Appalachia. We therefore will phase out financing of companies whose predominant method of extracting coal is through mountain top removal. While we acknowledge that surface mining is economically efficient and creates jobs, it can be conducted in a way that minimizes environmental impacts in certain geographies."

Rainforest Action Network was largely responsible for the action:

They state - "Since we launched our "No Coal" campaign against Bank of America and Citi last October, one of our central demands has been that they stop providing support for mountaintop removal coal mining. We applaud Bank of America for taking this important step to reduce its financing of dirty coal. But we also need to keep the pressure on them -- as well as on Citi and other banks that finance coal -- to ensure that they continue to curtail financing for dirty energy and start funding the future through energy efficiency and renewable energy."

RAN is one of the most effective environmental groups, dollar for dollar and has brought about a tremendous amount of change in corporate America.

RAN ON!