Solutions: Combatting Corporate Dominance of American Politics

How do ordinary citizens counter the massive influence that large monied interests have over our democracy? What is possible after the Supreme Court's recent disastrous decision opening the floodgates to corporate money in elections. Fran Kortan, publisher of Yes! Magazine, explains "ten ways to stop corporate dominance of politics."

UPDATE: NPR's Ari Shapiro has an excellent interview with Lewis Maltby, author of Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace, about the widespread restrictions on individual liberties in the corporate workplace. Maltby says, "What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all." The full interview can be listened to here. Another excerpt and review of the book can be found at Alternet.

UPDATE: Robert Borosage has a good essay about an amendment to the Constitution Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced in Congress aimed at overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United, which gave corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in election campaigns as a matter of free speech.

Neil Young on How to Save the Auto Industry

Neil Young (yes, that Neil Young!) has penned a thought piece about the American auto industry's woes and how best to solve them. He writes, "We need visionary people now with business sense to create automobiles that do not contribute to global warming." And then he goes on to detail his plan.

Young, a long-time environmental advocate in addition to being one of the most enduring musicians from the 1960s, is the driving force behind Lincvolt, an effort "to turn a nearly 20-foot-long, 5,000-pound 1959 Lincoln Continental into a vehicle that will run on natural gas, electricity or some other form of clean energy. His aim is to win the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a $10 million challenge to develop a vehicle that can get 100 miles per gallon or better by 2009." Lincvolt even has its own Youtube channel.

I wholeheartedly agree with Young that this moment cries out for bold, visionary solutions to the problems we confront:  on the economy, on the environment, on health care, on education, on foreign policy, etc.  This is the primary difference between the Clinton Democratic moment in 1992 and the Obama moment in 2008.  In 1992, embattled by a rising conservatism, the best the Dems could hope for was a Republican lite version of Democratic politics.  In 2008, though, there seems to be real opportunity to think big and throw long.  I suspect this will ultimately be the measure of Obama's administration:  the degree to which he seizes the historical moment, takes some risks, and goes the visionary route...  or the degree to which he misses the moment by being overly cautious and halting in his reform agenda.

What do you think?

Good Ideas! "Ten Policies for a Better America"

Check out these good ideas from the people at Yes! Magazine...

... any reactions or thoughts? Do you have a good idea that would make America better? Lay it on us in the comments sections.

The Bottom Billion

Right now, more than a billion people on our planet are trapped in extreme poverty in failing countries. What might we, as compassionate human beings in a global community, do about it? Paul Collier has some ideas. Check it out:

Buy a Houseplant, Get Healthy!

This from GOOD Magazine:

Unless you live in an organic bubble, chances are that most days you interact with plastics, paper goods, synthetic fibers, and other household items that contain trace amounts of toxins—toxins that, in large enough doses, could kill you, but in small doses might still be causing some damage. But fear not: new research shows that readily available and conveniently decorative plants are natural detoxifiers, scrubbing the air of these potentially harmful poisons.

Here are three commonly found toxins, and the plant species that mollify their effects.

(click image to enlarge)

Massive Change: Bruce Mau Speaks

Today, I am featuring a guest post by my good friend Justin Kemerling, who is also a really talented graphic designer and all-around awesome guy here in Lincoln. Justin has something really important to say, so I hope you check it out...
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For the first time in our history we have the ability to think about the welfare of the entire human race as a practical objective. This according to Arnold Toynbee in 1957. Today we are thinking even bigger. We are thinking about the welfare of all life.

What kind of process do we use to do this? To think about the welfare of all life on this planet at this moment in history? On Thursday, October 4th Bruce Mau visited Omaha. To a crowd of 720 in the Joslyn Art Museum he spoke about Massive Change.

According to Massive Change, we will build a sustainable world. One that eradicates poverty, shifts from a culture of war to a culture of life, and provides shelter for the soon-to-be 9 billion people living on the planet by 2050. All people will have drinkable water and enough food to eat while living intelligently with all life. Harmony will be reestablished. The climate catastrophe will be averted while our energy consumption will turn to solar, wind and other renewable resources.

How?

By setting out to find solutions to practical objectives. This isn't utopian or out of reach. This is real. This is microcredit loans. Bus transportation in Curitiba, Brazil. The Segway. The LifeStraw. Featherless chickens. Open source. Cradle to cradle. And on and on.

Never before have all the problems in the world come back to a singular source to solve them. That is the profoundness of Massive Change. Design bringing everything together. Planetary issues being looked at as a design problem in need of design solutions.

In terms of the word "design", it isn't (only) visual. It is the system. The entire process. We can no longer just design the water bottle and its form. We must look at the entire life cycle of where it comes from and where it goes. It doesn't leave anything out. As our convergence of crisis in all areas of our world present themselves, we must solve them holistically, as if everything is connected, because dear friends, it is.

As it stands now, if everyone in the world lived like we do in America, we would need an additional 4 planet Earths to sustain us. We are faced with that brutal fact and have two choices that are becoming ever more apparent. Will we hunker down, get our wagons in a row, build up the fences and let fear manifest itself into a retrograde society? Or will we focus on the reality that is out there right now, perhaps just a little harder to see, and move forward into an advanced society?

Thinking of "reality" as a newspaper a mile thick, the first quarter inch is the typical New York Times, a compilation of the world around us crumbling into an abyss of death and destruction where no one can be trusted and everyone is out to get everyone else. The rest of that mile is Massive Change.

It is hopeful. It is happening. It is massive. It is the work being done to create a global society that is advanced, intelligent and in harmony with everything that surrounds it.

And as a movement it must begin to take hold. It's looking for believers and doers. To get out there and seize these days of extraordinary opportunity.

Now that we can do anything, what will we do? In the spirit of wonderful optimism and the massive changes already taking place, we will build our world.

Here are some relevant links to further stoke the fire:

Massive Change

Massive Change In Action

Arnold Toynbee

Microcredit loans

Curitiba's Bus System

The Segway

The LifeStraw

Featherless Chicken

Open source

Cradle to cradle

TheMatchFactory

peace,
Justin (who is also a part of The Match Factory)

Solutions: "Natural Capitalism"?

At the outset of this blog, I wrote that we not only need to name the problems in our society and world, but we need to offer visionary solutions that are proactive and concrete. One of the massive problems we face today is a global economic system that produces vast inequalities and destroys the environment. My good friend Justin Kemerling is a big fan of "natural capitalism," a set of ideas put forth by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. At their website, they write:

Most businesses still operate according to a world view that hasn't changed since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Then, natural resources were abundant and labor was the limiting factor of production. But now, there's a surplus of labor, while natural capital - natural resources and the ecological systems that provide the vital life-support services - is in decline and relatively expensive. The next Industrial Revolution, like the first one, will be a repsonse to changing patterns of scarcity. it will create upheaval, but more importantly, it will create opportunities. Business must adjust to these new realities. Innovative companies are already doing just that. They're profiting and gaining decisive competitive advantage - and their leaders and employees are feeling better about what they do, too. They're the vanguard of a new business model: "natural capitalism"

Here is their website:
Natural Capitalism

Here is an article from Mother Jones:
Mother Jones article

A more comprehensive report on "natural capitalism" from the Harvard Business Review can be found in pdf format at the Wikipedia site on the subject:
Harvard Business Review article

Natural capitalism has its critics, particularly among progressives and environmentalists. For example, a reviewer in FEASTA Review, a journal of economic sustainability, writes,

Perhaps the most widely discussed recent book on the transition from a wasteful, unsustainable economic system to a more sustainable one is Natural Capitalism.. Unfortunately, the book is deeply flawed because, like most US books of its type, it pretends that the transition will be so highly profitable that the market alone will bring it about and that government regulation and legislation are unnecessary. Surprisingly, it maintains this position despite an excellent chapter on the ways in which markets can fail.

Here is the whole review:
FEASTA Review review

Here is another review by William Greider, a brilliant progressive economic journalist:
Greider review

Can, as the authors of Natural Capitalism claim, "business strategies built around the radically more productive use of natural resources... solve many environmental problems at a profit"? Or, is this wishful thinking, having our cake and eating it, too?

What do you think? Is this the best viable alternative to the current version of global capitalism? Or, is it a utopian pipe dream as some critics suggest?