"Ten Ways to Democratize the Economy," apart from the parties.

I won't be long-winded about this, as the article is lengthy and thought-provoking.

The fundamental difference between me and either Jeff Gahan or Kevin Zurschmiede is that as mayor, I'd be doing whatever I could to support democratization initiatives like the ones explained here.

In fact, I'd challenge the community to embrace these, and to do more. I sincerely believe that insofar as posterity cares about Gahan's term, it will focus on the perpetual pander: "Relax, and let me spend more of your money. You needn't do or believe anything. Just trust me."

This offends me, and it should offend you. Corporate welfare of the sort practiced by both major political parties has nothing to do with grassroots sustainability and democratization.

You have to push from the ground up. If I'm mayor, I'll listen and try to help.

What Then Can I Do? Ten Ways to Democratize the Economy, by Gar Alperovitz and Keane Bhatt

The richest 400 Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 180 million taken together. The political system is in deadlock. Social and economic pain continue to grow. Environmental devastation and global warming present growing challenges. Is there any path toward a more democratic, equal and ecologically sustainable society? What can one person do?

In fact, there is a great deal one person working with others can do. Experiments across the country already focus on concrete actions that point toward a larger vision of long-term systemic change – especially the development of alternative economic institutions. Practical problem-solving activities on Main Streets across the country have begun to lay down the elements and principles of what might one day become the direction of a new system – one centered around building egalitarian wealth, nurturing democracy and community life, avoiding climate catastrophe and fostering liberty through greater economic security and free time.

Margaret Mead famously observed: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Some of the ten steps described below may be too big for one person to take on in isolation, but many are exactly the right size for a small and thoughtful group committed to building a new economy, restoring democracy and displacing corporate power.

As the history of the civil rights movement, women’s movement, and gay-liberation movement ought to remind us, it’s precisely actions of this sort at the local level that have triggered the seismic shifts of progressive change in American history.

"...it's necessary. And, in fact, anything less than that isn't even worth trying."

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme - but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being.



More information is here or read the online/">full text of the book online for free.

ON THE AVENUES: Can't you smell that smell?

ON THE AVENUES: Can't you smell that smell?

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Back during those heady postwar days, America’s empire of the cash register was the last one standing in a world bankrupted by conflict.

We imagined our nation as the personification of a handsome, Nebraskan, corn–fed farm hunk, with wavy hair and muscles rippling, atom-powered rockets in his pockets, but moreover, raised the “right” way by God-fearing, plow-lugging folks, all pious and well-meaning and virginal.

The CCCP was a concern, to be sure, but fortunately the United States intended only the best Christian Capitalist Consumer Protection for those countries soon to be colonized, though not for reasons of territorial aggrandizement in the physically acquisitional sense.

(Except for Hawaii, of course; after all, we needed somewhere dependable to go on tropical holidays, and those pineapple salespeople could draw up the statehood contract, take their cut, and git ‘er done. Alaska was a non-tropical afterthought, albeit one with plenty of pretty petroleum.)

Nowadays, we’d just outsource the whole kit and caboodle to China, but back then, what we needed were markets. Not only that, it was either Moses, Ben Franklin or Henry Ford who’d once asserted that the Burmese, Kenyans, Uzbeks and residents of inner Winnipeg merely wanted to be just like us, so long as they remained exactly where they were over yonder, and continued to purchase their Bible-toting suburban start-up kits from genuine American distributors on a time payment plan.

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At about this same time, it was widely held outside the narrow confines of the Bronx that rooting for the New York Yankees was like rooting for U. S. Steel. Youthful and otherwise inexperienced ears may not grasp the analogy, but make no mistake: It was intended as derogatory to both named parties.

In short, how is it that an ordinary person in hock to the higher-ups might be duped into feeling an allegiance to the ball clubs and companies with all the money?

How could any dues-paying, card-carrying member of organized labor’s various unions ever cheer for the Yankees, if by doing so meant implicitly siding with the length, breadth and power of the Man? (This was before George Steinbrenner, by the way).

Granted, while rooting for either of these behemoths legitimately might be considered indicative of human neuroses capable of being understood (and spelled) only by the likes of Sigmund Freud and Sidney Freedman, it’s at least possible to argue that sports enthusiasm generally is harmless, and perhaps even mentally healthy, in carefully regulated, smaller doses.

They’re only children’s games, and so long as the viewer displaces his or her extensive list of personal grievances and hostilities by leaving them to the combatants on the field, rather than bludgeoning targets in real life, perhaps it helps to grease the wheels of pervasive apathy.

But rooting for a corporation? How is it possible?

Cheering for U.S. Steel, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, or Archer Daniels Midland?

Really?

It’s inexplicable, unfathomable and more than a bit degrading, and yet it’s exactly the path Americans chose to follow as the Greatest Generation receded into decay and the circuses grew ever more elaborate. Even those professing to hate the Yankees came to pull for the corporate giants, primarily because we were deluded into thinking that every man can be a king by investing in the rich man’s game.

Unfortunately, as the famous writer F. Scott Smith once observed, “The rich are different than you and me -- they have the Republican Party to ensure they hold on to their money.”

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One such bloated monstrosity, which somehow still inspires affection in non-shareholders spite of itself, is the multinational amalgamation known as Anheuser Busch Inbev (ABInbev).

It was reported the other day that in Texas, a Houston-area wholesale distributor of Budweiser was paying cash to bar managers to take a certain local brewer’s beer off tap, and replace it with one of the distributor’s own brands.

While these allegations remain unproven, they do not come close to constituting a shocking revelation. Payola is illegal most places, and no one cares, because in subterfuges both great and small, payola is the way that each and every one of the ABInbevs and U.S Steels of the country came to be where they are today.

Naïveté simply has no place in determining the value of your stock.

Interestingly, a quick glance at the wholesaler’s web site shows that while ABInbev’s brands obviously are its malt and butter, a few craft brewers are on the roster, too. It’s entirely possible that the wholesaler paid to remove one craft brewer’s brand, and replace it with another, and how bizarre is that?

Moreover, in the wake of Internet outrage over the Budweiser wholesaler’s act of imperialistic hubris, there also were hints that some craft brewers – gasp! – have themselves practiced pay-for-play when it comes to draft placement.

Ah, but them’s fightin’ words.

Not us! We’re the honest, localized, creative and exuberant segment, not the old-time, immoral, ginormous ass hats. Craft brewers don’t play by the rules, we subvert them … conjure new paradigms … inject honesty and ethics into the equation ... and so on. The Greatest Generation of beer wholesalers was the one playing dirty pool, not the chosen, the redeemers, the innovators.

On the other hand, perhaps it points to the direction we’re all heading as our segment of the beer market matures, because however much we may like to think of ourselves as different, we still must play according to the rules of a system that is flawed at best, and at worst, inextricably broken.

There’s no glib moral to this story. Will the economic system we’ve chosen to abide in America permit the craft beer business (as well as others like it) to grow according to its own merits, with a semblance of ethical propriety, and without having to use the odious, time-tested “tools” of the trade?

Or, does the money stay where it is?

Korten: "It starts with a defective system that cannot be fixed. It has to be replaced."

We either have the courage or we don't. It's complicated, and yet that simple.

When even having an imagination is radical.

Perhaps the most disturbing element of the national Occupy Wall Street movement is how closely the issues relevant therein mirror the issues relevant in our little burg. Unable to imagine better, we've simply chosen to mimic the undemocratic and demoralizing machinations that put people into power and money not through any sort of meritocracy but rather via an ongoing series of crudely choreographed, rear end aimed ego-financial trips. Whether counted as lucrative contracts, coerced funding, or well timed looks the other way, ward heeling still sucks.

But, if we can change just enough to capture a small portion of the perennially frustrated, exit-bound metro intellect, the transformative effect in the city would discombobulate even the most entrenched spreadsheet dilettantes, the provincials across the Ohio included.

I'm for it.

Occupy Wall Street Rediscovers the Radical Imagination, by David Graeber (Guardian)

Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?"

It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.

Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart.

"Blonde parade lifts spirits in Latvia."

It is a parade designed to "lift sprits," and the footage above is from the 2010 fest. Here's a description from the 2011 edition: 2011

And a few more photos: Gallery