Journal: Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction All Lies?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney Recommends....

Casting Light on “The Moment of Truth”

Where’s the evidence to back up the fear mongering? A challenge to the Fiscal Commission’s report.

James K. Galbraith

James K. Galbraith is General Editor of “Galbraith: The Affluent Society and Other Writings, 1952-1967,” just published by Library of America. He teaches at The University of Texas at Austin.

The report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, issued on December 1, 2010 by Chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, is entitled “The Moment of Truth.” The words appear in block caps on the second page, weighty and portentous. They reappear in the first paragraph of the preamble:

EXTRACT:  These sentences set the tone. The first is a bald-faced lie, as a Westerner like Senator Simpson knows perfectly well. To the contrary, we have often fallen under the sway of robber barons, water barons, oil barons, bison-killers, clear-cutters and strip-miners, hell-bent on maximum pillage in the shortest time. Only occasionally have a few heroes like Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot and Harold Ickes Sr. emerged to battle for the most precious physical elements of our heritage — and then only with limited success.

EXTRACT:  Noticeably missing from the Commission’s plan are measures that would fall on the “leaders” themselves. The very richest pay cash for their houses. The commission would reduce, not increase, marginal income tax rates. There is no suggestion of a financial transactions tax.

EXTRACT: “…we spent the past eight months studying the same cold, hard facts. Together, we have reached these unavoidable conclusions. The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. And Washington must lead.”

The reference to “studying” is suggestive. Are there any studies? White papers? Background analyses? Normally, one might expect a commission to produce some. In this case, it did not. The Commission’s web site makes no mention of any such thing.

Read entire article.

Phi Beta Iota: The most important point in our view is that there are no studies to back up the hyperbole and the recommendations, at the same time that it is clear the deficit reductions are Of, By, and For Wall Street, not We the People.  The White House and Congress continue to offer the public theater of the most absurd kind, lacking in all substance and assuredly not in the public interest.

Journal: Egypt Elections–Muslim Brotherhood Loses, Internet Wins

08 Wild Cards, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Mobile

Philip N. Howard
Philip N. Howard

Professor and Director of Project on Information Technology and Political Islam

Posted: December 3, 2010 10:57 AM

EXTRACT:

But Mubarak's real enemy is no longer the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a complex, fractured umbrella group, and the practice of faith and opposition to Mubarak may not be enough to hold it together much longer. There is also the Kefaya movement, a loosely organized network of cosmopolitan Nasserites, Islamists, and leftists, that has organized some successful protests but has lost some momentum.

Mubarak's real opponents are tech-savvy activists and wired civic groups.

In the last few years, the internet has become the primary incubator of democratic political conversation. The state has never had this role, and the Muslim Brotherhood is no longer the exclusive provider. Instead, civil society in Egypt has moved online, using the information infrastructure of digital media as the place for difficult political conversations about regime change, gender and political life, and transnational Islamic identity.

This infrastructure is beyond the reach of the state.

Read complete article….

Journal: Mercury Makes You Gay…

11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Birds Are Becoming Gay From Mercury Pollution, According To New Study On White Ibis Breeding

A new study on white ibis breeding has discovered that mercury pollution is resulting in males of the species mating with each other.

Dr. Peter Frederick of the University of Florida embarked on the five-year research to determine what was significantly impacting the reproduction of the birds, but even he was stunned by the findings. “We knew mercury could depress their testosterone levels but we didn't expect this,” Frederick told the Telegraph.

According to Nature.com, coal-fired plants and gold mining are the main sources of global mercury pollution, though the burning of medical and municipal waste is likely the prime culprit in Florida, ingested by the wetlands birds through their food sources.

Phi Beta Iota: We did a double-take, and then checked to make sure this was not in the Comedy section.  This helps emphasize what many books have been reviewing, which is the unanticipated and now unaddressed impact on humanity of the many toxins and pollutants that corporations are allowed to not just externalize, but include within their products or as a side effect of their services.  “True costs” is the meme, and Transparency is the method.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Disease

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Environmental Degradation (Other than Emissions)

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poisons, Toxicity, Trash, & True Cost

Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Key Players, Mobile, Officers Call, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Gregory UnruhGregory Unruh

Director of the Lincoln Center for Ethics in Global Management at Thunderbird

Posted: December 3, 2010 03:21 PM

Transparency: The Internet's Killer CSR App

EXTRACT: Today “Wikileaks” makes the McLibel case look like child's play. Corporate executives should watch closely as diplomats cringe under the sudden and violent spotlight. The same scrutiny is coming to the corporate world. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has already announced the private sector is his next target. It may be that governments find a way to silence Assange (Wikileaks.org is already undergoing shadowy cyber attacks to shut it down) but it wont stop the wave of involuntary transparency that the Internet provides. Transparency is the Internet's killer CSR app. You can either get out in front of it or fall prey to it.

Read entire post….

Phi Beta Iota: The post is an elegant, concise articulation such as has not appeared elsewhere to our knowledge.  The lines are drawn, all that is lacking is the precipitating factor to launch the revolution.  “Profit Recovery” is going to join “True Cost” as the new meme, but instead of secretive beltway bandits maurading across the health industry–to take one example–it will be the public willfully exposing that which must be restored to the Commonwealth.

See Also: (46 Items):
Continue reading “Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)”

Journal: Groupon’s Missed Opportunity

11 Society, About the Idea, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process

Groupon's Missed Opportunity

The tech industry has a total crush on Groupon, that darling of the start-up scene that emails you huge discounts on everything from Gap jeans to gym memberships. Now that Google is about to acquire the Chicago-based start-up for billions of dollars, it’s like the tech blogs are all competing to see who can gush the most about how great Groupon is and how smart Google is for wanting to acquire them. It’s really not that big of a deal – how many times have we seen this kind of Cinderella story before?

Though I don’t find the acquisition all that interesting, I’m fascinated by the concept of Groupon, mainly for the incredible opportunity they missed. On the surface, Groupon seems to be about killer deals. They negotiate huge discounts with national and local businesses in exchange for the promise of thousands of new customers – pay $25 and get $50 worth of Thai food, for example, or pay $60 for a normally $250 dental exam. It’s a classic loss-leader tactic – gain new customers at a loss in hopes that they return and generate more business later.

When you take a closer look at Groupon’s phenomenal success, though, there’s a lot more going on than just bargains. Groupon was one of the first companies to successfully harness the power of group behavior across the social web in the name of a common purpose. That’s incredibly powerful! Think of the potential – for the first time in history, the physical barriers to collective, powerful action have been torn down, and Groupon figured out how to focus that power into a single, common goal. That’s huge!

Continue reading “Journal: Groupon's Missed Opportunity”

Reference: Policy Agendas Project Database

Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy

“Online Database Tracks Congressional, Presidential and Public Priorities”

November 22, 2010 23:10

From a University of Texas at Austin Announcement:

As a new Congress prepares to take office, a powerful online tool from University of Texas at Austin political scientists can help answer questions about lawmakers' shifting focus over time, differences between Republican and Democratic priorities and whether wave elections correlate with policy changes in Washington.

The Policy Agendas Project database allows journalists, scholars and interest groups to easily track and compare the issues that presidents and members of Congress have taken up since 1947 and to assess how those actions reflected the mood of the country.

The interface lets users sift through dozens of issues and sub-issues — health care, the environment, taxes — to look at the topics leaders dealt with in congressional hearings, new laws, executive orders and State of the Union addresses, as well as public opinion about problems facing the nation.

[Clip]

The data generated by the project are free and publicly available. They come with software that allows them to be used in classrooms. Jones and his colleagues released earlier versions of the Policy Agendas Project while he was a professor at the University of Washington.

Tip of the Hat to Gary Price at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: This has some promise, especially if they design it to be scalable across countries and down to the state and local level.  However, since nothing is policy until it is in the budget, the real truth tellers will be if they can link this to actual budgetary authorizations, allocations, and obligations; factor in “true costs” of any given policy element; and open it up to fact-based citizen dialog and deliberation.

Reference: Crash Course on Reality

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core), Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, True Cost
Chris Martenson Home

Chris Martenson not only paid attention to all of the early warning signals, but acted upon them, leaving a Fortune 50 job, selling his Connecticut home, getting out of the stock market, and buying gold and silver.  Now he has produced the single best, down-to-earth, detailed free video (38 minutes), inexpensive video (208 minutes), forthcoming book, and a 50 hour week-end course for concerned citizens.  This is essential education for all–it also demonstrates the fraud, waste, and abuse inherent in the continued support by the two-party tyranny of Wall Street.  Wall Street STILL OWES twice the capital it actually has–the bail-out was a flim-flam to perpetuate the short-term bonuses and positions of the criminals who have looted America and the rest of the world.

Short Free Video

Amazon Page
  • Crash Course by Chris Martenson – 38 minute condensed version
  • DVD Release Date: March 5, 2009
  • Run Time: 203 minutes
Amazon Page
  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: In a perfect demonstration of the Hacker Principle that for every piece of information you share, you get back 100 pieces of which 10 are priceless (10:1 noise to signal and 10:1 return on investment), the below was brought to our attention by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP), IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA.  We like IBM, we like it even more after seeing that this kind of thinking is well-understood by IBM.  Bottom line: a number of others have sounded the alarm, Chris Martenson does it better than everyone else, in the most concise non-partisan manner possible.  He is the Paul Revere of the Republic, the Commonwealth.