Category: Budgets & Funding

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Tom Atlee: Citizens Panel Cuts 2.2 Trillion in One Hour

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Methods & Process, Military, Policies
Tom Atlee

Dear friends,

The 160-person British Columbian Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform took every other weekend for a year to research and reach consensus on the best method for their province's election process.

The fourteen citizens in a Danish Consensus Conference take several weekends over several months to learn about their assigned technical issue and come up with shared recommendations for Parliament and the public.

A 24-person Citizen Initiative Review of the kind now institutionalized in Oregon takes a week to figure out how to best advise voters on a given ballot initiative.

Similar Citizens Juries on all kinds of subjects also take about a week.

The dozen citizens selected for MACLEAN'S magazine's 1991 “People's Verdict” deliberations took just three days to come up with a lengthy vision for Canada's future direction.

A Wisdom Council often takes just two days to come up with a consensus statement sharing their concerns and dreams for their community.

Hundreds or thousands of people in a 21st Century Town Meeting take one day to make decisions on the issue that they have been assigned.

And now ABC News gave five citizens of diverse political beliefs one hour to solve the deficit crisis that Washington can't seem to resolve in months.  This small group's success is the special feature of this e-mailing, so check out ABC's very short video (2:43) about it

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Citizens Panel Cuts 2.2 Trillion in One Hour”

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Marcus Aurelius: Joe Scarborough Tries to Scare on Debt

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency
Marcus Aurelius

Below is an excellent example of scare-mongering and ideologically-rooted media froth.

The morning after

Joe Scarborough

WASHINGTON, D.C.— Aug. 3, 2011

It was a financial storm that even an economics professor could see coming. The debt crisis that had gripped Washington for a month came to a sudden, horrifying climax that left America’s economy looking like a nuclear wasteland. Credit markets suffered life-threatening seizures as the stock market dropped a staggering 25 percent. U.S. Treasuries plummeted as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating — instantly adding trillions of dollars in interest costs to the national debt. Only gold was on the rise, and its price exploded past $2,000 an ounce.

Read rest of article….

 Phi Beta Iota:  The only people who benefit from raising the debt ceiling are the banks that destroyed the economy in the first place, and the industrial complexes from medical to military that have grown the profligate entitlement and earmark society.  Nationalizing the banks and closing down the Federal Reserve are both viable alternative strategies.  The fact of the matter is that the truth is not on the table.  To WHOM does the US Government owe money in violation of the Constitutional mandate that it be the steward of the full faith and credit of the Republic?  Triage among sovereign powers, banks, and individual investors should reveal a wealth of alternatives.  This is, as one TV commentator called it, a “food fight.”  Intelligence and integrity are lacking within Washington–neither the Republicans nor the Democrats, the Congress nor the Executive, are demonstrating the needed character during this time of tribulation.

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Robert Young Pelton: USA Road to Debt Decisions

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government
Robert Young Pelton

Useful survey on when the recent as well as the further back decisions on going into debt were made.  From April, but so very relevant today.

Running in the red: How the U.S., on the road to surplus, detoured to massive debt

By

The Washington Post, April 30, 2011

The nation’s unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis.

. . . . . . .

All told, Obama-era choices account for about $1.7 trillion in new debt, according to a separate Washington Post analysis of CBO data over the past decade. Bush-era policies, meanwhile, account for more than $7 trillion and are a major contributor to the trillion-dollar annual budget deficits that are dominating the political debate.

. . . . . .

William Hoagland, who was for years a top budget aide to Domenici and other GOP Senate leaders, said it is simplistic to think today’s fiscal problems began just 10 years ago. In 1976, as a young CBO analyst, Hoagland produced a long-term simulation that showed entitlement costs gradually overwhelming the rest of the federal budget.

“This situation really goes back to long before [the Bush administration], which is to say to old dead men that have long left the Congress,” he said.

Read full article (three screens)…

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Winslow Wheeler: Analysis of US Bases Abroad

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, DoD, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Winslow Wheeler
Carlton Meyer, a former Marine Corps officer and editor of G2mil has produced an insightful analysis of US foreign bases to close.  The defenders of the status quo on the bases question like to paint those who want to close foreign bases as “isolationist.”  That sort of guttersnipe-baiting is rendered ignorant by Meyer's analysis.  You can easily see that from his introduction and from his analysis throughout.  In fact, some might become a little nervous that Meyer has an awful lot of American intervention in mind in with the reduced base structure he would advocate for the future.  On the other hand, Meyer is also not a sucker for the dysfunctional war advocacy from the interventionists in Congress and elsewhere.
Contact him directly at editor@G2mil.com.
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Chuck Spinney: The Afgan Misadventure in One Paragraph

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney

First, the paragraph:

“The enterprise has proved to be a model of how not to go about such things, breaking all the rules of grand strategy: getting in without having any idea of how to get out; almost wilful misdiagnosis of the challenges; changing objectives, and no coherent or consistent plan; mission creep on an heroic scale; disunity of political and military command, also on an heroic scale; diversion of attention and resources [to Iraq] at a critical stage in the adventure; poor choice of local allies, who rapidly became more of a problem than a solution; unwillingness to co-opt the neighbours into the project, and thus address the mission-critical problem of external sanctuary and support; military advice, long on institutional self-interest, but woefully short on serious objective analysis of the problems of pacifying a broken country with largely non-existent institutions of government and security; weak political leadership, notably in subjecting to proper scrutiny militarily heavy approaches, and in explaining to the increasingly, and now decisively, sceptical domestic press and public the benefits of expending so much treasure and blood.”

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles
British ambassador in Kabul and as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan

The Afghan misadventure

By Lionel Barber, Financial Times, 22/07/11

Phi Beta Iota:  A full reading of “The Afghan misadventure” by Lionel Barber is highly recommended.  The ends with several lessons not understood in Washington, and a marvelous description of NATO as a “tethered goat.”  He also recommends these three books:

Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0feac042-b395-11e0-b56c-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1SxSELLAY

Cables From Kabul: The Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign, by Sherard Cowper-Coles, Harper Press, 352 pages

The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts and the Failures of Great Powers, by Peter Tomsen, PublicAffairs, 912 pages

Dead Men Risen: The Welsh Guards and the Real Story of Britain’s War in Afghanistan, by Toby Harnden, Quercus, 640 pages

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Paul Fernhout: Comments on Integrity at Scale

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Key Players, Policies, Serious Games, Threats
Paul Fernhout

Just from the topics, it seems like a more coherent version of this stuff I wrote in 2004:  Achieving the Star Trek Society.

“This essay shows how a total of $14000 billion up front and at least another $2085 billion per year can be made available for creative investment in the USA by adopting a post-scarcity worldview. This money can help further fund a virtuous cycle of more creative and more cost saving efforts, as well as better education. It calls for the non-profit sector to help shape a new mythology of wealth and to take the lead in getting the average person as well as decision makers to make the shift in worldview to their own long term benefit. … Let us consider ways to free up money for the non-profit sector (or
reducing working hours) by cutting wasteful government and consumer
spending in these areas with (annual estimate of easy savings):

Continue reading “Paul Fernhout: Comments on Integrity at Scale”

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John Steiner: Banks Not Lending–Blame the Fed!

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government
John Steiner

Thanks to: Jack Kaplan.

Why Banks Aren’t Lending: The Silent Liquidity Squeeze

by Ellen Brown

Global Research, July 15, 2011

EXTRACT

Paying interest on reserves was intended to prevent “inflation,” but it is having the opposite effect, contracting the money and credit that are the lifeblood of a functioning economy.  The whole economic model is wrong.  The fear of price inflation has prevented governments from using their sovereign power to create money and credit to serve the needs of their national economies.  Instead, they must cater to the interests of a private banking industry that profits from its monopoly power over those essential economic tools.

Whether by accident or design, federal policymakers still have not got it right.

Read full article…