None of my liberal friends who I sent this article have responded or commented on it. Perhaps they cannot be bothered, since they are rejoicing at Obama's win? Or could it be that Professor James Petras, who wrote it, and an outstanding scholar with many books and articles to his name, is puncturing their illusions of Obama, and it's too painful to acknowledge the truth?
This article effectively summarizes in one place Obama's near absolute and locked-step alignment to the American Police State, to Wall Street, to utter betrayal of his naive supporters, to the evaporation of the middle class. It blows up any illusions that the victorious second term president is really a “lesser evil”, that it makes any difference. He shows the distinction between lesser and greater evils is irrelevant when it comes to Obama and Romney. One could add to this what Mish Shedlock said in his blog: “If you keep voting for the lesser of two evils, then you will continually be presented with two evil choices!”
Truly disruptive innovation — the kind that creates new markets, opens up new ways of looking at problems, and greatly expands wealth — is in short supply, and that is what is dragging the current economy. There isn’t enough innovation because business leaders and managers have become too focused on short-term gains.
That’s the view of disruptive innovation guru and Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, who, in a New York Timeseditorial, explains why America’s innovation system has gone off the tracks.
Basically, the economy has long been driven by three types of innovation that all industries cycle through: empowering innovations, which transform complicated and costly products available to a few into simpler, cheaper products available to the many (think Ford’s Model T); sustaining innovations, in which old products are replaced with new models (think Toyota’s Prius); and efficiency innovations, which reduce the cost of making and distributing existing products and services (think Geico in online insurance underwriting).
The problem these days, Christensen says, is that instead of cycling through these three phases, businesses are stuck on efficiency innovations — streamlining, paring, cutting and squeezing. While efficiency innovations liberate capital, there isn’t enough energy and resources going to empowering innovations — which generates new wealth and opportunity within underserved or unserved parts of markets.
The Open Source Ecology – 50 Do It Yourself Tools for Civilization focused on 12 people, 2 hours a day living very well.
Ethical open production yields a 50 times cost reduction over any given lifetime.
Published on Oct 31, 2012 by MarionInstituteTV
http://www.connectingforchange.org Connecting for Change: Bioneers by the Bay conference hosted by the Marion Institute is A SOLUTIONS BASED gathering that brings together a diverse audience to create deep and positive change in their communities. The conference connects the dots between food and farming, health and healing, indigenous knowledge, women and youth leadership, green business and restorative living.
MARCIN JAKUBOWSKI – “Growing up in Poland, and having a grandparent in the concentration camps, I was aware even at an early age what happens when materials are scarce, and people fight over opportunity.”
To set the stage, here is a quote from a top Reagan era economist.
“Paul Craig Roberts:“As readers know, I don’t think that either candidate is a good choice or that either offers a choice. Washington is controlled by powerful interest groups, not by elections. What the two parties fight over is not alternative political visions and different legislative agendas, but which party gets to be the whore for Wall Street, the military-security complex, Israel Lobby, agribusiness, and energy, mining, and timber interests.”
Now imagine a populist revolt that eliminates absentee owners and declares local to global debt jubilees, much as the IMF is (rather radically) considering in The Chicago Plan Revisted (August 2012), while the local, state, and federal government also agree on the Automated Payment Transaction Tax or the Tobin Tax (two different ideas that can be implemented separately or together).
In October of 2011, New Scientist reported that a scientific study on the global financial system was undertaken by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The conclusion of the study revealed what many theorists and observers have noted for years, decades, and indeed, even centuries: “An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.” As one of the researchers stated, “Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market… Our analysis is reality-based.” Using a database which listed 37 million companies and investors worldwide, the researchers studied all 43,060 trans-national corporations (TNCs), including the share ownerships linking them.[1~footnotes at the end of the article]
In anticipation of challenges to my assertion that our political dichotomies – especially the liberal/conservative, blue-red divide – are illusions, I offer the following references:
3. The story of the first pro-life and pro-choice activist dialogue done by the Public Conversations Project http://co-intelligence.org/S-beyondabortiondebate.html in which participants were invited to confidentially discuss the “grey areas” where they weren't FULLY comfortable with the archetypal public position of their “side”, but with which they compromised in order to be politically effective. What emerged was a full spectrum of different perspectives on abortion, not just two.
President Obama said in his 2012 victory speech that “we are not as divided as our politics suggests”. He also argued that we are more united than our politics makes us think we are. Finally, he hinted that we are more diverse than our politics suggests. All of these are important truths.
However, President Obama failed to take the next step, the step that would make all the difference in the world, the step we must make through which we come to recognize how changing our political system will enable us to creatively use both our diversity and our common ground to generate public wisdom.
It is painful to watch the thrashings and lurchings of our quasi-democratic country, particularly during the spectacle of a presidential election. Our political system takes our vast diversity and, with tremendous verbal and ideological violence, mashes it down into two opposing forces. At the same time, it splits our vast common ground and fences it off to separate and solidify those two opposing armies.
After all, it is far easier to win a victorious majority if there are only two options, two sides, two ways of looking at the world. If there are three – or, heaven help us, thousands – winning a majority suddenly seems impossible to achieve.
Yet those two options, those two sides, those two worldviews are false – always. The passionate dichotomies that seems so solid to us as the warlike electoral fervor grows are mirages, hallucinations, cloud shadows. The categorical flags around which we rally, the castle boxes into which we gather in solidarity are simply not real; they do not stand up to close scrutiny, any more than the generalizations of racism and sexism do. They seduce us into the thrall of potent and degrading oversimplifications of who we are and how we think and feel and what is really possible for us as a people, as a community, as a world. They are prisons masquerading as knowledge and power.
We do have active duty Marines from 26 MEU and CLB….why the SeaBees Gurad, and DOD are not setting up tent camps is beyond me unless DHS-FEMA wants to re-do the trailer cities it did for Kartinia but way too late……suspect there is turf battles going on……what are the unions doing???Hmmmmmm!
Click on Image to Enlarge
Below is URL for a useful Google crisis map with multiple icons that can be turned on and off. Western Long Island and the entire coastal area north and south of New York City is the center of gravity for aid that is NOT getting here as quickly and coherently as it should, AND we have another storm on the way for which few are ready.
