From the Occupy movement to top GOP strategists, forces from both sides of the aisle are uniting to combat the corrupting influence of money in politics. The result? The American Anti-Corruption Act. To read the act, sign your name, and learn more. www.Represent.Us For details about the Act, visit: www.anticorruptionact.org
Yoda: Digital Communications Revolution
Access, Education, Innovation, Politics
Open Internet, Force Is….
Digital Communications Revolution
The importance of a revolution in digital and communications technology has risen in importance since 2011. Interestingly, the most significant proportion of respondents came from Latin America, who particularly emphasised explosions in social media and mobile phones. Respondents from this region had a particularly higher focus on this issue when compared with those from Europe and Asia.
Keeping the digital revolution on track.
A top trend that emerged from the 2012 World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council Survey (which received almost 1,000 responses from the world’s leading thinkers) was the “digital and communications revolution.” But who laid the conditions for this revolution? And how are we going to continue to reap the benefits from this new era?
The answer may surprise you. The people who established the standards and rules allowing 99% of the computer servers worldwide to speak to each other, freely and openly, were not in the US government, Google, or even the UN. Rather, they belonged to civil society – academics and technologists – such as Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn, and Tim Berners-Lee, the participant in the opening ceremony of the London Olympics who few people recognized.
Let’s recap that revolution. Over the past five years, 21% of GDP growth in mature economies came from the open Internet. Growth will spread east and south as broadband connections via mobile in emerging economies smash through developed world’s subscriptions in 2013, as reported in the World Economic ForumGlobal Information Technology Report 2012. If the members of Facebook were part of a single sovereign state, it would be the third-largest country in the world; and its terms of service is looking more like a constitution determining people’s rights than an ignored contract with a service provider.
Michael Moore: Open Letter to President Obama That Misses the Point
Politics
An Open Letter to President Obama …from Michael Moore
Monday, November 19th, 2012
Dear President Obama:
Good luck on your journeys overseas this week, and congratulations on decisively winning your second term as our president! The first time you won four years ago, most of us couldn't contain our joy and found ourselves literally in tears over your victory.
This time, it was more like breathing a huge sigh of relief. But, like the smooth guy you are, you scored the highest percentage of the vote of any Democrat since Lyndon Johnson, and you racked up the most votes for a Democratic president in the history of the United States (the only one to receive more votes than you was … you, in '08!). You are the first Democrat to get more than 50% of the vote twice in a row since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
This was truly another historic election and I would like to take a few minutes of your time to respectfully ask that your second term not resemble your first term.
It's not that you didn't get anything done. You got A LOT done. But there are some very huge issues that have been left unresolved and, dammit, we need you to get some fight in you. Wall Street and the uber-rich have been conducting a bloody class war for over 30 years and it's about time they were stopped.
I know it is not in your nature to be aggressive or confrontational. But, please, Barack – DO NOT listen to the pundits who are telling you to make the “grand compromise” or move to the “center” (FYI – you're already there). Your fellow citizens have spoken and we have rejected the crazed ideology of this Republican Party and we insist that you forcefully proceed in bringing about profound change that will improve the lives of the 99%. We're done hoping. We want real change. And, if we can't get it in the second term of a great and good man like you, then really – what's the use? Why are we even bothering? Yes, we're that discouraged and disenchanted.
At your first post-election press conference last Wednesday you were on fire. The way you went all “Taxi Driver” on McCain and company (“You talkin' to me?”) was so brilliant and breathtaking I had to play it back a dozen times just to maintain the contact high. Jesus, that look – for a second I thought laser beams would be shooting out of your eyes! MORE OF THAT!! PLEASE!!
In the weeks after your first election you celebrated by hiring the Goldman Sachs boys and Wall Street darlings to run our economy. Talk about a buzzkill that I never fully recovered from. Please – not this time. This time take a stand for all the rest of us – and if you do, tens of millions of us will not only have your back, we will swoop down on Congress in a force so large they won't know what hit them (that's right, McConnell – you're on the retirement list we've put together for 2014).
BUT – first you have to do the job we elected you to do. You have to take your massive 126-electoral vote margin and just go for it.
Here are my suggestions:
Continue reading “Michael Moore: Open Letter to President Obama That Misses the Point”
Rickard Falkvinge: Why A Pirate Party WORKS
Politics
Yes, The Pirate Party Is A Silly Name, And That's Why It Works
Zacqary Adam Green, 17 November 2012
“Pirate Party? Are you serious?” I hear that all the time when I’m canvassing. “With a name like that, how will you succeed?” Well, I reply, it got your attention, didn’t it?
The last time we canvassed in New York City parks, most conversations went something like this:
“Hi, are you tired of politics?”
The person keeps walking.
“Left vs. right always saying the same thing?”
They keep walking.
“I’m with the Pirate Party!”
They stop. They slowly turn around.
Pirates. Arr, shiver me timbers. Swillin’ grog an’ plunderin’ yer treasure. That’s the image the name immediately conjures to many people. They laugh. We tell them that we don’t have a chairman, we have a captain, and they laugh even more. We tell them we want to declare mutiny against the corrupt government, and their sides are splitting.
Continue reading “Rickard Falkvinge: Why A Pirate Party WORKS”
Ron Paul: 32 Questions – One More Fight?
Politics
32 Questions That All Americans Must Answer
Activist Post, 16 November 2012
Ron Paul, in his historic farewell speech to Congress this week, asked 32 thought-provoking questions addressed to his fellow Americans.
It's very clear upon examination of these questions that something is very wrong with our government. Below are his questions:
SchwartzReport: Marijuana Legalization Reaches New High in National Poll
Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Politics
Marijuana Legalization for Personal Use Reaches New High in Poll
JUSTIN SINK – The Hill
We should remember that it was the states that ended Alcohol Prohibition. It began just as this is beginning, and went up quite quickly to the Federal level. I am not sure that this will happen the same way. Look for this: When it becomes politically dangerous to be anti-Marijuana. It will happen quicker with Representatives, because of their smaller concentrated populations, district by di! strict. I think this will drive the Senate to change as well.
But the opposition may be so bitter, that it is one of the first of the new development trends shifting power to the states. This is going to depend on what the Obama administration does.
A record 48 percent of Americans support legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use, just one week after three states voted to legalize the drug under some conditions – including Colorado and Washington's historic votes to allow the personal use and sale of pot.
Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Marijuana Legalization Reaches New High in National Poll”
Berto Jongman: Shadow Banking & Tax Loopholes – With Comment by Robert Steele on Integrity & Automated Transaction Payment Tax
Economics/True Cost, Politics
Beyond Regulators' Grasp How Shadow Banks Rule the World
By Martin Hesse and Anne Seith
Spiegel, 11/14/2012
Beyond the banking world, a parallel universe of shadow banks has grown in the form of hedge funds and money market funds. They're outside the reach of conventional financial regulation, prompting authorities to plan introducing new rules to prevent the obscure sector from triggering a new financial crisis. But in doing so they risk drying up an important source of funding to banks and firms.
Tango with the Tax Man Multinationals Find Loopholes Galore in Europe
Spiegel Staff
Spiegel, 11/14/2012
Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support.
