Citizen Intelligence, Core Good Idea Well Presented, June 9, 2009
Steve Shafarman
This book is the one that in combination with other things that are going on including Ron Paul's endorsement of the book Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, has caused me to see 2008 as a tipping point. We the People are restless and on the prowl.
This particular book is the single best current exposition on the need for individual economic security as a citizen's right, in the book called the Citizen Dividend, also known as negative income tax or guaranteed income.
The author is clear on this being a modest sum, on the order of $500 to $1000 a month, a safety net, and the author also speaks to the Citizen Service that is made possible in return.
As a great admirer of the book by the United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats and Challenges, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, I am totally blown away by the intelligence in all its forms of this author, who nails the essential better and more concisely than anyone I have seen anywhere else: poverty, crime, health care, education, social security, family values, racism, pollution and global warming, farms and all, local communities, national security, globalization, other countries, world peace. This is a SERIOUS citizen not to be triffled with. See Earth Intelligence Network and the strategic analytic model there to understand why I am so very impressed.
The author has done a great deal of work in putting the book together, and among the things about it that I really like are the 26 Frequently Askewd Questions (FAQ) with detailed answers; the superb quotes from the Founding Fathers onward on why this kind of thing is needed; and the two Appendices, the first on previous attempt to implement the idea, the second on current efforts.
The author concludes the book with some hard thoughts on the corporations, courts, and media, on politicians as performers and politics as theater (see my own book, Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography), and on how elected officials are out of touch with citizen reality while the special interests do not care.
The author gives credit to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), RIP, one of my own personal heroes, and his book The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan.
I put the book down well-satisfied, and feeling that if every citizen were as serious as Steven Shafarman, We the People are certain to triumph in the 2010-2015 timeframe as we seek to restore the Constitution and free open elections.
In myh remaining six recommended books I want to focus on the corruption of the existing capitalism system, which is not moral capitalism (going well by doing good) but immoral predatory capitalism that has also destroyed democracy:
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
My complex annotated bibliography is free online at oss.net/PIG. It is also the only way to get to many of my reviews now that Amazon buries any reviews that are not 100% positive about the book they are trying to sell.
