Monthly Archives: January 2008

Voters No Longer Necessary

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I was online checking my email and I noticed that CNN had called the winner in the Republican Caucuses in Nevada. I was a little surprised, as it was only 1:30 here on the east coast, and I wasn’t sure they’d even started, let alone finished.

Turns out CNN is calling this with 0% of the precincts reporting. They are calling it based solely on polling data.

I guess we no longer have to vote.

We ought all stay home, near the television, so we can answer the phone if a pollster calls, and to be sure to be watching as CNN tells us what our future is to be.

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What is Sustainability?

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So, I am enrolled in the MBA program at Marlboro Graduate College – Managing for Sustainability. Studying Sustainable Business Practices. A two year program teaching the standard MBA nuts-and-bolts, but built from the ground up with Sustaiability in mind.

What is Sustainability? It means a lot of things to a lot of people. It can mean waste equals food design practices, or it can mean adding Social Responsibility to the mission statement – and then backing up the words with action. It can mean a Triple Bottom Line or Four Capital Accounting. It can mean buying fair trade coffee, a local carrot, or a Prius – or figuring out how to walk there.

It is a broad subject, and over the next two years I hope to be writing here quite a bit about it. I have started a new set of essays over in the sidebar, may add lists of books. Take a look, join the discussion – here or elsewhere.

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Obama the Architect

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[origionally posted at BlueHampshire]

Watching the debates with my New Hampshire host family, John Edwards really impressed us. He is passionate, he cares, and he has identified the problem — the corporate interests in Washington pushing their own interests at great cost to the public good. Edwards is a fighter, and it is clear he is going to go after them.

It is also clear that Obama has identified this as a root issue as well, and has been working to address it with his work in ethics reform. And, like Edwards, he is not taking dollars from the corporate interests, so he will not be beholden to them.

So what can I say to an Edwards supporter? On this issue we are very closely aligned.

Last night it became clear that the answer is in Obama’s deeper analysis of the situation. It is clear he is an architect, as well as a fighter. His roots in community organizing lead him to an analysis of the situation in terms of power. Where are we going to get the power to fight these interests that “have a strangle hold on Washington?”

We are going to get this power from organizing the American People. Obama is clear on this – he cannot do this without us. In fact, in his speeches he is repeatedly asking for us go get involved, to take back the government of this country. He is willing to build a coalition with republicans – not pander to republican leaders, but find republican voters who are disenchanted, for whom the neo-con promise has not come true.

This, I believe, is a critical difference. While Edwards has identified the problem, and is clearly a bulldog who will chew on the leg of corporate interests, his experience as a trial lawyer slots him into an “us-and-them” mentality. He will label them as bad guys and go after them. And, he will likely win a few.

Obama is seeking rather, to dismantle the structure that allows corporate interests to thrive. He is seeking to change the rules of the game, and he recognizes that in order to do this, he needs to build a broad power base. A power base rooted not in the politics of Washington, but in the ultimate source of political power in this country – the American People.

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