>This it is a good piece ( long but good) on why the environmental >movement has got to move on to a commons movement
>Our Commons Future Is Already Here >A stirring call to unite the environmental and global justice movement >by Maude Barlow > >http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/13-6 It seems to me that things are getting bad enough that activists are starting to consider dumping the current development paradigm. I am seeing more political proposals (see above) organized around "the commons" and the "common good" instead of the "private greed under fascism" we have now. My idea -- AMERICA 2.0 -- is one of those proposals. Step one must be to take corporations completely out of our global political systems (see below). If that's not done, then progressive change is simply not possible. Therefore, I suggest global activists organize around the idea of removing corporations from politics. Everyone should be able to agree on that first step. Once corporations are completely out of our political systems, different post-capitalist, post-fascist social models can be tried to see which one seems to be the most promising. Jay ========= [ Snip from <http://tinyurl.com/2dojm4l> ] What follows are six political steps, listed in order of priority, that are designed to mitigate the societal disruptions of the net energy cliff: 1. Remove the "personhood" Constitutional protections from corporations. 2. Make it a federal crime for corporations to advocate anything (including, but not limited to, advertising) in the mass media. 3. Make it a federal crime for anyone employed by a corporation to lobby elected or appointed officials directly or indirectly. 4. Mandate public financing for elections. 5. Assemble teams of the country's best and brightest medical doctors, scientists, engineers and other thinkers-but no representatives of religious groups, economists, or other corporate-special interests-to recommend public policy. (We do not need a Manhattan Project for economics-on how to save the corporations and their outrageous profits; we need a Manhattan Project on how the country can survive the net energy cliff!) 6. Encourage public debate on proposed changes. (Number 5 above is the key difference that I am advocating. Public policy recommendations would come from medical doctors, engineers and scientists who are looking at the entire system instead of from a room full of fat salesman trying to sell worthless shit to an unsuspecting public. It's based on the recognition that if one changes the environment in which political decisions are made, one changes the political decisions.) _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
