This Might Not Go Well

In purely academic terms, three strikes and you are out is not bad if applied to violent crimes, but a fundamentally racist criminal justice system applying that to minor drug offenses is obviously racist and obviously wrong. One dollar can safely be leveraged to 1,000, done right, forget 30, which is where the market crashed in 2008, and ultimately all money everywhere and all monetary transactions will reside on one single, global blockchain, just like there is but one internet, but right now Bill Clinton's mixing up the banks in, I believe, 1999 gets blamed for 2008. W spending a trillion on tax cuts, another three trillion or so on Iraq and Afghanistan, and sending all sorts of wrong signals to Wall Street on greed (how do you outlaw the sin of greed?) is not talked about. But right now even a gifted politician like Bill Clinton comes across as tone deaf on these two issues. In 1992 the Sister Souljah comments was designed to grab the white votes. It might be a similar attempt now, but the ground has shifted. White liberals are not too keen on subtle racial messages that point the other way.

This move might have been a mistake. Or perhaps Bill Clinton is reading the writing on the wall, and is not liking it. The race was not supposed to be neck and neck. A New York primary was not supposed to ever matter. But this time the New York primary might decide who the next president is. Stranger things are known to happen.

But Black Lives Matter is not about Bill Clinton. Well, maybe now it is. Bill Clinton ran as a New Democrat, which basically was elbowing the Liberal, and it worked, but now that Liberal seems to be in vogue.



Bill Clinton needs to go away: Why his presidency has become a political liability
In a widely circulated video yesterday, Clinton defended programs that have ballooned both prison and poverty rates

Bill Clinton is no doubt his wife’s double-edged sword: Though he is among the most charismatic politicians of his era, he’s also prone to saying things that make campaign life rather awkward. The big problem, however, isn’t just that Bill Clinton can’t keep his mouth shut. It’s that his right-leaning New Democrat policy record is a bad fit for today’s liberal politics. ...... Yesterday, speaking in Philadelphia, Clinton responded to protesters by defending two now-very-controversial bills that he signed into law: The 1994 Crime Bill, widely criticized for fueling mass incarceration, and so-called welfare reform, which dramatically reduced poor families’ access to cash aid. ..... At the same time, he insisted that Hillary Clinton had nothing to do with either. And that gets at one of her campaign’s unshakeable dilemmas: They are running on what’s still popular about the Clinton years and trying run away from what’s not. That, of course, is impossible. And in Philadelphia, the balancing act tripped as a frustrated Bill Clinton lashed out at protesters with a full-throated recourse to throwback war-on-crime rhetoric. ..... what’s most remarkable is that Clinton made a case for the laws that just doesn’t add up. On the Crime Bill, he blamed Republicans for the the “increased sentencing provisions,” and said that the law created “a 25-year low in crime” and a 33-year low in the “murder rate.”..........Protesters, he said, were “afraid of the truth” for not letting him speak. But the truth is not what Clinton was speaking...... The number of those living in extreme poverty has skyrocketed since 1996. .....

Hillary Clinton can’t get around running as the Clinton Administration’s second coming.

Though her camp likes to protest that holding her to account for anything she endorsed during the Clinton presidency is unfair, it’s actually appropriate in a purported democracy that has proven itself prone to the allure of political dynasty. Times have changed, and many Democratic voters don’t want to go back to the 1990s. And Hillary Clinton has to answer for it. ....... Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign has been so shockingly successfully precisely because he’s been able to exploit this dissonance.

On welfare cuts, which he voted against and described as a bigoted assault on the poor

, that’s easy. ...... Sanders, however, has said that he did so because it included the Violence Against Women Act, and he did vocally criticize incarceration as a policy solution: “We can either educate or electrocute,” he said. “We can create meaningful jobs, rebuilding our society, or we can build more jails.” He also criticized the unsuccessful 1991 Crime Bill, which he voted against, as “not a crime prevention bill” but “a punishment bill, a retribution bill, a vengeance bill.” ......

Sanders on many issues provides a decisive contrast. And many people like what they see.

......... On welfare, Bill Clinton was just plain wrong. On crime, he rightly pointed out that the bulk of the nation’s prison population reside in state facilities; that there was very real public outcry over crime and that people demanded action; and that there was support even from black leaders for the bill. But it was politicians like Clinton who weaponized those public fears for political gain. And today, voters are beginning to understand the costs. And that continues to be a hard square to circle for Hillary.

Bernie: The Progressive Ronald Reagan?

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ronald Reagan wearing cowboy hat at Rancho del Cielo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I don't seem to like anyone on the Republican side, and it is not because I am a Democrat, I am not. But I have been neutral on the Democratic side. I guess I like them both. I like the idea of a first female president, I also like the idea of someone who is a policy wonk with executive experience, who has been to all parts of the world. But then Bernie is Jewish and that is a plus. He would also be the first Jewish president. Dean 2004 was grassroots 1.0. Obama 2008 was grassroots 2.0. If Bernie 2016 is grassroots 3.0, what are the structures? Bernie should be able to build something 10 times better than what Obama built, because now we have technology Obama did not have. I have not been following the campaign too closely, so I don't know. But if he had built that, it would have made news. And it is not for lack of money. The guy seems to be breaking his own record every month for several months now.

It just hit me that Bernie Sanders could be the progressive Ronald Reagan. Bernie does have executive experience. He was not Governor, but he was Mayor. And just like Reagan, he has been saying the same things for decades, until finally the dog seems to have caught up with the car. Any of the two Democrats would win. So it is not about November worries. And, no, Bernie would not have governing problems. If you think he will, you don't understand the powers of the presidency.

Reagan's thing was primarily messaging. He distilled it all into a few neat phrases, and that is the primary thing he did. For example, phrases like strong on defense, or small government, or tax cuts, or personal responsibility, freedom. Bernie does not have quite the short phrases yet, but he also seems to have been moving towards the five clear ideas. He wants money out of politics. He wants to break the big banks. He wants to build on Obamacare to give more to the needy, as in get closer and closer to the Canadian model until he does have the Canadian model. If the people want it badly enough to bother to get organized, of course it is possible. He has similar thoughts on education. He is so strong on health and education, you have to think this guy "gets" the knowledge economy. America's sorry state of investments in health and education is why America keeps taking faltering steps towards a knowledge economy, a knowledge economy that works not just for the Silicon Valley elite, but for all.

But Bernie is not concretely building the grassroots structure. And he has not yet distilled his key ideas into a few short, neat phrases. As for execution, Reagan appointed the key people to that end, and went to sleep. Hard work never killed anybody, but I figured why take a chance, he said. Bernie seems too sprightly to go to sleep. He might actually put in the hours. Bernie's physical vigor should make you want to run marathons. That is how he did it.

My advice to Bernie: hire Alanna Krause, the thought leader in the space, and put about 10-20 million into it, and build something to last. As in, the grassroots is integral to your governance. It is about building a one person, one vote, one voice structure. People should gather, people should speak, and people should be heard.

Just as early waves of technological innovation in education and health care simply attempted to digitize old practices — putting an analog class into a MOOC or a patient’s file into the cloud — early forays into governmental technology involved bringing civil services online and enabling citizens to follow government protocols on websites instead of in buildings. .....

new governance technologies preparing to reroute lines of authority and change what it means to be a citizen in the 21st century.

....... Others are helping teams to build consensus and budget together, dynamically and elegantly. Still others are creating operating systems for political parties that are already winning seats in government. .....

Whether we're facing climate apocalypse on Earth or colonizing Mars, the deciding factor between human civilization being extractive and oppressive, or cooperative and generative, will be how much we as a species have practiced the skills of equitable collaboration on a day-to-day basis — hearing diverse viewpoints and synthesizing them, consciously understanding the flows of power dynamics, and designing in the key factors of human wellness.

......... Human beings have been sitting in circles listening to one another for millennia, but software and the internet allow us to scale up these practices in a way we never have before. ....... Cobudget for funding and Loomio for decision-making. ........ Many of the worst aspects of command-and-control, mechanistic, hierarchical governance are consequences of limited communications technologies. If we can make distributed cooperation just as efficient, the need for those old governance forms — which cause a lot of human suffering in the name of efficiency — could be obviated. ..... The key difference is: are you privatizing everything, or are you building the commons? The real distinguishing factor isn't the governing practices, which may be similar to a point, but the governing purpose. Are we building in service of the people and the community, deeply rooted in social values and human rights, or are we in service of private interests, which only answer to their own internal logic of profit and power? ....... Already, in our network, Enspiral, where we run businesses in service of positive social outcomes, we constantly have to 'hack' company structures to make them reflect how we actually want to work. We're sticking to the law, of course, but there's some legal gymnastics involved and we're constantly having to blaze a trail. Are we a community? A company? A charity? None of the current forms actually quite fit, and the distinctions seem contrived. ........ One of the protections against government corruption in democracies is that the moment of the vote is hidden and blind. ......

the very idea that our key moment of agency as a citizen is ticking a box every three or four years is the insane part

..... Our 'democratic' system is another example of something developed a couple hundred years ago because of very limited communications technology — election dates in the US are still determined by how long it took people to go on horseback between cities. ..... What's actually incredible is when you create a society where people not only feel safe being open about their political opinions, but they genuinely discuss them with different people, and their opinion can evolve through that interaction — they can change their minds.

When citizen deliberation is possible, that's when truly amazing solutions can emerge, from synthesizing different views.

......... What can users of SMS-enabled mobile banking in Africa teach us about how our apps could work? People in war zones and disaster areas know a ton about decentralized networks, because centralised infrastructure fails them. Activists threatened by oppressive governments have heaps to teach us about privacy, identity, and leveraging online communications tools for effective action and resistance. ....... most people in this space are running completely analog processes using technologies like neighborhood meetings and science-fair like exhibitions of citizen-generated ideas. They are willing to pound the pavement.

If Bernie is the Democratic nominee, he is the next president. And if he is, he is going to govern just fine. Right now I don't know if he is, but he does seem to be running neck and neck. He seems to have momentum.

I am neutral because Barack Obama is neutral.

America can be taken to a 5% growth rate, absolutely. It is just that when you destroy 13 trillion dollars, the resultant wage depressions will take some time to recover.

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanize production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres. ....... There are three reasons why today’s transformations represent not merely a prolongation of the Third Industrial Revolution but rather the arrival of a Fourth and distinct one: velocity, scope, and systems impact. The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent. When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.

What might be some Bernie catch phrases that progressives might repeat for 20 years?

• Take money out of politics
• Strong on education, strong on health
• Too big too fail it too big to exist 
• One person, one vote, one voice 24/7, local to global 

Maybe I am not that neutral. Both on message and the organizational structure, Bernie seems to get me. I was a Deaniac in 2004, in Indiana, of all places, and I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in New York City in 2007.