Matt Hancock's Blog

My 10,000 Hours

2011-01-17T15:20:00.002-06:00

You know the oft-cited number of 10,000? As in, it takes 10,000 hours for someone to be really good at [insert thing here].

Well, I decided to try a little experiment on myself.

This Christmas, we brought back the electronic piano my Mom bought for me when I went to college. It's been collecting dust for the better part of 10 years now.

So, we set up the piano in our dining room (it's big, we only have one small table in the dining room--so it fits fine) and I started practicing, seriously, for the first time in ten years.

I found that I was really enjoying it.

So, I thought: "It would be great if I could get really good at piano." Then that 10,000 hour number popped into my head. So, I thought, let's see where I am in 10,000 hours. (I also thought, this would be a good way to keep me motivated, since there are no piano recitals to prepare for, or parents to make me practice.)

So, I just opened up Open Office spreadsheet and did a little calculation. I estimated that I could spend 46 weeks out of the year, practicing 7 hours/day (this would allow for 4 weeks of vacation, plus one week for Christmas and one week for Thanksgiving). I figure that the regular variation due to work-related travel would work itself out: for example, I practiced for 2 hours one day, not one. You get the gist.

I figured that as a younger student, I probably put in about 1,380 hours. I previously studied piano for about 10 years, but not in a very disciplined fashion (I figured 3 hours per week for 46 weeks a year, just to be conservative).

So, I added that to the 5 hours I practiced last week. Looks like I'll be a genius in about 27 years!

I'll keep you posted on progress. Here's the spreadsheet I mentioned:

Matt's 10,000 Hours
Date Hours Minutes
01/12/11 1 20
01/13/11 45
01/14/11 20
01/15/11 2
01/16/11 30

Total Hours to date 1384.92 Estimated hours during previous study 1380
Hours To Go 8615.08 (46 weeks per year, 3 hours/week practice, for 10 years)
Years to Go 26.75

Why Obama is On the Run

2010-12-16T07:45:00.006-06:00

The Obama administration is plagued by three, fatal flaws:

1.) An over-reliance on the financial services industry

2.) Fear or avoidance of conflict;

3.) Failure to effectively manage the politics of policy.

Let's look at each of these issues.

Financial Services

An interesting thing has happened in American politics. We seem to have confused the stock market, and trade in other speculative financial instruments, with the economy as a whole. And since the Clinton administration, the financial services industry has provided Democrats with a significant fundraising edge--and has had an out-sized influence on economic policy. Why are the managers of investment banks and hedge-funds best positioned to manage our country's economic policies? What about entrepreneurs? What about our manufacturers and high-value add service sector? And when you depend to such an extent on the financial industry to fund your campaigns, it becomes extremely difficult to effectively regulate that industry--or create a rationale tax system that funds the public sector and appropriately redistributes wealth.

Conflict

The Republicans have mastered the art of using conflict to get what they want. The Republicans are not afraid to jack up taxes on working class people; they're not afraid to shut down the government over the budget. This is an empirical fact. They are hostage takers.

Obama doesn't seem get this essential fact.

He still talks about compromise, about bi-partisanship. I think he really does believe that voters will reward these two virtues. This, too, has not been borne out by the facts. The Democrats have never been rewarded for reasonableness, compromise and bi-partisanship. Just look at the last election, which swept in a generation of lawmakers who have promised voters they won't compromise.

Mismanaging the politics

No one can argue that the Obama administration has not accomplished anything. On the contrary: the stimulus, financial reform and the most sweeping piece of social legislation since Medicare and Medicaid are all real victories for his administration. But all along the way, he has failed to manage the politics of policy. Think about the spectacular mismanagement of the health care debate: the town halls, the death panels. The stimulus package saved millions of jobs, yet so many working and middle-class Americans are opposed to it.

But the tax deal is the most glaring example of the administration's failure to manage politics effectively.

First, the compromise was negotiated behind closed doors, between the White House and Mitch McConnell. Back-room negotiations like this deprive the Democrats of a critical negotiating tactic: publicity.

The Republican leadership is blatantly pushing an agenda to narrowly benefit the top one percent of income earners--and they were willing to hold unemployment insurance and 99% of Americans hostage to benefit the top one percent. But this greed was never put in the spotlight during the negotiations. Throughout, the Republicans controlled the message: "now is not the time to raise taxes on anyone."

And look at the way the Republicans and the White House have handled the aftermath.

Now, this deal is clearly a victory for Republicans. But listen to how McConnell describes it:

Saying that he was unhappy with the deal, he adds “This bipartisan compromise represents an essential first step in tackling the debt — because in keeping taxes where they are, we are officially cutting off the spigot."

This "compromise" is, objectively, a huge victory for the Republicans. Yet they position themselves as disappointed, but happy that they are finally "cutting off the spigot" on Democrats wasteful spending. What is the wasteful spending they're talking about? Expanding healthcare coverage, extending jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed, and the like. The Republicans are playing the politics of this great: they keep their base (and funders) happy by saying "hey, we're not happy with this compromise [of course they are] but we're imposing discipline on Democrats' recklessness."

How has Obama handled the aftermath of the tax deal? He has become its biggest cheerleader:

“This proves that both parties can in fact work together to grow our economy and look out for the American people.”

“a win for American families, American businesses and our economic recovery.”

Really? This seems like a spectacular mistake that is going to come back and haunt Obama. We know that the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy don't spur economic growth and job creation: just look at the actual effects of those tax cuts, in effect for the better part of the last decade. So, why is the President going around talking about this as a victory, as something that is going to have big, tangible benefits for workers and the economy?

We know that these tax cuts are not going to spur growth and hiring. So, Obama is setting himself up for a major backlash when the inevitable happens. Being the poster child for such terrible policy is not a good political move, unless his goal is to attract the support of those who are going to benefit most from the idiotic extension of these irresponsible cuts.

I'm not saying that the Democrats should have simply allowed the tax cuts to expire for everyone, and accept no extension of unemployment insurance. That would not have been good politics either.

But, let's consider an alternative approach:

The negotiation over the extension of the cuts, and extending unemployment, is done in public, in Congress. The President uses the bully-pulpit to decry Republicans' irresponsibility and the reality of what they're doing: holding hostage 99% of Americans to extend an unfair and irrational benefit for the top income earners. While Congress debates this, on TV, Obama goes on tour and puts a human face on what's at stake: highly skilled workers who are desperately looking for work, but can't find any, for example. Warren Buffet types speak on behalf of the responsible, enlightened wealthy with a "get real" type of attitude: "hey, I'm worth $X billion, I don't need a tax cut, you need jobs." The Democrats mobilize their base to bolster the will of the Democrats in Congress to fight this out in public, and they put unrelenting pressure on supporters of the Republican position. They make the Republicans pay for their policies.

Perhaps, in the end, a similar compromise would have been reached. And, perhaps, it would be the best thing for the country. But, at the end of this good, healthy fight where the right lines in the sand are drawn and the Republicans are exposed for what they really are, Obama's speeches would not praise this compromise as a victory: he would speak honestly about his disappointment with the Republicans irresponsibility and would praise the valiant efforts of the Democrats to extract what they were able to extract. He would say:

"This is the best deal that we could come up with. We are deeply disappointed that the Republicans have made protecting the incomes of millionaires their priority. Our priority is families; our priority is the people who have been looking for work for the last 9 months, and can't find it; our priority is to make sure that no one is turned away at the doctor's office because they don't have insurance, or can't get the help they need because of a pre-existing condition. So we were not willing to stand by and allow the Republicans to hold your interests hostage to benefit the extremely wealthy. So, while we're disappointed with these irresponsible tax cuts, we fought, and won, to preserve tax cuts for the middle class, unemployment insurance and a cut in your payroll taxes to put more money into your pocket. But, long-term, it's up to the American people to let the Republicans know it's time to stand up for your interests, not the special interests."

I am awesome.

2010-11-24T10:21:00.002-06:00

Folks, this is amazing. Two days after my post about What the Kindle Needs Now (in which I suggest, among other things, that you should be able to give an e-book as a gift) Amazon announces that you can gift a Kindle e-book via e-mail now!

What The Kindle Needs Now

2010-11-17T19:50:00.007-06:00

As you know (I assume you do by now) I'm a very happy Kindle owner.

I plan on purchasing a tablet (Notion Ink Adam!) in the near future; but this will not replace my Kindle.

From the moment you open the box, you love it. It's totally focused, obsessively, on the act of reading and the glorification of that act. From the Kindle logo, to the pre-installed dictionary, it's not about media delivery, it's about getting back to basics: to the pure, beautiful, simple--yet profound--act of reading the written word.

The technology behind it even glorifies reading: it's not a traditional, back-lit screen, it's E Ink--literally little black and white balls being arranged on the page to form letters, words, and, ultimately, magazines and books on the page, like a book.

Point is, I love it.

Nonetheless, the Kindle still has some "beta" aspects to it. And as the playing field gets more crowded, Amazon will have to seek new ways of creating value with their product.

Here are some suggestions:

1.) Don't try to be the iPad, or any other tablet computer.

The best thing about the Kindle is that it's designed to do one thing, and one thing only, extremely well: provide a superior experience for the reader on a paperless platform.

The Kindle is so good because of what it doesn't do, just as much as for what it does do: you can't check Facebook, or e-mail your friend's, or flip back and forth from one "app" to the other. You just read. I read mine, mostly, on the bus during my commute. The Kindle provides me with two hours of un-cluttered, calm reading time each day. Advertisements, chat's and tweets are not competing for my attention. My mind is calm and clear after 30 minutes of reading, and nothing else.

In this hyper-active, digital world we live in, these moments are fewer and farther between. The Kindle has helped me rediscover leisurely, uninterrupted reading. And it's a real pleasure.

2.) Create a community.

You must be able to do better than a #kindle hash tag on our tweets. Let us connect with each other by sharing newspaper and magazine clippings with other Kindle owners (and not just sharing a highlight). Allow us to give e-books as gifts to other users. And what about lending books? The accountants will tell you that you'll lose potential revenue by allowing people to share books. That's missing the point: the more the Kindle (and not some other platform) connects people to their books, and to each other, the more revenue you'll drive to the Kindle bookstore.

3.) Re-invent and re-define the bookstore.

I was in a Borders the other day. What bitter irony. It's the Water Tower location in Chicago--they're doing a store-wide sale because they're closing. I was browsing the business section, and stumbled on a collection of articles from Harvard Business Review on leadership. I flipped through the pages and thought "this is a nice book, how much does it cost?" I flipped it over and checked the price "$22?" Really? I pulled out the Kindle, connected to the store and found the same publication for $9.99. I hit "buy" and in 60 seconds the it downloaded to the Kindle, at less than half the price.

Maybe that's why they're closing?

I haven't figured it out yet, but I'm convinced there's a role for a physical bookstore in a world of e-books. "Browsing" books in the Kindle store, is not the same thing as browsing through a real bookstore. Reading the sample you can download for free on the Kindle is not the same thing as picking up a book, holding it in your hands, flipping through the pages, turning it over to read the comments on the back. I'm much more likely to purchase a book in the Kindle store after I've flipped through a hard copy than if I just read the sample on the Kindle.

And there's got to be real value in creating a virtual community--defined by Kindle ownership--and providing a physical meeting point for those community members. I still love browsing in a book store, and sitting down to read in a cafe or on a big couch that's not in my house. Barnes and Noble has attempted to do this, to a degree, with Nook. If you've got your Nook and you're in a Barnes and Noble, you can read, for free, books that are available in the store. It's still an idea in formation, but I'm intrigued.

Ralph Nader was right (and so was I!)

2010-10-03T17:04:00.008-05:00

I was an ardent supporter of Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential run. I was one of the chief organizer's of the Nader2000 campaign at Skidmore College and was a founder of the Nader-inspired student activist organization, Campus Greens.

Lately, I've (unfortunately) been feeling quite vindicated.

Ten years later, many progressives (particularly those that came of age as radicals in the 60's) cringe when I tell them I supported Nader in 2000. I believed then, as I believe now, that that was the right move.

Does that mean that I will always, as a rule, support a progressive 3rd party candidate? Of course not. In the 2004 election, for example, I supported Kerry and argued that Greens should focus on a "safe states strategy" and essentially use their candidacy to run against Bush and his reactionary, hegemonic policies, ala Earl Browder's 1936 strategy as CPUSA candidate for president.

It was clear in 2004, despite the weakness of Kerry's candidacy and the capture of the mainstream of the Democratic party by corporate interests, that there was a clear difference between the "globalist" faction that Kerry represented, and the war-mongering, "hegemonic" faction that Bush/Cheney represented.

Obviously, there is a clear difference between the Democrats and Republicans--between a Pelosi House and a Boehner House. But just how big of a difference is not clear to me. Obama has proven himself to be a consensus builder at all costs--failing to seize on the momentum, mandate and control of the House and Senate when he had the chance. Healthcare reform, in its darkest times, was championed by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Steny Hoyer--Obama was not out in front on that issue. And, by attempting to alienate no one, Obama and the Democrats have alienated everyone: the Wall Street execs who have bankrolled their elections, and the labor unions that have turned out the vote to get them elected.

And while there may be a difference, no matter how small, how much will the current Democratic party be able to bend the arc of history in a different way--to set the United States and the globe on a different trajectory altogether--and not just tinker at the margins?

I'm amazed at the cynicism, and seeming stupidity, of the Democrats when I read articles like this. Do the strategists really think the problem is how to "excite" the base? Wouldn't "the base" be excited if the Democrats were doing more to help people now? You would think that the worst economy since the Great Depression would be a time for the Democratic party to shine--to show what they can deliver for working people. But, instead of doing, they're spending their time figuring out how to excite and inspire. Inspiring speeches got Obama to the White House, but only real, concrete action will keep him--and Democrats--in power.

So it was with some sense of vindication that I read Thomas Friedman's column, "Third Party Rising," this morning. He wrote:

"President Obama has not been a do-nothing failure. He has some real accomplishments... But there is another angle on the last two years: a president who won a sweeping political mandate, propelled by an energized youth movement and with control of both the House and the Senate — about as much power as any president could ever hope to muster in peacetime — was only able to pass an expansion of health care that is a suboptimal amalgam of tortured compromises that no one is certain will work or that we can afford (and doesn’t deal with the cost or quality problems), a limited stimulus that has not relieved unemployment or fixed our infrastructure, and a financial regulation bill that still needs to be interpreted by regulators because no one could agree on crucial provisions. Plus, Obama had to abandon an energy-climate bill altogether, and if the G.O.P. takes back the House, we may not have an energy bill until 2013."

I recently spoke with a colleague about my support for Nader in 2000 as I was venting my frustration with Obama and the Democrats. She cringed, and told me that Al Gore would have been President were in not for Nader in 2000. My friend argued that it was not just Florida, but other states that Nader cost Gore the electoral vote.

So I went back and looked at the results of the 2000 election. In most states where Nader's share of the vote was meaningful, one of the two major parties won by a sizeable margin--Nader did NOT cost Gore many electoral votes, even when he had a showing of more than 5%. (And that's assuming everyone who voted for him in New Hampshire would have automatically voted for Gore had Nader not run.)

But that's not the point, is it? What people are really saying when they criticize Nader's presidential run(s) is that he shouldn't have run because people, when given an option, might have chosen that option. Put another way: the stakes are too high to provide people with more choices because they might make the "wrong" choice. So, to ensure the "right" electoral outcome we must limit their options.

Sounds like the arguments made, in centuries-past, against direct election of the president and against universal suffrage.

Well, Pat, you were right

2010-07-05T11:50:00.003-05:00

Just saw the new Amazon Kindle DX. It's an incremental improvement, at best. But perhaps the biggest innovation is its drop in price: to $379.00. This is, presumably, in response to the iPad's price, as Raffertyesque aptly observed several months back. (No, I can't link to his post about that because he told it to me in person. That's right, I hang out with Raffertyesque!)

Of course, the graphite color and improved contrast are also cool. But man, I like that price point. But, I also just got a Kindle. Hmm, come to think of it, the USB port on my Kindle has become a bit loose. Momentarily...

Confidence inspiring

2010-06-06T11:15:00.002-05:00

This article from today's New York Times exposes just how pathetic and corrupt our Minerals Management Service is, and how cynical BP is.

My favorites: capping the well, and the "junk shot" (with golf balls) were both tried in 1979 on the Ixtoc I well in the Bay of Campeche, Mexico. How'd that work back then? Both failed. So why the hell did they try that again?

Oh, and BP had alerted regulators to the potential for this kind of blowout on the Deepwater Horizon. How would they deal with it? A "containment dome." Of course, MMS didn't require them to have such a dome on hand, just in case. It took 'em two-and-a-half weeks after the explosion to build and transport the containment dome.

Oh, and just for fun, the "spill response plan" that MMS approved mentioned how important protecting "walruses, seals and sea lions" would be. The catch. THERE ARE NO WALRUSES, SEALS AND SEA LIONS anywhere near the Deepwater Horizon.

If I were the Obama administration, I would not be taking responsibility for any of this, I would expose BP and the oil industry for the corrupting force they are on our political system and make the Deepwater Horizon a battle-cry for creating a new, green energy economy.

From this crisis can come change, but only if the administration seizes the opportunity and takes an unequivocal stand AGAINST the oil industry, for the fishermen, the gulf coast communities and a complete transformation into a renewable energy economy. This isn't about "energy independence," a battle-cry that got us into this mess, but for a green energy economy. Obama must make the connection between our dependence on fossil fuels, the corruption of our regulatory agencies and political system by oil companies, the devastation in the gulf and the deepening global environmental crisis.

Does this make Amazon nervous?

2010-06-04T08:40:00.002-05:00

I can't stand the name "Skiff," but this looks really awesome.

Do This, This Weekend!

2010-06-02T08:10:00.002-05:00

Find a local GOTV canvas near you through OFA.

We'll be canvassing in Andersonville from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM. We'll be knocking on the doors of folks who voted for the first time (and for Obama) in 2008. We'll be asking them to sign a card that they'll commit to vote in November. Everyone who signs up will receive a letter from the President.

More on Sardinian Elections

2010-06-01T07:27:00.002-05:00

But the real story, is that voters in Triei handed the center-right a crushing defeat, with Ivan Puddu's Socialists leading the center-left coalition with 20%.

The Latest on Elections in Sardinia

2010-06-01T07:16:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, Sardinians (Italy) went to the polls to choose the presidents and council members of their provinces. Out of 8 provinces, 3 are now in the hands of the center-left (Sassari, Medio-Campidano and Carbonia-Iglesias), and 2 are in the hands of the center-right (Oristano, Olbia-Tempio); three are headed for a runoff, where the margin of victory wasn't large enough (Cagliari, Nuoro, Ogliastra). Interesting to note that where industrial-unionism was strongest, the center-left carried the day.

Ubuntu Desktop Web Integration Awesomeness

2010-05-31T12:04:00.002-05:00

One of the things I really like about Ubuntu 10.04 are features that more fully integrate the desktop with the web (and NOT to obliterate the desktop, e.g. Chrome OS).

Check these out

Thanks OMG!

A great 24 review from "The Economist."

2010-05-29T10:12:00.001-05:00

Agent Improbable

A mutual aid movement in the US?

2010-05-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

This post at SolidarityEconomy.net reminded me of the movement, in Italy in the 1800s, to create "mutual aid societies." These self-help organizations were the cradle of both the cooperative and labor movements in Italy.

Though the US does have a mutual aid tradition of its own, the dominant form of representation in civil society, at least in the 20th century, has been the advocacy model, as opposed to self help, or self-management.

Even organizations, like labor unions, are advocacy organizations. We're used to joining together, paying dues and electing, or hiring, someone else to represent our interests.

In northern Italy, on the contrary, people banded together to more effectively represent their own interests: to educate and train themselves to run for office, manage businesses, labor unions and cooperatives.

No delegation. All self-management.

This tradition is still particularly strong, in Italy, in the cooperative movement, small business association and labor movement.

There is some evidence that this is changing in the United States. Recent developments include the, above mentioned, Common Security Clubs, the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland and the Freelancer's Insurance Company in New York (I'm a board member!).

When people start thinking about representing their own best interests, and see the market and profit as tools--not ends in and of themselves--that's when you begin to see a real paradigm shift.

Why the hell would you do that?

2010-05-26T07:21:00.000-05:00

Google Sued for Vacuuming WiFi Data

Consuming our Way to a More Sustainable, Just and Balanced Future

2010-05-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

I must admit, I was interested in attending this weekend's Green Festival in Chicago. Back in 2002, when I was National Organizing Director for Campus Greens, Kevin Danaher asked me, in a phone conversation: "what do you think about this idea?"

That idea, it turns out, would become the Green Festival. A traveling roadshow of sustainability, the Green Festival has been up and running for a few years, now.

I imagined it to be a mix of World Social Forum and business trade show. It was located at Navy Pier, Chicago's premier tourist-trap-on-the-water/convention center/IMAX/theater-in-the-round.

What I saw was a hodge-podge of traditional "sandals and candles" companies (products made of Shea Butter, organic soap, traditional Mayan handbags, Kleen Kanteens), social activist groups (Earth First, Democracy Now), public transit advocates and green building contractors. Oh yeah, and a yoga studio, martial arts demonstration, and vegan food.

It was sort of a mecca for people who think that, by changing our personal consumption patterns, we can change the world. If we buy enough stuff made by indigenous people, wash with enough organic soap, do enough yoga, or make enough hippie patchwork pants, then we can achieve a green revolution.

Now, there's nothing wrong with changing personal consumption habits, but this is largely something that only the professional class does. Few people can afford to live this type of green lifestyle.

A developed-world movement for this type of consumption doesn't address issues of technological innovation in the developing world, investment, and the development of locally-based value-added industries. In fact, the line between this type of activism and a type of nostalgic protectionism that actually retards development is very blurry. While this type of social activism makes us feel better (for good and bad reasons), I think it is incapable of addressing the core issues of development facing most of the world.

And with few exceptions, this type of social activism doesn't address the issues of poverty and inequality facing American communities, and other communities in the developed world.

What should a Green Festival be showcasing? I would hope to see something about the United Steelworkers-Mondragon Cooperative Corporation alliance, the work of the Great Lakes Wind Network to help the auto supply-chain retool and plug-in to the domestic wind turbine value chain, or the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland's work developing industrial-scale, worker owned cooperatives and an investment fund for future enterprise development.

Keeping the House and Senate in the Right (as in correct!) Hands in November

2010-05-21T08:42:00.000-05:00

Like clockwork, the mid-term elections see heavy losses for the president's party--whether the president is Republican or Democrat.

The Republicans have set their sights on seizing control of Congress: a repeat of the 1994 Republican Revolution.

This year, the stakes are extremely high: we still have active conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're just barely emerging from the deepest downturn since the great depression, and if we don't act now on global warming and energy independence, the planet may not give us another chance.

With a Republican takeover of the House and Senate, progressive solutions to these problems will likely be completely blocked--and with the specter of the filibuster, it's important that we not cede ANY seats to the Right this mid-term election.

But keeping Congress in Democratic hands this fall isn't just about pushing the President's agenda, it's about blocking the rise of a new type of Republican: reactionary, anti-immigrant, anti-government, border-line racist and violent.

That's why I got off my butt this year (at the urging of my wife) and volunteered to be a "neighborhood team leader" for Organizing for America. We're organizing the budding "Andersonville (Chicago) Neighborhood Team."

Our mission is to develop an active, connected grassroots base to organize around president Obama's agenda and knock on doors this November to get out the vote.

Why is this so important? Democrats, in terms of percentage of overall registered voters, enjoy a statistical advantage: there are more registered Democrats than Republicans.

Our problem is not registered voters, it's getting those voters to the polls. Registered Republicans tend to be more likely to actually go and vote: particularly in a mid-term election. So, if we get more registered Democrats out to vote in November, we win. It's all about how many calls we make, and how many doors we knock on.

This week's special elections and primaries give us a strong indication that this strategy will work in November.

As this NY Times analysis shows, it was heavy turnout among Democrats that handed Critz a decisive victory in the Pennsylvania special election to fill Murtha's seat. What's particularly significant about this race, is how conservative that blue-collar district is: in 2008 it was carried by McCain.

And how good is it for Democrats that they'll be running against right wing nut Rand Paul in Kentucky?

2010-05-20T16:38:00.000-05:00

ChromeOS, the Cloud and Civil Liberties

Being short on funds, I'm forced to resist the urge to buy new electronics (I'd really love the Boxee Box and a home theater to go with our new flat screen TV). What to do? I decided that, instead of buying new toys, I'd play around with different Open Source OSes.

After a month of beta testing Ubuntu 10.04 (that was kinda fun), I upgraded to the stable LTS on my laptop. (I'm a big fan of the Lucid Lynx, by the way). I've also got this netbook (Acer Aspire One—very crappy, I think it's easier to type on my iPhone). So I thought, what can I do with that? There's not much exciting about running Ubuntu's netbook remix—it's great, but it's just a respun version of the desktop edition.

I thought: Let's try and run ChromeOS.

I went to the Chrome project website, and they want me to build it myself. They have instructions, but it seems pretty intimidating. So, I did a little searching on the web, and discovered Hexxeh's build of ChromeOS. He calls it “Flow.” I can make a bootable USB drive. Cool.

So, I boot up, and am instantly (it's almost like turning on your T V) in to the login page. It's kind of like when you first turn on a new Android phone, it wants you to use your Gmail account to sign in. It's all part of the master plan.

So I'm in, and the browser (I mean, the OS) opens immediately. Only problem is the damn thing boots faster than my wi-fi connects, so I get an annoying error message that goes away when I hit refresh. (Note to Google, maybe you want to have some sort of welcome screen that keeps people distracted while the wi fi connects.)

So I start screwing around. Imagine if the one program you could run on your computer were the Chrome browser—no desktop, no start menu, no trash icon, no clock, nothing. Just your browser. That's ChromeOS.

I first go to my e-mail. Check. Then calendar. Check. Nothing revolutionary here. I've checked Gmail from the Chrome Browser before.

They have a sort of “favorites” page where it allows you to click on “apps.” But, these “apps” are really just links to web pages: YouTube, Gmail, Twitter, etc.

At this point I start feeling a little claustrophobic. ChromeOS has completely obliterated the desktop metaphor, and I'm literally stuck in my web browser.

Because it's a netbook with an Atom processor, I can't really stream video (so, no Hulu or YouTube). I've got no DVD drive, so no DVDs. I supposed I could download some content and watch that... but wait, there's no place to download to and all the “apps” are web based, so my content has to be in the cloud. (Of course, there is storage in Chrome, it's just hidden from view—apparently everything is cached for offline use. But, again, there's no point in downloading anything, since there are no programs that would allow me to do anything with the downloaded content. )

I go and post some Tweets. But, again, nothing revolutionary here. I open Google docs, but this is useless to me, since I hate using Google Docs. Can someone actually tell me they'd prefer to make a spreadsheet on Google Docs, over on an old-fashioned, desktop-tethered program like Excel or Open Office? And for sharing, wouldn't you rather use Dropbox?

Bottom Line?

I applaud Google for sponsoring a major open source project. I also applaud their efforts to integrate the OS more fully with the web. But I think Chrome suffers from two big superficial problems: 1.) It's still ahead of its time—not enough cloud-based, consumer-oriented services to replace your desktop 2.) The bigger problem, for me, is that I just like the desktop metaphor. I'm not ready to put my entire digital existence into a browser.

I want stuff I can download and possess—and I want the ability to create my own content and not have to surrender it to the cloud. I think that's why Amazon's Kindle service doesn't bother me—I don't really own the books or magazines, in fact, Kindle takes my old New York Times issues away from me after a few weeks and disappears them into the cloud. But, that's content I acquired through their service. I'm not creating my own content (papers, pictures, videos) and then turning it over to the cloud.

The bigger issue for me, is that this is an example of Google (a company I really admire) going way further than their mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." They're rendering more and more information proprietary by making storing and accessing the information totally Google-dependent. ChromeOS will only be successful when all content is delivered through the cloud as Software as a Service (SaaS).

Think about that: the notion of “private” could be completely obliterated. Not only are we communicating over private channels but the content will be stored privately. To me, that feels like surrendering a bit too much. I'm thankful to Google for helping me better organize data, but I don't want them owning and delivering all my data.

Finally, while Google's mission is to organize the world's information, they are not a non-profit, social purpose business. Their business mission is to produce a return for shareholders. Organizing and making information accessible is the means by which they drive user-clicks to Google's advertisers which, in turn, makes a profit for distribution to shareholders. This is by no means evil. It's just important to keep in mind that they are not your local library.

From a user-experience perspective, I'm much more a fan of a web-integrated desktop and OS. I think Ubuntu has made some significant strides in that direction. When I click on my calendar on the desktop, it's linked to my Google calendar, and updated in real time. I can post a tweet from the “me menu” on the desktop, and when I purchase songs from the Ubuntu One music store, it's stored in the cloud (Ubuntu One) and immediately synchronized to all my desktops. I'm alerted to new e-mails and IM's when the mail icon on the me menu turns green. Tomboy notes are synchronized across desktops and backed-up in the Ubuntu One cloud. And Evolution keeps my contacts synchronized with Gmail and stored on my computer's hard drive. And this all syncs nicely with my iPhone (or your Android-based phone).

So, I guess I'm saying no to ChromeOS on two grounds:

1.) From the user's perspective, there's not Software as a Service available yet to make it a rich experience, and I like the desktop metaphor—I don't like being stuck inside a browser,

2.) But the bigger issue is about how proprietary I want my digital existence to become. The civil libertarian in me just isn't comfortable with that level of private control over my online experience, information and sensitive, personal data.

(Ooh, that reminds me, got to pay my dues to the ACLU!)

Testing, 1, 2.

2010-05-19T10:24:00.001-05:00

Just downloaded "Blogwriter Lite" (I try not to pay for apps). This is my first remote post. So it's a test.

Kindle PDF Breakthrough

2010-05-19T09:43:00.001-05:00

Thanks phototristan for commenting on this YouTube video.

I've been a Kindle user since February, and love it. One big drawback: multi-column pdfs are nearly impossible to read. I just sent myself a .pdf with the word "convert" in the subject (through Amazon's service) and it turns each column into a page... so you can read the pdf just like an e-book. Obviously, formatting isn't the prettiest. But it is readable!

The big deal for me, is that I can significantly reduce paper clutter: no more printing up reports to read on the bus. Just e-mail to my Kindle.

Looking forward to the new firmware update

What the Tea Party means?

2010-05-19T07:39:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about this for a while, and was nudged to write by Rand Paul's primary win this morning.

The mainstream political debate in the United States for, oh, the last 30 years has been between Republican supply-siders or Democratic, more-liberal neo-classical or neo-Keynesians. With the "right" pushing tax cuts and de-regulation as a way to spur economic growth, create wealth and jobs. The "left" position tended to focus more on demand-side, and wealth redistribution policies as a way to spur growth, create wealth and jobs.

While both are inadequate and antiquated (as our Innovation Economics friends point out here), you got the idea that both sides were trying to get to the same place: low (or full) employment, high wages, a competitive economy, etc. Even the Republican Revolution of 1994, with their smaller government obsession, was claiming that THEIR WAY was the best way to help the poor, etc.

Not so with the Tea Party. Their focus is on small government, lower taxes and a free market--not because of what it will produce (aside from more "freedom") but just because! Dick Army has cynically (and skillfully) taken advantage of decades-long frustration and fear among many Americans over, essentially, globalization to support the political agenda of the most reactionary part of the US elite.

Short term, I think this will be good for the Democrats in November. The DNC is developing a grassroots, neighborhood-based presence with OFA to bring out record numbers of Democrats to the polls in November (where we enjoy a statistical advantage). That and the Republican civil war (Tea Party Vs. Establishment) could (should?) translate into Democratic wins.

But long-term, the Tea Party movement is classic Fascism-on-the-rise: world-historical events, dramatically transforming politics and our economy (globalization, today, World Wars and the end of colonialism in the past); no effective response from mainstream parties; working people, united by a movement that channels only their fear, allied with the reactionary elites. The Tea Party movement fits all of this, and sometimes has the feel of a para-political group. Their language and imagery often have violent tones. Their "take back our government" language often skirts the line between democratic opposition and protest and advocating, essentially, a coup.

Combine this with the quasi-seditious language of right wing pundits, and the emergence of the "Oath Keepers" movement made up of current or former military preparing to disobey the president, and we've got all the pieces of a homegrown Fascism.

What happens in the future is entirely up to us. Much of it will depend on the strength of our democratic institutions. But most importantly, it will depend on the ability of a counter-movement to the Tea Party to arise on the left and the ability of this movement to articulate a positive, progressive vision that responds to the crisis in the global economy and the legitimate fears of many. This response needs to avoid fear-mongering, and short-term political pandering, and opt, instead for the articulation of a long-term, positive and inclusive alternative.

Emilia-Romagna and Nano-tech

2010-04-18T12:54:00.001-05:00

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Emilia-Romagna Into the Nano-Age Through New Public/Private Partnerships

Emilia-Romagna is a highly industrialized region in north-central Italy of about 4 million residents.

Manufacturing has provided Emilia-Romagna's citizens with high wages and standard of living, and sustained economic growth. Faced with increased global competition, the Emilian economy has responded creatively and aggressively, actually increasing employment in manufacturing over the last 10 years.

A key factor in the success of manufacturing has been active government policy in support of business growth, cluster development, and building effective links between applied research and advanced manufacturing.

In December 2004, the region's government announced the creation of the Regional Network for Industrial Research and Technology Transfer, made up of 27 Industrial Research and Technology Transfer Laboratories, 24 Innovation Centers and 6 Innovation Parks.

Researchers in this network have recently invented a solar-powered “nano-engine.” The size of two molecules, this new motor is as fast as a normal four-stroke engine spinning at 60,000 RPMs with potential applications in medicine, computers and manufacturing. And it's solar-powed to!

Development of this new technology has been turned over to the regional laboratory, Nanofaber. Nanofaber is a public-private partnership (a 'networked' lab) among the regional government, several public research institutes, the University of Bologna, and a group of regionally-based manufacturing firms, including SACMI a leading worker-owned cooperative.

Nanofaber's mission is to develop and commercialize this technology to the benefit of the region's clusters of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The nano-motor is just one of the fruits of the region's new industrial innovation policy designed, in the word's of Minister of Development Duccio Campagnoli, to ensure the regional economy's competitiveness for the next forty years.

You can read more about 'Sunny,' as the nano-motor is nicknamed , in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cooperativa CEFLA

2010-04-18T12:53:00.001-05:00

Monday, October 09, 2006

Cooperativa CEFLA of Imola

I went to the dentist for the first time in four years last week.

My excuse for not having gone more frequently was that I was living in Italy.

Upon hearing this, my dentist mentioned that Italy is producing some of the best, most elegantly designed dental equipment and materials in the world.

On a whim, I asked if he'd ever heard of Anthos, the brand-name of one of the Imolan cooperatives.

Last year, towards the end of my stint in Emilia-Romagna, I had the pleasure of interviewing Claudio Casini, the president of one of Imola's largest cooperatives CEFLA.

Imola is a small town of about 60,000 people just outside of Bologna. Imola is the heart of the Italian cooperative movement. Among this small town's 100 or so cooperatives, are the largest, oldest and most successful worker-owned cooperatives in Italy--indeed in the world.

We'll here more about Imola in future posts. Back to CEFLA.

CEFLA was started in 1932, at the height of Italian Fascism by a group of unemployed anarchists and socialists branded "subversives" by the Regime. Unemployment in Imola at the time was around 20%

The original co-op was started by nine members. CEFLA stood for Cooperative of Electricians, Fountain Attendants, Tinsmiths and Related.

The co-op was headquarted in the storefront of one of the members. The co-op specialized in producing and installing heating systems, plumbing and electrical wiring. The co-op's first significant contract was the installation of a heating system in a local hospital.

Today, the CEFLA Group employs just over 1,000 people, with 273 worker-owners. The group has annual revenues of about 200 million euros, 90 million from exports. They still do heating and electrical installation, but have since expanded to include several divisions:

1) Retail shopfitting
2) Dental equipment
3) Automatic wood varnishing machinery
4) Heating and electrical installation

You may not know the name CEFLA, but you may know some of their brands: Duspohl, Delle Vedove, Falcioni, Sorbini, Zenith, Ariam, Anthos, Sternweber, Elca and Dna-Anthos.

CEFLA is unique in many ways.

Like many other cooperatives in Imola, they have expanded through aquisition of companies in crisis (including the cooperative CIR). Typically, the cooperative sets up a holding company and creates a hierarchical relationship: members in the 'mother firm' and subsidiaries subordinate to the mother firm.

Not so with CEFLA. Here, the aquired companies aren't set up as subsidiaries of the cooperative, but as divisions of the cooperative, with members placed strategically in each of the divisions.

This makes good business and social sense: since it's unlikely that each of the markets the co-op sells to will experience downturns at the same time, members and employees can be shifted from one division to another when there is a slump in a particular market. CEFLA has never had a layoff. In fact, they were able to absorb a good portion of the members and employees from another local co-op that went belly-up in the 1980s.

All of the co-ops I interviewed invest a significant portion of annual profits into an "indivisible fund" which they don't pay taxes on, but can never payout to members. The indivisible fund can only be used to grow the cooperative. These retained earnings, unlike in a private firm, don't increase shareholders' equity--it's money that belongs to "future generations."

CEFLA is unique in this respect too: not only do they invest a majority of profits each year into these indivisible reserves--according to company regulations, the members had to invest enough profit into the firm each year to grow the indivisible reserves by at least one percentage point above inflation. Additionally, the amount that members could earn (the sum of salary + interest + patronage dividends) was capped at an amount lower than that allowed by law.

Finally, CEFLA is unique in another aspect. Despite high rates of unionization (and historical ideological ties) relations between the cooperative movement and the labor movement have chilled. The co-ops generally think the unions just don't get it. "They want to reproduce the same conflict between capital and labor you have with private firms" is something I've heard many times. The unions are equally critical of a cooperative movement they say has lost sight of its original values under market-pressures to be competitive.

Despite this, CEFLA makes a point each year of meeting with the labor movement to discuss the annual budget in the spirit of transparency and participation.

So what does this have to do with my dentist?

This aggressive reinvestment of profit back into the company is a big part of why this small, worker-owned firm from Imola is now a global leader in -- among other things -- the development and production of cutting-edge dental equipment.

So, when I asked my Dentist if he knew "Anthos." He said: "I'm pretty sure they're the leader in the new digital x-ray technology that all the dental offices will be using in five years. "

In my conversation with Casini, he made a point of talking about their dental division. This was perhaps where they were implementing their boldest strategy yet: major investments in R&D to develop the next generation in dental technology so that they could break into the American market, where their biggest competitor is the multi-national GE.

Looks like their strategy is paying off.

But I think the competitive advantage of the co-ops can't be accounted for simply in terms of investment in R&D or other aspects of the business model.

I have to agree with Casini, who told me:

"Un'impresa senza valori sociali ha le gambe corte."

That means: a business without a grounding in social values ain't going very far.

I asked him to clarify, and he said it unequivocally: "our values are our competitve advantage."

Emilia-Romagna: Alternatives in Action

2010-04-18T12:52:00.001-05:00

By Way of Introduction

For two-and-a-half years, from August 2003 to December 2005, I was immersed in what is one of the most important and large-scale experiments in economic democracy in an advanced industrial society.

In the spring of ’03, while working at my current employer the Center for Labor and Community Research, I expressed interest in going back to Italy to go to grad school. Dan Swinney, CLCR’s Executive Director, suggested focusing on Bologna.

Bologna is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, Italy's most prosperous and economically dynamic region. Emilia-Romagna—with it's left governments, vibrant network of small firms cooperating and competing in flexible networks, and perhaps the world's strongest cooperative movement—was an important model of democratic, sustainable development and high performance economics.

Emilia-Romagna, along with Mondragon, Spain, are two international examples that had inspired CLCR’s work and that we needed to gain a deeper understanding of.

In August 2003 I left Chicago for Bologna, armed only with a guide to the history of Emilia-Romagna and two contacts: Francesco Garibaldo of the region's Institute for Labor and Professor Stefano Zamagni, leading academic in the civil economy and director of the University of Bologna Master's Degree in Cooperative Economics.

I spent my first year working as a researcher at the Institute for Labour, doing work mostly in the private sector, studying flexible networks of small and medium enterprises.

The Institute for Labour is a research institute, founded and partly funded by the regional administration, that works with business and labor to implement high road, participatory forms of work organization. Working at the Institute for Labor I was able to gain first-hand knowledge of the regional development model through meetings with labor leaders, entrepreneurs and managers, as well as key policy makers.

In September 2004 I enrolled in the Master's Degree in Cooperative Economics, studying the cooperative movement with Italy's top cooperative managers and academics. Essentially a ‘cooperative’ MBA.

Thanks to my experiences at the Institute for Labor and in the Master's program I was able to have an intimate, 'insider's view' of this extremely complex, dynamic and economically vibrant system based largely on worker ownership. Often the cooperatives—as is the case in manufacturing, construction, services, farming and retail—are among the market leaders in Italy, and the largest firms in the region. Many of the region's large manufacturing coops are leaders globally in their field as well.

What I discovered in my two-and-a-half years there—through interviews with top policymakers, labor, business and the cooperative movement—is a world-class model for sustainable development, one that combines the market, participatory planning and economic democracy.

This Blog will be a collection of my thoughts and writing about Emilia-Romagna, as well as up-to-date analysis of changes in the regional economy, in policy and in the cooperative and labor movements. I hope it can become a real resource.

I’m very thankful to my good friend Dan Bianchi who’s in Spain right now studying in that other center of economic democracy and High Road economics, Mondragon. He really pushed me to start this blog and put my thoughts down on paper.

I was also extremely lucky to have benefited from the support of Bob Williams of the VanCity Credit Union in Vancouver. Without their generosity, I would have been giving English lessons and not studying this wonderful region’s economy, politics and society.

Let Me Just Vent a Little

2006-10-10T16:40:00.000-05:00

So this weekend Olga and I went with some friends to the "Awesome 80s Prom."

It's sort of like Tony and Tina's wedding, but only at a prom set in 1989. It was good, because Olga got to experience American High School in just under 4 hours. And the bully and the jock were really actors.

Not so awesome was the fact that I left my ATM card and driver's license there.

I figured, no problem, I'll just call up Awesome 80s and they'll, like, totally give me my license back.

Not.

I called Monday morning at 9 AM and Kevin answered: "Awesome 80s Prom this is Kevin."

I explained my problem and he said, "Oh that's too bad. You know, I have to go look downstairs to see if I can find it, but I'm working on a project now. I'll call you back."

He did not go and look for it, nor did he call back.

So I called again: "Ohh, you know it's downstairs and I just haven't had a chance to go and look. You probably really need your license and ATM card. Let me look and I'll call you back before 6."

He didn't call back.

So I called back the next morning. Pretty pissed.

I used phrases like "pretty fucking bad," "this is pissing me off," "Awesome 80s will not like what I will do when I'm pissed off," "are you fucking kidding me?"

The problem was that the bartender had probably put my card in the safe at Sangria's (another restaurant owned by the same outfit) and he didn't have access to the safe and the managers and owners (since Sangria is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays) weren't there.

I then accused Kevin of identity theft. He said "what, what are you talking about."

"Why else don't you want to give me my driver's license back?"

So he went to go call the manager.

He claims he spoke to a manager who looked in the safe and said it wasn't there.

Then I drove to Awesome 80s (illegally, because I had no driver's license of course). After knocking on the door for some time, I walked about 50 feet south on Freemont (the Awesome 80s ballroom is in N. Freemont) and hooked a right into the alley behind the ballroom.

I rung the doorbell of the "Bortz Entertainment Group." They let me in and I walked upstairs to find Kevin, the receptionist there.

I apologized to Kevin for my rude behavior on the phone and explained that I was very concerned about identity theft and asked if we could look one more time before I file a police report. (I learned this kind of "good cop, bad cop" routine from Lewis and Catone.)

He said sure, but that I'd have to wait.

While waiting, I started reading the framed newspaper articles on the walls in the waiting room which featured the owners of the Bortz Entertainment Group.

I then saw the owner (the one who's picture was on the wall) walk out of his office (you'll remember that Kevin told me the owners weren't in). Why the runaround?

About 20 minutes later a guy came upstairs with my driver's license, credit card and receipt for me to sign so they could collect their payment on the $6 of beer I drank.

Markets and Solidarity: Social Cooperatives in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna Region

2006-04-17T12:34:00.000-05:00

Hey There. Here's an excerpt from a longer article I just wrote on social cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna. The longer version will be up soon on CLCR's website. I'll put a link up here too for anyone who's interested in getting more details. This is kind of a response to this article about privatizing welfare.

... Matt

----

Introduction

Bologna is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, a region in the north-central part of Italy. In many ways this is a remarkable place.

Emilia-Romagna is a region that has successfully combined a dynamic, advanced manufacturing economy with high wages, high standard of living and almost non-existent unemployment. Since the end of World War II, the regional economy has expanded – driven from within by the region’s hundreds of thousands of cooperatives and small firms – to absorb excess employment in agriculture, and to consistently provide decent employment for the region’s citizens, at the same time attracting immigrants from other parts of Italy and beyond. While throughout much of the last century, Italy was a place people left looking for work, Emilia-Romagna was a place people came to for good jobs.

Today, in the face of rising challenges from China and Eastern Europe, Emilia-Romagna continues to thrive. Despite Italy’s stagnant GDP growth, Emilia-Romagna’s economy continues to expand, on par with Europe’s top-performing regions, and even outpacing the United States last quarter.

There are a number of reasons for this region’s success. Chief among them is a unique culture of entrepreneurship, social justice and solidarity and a willingness on the part of the social movements in civil society to embrace the market, contending with their values to define the character of the regional economy.

In Emilia-Romagna there is one business for every ten residents. Owners frequently comment on the role their business plays in “the social development of the local community.” The largest, most globalized and technologically advanced firms in Emilia-Romagna are often cooperatives, owned by their workers. In fact, Emilia-Romagna has one of the strongest cooperative movements in the world: 4,000 cooperatively owned businesses, active in all sectors of the economy.

In what may seem like a contradiction to many, the majority of businesses and cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna are identified with the left politically: mainly the Socialist and Communist Party and their successor, the Left Democrats. And unlike traditional social democracies, that see social services as inherently redistributionist, policymakers, business owners and the labor movement here see providing citizens with the best health care, education and social services as part of the region’s competitive advantage. Social services are not just about redistributing wealth; they are key to producing it.

Social Cooperatives

One of the aspects of development in Emilia-Romagna that has attracted attention lately has been the growth of social cooperatives, and their increasingly important role in providing health care, social services and education. Today, in Bologna alone (Emilia-Romagna’s capital, and a city of just under 400,000) there are 113 social co-ops that employ nearly 5,000 social workers and provide services – daily – to nearly 19,000 people.

Italian law distinguishes between two types of social cooperatives: type A and type B. A type A social cooperative has the same structure as any worker-owned cooperative. In this case, rather than producing a product, they are providing a social service. A social co-op is legally defined by the extent to which the service they provide meets broader social needs.

Type A social cooperatives provide a wide range of services: from home healthcare to the elderly and disabled to physical therapy, from drug rehabilitation to immigrant services, from day care to nursing. These services are most often paid for publicly, and delivered by the social cooperatives. The social co-ops compete in a competitive “social market,” for public contracts.

Type B social cooperatives are a different animal altogether. They are what we might call “social enterprises,” and are often similar to the American idea of a sheltered workshop. Type B social co-ops provide job placement services, helping the disadvantaged (broadly defined) get on their feet, learn skills and start working. While a Type A social co-op might provide treatment for drug addicts, occupational and physical therapy to the disabled or cultural mediation services for immigrants, a Type B social co-op places someone with a job, most often in the social cooperative. Type B social co-ops enjoy some tax advantages, but compete on the market with private firms for customers. I’ve visited Type B social co-ops that operate printing presses, sell stationary and office supplies, clean offices, and even manufacture parts for Alfa-Romeo, the Italian automobile manufacturer.

Often a not-for-profit association will start a Type B cooperative to further advance its mission. For example, in Bologna, Alter Co-op was started by an association that helped Italian political prisoners find jobs as they transitioned out of prison. Because many private firms are loath to hire ex-offenders, this association started their own cleaning and office-supply business – they created their own business to hire the ex-offenders they were working with. All of the Type B social co-ops I’ve visited have been very clear that they are successful because of their ability to compete in the market – they don’t win clients because of their social mission.

In order to be defined as a social co-op, the business has to serve the “disadvantaged” which in Italy range from the physically disabled, to the socially marginalized. In the case of a Type B social co-op, it must be run democratically, one person one vote, and at least 30% of the membership and 30% of the Board of Directors must be disadvantaged. This is essentially a multi-stakeholder model of governance. It’s not uncommon for the Board of a Type B social co-op to include social workers, parents of disadvantaged persons served by the co-op and the disadvantaged persons as well.

Given the region’s history and culture, it shouldn’t be surprising that social co-operatives have taken root here. As Antonio Bria, President of EPTA, a consortium of social co-operatives in Bologna, put it:

In this context, those who worked in social services thought about doing it almost automatically… a social co-op… The success of the social co-op here is because of the consolidated cooperative movement.

Entrepreneurs in Emilia-Romagna have also long known that creating big businesses to achieve economies of scale doesn’t always offer the best competitive edge. Instead, networks of small businesses prefer to cooperate, informally and formally through consortia and other arrangements, to produce world-class products for the global market. This provides scale without sacrificing flexibility, quality and the autonomy of the single firm – which is often owned by one or more skilled workers.

Social co-operatives have followed a similar trend with the construction of consortia, or second-tier cooperatives, made up of the individual social co-ops. This preserves the autonomy of the single co-op, while achieving economies of scale, reducing costs and providing more comprehensive and better quality services.

The Dialectic Between Markets and Solidarity

According to Bria, EPTA’s mission is “to marry efficient management with internal solidarity.” Like most Emilian cooperators, Bria sees profit as a tool. “Making a profit,” he says with conviction, “is profoundly ethical because it only goes to improving services.”

Providing business development services (internal solidarity), particularly to the smaller co-ops, has become more difficult because increasing labor costs have consistently eaten away at their margins, despite increasing revenues. Nonetheless, EPTA provides an important degree of stability and aid to the individual co-ops, especially as they negotiate the ups and downs of the market.

At least two of the co-ops in the consortium have risked bankruptcy at one time. In both cases, it was internal solidarity that helped avert crisis and put the co-ops back on their feet. It is not uncommon for a healthier co-op to take on some of the contracts and personnel of a co-op that might be struggling, averting failure by shifting capacity and work internally. In one rather dramatic case, management in one co-op was cut from 14 to 9, and employment from 300 to 180. To deal with this crisis, the consortium resorted to a market mechanism. The struggling co-op raised its fees, while the other co-ops re-hired the laid-off managers and workers, and lowered their fees to draw clients away from the struggling co-op, allowing that co-op to reorganize and weather the crisis without reducing overall employment in the consortium, or letting social needs go unmet. Other times, the problem might be excess capacity in a particular co-op. In this case, co-ops that can afford to shed some contracts will shift work to those co-ops with excess capacity to serve as a short-term boost.

Bria describes this as an example of the kind of dialectic between the market and solidarity (“economia/solidarieta’”) that it is his job to manage.

Competition from Private Providers

When asked if competition from private providers of social services was a problem, Bria responded calmly, “no.” Currently, there is no competition for the provision of social services from private businesses. And regardless, he says, “our duty is to respond to the mission… if someone else can do it better, fine.” Clearly, Bria is confident that they do it better than anyone else.

The culture of Emilia-Romagna also puts profit-seeking businesses at a competitive disadvantage. Above all else, people expect quality care and services, something that cost-cutting to increase margins would threaten. This is also reflected in a recent regional law regarding competitive bidding to provide social services. By law, price can only one of the factors when a government makes a decision – and it can’t be the most important factor. Greater weight is given – by law – to the quantity and quality of the services offered.

Ultimately, the social co-op’s competitive advantage comes from the fact that the service they provide is fundamentally “relational.” It means “being there.”

According to Bria, it would be a mistake to see the prevalence of social co-ops as the result of deliberate government policy. Policy shifted, in the 1980s, to outsourcing social services – once entirely provided by the state and local governments – to cut costs. The fact that social co-ops emerged as the preferred providers and not, say, profit-seeking corporations, is really due to the efforts of the social workers and the co-ops themselves. Bria sums it up nicely when describing how he got into the social co-op field:

When we started Nuova Sanita’ we invented our own job: providing services to immigrants… we were not responding to a demand from government… It’s always like this. The public actor couldn’t or, perhaps, didn’t want to [meet that need].

The main obstacle facing the social co-ops appears to be public funding available to meet increasing demand for services. This is a contradiction in a society as wealthy as Emilia-Romagna’s. Bria insists, “It’s not that the resources aren’t there, it’s that someone decides not to spend them.”

Conclusion

In the United States, both sides in the debate around privatization tend to be dogmatic and simplistic. The right praises the “free market” and private enterprise as a panacea and demonizes the state as ineffective, inefficient and corrupt. The left, on the other hand, demonizes the private sector and falls back on old statist models based on the New Deal welfare state model. The left refuses to entertain the idea of engaging the market directly. In so doing, it cedes the market to the right.

In both cases, the left and right miss the importance of new, creative approaches that are redefining the role of the state and private sector.

Both Type A and Type B social co-operatives are part of how Emilian society is redefining how social services are provided. In the process they’re turning the debate on privatization on its head. Indeed, the social cooperatives – and the broader cooperative movement – show how civil society and the social movement can further advance their vision by engaging with the market, and competing on that terrain, in addition to the familiar areas of the state and civil society.

A Provocative Piece from the Right on Social Entrepreneurship

2006-04-17T10:00:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal.

Privatize the Welfare State

March 9, 2006

By Howard Husock

No matter whose priorities prevail in this year's budget debate, it is a certainty that the federal government will continue to devote billions to activities known as "social services." These include support for everything from foster care to drug abuse prevention; indeed, the Administration for Children and Families alone supports no less than 60 such programs at an annual cost of nearly $13 billion, in addition to the cash welfare payments it handles.

Billions more are spent on such purposes by state and local governments, often through contracts with private "providers." Robust public debate has developed as to whether other parts of the New Deal legacy still make sense, but the central role of government in providing or paying for social services appears settled -- with the only question being how best to achieve efficiency and effectiveness.

But should this role be considered beyond debate? It is a question worth pondering today because of a historic confluence of circumstances: an impending wave of charitable giving at an unprecedented level; long-term projections of federal deficits, undermining the assumption that social programs can best be funded by government; and a new generation of so-called social entrepreneurs, looking to try creative approaches to help those in need, and to do so on a large scale.

These circumstances, moreover, emerge in the context of heightened, post-Katrina public dissatisfaction with the quality of government-provided public services. Together, they suggest the possibility of imagining a modern society where major social service efforts are provided on a large scale outside the government, through privately funded, not-for-profit charitable organizations.

* * *

In the era before passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, whose Title V provided for such spending, privately funded agencies yielded the bulk of U.S. social services, augmented by such local public institutions as poorhouses, asylums and orphanages. Nevertheless, such agencies -- and groups like the Child Welfare League of America -- assumed that government services would be at least as good as their private, often religiously inspired predecessors, as well as more universal in reach and standardized in approach, and thus preferable. They did not oppose government social-service spending, and, indeed, were often among its leading advocates.

In any event, greater government social service spending was certainly achieved. In terms of quality, however, it is hard to argue that things have worked out the way reformers intended. Consider services for children. Over the past 10 years, 22 to 36 children have died each year under the watch of New York City's Administration for Children and Families. A recent federal review of state child welfare agencies found that not a single state complied fully with federal standards. Then there's Head Start, whose potent name, and the fact that it provides grants to local organizations in every state, has made it immune to budget cuts. Yet a 2005 federal study involving 383 sites and 4,600 children found it led to no gains in math learning, oral comprehension or motivation to learn.

This record of government-provided services plays out today in a dramatically changing environment for philanthropy. In recognition of the wealth of soon-to-retire boomers, the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy estimates that philanthropic giving will total some $6 trillion between 2003 and 2050. Already, over the past 10 years, there's been an 88% increase in the number of foundations. Over the last decade there has been a 67% growth in the overall number of U.S. nonprofits.

Meanwhile, a wave of capable persons has come forward to establish effective new social service organizations, based on new ideas and with little or no government support. Indeed, it can be argued that we are now in an unprecedented period for the emergence of such people, who have started new types of job training, mentoring and immigrant-assistance efforts. The term "social entrepreneur" -- for those who establish such organizations -- has entered the language and become current on college campuses, where courses and research centers (Harvard, Duke, Stanford) on the topic have been established.

Thus the stars are aligned for nongovernmental organizations to play a much larger role in assisting those in need. To date, however, the Bush administration, in part as a matter of political pragmatism, has seen such groups less as substitutes for the welfare state than as potential new beneficiaries of it -- directing federal resources toward faith-based groups formerly independent of government, in an effort to "level the playing field" with nonreligious contractors. A case can be made, however, that a truly independent, philanthropically supported nonprofit sector can better sidestep the pitfalls that have plagued government. Such a sector would be likely to attract committed employees and volunteers. This was certainly the case pre-New Deal. More to the point, the willingness of Americans to answer a call to service continues to be strong, as reflected by the emergence of major new "brand name" nonprofits such as Teach for America, Prison Fellowship and Habitat for Humanity.

What's more, service organizations which rely on private donations -- whether from individuals or foundations -- might actually prove to be more accountable for their performance than their public or publicly funded counterparts. It is hard to imagine a private organization surviving the bad publicity and subsequent fall-off in donations which might follow the death of children in its care. Indeed, the possibility of organizations being punished for poor performance was demonstrated by the sharp drop in donations to the national United Way organization following corruption charges involving its executive director. In contrast, public employee unions, influential with legislatures, make it more difficult to discipline public social service agencies similarly.

The transition to a diminished government role in social services would be complex, as Americans have been conditioned for several generations to view government as the provider of first resort. And the substitute for government could not be small, volunteer-based organizations, 19th-century style -- although small, voluntary groups will, and should, always be with us. Rather, large-scale, professionally staffed brand name agencies of proven effectiveness would be needed -- much as brand name chains of charter schools are now emerging. This would require the development of sophisticated tools to match the coming wave of philanthropy with the places where it will do the most good.

Such tools might include a stock market equivalent for major service-providing nonprofits. This is not as odd as it sounds; serious people are already considering such an idea. They include George Overholser -- a founding member of the financial services firm, Capital One, now with the National Nonprofit Finance Fund -- who argues that a means must be developed so that donors can distinguish between "build" capital and "buy" capital. The former would support new, unproven ideas, the latter the expansion of proven successes. Mr. Overholser envisions a quasi-stock market in which "venture philanthropists" might put their funds at risk to support a social entrepreneur's new idea. If the idea can be implemented effectively, a second wave of donors would repay the original venture philanthropists with interest, allowing the latter to have their capital back and be free to move on to new nonprofit startups. A philanthropic "market" of this kind would, naturally, require the equivalent of rating agencies.

Such a system would, to be sure, have to emerge gradually -- after all, the general replacement of private with public sector social services did not occur overnight. But the question of whether and how to do so should be part of any discussion about the present and future of the welfare state.

*****

Mr. Husock is director of the Manhattan Institute's Social Entrepreneurship Initiative and a research fellow at Harvard University's Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

©2006 The Wall Street Journal Copyright The Manhattan Institute
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 phone (212) 599-7000 / fax (212) 599-3494

What's Lame.

2005-10-22T10:47:00.000-05:00

Well, Yast has just informed me that lame is NOT an MP3 player. It's an educational tool for teaching people how to make MP3s.

That's really beside the point. 'Cuz the new I-Tunes TV show feature IS lame. Really, really lame.

Consider this:

I've become a big fan of the new show Lost. Before season two came out, I caught up on season one thanks to Bittorrent. Sure, downloads can sometimes take a whole day, but I'm pretty satisfied with Bram's little invention.

Point is, I was all caught up by the time of the season premier. Sure, I saw it about 18 hours after the rest of the folks who saw it on TV did, but, for being in Italy, only a 1 day delay is more than acceptable. And usually the audio and video are of good to superior quality, even watching it in full screen mode.

So, I-Tunes now sells episodes of Lost about a day after the episode airs. I thought I'd give it a shot.

Well, let me tell you, Pat, I-Tunes' performance was much lamer than the episode, no matter how much you think it sucked.

Sure, it downloaded in a few minutes, as opposed to a few hours with Bittorrent. But that's about the ONLY good thing about it. The video quality was HORRIBLE (unless of course you watch it in Quicktime's thumbnail-size "normal" window). Oh, and since I refuse to pay for Quicktime, I couldn't watch it fullscreen.

So, I must admit, I feel just a little bit ripped off by Steve Jobs.

Now back to figuring out how to listen to MP3s on SUSE 10.

The Cherry Master

2005-09-14T03:10:00.000-05:00

So I just got this message on my Skype account:

[13/09/2005 10.09.54] Dan Gaddum writes :is this the matt hancock that is known as the cherry master?
[10.00.44] Matt Hancock writes: Sorry. I am not the "cherry master."

Too bad he wasn't looking for the key master.

War on Poverty, or War on the Poor?

2005-04-28T05:16:00.000-05:00

Crime rates are down, and the prison population is way up. Last year 1 out of every 138 US residents was behind bars. That's 900 new inmates a week. 2.1 million total. That's four times the number of inmates in 1980 and more than any other country in the world.

Many of these people are non-violent drug-offenders. Because of "get tough on crime" laws passed in the '80s and '90s they are thrown in jail, and not into re-hab.

Don't get me wrong, violent criminals, murderers, rapists and the like should be behind bars. But that's clearly not the case here.

But if you think about it, could things be any different?

For the last thirty years the economy, in terms of GDP, productivity and employment has grown at a snail's pace compared to the post-war boom that continued into the early 1970s. Not counting the 2.1 million behind bars and those who have stopped looking for work, official unemployment is still at 5.2% More and more people are falling into poverty each day. Despite relatively minor fulctuations, the number of Americans in poverty has climbed steadily since the 1970s.

It's no coincidence that alongside poor economic performance and increasing poverty we've seen an increase in the number of people behind bars. In the absence of an effective education and welfare system and a healthy, expanding economy capable of providing good jobs for all who want to work, the government has turned to the US prison system to keep the under- and unemployed from getting out of hand. Rather than a war on poverty, we have a war on the poor.

Are You F***in' Kidding Me?!

2005-04-16T11:48:00.000-05:00

Apparently no.

Apparently this is for real.

I'm getting this, not from The Onion, but from the Seattle Times, which I believe is a reputable newspaper. (Putting the word "Times" in the title tends to have that effect, while using a term like "Sun" generally has the opposite effect. You'd expect good reporting form a New York Times, whereas you'd expect to read about how the campaign to "Save Jordan's Giant Jugs" is "taking off around the world" from someone like The Sun.)

Anyhow, While doing my daily scan of Google News this caught my eye:
Wendy's offers $100,000 reward for "chili finger's" original owner

So this lady bites into a finger while eating a bowl of Chili at a Wendy's in San Jose, California. She sues Wendy's, but then drops the case once it comes out that she has a history of bogus law suits against corporations.

Of course the bad publicity causes a drop in sales for Wendy's.

Wendy's, in the meantime, has hired a private investigator and set up a hotline to try and find out who the finger belongs to. They've even offered $100,000 "for information leading to the finger's original owner." Why they put the word "original" in there is a mystery to me.

Anyway, looks like they've got a lead from Pahrump, Nevada. Get this: it's a woman who recently had her middle finger bitten off by a spotted leapord, "one of several exotic pets she kept around her mobile home."

What the hell!?

Anyway, doctors said they couldn't put the finger back on because of risk of infection. So Sandy Allman, now missing one middle finger, decided to leave the digit behind. "What would I want it for?" she asked.

They haven't been able to confirm whether the Wendy's finger is hers yet. The local police are waiting for prints on the Wendy's finger to be sent from San Jose to Pahrump. They'll then match it up with her finger prints which are, conveniently, already on file because of past charges related to, "a spate of pet thefts." (Charges were later dropped.)

Despite big losses for Wendy's, it seems that the locals have not lost their wits, or their loyalty to Wendy's. As longtime customer Ralph Woodman, 81, put it: "How the hell would you get a finger into the pot without seeing it in there when you're stirring it? It had to be some sort of screwball ruse."

Thank you, Ralph, for a little bit of sanity.

The Presidential iPod

2005-04-14T00:24:00.000-05:00

Curious as to what our President is listening too? Check this out.

A Rolling Stone reporter summed up his playlist like this:
"One thing that's interesting is that the president likes artists who don't like him."

This may explain why Bush is pushing so hard to get recording artist Michael Bolton approved as ambassador to the UN. He may be one of the few artists who do not actively oppose the President.

(Thanks to Pat for the article and letting me steal his joke.)

Ridiculous.

2005-04-13T08:07:00.000-05:00

RIAA launches new round of lawsuits
More NYU students targeted for illegal file sharing
As many as 25 NYU students could be sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for allegedly using a high-speed version of the internet for illegal file sharing, industry officials said yesterday.
by Kira Peikoff
Full Text

Advice From Rush Limbaugh

2005-04-13T03:57:00.000-05:00

Well, no one can accuse me of being sectarian. I'm at work right now listening to Rush Limbaugh speeches. (I would be listening to his show, but I'd have to pay for that and become a "Rush 24/7 Member.")

Anyway, I think folks on the Left should listen to Rush frequently. He's a great speaker, and you can understand exactly why he's able to connect with so many people, especially working class people, despite the fact that he represents a reactionary agenda that is counter to the interests of the great majority of his fans.

But what I really like is the great advice he gives to the Left:

"And you know, I'll tell you what, there's one thing about the left that worries me. If they would ever figure that all they'd have to do is say, 'Yep, we're liberals, we've got an agenda and we hate Bush and the purpose of our newspaper, our newscast is to destroy them,' they would have credibility because then they're being honest. "

You can listen to the whole speech here, if you like.

I Know Where I'll Be...

2005-04-12T04:18:00.000-05:00

Better than Batman? I don't know about that, Pat. but I do know where I'll be on June 3rd: watching Sin City. Which in Italian translates into... Sin City.

Adjuncts of the World: Unite!

2005-04-11T05:15:00.000-05:00

Here's an article on the elections for the local adjunct union at NYU. Dave was on the winner's campaign staff.

Congratulations!

Killer Coke!

2005-04-11T04:30:00.000-05:00

Since the beginning of his Freshman year at NYU's Gallatin School my brother Dave has been a leader in the national Killer Coke campaign.

In a nutshell, Coke's subsidiaries in Columbia have been accused of working with para-military groups to block efforts to unionize the bottling plants. According to the Killer Coke website, union-busting tactics have included murder, torture and kidnapping.

The Killer Coke campaign's goal is to get Coca Cola to agree to an independent investigation of the human rights abuses.

Coca Cola refuses.

So in order to put pressure on the company, students have now taken to calling for their universities to cancel contracts with Coke.

Coca Cola seems scared... they even sent a rep. from Atlanta to debate my brother at the end of last semester.

NYU stopped short of banning Coke from campus. Instead they recently sent a letter to Coke requesting that they work with the Worker Rights Consortium to address the allegations.

What's the next step for NYU's Killer Coke ativists? Stay tuned (or maybe Dave will update us using the "comment" feature). In the meantime, check out the latest article on the Killer Coke campaign from NYU's Washington Square News.

2005-04-06T10:30:00.000-05:00

Here's a recent IM conversation I had about the latest episode of 24 with my friend, associate and sometimes partner in crime (that's right Catone, eat it!) Pat. In the interest of not having to spend too much time on this post, I have not edited the conversation. MWHancock is me, Matt. I know that confuses people sometimes...

MWHancock: Am I wrong, or was the stock footage a little less terrible this episode?

TwistedView: Not nearly as bad.

TwistedView: And they hide it a little with the split-screen box things...

MWHancock: Yeah, that's true.

MWHancock: I'm not sure how I feel about this episode though.

TwistedView: Is it over already?

MWHancock: Yeah.

MWHancock: Remember, I see it without commercials.

TwistedView: Are we watching the same episode?

MWHancock: I think?

TwistedView: Ummm, Airforce One??

MWHancock: Maybe I just don't identify with Air Force one all that much.

TwistedView: That be some cold shit.

MWHancock: Well, here's the thing:

MWHancock: You hate the current president right off the bat because he turned against Palmer last season.

MWHancock: This season, the writers have done nothing to warm you up to him.

MWHancock: If Palmer was in danger you cared 'cuz it was Palmer, and not "the President."

MWHancock: For me, without Palmer inside, Air Force One is just another Boeing.

TwistedView: I think I'm viewing it more from the perspective outside of the show... more on the "wow, 24 has the biggest balls ever."

TwistedView: This brings it back to your "most subversive show on television" standing.

TwistedView: But yes, it would have been better had anyone given a shit about the president at all.

TwistedView: Or his son. Which was kind of gay.

MWHancock: Well, the son was just kinda "generic, vanilla, college, white kid."

MWHancock: And I do pronounce vanilla "vanella."

MWHancock: But, subservsive?

MWHancock: I don't think so...

MWHancock: The good guys are still the good guys.

MWHancock: Where's the shadow government that's subservient to corporate interests?

MWHancock: Where's that Muslim guy who you think is a terrorist and gets killed by his white girlfriend?

MWHancock: Where's that guy in the skyscraper on the cell phone with that hot girl?

MWHancock: Where are the people who paid Nina?

TwistedView: Well, shit.

MWHancock: Don't get me wrong. This season still has me on the edge of my seat. All I'm saying is that, as fans, can we hold 24 up to any standard other than its own best moments?

TwistedView: I trust you're putting all of this in an email?

MWHancock: Well, I thought this might be the next post to my blog.

TwistedView: That works too.

TwistedView: You're probably one of the only people in Italy blogging about this season.

TwistedView: To the victor go the spoils.

TwistedView: I have no idea what that means.

MWHancock: The die is cast!

MWHancock: (It seemed in line with what you said)

MWHancock: (at first I thought: who's Victor?)

TwistedView: (spoils.)

MWHancock: Huh?

TwistedView: Have you read the recent messages now?

TwistedView: And found out about Kevin

TwistedView: 's unhealthy fascination with that chick?

MWHancock: Well, she was hot, right?

Sin City... Geek-tastic!

2005-04-03T03:31:00.000-05:00

Check out this interview with Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez by Kevin Smith.

Now, the big question is: will this movie ever come out in Italy? Or will I be forced to download it with Bittorrent (which I love) and watch it on my laptop.

Eitherway, this movie seems, in a word, awesome.

You can see a couple of good trailers here.

BREAKING NEWS

2005-04-02T09:40:00.000-06:00

This just in.

My Blog has changed slightly in the last five minutes.

While the title remains, brilliantly, simply, "Matt Hancock's Blog" I've made a slight change to the subtitle that will revolutionize my Blog (and by that I mean I will post to it more frequently). As you can see the subtitle now includes "... and anything else that he feels like posting."

You see, when it was only a political commentary Blog I was under enormous pressure from my publisher to produce... political commentary. So if I didn't have something nice and polished to put up, I just wouldn't post.

But now, now all that has changed. Of course, you'll still find political commentary, but you'll also find much much more. I could post, I dunno, recipes for example. Or just write whatever's on my mind. Or put up pictures.

I can't wait.

Terri Schiavo and Civics 101

2005-04-02T08:18:00.000-06:00

The Terri Schiavo case is deeply disturbing.

Mainstream, right wing, and left wing media and the foreign press have all focused on either the human story, or the fact that politicians opportunistically seized on the case for political gain. News reports focused on the drama of a husband pitted against his wife's parents; on the left and right, pundits drew the connection between the Schiavo case and the battle over abortion rights (see Katha Pollit in The Nation); George Bush urged erring on the side of caution when life was at stake. Democrats argued it just wasn't their job to intervene.

But what almost everyone has missed is the not-too-subtle attack on one of the foundations of the US political system--indeed the foundations of liberal democracy: the independent judiciary.

While everyone in the media (center, left and right) was focusing on the Schiavo case (should they pull the plug? who should decide? right to life etc.) Congress and the President directly intervened in the judicial system because they didn't like the way things were going. But to my knowledge, except for one article on CBS News online, no one has gone beyond the specific case to ask what the implications for democracy in the US are.

Everyone knows (it's the first thing kids are taught in school about the US government) that one of the foundations of our system is the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. The judiciary is above partisan politics, the interpreter of the Constitution and the ultimate check on both Congress and the White House.

So when Congress and the White House passed special legislation dictating that a federal circuit court had to hear the case, this was a major attack on judicial autonomy. This is in fact what the conservative Judge Birch wrote in his decision:

"... it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers' blueprint for the governance of a free people - our Constitution."

He concluded that, "the Act invades the province of the judiciary and violates the seperation of powers principle."

Whether or not Congress and President Bush acted the way they did for "altruistic" reasons, or to undermine the judiciary, what's important is that they did. Taken in the context of the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties with the passage of the PATRIOT act and the deliberate erosion of the separation between church and state, the right's intervention in the Schiavo case should not be taken lightly.

Okay... Sorry!

2004-09-09T10:39:00.000-05:00

Hey Folks. Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been busy. Some good news: I finally won in my struggle with the Italian bureaucracy. I will be starting the Master's in Cooperative Economics at the end of October. But before that, in September, I'll be acting as interpreter for a group of Indians coming to Bologna to study the Emilian Model of development.

Some other tidbits:

Check out Bush singing "Sunday Bloody Sunday." I found it on my brother Eric's blog.

Saw two good movies this summer while I was at home for a month: Fahrenheit 9/11, which I thought was brilliantly made and very convincing (make sure you bring undecided voters with you when you see it) and the Manchurian Candidate, another well made film that was quite twisted and disturbing, not to mention the great performances by the film's stars.

That's all for now. Will have something more substantial up soon.

Bureaucracy

2004-07-29T09:50:00.000-05:00

What a horrible word. I even had to look it up in the dictionary because I new I wasn't spelling it right.

I know this blog is supposed to be explicitly political, but it's 4:30 in the morning and its the fault of the Italian bureaucracy that I'm not in bed now sleeping.

Italy is famous for it's layers and layers of bureaucracy. The thick bureaucracy and tons of legislation that go along with it are actually the products of attempts to protect citizens in the early days of the Italian Republic from the arbitrary authority of the state.

This protection has grown into an oppressive monster whose prey I have become.

In Italy there are three levels of bureaucracy: the central state bureaucracy, state agencies and para-state agencies. (Note: this last term has nothing to do with the term "para-military.") Many times these bureaucracies have overlapping jurisdictions; almost always they create needless hassle, paperwork and generally slow things down tremendously: whether it's applying for a visa or starting a new business, the bureaucracy is a drag.

My beef right now is with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the the Ministry of Public Instruction. I think my case is indicative.

Last August (2003) I went to Bologna, Italy to study. I had originally planned on doing an undergraduate history degree (on the advice of a bureaucrat), but then found out from a professor that I was eligible to apply for a Master's Degree in Cooperative Economics.

Given that I wanted to study cooperative economics, and that I had already done four years of college as a history major and didn't really want to repeat my undergraduate degree, this seemed like the best option.

But all was not destined to run smoothly (is it ever when you have to deal with the Italian bureaucracy?).

We quickly ran into a problem. With the new university reform, was an American Bachelor's degree enough to get you into a Master? So to find out, the University called the Italian Consulate in the United States. The Consulate in Houston, Texas!

I would like to remind readers that the current President of the United States is from Texas, since 1982 they have executed 323 people, and, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling, refuse to ban the execution of the mentally retarded.

Couldn't they have picked another consulate to ask advice of?

Regardless, the consulate was absolutely sure: there was no way that my Bachelor's degree would allow me to do the Master's program.

So I went ahead and enrolled as a history student, paid the first half of the tuition and started about the process of getting my credits from school here transferred over there.

Then, about a month after I had paid tuition and it was too late to apply for the Master's, I called up the person who had contacted the Houston Consulate about the Master's program. "Oh, you, you're the American," she said. "I owe you an apology, I screwed you out of a year."

Huh?

So, yeah, it turns out the Houston, Texas consulate is not so reliable after all. Turns out that I could have, indeed, done the Master's program.

Funny how a Bachelor's degree will get you into a Master's program in the United States and in Italy.

I stayed calm, though. Took a few deep breaths and thought it through. "This isn't that bad, I've got the visa for a year, so why not hang out in Bologna and do the Master's next year?"

Turns out that was the best possible scenario. I got a great job as a "Junior Researcher" at the Institute for Labor in Bologna and got a chance to be a tour guide/interpreter for the wonderful Bologna Summer Program for Cooperative Studies.

By the time the school year came to an end, I decided to find out exactly what I had to do to apply for the Master's program. Any guesses as to the process? (Remember, at this point I'm still living in Bologna; interestingly enough not too far from the University of Bologna!)

Turns out that to apply for the Master's program I have to fly home, hand in the application at the Italian Consulate so that they can put it in an envelope and send it back to the University of Bologna.

Makes sense, right?

Well, the plane ticket only cost $1,200. Then there's the fact that I have to take a month off from work--even more, perhaps, if all doesn't go smoothly.

There being no other option I, of course, decided to play their little game.

I withdrew from the history program about a week ago, collected all the papers and documentation from the registrar that I needed to apply to the Master's and got on the plane to come back home.

Yesterday morning, Wednesday July 28, I woke up suddenly in a panic. I realized that I was missing some of the documentation necessary to apply for the Master's!

I quickly checked my accordion folder (aka "Nerd Pack") where I keep all this kind of stuff and, sure enough, the translation of the course descriptions and my college diploma were not there.

My level of panic increased slightly at this point. With all of the self-contained Jack Bauer rage I could muster, I thought, "Son of a bitch!" Then I realized there was nothing I could do at that moment, because Italy is six hours ahead of New York and all the offices were closed. A phone call to the registrar would have to wait until 2 AM New York time.

I finally got through to the registrar's office around 3:00 AM my time. They asked me to send a fax requesting the missing documents. After having sent the fax, I called my heroic friend, co-worker and housemate, Davide Dazzi, and asked if he would be willing to go pick up the documents and FedEx them to my house. With his help, and a little luck, things just might work out.

It's now 6:43 AM, I'm really starting to go batty, but I think we might be close to mission accomplished. They're just finishing sending over the faxes. I think the story wil have a happy ending.

Nonetheless, this was all 100% avoidable.

I have a few concrete suggestions for action: (1) to simply create a procedure for foreign students, living in Italy who are currently attending university in Italy who want to change from one program to another, that allows them to apply directly to the University, in person. This procedure already exists for folks working in Italy who also want to study; (2) now this second suggestion is a little bit more radical: each agency should have one person, or a team of people, whose job it is, in close consultation with the principle stakeholders (citizens and civil servants) to figure out the simplest, most efficient way of doing something.

Of course, my encounters with the bureaucracy are small compared to what many others have had to endure. When citizens, small businesses (and the Right) complain about the oppressive nature of the Italian state, they are not wrong. This is an issue the Left needs to aggressively address and co-opt from the Right by proposing a radical, progressive vision for bureaucratic reform.

Okay, so, maybe this was explicitly political.

A Few Words on the Green Party's Presidential Nominating Convention

2004-07-19T10:06:00.000-05:00

The Green Party took a significant step forward with its nomination of David Cobb and Pat LaMarche as Presidential and Vice-presidential candidates.

Cobb's "safe states" strategy aims the main blow against Bush and the neo-cons, and not the "two-party system" in general. This means that Greens can help beat Bush, maintain their independence (and their differences with the DLC Democrats), while defending their ballot access and perhaps growing modestly.

Most importantly, Greens rejected pressure to run an all-out, opposition to the "establishment parties" campaign. Even if such a strategy didn't hand the election to Bush, it would have only marginalized Greens among progressives and the electorate in general.

For more detailed coverage and analysis of the Green Party's convention and election 2004, see Carl Davidson's commentary.

Miopia Latina

2004-06-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

For those of you who read Italian, here's a link to an article that I wrote with Davide Dazzi, a colleague of mine, regarding High Road forms of work organization. The article appeared in the weekly newspaper of Italy's largest labor union, CGIL.
To read the article, just click here.

... Matt

The High Road to Sustainable Development

2004-06-17T18:03:00.000-05:00

The High Road to Sustainable Development
Markets as a Tool for Change
By Matt Hancock

Markets are a dirty word for many on the Left. Markets are equated with capitalism, “free market” or neo-liberal ideology, and exploitation. Yes, markets can be mechanisms of exploitation, and are currently shaped by the values of a capitalist economy, but they do not equal exploitation and capitalism. In fact, markets have been around for 10,000 years—long before capitalism. Markets were a part of the feudal system, just as they are a part of capitalist and socialist systems. Under any system, they can be a tool for democracy and development; or exploitation and de-development. It depends on who is calling the shots.

In his February 2003 article in In These Times, “Playing the Market,” G. William Domhoff called on the Left to build a cross-class “egalitarian movement” that makes “planning through the market” its central strategy. The Left should abandon ideas of central planning, embrace the market as a tool for change, and use the power of the state to build a more equitable economy.

But in the age of globalized capital, a successful movement must also address the fundamental issue of who's producing wealth. To build a really sustainable economy, labor and communities need to actually contend in the market, to start taking responsibility for producing wealth. A successful egalitarian movement must also use the power of the state to make labor and community the driving force in wealth production.

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Social and labor movements in the United States have almost always focused their demands on issues of wealth distribution, while ceding to the private sector the undisputed right to make decisions about management, about wealth production. Whether the struggle was militant or conservative in nature, the demands always focused on distribution of wealth: a pay raise, better health benefits, fewer working hours, better pension plans etc.

This was the basis of the social contract: labor would negotiate a greater share of the wealth it produced, while agreeing to stay out of management. To a great extent, this worked. With an expanding economy the wealth was there and the corporate leaders were willing to share it, within limits. There was a good deal of truth to the expression, “what's good for General Motors is good for the country.”

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The advent of the microchip and the end of the Bretton Woods agreement unleashed capital from its national chains. Some managers learned quickly that they could make substantial returns in speculation and other short-term investment strategies. This gave way to the Low Road business strategy: rather than making a product, managers began gambling with a company's assets or moving production abroad. Management let profitable factories slowly die, while pushing labor as far as they could for give-backs, and then opened up shop in foreign countries to exploit cheap labor.

These strategies were not required by the market in order for the companies to survive. Managers could have continued to aim for long-term profits by boosting productivity and increasing standard of living. Instead they chose to maximize short-term shareholder returns by deliberately destroying productive capacity. They became the equivalent of slum lords in the housing market—making a big return with strategies that destroy the assets over time.

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These dramatic changes in the global economy, and the ruling class' abandonment of its role as “steward of the economy,” require a major shift in strategy for the Left. First, those pursuing a Low Road, speculative strategy must be blocked and prevented from continuing their destructive practices. Second, labor and communities must take full responsibility for driving the creation of wealth. We must pursue a High Road strategy that creates businesses that make a return in ways that build the company and increase society’s productive capacity, promote a healthy environment, fair treatment of workers, and build strong communities. Labor and community, through their own initiatives including alliances with High Road business leaders, need to seek greater control of the firm and the economy at both the micro and macro level.

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The success of this strategy depends on creating a cross-class, mass movement that can muster the political will to build a High Road economy. Labor and community need a political movement that can help them block the Low Road, encourage High Road development and leverage the creation of worker and community-owned business.

To this end, planning through the market is essential. Taxes, incentives, regulation and government procurement are the tools with which to effectively and justly organize the economy. The state should favor High Road businesses that pursue a policy of financial transparency, allow employees to organize unions, seek to make a profit by building productive capacity and contribute to making communities healthy and sustainable.

An effective movement must also use its muscle to give labor and communities the tools it needs to successfully contend in the market.

To start with we need to strengthen the existing tools that labor and communities have, like the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) legislation. The ESOP legislation provides tax incentives to companies that give employees a percentage of stock in the company. Unfortunately, the legislation is filled with holes and does not require the company to actually give its employees any say in managing the company. The ESOP legislation should be changed to make it a genuine tool for increased worker-participation and ownership.

Currently, Low Road companies receive billions of dollars each year from local, state and federal governments through tax breaks and incentives, including funds to help American companies move production out of the country. An egalitarian movement should end these Low Road practices and use economic development subsidies to invest in High Road and worker-owned enterprises. Imagine if the billions spent each year on corporate welfare were used to help labor and community organizations buy out companies from Low Road management and start their own enterprises from scratch, revitalizing inner-city economies and breathing new life into our communities.

We can also learn much from the international experience. For example, in a number of countries, like Canada, labor-based mutual-benefit-funds have been set up to provide venture capital for cooperative startups and employee buyouts. These private investment funds can be started with seed money from the local, state or national government, union pension funds and private investors. Individuals can be encouraged to contribute to these funds through tax rebates or incentives.

Italy and Spain also provide some great examples. In Northern Italy, regional governments, under the leadership of the Italian Communist Party for 30 years, provided direct assistance to the infrastructure that supported local manufacturing companies and clusters. As a result, the Emilia Romagna region, for example, went from one of the poorest regions in Europe after World War II to one of the wealthiest.

In Spain a small manufacturing coop was created in the 1950s by 5 workers and a local priest. There was a ceiling and floor to wages and decisions were made on the basis of one worker, one vote. They expanded and today over 65,000 people work in the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation complex and represent the leading edge of the Spanish industrial and retail economy. Eroski—a coopertive retail store—defeated Walmart from entering the Spanish economy.

Eminent domain is another powerful tool that government can use to build the High Road economy. Why shouldn't a city use the power of eminent domain to prevent Low Road managers from destroying a community's productive capacity? Imagine if, during the 1980s, the government had used eminent domain to keep profitable factories open by buying them, at fair market value, from their Low Road owners or shareholders and then turning them into community or worker-owned businesses. What better use of eminent domain than to save the life of a community?

Finally, a successful egalitarian movement must be able to train future High Road business leaders. Too often public universities are training the next generation of Low Road managers. Management schools that receive public money must train people to build and run businesses that strengthen society's productive capacity, increase the standard of living and build strong communities. There should be no place for the Low Road at a public university or management schools that receive public money. We need a student movement that isn’t anti-corporate but is focused on forcing business schools funded by public monies to become centers for High Road business practices and intellectual work, not troughs for the Low Roaders to continue to feed at the public expense.

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To be sure, this is a bold strategy. But if we're serious about building a better society, we need to be bold. We need to re-evaluate everything, get rid of outdated strategies, and keep what works. One of the most significant first-steps we can take is to rethink our ideas about the market. We need to lose our knee-jerk rejection of the market and build a courageous, new strategy that sees the market as the terrain on which, in addition to the state, we contend for our vision of a better society.

The Center for Labor and Community Research has been a champion for these kinds of approaches and has a longer strategy paper—Building the Bridge to the High Road—on its web site: www.clcr.org

The Green Party, Election 2004 and the Struggle for Peace and Justice

2004-06-17T17:21:00.000-05:00

Note: This is a shorter, article-length version of my Green 2004 strategy paper

The Green Party, Election 2004 and the Struggle for Peace and Justice
By Matt Hancock

The most important debate at the Green Party’s upcoming Presidential Nominating Convention will not be over who to nominate or endorse as the Party’s presidential candidate, but over what kind of strategy Greens will pursue in the 2004 elections.

Right now the main, immediate threat to peace and democracy is George Bush and his neocon cabal. They are the principle architects of the war on Iraq and the assault on civil liberties at home. If not defeated, the Bush neocons will further erode civil liberties and move to control the rest of the world. For these reasons, a Bush defeat in 2004 is a strategic objective for Greens.

Because of the enormous structural barriers to challenges by insurgent parties and the unbelievable amount of money needed to beat Bush-he’s raised more than $200 million to date-the candidate that beats him must have the support of a part of the US ruling class.

Bush has the backing of the reactionary Hegemonist ruling class faction. On the other side are the more multilateral-oriented Globalists-typified by investors like multi-billionaire George Soros-who are deeply disturbed by Bush’s neoconservative war policy. This is the faction that has the financial resources needed to beat Bush. This is the faction backing Kerry.

So where does this leave the Green Party? A Bush win is a defeat for Greens. He is the main threat to world peace and democratic rights at home. But co-optation by the Democrats is also a threat. Historically the Democrats have provided a safety valve for US elites, protecting the ruling class from popular movements by swallowing them up and letting them blow-off steam inside the Party.

It would be a mistake, then, for the Greens to endorse Kerry; if he wins in November, we still get imperialism. Key is adopting a strategy that makes “regime change at home” the primary objective, while building a progressive force capable of holding whoever wins accountable.

A good model for Greens to follow would be the anti-Bush, Peace and Justice Voters strategy promoted by the independent Chicagoans Against War in Iraq.

Peace and Justice Voters aim at building a broad-based, independent, progressive force beholden to no one but itself. The main thrust of Peace and Justice Voters is “regime change at home.” At the same time they know they’re part of a long-term struggle for peace and justice, and will have to hold Kerry accountable as well. The point is that beating Bush will make both easier.

How can this strategy be adapted by the Green Party? First, the Green Party and its candidate must make Bush’s hegemonism, and not the two party duopoly, the main target of their attacks. The choice in 2004 is not between “rule of the people” and “rule of the corporations,” but between two factions of the ruling class. This is the harsh reality.

The Green candidate should also try to “steal” votes from Bush, rather than convincing likely Democratic voters to go Green. The conservative Reform Party’s endorsement of Nader confirms that this is possible.

Most important, though, is expanding the electorate in a progressive way. Democrats and Republicans struggle to appeal to the ever shrinking group of “likely voters.” Greens, instead, must bring new, underrepresented people like students, people of color and poor people to the polls. This is where the margin for Bush’s defeat will come from. This is where a politics of transformation begins.

With no clear winner yet among delegates-Texas-native David Cobb has the single largest bloc of votes, but the Camejo, Nader, none-of-the-above and uncommitted delegates greatly outnumber him-the upcoming Green Party convention will be a difficult and contentious project. That’s democracy.

If, during the convention, the Greens choose a strategy similar to Peace and Justice Voters, they will be able to deal with the most immediate threat to peace and democracy without making-believe that Kerry represents a progressive alternative. Greens will have increased the anti-Bush turnout, perhaps even providing the margin for his defeat. But most important, the Green Party and society’s progressive forces will be in a better position to hold whoever wins accountable, and to build an alternative to two-party rule.

The Green Party & the 2004 Elections: Between a Rock and a Hard Place?

2004-06-17T16:58:00.000-05:00

The Green Party & the 2004 Elections: Between a Rock and a Hard Place?
by Matt Hancock
6/16/04

The most important debate at the Green Party’s upcoming Presidential Nominating Convention will not be over who to nominate or endorse as the Party’s presidential candidate, but over what kind of strategy to pursue in the 2004 elections.

Right now the main, immediate threat to peace and democracy is George Bush and his neocon cabal. They are the principle architects of the war on Iraq and the assault on civil liberties at home. If not defeated, the Bush neocons will further erode civil liberties and move to control the rest of the world. For these reasons, a Bush defeat in 2004 is a strategic objective for Greens.

The challenge for Greens is figuring out an approach to the 2004 elections that allows them to contribute to Bush's defeat, while continuing to build an independent party capable of challenging both the Democrats and the Republicans. Doing both is not as impossible as it seems. This paper aims to outline a strategy that will allow the Green Party to contribute to Bush's defeat, while sticking to its principles, continuing to grow, and build a long-term challenge to the two-party duopoly.

Between Two Dead-Ends

It often seems that the Green Party is stuck between two dead-end strategies: on one the hand you have the ultra-left oppositionists; and on the other are those Green Party critics who argue for a “lesser-of-two-evils” vote.

The ultra-left, opposition to “the establishment parties” in general strategy is perhaps best articulated by Peter Camejo's “The Avocado Declaration” and Ben Manski's, “Green and Growing: 2004 in Perspective.” Camejo does a good job of describing the historical development of the two party system and the important role the Democrats play in protecting the ruling class from popular movements. But he takes an often times ridiculously ultra-left position, even berating one of the Greens' strongest strategic allies within the Democratic Party, Dennis Kucinich. And while Camejo is correct that both Democrats and Republicans represent ruling class interests, he fails to grasp the important differences among members of the ruling class, and the historically specific factors the Left is faced with in 2004 (not to mention the Left's, and the Green party's, own weakness and marginality). Besides a good critique of the US political system, Camejo does not offer a viable strategy for the Green Party.

Manski, on the other hand, sees the 2004 presidential race as a “vital,” all-important test of the Green Party's ability to move from “alternative” to “opposition” party. Having established themselves as the “nation's opposition party” it would be a failure of “duty” if the Greens didn't “hold our own” in the 2004 presidential elections. One of the big problems with the paper is Manski's inflated view of the Green Party's strengths (not to mention the fact that most Americans don't see the Greens as the nation's opposition party). But most significantly, “Green and Growing” treats the presidential election (a once-every-four-years, publicity-driven horse race) as an all important party-building strategy, ignoring the overwhelming importance of local, non-partisan elections (as well as the importance of high-profile, local races like Matt Gonzalez's bid for Mayor in San Francisco, in which Bill Clinton had to intervene to guarantee a Democratic victory). What “Green and Growing” offers, opposition to the establishment on all fronts, simply isn't a strategy for building a party.

Looking at the importance that “Green and Growing” places on running a presidential candidate, one would expect to see significantly lower levels of Green Party growth in between presidential elections. This just isn't true. In the three years after Nader's run (2001-2003) the Greens elected a total of 204 candidates; that's an average of 68 per year. In 2000, with Nader's high-profile campaign, only 48 Greens won office. (In the four years before Nader2000, the total number of Greens elected was only 80). The great majority of these wins have been in local, non-partisan races. This is where most of the growth in the future will be.

This is not to say that Nader wasn't important for the Green Party. But more important was the move to create the national party (already underway when Nader made his run), to open up an office in DC, and the critical work done on the ground since the 2000 elections. Of course, none of this would have been possibile—including Nader2000—if the Greens hadn't laid the groundwork during the previous 15 years.

In short, the Green Party's success is not dependent on high-profile electoral politics, and will not, simply by not running someone in 2004, wither away.

So where does this leave us? Is 2004 simply “not the right time” for a third party challenge to the duopoly? Do Greens need to follow a lesser-of-two-evils strategy and support a mediocre candidate like Kerry who doesn't represent a fraction of the Greens' values and platform?

The short answer is no. The lesser-of-two-evils argument is short-sighted, intellectually weak and just plain depressing. This is a political dead-end. Not only does it guarantee that we keep getting evil, but it falls into the same trap as the ultra-left strategies: it offers no viable strategy for a transformational politics.

The Green Party must develop a new strategy that rejects both extremes, capable of dealing with the immediate problem of the Bush War Party and the long-term one of building a third party. But before getting into what such a strategy would look like, let's take a look at the political terrain progressives are faced with in 2004.

Is There Really a Difference Between Kerry and Bush?

Greens argue, correctly, that the two parties are both captives of “corporate interests” (read: the ruling class). But just as there are differences within the ruling class, there are also differences between the two parties. For this reason, Greens cannot afford to be indifferent to the outcome of the 2004 elections.

Bush is guided by the Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld-Cheney-Perle “War Party.” The Bush War Party represents the most reactionary section of the ruling class—the Hegemonists—whose goal is nothing short of total American hegemony over the rest of the world. This is the group that opportunistically seized on September 11th to launch the war in Iraq and has been leading the assault on civil liberties at home. The Bush War Party is the main, immediate danger to peace abroad and democracy at home.

Bush has already out-fundraised Kerry nearly 2:1, leaving him with a more than $200 million war chest, against Kerry's $110 million. The nature of the highly media-driven US elections, the structural barriers to third party challenges and the overall weakness of the progressive forces means that beating Bush is going to require significant financial muscle. Right now only the ruling class has the material resources needed to beat Bush. This is why the upcoming presidential election cannot be seen as a struggle between imperialism and anti-imperialism, but between two factions of the ruling class.

This is where the other main faction—the Globalists—comes in. The more multi-lateral oriented Globalists, typified by investors like George Soros, are dismayed by the Bush War Party. This is the faction that supports John Kerry's candidacy and that has the financial resources to beat Bush. (Soros, for example, has pledged a minimum of $12.5 million to beat Bush. ) Again, in 2004 the choice is not between Bush and an anti-imperialist, but between Hegemonists and Globalists.

Regime Change Begins at Home!

As Carl Davidson and Marilyn Katz put it, in “Moving From Protest to Politics: Dumping Bush's Regime in 2004,” a Bush re-election will, “not only deepen the misery of those who suffer in this nation, but narrow the opportunity for dissent as well.” On the other hand, they point out, not only will the Bush War Party's Globalist rivals benefit from its defeat, all the progressive forces will benefit as well.

But beating Bush does not mean endorsing Kerry or supporting the Democrats (why endorse a candidate that doesn't even represent a fraction of your values?). What it does require is a shift in strategic thinking for the Green Party. Ralph Nader is right, DC is “corporate occupied territory” and we need to shift power to the American people; the Green Party is right, we need to break the grip of the two-party duopoly and build an effective third party. But running a presidential candidate is not the only (or even most effective) strategy for doing so.

First, we've seen that the growth of the Green Party is not dependent on a high-profile, national campaign, challenging the establishment parties on any and all fronts. Second it is in the overwhelming interests of the majority of people in the world, not to mention the development of the progressive forces (and the Green Party), to remove Bush from office. This is why dumping Bush is a strategic goal for the Green Party. This means that the Greens must make “Regime Change at Home” their battle-cry for the 2004 elections.

Green Strategy in 2004

A campaign for regime change means focusing the Green Party's main attacks against Bush, while working to bring a progressive bloc of anti-Bush voters to the polls. These voters will understand that Bush is the main threat to peace and democracy, but will not have any illusions about Kerry. They will be part of a growing independent progressive movement that will hold whoever wins accountable. Some of those anti-Bush voters will be part of a new Green-base of voters and activists.

While a regime change strategy is opposed to an all-out run against the two major parties (alla Nader2000), it does not preclude running a candidate for the presidency. There is the possibility of a “safe states” strategy. Ted Glick and Art Goodtimes have both advanced such strategies. In a safe states scenario, the Green Party would not run in “swing states” where Greens would risk handing Bush a victory, avoiding the spoiler label, while continuing to build the Party and helping maintain ballot-access for the Greens in the safe states. In Goodtimes' “Big Seven”scenario, the national party would hold-off on endorsing a candidate, deferring to the discretion of the states.

Of course, there's a third option available to the Greens: endorsing Ralph Nader. This is attractive for the obvious historical reasons, as well as Nader's celebrity status. Another positive is Nader's recent endorsement by the Reform Party, which confirms his assertions that he will be able to pull at least some votes from Bush. The downside to endorsing Nader is his insistance on running “all out” and not being tied down by any Party-imposed “geographical limits to campaigning.” Of course, the Green Party wouldn't have to put him on the ballot in swing states, and the Greens would ultimately focus on turning out the anti-Bush vote, building a future base of progressive-minded and Green voters.

If the Green Party does run a candidate, they should take a page from the the Communist Party USA's 1936 campaign and work to take two votes from the Right for every vote taken from the Left. Nader's endorsement by the Reform Party shows that stealing votes from Bush is practically as well as theoretically possible for a progressive candidate.

But the most important move for Greens is first to reject the ultra-left strategies. Candidate or no candidate, Greens should follow a strategy similar to that of the non-partisan, anti-Bush Peace and Justice Voters' movement. . The basic components of this strategy, adapted for the Green Party are:

1.Voter registration/education of new and under-represented voters
2.Development of a database of anti-Bush and potential Green voters
3.Organizing “Green Teams” to send to swing states this summer
4.Focus on fielding candidates for local, non-partisan races
5.Get Out the Vote (GOTV) Drive
6.Poll Watching on Election Day

While the Democrats and Republicans will be focused on “mobilizing their base” and going after the imaginary “center,” Greens should focus on registering under-represented constituencies like students, people of color and poor people. Registration must also be connected to education about the importance of regime change at home. Ultimately, a politics of transformation must begin by effectively organizing the disenfranchised and underrepresented.

Throughout the voter registration process, Greens should keep track of who the anti-Bush voters are and who the likely Green Party activists are. This can be done by creating a database that can be adapted for use by Green locals. This way the Greens not only turn out the anti-Bush vote on election day, but they also build a future base of Green and progressive-minded voters.

Key to regime change is bringing the most anti-Bush voters possible to the polls in this year's “battleground” states. The Green Party's national office should organize Green Teams to head to battleground states this summer for intensive voter registration.

Greens should continue to field candidates for local and, especially, non-partisan races. Greens should also look for possible openings in partisan and county- and state-level offices. Building a strong, progressive base of anti-Bush voters will also favor electing Green and progressive candidates in local races.

Leading up to election day Greens should focus on maximizing voter turnout. Every anti-Bush voter should get a phone call reminding them to get out and vote, with information regarding polling locations and assistance available to help people get to the polls.

Finally, one of the typical criticisms of the Greens usually goes something like this: “If Nader hadn't campaigned in Florida, Gore would have won the presidency.” Well, what about the thousands of, mostly black, people wrongly purged from the voting lists in Florida? To make sure that this type of racist, mass-disenfranchisement doesn't happen again Greens should volunteer as poll watchers on election day. Poll watching is especially important in battleground states. Had Gore and the Democrats stood up for the rights of the thousands of disenfranchised voters in Florida, we would have a different President today.

Conclusion: Greens and Populists, Historical Comparisons

Some have compared the dilemma faced by the Green Party in 2004 to that facing the Populists in 1896. The Populist Party was essentially a farmers' party based in the south and west. In 1890, Populists won control of the Kansas state legislature. Following this success the Populists took control of more state legislatures and elected members to Congress. In 1892, the Populist presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, won Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, and Kansas.

In 1896 the Populists ran into a crisis. The Party was internally divided between two extremes: the “midroaders” who opposed any cooperation with the Democratic party and the “fusionists” who favored working within the Democratic Party and supported the out-right endorsement of the Democratic candidate, William Jennings Bryan. .

Ultimately, the Populists endorsed Bryan and nominated their own candidate for vice-president. Many Populists went into the Democratic Party to support Bryan. Bryan lost to McKinely and the Populists disintegrated into the Democratic Party.

Do the Greens risk making the same mistakes in 2004? The obvious problems facing a farmers' party in a rapidly industrializing society aside, the Populists' demise was not due to their failure to run a candidate for president. Rather, it was because of their failure to develop an electoral strategy that allowed them to build an independent third party, while dealing with the tactical problem of a presidential election in which they were not a contender. The Populists fell apart because of deep-divisions within the Party and the faction that deliberately fused with the Democrats.

Still, there are a few similarities. The Greens, too, are faced with the question of how to deal with a presidential election in which they are not contenders, while developing a long-term strategy for Party growth and influencing policy. The risk for the Greens in 2004, though, is not not running a candidate for president, but ignoring the strategic importance of regime change at home for the Green Party's growth, as well as the growth of society's progressive forces. Of course, just like those Populists who argued fusing with the Democrats, it would be a mistake for the Greens to endorse or support Kerry.

By pursuing a “regime change at home” strategy, Greens avoid making both mistakes. They are able to address the most immediate threat, the Bush War Party, and by focusing their attacks on Bush, instead of campaigning for Kerry, avoid creating illusions about a Kerry presidency; there's no making-believe that he represents a progressive alternative. The Greens will have increased the anti-Bush turnout in 2004, perhaps even providing the margin for Bush's defeat. In the end, the Green Party and the progressive forces will be in a better position to hold whoever wins accountable, and to build an alternative to two-party rule.

Note: A great deal of this paper is based on the analysis made by Carl Davidson and Marilyn Katz in their manifesto "Moving From Protest to Politics: Defeating the Bush Regime in 2004." You can read it online at: http://www.noiraqwar-chicago.org/regimechange.rtf