Netroots Nation 2008

Originally posted at Daily Kos 7-16-08

Update: Al Gore made a surprise visit, joining Nancy Pelosi onstage to an outburst of applause from the enthusiastic Netroots bloggers.

Thought I'd let you know I'm going to the Netroots Nation Convention (formerly Yearly Kos) in Austin Thursday-Sunday. I've been planning it for a long time and am really excited. There are a lot of great panels and discussions being offered and an opportunity for me to meet some of the people I've been blogging with for the last year. If you have any issues you'd like me to explore, write about, relate to the other bloggers or to some of the politicians who will be there (Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Wes Clark, Rick Noriega, and more), let me know. I've posted a link to the convention program below.

One big question for us all is what is the future for healthcare in our country considering the problems we are experiencing today both as providers, consumers, patients. I will be attending the Netroots Nation panel:

Emerging Trends in Healthcare Online Sat, 07/19/2008 - 1:30pm, Room 19 The conversational landscape of healthcare online has transformed rapidly. New tools and platforms are transforming the ability of a wide spectrum of parties including healthcare providers, patients, consumers, policymakers and experts to connect to talk about solutions to their healthcare challenges. Experts on the frontier will share the new healthcare trends and share their thoughts on the potential applications and implications for the future of American healthcare. PANELISTS: Josh Orton, Ezra Klein, Ash Damle, Melinda Gibson, Julia Eisman


As you know I am focused on the issues of Energy, Economy, and Environment and how they interrelate within a complex system. Through sharing ideas in the Blogosphere, Energize America was formed and we have begun to focus on developing renewable energies as a means of mitigating our current economic troubles. Doing so, we may prevent further environmental consequences of climate change, and prepare for peak oil (or promote oil independence, if you prefer). Energize America through Act Blue is supporting a group of renewable energy friendly candidates, several of which are here in Houston (this includes Rick Noriega for Senate and Michael Skelly for Congress. But I definitely don't want to leave out one to whom I give special kudos, California's Debbie Cook, a strong energy and environment candidate for Congress who is participating in the Netroots panel.

Update: Both Al Gore and Barack Obama voiced these sentiments loud and clear just days after this writing.

In addition, I am, being a "space brat", interested in the revival of NASA and the space program (link below). I was inspired as a child to dream of space exploration by my dad's active imagination and his encouragement of my reading science fiction like that of Arthur C. Clarke. When Sputnik was launched, he got us kids all stirred up to witness this monumental event, tuning in our fifties style floor-model radio to Sputnik's bleep-bleep sounds. At just the right moment he stampeded us out into the front yard to watch it cross our portion of the sky in Victoria, Texas. I will never forget the excitement. Later, when I was a college student, he and I formed an even closer bond working together on the Saturn moon project. He was in New Orleans where the booster was built and I was at the Mississippi Test Facility where it was tested. In writing about this experience at the Daily Kos, I connected with someone whose father worked at the 3rd facility in that project, the one at Huntsville, Alabama. He gave me the name "space brats", saying that's what his dad called the kids of those who worked on the Apollo project--those kids who had been inspired by the great adventure of space travel. Another poster recalled a film being produced in which us older boomers were dubbed as the "Orphans of Apollo" we were abandoned in our hopes and dreams due to a shift in political-economic will.

I see the possibility of reviving the economy and further developing renewable energies (especially solar energy) to replace expensive and declining oil resources by giving some juice to the space program. Once we develop a fossil fuel-free launch system (which is in the works), space travel can be fueled by capture of solar winds . Eventual colonization within our solar system may also mitigate overcrowding of our planet as our population continues to grow exponentially. The complication of declining resources, climate change, potential pandemics, etc. is likely to prompt a massive die-off during this century according to scenarios developed by Futurists. See below a description of the panel on the revitalization of NASA and the space program.

Netroots Agenda (all panels/discussions):

Panels I will be attending:
Energizing America Setting an Agenda for Progress Fri, 07/18/2008 - 9:00am, Room 12 Created, nurtured and developed in the Blogosphere, Energize America has developed innovative approaches to move forward toward a prosperous, climate-friendly society. EA2020 is working at the nexus of the blogosphere, citizen activism, local governance and Congress. This panel will highlight the strengths and weaknesses of this effort, while setting out an agenda for progress. PANELISTS: Jerome Guillet, Mark Sumner, Mark Begich, Debbie Cook, A Siegel, Jeff Merkley.

Progressive NASA and Space Policy Under a New Administration Fri, 07/18/2008 - 3:00pm, Room 19 NASA is in crisis—overburdened, under-funded and inefficient. Yet the progressive legacy of space, which dates back to JFK, is being quietly reborn: NASA can reinvent itself as a critical resource in climate change mitigation; the UN and some in the U.S. military are collaborating to prevent space weapons from becoming an arms race with China; and progressive "NewSpace" entrepreneurs are creating new domestic high-tech jobs. Before 2009, a new progressive space policy needs to be devised and advocated beyond the traditional space constituencies, to upgrade Bush's failing space exploration vision. Who better to initiate this work than the Netroots? PANELISTS: Lori Garver, Chris Bowers, Patti Grace Smith, George Whitesides, Andrew Hoppins.

Building an Economy of Heart*

It’s been some time since I’ve spoken with you, readers. As I’ve mentioned in my blog, I have been, for a while, in a period of re-orientation—one that has refined and adjusted my lens of perspective so that I am now coming into a different focus and have begun to speak in a new way. Where I began my writings to you in 2003 through means of metaphor and rhyme, and continued my message in 2006-7 through the engagement of cultural myth and metaphysics (feeling that introspection and reflection upon my experience of life so far may be of value to others), now I find myself at a point in the process of self and soul expression where words of power and action are necessary.

For some time now I have pursued a spiritual perspective in understanding and coping with the happenings of our time. I have trusted in the dogma of the new thought alliance which has attempted to make a marriage between science and spirituality through developing a “unified theory of everything” that reassured us that, through attention, intention, desire, and prayer, we could change the world—a world we couldn’t change by our political action in the 60’s-70’s. And if we could not effect change by the former or the latter, we could, at least, hold ourselves in a frequency of peace and effect the same in our outer world (in the way of alchemy). We expected, in this paradigm, that the outer appearance of strife would worsen as the old ways, though weary and worn, were clung to by those who ruled under their sanction of power. Clearly, the ruling powers, both political and economic, would fight hard to prevent our seeds of consciousness from sprouting into a full blown vision of shared power and partnership in a caring economy.


And true to our understanding of the process, this war in the consciousness of humankind, has created war, chaos, and destruction in its physical expression. Many of “our kind” still maintain that holding the “OM” will get us through the fluctuating vibratory themes in the chaos of consciousness—warring beliefs, truths, philosophies, economic theories and ideologies—to the promised land on the other side of the storm. But, my friends, there does come a time when we can no longer remain in the blessing of the blueprint—we must act to manifest that which we desire from the ethers of inspired vision. We must sound the gong and initiate the call to action to fulfill the dream we so desire. And fulfilling the dream requires that we, together, formulate a clear and detailed plan of action.

Yesterday, I was reading an article (“Making a More Perfect Constitution”) by a professor, the director of U. Va.'s Center for Politics, Larry J. Sabato, who has spent the last ten years developing his dream of Constitutional reform and is publishing a book explaining his reasoning and his proposals. He indicated that such a process of reform (as is currently outlined in our Constitution) would likely be a ten year process. I commented that if we were to apply our energies to a ten year process of reform, it would better serve us to focus upon curbing the current abuses and excesses of corporate power, the henchmen of which are taking egregious liberties with our common good. Corporate interests have, over the last thirty years willfully and strategically infiltrated our government, our economy, our environment, our healthcare, and now are directing our military in an unlimited war with the Middle East for control of the supply and price of oil while we have been asleep at the wheel! (Or while reassuring ourselves meditating on the great OM!)

In my comment, I wondered why some of the progressive think-tanks such as the Rockridge Institute (who have been instrumental in developing a new narrative frame for progressive political thinking which successfully counters the neo-conservative rhetoric holding our public and its policy captive) haven’t been brainstorming about how to implement a new vision of economy, a more caring economy, that would act to preserve the common wealth of we the people, of our communities, both locally and globally. As you know, readers, I have been using the cycles and phases of the moon to guide my active imagination and my work of intention and manifestation, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, that no sooner had I announced my desire for a comprehensive plan of action, that in the fullness of the moon, I was given its unfolding in a clear and tangible form.

In my very next session of internet wanderings, I came upon “Yes” Magazine’s fall issue which carries the theme: “Stand Up to Corporate Power”, and includes a diversity of articles which speak according to a frame of reference being developed by a think-tank and social change group known as the Strategic Corporate Initiative (SCI). This initiative is an organically formed group, one which has naturally come together after spending the last twenty years individually involved in developing strategies and campaigns for protecting the common wealth and good from assault by unethical and opportunistic power groups. See information about this group and its formation in the box below.


Over the past two decades, each member of SCI has been involved in often-successful campaigns to curtail excessive corporate power, from rainforest protection to social investing. We have worked on campaigns to abolish toxic chemicals, defend labor rights, advance corporate ethics, and block international trade agreements.
While we have helped make large corporations more responsible, we’ve failed to make them less powerful. We’ve come to realize that without unified action, we may win battles, but we will lose the war.
The Strategic Corporate Initiative is our attempt to ignite a critical discussion on the path forward. We believe that, if united, the scattered movements already creating change can be the catalytic force to create a humane, sustainable, democratic society and economy.
The Strategic Corporate Initiative (SCI) steering committee is made up of the authors of this issue's lead article, Who Will Rule?, Michael Marx, director of Corporate Ethics International (CEI) in Portland, Oregon and Marjorie Kelly, author of The Divine Right of Capital, with the Tellus Institute in Boston; along with John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, and Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC; Charlie Cray of the Center for Corporate Policy in Washington, DC; and Mari Margil, formerly with CEI and now with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.


The SCI group put their heads together, integrated the wisdom of their diverse, yet common experience as agents of change, and developed a highly organized, intensive plan suggesting strategies that would change the very nature of the [corporate powered] market system, making it less destructive of the common wealth. These strategies, they say, would enhance the "countervailing powers" (those of the citizenry) to restore democracy. A central theme of their vision is the care and repair of livable communities, communities of people who have regained control over their futures. Communities are the front lines in the battle for bringing power back under the control of the people, for “bringing corporations back under citizen control”. Communities, they say, are where the movement begins, and I agree! See what you think of their plan. (By the way, it is quite readable—it is organized into three sections: an outline overview, then a short summary outline, and finally, a detailed proposal following the original outline that is quite lengthy--"126 pages of sanity", said one commenter of my posting on the Daily Kos!)

The section dedicated to community care and repair through building economic relationships and empowering people with choice is the part of the larger plan that is of central interest to me. This is the section that touches into the territory of my thoughts about local community economies and forms of exchange that are a complement and an aid to the larger system. I will be writing more to you on this topic as the thoughts form coherence.

*See article by David Korten