Political "Suggestions" to a New Administration posted...

My Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration are now posted...so please now spread the word!!!

One benefit of "change" is my fond hope that politics will be less important in coming years, letting folks like you and me relax enough to go back to stimulating the world with great projects and keen ideas! 

But first, let me announce that the series  of "unusual proposals" that I ran here - important ways that both the new president and the people might make things better - is now conveniently gathered and presented in a clear way. (With deep gratitude to our charismatic and highly skilled webmaster, Beverly Price!)

It seems everybody has "suggestions" for Barack Obama and an incoming emergency Government of National Sanity. My own list includes some sure to be so unusual, even you brainiacs haven't seen them before. Crackpot? Well, yes, some of them. (I'd hate to disappoint, after all ;-)  
But different. Guaranteed.

The other posting I want to announce carries forward a theme of mine... that a main political goal should not be to "crush conservatism" (that will only help Karl Rove maintain his unholy alliance), but to show decent conservatives how their movement has been hijacked by monsters... and thus break up a bizarre coalition that transformed the GOP into a modern Know Nothing Party.

(Hint: to do that, try showing your neighbors that change is needed, even from a decent conservative perspective.)

One allegory that I offer concerns a strange event that happened sixty years ago -- the Miracle of 1947 -- when liberals and Democrats went through a wrenching, painful self-transformation, similar to what decent, patriotic conservatives should do, in 2009.

Thus, we may win the greatest victory of all, one not of parties or single points of view, but of reason and pragmatism over an insane Culture War that has poisoned a once great nation.  Well, one can dream.

And now -- putting faith in people, nation, civilization, more than any one man (but hoping for him, too) -- let me shout -- enough #*$#! politics!

Back to the future!

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David Brin

 Visit me via:  http://www.davidbrin.com


PS... this was a LOT of work!! You folks helped and devoted time too.

Please do find ways to circulate the concepts. Especially, if any volunteers want to cross post at change.gov? ???

Me? I promised. Fiction. Must ... write... fiction...

Suggestion #20: Seek ways to end Culture War

Let’s finish this series of “Unusual Suggestions for America and the Obama Administration.”  with the one that is simplest and most basic. Something that seems so easy and wise, you really have got to wonder why it hasn’t already been done.  Or at least tried.

Let me lay it on the line. We have one priority, above all others, because solving it will unleash our native aptitude at fixing every other problem. That priority is to cure the sickness that is eating away at the guts and marrow of the greatest nation in history.  The nation that Jean Francois Revel called the “best hope” for the “best kind of human revolution.”  The kind of revolution that leads us to far higher horizons and to becoming better people, all around the world.

That priority is to put a stop to the treason that is called “culture war” and get us back to talking to one another again, as grownups.

President Obama can only play an important role in this endeavor.  Most of the heavy lifting must be done by us, in shaking off simplistic dogmas, in re learning the arts of negotiation. In rediscovering that skill and ingenuity and goodness are more important than celebrity or cash. Insisting that both we and our neighbors cut out the sick habit of outrageous indignation, an addiction that makes fools of us and strawmen of our opponents.

Nevertheless, President Obama will be the most important single individual.  And so, I want to conclude with a sincere suggestion to him.  It isn’t anything huge, just a gesture. Something simple, easy and cheap, but offering profound resonance, perhaps setting a tone that would ring across the land.  I have proposed this idea before: Honoring the Losing Majority. Here it is one more time.

---Honoring (and winning over) the losing side ---

What does “majority rule” mean? Suppose your candidate wins by close to a 60/40 vote margin. You can call that a solid victory, in modern political terms. But it still means that four in ten voting citizens did not want your guy in office. To that forty percent, the word "mandate" translates as -- drop dead!

Might there be some way to acknowledge the losing minority? One that both lessens their sense of humiliation, and making them more willing to accept that the winners really do mean well?  Imagine our new President making the following pledge:

"I now ask my honorable opponent in the recent election -- Senator McCain -- to help pick a panel of Americans who are well-outside my normal political or social circle.  In this case, I’d like him to help fill it especially with many varied types of “conservatives.”

“This panel will have one power.  Except during periods of crisis, they will get control over my appointment calendar one afternoon per month. On that afternoon, I’ll meet with -- and listen to -- individuals or delegations beyond my regular horizon.  In this small way, I hope Americans of all persuasions will feel just a little more sure that I do not live in a tower of ideological isolation, but that I stand ready to hear diverse -- even dissenting -- points of view."

Such a pledge would cost Barack Obama little to make or to fulfill. There is no obligation to act on what the delegations say, only to be accessible, listening occasionally to more than one ideology. More than one brain trust of cloned advisors. Indeed, the legitimacy of an administration will be enhanced if we see the president receive articulate, passionate emissaries, representing diverse opinions and walks of life.

(In fact, what better way to contrast his administration vs the Bush-Cheney era?)

  --- A return to our traditions ---

During the first era of our republic, private citizens used to knock on the door of the White House and ask to see their nation's leader. As recently as the time of Harry Truman, there was a slim chance of seeing the president somewhere in public, buying socks for real, not as a publicity stunt. Not thronged by photographers and Secret Service agents. There is genuine peril in losing this connection between power and everyday life.

If today's president cannot safely venture among us, representatives of sundry outlooks should have a route to him or her. With this precedent set, not just public figures, but individuals from the ranks of the poor and dispossessed might win a chance to plead their case before the highest official in the land.

Moreover, this would give those tens of millions who lost the election something. A token perhaps.  But far more than they expect. A gesture of respect. A vow to listen.

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And that concludes this series. (See the beginning of Unusual Suggestions to the Obama Administration)

I will post the entire series at: http://www.davidbrin.com/labor.html

I am proud to live in an era and a nation where a fellow like me -- notoriously outspoken and contrarian -- has the means and opportunity to voice proposals that range from mundane to ingenious to outright crackpot.  We all have to offer what we can, in order to keep momentum going, in this, the greatest of all human renaissance eras.

Final note:.... I have vowed to deeply REDUCE blogging, limiting myself to maybe two postings per month.  (Except for quickie news flashes.)  In fact, those who really care or admire me at all will help me keep to this promise!

Of course, this fond hope is based on a fervent wish and prayer that this nation, civilization, species has a good year ahead, a steady climb toward wisdom...

...as I hope and pray for you, in the year and years ahead.

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Unusual Suggestions for an America Undergoing Change (An ongoing series)

It seems that everybody is writing memos to Barack Obama.  Missives about “what I’d do if I were president” pour forth from columnists, political-sages, bloggers and citizens.  The official transition team has even set up an online suggestion box to sample this eager tidal wave of participatory democracy.

Of course, any tsunami is mostly water and air, with only a small amount of material that’s surprising or unique.  Likewise, most of the recommendations for the coming administration are pretty predictable.  Fix health care. Get us out of Iraq. Create jobs. Prosecute some of the klepto-thieves who turned the first decade of the 21st Century into the Naughtie Oughties.  These unsurprising exhortations do help measure public concern - or outrage - but they won’t fire off many new light bulbs the minds of Team Obama

Or take Discover Magazine’s recent feature "Advice for the Next President."  I was asked to opine alongside Edward O. Wilson, Steven Weinberg, Jack Horner, C. Everett Koop, Danny Hillis and others about ways to restore America’s position as world leader in science and technology.  Several of us urged that science education should get top priority, and that Congress restore the independent advisory commissions that Republicans demolished, so that policy deliberations can be based on facts, rather than stories.

Important?  Sure.  But also pretty obvious.

And so, I refrained for a month, browsing what everyone else was saying, winnowing my own list down to only items that are different, unconventional... perhaps even a bit contrary.

Oh, I won’t claim total originality. A few of my suggestions may have appeared elsewhere -- just not to my knowledge.  They range from slightly-skewed perspectives, to some that may seem arcane, or even bizarre. From nonpartisan and pragmatic to a few that are fiercely partisan.  But when it comes to saving the Republic, can the earnest folk in the new government afford to overlook anything?

Let’s start with the economic mess. Then we’ll continue - bit by bit - to defense, foreign affairs, domestic policy, politics and, finally, some ideas that are really out there, on the fringe.

==THIS ECONOMIC CRISIS... AND THE NEXT ONE==

1) Offer a fresh deal to labor and management

It’s a new century and time to chuck some obsolete ways of thinking.  Take this bemusing realization. On paper, the sum of all obligations owed to union workers, company health plans and pension funds would make organized labor by far the biggest net owner of capital in the United States.  

By some ways of reckoning, the workers already own the means of production. This was actually foreseen a long time ago.

Indeed, for decades, both labor and management have sought ways to avoid confronting this fact - for example, by separating off pension funds to be controlled by neutral specialists.  Labor leaders are comfortable with an old-fashioned, adversarial relationship toward management. The idea of sharing some hybrid role terrifies them.  Moreover, a few experiments in worker-ownership - such as United Airlines - seemed to prove it a bad idea. (These were contrived-to-fail.)

But there may be no avoiding this issue, any longer.  With unfunded obligations adding up to hundreds of billions, the pension plans need to start getting imaginative, or taxpayers will be stuck with that bill, in addition to all the others that are piling up.  In striving to preserve an illusion, labor may risk losing everything.  Meanwhile, American car companies with UAW contracts suffer a crippling competitive disadvantage against foreign automakers who pay far less for non-union labor, just a few states away.  A situation exacerbated by the blatant, greedy corporate vampirism of a dullard, parasitical managerial caste.

Is the solution yet another a mammoth federal rescue plan? Not without a stiff price, please!  There has to be a meeting of the minds, to thrash out an entirely new deal.

Everybody may have to give up something.  Stockholders, much of their delusional equity.  Managers, most of their recent crony-voted bonuses, even digging back some years.  Unions, their illusions. And non-union states, their unfair intra-national advantage in cheap labor laws.  Workers in Michigan might have to get NewGM or NewChrysler shares, in lieu of a third of their wages.  Workers at a Honda plant in Kentucky may have to get used to becoming union men and women.

In fact, just after I wrote this in first draft, the United Auto Workers announced (December 3) that it is willing to change its contracts with U.S. automakers and accept delayed payments of billions of dollars to a union-run health care trust to do its part to help the struggling companies secure $34 billion in government loans.

That’s fine.  We’re negotiating at last.  But it still reflects a desperate will to avoid facing the obvious.

The unions and pensions funds should “defer” nothing.  They should instead accept payment in the form of preferred, convertible stock in completely re-shaped and renewed companies.  And if worker-ownership hasn’t worked in the past, then it is high time that due attention is paid to making it work.

What should not be accepted any longer is the illusion that stockholder equity in GM etc is sacrosanct.  This is a bankruptcy reorganization, accept it.  Get past it.

On a broader scale, this notion of holding a grand conference, at which everybody sits and everything is on the table, will be raised again, and again.  After twenty years of partisan intransigence, we can no longer afford ideological impracticality.  All parties, from environmentalists to free-traders, all the way to xenophobes, will have to gather up a new maturity and go back to the old, American genius at negotiating for the best deal -- the best positive sum game -- trading away a little, in order to get a little.  So that we all can move forward.

More about this, soon.

Continue to the next posting in this series...

THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES: Suggestions to the new administration

Part 1: Unusual Suggestions for an American Undergoing Change
Part 2: The Horn of Africa
Part 3: Radical Transparency
Part 4: Watch out for a supra-national Aristocracy
Part 5: Avoid a crisis caused by "just-in-time"
Part 6: Repair the U.S. Civil Service
Part 7: Free the Inspectors General!
Part 8: Micro-Suggestions about the Economic Crisis
Part 9: Restore the Army, the Reserves and the National Guard
Part 10: Enhance our nation's (and civilization's) overall resilience
Part 11: Control the borders
Part 12: Investigate Wartime Contracts
Part 13: Restore Independent Advisory Agencies for Science and Technology
Part 14: Insure the kids
Part 15: Truth and Reconciliation 
Part 16: More Truth and Reconciliation: bring crooks to justice
   Part 16b: Truth and Reconciliation Addendum
Part 17: Political Matters
Part 18: Time to do something about Gerrymandering
Part 19: Consider a few Crackpot items
Part 20: Seek Ways to End Culture War

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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Political Suggestions for a New Administration

I just finished an exhausting push to file 20 suggestions on my website : Go have a look:

#1 A Fresh Deal for Labor and Management.

#2 Reduce Somali Piracy

#3 Save Capitalism with Radical Transparency

#4 Make Government Agile

#5 Avoid Just in Time Economics

#6 Repair the U.S. Civil Service

#7 Free the Inspectors General

#8 Micro-Suggestions to Heal the Depression

#9 Restore the Army, the Navy and the National Guard

#10 Enhance our Nation's (and Civilization's) Overall Resilience

#11 Control the Borders

#12 Investigate Wartime Contracts

#13 Restore Independent Advisory Agencies

#14 Insure the Kids

#15 Truth and Reconciliation

#16 Bring Crooks to Justice

#17 Political Suggestions

#18 Time to End Gerrymandering

#19 A Few Crackpot Suggestions

#20 End Culture War


Enough politics...I will pause to offer a few techie snippets. Thrive.

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Cheap Chemical Sensors: Electronic "noses" made from printed electronics could detect toxic chemicals inexpensively.

Technology already exists that can sniff out chemicals in the air and water -- but the detecting devices are expensive, limiting their use. Now Vivek Subramanian, electrical engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has made arrays of sensors cheap enough that they could be widely distributed for monitoring toxins in the environment.

The goal is to "identify environmental problems before they become severe, then react to them," says Subramanian. "One of the major requirements, if we want to do this, is ultra-low cost," he says. Subramanian makes his array of inexpensive chemical sensors using organic semiconductors and inkjet printing technology. The first generation of his devices, which would still rely on costly silicon-based technology to process signals from the sensors, would run about 30 cents a piece, Subramanian estimates. That's a bargain compared with several hundred dollars for today's sensors, he says. Subramanian reported on his work at the Materials Research Society meeting in Boston this week.

(Need I mention this is another EARTH predictive hit ;-)

-A cure for computer viruses that spreads in a viral fashion could immunize the Internet, even against pests that travel at lightning speed, a mathematical study reveals. "Honeypot" computers would be linked to one another via a dedicated and secure network and distributed across the Internet. The honeypots would attract a virus, analyze it...

- Richard Carrigan, a particlephysicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, believes the SETI@home project is putting Earth's security at risk by distributing the signals they receive to computers all over the…

In his report, entitled Do potential Seti signals need to be decontaminated?, he suggests the Seti scientists may be too blase about finding a signal. "In science fiction, all the aliens are bad, but in the world of science, they are all good and simply want to get in touch."