Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Public Campaign Financing... Ho-Hum?

All this creative & occasionally smart talk about Really Taking America Back is nice and all, but it won't happen until we peel the $$$ monkey off the back of candidates. I'm completely convinced that public campaign financing is the only effective way to do that, and made the case as well as I could in "You Should Pay for My Campaign," chapter 1 of As If We Were Grownups (if you comment on this post and ask to see Chapter 1 I'll send it to you).

Public financing is getting traction faster than I would have guessed. There's a really good website tracking it's progress, and a break-through column in this week's Newsweek. If you have any doubts about the issue's importance, or its political viability, go to these links. Please.

Does anyone doubt how core this is?

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Selling Common Ground

A core premise of this blog (and this may be a 'duh') is that Really Taking America Back requires a critical-mass majority of Americans coming together as an effective political force...which in turn requires the development and promotion of Common Ground to trump the cynical Wedge Issues trotted out every election season to keep us divided.

So I'm selling Common Ground. I had a particularly good opportunity to do it in front of about 100 Medford (Oregon) Rotarians yesterday at their weekly lunch meeting. This club was not exactly my cheering section when I was a tree-hugging County Commissioner some years ago, so I really wanted to engage them with this. Here's what I told them. What do you think?

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

A Great Teacher

I want to introduce you to Randy Pausch, who was introduced to me online yesterday. He's the most powerful walking promotion for tenacity, gratitude, and making the most out of each day that I've seen or heard in a very long time. All of those are qualities important, maybe essential to the task of TAB.

Randy's a brilliant Carnegie Mellon professor dying of pancreatic cancer at 47. He gave a last lecture recently to his campus family and -- well, just check it out. Through his website he gives you access to an 4-minute "trailer" of sorts or the full 1 hr 25 minute version. I don't have time for videos that long online. For some reason I made time for this one, and I'm glad I did. It's remarkably wise, fun and un-maudlin. Check it out. See what you make of his Brick Wall.

Friday, October 5, 2007

A Shot of Hope

If you're at a low point in your hope cycle, seriously doubting that we have the energy or brains or tenacity or resources to take America back (and are they any of us who haven't been there?), spend some time with a connected activist under 30. I was with four of them recently at a Reuniting America Conference near D.C. Picked me right up.

Some of them recently came together to put forward what they call Democracy 2.o. I want you to see their brief and clear statement.

What's clear beyond their passion is their connectedness, an indispensable quality for a people wanting their country back. We Boomers have much less of it. Could it just be we have something to learn here?

If you're inspired you can contact a key Democracy 2.0 organizer at maya@mobilize.org.