Rethinking the Economy

Time for a little more “stumbling towards.”
(see blog subtitle)
As we saw last week, in Krugman’s world you start by assuming that the market basically works and then you deal with exceptions — “market failures” or “negative externalities.
What if we stopped bowing down to the Market Gods? What if we stopped saying the sun [...]

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(photo by qbubbles)
This weekend, I went down to DC’s National Mall to pick up my folks, who were in town visiting and enjoying our wonderful free museums. On the way back, we got stuck in my favorite kind of DC traffic jam: a seemingly endless stream of folks, decked out in American flags, union [...]

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Monday’s post was my last thought on where enviros should go next after Copenhagen’s failure. Grist ’s Jonathan Hiskes reports on what Enviro leaders are thinking post-Copenhagen:
In the month since then, I’ve been trying to find out how the outcome at Copenhagen changed the U.S. climate movement. Whether advocates thought it [...]

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[Part 8 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
There’s a lot more I was going to write about in this series: how to build a bigger base of supporters, media strategy, the importance of tackling race and class head-on, et cetera. But my energy is flagging a [...]

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[Part 7 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
Once you figured out where you are going to play, you need to figure out how you are going to play — your strategy for winning.
I asked a few of my organizer buddies the top tips more [...]

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After Tuesday’s Massachusetts debacle, everyone’s been talking about what we do next in DC. But nobody’s talking about the other glaringly obvious next play — switch more of our action to the state/local board. Progressive States Network explains:
the filibuster allows as few as 3% of the total U.S. population to potentially elect representatives able to [...]

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[Part 6 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
Taking on corporations around the globe may sound insanely ambitious, but boring it’s not. But using local/state government? It’s more Kumbaya than Mortal Kombat. Sure, there’s evil here — just ask the environmental justice groups who fight [...]

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[Part 5 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
Playing on the local board sounds interesting. But can we win big enough here to make our efforts worthwhile?
To get a sense of what’s possible on this board, let’s take a quick tour of what US cities and [...]

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[Part 4 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
Maybe banging heads with corporations around the globe is more than you’re up for. No problem. There’s still a much better board to play on than DC or Copenhagen — the state/local board. I don’t know a lot [...]

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I need a brief break — this time for wrestling with my Inner Theory Allegators, not because of my hands. I’ll return to the Underpants Gnomes series next week.

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