This first step to putting decent people (ostensibly you folk) in office is to get you involved in actual politics.
I am a member of the Planning Board for my city, appointed by City Council. I am a member of the Airport Advisory Committee, as the Planning Board Representative, appointed by the Planning Board.
These positions are, as you can imagine, seriously small potatoes. But I bet there are more than 10,000 people who are hoping I do a good job. The only "trick" is to actually _read_ the packets.
-- Philanthropy
> In that context, a movement aiming to sway corporate execs to use corporate
> suprluses in a socially responsible way seems like the right thing to do,
> ands has nothing to do with philanthropy, which relies on the use of private
> wealth separately from business practices. In my book, it does far more to
> promote social justice than though-on-business drivel of campus radicals,
> which is just that: tough talk with no subtance behind it.
Cost of Act vs. Cost of Ad Buy
It's often
(more often than not?)
more self-serving
than serving.
"Put a Tiger In Your Tank"
saved some tigers
and spent 10x as much
advertising the same
Tigers info from "The Ecologist" magazine, perhaps from about 1994
If you are incredibly scrupulous, perhaps you could say "We will take your money, but you can not brag about it, advertise your philanthropy, or in any way (other than proscribed by law) make others aware of it."
-- Dispossession
> Russia is accumulating like mad. Who's Russia
> dispossessing? (Of course Russia's growth is largely
> natural-resource-export-based, so it might not fall
> into this paradigm.)
Resource extraction is dispossessing the future. Some percentage of what is done with the extracted resources could also benefit the future.
-- Useful
In the current context, I am 100% against mass protest.
The biggest protest _in_ _the_ _history_ _of_ _the_ _world_ was simply ignored by Bush and his administration. It was described (I poop you not) as a Soviet inspired plan on Fox News. What's the point? I can only hope that we get a real news channel someday, but I wouldn't bet on it. Why should I?
We can vote.
We can change our politics locally. These things matter, and they count, and they take effect (assuming you don't violate the Constitution of your respective political administrative unit).
-- The Priority List
I think #1 is voting system reform, which can happen on as small a scale as a town or city.
It might interest you to know that the very first novel written in a Romance language, Blanquerna by Ramon Lull (1287), involved voting system reform. Lull was unhappy the way the voting for Pope took place, and proposed a method which met the Condorcet Criterion.
Outside of that, Duverger's Law says that any voting system like Americans have naturally results in a two party system.
Free the Voters to express their will for third parties.
Force the Rulers to listen.
It won't make people smarter. It won't make people better informed.