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Green For All's new boss... and mine

Posted by Mike Morin |

Great news! I'm going to the White House! And Green For All has an amazing new leader!

Special Advisor For Green Jobs: Me

I will be at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. My job will be to help shape the administration's energy and climate policy, so that climate solutions produce jobs and justice for all Americans.

I am going to be the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation.

Dispelling Some Rumors

If you've had your ear to the blogosphere in the past few days, you may have heard some rumors. The most prevalent call me the new "Green Jobs Czar."

But I am not going to be any kind of  "Czar."  If anyone were to be the "Green Jobs Czar" (a position that does not exist), it would and should be Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. She was an original sponsor of the Green Jobs Act of 2007. Obama appointed her as the first Latina - and first green leader - to head the Department of Labor. Can anyone say "Green Jobs Czarina"?

Also, rumors that I will be handing out big piles of Recovery Act cash are utterly false. Unfortunately. :)

But enough about me. My new position with the Obama White House is not the only miracle that we are celebrating this week.

Green For All's New Leader: Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
phaedra
The other magical development is the leader who will replace me at Green For All's helm: Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins.

If you were writing a script or a novel, you simply couldn't invent a better leader than Phaedra to take Green For All - and the entire movement for green jobs - to the next level.

As nearly everyone who lives in California already knows, Phaedra is a true superstar - widely recognized as one of America's most brilliant, creative and successful social justice leaders. She helped to expand health care access in San Jose and across California. She also helped to raise the minimum wage for low-income families in the South Bay - twice.

As a result, San Jose Magazine named her one of the 100 most powerful people in Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley Business Journal called her one of "40 leaders to watch under 40." Presently, she is the head of the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council and also of Working Partnerships USA. She will join Green For All this month as its Chief Executive Officer.

Green Jobs: Moving From Inspiration to Implementation

Phaedra is the right leader to move Green For All forward. The movement for green jobs is shifting from a focus on inspiration to a focus on implementation.

And Green For All needs a top leader who has the practical know-how to get the job done.

For example, the green aspects of the recovery package will put billions of dollars on the table to repair our economy and restore our environment. But those dollars must travel a long way from the signing ceremony, through various levels of government, to get to communities across America. There are a thousand ways that folks from disadvantaged communities could be left out and left behind.

Phaedra knows how to translate public dollars and promises into good jobs for everyday people. She has a track record of winning real results. She commands the respect of labor leaders, elected officials, business leaders, social justice champions and environmentalists. Most importantly: she understands the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of tools that will get real work to real people on the ground - workforce development, community economic development, project labor agreements, community benefits agreements and more.

Green For All: From Start-Up Operation to Enduring Impact

Furthermore, with your support, Green For All has moved rapidly and successfully through its start-up phase. In just our first 14 months, Green For All has become a national organization with 32 staff members, a multi-million dollar annual budget, and an online network of 70,000 people. We have won a string of victories, most notably: $500 million from the federal government to support green job training programs across the country. These funds were an important part of President Obama's Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Now we are ready for the next-stage of leadership. Phaedra knows how to turn a start-up into an enduring organization. She has done it before. I am thrilled that she will do it again, at Green For All.

This year, the green jobs movement will be focused on helping to ensure equal access to the money in the green aspects of Obama's recovery package, while winning jobs and justice in the upcoming federal climate legislation. To be successful, the green justice forces need to be able to work from the bottom-up and the top-down. Now we will be much better able to - on both fronts.

My move to the White House - and Phaedra's move to Green For All - constitute a dramatic leap forward in the potential scale and impact of the movement for an inclusive, green economy. We ask for - and welcome - your support, love and prayers during this period, as we move from "hope" to change.

Green for all,

Van Jones

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Financial System and Property Ownership Reform

Posted by Mike Morin at Mar 11, 2009 01:31 PM
Please forward this to Mr. Jones and his new employer, Mr. Obama.

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Reforming Financial Systems


With respect to the "nature of wealth", I think that the "quality of life" paradigm in lieu of the "standard of living" paradigm needs to be stressed.

"Quality of life" includes personal happiness for self, family, friends, neighbors, and all others. It includes ownership opportunities for all and everybuddy having the things they need, including health, healthy and loving relations with family, friends, neighbors, and all the people of the world. It includes peace on earth, and it includes a future for all the children of the world.

"Standard of living" implies maximizing the consumption of things.


The current Capitalist dominated system is dysfunctional both from an equity/fairness and economic and natural resource sustainability perspective.

The dominant paradigm in Capitalist financial business operations uses something called the discount rate which assumes that money will be worth less (eventually worthless) in the future, thus creating a necessity to extract profits exceeding a "hurdle" rate leading to unfair and unwise exploitation of both workers and natural resources, and to rampant inflation.

The use of credit is not a good business or personal practice. In business, it should be discouraged because creditors have first claims on net revenues and hold liens on real property and capital assets. For "consumers", the use of credit is unwise because the system is set up to extract profits from interest thus assuring that when consumers use credit that they are losing money relative to inflation. Certainly the current foreclosure crisis in the USA is ample evidence of the inflation and the unfairness and unhealthiness of the mortgage lien process.

Credit Unions and Mutual Insurance companies are in theory attempts to institute non-profit economic democracies for their respective industries. However, because of the need to compete for customers, both of these relatively progressive financial service organization types are forced to play the same game that is basically destructive to individuals, families, communities, and the natural environment. Ideally, credit should only be used as a last resort, much more preferably not at all. We should replace all aspects of the extant financial system with an Equity Union. In some ways, a mutual insurance company is similar to an equity union. However, because such companies are required to realize profits in order to compete for "policy holders" (really investors), the companies that comprise the portfolios of the mutual insurance firms cannot be not-for-profit, can not be mutual organizations themselves.

In a not-for profit Equity Union financial services system based on principles of mutuality working in concert with ethical, wise, knowledgeable, and intelligent community, inter-community, inter-regional, and worldwide planning there would certainly be an important role for financial service workers.

A major impediment to such an Equity Union would be the competitive advantage of the current financial sector and the fear of the friction of change to those individuals and organizations. Dealing with this sector of "the" economy, it would be more feasible with regards to Capitalist resistance and more humane, to orderly and peacefully transition to an Equity Union, coordinated with ecologically sound economic planning.

I am writing and talking about transitioning slowly, methodically, and with the minimum amount of friction and hardship from a dysfunctional financial system, based on self-interest, to one designed to benefit everybuddy.

At risk of understatement, it will take a huge amount of work to educate folks to the need and benefits of such change and to communicate the basic Plan. Transition Planning will also be a very difficult process, but I see no alternative to the current, impending and worsening global economic, political, social, and natural environmental collapse.

The Peoples' Equity Union concept is designed to be a grass roots, popular choice "movement". I am organizing with individuals, workers, and shopkeepers in my neighborhood, adjoining neighborhoods, and through the inter-net to whomever I can attract an interest in the concept.

The focus is primarily local, yet global at the same time. It is my dream, not a hope yet, to encourage a critical mass of people to organize locally around a unifying mission, unifying principles, unifying strategies, and unifying tactics in order to minimize the amount of executive administration at the regional and global levels.

The theory is that neighborhood locales, the neighborhood community/worker hybrid association will have maximum autonomy and will be guided only, in their inter-community and inter-economic sector relationships by regional Planning Boards and a Global Policy Committee.

We must replace the current equity trading systems, corporate conglomerate corporations, insurance companies, and usurious banking systems of the Capitalist status quo with a worldwide Peoples' Equity Union with branches in every community/neighborhood.

The goal is to be a true economic democracy: of, for, and by the people.


Housing and Property Ownership

Concurrent with financial systems reform, discussed above, where equity sharing and not-for-profit equity investing would replace the current financial paradigm of for-profit equity investing, equity trading, and usurious credit arrangements, we need to evolve to a different system with respect to residential and other real property occupation arrangements.

In lieu of rent or leases, people should be allowed to acquire equity in their abodes and business properties. For example, in the case of an apartment, if one paid $500 per month to a property management firm, let's say $50 per month would go to property maintenance, and another $40 to administration fees, insurance, etc. This would leave the resident with $410 of accumulated equity added to their account each month. If we had a large cooperative housing organization (preferably world-wide, and preferably the only form of property ownership) then when someone had to move or wanted to move, they could take their equity with them to the new property.

With regards to mortgages, they are horribly usurious and should be banned. The scenario related above would also replace the current system of financing "home ownership loans".

A huge problem that we are facing now is the terrible inflation in the market values of real property (and capital assets, for that matter). If we pooled our equity, pooled our assets, and collectively wrote off our liabilities, then we could significantly write down the market values of real and capital assets.

 
Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com

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