Response to the Neanderthals

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090602_geography_recession?utm_source=LG&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIFLSFILG091229151087


Dear Jim Archibald,

Grade school Geography about the Midwestern "breadbasket", but one certain consideration that these ridiculous neo-cons seem to be overlooking is that food has to be produced, not just transported.

True, if we have anything left, perhaps we could go back to draft horses, river transport, etc., but to claim that an evolutionary Capitalist "free market" is the path is absurd. We are in overshoot and the population is and will be without coordinated education, effort, and action too ignorant, too incapable, and too old, and too few for any sort of survival to occur.

It is an evolutionary dead end, without the rational evolution to Homa Cooperativo.

Concerning their claims that the US Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, will be/is breaking the back of OPEC is profoundly premature.

By the way, any freezing in the Mississippi Waterway?, and any recognition of the reality of the fossil fuel bust that is going to wreak havoc on an ignorant people who just assume that the ignition is an extension of the hand?

Oh yeah, with all the dead putrefying bodies even the most primitive agriculturalists will not stand even the slightest chance.

By the time the dust clears on the largest cataclysm of all time, such a question would hardly be worthwhile.

But go see Avatar, I guess. The cataclysm will be on some planet far away. The cyclical market will rebound and we only have to switch on cruise control and wait for the invisible hands to continue their WMD performance of aggravated rape on this bountiful land.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Posted to Michael Moore's Website: 12/30/09

As we neglect the needs of the frozen North American Continent, Obama vacates for Hawaii.

For those of you who are not acutely observant, I pointed out at the time that Private WarBushitler appointed Karzai, that it was quite an appropriate name for a USA ally.

Ham=Pig Meat, Id=Rash Behavior, Karzai= Auto Headlamp.

AmeriKar Bombs and Drones.

Please USA admit to yourselves and the world that the 20th Century was a fluke of human history and let us commit to the peaceful adjustment that conserves the fossil fuels and all valuable resources.

Now, if you all would rise up and show the appropriate amount of indignation, instead of cruising in your rods, I'll make a very successful attempt to perform "Invisible Hands Don't Make It".

By the way, in a moment of blue skying, I called Directory Assistance for Flint, MI and got the number of a Michael Moore. Got his answering machine. Sounded very African American.

So, Michael, in your genius but willy-nilly target market Capitalism attacks on the status quo, if you care to take our work in a more positive benevolent direction, then why don't you contact me...


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
512 W. 10th Avenue, #2
Eugene, OR 97401
(541) 343-3808
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net

Response to "Local" Genius

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkugyv2Mkk


----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Morin
To: rlogan@igc.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: new paradigm of development


Ravi (and Jason),


With respect to your Post-Peak "Moment":

They'd rather drive.

Also, there is not a cooperative (or intelligent) bone in the USA Body Politic.

All seriousness aside, allow me to make the following commentary:


Good work.
I agree with almost all of what you say.

The planning locus needs to be the village/neighborhood with inter-community unity and cooperation within the watershed (planning region) and, of course inter-regional unity and cooperation.

Federation? That smacks of nationalism. No, thanks. There would need to be a world around unity and cooperation and accord and inter-regional trade and peace relations directly established and carefully nurtured.

I echo the moderator's questions as to how do we get from where we are to our desired destination. Also, where do we start?

I recommend that we abolish the Federal Reserve System and maintain the US Treasury to allocate notes and coinage to Regional Administrative Agencies (Equity Unions) that would allocate money to ecological economic redevelopment community betterment projects and programs based on explicitly stated and inculcated mission and principles. Eventually, a world currency may be the goal.

When you mentioned cooperatives, you omitted housing and other real assets. It is imperative that we completely overhaul the way that we deal with ownership relations in ALL sectors of the economy, particularly the financial/resource allocation sectors. We must fundamentally change the ways and means by which resources are allocated to and within communities and among and within economic sectors.

Very importantly, I will repeat one of my most important messages, that we in the United States and similar environs, need to reduce automotive vehicle use by 80% in the next twenty to forty years. This is absolutely essential to the survival of the species. All "permanent culture" designs, endeavors, projects, programs, and policies need to embody this goal.

More than just models, we need reality.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
----- Original Message -----
From: rlogan@igc.org
To: Mike Morin
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 2:32 PM
Subject: new paradigm of development



This finally got posted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNkugyv2Mkk

Let me know what you think.

Ravi

Response to "LA Progressive" Editorial - It has Nothing to Do With Obama’s Ethnicity

Duh,

The "fact" that O'Bomber is half African American has nothing to do with his behavior and the racist comment about AA's running away from a noble fight is absurd.

I have blue eyes and I know the problem is that O"Bomber is nothing more than a servile puppet of the militaristic Capitalist moneyed class, colored darker and kinked to be audaciously and atrociously sold to the liberal target market as at least, turns our at most, better than the alternative.

The slander on African Americans is ridiculous and un-called for. Among ethnic groups in the USA, the AAs have the most historical, longest lasting, and strongest radical tradition. As a French-Canadian/Sicilian American from Labor Heritage and an almost lifelong Cooperative Communitarian (Socialist/Communist), I find it easier to reach out and feel solidarity with "black" Americans.

I am frustrated by the ignorance and complicity of "white" people and their inability or lack of willingness to understand and embrace a radical agenda, even if presented in a most peaceful, orderly transition language.

I know it is an oversimplification to say White is to Capitalism as Black is to Socialism, but the History of the OEO of the 1964 Civil Rights Act suggests strongly that the appeal to O'Bombers "blackness" was an audacious rip-off of the legacy of Dr. MLK Jr.

Bringing "whites" into the fold, who seem to believe that freedom is equal to lack of responsibility to, for many, self, and to almost all, others, is problematic.

Chavez is the closest thing we have to a world leader. There is none in the US. His Bolivarian mantra almost draws the line in the sand between White Capitalism and Brown Socialism. If Obama thrusts us into full blown World War 4 in his ignorant attempt to enforce World Manifest Destiny then surely it will be the acts of a Capitalist Oreo and has no reflection on his ethnicity.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR

Point of Clarification – Terminology: Posted to Venezuelanalysis.com on 12/26/09

The word "Bank" makes me shudder.

In Business School, we learned that "Banks" were investor owned.

Surely the nationalization of such implies that the government will be holding ownership shares in trust for the benefit of the poor and the workers. While nationalist borders are not ideal, such would seem to be a prudent intermediary step, given that the administrators are not corrupt.

Consistent with Hugo's Communitarian philosophy those assets need to be applied to community betterment projects and a portion of not-for-profit endeavors earmarked for other programs and projects.

Certainly, Chinese know-how could be helpful to the folks of ASA, but "investments"? (Which seem contradictory to the non-exploitation goals being espoused and carried out by Mr. Chavez).


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Troubled by the Terminology – Posted to Venezuelanalysis.com on 12/26/09

Though I understand Chavez's Maoist philosophy and therefore applaud cooperative relations with China, I am troubled by the word "investment" (Chinese "investment" in Venezuelan economic development).

Such suggests an expropriational relationship with respect to land and labor.

The US has had an exploitative relationship with China for the last generation (be it mostly with Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai?) which has been exploitative of Chinese labor and contradictory to the interests of USA workers and coming to fruition, owners, as it seems that the schism between diluted assets ownership and the mushroomed liabilities of many or most has created a tremendous mess for the folks in the USA.

Maybe it is a Maoist plot to: "I didn't come to praise Reagan, I came to bury him"

I don't know.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Letter to "Capitalist" Friend

Ian,

I am writing to request your assistance with respect to my strategy to transition the Private Investment Sector to a Quasi-Public Equity Sharing One. Certainly, if you have perused my web log you would have gleaned reference to such a fundamental paradigm shift from Capitalism to Socialism.

Recently, the USW (United Steelworkers) signed a letter of intent with the Mondragon Cooperative Community Corporation (MCC), a rather hopeful, peaceful evolutionary model that originated in the Basque Region of Spain and has grown tremendously (not without its problems associated with trying to integrate into the Capitalist Economy). I have been trying to work with USW, but have so far been rebuffed. My, not brazenly presented, suggestion that seriously pursuing such an intent translated to evolving the acronym USW to United Socialist Workers was rejected in an arrogant, reactionary manner.

I am frustrated by the apparent lack of historical perspective and long range vision that our Labor "leaders" possess.

Anyway, thee should read about Mondragon. I'll give a very brief recap.

They were formed in the Basque region of Spain, called Mondragon because it was a FORMER region of iron ore deposits and iron and steel smelting. The people of the region were separatists continuing rebellion in sympathy with the revolutionary movement in Spain, of which they were part, that was defeated by the notorious forces of Franco.

The Mondragon system came about as an attempt to positively channel the Socialist ideals of the communities in the region. They started not-for-profit workers' cooperatives with pre-determined revenues earmarked to re-invest in new workers' cooperatives. Being a very principled and democratic organization, based on the principles of the International Cooperative Alliance, and being fortunate enough to be starting while the Capitalist economy, within which they were working, was still in a growth phase (unlike the very dangerous resource constraints that the world faces now) and astute enough to find opportunity, they were fabulously successful.

They grew so much, so fast, that they began to and increasingly to stray from the ideals upon which they were formed, eventually being corrupted by their perceived growth needs and less than fully principled leadership that saw, rightly or wrongly the need to integrate themselves into the ways of Capitalism as they began joint ventures with less than principled Corporations.

Being a product of their times, they are not and never were "green".

Our discussion of Zip-Car, which I stated to be a less than optimal co-optation of the great and necessary idea of vehicle cooperatives, could be a small move in the right direction if it were structured as a not-for-profit worker/community hybrid cooperative.

Your thoughts?


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
(541) 343-3808

From a Discussion of Agriculture

Arable land, has always been precious, and from an anthropocentric view point, at least until our species began gardening and then farming.

However, farmers and farmworkers have been severely mistreated almost since the beginning of that evolution.

I point to Shay's Rebellion as a relatively recent example.

While I agree with your sentimental statement about work hard, love well (mixing oil and water?) and care for ourselves and others, I would reckon that you are just showing your underbelly and are sufficiently knowledgeable and experienced to understand that we must remain truely Cynical, and that in a way we may be damned if we do and damned if we don't concerning the reality that it might take fighting to overcome.

We all should know and understand that fighting just leads to more fighting and any hope of any race or nation that they are the Master Warriors is wrong, both from a perception and a reality.

Extinction comes from many strategies, and we as Homo Sapiens are on a many pathed linear trajectory towards exactly that. It will take nothing short of a conscious evolution of the whole world of men and women to the evolution of Homa Cooperativo to solve this piece and all the others necessary.

We live in a time when it is possible, unlike any time before, to communicate with each other. My sadness comes from the apparent fact that there is too much diffusion and triviality associated with that ability. Also, to restate the extinction claim, we are living in by far the most precarious time in the history of Man.

Much more than likely, the sins of agriBUSINESS will not yield with a simple loving plea. AgriBUSINESS like all the competitive Capitalist pursuits will probably try to run its course of genocide, ecocide, and suicide. As likely, farmers will wither away as their occupation will become so impossible and so distasteful that no one will enter it.

In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Clarifying the Peoples Equity Union Concept

Collin,

Thank you for writing.

As you know, the banks not only charge interest, but most often issue a lien (i.e. they want collateral for the loan).

The entire Capitalist paradigm, whether it be in credit relations or equity relations, however inequitable the latter and former usually are, is based on the self-fulfilling, inflationary, and wasteful assumption called the time value of money, sometimes referred to as "the discount rate", which assumes that money will be worth less in the future. And, as we can see by the housing market, as the most burdensome example, eventually worthless.

Such a system sets off furious, irrational competition for businesses and institutions (I make the distinction because business can be productive and institutions tend to be exploitative) who set as their objective a "hurdle rate", "internal rate of return", "return on equity" rather than the meeting of peoples needs.

I have read Greco's book. I did not finish it. It started out good when he explained his personal history and intentions but deteriorated soon.

I am in favor of keeping the Treasury and eventually evolving to a world currency. The Federal Reserve should be abolished, although I am uncertain about the concept and role of "reserve notes". Thinking it through, it is an extension of the inflationary paradigm that I referred to earlier in this note. We must proceed very cautiously in phasing out or down such a system.

I strongly believe that we should redefine the credo word to be equity sharing, only because of the bad connotation that that credit has evolved to date. Equity sharing should replace "lending", equity trading, and equity investing.

I hope you comprehend and can appreciate and share this communication.

Please feel free to continue the conversation.


In Peace, Friendwalkin', Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Regarding Transportation Issues

I'm not sure that rail is more efficient than bus. If I am wrong, in my uncertainty, please edify.

Back East, in the USA and northern further eastern reaches, they certainly have enough, if not too much, in the way of rail.

One reason, that I prefer bus to rail is that it seems that it would be easier to make them much quieter. Please correct me, if I am wrong.

In Boston area, for example, the electric? (inefficient use of fuel) and direct power trains can be noisy as HELL, although relatively quiet at low speeds. All this bunk about bullet trains is both incognizant of that and of the terrible risk both in and outside the trains.

My suggestion for Boston, for example is to convert some, if not many, if not all, of the train lines to walking, bicycling, electric? (or at least quiet and relatively slow moving vehicles for the infirm) paths.

Commuter trains must take the human environment into consideration.

Here in Eugene, Oregon, as in most "points" "West", my reply to the AMTRAK corridors, is the same with the additional query, do you all really need to travel those corridors and if so, how often? Again, the issue of a quieter bus comes to mind.

The issue in sprawl communities is best stated relative to the walkability issue (i.e. the non-existence of village centers that would serve muliple beneficial purposes including having the availability of necessities and reasonable wants within walking distance for (almost ( I qualify because there will probably need to be rural exceptions, not to the village center concept, but to the walkability goal)) all.

Of course, new urbanism has been a mantra for some time now, but has been a failure. The reason for the failure has been primarily because it has left the allocation of resources up to the blatantly irrational so-called "free market" system.

Enough for now.

I invite and encourage all to respond, even if it is just in the affirmative (because it is really important and time is of the essence that we go beyond just planning and into the implementation).


In Peace, Friendwalking, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Hold It! Advise Regarding the Use of Fossil Fuels

It is very important to the people of Nigeria and Venezuela and elsewhere to let social/environmental policy supercede "economic". In other words, be ecological about your economics and don't fall prey to the dictates of the so-called "free market"

Fossil fuel and potential fossil fuel producers are facing a dilemma in that if they want to grow their revenue streams they must yield to the gluttonous demand, mostly being perpetrated by the USA.

The USA must yield and commit to a massive reduction in their gluttony.

It is good advice that you all protect the cleanliness of your land and waters and to whatever extent it is relatively environmentally acceptable to extract (desert environments) that you steward those resources for optimizing your own habitat improvements and for future generations the whole world round.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Related to Foreclosure Problem: Posted to Michael Moore 12/12/09

Here's a huge part of the problem. Some people make the majority or more of their income off of ownership "dividends". Can't say how many of them are greedy and how many are just getting by, themselves.

Certainly, it would be easier to work with those who only make a small part of their income from economic rents (i.e. mortgages, rental collections stock dividends, equity trading, etc.). One can hope that those who are greedy can and will forego their greed and release their competitive advantage grip, but it almost goes without "saying" that they would be more problematic to a cooperative world.

Those who are just getting by (in a humble manner) with such incomes could perhaps be more easily persuaded to join the work force, especially if job training were made available to them.

Anyway, given the "invisible handed" practice of Capitalism, we are unjustly finding ourselves at the mercy of the unscrupulous, the evasive, the uncaring, and the irresponsible.

Some talk and write about Revolution, but it would be a whole lot easier to overthrow the government(s) than it would be to realize any real economic gain, especially a sustainable cooperative scenario, with violence.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR

Mortgage Defaults and Related Capitalist Fallaciousness

Let's not quibble about minor adjustments, "loan modifications", that cannot begin to deal with the structural malaise of a mortgage default and possible ensuing eviction.

The first matter at hand, is can we have a moratorium on evictions, both mortgage and rental related? It seems as the Chief Executive, Obama could issue an executive order relative to such. Whether it be heeded on local levels is an entirely different question.

More fundamentally, the whole mortgage/lending and landlord/tenant reality of the Capitalist system is wrong. When I make a payment of $500 to my property management firm, what good reason is there that I should not be getting at least $350, if not $400, of equity from such a payment?

Such a world unity cooperative housing policy and program needs to replace the current Capitalist rip-off.

We have to recognize that first, and come together as a peoples' union to demand that we be treated as such.

Similarly, the exploiters need to organize to protect whatever legitimate interests they may have and to work with us on a transition strategy.

I understand the cutthroat mentality of the Capitalists. I am not naive. But the massive suffering that we have been experiencing and being realized by an accelerating segment (One argument is that we are only beginning to discuss it because it is now starting to effect the ownership "class") in the real estate/financial sector as in all sectors of the economy is due to the complete inequity, fallaciousness, inhumanity/uncaring nature that has been the Feudal/Mercantile/Capitalist evolution.

Tinkering will not suffice.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union

Letter to Fred Redmond ("Civil Rights" Rep.): AFL-CIO Blog 12/11/09

Liked your s'peach, Fred.

S'peace!

USW has signed a letter of intent with Mondragon. To me, and hopefully for the enlightened all, that should translate USW to United Socialist Workers.

IWW would best be International Workers of the World, until that ideal day when there are no borders. It should also be Industrious Workers of the World, because the concerns of humanity strongly translates to much happier workers (and May I add Equity holders) when there is artisanry in their occupation.

I have tried to communicate with Witherell, Garrard, and Trumka (and others). The following may be of interest:


12/7/09 Post to AFL-CIO Blog


Yes, Cherry, you are correct.

There have always been these tendencies relative to Labor/"Management" Relations, and the real exclusion of thinkers, organizers, agitators, and brave strikers and fighters who often if not most of the time had the best interests of workers and the benefit of the poor, and more recently the natural environment/resource base in their minds, their hearts, their bodies.

You are right that Organized Labor has been, as we so colorfully say, "blown out of the water", particularly in the last thirty years. I would venture a guess that many if not most who built the once strong labor movement in the USA, if alive, would admit that their complicity with Capitalists after they achieved a relative parity was a huge strategic mistake.

Did you know that Lawrence Summers, who was Clinton's Treasury Secretary and Geithner's boss and mentor, before the latter became Chief of the Federal Reserve of the Empire City was one of Ronald Reagan's Chief Economic Advisors?

Anyone who had a good introductory Economics course would know that Say's "Law", which supply-side economics is based on, is totally fallacious.

We now find ourselves in the very precarious position of a post over-supply side economy, where the off-shoring has deadened demand and accompanied by an imploding finite resource supply.

That's all for now.

It looks like the best we can do, these days, is keep chippin' away.

I have a sincere Cynical hope that that will change soon.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR
(541) 343-3808

Regarding Growth, Climate Change, Post-Peak Fossil Fuels and Ecological Economic Redevelopment

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Morin
To: Workers World
Sent: Friday, December 11, 2009 11:28 AM
Subject: Re: Addicted to Growth


No shit, Sherlocks!!!

But, Climate Change as the Central Issue?

What is the temp. in NYC as you read?

Post-peak fossil fuels is the environmental issue, and thee all better hope that we are not approaching what some analysts say is an "Odluvai Gorge" (i.e. a precipitous drop) in the supply of fossil fuel heating, cooking, and electricity resources. Then, of course, even if it is a relatively plateuish situation, there is the issue of effective demand.

The ecology of the situation calls for a fundamental socialist paradigm plan and implement eduaction campaign, commitment and realization of ecological economic redevelopment.

Please feel free to contact me regarding further elaboration.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene (hell, it's even cold out here), OR

Health Care Reform: 12-9-09 to AFL-CIO Blog

Incremental Change was not good enough almost 20 year ago when I wrote to the US House of Lords, Kennedy and Kassebaum, and was told by Mick Moran that my five basic pillars, er, principles were "too radical" and ny Dean Rosen, who would later go to work for a British Pharmaceutical Company, that the Senator said, "We have to do things incrementally".

Here it is twenty years later, and I have gone far beyond just stating the basic principles.

Yet, all we get is BS out of DC. Of course, DC cannot do it by themselves. I believe that is the first thing we must recognize.

I have been trying to get my health plan clear and communicated to everyone, but that is a very difficult charge (even worse than Anthony Mason ;-) ) given a limited stage and the frustration of non-response to my efforts.

Oui? Si?
See? We? d
Kelp!
I need somebuddy
Kelp!
Everybuddy!
- with the greatest respect to John Lennon


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation. and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples Equity Union
Eugene, OR
(541)343-3808

ProvidersUnion: Posted to “Michael Moore”

I ain't fakin'.

Now, here's the "prescription". All the Physicians and Allied Health Workers and the Owners and Workers of Hospitals and Insurance Companies join that Union and face the FACT that their revenue levels be reduced by, let's say 30 to 40% in the next ten years and staffing levels cut to a similar, yet somewhat less, amount.

There will be unemployment compensation for all workers and eventually for the uninitiated a lesser guaranteed income. All efforts by the Union working within and with other sectors would be to try and guarantee placement and/or re-training.

For example, there needs to be an increased presence in the field of wellness education and wellness policy and program implementation. I am not "talking" about the early screening shams, I am writing about environmental/public health issues. There will also be need for the ethical practice of sorting out what is really medically necessary and beneficial relative to the terrible fraud and abuse practiced by the medical profession and rammed down our every orifice by the medical industrial complex.

Enough for now.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR

12/7/09 Post to AFL-CIO Blog

Yes, Cherry, you are correct.

There have always been these tendencies relative to Labor/"Management" Relations, and the real exclusion of thinkers, organizers, agitators, and brave strikers and fighters who often if not most of the time had the best interests of workers and the benefit of the poor, and more recently the natural environment/resource base in their minds, their hearts, their bodies.

You are right that Organized Labor has been, as we so colorfully say "blown out of the water", particularly in the last thirty years. I would venture a guess that many if not most who built the once strong labor movement in the USA, if alive, would admit that their complicity with Capitalists after they achieved a relative parity was a huge strategic mistake.

Did you know that Lawrence Summers, who was Clinton's Treasury Secretary and Geithner's boss and mentor, before the latter became Chief of the Federal Reserve of the Empire City was one of Ronald Reagan's Chief Economic Advisors?

Anyone who had a good introductory Economics course would know that Say's "Law", which supply-side economics is based on, is totally fallacious.

We now find ourselves in the very precarious position of a post over-supply side economy, where the off-shoring has deadened demand and accompanied by an imploding finite resource supply.

That's all for now.

It looks like the best we can do, these days, is keep chippin' away.
I have a sincere Cynical hope that that will change soon.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR

Equity Union Inculcation - Attempted Post on Moore's Website

Yes, but even mutual insurance companies are not the answer because there is nothing mutual about the make-up of their portfolios.

An Equity Union is a better idea in that the participants could be, if the for-profit exploiters were not allowed to lie and steal and cheat and exploit their way through their lives. In other words, if we could get a voluntary consensus for world unity and cooperation with the locus being every individual/every local community, inter-community, inter-regional, and world round based on the principles of meeting needs and reasonable wants in an inclusive, humane, equitable, wellness-oriented, quality of life, peaceful and sustainable principled manner based on a plan and implement modus operandi.

Such would constitute a true mutual.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Relative to Unemployment Compensation: to AFL-CIO Blog

I had a form of unemployment compensation (Private Disability), which paid 60% of my previous income.

After about one year, the Private Insurer insisted that I apply for Social Security, saying that they would cut off my benefits, if I did not.

After my Social Security came through, the application and approval process took about six months, but SSDI paid me back wages, the Private Insurer carved out the Social Security, making it approximately a 50-50 proposition for about another year.

Then the Privates dropped out. My income, however, did not halve, because in my particular situation the Social Security was not taxable.

Structural unemployment should be viewed as a disability (of the system).


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR
(541) 343-3808

An Open? Letter to Michael Moore Prompted by a Health Care Reform Essay

I'm getting tired of not being "heard" and with your incessant inculcation concerning what we already have, a certain consensus on, the need to have a single, or more accurately, double payer health care system.

When you all rail against the Medical Payer Corporations that have diversified into Medical Provider Corporations and vice versa, you are accurately scratching the surface of the health problem and the problems associated with the Capitalist system.

But, we must use this potentially valuable resource that Buffy is providing us and do more than futilely scratch away at the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and all associated "we're only in it for the money" Leviathan.

I'm tired of being ignored with respect to my working plan for a libertarian socialist alternative of world unity and cooperation, which will fundamentally change the ways and means that resources are allocated to meet the needs of people in an inclusive, humane, equitable, wellness, quality of life, peaceful, and sustainable manner.

I appreciate a good laugh as much as anybuddy, and Michael is incisive with his humor and his critical assessment. But we need to do more than expose and criticize. We need to provide a workable alternative. I have done this and will continue to try from my proletarian platform to get my words "heard".

I don't think that a MikeMorin.org website is what we need. In lieu of that is a cooperative amalgamation and alliance, perhaps a PeoplesEquityUnion.org, that would be a good start but not enough.

Michael. I love your work and I love you, but we must go beyond (yet still include) the target marketing of the protest/disillusioned and concerned with the disenfranchised, perhaps majority (i.e. the competitive anti-establishment "vote") and work to establish a working cooperative pro-active alternative plan and implement ecological economic redevelopment modus operandi.

Now, it is unrealistic of me to think that Michael reads every post, but those who do, can you please see that it is important that he reads this one and, if possible, the others that I have posted on this website?

We're One
but we're not the same
we've got to help each other
got to work together
-Bono


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

Unemployment and Social Security: AFL-CIO Blog

First of all, the reported unemployment rates (though reportedly relatively high) are a gross misrepresentation of the workers' and potential workers' plight.

I would guess that you all know that the unemployment rate is only the number of those who were working covered by unemployment compensation funds that they are now collecting, unless they got “fired”.

I'm not an expert on this, but if I remember correctly, the law in Massachusetts was that only firms with 25 employees or more were required to pay into the State fund.

At least, fortunately, we have a Democratic majority in Congress, so there has been Federal Extensions on the time limits associated with most, if not all, State Unemployment Programs.

Secondly. Tricky Willy Clinton, to manies potential or actual benefit, eliminated or reduced that villain with a terrible name, Welfare, while putting many if not some of those manies on Social Security. Social Security tends to be overly miserly to those truely in need and unnecessary for some, if not many, of the elderly.

Based on recent reports, I have roughly calculated that 1 in 5 citizens of the USA are receiving Social Security "compensation".

So you see, Virginia, the seasonal stimulus is not anywhere close to being true.

Besides, manufacturing is industrial, whereas people are much more happy workers when they have the opportunity and education to be artisan industrious.

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Workers and the Poor: AFL-CIO Blog

The minimum wage definitely needs to be raised. However, we all must consider regional difference between let's say, Arkansas and California.

More important then "minimum wage" is the issue of living wage. The short term answer is a guaranteed income for all over the age of eighteen (of course, we need to deal with orphans as well, and there still is an issue related to AFDC), increasing with age.

Over the long term we need an equity union to perhaps write off or down the liabilities and bring the cost of assets back to earth.

With respect to a guaranteed income, it should be only enough to meet the bare essentials including the idea that youth can share apartments and houses (although everyone should get equity from their "rent" payments) up to a certain age (suggested for discussion, 23).

Concerning meeting needs, there is a huge difference, climate wise, between McAllen and Minot. And PLEASE let's not dally another second regarding the opportunity costs associated with automotive squandering and MUCH HIGHER PRIORITIES like home heating, cooking, and electricity...


In Peace. Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Concerning “Offshoring”: AFL - CIO Blog

“Olderworker”, I’m 57, am I an Older older worker or a younger older worker (i.e. than thee)?

Yes, you raise very legitimate and problematic concerns. Fundamental to such is the rampant inflation that has been going on in the USA, which puts North American Workers at a terrible disadvantage in the competitive job market.

Corollary to such is the prohibitive effect that the ridiculously inflated real “economic rents” and costs of capital assets have had on any entrepreneurial opportunities, already at great disadvantage to corporate diversification strategies and (now failing) economies of scale.

Concerning “stimulus” money such is a fundamentally destructive concept anyway in that it appears to assume the addiction to what I previously described as the specious fantasy of infinite economic growth within a finite earth in the solar system.

Secondly, this concept of “clean energy” is unfortunately an irreality.



In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR

An Open Letter

Mike Morin
512 W.10th Avenue, #2
Eugene, OR 97401
December 2, 2009


Mr. Kenneth Lewis
President
Bank of America
Corporate Center
100 North Tryon Street
Charlotte, NC 28255


Mr. Lewis and/or whoever (else) reads this letter:


It is my sincerest Cynical hope that you all will read this letter, take it seriously, and strongly consider cooperating with the plans that I have laid out and will try now to succinctly summarize.

I am asking thee to take a leadership role in the Banking “Industry” and consider the education, communications, and actions that you can take with respect to a peaceful transition regarding the evolution to a cooperative communitarian economy that is fundamentally dedicated to meeting peoples needs and wellness in an inclusive, humane, equitable, clean, and sustainably principled manner and modus operandi.

The basic call is to convert the “private sector” to a quasi-public one, working in unity and cooperation and helping to relieve the burdens and fiscally strapped potential inadequacies of the various Public Institutions and Programs.

We need to reorganize, reallocate to and within communities and among and within economic sectors, rebuild our communities in recognition of the post-peak fossil fuel reality and the century of sprawl with a paradigm of ecological economic redevelopment.

It is my firmly held assertion that the business community with its assumptions of discount rates with the concept of the time value of money is a self-fulfilling inflationary perspective and practice where money becomes worth less, eventually worthless. Also on a finite planet, we cannot entertain the fantasy of infinite growth.

We need to move on to a new era in human evolution, that of Homa Cooperativo, where equity sharing replaces equity trading and lending.

I hope you will understand the wisdom and intelligence incorporated into this communication, share it with your compatriots, and seek further communications, elaboration, discussion, and work with me and the interests of the greater world that I represent.

Time is of the essence.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net

Another Futile/Unheeded Post?

Hear ye! Hear me!

Single Payer with very tight budget controlled HMOs with emphasis on wellness (i.e. environmental/public health).

Dealing with pollution at the source (definitely with concern directly related tobacco, alcohol, and sources and causes of obesity (e.g. sugar waters, consumption of meat without rigorous exercise, etc.).

Please, let us get our eduaction together. Work with me on developing the izquierdo correcto policies, programs, and projects related to promoting the "general welfare" both within and beyond the borders of our fifty plus ONE (and that's reality) ways and means and the necessary libertarian voluntary evolution of the "private sector" to a quasi-public ONE.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
Peoples' Equity Union
Industrious Workers of the World
International Workers of the World
United Socialist Workers (USW)

Concerning AFL-CIO Obama Economic “Summit”

Not Good enough!

Jobs and Equity!

Debuilding roads and true Green Jobs Initiative with the goal of reversing within the next 20 to 40 years the spurious ill conceived twentieth century of sprawl and automotive domination!

Who the hell are Stiglitz and Krugman (New York Times? No, thank you!)

And do we want to work with O'Bama O'Bomber after the decision that he is reportedly going to make tonight?


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR

With Respect to Transition Cascadia

Don't get me wrong, I concur completely with the bioregional concept and approach. That is why I have tried on Transition Oregon to start a group called Transition Willamette Valley Watershed.

However, I think it equally as important that we take the communal and inter-community approach. Thus you could see my unsuccessful, to date, attempts to organize a Transition Jefferson/Westside and a Transition Eugene/Springfield and Vicinity groups.

Eugene is a bourgeois super-sprawled atro city. If it were its own bioregion and not associated with the farther Northern reaches of Cascadia, I would suggest that it be called the State of Treesgon. The colors of the U of O Ducks are gone green and fool's gold. If I were Emperor of Eugene, I would be Michael of
Ro(ad)mania. The great majority here almost never leave their cars, thus there is a very alienated atomized unfriendly lack of community here associated with the non-existence of village centers and the endless zoned residential sprawls with drive-to and drive-thru malls. Napoleon Blownapart.

Having seen Salem, Corvallis, Portland, and areas between and my knowledge of the history of the built environment, I'm guessing that all metropolitan areas within Cascadia suffer the same PLAGUE.

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene

Land Reform in Venezuela (and Elsewhere?)

Two hundred peasants reported dead in Venezuela, partially because a State Forced (National Guard) Land Reform.

It is almost the opposite of early New England's Shay's Rebellion where the Capitalist backed "Militia" of the States of Massachusetts and Connecticut accompanied by local mercenary thuggery (police) killed and imprisoned farmers who wanted a fair deal and were not getting it.

Brings to mind the Conservatives', partially true (and when so or even not but hysterically propagandized, very virulent) counter to Marx's Labor Theory of Value (which I see as a subset of the French Physiocrats construct that nature is the source of all value). That is, Locke's Labor Theory of Property.

We, as Friends and Socialists should respect such up to the point that some, if not many, of the Capitalist persuasion view money as a tool and not simply (and fairly) a medium of exchange.

It should be very obvious to all that are willing to look on objectively that one of the biggest criticisms of Capitalism is the irrational (and inequitable) ways and means by which it allocates resources.

When there was a virgin landscape to rape, it, Capitalism and its pretensions to the so-called “free market”, to many seemed like the most successful system in the history of man. But, now that we are on the other side of the peak of earthly finite resources, tragically aggravated by the preposterous supply-side experiment (which will be recorded as the over-supply side era blind to the tragic adverse affect on workers’, and eventually owners’, effective demand.), it should be clear to us all that a plan and implement modus operandi is necessary, and that Resource Allocation (RA) be a paramount topic of discussion and action.

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples Equity Union
Eugene, OR, USA

Response to AFL-CIO Report on Columbian Union Deaths

It's probably a safe assumption that the PSUV and their associated and high solidarity Unions are not in the least way responsible for the death of Union members in Columbia.

Au contraire, whatever tension being minded, felt, and experienced between Venezuela and Columbia stems from the basic fundamental paradigm difference of "Free Trade" (i.e. USA and mostly European Lackey Capitalist Corporate dominated) and lack of "Fair Trade" and owner/worker relationships and environmental stewardship concerns (the puppet International Capitalists' resistance to the popular ALBA Movement).

AFL-CIO has a window of opportunity to align correctly with the signing of a letter of intent between the USW and Mondragon (like the Basque region of Spain the ore and the energy for furnace fires was/is depleted and the heart mind bodies were/need to be dedicated to new solutions which were/will be libertarian cooperative communitarian in design, form and materialism.

The USW acronym needs to be redesignated as United Socialist Workers and become the direction of AFL-CIO and our relation to international with the goal of world unity and cooperation.

Whereas, the "One Big Union" was the slogan of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) so should it be as the Industrious Workers of the World and in transition the International Workers of the World, as resource constraints and humanity moves us more towards the relocalization artisanry opportunities for everybuddy, leaving none behind.

We can unite with the now aligned nations or you can hold out for a White House USA Summit of the G(one).

It's our choice.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Peoples' Equity Union
Eugene, OR, USA

TARP and Related Matters

As DeFazio and others have suggested fire Summers and Geithner, but take back ALL the TARP money, not only that given to AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Put the money into a Peoples Equity Fund for allocation to community betterment/worker owned projects for ecological economic redevelopment which is inclusive, equitable, humane, altruistic, healthy, needs and peace oriented, and sustainable,

DeFazio talks of "infrastructure". What does he want more squandered "stimulus" money, a continuation of the National Highway Act of 1950? Sorry, Peter, you're right on the front end, but wrong from then on.

Decommission the military and end military spending as fast as possible and dedicate some if not much of that money to the comprehensive education program that will be necessary to transition to such a cooperative communitarian economy.

Much more to write, but limited space.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
(the unresponsive DeFazio's district)

Comment on Michael Moore’s Website Regarding Health Care Reform

Then there's Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Columbia Health Systems, Humana, and many, many more. Then there is General Electric, Siemens, and many, many more, Pharmaceutical Companies. Doctors whose revenue motivation is to cut and poison.

Then there was the famous US Government Hill-Burton Act. Perhaps some can defend this, but like most government public works (e.g. National Highway Act, subsequent amendments including O'Bomber's recent "Stimulus") my opinion is that they went way too far in their supply side corruption.

I favor a single payer, but I also favor a single provider, with drastic immediate cuts in medical spending on the order of 30 to 40% in the next 3 to 5 years and 60 to 70% within the next 10 to 20 years.

With respect to budgeting, a medical policy board and regional and local administrators made up of ETHICAL (that may be hard to find) health care professionals who are acutely aware of the fraud and abuse in the medical care system. Shannon Brownlee and Nortin Hadler come immediately to mind.

Concerning the Provider Situation, that's where the Budgeting Committee will have to get tough. All for-profits need to be converted to non-profits, but that will not be nearly good enough. Unemployment Compensation and/or Social Security should be offered to all displaced workers and much effort put into the function of job retraining.

It's gone way too far, has been going way too far for far too long, and it's time we stopped the massive complicity to corruption and decadence.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

With Respect to thee Peoples' Equity Union

Don,


Given the tinyness of the Peoples Equity Union, yes, money for experimentation is not available.

Traditionally, as you well know, R&D has been shared between Governments and Corporations, and the very rare instances of recent history private individuals and closely held businesses.

My eutopian (good place) vision is that ALL Banks would convert to a combination savings bank for depositors, Equity Union for Investors. It would be up to the democratic process to see if and how much Governments contribute funding to the Equity Union and/or directly to community betterment organizations (CBOs), as I think that you are proposing.

Corporations would dissolve evolving into community/worker hybrid cooperatives with the utopian (ideal place) eventually being a unified, equitable arrangement where the distinction between community cooperator and worker cooperator became irrelevant.

Anyway, it's still much more theory than practicality, as I write.

I'm torn between whether or not to wish you luck in getting your funding from traditional sources, because I believe that you potentially have a life-enhancing product that would be highly beneficial to people, but I don't want to encourage the very unfair, inequitable, exclusive, inhumane, unsustainable Capitalist system.

Keep in touch.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin

Local Request for Equity Union Funds

The led grow lamps will work. i have been working on this for about 2 years. Funding disappeared with the sub prime mortgage collapse. i was sceptical of the interest free loan you offered. kind of something for nothing thing. but it was not for nothing. it was to further the equity union. i have worked out 90% of the bugs, where others fail. i will succeed. mostly because my "unsuccessful" prototypes perform better than other groups "Successful" in production lights.

peace

Don Goerz
Exec. Director
Led Tek

***************************************************
Well, the local Peoples' Equity Fund has tentatively dedicated $20,500.

If that is enough for you, you'd have to demonstrate beyond almost any doubt the validity of the technology and have an assured market that would guarantee the payback.

I prefer to call it equity sharing rather than a no interest loan.

In other words, let's say the Equity Union was able to raise $500,000 but you were able to create valuable services to the region and the world and equity opportunities for a low-income/no or very little equity community or communities, and a certain amount of your revenues were earmarked for other community betterment projects then maybe we would only require that you pay back $450,000 or better still, we as the equity sharers would be a community owner of your community/worker hybrid cooperative. It would be subject to negotiation.

We could not sell our equity shares and if we disapproved of the direction the cooperative was taking (let's say investing in Christmas lights or lasers for weapons systems, or poor and/or undemocratic management), we could call our equity back but only at par value. Though if there was highly significant sharing we would build in legal stipulations as to what and how any earmarked revenues could be redistributed to other "ventures". Any variations from the legal stipulations (we'd keep them concise, fundamental and understandable) could carry with it a severe monetary penalty (not a lawsuit, but probably require you to divest your cooperative/productive equity and assets to us and pay a penalty for any uncooperative pursuits that you pursued.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
343-3808

TARP and the Peoples Equity Union

ALL THE MONEY that was doled out under Bush's TARP should be paid back to the Federal Government and put into a Peoples' Equity Fund.

Contact me to discuss what we do before or after O'bomber does the right thing for a change and sets his Attorney General and Treasury Secretary to do just that, and I'll give you some really good ideas on how some or all of that money could be reallocated for inclusive, equitable, humane, healthy ecological economic redevelopment.

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
(541) 343-3808

With Respect To World/European Social Forum

With Respect To World/European Social Forum

Regarding the planned European Social Forum of 2010:


Good to see World Organizing manifesting itself in a regional context.


To whatever extent we can get people together to introduce, discuss, inculcate, and progress the ecosocialist agenda and that of world unity and cooperation, the forums will hopefully continue to serve a purpose.


One problem that I have is the "jet set" modality of the participants. I could be and hope to be and probably am very wrong about that statement.


We need to move beyond the world round organizing and communicating and bring such to local and regional levels. A good conceptual initiative is The Peoples' Agenda for Alternative Regionalisms www.alternative-regionalisms.org/?page_id2 . They have an excellent agenda. Not surprisingly those of us within the belly of the Leviathan (The USA Economic/Military hegemony) have no representation in the organization.


It is very frustrating trying to organize within the local community and region in the Eugene, OR, USA. People here are either brain-dead, complacent with their current competitive advantage, drugged, tobaccoed, and alcoholic, cowardly, and/or otherwise non-committal. To many, the concept of peace means withdrawal and the absence of hassle. The monster is too damn big in the USA.


Hugo Chavez has been relatively successful in organizing the ALBA coalition, the Latin American/African Alliance (ASA), cooperative ties with Iran and Russia and China. The USA and his European allies are still too uncooperative and hell-bent on their premier role in a world hierarchy to join such an alliance of world unity, equity, and cooperation.


They (the USA and their Fascist complicit media) will continue to obfuscate and pathetically beat the war drum while continuing a self-interested ecocidal, suicidal and attempted genocidal linear trajectory Capitalism. They will fail, but how much damage will they do in the mean time?


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,


Mike Morin


Peoples Equity Union

Eugene, OR, USA

Commodities Dealers vs. Community Cooperatives Concerning Oil and Other Resources

Commodities Dealers vs. Community Cooperatives Concerning Oil and Other Resources


(The premise of the article to which I responded was that Commodity Dealers were driving the price of oil way too high)


Half true.

Commodity dealers are hard sucking parasites and their effect on the cost of home heating oil and gas (and electricity) could be fatal to many this winter and/or increasingly very soon.

Community buying/producer cooperatives direct trading should replace the existing exploitative and parasitic economic relationships for fossil fuels, agricultural, products, and other "commodities". Citizens' Energy Cooperative, which buys its home heating oil from Venezuela, may be a good, though small and isolated, example of how an alternative economic system could be structured.

It is my considered opinion that we are in an era of post-peak oil. Oil is a stock resource; therefore the long-term scarcity justifies high prices. Also, the demand side management and the environmental costs (including climate change) would justify much higher taxes (at least on gasoline) and caps on its use.

We must make the commitment of reducing automobile use by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, by rebuilding neighborhoods/villages and reallocating goods and services to those neighborhoods/villages so that almost all can get what they need and reasonably want within walking distance of their homes, and so that a maximum amount of people can work at home and/or within walking distance of their homes.

Such would be a major boom to the building trades and with the proper education and training rectify the terrible structural unemployment situation that now exists in the United States.

Green Jobs, Equity, and Carbon

Green Jobs, Equity, and Carbon


Friends of the Earth (FOE?) of which I am one, I am also a Friend of the People (FOP?)

??
no, no.

I am equally Friend, equally Socialist (that's why I go by the names Mohandos Mao and Mohandos Lenino).


These Friends have it half correct. Cap and trade is a sham, a racket, an invention of Wall Street types.

We should implement carbon taxes and maybe caps, but we need to consider a workable transition so that we do not have power outages and freezing and starving people.

Wind and PVs are an illusion. Neither supplies the voltage and amperage needed to do the great amount of work that our society has grown accustomed to.

The key to a bountiful green (building) economy is the reversal of the thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development, particularly in the United States (that's what I know).

By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great majority of people will be able to get what they need and reasonably want within walking distance to their homes).

Such a tremendous commitment and dedication of resources will be a boom for the building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood, commercial, community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and climate change and bringing with it the neighborly qualities of life associated with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and families currently lack.

If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling), electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water and drying systems, limited wind and PVs.

Also if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods/villages.

Concerning FOEs suggestion of a publicly financed economy, we would optimally transition the "private sector" to a quasi-public one working in cooperation with public funding programs. The ideal would really be to phase out the government programs as much as possible.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Chavez Sends 15,000 Military Troops to Columbian Border

I disagree with Hugo's strategy here. The use of the Institutionalized Violence of the Military is counter to Fidel Castro's proclamation that we are all policeman.

A military man, like a national flag is a symbol of oppression and divisiveness.

To counteract the USA funding of the Columbian military (and arming of plain clothesed Columbians?) Hugo should supply his plainclothesd citizen allies with weapons, if necessary.

I think that if citizens whether armed or unarmed were meeting and working together with each other over common and mutual interests, it would be much more productive than employing military resources and personnel.

I am Libertarian Socialist, and/but would not welcome a Military presence whether it be Socialist or Capitalist in my neighborhood/village, community, region.

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Peace Flag Project

Here's a great socialist project and I'm serious about doing it.

Let's replace all the national flags (at the UN General Assembly and everywhere else) with the Rainbow Peace Flag in all the languages of the world and in regions/locales.

Anybuddy want to work on that project?


In Peace/Paz, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Jefferson Westside Neighborhood
Eugene-Springfield and Vicinity
Willamette Valley Watershed
Pacific NW of the North American Continent
Finite Planet Earth
Solar System
Infinite Universe

With Respect to Mondragon

This, if it is true, is a very sad report.

The Mondragon Experiment, except for their ignorance of social ecology, was a very promising alternative socialist organization.

They formed successful workers' cooperatives, which spawned others, and they grew to relieve poverty and disaffection in their isolated region.

The problems started as they grew too big and began to need to integrate their business operations with the Capitalist world that surrounded them. The expediency of business operations and personal greed began to outweigh the egalitarian and solidarity principles based on the ICA principles.

Although they carefully built a very democratic cooperative corporate governance model, the complexity of large-scale operations and the accelerating pace eventually began to erode the vigilance and influence of the holders of the founding principles.

If I were beginning a socialist business entity, I would most certainly start with Mondragon, their founding principles and their early history as a positive example. I would study where they went wrong and try to devise mitigating interventions so that the new socialist economy was not corrupted.

The problem is that there IS a Capitalist system, where corporations have certain strategies and tactics (e.g. diversification, economy of scale, worker and environmental exploitation and the eschewing of those costs, etc.) to defeat small business. Otherwise, I'd suggest that the next Mondragon stick to the small mutualist business model and form community alliances only. However, that would not be realistic and successful. As long as there are corporate capitalist conglomerates, it will be impossible to build an alternative socialist economy.

We need world unity, understanding and cooperation.

Nothing less.


Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA

Response to American Catholic:” Beyond Socialism and Capitalism”

As we face the most difficult times that the human race has yet to experience, I think that it is important that we emphasize that the concept and the term socialism was born out of compassion.

Before Robert Owen "coined" the term “socialism”, cooperative communitarianism or mutualist communalism were ideas put forward by intellectuals and advocates of the oppressed in a brutal feudal and emerging Capitalist economic system. They were eutopian dreams of equity (equality in proprietorship), put forth by altruistic thinkers and taken to heart, mind, and body (thus the beginnings of class struggle, a struggle against a brutally oppressive and exploitative system) by some of the peasants, some of the artisans and, as industrialization set in, a new more dehumanized class, the factory worker.

It was in light of the depraved conditions, particularly of the last, and with population growth, the enclosure movement, the waning influences of the established charities of the Catholic Church, that in England, the aristocratic, paternalistic, parliamentarian mill owner, Robert Owen, campaigned for the increased role of the State to improve the conditions of the workers and the indigent, and that he suggested that the ideas of the workers' "movement" be termed "Socialism" to include such.

"Socialism" and its predecessors got a bad connotation because of sporadic violence in reaction to oppression. Such was the origin of the term "anarchist", originally a derisive term used against the early cooperative communitarians who occasionally fought back against active oppression. The term Anarchist, which eventually would be adopted as a "positive" tendency by some Marxists was used, in the early days, to turn public sentiment against the Cooperative Communitarians.

Of course, the history of bloodshed between the Capitalist/Feudal establishments and Marxist/Leninist/Maoist strikers and soldiers and the eventual expropriations that came with the eventual victories of the latter have given the terms "Socialist" and "Communist" negative connotations.

As a lover of life, a Friend, I abhor violence.

Socialism, at least, should take care of those that cannot take care of themselves. That aspect of it, by itself, makes it an improvement in economics (i.e. the management of the home) and consistent with one of the pillars of Islam, the giving of alms. The more "utopian" ("eutopian" means "good place", "outopian" means "no place") aspects of cooperative communitarianism or mutualist communalism such as an economy dedicated to meet the needs of all founded on the principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life in lieu of maximization of consumption and waste, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace (the hoped for result) which seeks to inculcate that all men are brothers, all people kin, are worth consideration when dedicating thought and communication towards the progress of the human race.

As the laws of nature (survival of the fittest) are horrendously cruel and have been taken to the ultimate by the human species, and thus there will always be motivations of competition that can be divisive between individuals, within communities (however defined) and between and among communities, we must use every opportunity and devise that we are able to counteract such, to truely establish our humanity.

Given the fact that we can communicate like never before, let's use it! Let's declare the future a new era, an era of speciation that brings about the ideal of mankind, the evolution to Homo Cooperativa.

I believe that Hugo Chavez is a peace loving man. I hope that Hu Jin Tao is a peace loving man. Despite the policies thus far exhibited (e.g. Afghanistan and Pakistan), I'd like to believe that Barack Obama is a peace loving man.

Left to their own motivations and momentum, men will fight. There is no such thing as a good fight.

Forget "command and control", what we have in mind is "plan and implement".

Let's work together!


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike "Cuthbert" Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

Health Care Reform in the USA

All People's Health Care should be covered, as in other countries.

I think that a Single Payer is the vehicle that we should employ, with HUGE CAVEATS.

I worked in the Health Care Finance field for 15 years, mostly as a Utilization and Cost Analyst for "Managed Care" companies. While Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) makes good and valid arguments for a single payer system, they neglect to address the massive fraud and abuse on the Provider side of the health care "INDUSTRY". The massive greed of physicians and the over-supply manifestations of the "medical industrial complex" have caused the USA to have, by far, the highest cost medical system in the world, with poor results due to a preponderance of bureaucracy and the revenue driven bias towards maximum intervention leading to "damaged care" and waste.

We need a single payer with VERY TIGHT budget controls (huge rollbacks on medical spending). We could evolve to a single payer by mandating a public option in all places where insurance coverage is offered and expanding Medicare to everyone else.

But fee for service medicine has got to go. Regional HMOs need to be established with budgets being phased down by 35 to 40% in the next 10 to 20 years. Medical policy boards to oversee the formulation and implementation of such budgets, as caring physicians who understand the cost and abuse issues need to be put in charge of resource allocation policies and administration.

Hospitals and Hospital Corporations need to consolidate their resources into a unified organization so that rational resource allocation and the necessary winnowing out of over-competitive redundancies can be carried out.

Then there are the issues of environmental and public health, the subject of another HUGE discussion.


Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

The Federal Reserve?

What do we need the Federal Reserve for? It seems to me that, under a reformed financial/economic system, the Treasury could issue funds directly to people, communities, productive endeavors (via their local equity unions) rather than issuing money to speculative, usurious private corporations (the banks).

Equity Union: A New Idea for Practical Socialism

To make a sustainable economy, an equitable environment, towards a permanent culture, we need to evolve away from an investor/lender class with their inflationary and unrealistic aggravated growth programs and policies and evolve to an equity-sharing paradigm.

We need a financial/economic system that is motivated by the drive to meet peoples' needs, both in the short and long term, quite different from the speculative, profit-taking system that is extant.

Locally based equity unions, with inter-community, inter-regional unity and cooperation focused on community betterment projects, programs and policies would be the ideal world economic/financial system.

A mission of peace, world unity and cooperation based on the fundamental principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, altruism, quality of life in lieu of the maximization of consumption and waste, environmental/public health and wellness, and sustainability would underlie a "plan and implement" modus operandi in lieu of the selfish, unprincipled slash-and-burn speculations and profit-takings of the so-called "free market"

Village/neighborhood sovereignty, economic democracy, and environmental equity would be inculcated in such a system. A more fair and just balance between competitive advantage and comparative advantage would be sought, and the community/environmental improvement for all, starting with those most in need, would be paramount.

Can I submit this as a proposal to the UN General Assembly?

In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

To AFL-CIO Regarding “Regulation” of the Financial Sector

Deregulation/Regulation is a false issue.

Regulation, is in some ways well intentioned, but in other ways a scheme of self-perpetuation of bureaucrats, some directly associated with the remaining strongholds of the AFL-CIO, AFSCME and SEIU.

That was not meant as an attack on those Unions, I invite their leaders and constituents to participate in the progress that I have in mind.

The issue of financial regulation is similar to the private (and quasi-public) sector health insurance practice of Utilization Management. It may serve a necessary "sentinel effect" on industries that are rife with greed, but at what bureaucratic costs?

Implementation of regulatory processes also qualify under the banner of futility, as do well meaning initiatives such as "truth in labeling", OSHA, and organic certification.

We don't need regulation, we need true fundamental economic/financial reform.

With regards to "nationalizing" Banks and other "investor owned" Institutions, we must be realistic concerning the inter-national composition of the investing institutions, corporations, and individuals.

Writing from a libertarian socialist point of view, I think it is necessary to clarify the objectives of any comprehensive program to re-dedicate private resources to a quasi-public mission and to consolidate equity and assets for the purposes of sharing the former and writing off the economically paralytic inflationary cost aspects of the latter.

In lieu of an economic system based on credit and equity trading, whose motivation is the underwriting of speculative ventures, and profit-taking, we need to transform our fundamentally inflationary financial/economic system to one that is based on equity sharing and meeting the needs of people in the form of community betterment.

Such a financial system would be the right hand, the resource allocation facilitating function and services of an ambidextrous ecological, democratic, economic "plan and implement" economy that would respect and favor the sovereignty of villages/neighborhoods, educate-foster-facilitate-inculcate inter-community and inter-regional equality, unity and cooperation based on the basic principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, mutualism, altruism, quality of life (in lieu of standard of living), environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace.

Such a system would seek to establish a more just balance between competitive advantage and comparative advantage with the concerns of those indigenous to all communities being paramount.

Such an economic system would recognize the necessity to embrace and implement conservation ethics for shorter term programs and projects of ecological economic redevelopment dedicated to survival pursuits and skills and its concomitant ubiquitous environmental improvement activities, and to the longer term programs and policies related to the legacy of the human race and its dominion (i.e. the recognition and respect of the resource limits imposed by a finite planet).

I call such a proposal an equity union and believe it to be a prudent and practical alternative to the extant economic/financial system. I believe such an economic rearrangement based on the fundamental mission of world unity and cooperation is the best hope for the purpose of entering an unprecedented era of peace and human progress and success.

Please respond.

Be not afraid of losing with respect to your personal private interest. There is more than a plethora of work to be done in fostering and facilitating the transition to a new financial/economic era and the avoiding the repercussions for letting the death of empire just run its course.

The first thing we must do is clarify our mission and principles. I hope that I have been clear at doing this here and among the other posts of which I have been trying to maximize circulation.

If the mission and principles are clear and desirable, then we need to form "union" with respect to their purposes, their education, their inculcation, their meaning to one and all, and the actions that we can all take to make such a purposeful, desirable world a reality.

We are in perilous times, and facing challenges that although having precedent, are unprecedented in the enormity of the fundamental change that is required. Fortunately, we have communications technology like we have never had before.

Let's not trivialize the fulcramatic shift needed in the financial/economic sector (i.e. resource allocation) by bickering about regulation, an ineffectual solution to the very real problems that we as people must address and act upon.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,


Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

Response To Transportation (Trucking) Industry Publication Communicating Gary Locke’s (Obama’s Secretary of Commerce) Downplaying of “Climate Change”

I tend to believe that the greenhouse effect and global/warming climate change is real. We have had evidence for more than 40 years and the overwhelming geophysical evidence presented by scientists almost seems to be at consensus these days.

An associated problem, which will prove to be just as large, if not significantly larger, is the problem related to post-peak oil. It is a well-accepted belief, if not fact, that we have probably passed the peak of oil resources available for our squanderous consumption. After all, it is a finite planet and it takes millions of years under special geologic conditions to form an oil field. The effort, though considerable; to find, extract, transport, refine, transport, and exhaust (yes, poof - gone FOREVER) is but a relative flash in the pan in human history.

The world uses about 80 million barrels a day of oil. Fully 25% of that (approximately 20 million barrels a day) are consumed by the people of the continental United States, 14 million of those barrels used in the transportation sector alone.

If we want to conserve precious fossil fuels for priority uses such as solar assisted heating, cooking, electricity generation, cooling, agricultural inputs, durable products, necessary industrial processes, inter-community and inter-regional transport within a paradigm of relocalization for all communities and regions (moving towards self-sufficiency), and preserve the luxury and convenience of occasional automobile and airplane travel in a manner that explicitly adjusts for economic disruption, then we must plan and implement, allocate our resources accordingly.

We are currently on a linear projection into oblivion. We must reassess the role of the automobile and airplane in our society/economy. A huge job creations program could be realized by rebuilding our sprawled neighborhoods and reallocating production and distribution resources, so that almost all have the quality of life advantages of having their needs and reasonable wants, and the capability of making a living, available within walking distance of their homes. Such a relocalization (towards self-sufficiency) program will have the effect of reducing personal automobile use by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, freeing up precious, yet finite fossil fuels for priority uses.

There will always be a need for long-range transport, as few if any regions could realize total self-sufficiency and comparative advantages do exist. However, the transportation industry can do their part for the youth and children, the survival of the species, by considering their role and the adjustments that will need to be made (in shifting to a more regional and inter-community/within regions economy).

Please consider the policies, programs, strategies, and actions that you can take to cooperate.


Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

Concerning the Restructuring of the Global Financial/Economic System and Recent Discussion of Nationalizing “Banking” Interests

With regards to "nationalizing" Banks and other "investor owned" Institutions, we must be realistic concerning the inter-national composition of the investing institutions, corporations, and individuals.

Writing from a libertarian socialist point of view, I think it is necessary to clarify the objectives of any comprehensive program to re-dedicate private resources to a quasi-public mission and to consolidate equity and assets for the purposes of sharing the former and writing off the economically paralytic inflationary cost aspects of the latter.

In lieu of an economic system based on credit and equity trading, whose motivation is the underwriting of speculative ventures, we need to transform our fundamentally inflationary financial/economic system to one that is based on equity sharing and meeting the needs of people in the form of community betterment.

Such a financial system would be the right hand, the resource allocation facilitating function and services of an ambidextrous ecological, democratic, economic "plan and implement" economy that would respect and favor the sovereignty of villages/neighborhoods, educate-foster-facilitate-inculcate inter-community and inter-regional equality, unity and cooperation based on the basic principles of inclusion, equity, humanity, mutualism, altruism, quality of life (in lieu of standard of living), environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, and peace.

Such a system would seek to establish a more just balance between competitive advantage and comparative advantage with the concerns of those indigenous to a community being paramount.

Such an economic system would recognize the necessity to embrace and implement conservation ethics for shorter term programs and projects of ecological economic redevelopment dedicated to survival pursuits and skills and its concomitant ubiquitous environmental improvement activities, and to the longer term programs and policies related to the legacy of the human race and its dominion (i.e. the recognition and respect of the resource limits imposed by a finite planet).

I call such a proposal an equity union and believe it to be a prudent and practical alternative to the extant economic/financial system. I believe such an economic rearrangement based on the fundamental mission of world unity and cooperation is the best hope for the purpose of entering an unprecedented era of peace and human progress and success.


Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

With Respect to Labor Unions

I am named after my great uncle, Mike Misenti, who worked and fought? his way from humble beginnings as a mason to President of the Building Trades Union, and later President of their Pension Fund, in the State of Connecticut.

Mike Misenti didn't care what "his folks" were building, as long as they were building. That is my major complaint with Labor Unions, their need to self-perpetuate, and offer blind loyalty and complicity with less than optimal corporations/contractors and the latters’ self-interested profit motivated projects and industries that are sometimes, if not often, counter-productive to social/environmental goals...

Don't get me wrong, I consider the interests of workers of all "stripes" and the poor to be of the utmost importance. However, in this era of post-peak oil, climate change, inequality and the tensions that such brings, and the perception of hopelessness that are held by and for youth and for the children, it is necessary that we allocate scarce resources in the most optimal ways and means possible.

Mike Sar has pointed out the decline in airline travel. This trend will not only continue, we should employ all direct and indirect actions that we can to hasten such a decline.

We must recognize the fossil fuel age and the subsequent overshoot in automobile and airplane use as a historical exception that must be phased into perspective.

If we want to conserve precious fossil fuels for priority uses such as solar assisted heating, cooking, electricity generation, cooling, agricultural inputs, durable products, necessary industrial processes, inter-community and inter-regional transport within a paradigm of relocalization for all communities and regions (moving towards self-sufficiency), and preserve the luxury and convenience of occasional automobile and airplane travel in a manner that adjusts for economic disruption, then we must plan and implement.

We need to see the study and practice of Resource and Regional Planning beyond the historical complicity, and at best mitigation of, the irrational Capitalist growth paradigm that does not recognize and/or respect a finite planet whose limits that we are fast approaching. We must enter an era of Resource Allocation based on the explicit principles of meeting human needs, inclusion, equity, humanity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability, economic democracy, and peace.

The key to a bountiful green building economy is the reversal of the
thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development in the
United States.

By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to
those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great
majority of Americans will be able to get what they need within
walking distance of their homes), we can succeed.

Such a tremendous dedication of resources will be a boom to the
building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile
usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood commercial,
community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in
what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential
areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and
climate change and bringing with it the quality of life associated
with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and
families currently lack.

If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for
weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling),
electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water
applications, limited PV and wind applications, etc.

Also, if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership
arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an
equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods.

It is important that we fundamentally reassess our economic system
and replace the current economic/finance system with one that targets
the needs of the current residents, and not, for-profit speculation.

Because of the terrible inflation of real and capital assets that is
a product of the speculative modus operandi of the Capitalist system,
it will be fundamentally necessary to reform our economic/financial
system by consolidating private (while rededicating them as
quasi-public) real and capital assets and equity and writing way down
the “market value” of those assets.

After completing that awesome task, we could proceed with a “plan and implement” economy dedicated to meeting the needs of the indigenous populations of all communities: inclusion, humanity, equity, quality of life, environmental/public health and wellness, sustainability,
and peace.

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com
wiserunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808

PA Editors Blog: October 2009 issue: Capitalism or Democracy – Time to Choose#comment-17944272

PA Editors Blog: October 2009 issue: Capitalism or Democracy – Time to Choose#comment-17944272

Post-Peak Oil, Climate Change and Green Jobs

Post-Peak Oil, Climate Change and Green Jobs

PVs and Wind are somewhat of an illusion. Neither supplies the voltage and amperage needed to do the great majority of the electrical work that our society has grown accustomed to.

The key to a bountiful green building economy is the reversal of the thirty, fifty, one hundred year trend of sprawl development in the United States.

By rebuilding neighborhoods and reallocating goods and services to those renovated neighborhoods (made walkable, meaning that the great majority of Americans will be able to get what they need within walking distance of their homes), we can succeed.

Such a tremendous dedication of resources will be a boom to the building trades and will create the effect of reducing automobile usage by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years. Neighborhood commercial, community and work/telecommute centers will be centrally placed in what are now alienating, automobile dependent, strictly residential areas, alleviating the problems associated with post-peak oil and climate change and bringing with it the quality of life associated with communities and neighborhoods, that most individuals and families currently lack.

If we do this, we can take the opportunity to retrofit for weatherization, passive solar design (heating and cooling), electronic environmental controls, solar assisted hot water applications, limited PV and wind applications, etc.

Also, if done correctly, we can make changes in ownership arrangements that are much more fair and just, and work towards an equitable distribution of wealth among neighborhoods.

Please do contact me so that we can establish a working relationship and together build a great future for the building trades, for youth and children, for the world.


In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity,

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR

Restructuring Financial/Economic 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 workers, borrowers, 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, where equity sharing and not-for-profit equity collaboration 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.



More on Equity Union(s)

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 would serve the needs of the people.

In local and inter-community equity unions, equity sharing would be the modus operandi. People with funds being held in equity unions would have the option of sharing in primarily worker owned community betterment projects based on the principles of quality of life, equity (which means ownership, and also means equality), humanity, and sustainability (which means there will be an economy and natural resources for the youth and the children, and for generations to come).

If the inflation spiral can be removed (and the cost of real and capital assets brought back to earth), then indigent and poor workers could hope to increase their equity holdings and quality of life assets and equity investors could hope to get their money back. Some endeavors, beyond poor workers enrichment, would be not-for-profit. That is, profits made beyond a pre-determined return to the poor workers, would be re-invested in more such worker/community betterment hybrid businesses (preferably cooperatives).

Equity investments in community businesses could not be sold to others, but could be bought back at par value (the price of the share of the stock when it was invested). Such would be discouraged, and disallowed if it was a qualified low-income/low wealth equity investor, who may, or may not if they were allowed to collect (limited) personal dividends.

Equity Union branches in low income/low wealth neighborhoods would be allowed to set up a (501)(c)(3) to receive donations to an equity fund for their neighborhoods, to be kept in a local Equity Union and the funds allocated (equity grants) by a Board committed to community betterment and the likely success of the endeavor(s).

Mike Morin
Eugene, OR, USA
mlarosramorin@earthlink.net
wiserunion@earthlink.net
peoplesequityunion@earthlink.net
(541) 343-3808





Equity Union – An Example
Getting Started

Hi Mike,

(rest of letter deleted)

[By the way, I presently have more income than is best for my
lifestyle, and now have recently gotten my hands on some extra money.
I'm not used to this situation. Do you have any suggestions about
where to 'invest' for the greater good, keeping in mind that my main
concerns remain first 'global heating', and then generally shorter
paths to possible eutopias vs. possible extreme dystopias?]

Dan
**********************************************************

Hi Dan,

(rest of letter deleted)

I, too, have some discretionary funds that I would like to put into trust
for public service and altruistic endeavors. Perhaps, you and I (and others if we can find them) should investigate creating a local Peoples' Equity fund. My idea on that is to see if we can open a group trust account in a Credit Union, where each trustee would have an individual account, yet allocations to community betterment projects could be done collectively, with each individual signing off on the amount that they want to dedicate to the project.

The idea would be that we would "invest" in community betterment projects with the care that we would expect to only get the par value of our "investment" back or we could choose to make individual and/or collective tax-deductible or maybe tax credit eligible contributions to "qualified" 501(c)(3) community betterment organizations (CBOs)

CBOs could be not-for-profit, non-profit or both.

That's enough for now.

What think?

Mike