This stuff can be depressing. Even the good guys spend so much time with their hat in hand that they must become fans The Amazing Money Machine. Or so says TheAtlantic.com in a piece by Joshua Green, June 2008:
Faulty necessity or not, the problem does not lie with the money. Any more than is it axiomatic that socially responsible investors are just bad people dressed up in globabl friendly capitalist clothing.
The issue is how the money is spent; how the underlying model for the bottom line of change, progress and, ultimately, justice takes shape. Or, how well the initiator has it ingrained into his or her thinking that new systems of support are viable … something that should come naturally to one with an innovative community organizing mentality.
Put another way: Obama should know better.
Take the issue of Campaign Finance Reform, for example. Where Barak Obama messed up is not on calling attention to the system’s flaws, nor even on opting out; his mistake was in not recognizing that the underlying system is good and necessary for effective political reform. Obama should have instinctively elected to direct his successful money-raising infrastructure in the direction of change that favors a core understanding of the concept of Clean Money even if he still opted to put the money in his pocket.
I believe he could have bypassed nearly all of the criticism of the Campaign Finance Reform boondoggle very simply: by committing to raise, after the election, an amount equal to .. say .. 25% of the amount he raised otherwise by circumventing a generally good solution. These funds could then be directed, competitively, for direct use by the good-government reform agencies whose very existence is nearly always threatened by the fact that their solutions so often fail to generated sustained charitable contribution.
[It is exactly this same criticism, by the way, that underlies my concern that with more than $25 million being invested by corporations in California's struggle to move CAForward, virtually no one within the supportive organizations are planning on how to capitalize on these early investments in change if victory comes their way. See the preceeding post giving thanks to the Eva Patterson and the Equal Justice Society.]
A payoff of $10 to $20 million dedicated to innovative thinking fto fix the damage done by bypassing good government ideals might not be a bad substitute for doing the right thing outright. In fact, it could well be an exceptional progressive lesson in realpolitic, especially if it actually still gets us to the promised land of clean money.
Tags: 2% solution, alternatives, Barak Obama, Campaign Finance Reform, Clean Money, donation, ideas
