Cloth Carnage Continues

Tucson, Arizona. In today's Citizen Teya Vitu has an article noting that Donovan Durband and Bill O'Malley, two of the few embedded in the Clothiverse that actually produced results, have had enough of the incompetence and corruption and chosen to depart for other pastures. I don't know O'Malley, but I did meet Donovan at some Cloth events back in the day. He and I went to Austin, Texas in that ludicrous exercise of touring a great downtown that's possible when community leaders serve the community instead of themselves.

Remember we are talking about the Cloth, so attributes like intelligence, productivity, integrity, and a genuine desire to contribute to the community are profound liabilities and cause for alarm. Durband was the Executive Director of the functional Tucson Downtown Alliance. His alarms probably sounded when the Cloth injected pure fabric into his group, hoisting an overpaid suit named Glenn Lyons from Canada (who'd he know?) and adding Hecker, Shelko, Snell, and other flab to the board, creating a bloated, dysfunctional suit stuffer (Downtown Tucson Partnership) with no commensurate increase in funding, so to pay the suit they had to toss real workers. I don't know if either were forced to leave, saw what's coming, or just couldn't stand the retching anymore. I remember at the San Manuel smelter (huge company) when all of the accounting people started resigning in droves. I remained in denial until the plane literally exploded on the ground. Whoops. I did not make that mistake with SAIAT.

Speaking of departures, not too long ago someone told me that BJ Smith, a former City of Tucson economic development worker who served on SAIAT's board, had left TREO. BJ resigned from SAIAT's board right about the time TREO stole its funding. Working at TREO today must be awful, and I don't envy remaining workers Gerri (former city) or Tiffany (former county) as they work amongst empty cubicles and unused furniture bought with the blood of destroyed non-profits. Both should update their resumes and find work with human beings, a likely objective of Durband, O'Malley, and the other decent people leaving the Clothiverse.

Good luck.

The Future is Calling

The United States experienced history tonight when the highly educated African American Michelle Obama stood before a crowd of thousands and a television audience of millions and spoke on behalf of her husband's candidacy for President. In an authentic speech delivered directly over the plate with moving clarity and simplicity, she cut through the nonsense of Rove's villainy and showed, not described, the face of hope.

I consider watching her speech a privilege and won't ever forget it. Less than fifty years have passed since a woman refused to give up her seat on a bus. Just over 20 years have passed since Morris Dees won the famous lawsuit that set a precedent against KKK violence and led to other litigation against white supremacist groups. Tonight showed both how far we have come and how far we have yet to go. Of course Obama is not perfect, but he is the best candidate for president to run in many years. The GOP and the current White House have inflicted far more damage than can be repaired in four years or eight or eighteen. But we can start.

A wave of change is trying to happen. The future is calling. If we are too stupid, blind and easily manipulated by GOP smears to recognize this opportunity, we deserve the result. Our children do not. The future is calling. For the sake of the nation, everyone should answer the call. The blue tsunami remains in play.

Resource Nationalism - The Axis of Oil

Some may recall in 2006 when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a regional group linking China, Russia, and Central Asia. He most intentionally got a bunch of Americans excited by suggesting a debate about whether the holocaust occurred. Ahmadinejad attends these summits regularly to contribute to the growing backlash against the Bush – Cheney exacerbated global bullying rhetoric. Bush’s foreign policy "axis of evil" blunder threw fuel on simmering tempers. If one listened, one could hear the world retch when Bush (and later McCain) remarked that the 21st Century does not tolerate one sovereign nation invading another. Oh, God.

Through incompetence, arrogance, stupidity, myopia, greed, or a combination of all, the United States in the past eight years has made far more enemies than friends, lost more respect than it earned, and squandered the global hegemony at its feet when W. Eggplant in Chief entered the White House. Only the GlennBeckian kooks buy the "Islamo-fascism" talk until recently forwarded by the administration and already dead. The more relevant expression that will remain pertinent and grow in significance is Resource Nationalism, and it’s not pretty for the US, Western Europe, or democracy. Who wants to live in a democracy if it elects self-important morons that cater to the ultra-rich and screw the general population? Who wants to live in a democracy if it means no health care, no social services, rampant corruption, economic oppression, the highest incarceration rate in the world, and insurmountable national debt?

Among other developments, the Summer Olympics and the recent Pew study that found China’s population more satisfied with its government than Americans have led to growing conversation regarding the popular autocracy or autocratic capitalism. Three thousand years ago the Greek philosophers criticized democracy as lowering government to the lowest common denominator of blithering, uneducated idiots. In the year 2000, the United States made good on the concern, and we now witness The Great American Yard Sale most recently highlighted by the sale of Anheuser-Busch. Why is so much of America for sale? Rather than ask let alone answer, the Bush loving bubbas have vowed to boycott Budweiser.