naomi epel's Radio Weblog

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

the think tank

thinks thanks

for freedom friends family

and feedback!!!

Thank you thank you thank you for all the email. The teeeny tiny yellow envelope at the very very bottom of the page may take a while, but click it and you're message will fly through space and land here very soon.

Thanks to Nancy Levine, author of The Tao of Pug who suggests:

Instead of calling the environment Mother Nature, we should refer to it as God's Earth. This way we appeal to Christians of all stripes, even the creationists.

We actually do have important pro environmental allies in the Duck Hunters of America, who want to preserve the nature they love. How do we reach out to other hunters around the country? Most members of the National Rifle Association are hunters, maybe we allign ourselves with the NRA!

I happen to be a supporter of the second amendment, even though I do not own a gun. The Founding Fathers wanted to be sure that citizens could defend themselves if ever a tyranical government should try to depriive them of their rights...

Rob Osborne writes that he thinks the title Troublemaker's Toolkit may put too many people off. He suggests a less contentious title. I could call it The Citizen's Action Pack.

What do you think?

Rob Osborne also says "Nobody is fooled by the term ‘progressive’; it sounds like liberals being condescending and elitist; we’re Liberals, we should just fucking say so proudly."

Should we call ourselves Liberals? Progressives? Is there an even better name?

Sydney Osborne suggests we help people understand the implications of Bush's "ownership society":

"When the repugs talk about the Ownership Society, we should make it clear that there will be an ownership class (vs. the debtor class, perhaps)."

I like her term repugs,

As someone who has worked with dreams for many years, I know that unconscious associations operate just beneath the surface of rational thought. Therefore it is imperative that we Progressives stop referring our opponents as The Right. Because the opposite of right is wrong, and we don’t want to be Left behind.

We can’t continue to call the Bush-Cheney gang Conservatives, because they're not into conserving energy; natural beauty; or even precious capital.

The only thing they are into conserving is power, their own power. Meanwhile our power as a nation is diminishing as the dollar drops, and we bungle through a war we cannot win.

We who want to conserve traditional values like liberty, freedom of speech and the separation of church and state called ourselves Liberals until our opponents turned liberal into a dirty word - pairing it with “elite,” “knee jerk,” “tax-and-spend”

We’ve replaced the term Liberal with Progressive in recognition of our effort to promote peace, equality and prosperity. Perhaps we should call the other team the Regressives, as they long to return to the 1950’s when men made all the decisions and plastic supplanted glass, wood and stone.

Those on the right who advocate pre-emptive war have adopted the proud descriptive Neo Con (short for neo conservative) yet there is nothing really new about greed or the lust for power. So let’s drop the neo and simply call them Cons. And we become the Pros.

While Pros provide programs to protect the people, Cons conspire to convince these folks to constantly consume… conspicuously.

We cannot condone the Cons’ behavior as they conspire to compromise our Constitution. We must protest; protect our eConomy; and produce a Progressive Congress.

The little yellow envelope is way down at the bottom of the page. If you know how to move the envelope and make it bigger, let me know. But for now, press the yellow envelope and let me know what you're thinking.

5:39:53 PM

think tank

think truck

stop thinking at all

Its time to stop thinking of tanks and trucks or guns and money

Its time to start thinking about language

Its time to start playing with metaphor

Its time to start talking about real values

It is time to take our Country back!

And one tool we have is reframing...Changing the terms of the argument. Evoking images that will bring out the best in our fellow Americans, even as certain forces strive to bring out the worst.

Many people were scared into voting for the current administration because they had become convinced that terrorists were about to strike; that Gay men were going to seduce their husbands or gay women would turn their wives into Lesbians. They were convinced that Satan was hiding in the bushes and if they chose to heed his call they would burn in hell.

We must appeal to the goodness in people. We must remind them of why America is great and help them make it even better.

An Invitation

You are cordially invited to further the progressive cause by thinking up new ways of framing important issues - Please contribute new sound bytes, slogans, ads, calls to action by emailing them to me at this site.

I will publish the ones that members of The San Francisco Thnk Tank find most effective in the hopes that you will adapt them and pass them on.

Each week we will pull 3 cards from the Troublemakers Toolkit - a value card; an issue card; and an action card.

See if you can find new ways to combine those 3 elements to produce an effective phrase or action.

This week members of the San Francisco Think Tank pulled the following cards from the Troublemaker's Toolkit:

Action: Create a Sound byte or Slogan

Issue: The Future of Social security

Value: Fairness

Using these three cards the following phrases emerged

Are we becoming a Debtor Nation?

A debtor society?

We had a contract... they're trying to break it

Do we want other people's children gambling with our retirement money?

Why trust Wall Street to protect our savings?

the house always wins in the end

After the think tank meeting was over, Barry Willdorf went home and wrote the following:

A MESSAGE TO THE SHAREHOLDERS IN AMERICA

Thomas Jefferson wrote:

“That to secure these rights (Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness) governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

We Americans are fortunate that our country was founded on such principals. Tom Jefferson, George Washington, Ben Franklin and their like made us the owners of our government. Over time, and due to the collective wisdom of our ancestors, today we together are shareholders in the greatest venture presently existing. Collectively, as Shareholders in America, we own vast tracts of land, forests, rivers, large swaths of the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans. We own enormous stretches of sky. This is our birthright and ought to be our children's inheritance.

We are landlords. Among our tenants are some of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations on the face of the planet. We lease mines and oil fields to these corporations. We give them rights to use our forests, to fish in our oceans, to graze their cattle, to send their messages over our airways.

With all of this wealth, we should be very rich. We should be collecting considerable rents and royalties that could fill the national coffers. We Shareholders in America should be getting dividends for the use of our resources, as any reasonable group of shareholders might expect from an enterprise that possessed such enormous wealth. Yet this is not the case. Many of our Shareholders in America can’t even afford to spend a weekend on their own land. They can’t enjoy the benefits of medical breakthroughs developed in our own laboratories. Only the citizens of Alaska enjoy oil royalties from the use of government lands by energy companies. We are the victims of BAD MANAGEMENT.

Our present CEO doesn’t even recognize that we Shareholders in America are the owners of these things. He treats our property as if it were something he can give away to his friends. A good example of this is the Social Security System. It is our insurance company and sells a pretty damn good product, an annuity that keeps many of our Shareholders in America out of poverty when they get old. Our CEO says that if we stop investing in our insurance company, we can use that money to invest with his friends who run stock brokerages and mutual funds. He says that we will then become “owners” in America. Well, here’s some news for Mr. Bush and his ilk, WE ALREADY OWN AMERICA, and it’s about time our CEO and his Board of Directors recognize it.

What kind of CEO tells his shareholders and his customers that they ought to be doing business with his competitor? What kind of CEO gives away the property of the company he has been entrusted to manage to his friends? What kind of CEO works to diminish the value of his investors’ shares? The same kind of CEO that ran into the ground every other company that he got his hands on, that’s the kind.

We, the Shareholders in America, ought to demand that our elected managers start running our collective enterprise more like a business and less like a drunken fraternity party. It’s high time we made deals where our tenants pay market rate for the use of our property. We have a right to demand a great big cleaning deposit from those oil, lumber and mining interests that rent our land. Those airwaves that belong to us should be accessible to us. Whenever a lease or license comes up for renewal or modification, we should demand better terms. We should make sure that the deals we made in the past are not currently in breach. Most immediately, we should demand that if our CEO thinks that his friends on Wall Street are selling a better product, he should implement changes that will make our product more desirable. Instead of closing up shop and leaving us Shareholders in America without our insurance company, he should be working to make us more competitive, more profitable and collectively wealthier. He should quit binging and start acting like a CEO.

Please email any ideas you may have for ways to convince people that the privatization of Social Security is bad for our nation.

Think tank members ask"are we being swindled... conned...ripped off?"

What do you have to say? What language can we use to help people see that the man they see as the current father of the nation doesnt have our best interests at heart?

Please send in any catchy phrases you might have on any subject relating public policy

We like:

Corporate Media instead of Mainstream Media

Mother Nature instead of the Environment

What do you think?

Ask your friends if they have any good ideas and send them in. Hit the yellow envelope image at the bottom of the page to email your responses.

1:52:23 AM