Originals

originals
ideas

     What if the new President empanelled a "blue ribbon" task force to tackle what looms as precipitous threats to the republic?

•      how to unlock government grid lock
•      how to create a new job generating economy
•      how to initiate a multi decade rebuilding of America's infrastructure
•      how to shorten federal elections and pull the big money out of politics
•      how to bring accountability and greater efficiency to the federal bureaucracy 

       There is certainly more on the horizon but almost everything else follows these critical needs.

        The panel would consist of economists, theorists, scientists, political scientists, big data analysts and be led by real doers. Who would be the leaders? People like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Amory Lovin, Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Larry Page, Safra Catz, Mary Barra, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Meg Whitman, Mary Daly, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Michael Bloomberg, Lawrence Ellison, Jamie Diamond and that caliber of person. With a group think process "managed" by these innovative thinkers, the process would produce more results than leaving politicians to sort it out.

       Political leadership would be there to listen and to be questioned. Writers and thinkers as diverse as Noam Chomsky to Charles Krauthammer, Tom Friedman to David Brooks, Midge Decker to Peggy Noonan, Barbara Ehrenreich and others would also be invited to be quizzed and asked to feed ideas. 

       The work process would glean ideas right to left. It would amount to a huge intellectual product, idea and data dump that would then be assimilated, studied and processed by the blue ribbon managers. They would author a document.

        Nothing like this has happened in American governance. Dwight Eisenhower began to approach the concept when he'd invite eminent scientists and scholars to have a sandwich and talk about what's new.  Eventually bureaucrats took it over and it morphed into something else as is typical in Washington.

       Getting the full range of problems, potential solutions, practical applications and real political understanding would help not only probe the depth of the crisis, but would begin to build a road map to solution.

       The world has changed since I began studying political science. The complexity of problems facing our government and others, has woven so intricately and our guardians have so blown their assignments we now face waves of pressure and force than can force modern civilization into a tail spin.

Partisan politics has replaced a desire to fix, solve, lead and serve. This presidential election is a marker as to how bad it is. 

       Congress cannot function, but they have created a special class for themselves. The White House, under almost any person, is terribly outgunned and over worked. Our Supreme Court is not at capacity and is more political now than in a century. The political class has failed. It is past time for a new Ap, an application of innovation and professionalism.  We need the help. It would be hard to say no the President.

original skills

    Cowboy is a job description here on the California central coast. Skills we used to see in the old movie westerns are still well practiced here.

         Below a young male is being branded and is about to be castrated. The missing parts are put into the bucket you see to the right of the frame, and moved promptly to a grill where they become Rocky Mountain Oysters. 

     Fisherman still go down to the sea off the central coast with Morro Bay being the nearest local port. 

     On this day this particular catch was taken some 30 miles off shore.

     As seals and gulls hope for a snack, a couple of fishermen 
prepare the catch of slimy eels. 

    They are  processed and put in a transportation tank to be sent to Asia.

original genius

the young lion 

who should have been president

    In 1979 Senator Richard Lugar, a runner, sponsored a fitness festival. Years later the highly respected Senator made a bid for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. 

    I've often wondered what a difference that would have made. Lugar was admired by both sides of the aisle and played a key role in stabilizing the world by controlling nuclear war heads and biological weapons that fell to local control when the former Soviet Union collapsed. He and Senator Sam Nunn intervened and kept weapons of mass destruction off the black market. 

    In this post featuring American originals I wanted to pay tribute an original political thinker. 

     I remain stunned how young we both were. I was producing a documentary on running and this was a break in that day's shooting. 

author, author

   Kudos to a tennis friend for his creative writing. Ray Derouin plays a skilled game of tennis and writes with depth and aplomb as well. The Pewter Plough Playhouse, an historic Cambria theatre presented readings of three of his one act plays, Perfect Strangers, Tea Time and A Week of Mondays. 

   Intricate and thoughtful scripts and nicely read by Janice Peters, Randall Lyon, Viv Goff and Mikaele Alicia.

original defense

    Why not outlaw open fires unless in the rainy season and why not find a stepped up enforcement plan?

     I ask this as 5,552 men and women continue to battle the fire north of Big Sur that has spread to 71 square miles, 51 thousand acres and has destroyed 57 homes with thousands more threatened. The most terrible thing about the fire is that it cost the life of a bulldozer operating trying to prepare a firebreak.

    How did this fire get started? A camp fire. True it was an illegal camp fire, but open fires are permitted in state and national parks and that is just wrong. We all have memories of sitting around a campfire, sure, but in the future those memories should be written only in the rainy season. The idiots who caused this fire are being pursued. Nothing can undo the damage, but justice can be punitive and in that way make an example of the fools who in all honesty may never have been taught about the danger of a camp fire.  

    See you down the trail.

GOLDEN MOMENTS

    Surrounded by Gold

Series of photos around Cambria

Golden Memory

     She could not have known the affect she had baked. The first bite was as though being belted into a time machine and delivered to an address in the early 1950's.

      Since Christmas a couple of years ago a jar of genuine English mincemeat sat in the back of the pantry. Lana put it to life in pie-cobbler. No top crust, just the savory sweet and unique taste, so authentic it time shifted me. My English grandmother and her sisters made mincemeat pie when they shared a large home, very much like a boarding house, on West Jackson Street in Muncie. Most of them were widows by then and frankly their English culinary skills were not to my liking as a lad with a couple of exceptions, ox tail soup and mincemeat pie.

      It had been decades since I tasted real mincemeat pie and each taste fired synapses deep in the memory file, vividly. I could smell the various perfumes of my great aunts, hear the sounds of that big house, feel the buzz as extended family gathered for Thanksgiving or Christmas. What a sweet and naive time it was. And what a wonderful taste!

Generation Shift

      My great aunt Martha who eventually survived all the others used to marvel at the progress she had seen and told my brothers and me we would see things she could not even dream of. My mother and father also welcomed the promise of the future and new thinking. Not everyone is wired that way.

     While most of the focus has been on the candidates in this cycle there is a glimpse of the future in the supporters and that is probably most true in Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

     Trump is a sentry of the old and changing structure; Whites, mostly older white men and women, some angry, some frustrated and most frightened by the disruptive nature of the future. More about that in a moment.

      Look at the faces and age of the massive crowds that Bernie Sanders has attracted coast to coast. Young, all sex and gender identity, culturally diverse and very much at home with disruption.

      Disruptive innovation, big data and the shared economy are forces that are shredding old ways and creating new businesses, opportunities, economic models, ways of living and in essence our future. Trump's supporters have more difficulty getting their heads around such concepts. Sander's supporters are already living lives that make Uber, Airbnb, 

metadata analysis, cooperative living, Instagram news and more, a reality. 

       20 years in the future? Most of Trumps supporters will be dead. Sander's demographic strength will be the most viable political voting block in the US.

      Based on the fervent support they have given Sanders, and the ease with which millennials adapt to disruptive influence and data processed lives, the formulating will of the American electorate will be much more inclined to a Sander's vision of government than any of the other candidates in this year. By 2036 a form of social Democracy may well be the model for being elected. I think we are seeing the first signs of that in Sander's appeal to those who will be the bulk of the future.

      Boomers are a fault line. Some take comfort in the knowledge of what they know, the richness of their lives and memories. They like things as they are. New operating systems on phones or computers, new designs in cars, new music, fashion and etc are annoyances. Others are still early adopters, fascinated by new art, cinema, technology, eager to use it, unintimidated by diverse mores, excited about the appointments of shared economy, comfortable with change including the relinquishing of power. 

      At the risk of annoying friends elsewhere-the most exciting region in the US now is the bay area-San Francisco-San Jose-Santa Rosa. Technology, information, data, money, ideas, innovation, space science, energy, automobiles, medical research and application are proportionately more robust and fully engaged in the Bay Area than anywhere else. Disruptive influence, big data, new business models and new politics thrive. That too is a glimpse of the future.

     Watch the politics there, a generation shift foretold. I hope as I continue my march to old boy irrelevance I will be excited by new technology, scientific advance and can still find mincemeat pie.

Surrounded by Gold

   See you down the trail

CAN IT BE TURNED BACK?

WE ARE SUFFERING SELF INFLICTED WOUNDS

     It is as though we've crossed a "Rubicon" and now worry about the consequences. Big Data, Surveillance, Algorithmic Analysis, NSA, etc, etc.

     Now FaceBook confirms that up to six million users' personal data, even that which is not public, has been seen and or gathered by third parties.  Many have argued those who post so much personal information willingly have themselves to blame when that data is hijacked, hacked, sold or used to either bug or defraud you.

     A couple of experts are now saying that analyzing big data needs to be more effectively used by federal authorities.  They contend the alleged Boston bombers history of viewing violent or terrorist prone on-line videos should have led to an interdiction before they acted out what they were thinking.  Thought police? 

     Being a First Amendment advocate, I've been posting about this crunch since I entered the blogosphere.

      Here's an earlier set of thoughts, dealing with this idea of thought police. The Eli Pariser video should be must viewing for anyone who spends anytime in cyberspace.

      The point is our privacy suffers, by our own hand, by commercial enterprises, by government agencies and by information pirates. It is just out there and all to easy to overlook or put out of mind.  But like most things,it grows.  What can, what should we do about it?

Jon Stewart

The Diplomat

     Those of you who appreciate the satire of Jon Stewart

know he is off this summer, directing a film in the Middle East.  Well, he's made an interesting appearance.

See you down the trail.

FREEDOM OR SECURITY-TALK IS NEEDED-Dangerous or Otherwise

FEELING MANIPULATED?

or as though someones listening in?

   The big yap yap now over the NSA disclosures at least

has people talking.

     And there is a lot of that going around.(Friend and reader Beverly noted, the bovine above is not a bull. Indeed, as a careful look will inform you. But just sort of go with it)  
      A question is, How do we want it?  What are the boundaries?

      Are we willing to give up liberty to feel safe? The conversation is needed and all of us, from voters to the intelligence community, need to weigh in. 

      I'm hung up on a couple of points.  Why is so much of our top clearance, security and intelligence work being done by private contractors? When and how did we decide to job it out and for who's benefit?  We are now paying private sources more money to do work that should be the exclusive franchise of US Government employees.

      Eisenhower had it right about the "military-industrial complex."  The modern codicil is "intelligence-industrial."  So a high school drop out, army wash out, can get hired by the CIA and get clearance and then quit only to be hired by a private contractor, paid reportedly a $ quarter million a year and have his ticket punched so he can purloin some of our most secret and sensitive information. Yea, that's intelligent isn't it!  Where are the adults?

      It's not an easy riddle. Americans voluntarily give up more private and specific data to social media, banks, in online purchases and e-mail than what the NSA has gathered in bundles. Private business knows more about you than do the spooks and some in the intelligence community  can't figure why that is, or why the current flap.

      Intelligence and security people reason they've been tasked with keeping us safe from harm and in their mind they cannot have too much information. But in the old days raw and irrelevant data got purged.  Now files are kept forever. Is that right?  It's another choice we have to make.

      The panel of Judges who guide the intelligence community in their acquisition of data also need to be heard from. It would be good for the Republic to hear the mind set and thinking of those who frame these vitally important considerations.

      And a word about Snowden as a leaker.  As a one time investigative reporter I could bore you with countless details about how a whistle blower or leaker helped get information to the public. In my experience there were many instances where the public good was served.
     Examples-an elementary school being built over a "forgotten" hazardous material dump, a grand jury being used to punish political enemies, mental patients being poisoned by inept or non existent medical supervision in over or wrong medication, Ku Klux Klansmen working on a city payroll as a result of extortion, managers of public housing selling material meant to improve housing projects out of the back door and profiting huge sums, a KGB officer trying to infiltrate a public office holder's staff, security breaches where some of this nation's most deadly nerve agent is stored, toxic poison leaking into a public water resource.

      I would not have been able to get that information onto the public agenda, had it not been for state, city and federal employees getting information to me-data, records, documents that had been buried, hidden, over looked, forgotten or in some cases "destroyed." 

      In my own little footnotes to history, our work prompted investigations, prosecutions, regulations, new statutes, and informed conversations. 

      We all would be well served by a robust conversation now about privacy, safety, expectations, propriety, and who should be minding our secrets.

       There's a great thought, attributed to both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.  I'm comfortable with quoting them both-

       "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either!"

   See you down the trail.