New Clear Vision


constructive commentary for the chronically farsighted


Water Politics

July 07, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Ecology, Martin Zehr, Politics

Balancing Growth with Renewable Supplies

by Martin Zehr, aka Mato Ska

Any study of water management in the state of California that fails to analyze water politics leaves a significant gap in grasping the decisions that have been made in the past and those that will be made in the future.

In addressing California water politics we find profound disparities in power and influence. There are many advocacy groups that represent users and stakeholders throughout the state who are engaged in issues of water quality, water allocations and water diversions. There are lines drawn between coastal municipalities and inland users. There are lines drawn between North and South. There are environmentalists and agribusinesses that project their ritual oppositions in the media. Liberals in San Francisco raise the banner of the Delta smelt, while conservatives on talk shows mock the prioritization of a minnow-like fish ahead of the farm owners and farm workers of the Central Valley. (more…)

How to Spark a Commons Revolution

May 07, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Culture, Ecology, Family, Jay Walljasper

What You Can Do to Make a Better World

by Jay Walljasper

E.F. Schumacher (author of Small is Beautiful) gave us some good advice about how to restore the commons when he said, “Perhaps we cannot raise the wind. But each of us can put up the sail, so that when the wind comes we can catch it.” Even in these tough times, the breeze of change is beginning to blow.

The following is a handy list of ways you can raise the sail in your own community and life, reprinted from the new book published by On the Commons, All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons. These simple suggestions are offered to encourage you to find more of your own ideas, and to implement them in your lives and communities.

Personal Life

1. Challenge the prevailing myth that all problems have private, individualized solutions.

2. Notice how many of life’s pleasures exist outside the marketplace— gardening, fishing, conversing, playing music, playing ball, making love, enjoying nature and more. (more…)

Garden Like Life Depends On It

April 05, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Ecology, Economy, Guest Author

The Benefits of Small-scale Food Production

by Ellen LaConte

Spring has sprung — at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it — and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food — all of which are also becoming more expensive — or less food.

In some American towns, and not just impoverished backwaters, as many as 30 percent of residents can’t afford to feed themselves and their families sufficiently, let alone nutritiously. (more…)

Fighting Fire with Water

March 15, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Economy, Guest Author, Politics

Eternal Vigilance, Grounded Struggle Define Democracy

by David D. Leeper

Main Street, Wisconsin — harbinger for the nation — is becoming aware that our democracy is being threatened by some very rich, powerful people. The super-wealthy are threatening the very core of our democracy as they consolidate more and more wealth and power. For those who recognize this conflict and want to resist, the first thing to realize is there is no quick-fix.

Abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote, in 1857: “If there is no struggle there is no progress…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Benjamin Franklin reportedly told people that the form of government our founders had created “is a democracy — if you can keep it.” Preserving our democracy is not something we can accomplish with one powerful demonstration. Like freedom, democracy’s cost is eternal vigilance. (more…)

The Health Economy

March 09, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Economy, Guest Author, Politics

Promoting Wellness through Accountability, Community, and Justice

by David K. Cundiff, MD

The Health Economy will take the place of today’s bankrupt Waste Economy that has let down working people. The American people are capable of increasing individual and public health, prosperity, and happiness. We can replace institutionalized waste and inefficiencies in the public and private sectors with valuable economic activities and community building pursuits that are not for money. Volunteerism and mutual aid can be incentivized.

Jeffersonian democracy with cooperative community involvement is what works, while the same old greed, corruption, and economic disparities of our dysfunctional government and corporate systems display failure more starkly each day. We can’t afford the present level of government spending and consumer debt, but we can definitely afford health, helping others, and economic justice. (more…)

Morning in America

March 01, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Current Events, Politics, Randall Amster

If at First You Don’t Secede…

by Randall Amster

Progressive eyes have been rightly transfixed on Wisconsin of late, with the en masse display of “people power” directly confronting attempts to erode public infrastructure and eviscerate the leverage of collective bargaining that so many have struggled for over the decades. Coming on the heels of popular uprisings in Egypt and across the region, and with the potential for an ensuing General Strike in the offing if austerity measures persist, the “Wisky Rebellion” has captured the imagination of workers and activists, spawning solidarity actions around America and inspiring people in other states to push back against comparable rightwing machinations.

Arizona has been no exception, as hundreds gathered in Phoenix recently to show their support for protesters in Wisconsin, and to voice their displeasure at similar policies in their midst. If there’s another state in the union with a competing claim to be the frontline of reactionary politics gone haywire, it is surely Arizona. Beset by invidious legislation and a decimated economy, among other issues, the nascent “failed state” ethos that has taken hold in the desert is escalating even as the leading edge of a people’s movement begins to push back half a continent away. While Phoenix bears little overt resemblance to Madison, either geographically or politically, the national assault on sane governance compels us to explore the linkage. (more…)

Toward A ‘Leaderless Revolution’ in America

February 16, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Economy, Politics, Will Wilkinson

A Growing, Yet Largely Invisible, Movement Begins to Take Hold

by Will Wilkinson

At first glance, the “leaderless revolution” in Egypt has nothing in common with the recent closing of Allyson’s, a local deli here in our small Oregon town. Until you hear why the bank called the note: “the balance and payments are due.”

Quoting from a recent article by David Porter on Egypt, “It is the slowly-accumulating momentum of hundreds of thousands of confrontations with local officials and elites … that slowly develop the courage, confidence and essential horizontal networks bubbling below the surface.”

How many Allyson’s stories are accumulating throughout America? How many business owners and employees, home owners and credit card users have had their lives turned upside down by bankers’ decisions like this one, so utterly devoid of humanity? (more…)

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