New Clear Vision


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Archive for the ‘Will Wilkinson’

Give the Money Back

April 18, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Economy, Will Wilkinson

Are We Missing the Obvious?

by Will Wilkinson

An online headline proclaims “The ‘Key to Recovery’” — which apparently is rebuilding America’s infrastructure — but then the rest of the article mentions that funds for this have been slashed in the new budget.

Duh.

What’s so difficult about acknowledging the real key to recovery: some Americans have way too much money and some have way too little. So, spread it around.

The idea of “redistributing wealth” surfaced a while back and was immediately branded as a socialist horror. Politicians who preferred to keep their jobs distanced themselves from the concept pronto, but it is the obvious answer. And there’s nothing radical about it at all, actually. What’s radical is what we already have — a huge gap between the rich and the poor. (more…)

What Have I Done?

March 24, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Culture, Politics, Will Wilkinson

Personal Accountability as a Basis for Change

by Will Wilkinson

The nuclear nightmare in Japan confronts us with painful lessons. Where to start? There’s the obvious: ignoring warnings (it can’t happen here). Making choices from greed and laziness rather than wisdom and common sense (building unsafe facilities, filled with volatile, radioactive materials, near fault lines). Hubris (trying to replace the sun). The list could continue for a while.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.” Over and over again we witness mind-boggling repetition and denial. World War One was described as “the war to end all wars.” Actually, it marked the beginning of a long line of wars. Vietnam was one of them, recent enough and failure enough — you would think — to have warned us about the folly of Iraq. Quite the opposite.

Ten million protesters in 60 countries tried to stop that war in 2003. We were ignored. Things turned out much worse than even we had warned. Those who ridiculed us and lied to us were wrong, dead wrong. They have never admitted it and they have never apologized. They persist with their same flawed ideologies, in the face of completely contrary evidence from the real world. (more…)

The High Cost of Doing Right

February 23, 2011 By: NCVeditor Category: Community, Economy, Family, Will Wilkinson

From Rosa Parks to the ‘Walmart Four’

by Will Wilkinson

It was a real Rosa Parks moment on January 13 in Layton, Utah, when Walmart staff caught a convicted felon shoplifting a Netbook. They escorted him into an office where he pulled a gun, cocked it, and charged towards them. The four longtime Layton branch employees (Lori Poulsen, Justin Richins, Shawn Ray, and Gabriel Stewart), acting instinctively, disarmed him before he could barge back into the customer area. The investigating police officer reported that they acted in the “best interest and safety” of everyone around them.

A week later, Walmart dispatched a representative trained to handle situations like this with their well-known sensitivity. “You’re fired,” she told them. (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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