There is evidence that some members of the Harvard Faculty can critically think and then, there are the rest of them.
Intelligence is not necessarily an operant criteria in a 140 or less word society and surely, Harvard has not been successful enough to transform 21st Century greed and governance from its predessors in earlier times. But, although greed may be a lost cause there and elsewhere, there are those among the faculty, research base, and graduates who recognize the simple truth that, without a new paradigm for managing the massive changes brought about by globalization and the world wide web, just to mention two, nations will either suffer enormously in the economic world or look to overthrow existing governance in order to survive.
This is not theoretical claptrap. We have this within our own borders in the Queen City. Jokers are wild and the disease rampant. I cannot possibiilty risk losing you by going over much covered ground; the power of Enablers, the fail to adhere to the City Charter/Code, the assumption of power by this and past mayor(s) where not warrante by this Charter/Code, a unaware or unwilling City Counsel to accept the power granted to them, and so much more.
What about the Harvard faculty. Well, there is Lawrence Tribe, Obama’s mentor at the law school, who spanked him for his chutzpah on seemingly denying the role of the Judiciary in our scoiety. Obama knows better, but is doused with his own sense of entitlement and self importance. So, he creates weasel words to crawl away from his discomfort, but they are purely Sophist in nature. Surely you know that and more surely you must see the parallels in New Rochelle where Sophistry has replace reason, even common sense.
Of course there are still many advocates up north who come up with the oddest things. Just read a posting where someone strangely was saying words to the effect that isn;t it nice to have a neighbor who takes out the garbage, mows his lawn, you know not so much of a patrician but real folks like you and me. Well, that’s nice, but put it in the context of the bigger picture which is to be as diligent in cleaning our community house as you are in sprucing up yours.
What does not rock my cradle is that Noam is capable of this and so are most of the Council. But there are old forms to conquer and new paradigms to embrace and now is almost too late.
And, that brings me to Michael Sandel. Sandel is a Political Philospher at Harvard and the author of The Moral Limits of Markets, a work as necessary today, as was Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, not so mny years earlier.
You have all watched endless hours of cable tv, read countless books and articles about the global economy and how nations’ adapt or fail to adapt to its demands. You’ve observed New Rochelle Council Meetings, read press releases, heard the voices of your neighbors trying to make some sense of their lives here and …..
If you are anything like me, you were underwhelmed by the integrity, community paricipation, ethical and moral derivites, and pure common sense…..
But surely overwhelmed by the failure to address the most pressing needs, to marginalize or eliminate greed, to neutralize power that is not shared with the community, and to establish working systems in planning and prioritization that got to “first thing first.”
Weren’t you? Or do you prefer obfuscation, sophistic language, pseudo-rationalization, and taking of power and control despite prior Charter, voters wishes on referendums, and simply, open and honest government where you would learn about a college president delivering much money and heading up the BID in exchange for…… or a shapeshifter such as Ratner under disguise if need be getting his prposal on Echo Bay taken seriously in exchange for……. having citizen committees on budgets and planning formed by the power elite with qualifications hardly a criteria in exchange for….. and trying to figure out why a ceremonial mayor is sitting on a lot of campaign dough ….. in exchange for…….
Sandel thinks about these things at all levels in government and doesn’t indict as the indictment sheet would be too long. He has helped me enormously with my quest over the past 3 years of coming up with a new form of governance which migh not moderate questions such as those I ask above, but rather to take these into account under our form of governance and put a marketing value on these. In short, he has listened to Obama’s sophistry, Gingrich’s neurotic rants, Romney’s moving etch a sketch, Santorum’s ideological slants, and even Paul’s honest expression of the “people first and foremost.”
So, he considers the ineffectiveness of 21st Century classified Capitalism and the structural inefficiency of large scale social progressivenism and has come up with a way to look at business and economic system that removes the power elite/enablers as sole inheritors of power unchecked and places it back in our hands…. in short, you do get the government you deserve if you opt for this choice mechanism.
We must expose the power elite and enablers to the light of day and point out the consequences of turning our world over to them because we are apathetic, ignorant, even too trustful.
As we learn from Occam, the simplest solutions are often the best. Poe placed the purloined letter in sight of the seeker. Those who measure a community by segments, or by noblesse oblige, or by “its my neighbors’ tough luck if they live in hard areas or times, are well, FOOLISH! You need to know that you don’t need a priest, minister, or rabbi, or even a secular counselor to tell you that. You will feel it in your empty wallet, your diminishing financial accounts, your children’s fading dreams.
Why? Because economically if in no other way, you are “your brother’s keeper.” Why overheat you with information on equity, assessed values, reputational risk in the market place? If your Adminstration tells you. glibly, with hubris oozing from each pore that the consultant assisting the Citizens Group is unknown to you and if the name is known, he is unknown in the professional community in this area of supposed expertise. But you must know that much, for several administrations you have endured, consultants with direct ties to City Hall, beneficiaries of RFPs from donors to the mayor’s hope chest as well as the political party’s.
Maybe someone can tell me what a ceremonial mayor needs a hope chest to begin with. Is it to buy candidates for the City Council every few years. Maybe this is enough reason to create and enforce a proper Ethics Code.
But as ofent, I digress. What then, is so special about Michael Sindel? Cutting through tons of material, some of it availabe in the Atlantic Magazine, all of it at Harvard, you learn that its best attributes are:
1. Responsiveness to changes in competing economic/political systems found necessary based on globalization, emerging markets, the Internet.
2. It’s ease in understanding, in application but its extreme difficulties in changing the existing paradigm and insisting that the current system of governance in New Rochelle change and change NOW.
Here is some of what Sindel says which I take from the Atlantic Magazine.
“Globalization and the advent of technology can only continue to heighten the contradiction (as the Marxists would say between free markets and family values. The relentless logic of the market is insinuating itself into every sphere of your lives. We are moving from having a market economy to being a market society, in which EVERYTHING — the right to pollute, the use of a womb — has a price tag. Here is a cause that unites elements of the left and of the right. Here is a force whose less happy effects we can hope to soften only through the creative constructive interplay of COMMUNITY, CHURCH, AND GOVERNMENT. When you think about it, here is a suitable task — in theory — for a committe community organizer, or maybe even a real Massachusetts moderate.
He gets it, he really does. He sees that the age of choice, of informed consumers, communities, actually welcome and embrace market values.
Let me put it simply. If New Rochelle’s governance understood any of this, they would need to divest from enabler relationships. They would have to give more prominence to assessing where we are, positive and negative, in current state while filing the future state — largely developmental because Bramson wants something that does not bring value to his constituents’ core needs on buidling a tax base, for example. The eanblers who mostly want something in return, dormitory space, a city contract, a continuing job on the payroll, must be modified, likely replaced by real community needs.
Right now these are restoring and rebuilding not creating. We need to restore a police prsence, contol the crime rate rise, recognize that Avalon for one, has become a shell of what it was… We now can say that we gave a 30 year abatement for a dormitory with some semblances of Section 8 housing.
Jack Stanek of the University of Chicago, a dear colleague from the past, would label this a “dog’s breakfast.” Nothing planned, nothing prioritized. Put it in a dish and serve it up. The dog will eat it.
Are you hungry? Prove it and wait until you can contact your Council member and say no to Echo Bay, Albanese, and moving the DPW yards. If you don’t know enough about these forever, you live in a monastery. Say yes to Charter adherence/revision, rezoning, breaking up parts of City Hall/Poice Precinct and moving them downtown, muzzling Iona and Monroe.
I am Warren Gross and I approved this message because I give a damn.