Yearly Archives: 2008

change congress

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Creative commons founder and personal hero, Lawrence Lessig, has founded Change Congress, his first step in what he plans to make a 10 year mission to improve the state of American democracy.

It true Lessig fashion the goal is big and the plan is simple. He’s focusing on four changes:

  1. No money from lobbyists or PACs
  2. Vote to end earmarks
  3. Support publicly-financed campaigns
  4. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

upon which there is more written about here.

Am I excited about the potential? Absolutely. Something is happening in the United States right now. A progressive backlash is brewing.

Change Congress

My only cause for concern is that, like previous reform efforts, we don’t succumb to the law of unintended consequences. I remember reading how making congress members committee votes public was intended to make congress more “transparent.”  It did. By by doing so it empowered lobbyists to ensure the members they gave money to actually voted the way they were paid to – in effect tightening this groups control on congress. While I believe transparency to be a good thing, this outcome could hardly be described as progressive in its impact.

I’m no expert on the machinations of congress, but we should always ask ourselves what will happen to the money once we close off one tap. For example, of the 4 priorities above, the end of earmarks raises some possible concerns. It will probably mean that the US public service will have more control over the specific allocation of monies. This could be good thing. But then perhaps not. The US public service is not as independent as it is say, here in Canada, and so this may simply enable the administration to assert more control on who ends up receiving money. Rather than an end to pork barreling, it will simply shift who controls the pork from congress to presidential appointees…

Dissecting the Quadra By-election

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The political Parties have been busy spinning Monday’s by-election outcomes. The one that is most interesting to yours truly are the stories out of Vancouver-Quadra.

The Conservatives have been successfully spinning their narrow loss as a victory in the long standing Liberal riding:

“Whether we win or lose, it’s a huge victory for the Conservatives in Vancouver Quadra,” said Meredith. “We’ve closed the gap. The fact that it’s so tight right now and we can’t say who the winner will be is a huge change from the last few elections.”

According to Elections Canada the finally tally had the Liberals at 36.1% (down 13% from last year), the Conservatives at 35.5 (up 6%), the Greens at 13.5 (up 8.5%) and the NDP at 14.4 (down 2%).

Interestingly, few people are talking about the low voter turn out. Only 27.9% of eligible voter (and 33.9% of registered voters) actually voted. This is less than half the average of the last general election.

Given that Quadra is a fairly Liberal riding a lower voter turn out rate will broadly favour challengers. Why? If the “average” voter is Liberal and opts not to turn out then the outcome will favour those who are more motivated. This tends to be voters who are challenging the incumbent or who have are issue focused. This riding has been Liberal for a while now, so they are most at risk in this situation.

Once this is factored this race takes on less meaning. Take the the Greens for example. Their voters are probably  more dedicated than the average voter (to go the poll year after year knowing your candidate isn’t going to get elected takes dedication). Because of the low turn out rate their % of the vote increased dramatically (doubling from 6% to 13.5%) even though the absolute number of people who voted for them rose only marginally.

Most interesting though was that the Conservatives almost got their perfect storm. To win they needed a very low voter turn out rate with strong low-key campaigning from themselves and a good performance out of the Greens and NDP. Indeed, the Conservatives were so intent on this strategy that Harper didn’t even campaign on behalf of the Conservative Candidate – Deborah Meredith – when he was in Vancouver last week. Having the Prime Minister campaigning would have raised the profile of the race thereby increasing voter turn out and hurting the party’s odds. It was one of those moments when having a sitting PM stump on your behalf would actually have done more harm than good.

As a result I’m not sure that anyone can claim any larger meaning out of the race. The Greens impressive % increase is an interesting story, but again, it is likely that many of the same hardcore  supporters came out as opposed to many new ones. Interestingly the NDP never really ran in Quadra, but instead had almost a city wide campaign trying to increase their profile in preparation for the general election (my understanding is that they didn’t even do door-to-door canvassing and focused their attention on city-wide media). I hope it worked because the NDP’s numbers are the real disaster story. Its % of the vote shrunk when the low voter turn out should have inflated it. Either their die hard supporters opted not to come out, or they voted Green or Liberal. Either way, that’s not a good sign for a party stuck in the polls.

I've never seen a political speech like this

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I was going to post about the Quadra byelection today (I’d even written something so will post tomorrow) but yesterday afternoon I started getting emails from friends in the US asking me if I’d seen “the speech.” I’d locked myself away for much of the day and was trying to avoid the great distraction that is the internet, so… I hadn’t. I finally loaded it up on YouTube and figured I watch a few minutes.

37 minutes later, and now a night’s sleep, and I’m still feeling pretty stunned.

I thought Obama displayed courage when he gave his speech on homophobia within the African American church at MLK’s church on MLK day. This speech takes that courage to a whole new level. What made it work – for me at least – was how he seemed to serve as a conduit, a translator, for African-American and white communities. Breaking down the stalemated debate between them and trying to offer a path out.

Most impressively, he did this while trying to bring complexity and nuance back into political discourse. I don’t know if he’ll succeed but I’m glad someone is finally trying.

Finally, the comparison to Hillary is again, quite stark. When the controversy over Geraldine Ferraro’s remarks spun out of control Hillary threw her under the bus. Did she use the opportunity to talk about the glass ceiling for women? The subtle and pervasive effects of sexism? No.  This would not have been politically expedient. And yet, to paraphrase Obama, Ferraro’s frustration and anger was real, legitimate, and powerful. And to simply wish it away and to condemn it without understand its roots only served to widen the chasm along both racial and gender lines.

And yet this is what Hillary did. She wished it away and condemned it, instead of using it as an opportunity to elevate the debate and actually try to address a serious and legitimate problem.

But then that sums up the campaign in a nutshell:

Hillary is playing to win – and her supporters believe she can better manage Washington. Obama is playing to make change – and his supporters believe he can remake Washington like Reagan or FDR did. So today they are reveling, as their candidate  has again demonstrated his willingness to take on a dangerous issue – like race – that no other politician can or will touch.

Here’s a youtube clip of the speech:

Negotiation Workshop for NGOs in Vancouver

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I’ll be doing a Negotiation Workshop on behalf of the Hollyhock Leadership Institute in Vancouver this April 25th and 26th. You can find out more, or register, here.

Since moving back to Vancouver I’ve been interested in finding ways to enable the local NGO community so when HLI asked if this is something that might be possible I jumped on the opportunity. While the workshop will be applicable in a number of circumstances, I want it to relate to two specific challenges.

Puzzle Circle

The first relates to what I think is a critical moment in BC, particularly for NGO’s.

With the coming Olympics and the passage of the recent provincial budget I suspect the number of negotiations between NGO’s and the provincial government will likely increase and/or taken on greater urgency. On the one hand this is an enormous opportunity for ENGOs to engage and partner with government and advance their cause – if the two parties can create a collaborative framework for working together.

Creating such a collaborative framework is often challenging.  Further complicating the issue is that parties will need to be able to sustain this collaboration in specific areas while the NGO community (legitimately) continues to critique and condemn government activities in other areas. These cooperative/competitive relationships are always difficult to manage, but all the more so when two groups – government bureaucrats/politicians and scoail activists – come to the table with a complex (and sometimes personal) history.

The second challenge relates to the equally difficult issue of the negotiations between NGO’s or among the activists within a social movement. As anyone experienced in this type of work will tell you, these conversations can be equally, if not more draining. If we can begin to develop skills and foster a culture that improves our capacity to engage in these conversations and negotiations, the movement can only be strengthened.

My hope is that this workshop can enable members of the community to better manage these negotiations and their relationships both with government and one another. If this is of interest, check out the workshop webpage. Also, I’ve mapped out what some of the critical negotiations in social movements are in this earlier blog post.

Negotiating with the Lord's resistance army (redux)

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Some of you may remember the post I wrote after doing a workshop with some Ugandans who’ve been negotiating with the Lord’s Resistance Army for the release of kidnapped children.

I forgot to mention that the Canadian Consortium on Human Security published a slightly revamped version as the lead piece in last month’s edition of the Human Security Bulletin.

Active online often means being active offline

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Anyone under the age of 30 – skip this post.

From time to time, after I give a talk about technology and public service sector renewal, I end up getting a question from the audience to the effect of, “hey isn’t all this technology just isolating and distracting? Aren’t people who spend time online just sealing themselves off from the world?”

Despite the Web 2.0 explosion, their remain pockets of people for who the “geek” stereotype of internet user remains dominant. Stephen Johnson’s book Everything bad is good for you began to poke some cavernous holes in this stereotype – for example, white collared professionals who play video games are actually more social, more confident and more adept at solving problems than their colleagues. But then, video game geeks and internet users may be different people.

Trolling through some old emails I stumbled up some studies that challenged these stereotypes. A while back Alan Moore shared with us some of the following exciting (and expensive) conclusions of the University of South California’s Digital Future Report:

The Digital Future Project found that involvement in online communities leads to offline actions. More than one-fifth of online community members (20.3 percent) take actions offline at least once a year that are related to their online community. (An “online community” is defined as a group that shares thoughts or ideas, or works on common projects, through electronic communication only.)

So online activities actually lead to offline activity for a fifth (and growing percentage) of people. No surprise here. What surprises me are people who think the internet and the “real” world are some how disconnected things. They aren’t. As David Weinberger has so vigorously and effectively argued – the two are deeply emeshed in, and shaping, the other.

The other reason young people don’t vote – or why I didn’t vote yesterday

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I tried voting yesterday in a local by-election (advanced poll). Sadly, I was unsuccessful.

First, I went to the Elections Canada by-election website. Guess which link tells you the election dates and locations? (hint: it is under the “and more…” link).

Unsurprisingly, the advanced poll was at a local church (more on that below) that was a half kilometer away from all the local bus routes. But the kicker was that I’d failed to notice the opening time of the polling station, so upon my arrival at 10:15 (I was hoping to arrive after the prework rush) I discovered that the polling booth wouldn’t open until 11:00am. With a 11am meeting scheduled downtown, my day of democracy was over. Was my negative experience Elections Canada’s fault? Absolutely not. I’d failed to notice the polling start time. But it did make me wonder about the whole process of voting, and why young people seem to avoid it.

A lot of noise has been made about the dropping voting rates among young people. Some (usually young people) argue politicians and political parties don’t advocate agendas or messages that appeal to young people. Others (usually their parents) claim our schools fail to teach enough civics and that society doesn’t imbue the behaviour in our young people. And finally, still other people (usually their grandparents) believe young people are simply hedonistic, self-centered, and lazy (and likely undeserving of the right to vote anyway).

I agree that many young people don’t vote because they fail to see how a single vote in a the political process will have any impact, particularly when the choices are, quite frankly, not that appealing. That said, the rise of Barack Obama clearly points to the fact that young people will mobilize themselves and vote in fairly large numbers if stirred.

There is however another, important reason why I believe young people don’t vote. Some call it laziness. I prefer the term convenience.

The simple fact is that the voting infrastructure we use today was essentially built by and for our grandparents. Since then, it has been barely tweaked. Try this out. In the 1960’s if you were a “young person” (e.g 20-30) you were almost certainly married and had two kids. (60’s avg marriage age was 24 for men, 20 for women). Thinking in terms of the 1950s and 60s: What were the 3 institutions you probably visited on a daily basis? How about A) the local community centre, B) the local school, and C) the local church.

Now, if you are between the age of 25 and 35 or under, name me three institutions you probably haven’t visited in over a decade.

…exactly.

Do young people not vote because they are lazy? Maybe. But they also didn’t have a voting system designed around them like their grandparents did. Why aren’t their voting booths in subway stations? The lobbies of office towers? The local shopping mall? How about Starbucks? Somewhere, anywhere, where people actually congregate. Heaven forbid that voting booths be where the voters are.

I don’t claim that such a move would magically solve the youth voting issue. But imagine if such a move increased young voting turnout by even 5%. Suddenly the youth demographic would be the fastest growing segment of voters and you can bet your bottom dollar that political parties would suddenly pay a lot more attention. That in turn might create a virtuous circle: with more parties appealing to them, more young people might turn out to vote.

It’s not magic bullet – but since we can’t make political parties appeal to young people, let’s fix what we can control. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to have a voting infrastructure designed by and for the 21st century, would it?

giving

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Some of you may remember that last August James Wright – Governor on the Board of McGill, Executive Director of the Sauve Scholars and all round great person was suddenly killed in a tragic accident. After posting an obituary literally hundreds upon hundreds of people visit my site from every continent – usually after googling “Jim Wright.” It was a testament to how, around the world, one man had impacted so many lives.

For those who knew Jim, a new scholarship – the James Wright Memorial Scholarship – has been established in his honour. I beleive more details will emerge but you can read about it and donate towards it here.

Engineers Without Borders Job Opportunity (March 7, 2008)

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Hello everyone. One of my favourite organizations – Engineers Without Borders – is looking to hire. Wanted to pass along the good news in case any readers are looking for some fun, interesting and rewarding work.

Up to three positions are on offer including

  1. Overall team management,
  2. fundraising – small individual donors, foundations and major gifts
  3. strategic communications/writing

If you are interested you can get more information at the EWB website.To apply, forward your resume and a letter of interest to George Roter. You’ll likely want to move quickly as they will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

The long tail of public relations disasters

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 “To create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike.”

– Virgil Griffith, on why he created WikiScanner

The article below appeared in the Financial Post yesterday – thank you JJ for the hook up.

Admiteldy, this group is hardly that big, but you can imagine that 10, 20 or 50 of these popping up and it could start to become a pesky burden for a large oligarichal company, like, say, a Canadian bank.

I suppose this could be the longtail of protest and dissent. Made possible because the internet allows these frustrated consumers to band together.

Hey, this just came to me. You know who else benefits from this technology? Lawyers in class action suits.


Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Facebook helps rally dissent over ABCP losses
Scotiabank AGM

Jim Middlemiss, Financial Post Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008

A Facebook site created to advocate on behalf of retail investors in asset-backed commercial paper is gathering steam and members plan to take their message to the floor of the Bank of Nova Scotia annual general meeting today in Edmonton.

ABCP investor Reid Moseley plans to attend the meeting on behalf of Bank of Nova Scotia shareholder and independent Ontario financial analyst Diane Urquhart. Along with fellow ABCP investors Brian Hunter and Layne Arthur, the trio plan to attend today’s meeting to raise questions about the bank’s participation in the ill-fated, $35-billion non-bank ABCP market, which seized last summer.

The men collectively have more than $1.2-million of ABCP in their investment accounts with Canaccord Capital. Canaccord was sued last fall by two British Columbia holders of ABCP and in its legal response, the financial investment firm denied liability and blamed the bank’s related company, Scotia Capital Inc., which sold Canaccord the paper it then distributed to its clients. Canaccord has disclosed it has $269-million in exposure to ABCP, which is believed to be spread among 1,400 investors.

“We’re trying to get the proper proxies sorted out,” said Ms. Urquhart, adding she has identified as much as $770-miillion in ABCP held by retail investors at Canaccord and the credit unions.

“The reason we’re going to Scotia is that Canaccord received its non-bank ABCP from Scotia Capital Markets and … Scotia is a party joined to a lawsuit relating to Canaccord’s allegation that Scotia is an expert and it relied on Scotia and it has joint responsibility.”

As well, she said, most of the Canaccord investors who have come forward on Facebook are holders of paper in the Structured Investment Trust III, and Bank of Nova Scotia is the issuing and paying agent. “They were an instrumental party to the operation of the trust.”

Bank AGMs have a question-and-answer segment and the men plan to use Ms. Urquhart’s proxy to make a statement and “request that Scotia pay up money,” she said.

Mr. Arthur said he has 25% of his net worth, mostly proceeds from the sale of a family farm, tied up in ABCP. “All the brokers tell me how safe it was,” he said of the $434,000 he has invested in ABCP. “They didn’t realize what the heck it was,” said Mr. Arthur, who plans to attend the AGM and hand out a letter the group was crafting late last night.

Brian Hunter, who started the Facebook site, said “we’re just trying to get our voice heard.” It’s believed to be one of the first times investors have galvanized around a social networking site to organize and push for compensation.

The site now has 56 participants, including some non-ABCP holders, such as journalists, lawyers and analysts. “It’s been very good and a little bit cathartic to find out there are others with the same problem,” Mr. Hunter said. He said Facebook is “a very, very simple tool that allows you to communicate with a large number of people with very little effort. It’s a good way of sharing information and blowing off a little bit of steam.”

jmiddlemiss@nationalpost.com
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