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eCars google group

By Brian Chesney - Apr 21st, 2009 at 11:57 am EDT

I've created an eCars - USA google group. This will be a sub-group of the eCars Global google group to discuss promoting electric vehicle conversion specifically in the United States.

eCars - USA

Visit this group

The goal of this group is to promote converting internal-combustion engine vehicles
to electric vehicles in the United States as well as promote any new
technology developed in the US to make the conversion process cheaper,

easier, faster and safer.

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Vehicle Emissions cap and trade

By Brian Chesney - Mar 24th, 2009 at 10:51 pm EDT

Does anybody out there have a feel for the feasibility of a cap-and-trade system for vehicle emissions? The idea behind it would be to encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient cars.

http://www.sociologicaldig.com/whatsnew/?p=90

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Housing Cities 2009

By Brian Chesney - Mar 12th, 2009 at 11:13 pm EDT

If you're in the Boston area Friday, and interested in sustainable housing, check out Housing Cities 2009.

It kicked off tonight with a conversation with the head of the Boston Housing Authority, Sandra Henriquez. Ms. Hernandez gave a thorough introduction to the challenges facing public housing.

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OFA 2.0 on linkedin

By Brian Chesney - Mar 1st, 2009 at 10:57 pm EST

Join the Organizing for America group on linkedin.com!

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Dinner with a Stranger

By Brian Chesney - Feb 21st, 2009 at 7:50 pm EST

Franke James has a great post on her blog about an offer she received around Christmas: $200 to the charity of her choice in exchange for one night of dinner. Only the catch is, the the person making the offer was a complete stranger. Read her post to see how it went -- reminds me of the great community spirit that organizing can capture.

(via kottke.org)

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Economic Recovery Meeting -- Jobs

By Brian Chesney - Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:28 pm EST

The last in the series of posts about ideas generated at our Economic Recovery Meeting -- thanks to all who participated:

Jobs
- I think we generally agreed that growth through investment in small businesses is a good way to stimulate the economy. This investment has the opportunity to grow the economy in a sustainable way.
- Jobs are tough to find -- this isn't a news flash, but was reiterated during the meeting
- Employer-provided health care makes losing one's job an even bigger blow. We need to do something about reducing the cost of health care to lessen the impact of job market contraction on an individual's health care.
- Nearly everything we talked about is tied to jobs in some way. In fact, many of the subjects are tied together. It's going to take a broad based approach to economic recovery to improve our current situation. We can't focus on these things serially, they need to be addressed comprehensively.

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Economic Recovery Meeting -- Financial Stimulus Ideas

By Brian Chesney - Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:26 pm EST

Continuing with the ideas form the Economic Recovery Meeting...

Financial Stimulus Ideas
- HOPE bond: this is Tommy's idea that I really liked and seemed to be generally well-received. I'm not sure I understand all of the details of how this would work, so please feel free to add/correct here. The idea is that the Treasury would issue inflation-adjusted, tax-deductible bonds (I believe I series was the model alluded to, but without the purchase restriction) that would facilitate funding certain projects. The government would set up certain types of projects and letter the bond according to the project. For instance, there might be a G bond to invest in greener energy. This would allow the bearer of the bond to financially support certain projects as well providing a stable asset for them. It would also help diffuse some of the partisan wrangling over how to pay for programs that are sorely needed. Making this project useful would rely on it being marketed heavily to the public -- that's the only way we'd be able to generate enough cash to fund significant projects with it. It seems like a good step in that direction occurred today -- CNBC's Dylan Ratigan mentioned a similar program on the Today show with Matt Lauer.
- An SBA EZ form -- another one from Tommy -- that would simplify the process for getting money from the SBA and actually circulating it in the economy. It would consist of either an online requisition form or some kind of debit card that a small business could use to make purchases. The loans would come in smaller chunks and the small business would have to go back to the SBA for more once they've paid that off. However, they'd be free to circulate the money into the economy in a way that would help their business: hiring people, purchasing capital equipment, etc... in a much more streamlined way. This would help speed up the effect of investing in small businesses on the economy.

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Economic Recovery Meeting -- Health Insurance

By Brian Chesney - Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:15 pm EST

Continuing with topics covered at our Economic Recovery Meeting:

Health Insurance
- This is such a big issue for a lot of reasons, but the main reason it came up in this discussion is its connection with jobs. We talked about the outrageous cost of health care and the advantages and disadvantages of a nationalized system. While we didn't settle on an approach to health care, the consensus was that something needs to be done. The employer-provider model limits job mobility, which doesn't help an already-tough job hunt.
- We also touched on a mixed employment/retirement model that will probably be more popular in the coming decades. We questioned the viability of a labor model where individuals work for 30 or so years and then retire for 30 or so years. Will most Americans actually be able to make enough money or will pensions be fiscally viable enough to sustain it? With longer lifespans and the ability to work from home, most of us would actually prefer to be working, challenged and stimulated later in life.
- We also touched on the idea of several small businesses banding together to get better health care rates. This seems like a good idea and could be expanded more.

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Economic Recovery Meeting -- The Stimulus Message

By Brian Chesney - Feb 11th, 2009 at 10:04 pm EST

Continuing with the topics covered at our Economic Recovery Meeting -- the message about the stimulus package:

Stimulus Message
- The main point with the message surrounding the economic stimulus package was that its detractors seemed to be dominating the conversation about it. To address this we need to engage with others about it and express our support, especially with people that we know that might be against it. Further educating ourselves on it will make engaging in this conversation much easier.
- It seems that the stimulus package was losing the battle of language and labeling and is being miscast in an inaccurate light. There was general dismay over Senate Republicans myopically focusing on certain aspects of the bill that represent a very small percentage of it and using that as a reason to shoot it down. The concern here was that the message of the broader advantages of the bill was getting lost.
- (I turned on Charlie Rose at about 11 or midnight or so and caught the last 20-30 minutes -- nearly all of it was dedicated to losing the upper hand on the message of the stimulus bill and how not to let that happen next time. The consensus seemed to be that it was not a catastrophic error and that the Obama Administration will learn from this mistake.)
- Streamlining the web presence for economic recovery might help. There's recovery.gov, whitehouse.gov, and my.barackobama.com, all dealing with different aspects of similar things -- can we get this in one comprehensive site?

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Economic Recovery Meeting -- Sustainability

By Brian Chesney - Feb 11th, 2009 at 9:59 pm EST

Lea and I hosted an Economic Recovery meeting last week. We had a wonderful gathering and an interesting and informative exchange of ideas. I'm going to post a summary of what we talked about, starting with sustainability. Thank you so much to Liz, Anand, Tommy, Joan and Barbara for participating and making the discussion so lively:

Sustainability
- We talked about the importance of living within ones means and the positive impact this can have on the economy, or more importantly the negative impact not doing it will have.
- We discussed the price of food and buying locally and seasonally to not only reduce costs, but also to minimize our own carbon footprint.
- This led to a discussion on mixed-use urban development, primarily focused on our local situation in the Cambridge area. Mixed-use helps reduce our dependence on gasoline and builds more sustainable communities that are more robust against economic boom and bust cycles.
- While we seemed to generally agree that self-sufficiency is a good thing, it should be balanced with staying in touch with the community and helping others out too. Everyone seemed to agree that the mentality of isolating yourself and only being concerned with furthering your own personal economic situation is not a good thing.

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TARP II

By Brian Chesney - Feb 7th, 2009 at 5:24 pm EST

From a New York Times article on what TARP II would look like:

Although critics have blamed the administration of George W. Bush for mismanaging the TARP fund by not pressing the banks receiving assistance to increase their lending, the new round of capital injections is not expected to come with government demands that the institutions provide more loans. But the new administration was expected to take other steps to encourage institutions to increase their lending, as well as to explain how much their lending had increased or decreased each quarter.

A new round of capital injection that doesn't come with strings attached to increase lending? What's the point? Why not capitalize new nationalized banks whose goal is to lend money? Why give money to the current institutions to use at their discretion if they are not going to circulate it?

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Hello!

By Brian Chesney - Feb 5th, 2009 at 11:00 pm EST

I just started my BO.com blog! To learn more about me, check out my (other, I guess) blog. Or come to my Economic Recovery Event on Friday 2/6/2009.

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