Archive: Author: The Management

My friend Ralph Benko, author of The Webster's Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World, emailed me a very interesting response to my back and forth with Mark Tapscott. With his permission I'm sharing it here. It's Ralph's interpretation of how Saul Alinsky, the veteran community organizer, might analyze Obama today. The page references are all from Alinsky's book Rules for Radicals, (Vintage Books, a Division of Random House, Inc./New York, October 1989 printing). Ralph writes: Obama has chosen the path of the Leader, rather than the path of the organizer. Alinsky (pp. 79-80): Finally, the organizer is constantly creating the new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; that every time...

If you can sign an electronic pad at the supermarket to pay your credit card bill, why can't you sign the touch-screen of your iPhone to sign a political petition? That question is now being put to the test by the Citizen Power Campaign in California, working with technology developed by a company called Verafirma. The ballot initiative they're working on aims to strip public employee unions of their ability to tap member dues for political activities (a proposal that may not be constitutional) but leave the politics aside; the potential to open a new front in ballot petitioning is what's important. As far as anyone knows, this is the first time in the U.S. that ballot initiative signatures are being...

I hate to break it to my friend Mark Tapscott, who I have made common cause with (and broken bread with) over the issues of government transparency and accountability, but my end-of-the-year post on the Obama Disconnect should not be read as saying, "the truth about the Obama campaign in 2008 was almost exactly the opposite" of the mainstream media's description of him as bottom-up and people-driven. I know this is as hard for folks on some parts of the Right, so wound up in their intense dislike of Obama, to understand, as hard as it seems to be for folks on some parts of the Left, so passionate in their support for him, but the picture I tried to...

British writer James Crabtree has weighed in at The New Statesman with an absolutely fascinating prediction for the coming year of English online politics as the country heads into new elections: the balance of power and energy is going to shift from the right, which has long dominated the British political blogosphere, to the left. He writes: ...

Dear Karoli: Obviously, we don't know each other. I didn't know if Karoli was your real name or your nom-de-blog; thanks for clearing up that confusion with your latest post. You clearly don't know me or my work, or you wouldn't be accusing me of "criticizing from afar." I forgive you. I'm sorry if you think I'm being disrespectful of your passion. Actually, I really like it. People who are passionate about something are the ones who drive change. I just want passion married to facts, rather than illusions. And here's the facts about Obama, campaign finance, and his grassroots base: -The early money he raised (in 2007) came heavily from the finance sector; I think you and I don't dispute this. -The "internet...

A blogger who goes by the name named Karoli has posted a long critique of my Obama Disconnect post entitled "The Sifry Disconnect: When cynicism kills hope." It's fundamentally a sentimental post, arguing that it makes more sense to be a "positive catalyst for change," to take responsibility for making change into our own hands, and to "quit taking potshots at the President." Why the latter is in contradiction with the former is beyond me, but whatever. Since she accuses me of various mistakes and falsehoods, here goes an attempt at responding. First, Karoli "calls bullshit" on my writing that Obama's heavy dependence on early money from the finance sector, and from wealthy donors overall, implied a degree of "corporate...

One question that a number of people have raised in response to my post on The Obama Disconnect is essentially, "What's your alternative? What should the Obama team have done to keep the new political movement it had spawned going as a force for change? And how could they have better reconciled Obama's role as president of the whole country with his role as leader of a political organization beholden to him?" That's absolutely a fair question. Here's what I think could have been done: First, the Obama team could have immediately made "keeping the movement going" as high a priority as the formal transition process was in the months of November/December/January right after the election. Their failure to do so...

"Collectively all of you, most of you whom are, I'm not sure, of drinking age, you've created the best political organization in America, and probably the best political organization that we've seen in the last 30, 40 years. That's a pretty big deal...

Andrew Rasiej and I are excited to announce that next year's Personal Democracy Forum, our seventh, will be taking place on June 3-5 in New York City, with the main conference on June 3rd and 4th at the CUNY Graduate Center and an unconference on June 5th (location TBA). We're going to open early registration just after New Year's with special discount rates, so watch this space. In the meantime, we think you will want to hold the dates so you can join the illustrious group we have already confirmed as speakers: -Saul Anuzis, National Chair of the GOP's Committee on Technology; -Nick Bilton, Lead Technology Writer for The New York Times Bits Blog and Author of the forthcoming book, I Live...

Over on USA.gov, they're running an interesting dialogue about how to improve the site, which is a primary portal for citizens seeking all kinds of information from government. (Compete.com says USA.gov averages just under a million unique visitors a month.) One person...