This Friday marks the 99th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. You're going to be hearing a lot about the Gipper this week, and you're going to be hearing a lot about him for the next 12 months. Already, a Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission -- signed into law by President Obama last June, at a ceremony attended by Nancy Reagan -- is busy planning a slew of Feb. 6, 2011, events that may take the nation one step closer toward Reagan's political canonization. Meanwhile, day in and day out, the legacy of the 40th president still looms large over the national conversation, some 21 years after he left the Oval Office and nearly six years after his death -- thanks in part to a deliberate campaign of distortion by modern conservatives, a Reagan myth has been used to justify disastrous spending policies at home and disastrous militarism abroad .

This week also marks the new paperback release of my book, now slightly retitled: "Tear Down This Myth: The Right Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy." When I was working on the book in 2008 in preparation for the original hardcover version, I did worry somewhat whether the likely election of a center-left Democratic president would render as moot the power of the Reagan myth. As it turned out, the inauguration of Barack Obama and the arrival of a large Democratic majority in Congress instead showed the limits of government in the face of this powerful philosophy that is loosely based on Reagan's 1980s presidency but distorts or exaggerates the reality of much of what happened in those years.

The Reagan banner as carried by today's conservatives involves deep and unrelenting mistrust of the government to solve any problems, even as crises from joblessness and unsound fiscal policies and a lack of a serious approach to energy and global warming fester from a lack of... problem solving. Reagan's predecessor, Jimmy Carter, captured the White House in the election after Watergate by promising "a government as good as the people," but when Carter stumbled for a host of reasons, Reagan was elected with a much different message. In his 1981 inauguration, he said: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems -- government is the problem."

Little remembered is that in the same speech, Reagan also said: "Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work--work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back." But is the first message -- that there is no government solution to any problem, no matter how complex -- that has been hammered home by the powerful right-wing infrastructure, most notably talk radio and now the highly rated Fox News Channel on TV, that has endured and grown since Reagan's tenure in office.

In this present crisis -- the one with deep roots in the catastrophic eight-year reign of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney -- the Obama administration has been unable to do what Reagan ultimately suggested in 1981: Make government work better. Obama mistakenly believed that his election had at least dented the Reagan myth; in a December 2008 interview with political journalists Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz, the incoming president acknowledged the Gipper-powered skepticism toward government but also predicted America was witnessing "an end to the knee-jerk reaction toward the New Deal and big government."

No one ever said Barack Obama was good at predictions. Although he did win passage of an economic stimulus package -- the time-tested solution for digging a national economy out of a near-depression -- he bowed to Reagan-myth-inspired GOP opposition to make the roughly $800 billion package still too small to stop rising unemployment, still weighted too heavily to tax cuts less likely to create jobs. A health-care package that -- while certainly imperfect -- would have been the first steps toward curbing medical costs, reducing the federal deficit and eliminating bankruptcies and even unnecessary deaths -- is foundering in the face of an opposition whipped into a frenzy by the radio and TV hosts who also ask nightly, "What would Reagan do."

This Reagan legacy that continues to prevent action on jobs, on health care, and on alternative energy (it was Reagan, after all, who tore down the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof) is no accident. As laid out in "Tear Down This Myth," it is the result of a deliberate campaign -- led by Grover Norquist's Ronald Reagan Legacy Project -- to name roads and schools and erect bronze statues of the 40th president. The result is that a president who was divisive and had average approval numbers during his actual presidency is now widely admired by a churning population that increasingly remembers the myth better than the man. Even though there's a lot about the real Reagan record to knock (the creation of a debt-powered consumer economy, heartless responses to AIDS, homelessness and urban decay, trading arms for hostages in the Middle East), progressives can't win their case in 2010 with a direct assault on Reagan.

But they don't have to. Here are three ways that progressives can take back the political debate by turning the Reagan legacy on its head:

1) Reagan had a big-spending economic stimulus plan. It's true. As noted in the book, the economic turnaround of the 1980s had little or nothing to do with Reagan's income tax cut that was heavily weighted to the rich but was instead the result of other factors, including the tight money policies of then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker (now an Obama adviser) and a global collapse of oil prices. But there was something else: Reagan also created thousands upon thousands of new jobs across America with a spending program that caused the federal deficit to skyrocket. It was called the Reagan defense buildup.

In the part of America where I lived in the 1980s, Long Island, N.Y., the economy was booming, in part because of the government dollars thrown at the then-Grumman Corp. to build new jet fighters. Now, government has a chance to do the same thing that Reagan achieved -- but not by building machines of death but creating jobs for things that will improve life, like solar power and high-speed rail.

2) Reagan would not have allowed many of the terror tactics started by Bush and Cheney and continued in the face of pressure by the Obama administration. Don't believe it? -- let me count the ways:

A) Reagan was a staunch opponent of torture by Americans, signing in 1988 the International Convention Against Torture, which said "[n]o exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

B) The official policy of the Reagan administration was civilian trials for terrorists, as elaborated in a speech by the official overseeing the policy, Paul Bremer (yes, THAT Paul Bremer) who said in 1987 "a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against them."

C) Reagan would not have approved of drone-fired missile attacks aimed at killing terrorists; as president he several times rejected anti-terrorism operations for the sole reason that civilians would have been killed by collateral damage. In 1985, he surprised aides such as Pat Buchanan by ruling out a military response to a Beirut hijacking for fear of civilian casualties; Lou Cannon reported then in the Washington Post that Reagan said "retaliation in which innocent civilians are killed is 'itself a terrorist act.'"

3) Obama can best honor Ronald Reagan in this centennial year not by another statue, but by continuing to work toward the grand goal that the 40th president and the 44th president both share: Ridding the world of nuclear weapons. As I note in a new introduction to "Tear Down This Myth":

It was in 1983 that President Ronald Reagan privately screened the anti-nuclear movie "The Day After" in Camp David and wrote in his diary of his resolve "to see there is never a nuclear war" - the ambition that fueled his remarkable series of summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. That very same year Barack Obama was just an undergraduate in his senior year at New York's Columbia University, still very uncertain of his place in the world, when he publicly voiced the idea that Reagan shared but kept secret, an ambition of eliminating all nuclear warheads. As reported by the New York Times, the young Obama wrote an article for a campus magazine that was entitled "Breaking the War Mentality." In it, he railed against "billion-dollar erector sets" and what he called "the twisted logic" of a winnable nuclear war. Little did the then-22-year-old Obama imagine that it would be Reagan who would start the job of reducing the world's nuclear stockpiles or that he himself would be the president in a position to carry that mission forward in the 21st Century.

Although it's rarely portrayed this way, nuclear-arms reduction was the great progressive cause and the great progressive achievement of Ronald Reagan, and it can be so for Barack Obama as well. We've just seen in 2009 that it is impossible to fight an entrenched myth on its own terms. Let's hope that Obama and all of us who believe in more just and a more progressive society can instead harness the Reagan myth in 2010 and beyond, and steer America in the right direction again.

More on Barack Obama

I talked Sunday about Move Your Money with Guy Raz of NPR's Weekend All Things Considered (summary; audio from about 3:45). We covered a lot of ground, from what's in it for individuals to shift towards community banks and credit unions (better service and lower costs, in many cases) to how this could begin to reign in Too Big To Fail financial institutions (slowly, but surely).

Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to discuss what comes next -- i.e., what happens when the location of political candidates' own money starts to matter. As early as this fall's primaries, expect to hear people ask politicians in debates and through various kinds of interactions: (1) where do you, personally, keep and borrow money, and (2), in all relevant cases, where did you put public money when it was up to you?

These questions strike to the heart of democratic responses against overly concentrated financial power throughout US history -- a topic we take up in Chapter 1 of 13 Bankers.

In the 1830s showdown between elected officials and big banks, President Andrew Jackson went toe-to-toe with Nicolas Biddle of the Second Bank of the United States. Both sides won several rounds and finally it came down to this -- could Jackson really move the money of the US government away from the Second Bank? He could and did. And despite being threatened -- by bankers, naturally -- with dire consequences, the US had a very good 19th century.

The essence of the second confrontation was neatly captured by the title of Louis Brandeis's 1914 book, Other People's Money - and How the Bankers Use It. Brandeis, a future Supreme Court Justice, saw clearly through the nature of the "Money Trust" -- recognizing that its power was based, essentially, on its access to and control over funds deposited by regular people.

In effect, the industrial revolution had spread wealth and disposable income, but -- through the rise of powerful investment banks -- actually concentrated economic and political power.

Reformers struggled for several decades with how to constrain the biggest banks, without choking economic growth and while protecting individual depositors, in this new economy. The solution, reached after much difficulty and finally in response to popular demand, was the regulations of the 1930s.

From that time, until the early 1980s, financial empires based on retail deposits were greatly constrained in terms of the risks they could take -- and without retail deposits, it was hard to become big enough to do serious damage to the economy.

After 30 years of deregulation and financial "innovation," our problem today is rather different. The idea of banks being so big they can extract enormous resources from the state would have been incomprehensible to Jackson and ludicrous even to FDR -- in their day, the federal government did not have anywhere near enough resources to "save" massive failing banks as we have done in the past few years.

The essence of our current difficulties is that so many people -- both in power and from all walks of life -- still actually think our biggest banks are good for their customers and for society as a whole, so we must hold our noses and live with them. This view must be challenged, directly and repeatedly.

In this context, moving your own money is more than an important gesture, and if enough people get on board, it will make a difference. More likely, thinking hard -- and talking with others -- about your various monetary transactions also begins to change the rules of the political game. How can politicians claim to be against Too Big To Fail banks when they actually have an account or a credit card or a mortgage at one such offender? Shouldn't state officials be held accountable for where they park the taxpayers' funds? Which governor wants to risk reelection while heavily dependent on big banks? Who got what kind of commission last time a government body issued bonds?

This set of litmus tests can be seized on by left or right -- both, in fact, can reasonably claim some inheritance from Jackson and Brandeis. Expect competition from all sides to prove their candidates are less beholden to the dangerous and debunked ideology of Reckless Finance.

Move your politicians.

Cross-posted with the Baseline Scenario.

More on Move Your Money

A few days ago, I sat down with representative Jim McGovern, a democrat from the third district of Massachusetts. This time the opportunity was an interview for the Colombian daily newspaper El Espectador. We had crossed path before to talk about the slim chances for a peace process in Colombia, but in recent times it was the Peace without Border concert promoted by the Colombian pop star Juanes that gave us more opportunities to get together.

During those months of last summer leading up to the concert in Havana, I could appreciate the resilience, the straight thinking and the deep dedication of this politician and his staff for causes he believes in. This time, I knocked on his door to talk again about Colombia, a country and a people if which he has a deep knowledge. When he travels there, in general once a year, he avoids fancy meetings in the centers of Colombian politics and privileges peripheral communities in the remote regions of Putumayo or Arauca that have been marked for decades by political violence and narco trafficking.

And even when he travels to Bogota, rather then indulging in meetings at the Presidential palace or even at the U.S. Embassy, Jim McGovern reaches the marginal barrios of the capital, such as Soacha or Ciudad Bolivar. "I go where the people live," he told me underscoring his interest is in observing and taking notes of the effects of policy and power, rather then shaking hands with the powerful, and hanging out in luxurious ranches.

Thus, McGovern is a politician, who has a complex reading and understanding of this country of Latin America and to which financial aid from U.S. has been flowing generously, primarily, so far, to support the strengthening of the military. The lenses that McGovern uses to read Colombia are those of human rights. To him, the promotion of a culture and practice of human rights is essential even for achieving security, and lay the foundation for lasting peace.

This is why McGovern does not like everything he sees when it comes to Colombia. Especially the killing of hundreds innocent young men, falsely presented as war causalities (in Colombia they are euphemistically called false positives), provokes outrage in this representative of Massachusetts -as does in several of his colleagues in Congress. When he considers necessary, he can be a staunch critic of U.S. policy towards Latin America, and Colombia in particular. In a delicate moment for Colombia, when the concerns for human rights are once again high and when the president is flirting with the idea of a second reelection, it was a goo think to do to sit down with Jim McGovern and get his perspective.

In his recent trip to Colombia, the number two of the State Department, James Steinberg, defined Plan Colombia as "very effective", and as an "important success case." Do you share his assessment?

There are a lot of challenges, especially in the area of human rights. The issue of false positives continues to be a major concern to many of us in Congress. We continue to be concerned about the internally displaced. How can you say that a policy has been a success when so many people living inside of Colombia are displaced -- and hundreds of thousands have fled the country due to violence? There will never really be success until the war is over.

You defined the outcomes of Plan Colombia as "depressing," but you cannot deny that there was some progress.

Colombia continues to evolve and some things have changed for the better, but I don't think anybody can go down right now and say the plan has worked or "mission accomplished." There's great potential, there are great opportunities to try to create a more just society, where there is real investment in community-based development, and a society that hopefully someday will be free from this violence.

You described communities you visited last year in Colombia as cheering because of Obama's election. The skepticism towards the current U.S. administration is growing throughout the region. Should those communities still be cheering?

I think that the Obama policy towards Latin America is still a work in progress. To be fair, the whole world is in turmoil and the United States, unfortunately, in my opinion, is stuck in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now there is Haiti. As a result, I think, they are still trying to figure out what their policy in Latin America should be. I wish things were moving much faster, but there's a lot going on in the world.

But your government did find the time to negotiate and sign the agreement to use seven military bases.

I'm still not quite sure why we need those military bases, why we need that. I have yet to get a convincing argument from the Administration of why that is necessary. But if it is necessary, they didn't do a very good job of explaining it. And not just to the United States Congress, but to the people of the region.

When it comes to Colombia, does the Obama administration get it?

I'm worried that the United States looks at Colombia through a very narrow lens. There are some who believe that our only interest in Colombia should be drugs and counter-insurgency, and everything else is secondary. And I think that's the wrong way to view Colombia. I think human rights should be a central part of U.S. foreign policy and I think that when we see reports about false positives, and the activities of the DAS, it's outrageous. We should be willing to be an ally and a partner and a supporter of Colombia, but you shouldn't ignore issues like human rights, extreme poverty, or the internally displaced population. Those people are suffering. Those things need to be addressed.

So, you are against Plan Colombia.

It's not that I'm against Plan Colombia. I'm against this Plan Colombia. There should be a Plan Colombia for victims to help these people who have suffered so much.

Under the leadership of defense minister Santos, the military has been internally addressing the issue of human rights. You are not satisfied?

Colombian government officials told us that the military has changed and that everything is now perfect. Then you read again about human rights abuses committed by members of the military, and in some cases covered up by high-ranking members of the military, you can't help but wonder whether there's an institutional problem that exists within the Colombian military, that somehow they're above the law.

Do you think that those government officials lied to you?

A few years ago, when asking the Uribe government whether or not they believed that there was a connection between the military and paramilitaries, I was told ""Oh no, oh no." Then we find out very vividly that there is this connection and then the response is "Oh, we're so surprised!" You know, its kind of like that movie Casablanca, when Claude Rains says to Humphrey Bogart, "I'm shocked that there is gambling going on here," and then Humphrey Bogart hands Claude Rains his winnings. I think it's important for the Colombian government to acknowledge publicly that there are problems and that we need to fix them.

These are issues that 53 members of Congress addressed in a strong letter to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging the administration to change its policy towards Colombia. Any response?

I'm glad that the deputy secretary brought the letter to President Uribe. There are some of us in Congress trying to get our Administration to kind of expand their view on Colombia and that being insistent that Colombia adhere to a high standard of human rights is not inconsistent with maintaining security. The people of Colombia should not only be assured that they'll be protected from the FARC, but they should also be assured that they'll be protected from their own military, or their own police, including not collaborating with paramilitary and illegal armed groups.

You sound very critical of President Uribe.

I personally like President Uribe. I think he has a lot that he can be proud of in terms of what he's accomplished, but there are other issues that really deserve attention. People who come forward (delete comma) and defend populations that have been mistreated are not the enemies of the state. Too often we've seen in Colombia human rights defenders treated and labeled as terrorists. That needs to change.

So, would you give to Uribe a pass or a fail?

I'm not here to beat up on President Uribe. I want him to succeed, but I want him to pay more attention, and I want my government to pay, more attention to the victims.

There are those in Colombia who think that, by speaking out for human rights, you end up supporting the FARC.

I guess the question is, what are the consequences if you're silent? What are the consequences if nobody raises the issue of human rights? Do things get better? Or do institutional forces within the government believe they can operate more freely with impunity, and to continue some of the human rights abuses?

You are very critical of the US policy towards Colombia, and of the Colombian government.

I'm a United States Congressman. When my government does something I disagree with, or behaves badly, I raise my voice. I criticized my government when it went to war in Iraq. It doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic. It means I love my country enough to speak out to try to make it better. Dissent is not a bad thing. Dissent is a cornerstone of a democracy. What strengthens the FARC is when members of the military are involved in human rights violations. That gives more comfort to the enemy than putting someone in jail who's committed the human rights abuse.

From what you say, I understand that the false positives are a very big issue here in Washington.

This issue of false positives is a big issue and it is a serious issue. And if the Colombian government doesn't believe it's a big or serious issue, then I think they are going to have a problem with members of Congress.

What should the Colombian government do?

The issue of impunity is a real problem. The best way to put that behind you is to investigate and prosecute and put in jail people who commit human rights abuses. Period. It's not that complicated.

Listening to you I am not surprised that Piedad Cordoba calls you a friend. What do you think of her?

Yes, I got to know Piedad Cordoba and I give her credit for helping to facilitate the release of some of the hostages. That's a good thing. When families can get reunited with their loved ones who have been taken hostage by the FARC, why is that a bad thing that somebody wants to end that suffering? This is a humanitarian crisis and I think it's important that those hostages be reunited with their families.

Piedad Cordoba is also very close to Chavez. That doesn't bother you?

I'm not a fan of Hugo Chavez. I think he's a grandstander, but to the extent that the Venezuelan government or any government can play a positive role in facilitating hostage release, I don't think that's a bad idea. I understand President Uribe's frustration with President Chavez. He actually has a legitimate basis to be frustrated with the Venezuelan government.

And what do you make of the FARC?

Let me be clear. I'm not sympathetic to the FARC. They are terrorists. They have committed human rights abuses and atrocities that I think are atrocious, and horrible, and are beyond comprehension. Their practices of kidnapping is immoral. This is a force that deserves great condemnation at every time.

Are you still available to offer your personal support for the release of hostages?

If in any way, shape, or form, I can be of help in doing anything to release a single hostage, I will do it.

The hostage issue is not a humanitarian one for the Colombian government. The FARC declared it's readiness to release Moncayo almost a year ago, and he is still in the mountains. What do you make of it?

It is a humanitarian crisis. How else could you possible describe it? This is beyond my comprehension. I don't think it's acceptable to dismiss the hostage crisis as yet just another casualty of war. Yes, I wish the FARC released them all unilaterally. Immediately. I don't buy the notion that somehow the FARC is winning propaganda points by releasing these hostages. If anything, it exposes how backward, and how rotten, and how terrible the FARC is.

Do you think the Obama Administration would be supportive of a peace process?

I don't know. It's too early to say. Without a peace process, then we're talking about living with war forever and ever and ever. The FARC doesn't go away. This cycle of violence continues.

Here in Washington did you run into someone supporting the reelection of President Uribe?

I don't find anybody in Washington. I know no one, including amongst his strongest supporters, in the Congress, in the media, who would urge him to run again. If he runs again, it becomes difficult to criticize people like Chavez and others who want to keep running and running and running.

More on Colombia

This is the second of a six-part weekly series excerpted from chapter 11 of my book Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World. This series is an attempt to build new momentum for a climate change movement that has lost some of its mojo because of the failure of Copenhagen and the forces lined up against bold and timely national legislation in the U.S. While government has a very important role to play in setting the rules, the transformative and rapid change needed to address this issue is a lot to ask of a legislative system purposefully designed for incremental and slow-moving change. Or what I call social change 1.0. But we are justified in placing our hope in bottom-up change--social change 2.0--as this is how all major change in history has occurred.

To that end, this series shows how over 300 communities in 36 states--not satisfied to wait for the slow and torturous pace of government solutions--have built a bottom-up movement focused on helping Americans take direct responsibility to reduce our carbon footprints while at the same time substantially reducing our energy expenses. It describes how tens of thousands of people are stepping up to help bring the planet back from the brink--one household, neighborhood and community at a time. And it offers a whole system solution by showing how by directly and strategically addressing carbon reduction in the short-term we are building demand for legislation and a low-carbon economy to scale up over the long-term.

In case you missed Part One of this series here's the link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-gershon/empowering-a-climate-chan_b_434874.html

Along with the immense gratitude so many people felt toward Al Gore for raising our collective consciousness about the threat of global warming through his movie An Inconvenient Truth, came some criticism that he did not spend enough time helping people understand their unique contribution as individuals and what they could do to mitigate it; the problem came across as out of our control. While this may be fair criticism, it was not his primary aim to tell us precisely how to solve this problem. That is a tall order. His job was to tell us, the blissfully unaware passengers on the Titanic, that we are about to hit an iceberg and sink unless we dramatically change course.

Many have taken heed of his warning and are developing ways to help humanity make the necessary course correction as rapidly as possible. Al Gore is among the most prominent of these, advising the Obama administration on how America can take a leadership role on global warming and advocating for a shift to a 100 percent renewal energy system. But one of his less visible roles is as a thought leader shaping a strategic way of thinking about the process of change around this issue. It is in this role that he provides an answer to the question posed to him about what we can do as individuals, and as Americans. He offers a strategy that both empowers and holds us accountable as individuals.

"When people take personal action on global warming," Gore explains, "it leads inevitably to their desire to have changes in policies. They begin communicating with their representatives at the local, state, and national level. They say 'Look, I've made these changes in my life and I want you to work for changes in policy.' They are linked together. And when enough American citizens become part of this new critical mass and the U.S. changes policy, then it becomes much more likely that China will make the changes it has to make. We're all in this together." What I like about his thinking from a social change point of view is that it is a whole-system approach and therefore capable of generating the synergy we need to accelerate transformative change within the limited time available to us.

What I find unusual and noteworthy coming from a person who has spent his career as a policymaker is his understanding of personal action as a strategic lever that can work both the demand and the supply side of the equation. Many people who spend their time formulating public policy tend to undervalue the importance of personal action--the demand side of the equation. This is mostly because they are not familiar with how to build demand for change of this nature and scale up personal action; and so, rather than trying to crack that nut, which is a hard nut to crack indeed, they stick with what they know. In this context, that would be passing climate change legislation that provides subsidies and tax incentives to homeowners for taking actions like putting solar panels on their roofs, insulating their homes better, or buying new energy-efficient automobiles. But people need to be motivated to want to make these purchases and to adopt low carbon lifestyle practices. As the old maxim goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. A supply of policy solutions without demand for them will not get us across the finish line.

But Gore goes further than just encouraging personal action; he recognizes that people who are invested in this issue as individuals, when mobilized, can be remarkably effective advocates for supply side solutions. They know exactly what policies will help them lead a low carbon lifestyle. Carbon-literate and committed citizens become a true force for policy change when they can say to a political leader, "I am doing my part, but need your help to go further. These are the specific things that will help me. And by the way, most of the people in my neighborhood have made similar behavior changes and are also very eager to see these policies adopted." What political leader would not be motivated to vote for a more aggressive climate change policy knowing that they will be rewarded by their constituents?

The wider and deeper the constituencies of people who have taken personal action, the stronger the impetus available for policy change. As Gore noted, "They are linked together." When EcoTeam members from our sustainable lifestyle campaign advocated for environmental policy change in conservative Kansas City, Missouri, after having taken personal action, and made it clear that there were many more people like them, they encouraged conservative city council members to vote for policies they might not have otherwise.

To help further this personal action and policy advocacy strategy Al Gore created The Climate Project and personally trained 1,000 community leaders from all across America to present his slide show. In return for the training, each agreed to make at least ten community presentations. This is where Low Carbon Diet came in. He gave the book to his trainees so that they would have a resource for the personal action part of his strategy, and invited me to offer a webinar for those who wished to apply it in their communities.

To take full advantage of this webinar I realized that participants would need more than the book and some tips on how to organize their communities; they would also need the community-organizing tools we had developed over the past two decades. This was clearly a teachable moment in America for these empowerment tools, so we posted them on our web site as an open source social technology and encouraged people to use and modify them as they wished.

This webinar attracted the early-adopter grassroots organizers within his cadre of trainees and they spread the Low Carbon Diet and these community empowerment tools far and wide. When the full story of Al Gore's many contributions to helping get America on a low carbon path is told, one of the important credits he deserves is helping spawn this community empowerment movement committed to furthering personal action. I am very grateful for his leadership and the opportunity he provided me to share our work with his community.

Empowering a Movement

I posted the times I would be leading this free webinar on our web site and requested that Al Gore's trainees register so we knew how many to expect and who was on the call. Because we were posting this in a public space, it would be awkward to say this was only for The Climate Project trainees, so we allowed anyone who might come across this posting to attend. Since the only advertising was by The Climate Project to their trainees, we didn't really expect anyone else. That proved to be an erroneous assumption. News of this free training for community organizers and other individuals wishing to address climate change spread rapidly among the many grassroots networks around the country. There was such a paucity of resources other than carbon calculators and checklists on web sites, and such a pent-up demand for taking action stimulated by An Inconvenient Truth, that when a proven approach to household behavior change and community organizing became available, we found ourselves inundated with interest.

As of this writing I have given this webinar twenty-two times and trained more than 600 individuals from environmental, faith-based and community groups, local governments, and large and small businesses; university and high school student environmental leaders and unaffiliated citizen activists have participated as well. People have come from thirty-six states and over three hundred cities and towns across America. The largest interest has come from California with forty-eight cities participating, followed by New York with forty-two, Massachusetts with thirty-nine, Washington with thirteen and Oregon with ten. There have also been participants from Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan.

The webinar format consists of people introducing themselves and their community and briefly describing how they wish to apply the program. This introduction process allows these change agents, who are often working in isolation, to experience the wide diversity of committed people like themselves who are part of this climate change movement. To further enhance this connection, we send everyone a list of all the attendees on the call, their community-organizing background (which they send us when they register) and e-mail addresses. This allows them to get a better sense of one another and follow up to exchange ideas with those applying the program in similar venues.

After this introduction I present what I call the Cool Community slide show. This is posted on our web site and participants view it as I go through each of the slides. It begins by making the case for the need to achieve rapid carbon reduction based on the urgency communicated by climate scientists. I then explain how conservation at the household level is the low hanging fruit, makes up half of America's footprint, and buys us time for the longer-term solutions to kick in. I briefly talk about the five Social Change 2.0 design principles so that they have an understanding of the operating system embedded in the tools and can make future adaptations in their organizing strategy based on them. I then describe our behavior-change and community-organizing research with the sustainable lifestyle campaigns to build their knowledge of and confidence in the model they are about to use. Finally, I explain the design of the Low Carbon Diet, and the tools and strategy for taking it to scale.

I tell participants that this slide presentation is itself one of the community-organizing tools in that it allows them to make the case for an effective residential carbon reduction program to key community stakeholders, and they should feel free to customize it as they see fit for such presentations. I then take questions, which vary from requesting more technical knowledge on how to implement one or more of the tools, to asking for additional strategies for getting started.

I conclude with an exercise, in which I offer consultation on the community-organizing plans of three represented cities based on a template we provide in advance of the call and which they subsequently submit to us. The template asks participants to answer seven questions:

1. Who is your target population?
2. How will you engage them in the program?
3. What is your carbon reduction goal through engaging this population?
4. By when do you wish to achieve this carbon reduction goal?
5. What do you see as your greatest challenges in implementing this program and how are you addressing them?
6. What questions would you like to have answered to help you implement your strategy?
7. What is your next step in implementing your strategy?

This is when the webinar comes alive for people because we have real people with real strategies in real communities with real problems to solve. Based on the slide presentation, we also have a community-organizing framework on which to build. These interactions provide me an opportunity to share some of the experience we have acquired over these many years and help both the person I am speaking to and the others on the call to see how all this works on the ground. Based on the feedback we get from people, they leave this training inspired by one another, hopeful that there is a practical and immediate way to begin addressing global warming, and empowered with concrete tools and a strategy for taking action in their communities.

On a personal level it is very gratifying to share the fruits of all these years of trial and error with such receptive people from all over the country and world. What a difference it makes when an idea's time has come. Although pushing a boulder up a mountain is a good upper-body workout, it certainly is more fun when it is poised to go down the other side on its own momentum. While we are not at that point yet, it seems to me, based on the large number of competent and committed people attending these webinars, that we are edging ever so close.

To be continued... Part Three of this six-part weekly series, "Instead of Cursing the Dark, Light a Candle - One Person Making a Difference" will appear in the Huffington Post Green Section on Monday, February 8.

David Gershon, founder and CEO of Empowerment Institute, is a leading authority on behavior-change and large-system transformation. He applies his expertise to issues requiring community, organizational, and societal change, from low carbon lifestyles, livable neighborhoods, and sustainable communities to organizational talent development, corporate social engagement, and cultural transformation. Gershon is the author of eleven books, including his recently published Social Change 2.0: A Blueprint for Reinventing Our World, winner of the 2009 National Best Book Award and Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5,000 Pounds. He co-directs Empowerment Institute's School for Transformative Social Change and consults with communities wishing to develop Cool Community initiatives. To learn more about Cool Communities or register for the next free webinar, March 11, on how to implement one in your city or town visit www.empowermentinstitute.net/lcd.

Previous posts by David Gershon on this topic:

"Empowering a Climate Change Movement -- Part One: Low Carbon Diet and the Cool Community" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-gershon/empowering-a-climate-chan_b_434874.html

"Hope for a Climate Change Solution in the Wake of Copenhagen: If Governments Can't People Can" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-gershon/hope-for-a-climate-change_b_401298.html

"Stepping Up to Save the Planet: From Corporate Social Responsibility to Corporate Social Engagement" Stepping http://csrwiretalkback.tumblr.com/post/341862628/stepping-up-to-save-the-planet-beyond-corporate-social

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NEW YORK — New copies of Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall," Andrew Young's "The Politician" and other books published by Macmillan were unavailable Saturday on Amazon.com, a drastic step in the ongoing dispute over e-book prices.

Macmillan CEO John Sargent said he was told Friday that its books would be removed from Amazon.com, as would e-books for Amazon's Kindle e-reader. Books will be available on Amazon.com through private sellers and other third parties, Sargent said.

Sargent met with Amazon officials Thursday to discuss the publisher's new pricing model for e-books. He wrote in a letter to Macmillan authors and literary agents Saturday that the plan would allow Amazon to make more money selling Macmillan books and that Macmillan would make less. He characterized the dispute as a disagreement over "the long-term viability and stability of the digital book market."

Macmillan and other publishers have criticized Amazon for charging just $9.99 for best-selling e-books on its Kindle e-reader, a price publishers say is too low and could hurt hardcover sales, which generally carry a list price of more than $24.

Macmillan is one of the world's largest English-language publishers. Its divisions include St. Martin's Press, itself one of the largest publishers in the U.S.; Henry Holt & Co., one of the oldest publishers in America; Farrar, Straus & Giroux; and Tor, the leading science-fiction publisher.

Sargent credited Amazon in his letter, calling the company a "valuable customer" and a "great innovator in our industry."

But, he wrote, the digital book industry needs to create a business model that provides equal opportunities for retailers. Under Macmillan's model, to be put in place in March, e-books will be priced from $12.99 to $14.99 when first released and prices will change over time.

For its part, Amazon wants to keep a lid on prices as competitors line up to challenge its dominant position in a rapidly expanding market. The company did not immediately return messages seeking comment Saturday.

Barnes & Noble's Nook and Sony Corp.'s e-book readers are already on sale. But the latest and most talked about challenger is Apple Inc., which just introduced the long-awaited iPad tablet computer and a new online book store modeled on iTunes. Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, suggested publishers may offer some e-titles to Apple before they are allowed to go on sale at Amazon.com

The e-book market is an increasingly important one for Amazon. The company hasn't given specific sales figures on the Kindle, but CEO Jeff Bezos said Thursday that "millions" own the device. The company now sells six digital copies to every 10 physical ones of books available in either format.

To preserve the more lucrative hardcover business, publishers including Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins Hachette Book Group USA have said they will impose delays on the release of digital copies.

It's not the first time that books have disappeared from Amazon's virtual shelves. Last summer, Kindle users were surprised and unsettled to receive notice that George Orwell works they had purchased, including "1984" and "Animal Farm," had been removed and their money refunded. It was a deletion of pirated copies that had been posted to the Kindle store, but the ordeal highlighted a concern – that a book already paid for and acquired can be revoked by an e-tailer. The Kindle operates on a wireless connection that Amazon ultimately controls.

Bezos later apologized, and Amazon offered affected customers free books or $30.

Late Friday, author Cory Doctorow, who is published by Tor, the Macmillan division, called readers and writers "the civilian casualties" of the dispute in a post on his popular Web site, boingboing.net. It's a "case of two corporate giants illustrating neatly exactly why market concentration is bad for the arts," he wrote.

Another Tor writer, John Scalzi, speculated that Amazon's move would have "a long-term effect on Amazon's relationship with publishers, and not the one Amazon is likely to want," he wrote on his Web site.

___

AP Business Writer Andrew Vanacore in New York contributed to this report.

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NEW YORK — Tishman Speyer Properties walks away from 11,232 Manhattan apartments because it can't pay its mortgage. That's good business.

Rick Gilson, a college custodial supervisor in South Dakota, wants to walk away from the mortgage on his mobile home. If he does, he'll be a deadbeat.

Those two borrowers face the same financial dilemma: Their mortgages far exceed the values of their properties. Yet one gets to walk away without guilt, while the other can't.

Gilson is too scared to dump the mortgage on his mobile home. He owes $31,973, but the home is only worth about $14,000.

"I have 12 years of money put into this property that I will never get out," said the 50-year-old Gilson, from Rapid City, S.D. "But I am still paying because this is what I have been told to do. That's what I think is right."

Until now, the focus of the real estate crisis has been on individuals. One in four U.S. homeowners, or nearly 11 million Americans, are underwater on their mortgages. In some parts of the country – Florida, Nevada, Michigan, California and Arizona – the share tops 40 percent.

Some experts say it makes sense for some people to walk away if they're deeply underwater, even if doing so could wreck their credit score for seven years. It may not be worth it to keep paying a mortgage when they can find comparable rental housing for considerably less money.

The argument against walkaways is that they will wreak economic havoc if a lot of people do it. Banks will have more bad loans on their books. They'll make fewer loans. Home prices will plunge more.

The rules are different, though, for the walkaway of all walkaways.

That title is reserved for what happened to one of New York's trophy properties, the 56-building Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complex. Spanning 80 acres on Manhattan's east side, it's the largest single-owned residential area in the city. Its red brick buildings, built by Metropolitan Life in the 1940s for World War II veterans, are still a haven for the city's middle class.

Commercial real-estate firm Tishman and its partner, investment firm BlackRock, paid $5.4 billion to buy the property from MetLife in late 2006 – right at the market's peak. They hoped to make money by converting rent-regulated apartments into luxury condos and raising rents.

Then the housing crash hit. The value now: $1.8 billion.

And you thought you overpaid for your house.

"They made assumptions that things would grow to the moon, and things certainly did not," said Len Blum, a managing partner at investment bank Westwood Capital.

Tishman said last week that it was turning the property back over to creditors to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection. In recent weeks, Tishman failed to restructure $4.4 billion in debt, and couldn't find another buyer, according to a statement from the company.

Tishman exits the deal with a ding to its reputation, but it will be fine. It still has Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Center in New York, and dozens of properties in cities worldwide. The company has about $33 billion in assets.

Residential homeowners wouldn't get off so easy.

For most underwater homeowners, the thought of walking away from their commitment is impossible to fathom. After all, it's part of the culture. Pay your bills. Uphold contracts.

University of Arizona law professor Brent White, who has written about mortgage walkaways, says societal pressures often trump what's actually legal. He thinks individual borrowers believe they are obliged to repay their loans even when it isn't in their financial interest.

"The problem is that we have a structure whereby corporations can walk away with impunity but individuals can't," White said.

Gilson reads what's happening 1,700 miles away in Manhattan and gets angry.

His mobile home started depreciating the minute he moved in 12 years ago, much as a car loses value as soon as you drive it out of the dealer's lot.

Three years ago, he bought a new home that he lives in with his wife. Since he can't sell the mobile home for anything near what he paid for it, he rents it out in order to make the $300.36 mortgage payment every month.

"I get so stressed over this," Gilson said. "It's like the elephant in the room and there is nothing you can do about it."

Gilson is frustrated that real-estate tycoons can default on a $4.4 billion mortgage, but he's not supposed to do the same on his $31,000 loan.

How can you blame him?

___

Rachel Beck is the national business columnist for The Associated Press. Write to her at rbeck(at)ap.org

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25 Minnesotans for Peace (including myself) recently traveled to Washington DC to give a message to our elected representatives before the President's "State of the Union". We were able to read the names of the 77 young people from Minnesota who have been killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars in front of the White House. We then "threw our shoes at the occupation" after reading the messages and questions about the endless wars that we had inscribed on our "peace shoes" for later mailing to the White House. Finally some in our group committed an act of conscience by simply laying down on the sidewalk symbolizing the ongoing, enormous tragedy of the millions of civilian and soldier deaths. The mostly elderly participants were subsequently arrested and forced to spend 28 hours in the harsh conditions of the "DC lockup".

The next evening we heard the President give another good speech emphasizing his wonderful vision for the future of our country through new job creation, improving educational opportunity, investment in America's infrastructure, balancing the budget and a return to economic prosperity. The President only spoke of the costly wars and military build-up that he has chosen to escalate (against the advice of his own Ambassador Eikenberry to Afghanistan) towards the end of his "State of the Union" report.

But does not the tail wag the dog?

Obama's speech left us baffled as it does not appear to us that the lives lost and trillions of dollars that have been poured into these counterproductive wars over the last eight years (and counting) have won any hearts or minds in the Mid-east nor have they succeeded in reducing the threat of international terrorism. So we asked a lot of questions.

Our peace delegation was able to meet with many of our Minnesota Congresspersons and/or their staffs (including Klobuchar, Franken, Kline, Oberstar and Ellison). However nobody on Capitol Hill was able to explain how it is possible to "win" or even what future benchmarks Congress could use to evaluate whether progress is being made toward that goal. The last time our government published any information quantifying international terrorism was in 2004 (less than 3 years into the wars) and, at that time, the level had increased exponentially. The State Department's annual terrorism report was immediately discontinued. Over eight years after instituting the "war on terror", the government must still want to keep the bad news a secret, even from Congress. If there is no way to even find out this basic information, how can Congress assess if the Af-Pak escalation is "working"? We were met with blank stares.

We then asked whether changes in the level of American casualties could be used to measure the progress. We mentioned General (ret'd) Barry McCaffrey's dire prediction: "What I want to do is signal that this thing (Af-Pak escalation) is going to be $5 billion to $10 billion a month and 300 to 500 killed and wounded a month by next summer. That's what we probably should expect. And that's light casualties." One young congressional staffer who has studied foreign policy and military affairs (but without any military experience of his own) told us that increased American deaths would not be relevant or helpful in determining the war's effectiveness. I asked to know the number of funerals my Congressman Kline had been to for the soldiers in our district who had so far been killed in the wars or who had committed suicide as a result of the wars.

The last difficult question we posed to our elected Minnesota representatives was how can the reckless spending be brought under control and the national debt be reduced when an unprecedented $741 billion is to be spent on the military and wars this next year. (That's the projected minimum. Many experts expect supplemental spending will push the 2010 total amount to $1 trillion.) A staffer told us that Congress raised the debt ceiling last month to an unfathomable $12 trillion! That debt figure is more than double the $5.6 trillion the Bush Administration had when it started the wars. The national debt reportedly comes to $100,000 for each American family! How can fiscal conservatives not question the trillions being wasted this way? How can President Obama's hopes for economic prosperity be realized with a debt burden this high? Why are US military contractors allowed to gain huge war profits at the same time as saddling our children and grandchildren with crushing interest payments on this debt?

Our last terrible question was when will the other shoe fall? Our visit to DC happened to coincide with C-SPAN's airing of former Senator Pete Domenici's presentation to the members of a new bi-partisan, private sector debt commission being assigned to deal with the catastrophic rising debt. The elderly Domenici was practically in tears and hyperventilating as he pointed the press to a chart showing the United States' steeply climbing debt burden as he announced in a trembling voice that all government programs and "entitlements" (except for the military) but obviously including social security, Medicare and Medicaid would be on the cutting block.

One has to wonder if the line on Domenici's chart showing US debt going steeply up would mirror the one we are not allowed to know about the increase in international terrorism, as a consequence of U.S. pre-emptive wars, kidnapings, torture, etc.

In the end, our group had to leave Washington DC without the answers. But we do not intend to wait in silence for the politicians to respond. Since our current President and Congress do not appear capable of pulling the country out of the "war on terror" begun by the Bush Administration, it will, of necessity, fall to the common American people like ourselves to exercise our constitutional rights as well as our consciences to push for a peace process to end the bloody and costly quagmire.

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Williams credits a vociferous fan with an emotional assist after 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 victory that ends Justine Henin's Grand Slam comeback one step short of championship.

Serena Williams loves a good underdog story and understood that most of the crowd was behind Justine Henin.

This is not the first time this question has been asked. Jeff Jarvis started this discussion back in 2008, and covered the topic in his book entitled What Would Google Do? However, in recent times with the banking sector in so much turmoil and facing the ire of so many, the question probably is not whether a Google might come along and start a bank, but when will an Amazon, Google or Facebook weigh in to this space?

Unlikely? Sceptical? Let me challenge that thought with a simple fact. Google already has a banking license...

Yes. Since late 2007 Google has held a banking license issued by the Central Bank of the Netherlands- De Nederlandsche Bank. The license is nominated as being for digital banking services. They're not the only ones looking at financial services to extend their brand. As of May of 2007 Pay Pal has held a banking license from Luxembourg. HP has banking licenses in a few countries, allowing it to issue loans and leasing agreements. The publisher of the online science-fiction game "Entropia Universe" has a banking license from the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and this enables it Entropia to encourage trade of their virtual currency used in their online world. What about Apple? Well as far as we know they don't have one...yet.

What's wrong with your bank?
Many feel today that the big banks have got too big, have lost touch with their customers. They seem more interested in speculating on the assets they hold to create profit, than basic banking services to their customer. The criticism is often levelled that these banks feel they are big enough that if you don't like it, they'll just ignore you.

The fundamental issues that customers face today, however, are relatively simple to fix. For example, when you go down to your bank to apply for a loan or a credit card, they ask you all the same questions they've already asked before a million times before. Banks have a habit of hiking up fees without any warning, and you can't do anything about it. When you do need a new loan or changes to your mortgage, you feel like you have to beg just to get some consideration. No matter how many times you ring the bank, you have to repeat the same story you've already given to the last person you spoke to.

The question at hand, however, is Would Google build a better bank? The immediate answer might be - it couldn't be worse than what we've got now. The question really is how could a Google or someone like them build a better bank?

Simplicity is a service in itself
"The perfect search engine," says co-founder Larry Page, "would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want." This was the power behind Google's early success obviously, but we could easily paraphrase this for banking - the perfect bank would understand what you need and give you exactly what want...

Google has built its business around ten key business principles, what they like to call "Then things we know to be true". A number of these principles would come into play in creating a different type of banking environment for customers Google Style. Focus on the user and all else will follow, fast is better than slow, you don't need to be at your desk to need an answer, you can make money without doing evil, there's always more information out there, you can be serious without a suit, and great just isn't good enough. How would this manifest in a better bank?

Are you ready?
Whether it is Google, Apple or a fresh start-up, the likelihood of a new retail financial services organization stepping into the fray over the next few years is extremely high. As Google learned with its search engine opportunity for innovation is often borne out of either customer frustrations or simply a better way of doing things. Given our recent experiences with the big banks, is it unthinkable that someone might try to innovate your banking experience?

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PRESIDENT OBAMA 10 days ago set out one important element in the needed structural reform of the financial system. No one can reasonably contest the need for such reform, in the United States and in other countries as well. We have after all a system that broke down in the most serious crisis in 75 years. The cost has been enormous in terms of unemployment and lost production. The repercussions have been international.

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