Regarding Changing Congress.

Dear Professor Lawrence Lessing,

I recently was speaking to Carla Dardis from the Tides Center and she
linked me to your End the Corruption speech from the Momentum
Conference. I know that lots of weird stuff comes in from the Internet,
however I was hoping you might be willing to speak with me.

I was inspired by your patriotism and civic commitment. Yet, at the
same time I was frustrated by what I believe to be the core of the issue
of corruption that you did not address. I will outline briefly the
work I have been doing, hoping you will not dismiss the concepts out of
hand if I fail to articulated them with sufficient skill.

Akito Morita, the Founder of Sony said almost 30 years ago that "Nations
are a dying industry, Corporations are the structures of the future."
Since I first heard that offhanded comment while a student at Yale, I
have seen the truth of it more and more every year. 2007 was finally
the tipping point as, we finally entered the "Age of the Corporate
State" with 51% of the 100 largest economies in the world now
Corporations, not Governments.

The King is dead, long live the King!

As important as government reform is, corporate reform is first, I
believe. The democratization of capital is the great movement of our
generation. Just as in the 1770's when a handful of evolutionary
thinkers conceived of National Peoplehood and changed the world forever,
so too the time has come for a handful of thinkers to present the
concept of Corporate Peoplehood to the world, so that community of the
people, by the people, and for people shall not perish from the earth.

Corporate Peoplehood is not ESOPs or Co-ops, it is not Socialism or
Communism. Corporate Peoplehood is based in the glorious tradition of
Corporate Personhood, just as democratic government is based in the
glorious tradition of monarchy, but both are natural evolutionary steps
in human organization to insure that cooperators thrive and free riders
are marginalized.

If you have made it this far in this email, I thank you for your time,
and if you have any interest in learning more, please contact me.

Michael Rogers

3/19/10 New America Meeting

Thank you for your time and consideration. I am available Tuesday,
Wednesday or Thursday of next week to meet with you.

Specifically, what I wanted to discuss was New America's possible
involvement in an innovative asset building program on the Western Slope
of the High Sierra. We are a very troubled community economically, but
with very strong social capital ties which make us an ideal pilot
program site.

The Western Slope of the Central High Sierra is a resource rich area
with big problems and big opportunities. Some of our problems include
overgrown forests and fire dangers, over use of natural resources,
devastated salmon population, a mono-culture economy that is in a free
fall after the collapse of the trophy home industry, socially and
economically marginalized indigenous population and Central and South
Americans.

But the opportunities are just as big. PG&E will be giving away
approximately 20,000 acres of land in the near future for the best use
of the people of California, 1,500 people are organizing to create a
Collaborative Ski Area, economic opportunities from small wood
utilization, carbon neutral micro energy production, enhanced recreation
opportunities that create revenue to properly manage the resources,
non-profit youth outdoor adventure programs, strong progressive
non-profit community, a Forest Service seeking innovative ways to manage
the Tahoe National Forest, green technology and industry funding
opportunities, jobs stimulus packages, to name a few.

The goal of SumPeople.org is to organize a conference call "Dreams of
the Western Slope" to bring together this "apex of opportunity" to begin
to imagine a systemic resource management plan with the goal of
sustainable resource management, just and broadly distributed economic
development, and enhanced and non-extractive recreation access.

We envision the possibility of the creation of a Collaborative
Corporation that would gain long term resource rights on the Western
Slope, and, in the Common Pool Resource management model of Nobel Prize
winner Elinor Ostrum, manage those resources for the collaborative goals
of the community. Where this becomes an innovative asset building
program is in the collaborative control of the capital created by this
new type of corporation. For instance, resources earned by a
housekeeper are used to send her daughter to get a Master's Degree in
Engineering, or profits earned by a Janitor are used to build affordable
housing for his family.

By adding democratic civil government mechanism to the modern corporate
model such a checks and balance, branches of governance, and elected
accountable leadership we believe we can build a wealth building model
that does not depend on everyone becoming a sole proprietor. As a sole
proprietor I can say that it is an incredible obstacle to overcome, you
need to a jack of all trades and often master of none. Which is an
incredibly high barrier for historically marginalized communities.
However, we believe everyone can have a productive role to play in the
creation of a complex corporation and should have the right to a
representative voice in the government of their enterprise.

Let me know what times work for you.

With Hope, Determination, and Love,

Michael Rogers.

3/19/10 Health Insurance Blog Posting

How about the unhappy customers of the current insurance companies form
together to create a new insurance company with elected leadership,
checks and balances, and branches of governance. We could then create a
new company that's primary goal was providing the best health product at
the best price for its customers (what a novel idea). It would be
relatively easy to create a new company (no legislative initiative
needed) because insurance companies, like banks, have none of their own
money.

What if this Collaborative Insurance Company (CIC) created Population
Care Units (PCUs). For instance, my county has 100,000 people and two
hospitals with combined budgets of $100 million. At the $500 a month I
currently pay for insurance, this PCU would generate $600 million in
annual premiums. This CIC could negotiate with the hospitals to take
care of the 100,000 person PCU with no billing, no administration, no
overhead. The insurance company could probably operate on less than a
$1 million budget.

This would take our current system, where hospitals, doctors, etc become
richer the sicker people are, and instantly change it to them making
bigger profits the healthier the PCU is. You could also get the
government to put every dollar spent on healthcare (medicare, worker's
comp, disability, etc) into the pot to drive down the costs of
premiums. From a business point of view you could say, "Move your
business to our county and you don't need to buy insurance for your
workers because we are all covered anyway". This would drive up
property values and have lots of benefit for the community.

Also, the internal pressure on the real cost saving factors like smoking
and obesity would be huge. If I knew that my chance to have heart
surgery at 70 would depend on whether my friend was over weight, then I
would be saying, "Hey, Joe. Do you want to take a walk with me at lunch?"

We need to stop thinking that government can solve these problems, but
instead we must look to ourselves and build new collaborative
corporations that are accountable and self-regulating.

Sparkplug Mike
www.Sumpeople.org

3/19/10 Michael Moore website dialog

Collectives are nothing but another form of corporation. So, maybe we
need to agree upon terms. I don't use the term collective or
cooperative because I believe they more often than not come from a
tradition of consensus decision making. This is limiting concept and
does not lead to economies of scale and division of labor, which is why
I believe that they have never become more that a small percentage of
the overall economic output despite their clear social advantages.

The problem with consensus decision making, with everyone making every
decision, is that it quickly runs up against the Movie Picking Paradox.
That is to say one person can easily pick what movie to go to, two
people have a simple negotiation, three people is actually 300% more
difficult (not 33% like you would assume), so by the time you get to 10
people deciding on a movie it is approaching the impossible. What
usually happens in that case is that one person gets fed up and says "I
am going to X movie and Y time, who ever wants to join me can".

I prefer the concept of collaborative corporation because I think that
we need something that is capable of processing more complexity in
decision making and can take tactical action more easily when a general
consensus exists on goals and objectives. In a collaborative
corporation you initially start out with a pretty standard corporate
structure with the sole addition of elected CEO, an elected Board of
Directors that is more like a legislature, and a form of Judiciary (I
personally like the idea of a Grandmother's Council because I assume the
Executive and Legislative Branches will be weighted to the Masculine and
I think the nurturing, loving, Matriarchal is important regardless of
the actual gender of the Grandmothers).

But then, the Collaborative Corporation has the general Olstrum"design
parameter" of driving decision making to the finger tips of the
corporate body. We know that corporations that resist top down planning
are more in touch with their markets, customers, more efficient, and
just better places to work.

In the Collaborative Corporation the "leaders" really make very few
decisions (the CEO of Southwest Air was proud to say he made only two
decisions in the company -- who to hire and where to have the Christmas
Party). The role of CEO in this "leaderless" Collaborative Corporation
is to be the Catalyst, the Champion, the Visionary and to encourage
everyone to work together, and most importantly to give voice to the
unifying identity of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

I believe that a Collaborative Corporation can be this "third" way.
And, yes, this is not clearly spelled out in her work but I believe it
can be inferred from it.

Thank you for the intelligent and provocative dialectic.

Sparkplug Mike
www.sumpeople.org

3/18/10 Letter to Michael Moore

OK, do you get it now Mike? We are in the age of the corporate state.
Your efforts need to be focused on the democratization of capital.
Jefferson, Adams, Paine, and friends did not throw out government
because of the abuses of the Kings. Royal Capitalism is the problem, not
capitalism itself. Socialism is just government capitalism and it
doesn't work very well, does not have sophisticated checks and balances
on power, and will never work in our country given our traditions and
history.

Come join the great movement of our generation Mike, stop trying to
destruct and create, build, and work towards the creation of
corporations of the people, by the people, and for the people.

The Evolution of our times is the democratization of capital, but we
don't need to storm the castles on this one, we just need to aggregate
our power to build new corporations worthy of us as honest, hard working
corporate citizens.

If just 10,000 people, the population of my small town, were to commit
$10 a month, that would generate $1.2 million a year in salaries to
start a Liberation Bank. If we then took our money out of the Royal
Banks at an average of $1,000 each, that would create $10 million in
assets, we could lend out $9 million to buy good existing business to be
owned by a combination of working and investing partners, thus instantly
creating $19 million in assets, and so on.

Now imagine if the Liberation Bank had branches in every town in the
country. We could have bought your favorite company GM cheap and then
turned around to the workers and said, "Here, this is your company now."
We will appoint an interim CEO but you will start an election for the
new CEO, you will also elect your board of directors and they will act
like a legislature and make the laws of the company, then you can
appoint or elect the Judiciary branch of your company to rule on the
constitutionality of your laws. Good old check and balances, branches of
governance, and elected accountable leadership so that community of the
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the Earth.

If we can nation build in Iraq, surely we could build a democratic
economic nation in the heart of Detroit among the good, hard working,
corporate citizens on Michigan.

The only catch is that they make their loan payments before they pay
their salaries and benefits just like any small business person has to
do. Then when they pay back the loan we go and look at another fragile,
hierarchical, monarchical corporation to scoop up at pennies on the dollar.

This is good old fashion capitalism where the benefit inure to the
people who do the work and not the freeriders who take our money to buy
the companies we work for and then fire us to make even more money.

I believe in you Mike, but please open your mind and imagine that you
could fall in love with the right type of corporation.

We have started a group called Sum People to move these ideas forward,
it is less than a month old, with no funding, but a dream and a plan
that we believe can change this F'ed up system. Sum People will be like
Wikipedia and not Microsoft's Encarta. It will be created by the people
who join with us to make it happen. It has no concentrated capital yet
(neither democratic nor undemocratic) so don't expect fancy graphics or
detail proposals. We are starting with an idea and are willing to let go
of where it goes and allow that to be decide by the Whole. Come be a
greater part of Sum People and lets all stop whining and get to work
building the just economy our children deserve.

We are the people, the time is now!

March 10, 2010

I am wondering if you would be open to a refinement on the premise of
your conference?

Sometimes the questions we ask effect our ability to properly understand
the issues. I would suggest that some very interesting dialog could
come from asking if, in fact, the question should not be "Failed State,
or Dying Industry?" Over 20 years ago, Akido Morita, the founder of
Sony, said that government is a "dying industry" and that corporations
are the structures of the future. After the recent Supreme Court ruling
in Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations now
have complete, unrestricted constitutional rights. Our body politic has
become the battleground for competing corporate interests and narrowly
focused special interests to the detriment of common sense and the
common good. NPR recently identified the individuals in a congressional
hearing room where the debate on Health Care was taking place and
someone asked, "Who is there representing me?" and unfortunately the
answer was no one.

It is the historic rise of the Corporate State that is threatening our
democratic mechanisms and the recent Supreme Court ruling is an
effective Coup d'Etat completing the transfer of power. However, just
as a few forward thinking individuals in the 1770's gave birth to idea
that a Nation could become the embodiment of a people, now is the time
for us to think about a Corporation as the embodiment of a people, with
all the sophisticated design parameters of civil accountability at play
(i.e. check and balances, separation of powers, and accountable elected
representatives).

This new concept is being called Corporate Peoplehood and works with the
body of law around the doctrine of corporate personhood, but instead of
fighting it uses its full force behind the needs of community.

Undemocratic concentrations of corporate capital are the greasy fast
foods we are shoving down the gullet of our democracy, and we can do all
the open heart surgeries we want, but we will always find ourselves back
on the same operating table if we don't change our diet.

With Hope and Determination,
Michael Rogers
www.sumpeople.org

3/8/2010

I am wondering who to contact for a topic for Insight? My name is Michael Rogers and I am the elected Philosophy Officer of SumPeople.org.

I would be interested in participating in a show based on Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission -- Corporate Personhood versus Corporate Peoplehood.

This profoundly significant ruling has granted unfettered constitutional rights to corporations, even though our founders wrote "We the People of the United States of America" not "We the Corporations of the World and other unorganized citizens of the United States of America" This ruling is an effective Corporate Coup d'Etat of our democracy and it is based on the legal doctrine of corporate personhood (i.e. a corporation is a legal individual).

But there is good news. Instead of fighting this reality, we can instead embrace it. SumPeople.org is educating and organizing in California based on the concept of Corporate Peoplehood.

The idea is simple. In 1770, the radical idea that a nation could be the embodiment of a people transformed modern society and laid the foundations for the prosperity and abundance we enjoy still to this day. Well, in this age of the corporate state, the idea that a large, powerful, profitable corporation could become the embodiment of a people offers the same prospects.

New internet based collaboration tools have placed us at the apex of opportunity. Social Networking is exploding and Economic Networking is next. Decentralized collaborative organizational structures are having incredible success in this new environment, from Wikipedia, Burning Man, to Linux and open source, to name just a few. The opportunity to create a complex, decentralized collaboration of highly autonomous economic units that also are highly coordinated in their actions is a real and immediate opportunity to solve many of the challenges of this increasingly complex modern society.

SumPeople.org is applying these concepts to the Western Slope of the Central High Sierra. A highly resource rich and environmentally vital area that is struggling with a host of issues from overgrown forests to a struggling economy.

Using the work of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics winners Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, SumPeople.org is putting on a conference this Summer called Dreams of the Western Slope where their work on Common Pool Resources and Corporation as Governance Structure will be the basis for formulating a vision for the Western Slope that blends long term environmental sustainability, long term economic sustainability, and long term social sustainability.

If any of this interests you and you have more questions, please contact me.