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AWSC Supporters

Dr. Bowman – Presidential State of Union

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Dr. Bowman 6-15-07 College of Marin State of the Union Speech

The text below is excerpted from last five minutes of Dr. Bowman’s 90-minute Presidential State of the Union speech stating his support for People’s Lobby’sAmerican World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals.

Dr. Bowman is touring abut 30 states on his Patriots Tour.  http://thepatriots.us/   Home Page.

http://thepatriots.us/pg_01_events_tourSchedule.php   Tour Schedule.

http://thepatriots.us/pg_02_about.html   About Dr. Bowman.  Dr. Bowman is a much-decorated Vietnam Fighter pilot who directed all the Department of Defense “Star Wars” programs under presidents Ford and Carter…

 

 

Excerpts from last five minutes of Col. Bowman’s June 15, 2007 State of the Union Speech.

“Instead of a military presence, we’re going to have a humanitarian presence…

“Along with other wealthy nations of the world, we are going to establish a Marshall Plan…

“We are also going to have a domestic Marshall Plan, fulfilling the un-kept Bush promises to rebuild New Orleans…

“Finally, if we are once again to be a great nation, we must be a good nation…

“An America that leads the world with not only its military might but…

“An America in which every person is cared for…

“An America in which every person regardless of religion, race, creed, color, age is …

“It is an America in which our young people volunteer for the American World Service Corps and serve in the Peace Corps, Americorps, and Habitat for Humanity and in return get advanced education.”  …

Dr. Bowman, State of Union, June 15, 2007 College of Marin.

The total Bowman web-version video is up at http://blip.tv/file/271400/ .

Patriot Dr. Bowman passed away around 2015.

 

 

AWSC Supporters

Rabbi Michael Lerner

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Re:  Letter of support for AWSC from Rabbi Michael Lerner

To whom it may concern:

Sometimes the words are different but the heart’s intent is the same.

The Strategy of Generosity recently launched by the Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (info at http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=20070228183252814 ) calls for a shift in how we think about our own security, challenging the notion that the only realistic way to be safe is to dominate and control the rest of the world. The Strategy of Generosity commits us to reestablishing trust and hope among the world’s peoples by working in solidarity with them to improve life for all people and to heal the planet itself. Working together to eliminate, once and for all, world poverty, and to address the environmental crisis, will break the cycle of mistrust, fear, war and destruction presently imperiling all of us.

Those of us in the spiritual community know that all life is interdependent and that our individual and societal well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else on the planet. We need a mass movement to advance this consciousness.

Consequently, it was a serendipitous find when a friend recommended I contact Dwayne Hunn, Executive Director of People’s Lobby Inc. regarding their citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional proposals. Their AWSC congressional proposals, available on their website www.WorldServiceCorps.us, call upon Congress to build and deploy a peaceful productive volunteer army that can spread the Strategy of Generosity at home and abroad.  As proposed, this new peace and justice force will spread acts of kindness that lay the foundations for a Global Marshall Plan.

Many of our spiritual efforts are uphill battles.  Implementing and deploying the AWSC is an uphill political battle that provides dramatic spiritual wins.  If enacted in this Congress, the AWSC legislation will be among the most significant legislation passed in decades.  It deploys a peaceful army that eliminates the need for war by containing and erasing terror, poverty, and ignorance through acts of love and kindness.  Even if the legislation is not immediately enacted, however, the debate it engenders will provide a wonderful opportunity to discuss our vision for a world that operates on compassion and generosity rather than aggression and self-protectiveness. Hundreds of thousands of people will be exposed to ideas they have been longing to hear. Therefore, I am asking all of you who support our Strategy of Generosity and Global Marshall Plan http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=20070226095019665  to also help introduce and implement the AWSC Congressional proposals. Sign the AWSC on-line petition

http://www.worldservicecorps.us/sign_the_petition.htm.   Then call 866-220-0044 and ask your representatives to introduce and cosponsor the AWSC proposal in the House and Senate, and find other ways to help http://www.worldservicecorps.us/how_to_help.htm.

The world is spiraling so rapidly downhill that it can’t wait for us to exhibit the generosity and caring that having a million American World Service Corps service volunteers serving annually can do to rebuild our world.

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Tikkun Magazine, Editor

Network of Spiritual Progreessive, Executive Director

 

Common Sense Opeds, Land Development

Developers need a new strategy

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Developers need a new strategy

Dwayne Hunn

Article Launched: 03/25/2007 11:05:29 PM PDT

Marin Independent Journal

HERE WE GO AGAIN. Roughly every decade, the county updates its general plan.  Not many pay attention.  Those who do usually have a perceived problem with something in it.

If you build homes or commercial space, you pray you don’t have a project in Marin.

Why?  Because in Marin, developers can’t win for losing.

Developers propose building substantial affordable and workforce housing, whose marketability they prefer, and what happens? A political fear machine scares elected officials who further slash housing densities. Developers are forced to build mega-estates, with just a few deeply subsidized workforce units. Then, the public blames them for the lack of affordable housing.

Developers are willing to work with those of us who develop workforce housing and push for mixed-use European villages along the rail line, but are rebuffed by groups parading as environmentalists. Had rail-oriented mixed-use developments been built at Vintage Oaks, Hamilton and the St. Vincent’s School for Boys-Silveira Ranch sites (seemingly losing to the illogical minuscule-development myopics) our freeway would be less congested, workforce more balanced, train ridership solidified and, in our interconnected world, oil addiction a little less deadly for our troops.

What’s a winning strategy for developers? It’s similar to what the Bush administration needed for Iraq.

Developers need to build a coalition of landowners, affordable housing advocates, businessmen, etc., and build a vision that captures hearts and minds. After getting some media attention, the vision must be good enough to capture the belief of the too-busy, but still thinking, activists of both counties.

That is doable with a comprehensive development scenario that truly delivers good development, not merely mouths it. Unfortunately, when you have public officials overly influenced by scaremongers offering falsehood and simplicities, you do not develop smart, healthy programs.

Scaremongers have won most Marin battles by twisting facts and ignoring logical, visionary answers, while scaring politicians and citizens into buying into shortsighted nonsense.

What is some of the nonsense that scaremongers have foisted on too-busy people and politicians?

– That each new general plan has too much population growth, developable land, affordable housing and commercial space,

– That each general plan must be dramatically reduced so as to save our quality of life. This is said in California’s oldest median-age county where about 88 percent of its land is protected, only about 5 percent can have some development, and population growth has averaged about 3/10th of 1 percent per year for the last three-plus decades.

– That the Bay Area Association of Governments unfairly calls for too much affordable housing because Marin doesn’t have enough developable space.

– Therefore, the answer is to do less of everything in this new general plan update.

Consequently, each successive general plan fails to reach its goals. Then, the next general plan lowers it goals for previously unmet affordable housing, population, land use, transit oriented development, etc.

The scaremongers have developed a self-fulfilling decreasing development loop that hurts neighborhood, city, county, state and nation by scaring Marin residents into buying a small-minded view of how one of America’s wealthiest counties should be.

Developers, of course, are not faultless. They continue to fail to provide a vision of environmentally sensitive developments that feed mixed-use rail-oriented villages that should have been built for decades along North Bay rail lines.

By failing, they failed to build an army of supporters. Had they articulated that vision, in conjunction with supporting unobjectionable to all in-fill development, developers might reverse their long Marin retreat, and maybe save Baghdad. Oops, wrong battlefield.

Had pedestrian-pocket developments been built over recent decades, fewer would buy into scaremongering about “quality of life, my property values, parkingÉ”

If developers had built the vision and army, there would be fewer complainers sniping at the general plan’s social and housing benefits. Oh, yeah. Had that happened, Marin would be cutting our oil-trafficking addiction and reducing the underlying pretext for bleeding our troops in Baghdad.

wonrerase?

Dwayne Hunn consults on land development projects and is Executive Director of People’s Lobby, sponsor of the American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals.

Support Resolutions

Marin Democratic Central Committee 2007

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APPROVED FEBRUARY 1, 2007

WHEREAS the American World Service Corps (AWSC) cost-effectively involves a million more skilled, can-do Americans aged 18-60+ into working on world and domestic problems, and thereby gives them a deeper understanding, concern for, and ability to practically address domestic and international policy needs, while raising America’s political IQ and,

WHEREAS the AWSC invests in America’s education, health, and economy through tuition, Medical Savings, or IRA Account investments, (which at approximately $17,000 is one-sixth or less of the recruitment bonus presently offered to military recruits) to those who complete AWSC service; and thereby helps strengthen our knowledge of world and domestic needs, educational and economic competitiveness, and our citizenry’s understanding of and voting on public policy needs at home and in the world and,

WHEREAS a one million strong AWSC offers a, robust, peaceful volunteer civilian corps to augment out courageous 1.4 million military personnel; and thereby productively answers the increasingly alarming and costly spread of the critically dangerous Ugly American image, terrorist recruitment, poverty, environmental degradation, and misunderstandings that inspire hatred, by involving many more of America’s best assets, its concerned, patriotic citizens, in addressing needs; and it does so cost-effectively by legislating the use of the following funding mechanisms: 1) Public web sites: Listing public education incentivized donations by the Forges Riches 400. 2)  Public education incentivized donations by corporations that have paid little or no taxes.  3) Miniscule import levee on those developed nations with which we have a significant trade deficit.  4) Foundation grants.  5) General tax revenues.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Marin Democratic Central Committee proclaims our support for the introduction and passage of the AWSC concepts into legislation, which encompasses the goal espoused by President Kennedy’s words:  “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.  My fellow citizens of the world: ask not whatAmerica will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Marin Democratic Central Committee requests that during these critical times all our elected representatives support and congressional representatives introduce and pass Peoples Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals as promptly as possible.

The Marin Democratic Central Committee adds its support, as did the California State Democratic Party on January 28, 2006, to Peoples Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals, which by the seventh year after its enactment will add one million additional American volunteers into serving country and world through such organizations as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, OxFam, Mercy Corps, and State Conservation Corps.

Author: Dwayne Hunn, Executive Director, People’s Lobby, 415-383-7880

Dwayne@dwaynehunn.biz; www.worldservicecorps.us; www.peopleslobby.us

Xmas

Christmas 2006

YOOooo!santa sleigh

 

Merry Christmas 06, Happy New Year and Hanukah and the Season’s best to you all!  Especially.. if you’ve been nice…

For those of you who don’t benefit from my sister’s long and short distance phone call regimen, she continues to amaze those who have overcome similar challenges.  Thanks to a young man’s donated kidney and pancreas, Marlene’s kidney pancreas transplant moves into its eight year.  She no longer fights her diabetes with insulin.  Each day she awakens to handle her past diabetes effects by strapping on her leg and going to her kitchen table, cluttered with mail, papers, to-dos, radio, etc.  There she finds her magnifier and, with her sometimes reader, reads more than most Americans do.  In addition to completing service on the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, attending police and homeowners meetings, she also gives me advice on whom to contact for implementing the American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals www.WorldServiceCorps.us .  And, of course, she uses that working eye to remain ranked amongNorthern California’s top ten movie reviewers.

A couple times this year work on the American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals took me south to my favorite earthly bunker, my old giddy Pharm home, Rubel’s Castle.  For those who haven’t rollicked amidst the rocks, bottles, telephone poles, and oak stumped stools or visited, take a gander athttp://www.castlocations.com/app/showprop.php?property=4031 or

http://www.usa-locations.com/SouthernCalifornia/LosAngelesCounty/Glendora/3494/ or http://ascot.locations.org/uploads/index.php?mode=album&album=Unique+Properties/CS06 .  What great adventures, hiding amidst the junk, the King gave us Pharmhands.   And Suburbia still lamentingly wonders how motorcycled pharmer dunderheads got this built in their pricey neighborhood.    The Castle is now used for movies, so if you know of some interested in renting its unique visuals and environment, let me know.  I’ll put you in touch with Louie and Uncle Nick.

Most importantly, the King and Queen of Rubelia, Michael and Kaia, are still lending what some suburbanites consider “certifiably institutionalizeable” knowledge to help Pharmhands keep the gates, dungeons, canons, scarecrows, witches, tunnels, crops, cemeteries, avocados, kumquats, creosote, and moats afloat.
This year has been dominated by working to revive Peoples Lobby Inc. (PLI), whose assets were riddled by some poor board decisions and a former United States Senator continuing to fail to pay back hundreds of thousands in poorly used loans.  Peoples Lobby Inc (501c4 non-profit) www.PeoplesLobby.us was founded by two giants, Edwin and Joyce Koupal, who would have dramatically improved America’s smart civic participation had Ed live longer than his mere 48 years.  This year we added a sister organization, People Lobby’s Education Foundation (PLEF), a federally approved 501c3 non-profit to help with research, education, and outreach.  For those who want to make the nation and world smarter faster, a tax-deductible donation to People Lobby’s Education Foundation (PLEF) will be well used.

Our top project this year is to build enough Congressional sponsors and involved citizens to pass and implement the American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals.  www.WorldServiceCorps.us.  After that, our next project is to help Nadia McCaffrey establish, with another citizen-initiated legislative proposal if needed, veteran village retreats http://www.veteransvillage.org/index.html to more successfully deal with our vets’ posttraumatic stress disorders. Trained by PLI’s Ed and Joyce Koupal to ignore the odds and never aim small, Peoples Lobby’s American World Service Corps will dramatically improve the world, like few pieces of legislation ever have.  We could use your help in spreading the word and rebuilding PLI and PLEF.  At least, sign the petition at the web site.http://www.worldservicecorps.us/petition/default.asp

In this season of peace, which exists with difficulty for those who have connections to military service or the Middle East and its repercussions, it is helpful to remember a few of Kennedy’s Inaugural words from four decades ago that  describes today’s problems:

“…where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace…”

At Christmas, television, radio, writings, music, and even couch potatoes sing of peace.  Since the still strongest military power in the world still runs on laws, Peoples Lobby has written a law ready to deliver a gift that will build peacethroughout the world, as Jesus the Carpenter, Mohamed the Prophet, or any other truly magnificent religious leader would love to see delivered by sleigh, donkey, or some similar peaceful delivery system…

The AWSC will send the right stuff for the 21st century — American missions, not missiles.  It sends the right stuff, right service, and right size.

In the New Year, may all your emotions, ball bearings, wirings, sockets, and relationships run well… And if they cry, break, short, crack, and fall near despair, may you find the right hankie, tool, fuse, glue or most excellent repair crew.

For those of you from the wondrous round ball-chasing decades, lack of grease on a left ball bearing has slowed my round ball-chasing.  With stem cell researched stymied in recent years, I’m hoping bionic re-implantation, or at least Breach Candy initiated resurfacing, is the answer.  Ahhh, if only the body parts would always remain 25.

Wherever you reside on this little dot  ü   in space

May the New Year bring a lot of Joy to you and yours.

 If you recognize the need for implementing the American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals please spread the word, contact some of your Senate reps at

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

or House reps at

http://www.house.gov/    Thanks.

Merry Christmas…  Happy New Year & Hanukah…

Seasons Best Wishes… Salam Alakum..,

Peace and Good Health to all…

http://dwaynehunn.biz/Christmas%202006.htm  old site with pics that have not had time to place here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

AWSC Supporters

General Zinni comments on AWSC national service

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General Anthony Zinni on the American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals

Interviewed by Freedoms Forum’s Bob Aucone.

Portion of the video tape from November 2006 in Washington D. C.

In asking about “national service,” Freedoms Forum asks Four Star General Zinni about the volunteer national service proposal “coming out of the 6th CD,” Peoples Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps (AWSC) Congressional Proposals.

Aucone:  “Freedoms Forum is following a citizen-initiated proposal that is coming out of the 6th (Congressional) District in California, which is where we’re from. It is a proposal for voluntary national service that the government would pass legislation to incentiviize people joining, ah, this national service.  Either serving in the Peace Corps or Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, Habitat for Humanity.  All of these organization that you call non-governmental organizations, NGOs.

“Is there a place for that kind of partnership between military and NGOs to provide a stable world out there, where if we have more people that would be encouraged to participate in that kind of service that we would have, perhaps, a more stable world?”

General Zinni:  “Well, I think a national volunteer program would be fantastic.  When I teach my college course, I see so many students that want to put something back, what to do something for the world.  I think a national volunteer program should have everything in it.  It should include the option of military service.  It should include the option of other governmental service, serving internships with our state department or maybe the USA AID, which provides assistance out there, the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and with non-governmental organizations, where there can be placement and recognition for time spent there.

To me, all those provide service not only internationally but domestically.  I could see where this sort of volunteerism would have been effective for Hurricane Katrina, or elsewhere.  So we could have international and domestic.  I would like to see our government capture all the options, build the program, “and then put it in out high schools and colleges as an option.  So on career day you can look at these steps and these options and this would be explained as to where you feel you can best serve.

“Some people feel best that they can serve in uniform.  Others in doing some sort of humanitarian work.  Others in maybe working in government to help better create institutions, like rule of law institutions, or working with others in the area of diplomacy, or in other things that can support our effort.

“So I would like to see a broad based program that allows for all this.

“In terms of partnership, when you talk military and NGOs, you have to be a little careful, because many NGOS cannot be seen to be too closely tied to military. They have to maintain their neutrality.  The basis for their support may be faith based, or based on a principle like the Red Cross of neutrality or non-violence, and they could lose their credibility or effectiveness.  So it’s not that they object to the military or what they do in any way, our military particularly.  It’s that they have to retain that.  So you have to build that partnership very carefully.

“When we were in Somalia, we had some organizations that could not be seen as associating directly with us.  They appreciated the fact that we were trying to create a secure environment to allow them to operate.  But if it looked like they were working with the military, they may alienate certain elements of the society they were trying to help or make enemies.  So we had to do the coordination and cooperation on an information-sharing basis but not be seen as essentially cooperation.  That could be managed.  That can be done.  And not be seen as some sort of cooperation.

”When the military gets in the humanitarian business, sometimes it competes with them.  And sometimes we may not be the experts.  They know things about local diet.  They know things about constructing local markets that can stand on their own.  When the military comes in and tries to influence that it may not be the right course.  We’re not expert in that.  So they should have the lead.  The military should stick primarily, other than emergency relief, to providing that secure environment that allows them to work.

“So it has to be structured in a careful way.  The relationships are complicated.  But I would say one thing about going back to the point about national service program offered to our youth.  Don’t exclude anybody.  Don’t say that’s alternate service to the military

Because right away you are creating two sides to this.  It should be all encompassing.  You know when you talk about national service, there should be the option to serve in uniform or to serve in one of the other areas.  I think there are many possibilities here.  I mean, I listed three – military service, or working with governmental organizations non-military, or non-governmental organizations.  And there may be other options to throw into that service.”

 

AWSC Supporters

Congressional candidate Colleen Rowley 10-06

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Colleen Rowley MN 2nd CD D

Dear Dwayne and AWSC,

Thanks for taking the time to contact our campaign. Coleen generally supports an expansion of national service very much in line with AWSC’s platform. She also shares the reasons for doing so. In particular, she supports encouraging our citizenry to participate in programs like Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Head Start, Doctors Without Borders, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, and State Conservation Corps.

Raising America’s political IQ is in truly a win-win scenario. To that end, if elected, I am confident Coleen will take a particular interest in AWSC’s platform.

Thanks again.

Walter B. Winger

Coleen Rowley for U.S. Congress

10-6-06 email