Minutes of the March 30, 2003 Living Room Meeting of the South Bay Solari Supporters

 

Agenda

 

Introductions:

Mary Ursettie.  (Living room meeting organizer) Gave a brief description of Catherine Austin Fitts and her story along with what she learned at the local workshop presented by Fitts and Casey.  She mentioned in particular the use of local databanks and local equity sources and suggested that there is a lot more info at http://www.solari.com.

 

Elizabeth Weiss.  Told more of the story from the workshop and mentioned that she was a "reluctant business person" with a BS in psychology.  Story of Catherine is that she was a successful fundraiser for GHWB which led to HUD appointment as reward, but Fitts began looking into money leaks at HUD, got into trouble, created Hamilton Securities to increase the recovery rate of HUD defaults, got into more trouble.  This was a real wake up call and though Fitts is still fighting the government she has also started Solari, Inc. that is really just in the "getting off the ground" stage.

 

Bill Miller.  Major concern with money and the trouble it causes and whether it might have outlived its usefulness as it appears today that rather than money serving living things, the opposite is more often true.

 

Terry Lyngso.  Self described small business person.  Lesson of the Fitts/Casey workshop is to determine where the money goes in the local community and get accountability rather than just trust the elite.  Recognizes that we need to learn more about how to do this.

 

Peggy Stuart.  Minister and psychic.  Nervous with Bush administration.  Fitts/Casey workshop provided some guidance.  Transfer to wrath then have the path (??).

 

Marina Rose.  First heard Fitts on KPFA and was impressed by the idea of establishing a zone in one's abode where the origin (place of creation) was known for all the objects in it, the popsicle index and the insanity illuminated by the HUD story.  Local focus is OK, too.

 

Linda Rombaut.  She is visiting from Southern California and would like to listen.

 

Joe McClintock.  Joe has degrees in business and accounting and has worked for ethical companies so it is beyond him how the CEO's of those less so could get into the trouble they do.  Meanwhile he's also concerned that the political situation is "over the edge" and the war in Iraq like a bad dream.

 

Marialyce Caudillo.  We created our society and are waking up and taking responsibility for what has occurred.  The youth see more clearly.  Marialyce owns here own business, but has experience in working for companies who did not care for workers (or take care of them, either.)  Her current company supplies admin support for small businesses,  but she's planning a move to Colorado to start another business in a town that fits the size description of a solari.  Not sure how she feels about money, but that she is empowered to make changes.  Her parents were teachers and appeared "not aware of the real world", i.e. didn't bargain or negotiate, but took everything at face value.  It took a lot of time for her to learn that there were alternative ways to dealing with the world.

 

Josh Fradenburg.  Admitted that his parents were "hippies" and associated money with evil since most who have it don't use it for good, though later Josh realized that the money concept itself was not intrinsically bad.  He's happy to see folks beginning to ask questions.

 

Dave Tschang.  You can watch Dave on local TV (Saturdays, 7:25 pm, Channel 28).  Dave is a proponent of the mom and pop entrepreneurship and sees a great opportunity in East Palo Alto in particular for the benefits of supporting investment, rezoning or whatever else it might take to encourage the creation of more such businesses.  Unfortunately the M&P's are not well organized and so the failure rate is high.  He's talked to more than a thousand people on in East Palo Alto and while many recognize that "something is wrong", few know how to apply the skills or assets that they possess to "fix" it.  On the other hand he feels that if we get something started, establish a proper precedent as a "seed" then the M&P businesses should grow and thrive in a community like East Palo Alto.  He says he survived working on high voltage power supplies for many years, was a farmer at 7 years old, and started a successful machine shop before he became a "gray hair" and began promoting the M&P model here locally.  He knows what an individual CAN do, but how to start them is the question.  How so we begin to use the only asset that many folks have, TIME, in a way to productively takes communities like EPA out of their dependence on non-profit handouts and make them a place where people want to stay because of the quality of life there.

 

Court Skinner.  Almost as long-winded as Dave.  Court is an MIT educated Ph. D. (metallurgy) who worked in the semconductor business for 30+ years and is currently a nanny, helps organize technical meetings for the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (a trade organization for those making equipment and materials to support the semiconductor manufacturers) and is beginning to get involved in community support now that he's retired from "real" work.  He first heard Fitts on KPFA like Marina, but didn't make the connection with the potential for the solari concept until after he met Dave at an East Palo Alto city council meeting and started thinking about ways to support the M&Ps.  He looked up the website for Catherine Austin Fitts and found the solari and started a dialog with Catherine via email that led him to this meeting.

 

Twyla Wilson. (Hostess, in whose home we meet)  Moved by the lecture in Sebastapol, which she found a bit overwhelming.  An entrepreneur, small business person who also has experience working for larger enterprises.  Told story about one of those where the IRS seized the 401K assets things got so out of hand.  All were burned by the greed fo the owners (of the business.)  Meanwhile one of those brokered a deal to sell the assets of the firm he'd help destroy and got $500K for his trouble.  That's not right.  We are disorganized and need to be pushed out of the nest, so to speak, and to learn collaboration.  The Palo Alto Chamber of Commerce would like to encourage folks to "buy local".  Taxes eliminate the possibility of small business owners passing on their enterprises.  Would a "local stock market" alleviate this?  Discussed Larry ___, who owns the local Palo Alto Hardware store and his behavior as citizen and business owner.  (All positive.)

 

Gail Francisco.  Gail is here with Marialyce and is planning to start a mushroom business.  She high on collaboration which has provided here with lots of help in getting the business started.  The plan is to move to a 500 person community in Colorado and so the solari model is a nice fit, though clearly the mushrooms come first.  Convinced that no longer are all of us greedy.

 

Pamela Thivierge.  Self describe conservative on whom Pearl Buck's, "The Good Earth" made an early and positive impression re staying connected to the land, but who has worked primarily for companies that aren't connected.  Notes that a few at the top of most organizations get a lot and the rest don't.  Savings and loan disaster was a real eye opener for Pam. She sees politics as a big game in which "we the people" have lost control and need to regain it.  She's sure that small communities encourage trust.

 

The conversation.

 

Mary.  Two things that CAF stated impressed her.   We should put energy into things that make us feel good so if you're dating a sleazeball just because he buys good meals, stop.  Also put energy into what "feeds" you.

 

Second.  Average income for people is $32K/year and average outgo is $35K.  We fund the difference by reducing assets or increasing debt, but this can't go on indefinitely.  Hence the solari approach is really required to solve individual problems, but requires a community to implement.  We need to identify community wizards as a source of information about the community, financial and more.

 

Popsicle index.

Discussion of the Popsicle index as metric of wealth.  It's a measure of feeling not of the level of crime.  Apparently it can be high in an area where crime is high and clearly low in a low crime area.

 

Jessica's email.

Mary then read Jessica's email that described beginning a process with a "small groups of trusted friends solving each others problems (money ones or all?)  To do so we need to increase our "learning metabolism."  Focus on solving our own problems before tackling saving the community.  Continuing education is a good idea. It doesn't matter if you don't know what an earnings index might be, but data banks, software and graphic presentations are invaluable in determining what goes on in a community.   Constituency of the solari needs to include community residents, businesses, banks, non-profit organizations and educational groups.

 

Second step.  Trusted friends solve your problems.  Remove mask.  Data banks (bases) become part of one's resources.  Visual map. Get fear out of the way and get back to pipelines.

 

Sebastapol DVD.

This is a video of the workshop that took place in Sebastapol, CA with Caroline Casey and Catherine Austin Fitts.  It's a good resource with a lot of information, but the copy that Mary had seemed to cause problems with the play.  Later it turned out to be more of a quirk in the menu setup rather than a flaw in the recording.

 

What is a solari? [Mary T. define communities and DO IT. ??]

There was a lot of discourse around what a solari might be, how we might define it in an urban setting like silicon valley where there is a potential for an awful lot of 5000 people "places".  The idea of place appears to be crucial to Catherine's concept, but may be something that each solari will have to figure out for itself.  Education as to what's happening now is also crucial and lots not clear on how we might find this out. How important is the number of people on the level of trust possible? A stocks and B stocks, what's that all about?

 

How is community defined? What's the role of money? Of power?  How are they related?  [Solari also implies illumination.  If you know what folks are doing with your money, and they know you know it, then they are likely to be less likely to abuse your trust.]

 

Other ideas.

Josh asked how we should determine what businesses we do buy from and which not, i.e. in Fitts approach, how do we vote with our dollars?

 

Pam brought up the issue of controlling one's own life.  Folks working for companies like HP and Silicon Graphics can't expect them to become part of a local solari.

 

Twyla referred to Silicon Valley as a meso culture.

 

Dave mentioned the 1000 or so books in his living room and what he'd learned from them re the old versus the new economy.  Both are exporting wealth outside the community or even the country.  Suggested what he calls a 3x3 approach to small business incubation (bottom/basement for old economy (making things), ground level for new economy (retail or service) and top floor for living.  This needs zoning mods to make possible in the community.  Such an enterprise according to Dave could be started with as little as $20K.  [Actually a lot of the potential for solari is the bringing back into the community those services that have been contracted out, like the trash service, lending business, etc.]

 


Someone brought up the effects of Walmart versus the local M&Ps.  On the positive all is available in one place, but meanwhile Twyla mentioned that the squeegee she was looking for was not available there, but was at the Palo Alto Hardware store she brought up earlier.

 

Marina said that she was a member of several groups each of which maintained some resources which could be shared.  This led to a discussion that raised Craig's List, and Naglee Park email (??)  as non-economic forms of power.  [This needs more explanation.]

 

Twyla brought up the Bhutan gross domestic happiness index as another version of a measure of wealth that wasn't tied to things strictly economic.

 

Josh noted that many of the solari potential places were strictly residential areas so could only support "service businesses." How would the solari model work in such a place.

 

Dave suggested that this meant that land use policies might have to change to accommodate the increase in small business activities that a solari might encourage.  In particular it would be required if we wanted to encourage a "value added" type of business rather than only transaction types (retail stores, or e-retail.)

 

Josh countered that a solari that reduced housing values might not be welcomed as a benefit.

 

Bill Miller suggested that we were still too focused on money.  Wanted to know how we get away from that to a focus on fulfilling social needs and communal benefits rather than just a mechanism to make money.

 

[Court.  I've often thought that money is really the lubrication, or like described in an old musical piece, fertilizer, that only works when you spread it around.  Accumulating it does too few any good.]

 

Mary mentioned alternative money systems, bartering and even communities with a locally defined currency.

 

Court mentioned that the M&P model can't succeed without the liquidity and share of risk (among entrepreneurs, investors and even customers) that the solari model provides for.  As long as small business are limited to debt financing, in which the lending entity eschews the risk and there is no pop (benefit from the stock's price to earnings ratio) then bigness and the corruption that entails will prevail in the world.

 

Twyla brought up the Hickory Valley decision to fire Waste Management and do their garbage pick up with a local company and the benefits that came from that decision which created local jobs and added value to the community.

 

Mary brought up the need to collect the data (about where the money goes or flows) and make it visible.  This gives direction to where a solari might best focus attention.  It also requires that we recruit some community wizards. She also said that we should get some input from the rest of the folks in the living room.

 

Terry suggested that there is lots of info all over the place.  She liked the idea of finding a way to build a community, but stated that we have to recognize that trust is an important component.  Would really like to be able to share ideas and issues with a trusted group.  This would be of value, solari or no.

 

Peggy said that one of the instant benefits of her new level of awareness was guidance to cancel her Citibank credit card.  She'd like to see where she fits first and then progress to a point that is "free of the system."  On the other hand, she'd like someone else to do the research, as that is something that she's not good at.  She'd like the results, however, to indicate appropriate actions.

 

Linda says she likes small town stores and notes that they are disappearing (Jim's coffee shop consumed by Starbucks demonstrates the power of the "pop.")  She says we need a way to share our community with each other and with other communities.  Small vs. big.

 

Joe says he is still a little confused, but has a better idea of what a solari is, he's still convinced that economic activity occurs whenever more than 3 people share transactions.  How do we reduce economy with respect to human or other qualities.  He recounted the lonely experience of trying to collect signatures to support change in the community.

 

Mary recounted the story that Caroline Casey told about how the little town of Vallejo eliminated the oil refinery that some large company tried to foist upon them.  There is power in numbers, but it has to be organized.

 

Joe stated that, meanwhile, all of us have a life that we're involved in and stuff like this is pretty much outside it.

 

Marina said that we belong to other groups that are our resources.

 

Joe asked the very practical question, "Where do you find information re where the money is going?"  This seems a very practical problem that we'd have to deal with.

 

Twyla suggested that there were resources to help deal with this.  SRI, etc. [I'm not sure what it was that SRI did.]

 

Mary re-emphasized resource sharing and suggested also that we need to recruit some of the local banks who might have a better handle on this.

 

 

Marina mentioned taxes and how we might get them to support more local rather than global activities.  Further is the problem of how we afford to live here which led to a fairly extensive discourse on housing and even the "curse of the single family dwelling expectation" that we all grow up with.

 

Mary suggested that not everyone needs to own their own business for the solari to work or even for the community to increase its popsicle index.  Not all large companies catch enronitis.

 

Gail said she'd feeling empowered and has a sense of community that has a spiritual component beyond just providing a place to live and work.  She went on to describe the sort of diversity of people and their interests that make a community work.

 

Twyla said that it's time to take action OURSELVES.  We all have to be active , not passive.

 

Pamela said that we all came because we felt a need.  We need some ground rules for virtual team meetings.  We aren't close to being ready for details yet.  Need lots of hours of talking before taking action.  Some won't be comfortable with getting through this talk period, but we'll need some good debates, not arguments.

 

Someone else [Bob Chaplin?] suggested over population reduced home affordability and that overproduction reduced job availability.  He also mentioned a long ago proposal to develop the Palo Alto bay lands which was squelched by the community.  You can pay off your credit card every month and "game them."  You can play on the fringes in this overpopulated world.  Some jobs, like teachers, don't pay enough and force long commutes.  That's another problem that should be solved.

 

Adjournment