Huffington Post rethinks capitalism

To be more accurate, Huffington Post published a blog about rethinking capitalism. The essence of it is harnessing the power of profit for social benefit. it refers to the concept of Creating Shared Value from Harvard's Michael Porter.

They aren't alone in rethinking capitalism but the problem for grassroots activists is all too often one of access to mainstream media access. I found a solution when McKinsey created their Long Term Capitalism initiative and part of my contribution was  Re-imagining Capitalism - The New 'Bottom Line'

Unlike most other entries this was the perspective of a practtioner and it included an extract from our major work describing a 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine.which had been published in 2007 in an Ukrainian web journal 

As it happens, a 'Marshall Plan' for Ukraine is the subject of another Huffington Post article describing a plan which exists only in philosophy.

A simple Google search might have revealed the existing plan but there may well be reason. It's in what this plan says about trickle down economics which would clearly be at odds with any oligarch sponsored proposal.

'This is a long-term permanently sustainable program, the basis for "people-centered" economic development. Core focus is always on people and their needs, with neediest people having first priority – as contrasted with the eternal chase for financial profit and numbers where people, social benefit, and human well-being are often and routinely overlooked or ignored altogether. This is in keeping with the fundamental objectives of Marshall Plan: policy aimed at hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. This is a bottom-up approach, starting with Ukraine's poorest and most desperate citizens, rather than a "top-down" approach that might not ever benefit them. They cannot wait, particularly children. Impedance by anyone or any group of people constitutes precisely what the original Marshall Plan was dedicated to opposing. Those who suffer most, and those in greatest need, must be helped first -- not secondarily, along the way or by the way. '

In 2012, I had the opportunity to describe this work to Arrianna Huffington directly, when Skoll World Forum hosted a discussion on Cultivating Empathy/

In 2007 when Arianna was publishing her book Fearless, Terry Hallman wrote of the central focus of our 'Marshall Plan'  it would be another 4 years before revelations of conditions in Torez, appeared in the Sunday Times.  As Martin Luther King Jr. once said "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"

 "After six translations and seeming endless discussion over a three month period, the final paper was delivered to Kharkiv National University on February 20, 2007, for immediate release to government officials as they saw fit.  Two weeks later, Kyiv announced agreement on the central point and metric of the paper: modern rehabilitation treatment facilities for Ukraine’s most vulnerable people.  Those were, and are, children diagnosed as psychoneurologically disabled and hidden away in isolated, remote rural locations to live or die.  Death was common and an accepted norm due to neglect arising from almost incomprehensible medical ignorance, corruption and misappropriation of millions of dollars in funding channels that were supposed to assist the children, and entrenched protection of that money stream for benefit of what some judges characterized to me as Ukrainian mafia.  The point was not the welfare of the kids as much as siphoning off millions of dollars budgeted to protect and assist them.  

 

 Opening up the reality of that situation resulted in threats against me and anyone else interfering with that system.  I came under direct assault by tax police, government’s primary enforcement arm if anyone steps out of line.  This is not a research activity where many, if any, other people dared to participate.  UNICEF was willfully blind to the matter because it was just too dangerous to bother to intercede  Powerful interests remained entrenched with enforcers to make it dangerous.  Jurists were correct, in my view.  It was more a mafia operation than anything else, aimed at misappropriation and laundering of large money.  That was perfectly congruent with how Ukraine operated before the revolution.  USAID wanted nothing to do with it, nor would they fund any organizations or activists who might try.  Some things could be done and some things could not be done.  Helping these children was something that could not be done.  So, I exposed it and made it the central focus and metric of Ukraine’s microeconomic development blueprint.  In that context, it was far more difficult to ignore, dismiss, or argue about.  For about six months, I really did not expect to survive.  Nevertheless, Ukraine’s government finally conceded the point and announced the opening of more than four hundred new treatment centers for children who were theretofore invisible under tight and deadly enforcement.”

He died in 2011 allowing me to pass on to Maidan, what he'd called on USAID to support,