Major Illinois Legislative Initiative for Community Investment Corporations

["Norman G. Kurland" <thirdway@cesj.org>]

Yesterday February 4th was a historic day in the Just Third Way. 

Illinois Rep. Wyvetter H. Younge of East St. Louis, Illinois introduced HB4626, the Community Investment Corporation Development Act, for passage by the State of Illinois.  Rep. Younge is a member of CESJ's board of advisors, Majority Conference Chairperson  in the Illinois House of Representative, and, in my opinion, America's most visionary and socially committed political leader at any level of government.  A champion for the empowerment of the poorest of the poor and a powerful advocate of the post-scarcity ideas of Buckminster Fuller and Louis Kelso, Rep. Younge was the ideal political leader for championing this cause and laying the foundation for a citizen-owned, advanced technology city of the twenty-first century that she and Bucky Fuller called "Old Man River City."

As you know, following the institutional design principles of Louis Kelso, the CIC was invented by CESJ as a for-profit private sector vehicle for enabling all citizens of a community to share directly in the ownership, governance and profits from planning and development of local and regional land, natural resources and physical infrastructure.  The CIC concept starts with the premise that anything that can be owned by government can and should be owned and controlled by the people.  By linking people to land and technology, and the capital credit needed to create a community of owners with a stake in a dynamically growing private sector, beleaguered cities like East St. Louis (called by some "the Bangladesh of America") can become revitalized and livable new communities built as world-class development models for the Third Millennium.

You can read this one-page "radically centrist" bill by clicking on

 http://www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=4626&GAID=3&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=9165&SessionID=3

>From this summary page you can link up to the full text and to Rep. Younge's bio.

I truly believe that this landmark piece of state legislation will spread among other states and regions of America.  It is one of the key components in our Capital Homestead Act, as described in our new book, Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen.  (See attached flyer and free download from the CESJ web site at www.cesj.org.) 

You might also be interested to know that I will be speaking at the Carbondale, Ill. Civic Center next Thursday on Abraham Lincoln's Birthday, thanks to Bucky's old friend and colleague Bill Perk.  What beautiful timing!  As you might suspect, in the Land of Lincoln my principal themes will be on how the power of money and credit can be used to create growing Capital Homesteading stakes and "Capital Wages" for every American and on how the Community Investment Corporation can be used to end the monopolization of ownership and control over land development.  Thanks to Abe Lincoln and Rep. Younge, I will be coming to Carbondale ready to challenge all defenders of today's unjust and dangerously dehumanizing business-as-usual.

Yes, the liberating spirit of Abe lives on in the Just Third Way.  In this spirit please send out to political leaders of other states copies of the Community Investment Corporation Development Act.  Get your Congressman and Senator to reinforce this grassroots initiative by providing Federal Reserve monetary reforms and ESOP-like tax reforms to encourage the spread of CICs.  Let's begin to display our common commitment to ending monopoly barriers and spreading economic power as widely as possible among the people, lifting up the poor through new and transferred asset stakes without taking property rights away from today's rich.  Let's reverse the growing asset gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%.  Let's send a clear message that political democracy does not and cannot work without economic democracy.  Trying to combine political democracy with economic plutocracy won't work in Iraq and it won't work in America.

In Peace through Justice,
Norm