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NANR: Feb 11-14, 2024 – Denver (Oxford Hotel)

February 19, 2024

The annual NANR – National Association of Nonpartisan Reformers held its annual conference at the Oxford Hotel near Union Station in Denver. Led by NANR Executive Director Andy Moore.

NANR Agenda

Sunday, Feb 11: Pre-Summit Welcome Reception hosted by Joel Searby of New Way Politics

Monday, Feb 12: Plenary; The Primary Solution – Nick Troiano (Unite America) and Building a Durable Democracy – Emily Thielmann (Democracy Funders Network).

Tuesday, Feb 13: Plenary; Working with Conservatives – Brian Cannon (FairVote)/John Pudner (Take Back Our Republic)/Chris Saxman (former VA State Delegate) and Cracking the Code: Getting the Message that Reform is Good for Business – Ron Miller (YPO – Young Presidents Organization)

Tuesday, Feb 13: Denver Press Club 6:30-8:00 pm sponsored by Veterans for All Voters (8% of voters elect 83% of Congress with 90% reelection rate) Nick Turiano/Todd Connor/Lisa Feret (Arvada City Council / Candidate for legislature HD24). Strong support for Top 4 Primary and RCV General Election.

Wednesday, Feb 14: Plenary; Seth Radwell (author of American Schism), Messaging Our Movement – Cynthia Richie Terrell (Representing Women), and Mapping the Health Democracy – Matt Leighninger (National Civic League)

My (Dave Ryan) Favorite People at the NANR Annual Conference who can Benefit the Colorado Forward Party

  • Nick Turiano – Unite America
  • Todd Connor (CEO) & Eric Bronner (COO) – Veterans for All Voters
  • Seth Radwell – Author and a National Speaker to C-level leaders about democracy. Knows Andrew Yang, and offered to help Forward meet business leaders and raise money.
  • Chris Life – United Independents
  • Joel Searby – New Way Politics
  • Walt Roberts – Generate Democracy “The Transpartisan Movement” “200% supportive of the Forward Party”
  • Kyle Herman – ED of Rank the e Vote Ohio and a Forward Party City Council member!
  • Kristina Becvar – ED for Bridge Alliance

My (Dave Ryan) several Favorite Thoughts that come to mind from the 2024 NANR Conference

  • What does the Colorado Forward Party Impact Statement say about what “success” looks like?
  • Message Testing across the political spectrum found that “RCV is a process that ensures winners represent the majority of voters” works well.
  • How does the average citizen experience democracy every day?
  • In 2024, 24 million voters are locked out of taxpayer-funded “closed primaries.

Notable People and Organizations:

  • Nick Turiano (Unite America): “Primaries are the biggest solvable issue to address political division. Eliminating partisan primaries will change how candidates campaign and govern by needing to appeal to all voters.” In 2022, 83% of US Congressional seats (359) were decided in party primaries. In Colorado, only 13% of eligible Colorado voters effectively elected 100% of State House legislators, and 18% effectively elected the state’s eight-member congressional delegation.
  • Eric Bronner and Todd Connor (COO and CEO Co-Founders of Veterans for all Voters) High energy and intense focus on supporting our US Constitution by backing structural election reform. “Our Oath was not just for active duty.”
  • Wanda Mosley (Black Voters Matter) Don’t approach a community without something of substance, otherwise, it is extractive. Don’t speak for a community, bring them to the table. The “cost of entry” is high for BIPOC wrt wealth, education, networks, and daytime meetings.
  • Linda Templin (Executive Director, RCV for Colorado)
  • Principles First for America – anti-CPAC (founded by Heath Mayo a GOP Attorney): “The populism strain infecting the GOP is not solving the country’s problems. Conservatism will return in 2028,” Chris Saxman.
  • United Independents (Chris Life founder) Producer of Independent Nation Conference Austin 2023. INC24 to be held in Denver July 4-6. Chris is looking forward to working with the Forward Party to mobilize Independent voters and candidates.
  • Amy Tobia (More Choice San Diego): developed Follow The Money San Diego – A volunteer group in San Diego that sources information from San Diego Campaign finance to identify how much and through Political Propaganda who funds campaigns.
  • Mormon Women for Ethical Government This is an impressive group of over 7,000 members and 600 women with defined roles. They use “Principled Citizen” surveys to identify people open to transpartisan discussions.
  • Citizen Connect – An initiative of Bridge Alliance and Kristina Becvar. This is a BFD. Citizen Connect is a transpartisan organization seeking to connect hundreds of bridge-building democracy movements across the US. Kristina supports Forward and is willing to help carry messages of Colorado Forward that have broad interest to media outlets.
  • Cynthia Richie Terrell Represent Women Uses a gender parity index (#GenderParityIndex2023) to measure female representation in Congress, Statewide, Legislature, and Cities & Counties. Colorado women represent 50% of 100 legislators and 50% of eight congressional representatives. Individual state Gender Parity Indices.
  • Ron Miller (Young Presidents Organization) The business community needs to be engaged in a healthy democracy. Chaos in their workforce and in their community impacts business. Contracts and the Rule of Law are essential for business. Involving companies in politics is difficult, and is a two-step relationship-building process of addressing emotional concerns and education about what can be done. Every company should want to rate well on a healthy communities index supported by a general theme of Corporate Social Responsibility and Stakeholder Capitalism. When business is attacked by partisan politics (e.g. Disney, Banks/DEI) all businesses should be concerned.
  • Seth Radwell Business leaders have a critical dependency on healthy democracy for growth and profitability as well as being able to work with a polarized workforce where anxiety and anger create barriers to their leadership.
  • Ron Miller (YPO & CEO of Start Engine) Focused on talking to small to mid-size business leaders about democracy and the need for business to look out for all stakeholders. The need to recognize The Authoritarian Playbook is real. When working with business leaders; listen well, engage in tough conversations, focus on the rule of law, election security, and individual freedom is best for business and families. Persuasion depends on recognizing self-interest and the prevention of loss. When business leaders stand together, politicians listen.
  • Richard Eidlin (Business for America) a democracy entrepreneur based in Denver with 35 years of collaborating with large businesses on sustainability, social responsibility, and stakeholder capitalism. Richard is an impressive guy but his time at the February 12th Walt Roberts led IMIP session was too short. A key person and movement to watch. Seth Radwell is on the BFA advisory council.
  • Mediator Foundation – Jacob Borenstein – (funder and founder Mark Gerzon – TedX – Acknowledge your full self and the fullness in others) Principled active people = Citizen. Referenced Nebraska Housing of Homeless as a success story overcoming NIMBY and funding constraints.
  • National Conference on Citizenship
  • The Civic 50, an initiative of Points of Light, recognizes the 50 most community-minded companies in the nation each year as determined by an annual survey administered by True Impact.
  • Participatory Democracy
  • World Business Academy – What kind of Political Economy do we want to live in? How do we respond to real and immediate needs? Childcare, Affordable Housing, Transportation, Economic Zones, Civics Education, Healthcare Access. How do we respond to the things we need to care about? Governance, Corruption, Transparency, A Shared Identity.
  • Generate Democracy – Walt Roberts facilitated Intermovement Impact Project (IMIP) meetings each afternoon to bring democracy movement leaders together to discuss their organizations and what we learned in various breakout sessions. Walt “watched the birth of the Forward Party,” he views “Foward as the only transpartisan political party,” and he is “200% behind our efforts”. Walt is a national-level strategist of democracy reform movements.
  • Reed Howard – Political consultant focused on young elected officials and their support of democracy. Focus on the 15% of GOP moderates who influence the next 30%. Knows Lindsey Williams Drath and is a supporter of Forward.

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Ethanol to Acetaldehyde to Acetic Acid

March 17, 2023

We can thank (or curse) our ancestors for the ability of our bodies to digest alcohol. Over millions of years, our ancestors adapted to the presence of rotted and fermented organic material by preferencing genetic lines that were able to break down Ethanol using an enzyme called ADH, first into a toxic component (Acetaldehyde), and then quickly changing the toxin into Acetate using an enzyme called ALDH for excretion.

Those hangovers you experienced, the throwing up, the nausea, … that means you drank too much, too fast, and your ALDH process could not keep up with your ADH process, and Acetaldehyde built up in your system poisoning you.

Reactions of ethanol metabolism

Pathways of Ethanol Metabolism

Ethanol is a small two carbon alcohol that, due to its small size and alcoholic hydroxyl group (OH) it is polar (due to double negative = O and positive + H) and hydrophilic and becomes soluble in both aqueous and lipid environments. This allows ethanol to freely pass from bodily fluids into cells. Since the portal circulation from the small intestines passes first through the liver, the bulk of ingested alcohol is metabolized in the liver. The process of ethanol oxidation involves at least three distinct enzymatic pathways.

The most significant pathway, responsible for the bulk of ethanol metabolism, is that initiated by alcohol dehydrogenase, ADH. As outlined below, humans express several ADH genes with the class I members being responsible for hepatic ethanol metabolism. The ADH enzymes are NAD+-requiring and they are expressed at high concentrations in hepatocytes. Animal cells (primarily hepatocytes) contain cytosolic ADH which oxidizes ethanol to acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde then enters the mitochondria where it is oxidized to acetate by mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). A cytosolic ALDH exists but is responsible for only a minor amount of acetaldehyde oxidation.

Alcohol and the individual

Ingestion

Absorption through the stomach and intestines

When an alcoholic beverage is swallowed, it is diluted by gastric juices in the stomach. A small portion of the alcohol is diffused into the bloodstream directly from the stomach wall, but most passes through the pyloric junction into the small intestine, where it is very rapidly absorbed. However, up to half the alcohol is degraded in the stomach before it passes into the small intestine. In general, a lower percentage of the alcohol is degraded in a young woman’s stomach than in a young man’s because a young woman’s gastric secretions contain lower levels of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which breaks down alcohol prior to absorption.

ethanol, also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, or alcohol, a member of a class of organic compounds that are given the general name alcohols; its molecular formula is C2H5OH. Ethanol is an important industrial chemical; it is used as a solvent, in the synthesis of other organic chemicals, and as an additive to automotive gasoline (forming a mixture known as a gasohol). Ethanol is also the intoxicating ingredient of many alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine, and distilled spirits.

Ethanol is converted in the body first to acetaldehyde and then to carbon dioxide and water, at the rate of about half a fluid ounce, or 15 ml, per hour; this quantity corresponds to a dietary intake of about 100 calories.

acetaldehyde (CH3CHO), also called ethanal, an aldehyde used as a starting material in the synthesis of 1-butanol (n–butyl alcohol), ethyl acetate, perfumes, flavourings, aniline dyes, plastics, synthetic rubber, and other chemical compounds. It has been manufactured by the hydration of acetylene and by the oxidation of ethanol (ethyl alcohol). Today the dominant process for the manufacture of acetaldehyde is the Wacker process, developed between 1957 and 1959, which catalyzes the oxidation of ethylene to acetaldehyde. The catalyst is a two-component system consisting of palladium chloride, PdCl2, and copper chloride, CuCl2.

Synthesis of acetaldehyde from ethylene. chemical compound

Pure acetaldehyde is a colourless, flammable liquid with a pungent, fruity odour; it boils at 20.8 °C (69.4 °F).

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RPI: Remembrance and Positive Expression

May 11, 2021

Remembrance and Translation: An Action of Remembering and Positive Expression

In 1974 when I was 16, I went to a “Three Dog Night” concert at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York with one of my best friends Mark Printski. There were twenty two thousand people filling up just about every open space on the beautiful lawns surrounding the covered seating area. It was not only the largest group of people I had ever seen assembled, it was my first exposure to a big-time musical group whose three founding members and lead vocalists (Hutton, Wells, and Negron) took on the eponymous name of how to stay warm on a bitterly cold night coined by aboriginal Australians. Mark has passed on; but whenever I think of my first concert, I think of Mark, that iconic group, and my joyful experience that night. It makes me smile and lifts my spirit … every time.

My family and my experiences have allowed me to create so many wonderful memories and while we have had no shortage of difficult experiences from an important perspective, my positive memories far outweigh my negative ones. Even my memories of difficult experiences or memories of not understanding why an event occurred can be used for positive action and expression.

In 1978 while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), I took a course in Physical Chemistry. One of the hardest yet most memorable classes I ever took. The professor was amazing at bringing his real-world experiences and research involving chemistry and physics into the classroom. Every class started with a question for us to consider, like; Why do razor blades get dull? Why would a stainless steel, high strength, corrosion-resistant razor blade be dulled by cutting simple pieces of hair? I loved his questions and especially when he would unwrap the answer in a simple yet elegant fashion.

I remember preparing for a big test. My study notebooks were meticulously organized, my study material reviewed in-depth, I wanted to do so well on this test! When the test day came I felt like I was being asked to answer questions that had familiar words and concepts but was out of my league in terms of putting together solutions. I felt defeated. The following week our professor gave back our test results. The average score was about 20 out of 100 … I received something like an 18. The mood in the class of 100 students, a group not used to underperforming, was overwhelmingly one of defeat. One of the students asked, “Professor, Why Would You Give Such a Test to Us?”. He then displayed a chart of all 100 grades on a curve … and there were five grades clustered in the low to mid-90s and then nothing until much farther down the curve. His simple response pointing to the five was, “I wanted to find them”.

For many years after my professor’s explanation of, “I wanted to find them”, I struggled with his approach. Was he sacrificing learning for 95% of the class just to expedite the process of identifying future Ph.D. students or was there something pedagogical in his approach to learning for me and my entire class that would inform our future actions and expressions? It was not until I was in positions myself where I needed to choose the best candidates to invest time and money in business, education, and not-for-profit endeavors that I reflected back on that class and saw it as a positive to guide my own life. No, I don’t use the same approach he did; but my own life skills have improved through various experiences and study, and I have found more nuanced ways to evaluate talent, skill, and character. In all cases, I seek for myself and others around me to live in a framework supporting the fullest expression of our humanity.

So, I choose to remember my Physical Chemistry class at RPI and, in particular, that test, not as a negative memory but actually a pivotal moment in my lifetime learning. First, there are some seriously smart folks out there. Second, and of lifelong importance to me was the lesson from that class where I translated my professor’s approach to learning that I struggled with into my future actions of seeking out people in life who care enough about others and their community to be engaged and active in making their part of the world better. Perhaps the thought is a little sappy, but I do believe we all have the responsibility to make our part of the world a little better and to encourage everyone’s right to pursue happiness for themselves regardless of their ability. My Physical Chemistry class at RPI is part of my journey to that realization.

This is how I continually seek to translate that classroom remembrance into positive expression. And every time I think about it, … it makes me smile … every time.

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Change is Inevitable, Transformation is Optional

March 23, 2021

It would seem there are multiple ways to contrast Change versus Transformation.

  • Change Subscribes, while Transformation Prescribes
  • Change focuses on Process, while Transformation focuses on Behavior
  • Change is Inevitable, while Transformation Fundamentally changes Why Action is Taken

From early 2019 until I saw him again later in 2019 when I turned 62 I noticed that a friend of mine from RPI had lost weight, was more toned, and darn it … he was even better looking than at the start of the year! I asked him what happened to him. His answer was simple, he had bought a Peloton bike and had bought into the need for vigorous exercise, a better diet and accountability for his health. I thought I had been doing the same for the last 15 years in my Masters Swim program that met six days a week, but because of my “See Food” diet and gradually lower calorie burn I had gained over 25 pounds and I was aging and losing the strength that I had from running and biking when I was in my 30s and 40s.

So I bought a Peloton bike and started my latest personal journey of Transformation, this time focusing on being more accountable for my health through diet and exercise and the Peloton was the primary tool I used for the last 16 months. I went from 210 pounds (~95kg) down to 180 pounds (~82kg) and my average output for December 2019 and my monthly average output went from 140 Watts in December 2019 up to 230 Watts in March 2021. My Power to Weight Ratio has roughly doubled in the past 16 months. As my instructors like to say … “your new body does not subscribe to Amazon Prime … it does not show up in two days”. But, in a little over a year I can definitely say I may still look like I am 63 years old and I did not get better looking like my friend did but my bike performance today is now as good as it was 20 years ago when I was competing ( well … “participating” is probably more appropriate 🙂 in triathlons.

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Ryan Index: So This is The Free Market!

September 13, 2009

Did you ever come across news that just makes you cringe in disgust? Not “fake” news or information someone is spewing to throw someone off or on to a trail that does not reflect reality … but a realistic assessment of events or policies that just are not by any means balanced or fair. It seems there at a never ending series of these types of situations here in Arizona, the USA and around the world. I thought I would write them down as I see them.

Pharmaceutical Charges:
Bloomberg Businessweek (August 28, 2017 issue) reported that Roche Holding AG, the large pharmaceutical company, through their biotech affiliate Genentech reformulated a successful cancer drug called “Rituxan” that was also used off label (not FDA approved) very successfully to treat Multiple Sclerosis. The new drug is called “Ocrevus” and is now just approved by the US FDA.

“How these medications work is exactly the same” according to Annette Langer-Gould a former assistant medical director at Genentech.

Roche could not arbitrarily raise the price of the cancer drug Rituxan … so they created a development plan including FDA approval that would bring Ocrevus to market.

Annual Cost of Rituxan in the US: $8-$10K
Annual Cost of Ocrevus in the US: $65K

In this case “Free Market” means taking advantage of patent protections and the unilateral pricing power afforded by the FDA imprimatur. “Free Market” in this case also means that US Tax payers and Insurance premiums are jacked by 8X over another effective treatment.

Repeat and Rinse 100s of times across our pharmaceutical industry and no wonder we pay 50% more than the next major industrialized country for healthcare.

 

“Legal” Tax Avoidance by the owners of Chanel and the U.K. government

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-10/chanel-owners-get-5-billion-in-dividends-as-sales-of-luxury-goods-boom

In 2022, amid severe budget shortfalls and workers seeking raises after two+ years of austerity due to COVID lockdowns, we learned about the owners of Chanel, Gerard and Alain Wertheimer, giving themselves a 5 Billion dollar dividend sent to their Family Office, Mousse Partners in the Cayman Islands. It turns out that apparently, no one knew that the British do not tax dividends sent to offshore owners, and no one knew that the Cayman Islands do not tax dividends. It seems like a match made in heaven to get large sums of money from the UK without paying taxes on the profits. Since the Cayman Islands is a British territory, it seems odd that policymakers would have set up this mechanism to benefit their richest citizens. I’m being sarcastic; it is not odd; it is hypocrisy of the highest degree, and if it were not “legal,” it would be criminal.

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