Bill Black Does Three Bullet Points

Writing about the Occupy movements a month ago, I mentioned the importance of having three bullet points in a presentation:

Back when I worked for a relatively large defense firm, I had a boss who when we were making up slides for a presentation, would insist that we only have three "bullet points", meaning three thoughts or concepts to discuss, per slide. "What happens if there are four things to talk about?", I'd ask. "Remove one of them", was the response. Needless to say, most of those slides had either two or three bullet points, since almost never made sense to make a slide with only one. I suspect this sameness didn't help hold peoples' interest very much.

Why did my boss insist on this rule? It turns out that someone did some research into how best to hold an audience's attention in these sorts of presentations, and that was a rule they came up with.

The Place Is The Message

This happened on my way to describing how foolish it is to go to something like Occupy Wall Street and expect them to have a handy list of demands that various ticket-punching types can use to check off how compliant they are with the movement. Or something like that. The basic point of demonstrations is to explain to politicians that you're tired of them not getting done whatever it is you need done, and anyone who couldn't see what people meant by occupying the heart of our financial sector these days probably isn't all that motivated to see.

All of which brought a smile to my face as I watched this video of Bill Black discussing what needs to happen in America in the next few years if we're to avoid a depression:




Here are the bullet points:

• Jobs now
• Jail the bankers
• Stop the foreclosures

Three bullet points, all easily written onto a bumper sticker. Sounds like the start of a great political campaign. I just wish there were politicians out there willing to implement it.

At about five minutes into the video, he also accuses the Tea Party people like the Koch Brothers of trying to destroy America, a sentiment with which I agree.

Speaking of political platforms, I keep meaning to mention this, so I'll just blurt it out here. Awhile back a diarist at Corrente came up with what they quickly started calling the Twelve Word Platform (12WP), which is:

• Medicare for All
• End the Wars
• Tax the Rich
• A Jobs Guarantee

The last of those is the first of Black's bullet points, "Jobs now". He has a good idea for how to get it done, too. I'd say that "Jail the bankers" is part of the "Tax the Rich" plank of the 12WP.

Any politician at the state or national level who wants my support will have to not only support this platform, but convince me somehow that he'll actually work for it if elected.

So far, no one has qualified. Maybe that's because it's one bullet point too many...