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As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes

Monday, January 26th, 2015

Hedge fund managers are preparing getaways by buying airstrips and farms in remote areas, former hedge fund partner tells Davos during session on inequality

With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.

Johnson, who heads the Institute of New Economic Thinking and was previously managing director at Soros, said societies can tolerate income inequality if the income floor is high enough. But with an existing system encouraging chief executives to take decisions solely on their profitability, even in the richest countries inequality is increasing.

Johnson added: “People need to know there are possibilities for their children – that they will have the same opportunity as anyone else. There is a wicked feedback loop. Politicians who get more money tend to use it to get more even money.”

Global warming and social media are among the trends the 600 super-smart World Economic Forum staffers told its members to watch out for long before they became ubiquitous. This year, income inequality is fast moving up the Davos agenda – a sure sign of it is poised to burst into the public consciousness.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and a Davos star attraction after giving the closing address in 2014, said he had spent a lot of time learning from the leaders behind recent social unrest in Ferguson. He believes that will prove “a catalytic event” which has already changed the conversation in the US, bringing a message from those who previously “didn’t matter”.

So what is the solution to having the new voices being sufficiently recognised to actually change the status quo into one where those with power realise they do matter?

Clarke said: “Solutions are there. What’s been lacking is political will. Politicians do not respond to those who don’t have a voice In the end this is all about redistributing income and power.”

She added: “Seventy five percent of people in developing countries live in places that are less equal than they were in 1990.”

The panellists were scathing about politicians, Wallis describing them as people who held up wet fingers “to see which way the money is blowing in from.”

Author, philosopher and former academic Rebecca Newberger-Goldstein saw the glass half full, drawing on history to prove society does eventually change for the better. She said Martin Luther King was correct in his view that the arch of history might be long, but it bends towards justice.

In ancient Greece, she noted, even the greatest moralists like Plato and Aristotle never criticised slavery. Newberger-Goldstein said: “We’ve come a long way as a species. The truth is now dawning that everybody matters because the concept of mattering is at the core of every human being.” Knowing you matter, she added, is often as simple as having others “acknowledge the pathos and reality of your stories. To listen.”

Mexican micro-lending entrepreneur Carlos Danel expanded on the theme. His business, Gentera, has thrived by working out that “those excluded are not the problem but realising there’s an opportunity to serve them.”

He added: “Technology provides advantages that can lower costs and enable us to provide products and services that matter to the people who don’t seem to matter to society. And that’s beyond financial services – into education and elsewhere.”

Which, Danel believes, is why business was created in the first place – to serve. A message that seemed to get lost somewhere in the worship of profit.

– To the original: ➡

– Research thanks to Kierin M.

Posted in Climate Change, Conflict, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Human Rights, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Exposed: NSA program for hacking any cell phone network, no matter where it is

Monday, December 8th, 2014

– Worth noting how high the percentage is for New Zealand in the chart which you can find in the original article.

– dennis

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The National Security Agency has spied on hundreds of companies and groups around the world, including in countries allied with the US government, as part of an effort designed to allow agents to hack into any cellular network, no matter where it’s located, according to a report published Thursday.

Armed with technical details of a specific provider’s current or planned networks, agents secretly attempt to identify or introduce flaws that will make it possible for communications to be covertly tapped, according to an article published by The Intercept. Security experts warned that programs that introduce security flaws or suppress fixes for existing vulnerabilities could cause widespread harm, since the bugs can also be exploited by criminal hackers or governments of nations around the world.

“Even if you love the NSA and you say you have nothing to hide, you should be against a policy that introduces security vulnerabilities,” Karsten Nohl, a cryptographer and smartphone security expert, told The Intercept. “Because once NSA introduces a weakness, a vulnerability, it’s not only the NSA that can exploit it.”

t’s not the first time the US agency has been reported to introduce backdoors into widely used technologies. Last year documents provided by former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden—the same source for documents supporting Thursday’s story by The Intercept—showed that the NSA worked with standards bodies to adopt encryption technologies with known vulnerabilities in them. Two weeks later, the RSA division of EMC warned customers to stop using the default configuration of its BSAFE BSAFE toolkit and Data Protection Manager because it contained code reported to contain an NSA-engineered vulnerability.

The program reported Thursday, codenamed AURORAGOLD, has monitored messages sent and received by more than 1,200 email accounts associated with large cell phone operators around the world. One surveillance target is the GSM Association (GSMA), a UK-based group that works with Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Cisco Systems, and many other companies to ensure their hardware and software related to cellular technology is compatible. At the same time the NSA has been monitoring the group, other arms of the US government has funded GSMA programs designed to boost privacy on mobile networks. According to The Intercept:

The NSA focuses on intercepting obscure but important technical documents circulated among the GSMA’s members known as “IR.21s.”

Most cellphone network operators share IR.21 documents among each other as part of agreements that allow their customers to connect to foreign networks when they are “roaming” overseas on a vacation or a business trip. An IR.21, according to the NSA documents, contains information “necessary for targeting and exploitation.”

The details in the IR.21s serve as a “warning mechanism” that flag new technology used by network operators, the NSA’s documents state. This allows the agency to identify security vulnerabilities in the latest communication systems that can be exploited, and helps efforts to introduce new vulnerabilities “where they do not yet exist.”

The IR.21s also contain details about the encryption used by cellphone companies to protect the privacy of their customers’ communications as they are transmitted across networks. These details are highly sought after by the NSA, as they can aid its efforts to crack the encryption and eavesdrop on conversations.

Last year, The Washington Post reported that the NSA had already managed to break the most commonly used cellphone encryption algorithm in the world, known as A5/1. But the information collected under AURORAGOLD allows the agency to focus on circumventing newer and stronger versions of A5 cellphone encryption, such as A5/3.

The documents note that the agency intercepts information from cellphone operators about “the type of A5 cipher algorithm version” they use, and monitors the development of new algorithms in order to find ways to bypass the encryption.

NSA documents show that AURORAGOLD focuses on collecting details about virtually all technical standards used by cell phone operators.

– to the original article: ➡

Posted in Corruption, CrashBlogging, CyberChaos, Human Rights, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Salt-Water Fish Extinction Seen By 2048

Wednesday, November 12th, 2014

– Nothing new here. Just the same slowly approaching train wreck which is being widely ignored – as if that will make it all go away.

– I really wonder about people in general. Not just the obsessively greedy or power-minded but just the average Joe.

– The scientists have been sounding the ‘end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it’ klaxons for some time now and everyone’s just changing the channel to sort it out for themselves.

– dennis

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The apocalypse has a new date: 2048.

That’s when the world’s oceans will be empty of fish, predicts an international team of ecologists and economists. The cause: the disappearance of species due to overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, and climate change.

The study by Boris Worm, PhD, of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, — with colleagues in the U.K., U.S., Sweden, and Panama — was an effort to understand what this loss of ocean species might mean to the world.

The researchers analyzed several different kinds of data. Even to these ecology-minded scientists, the results were an unpleasant surprise.

“I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are — beyond anything we suspected,” Worm says in a news release.

“This isn’t predicted to happen. This is happening now,” study researcher Nicola Beaumont, PhD, of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, U.K., says in a news release.

“If biodiversity continues to decline, the marine environment will not be able to sustain our way of life. Indeed, it may not be able to sustain our lives at all,” Beaumont adds.

Already, 29% of edible fish and seafood species have declined by 90% — a drop that means the collapse of these fisheries.

But the issue isn’t just having seafood on our plates. Ocean species filter toxins from the water. They protect shorelines. And they reduce the risks of algae blooms such as the red tide.

“A large and increasing proportion of our population lives close to the coast; thus the loss of services such as flood control and waste detoxification can have disastrous consequences,” Worm and colleagues say.

The researchers analyzed data from 32 experiments on different marine environments.

They then analyzed the 1,000-year history of 12 coastal regions around the world, including San Francisco and Chesapeake bays in the U.S., and the Adriatic, Baltic, and North seas in Europe.

Next, they analyzed fishery data from 64 large marine ecosystems.

And finally, they looked at the recovery of 48 protected ocean areas.

Their bottom line: Everything that lives in the ocean is important. The diversity of ocean life is the key to its survival. The areas of the ocean with the most different kinds of life are the healthiest.

But the loss of species isn’t gradual. It’s happening fast — and getting faster, the researchers say.

Worm and colleagues call for sustainable fisheries management, pollution control, habitat maintenance, and the creation of more ocean reserves.

This, they say, isn’t a cost; it’s an investment that will pay off in lower insurance costs, a sustainable fish industry, fewer natural disasters, human health, and more.

“It’s not too late. We can turn this around,” Worm says. “But less than 1% of the global ocean is effectively protected right now.”

Worm and colleagues report their findings in the Nov. 3 issue of Science.

– To the original article: ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Extinctions, Food Shortages, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Dead Zones, Science, Social Breakdown | No Comments »

Revolution or a Police State?

Tuesday, November 4th, 2014

The future is now

– I’ve been saying for some time that the way things are going, the U.S. is going to end up either having a revolution or coalescing into a police state.

– The major factor that contributes to my prognosis is the widening wealth gap.

– Mr. Joe Six-Pack in the U.S. can still buy his six-pack and has a car and a big screen T.V. but he probably hasn’t noticed yet that he’s actually getting poorer year by year.

– The nation’s wealth, thanks to Neo-Liberalism, is inexorably moving up towards the 1%’ers.

– Here are two stories from other writers who have independently come to the same conclusion.

– I’m sure that there are many more writers and pundits who see these futures; some of them published and others aware – but silent.

– They know, as George Orwell once famously said:

“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

– It also will become, in this writer’s opinion, a dangerous act that the privileged among us will want to suppress violently as the pressure rises.

– dennis

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STORY ONE:

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us, Plutocrats

From Nick Hanauer
To: My Fellow Zillionaires

You probably don’t know me, but like you I am one of those .01%ers, a proud and unapologetic capitalist. I have founded, co-founded and funded more than 30 companies across a range of industries—from itsy-bitsy ones like the night club I started in my 20s to giant ones like Amazon.com, for which I was the first nonfamily investor. Then I founded aQuantive, an Internet advertising company that was sold to Microsoft in 2007 for $6.4 billion. In cash. My friends and I own a bank. I tell you all this to demonstrate that in many ways I’m no different from you. Like you, I have a broad perspective on business and capitalism. And also like you, I have been rewarded obscenely for my success, with a life that the other 99.99 percent of Americans can’t even imagine. Multiple homes, my own plane, etc., etc. You know what I’m talking about. In 1992, I was selling pillows made by my family’s business, Pacific Coast Feather Co., to retail stores across the country, and the Internet was a clunky novelty to which one hooked up with a loud squawk at 300 baud. But I saw pretty quickly, even back then, that many of my customers, the big department store chains, were already doomed. I knew that as soon as the Internet became fast and trustworthy enough—and that time wasn’t far off—people were going to shop online like crazy. Goodbye, Caldor. And Filene’s. And Borders. And on and on.

Realizing that, seeing over the horizon a little faster than the next guy, was the strategic part of my success. The lucky part was that I had two friends, both immensely talented, who also saw a lot of potential in the web. One was a guy you’ve probably never heard of named Jeff Tauber, and the other was a fellow named Jeff Bezos. I was so excited by the potential of the web that I told both Jeffs that I wanted to invest in whatever they launched, big time. It just happened that the second Jeff—Bezos—called me back first to take up my investment offer. So I helped underwrite his tiny start-up bookseller. The other Jeff started a web department store called Cybershop, but at a time when trust in Internet sales was still low, it was too early for his high-end online idea; people just weren’t yet ready to buy expensive goods without personally checking them out (unlike a basic commodity like books, which don’t vary in quality—Bezos’ great insight). Cybershop didn’t make it, just another dot-com bust. Amazon did somewhat better. Now I own a very large yacht.

But let’s speak frankly to each other. I’m not the smartest guy you’ve ever met, or the hardest-working. I was a mediocre student. I’m not technical at all—I can’t write a word of code. What sets me apart, I think, is a tolerance for risk and an intuition about what will happen in the future. Seeing where things are headed is the essence of entrepreneurship. And what do I see in our future now?

I see pitchforks.

At the same time that people like you and me are thriving beyond the dreams of any plutocrats in history, the rest of the country—the 99.99 percent—is lagging far behind. The divide between the haves and have-nots is getting worse really, really fast. In 1980, the top 1 percent controlled about 8 percent of U.S. national income. The bottom 50 percent shared about 18 percent. Today the top 1 percent share about 20 percent; the bottom 50 percent, just 12 percent.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.” We think we’re immune to the same forces that started the Arab Spring—or the French and Russian revolutions, for that matter. I know you fellow .01%ers tend to dismiss this kind of argument; I’ve had many of you tell me to my face I’m completely bonkers. And yes, I know there are many of you who are convinced that because you saw a poor kid with an iPhone that one time, inequality is a fiction.

Here’s what I say to you: You’re living in a dream world. What everyone wants to believe is that when things reach a tipping point and go from being merely crappy for the masses to dangerous and socially destabilizing, that we’re somehow going to know about that shift ahead of time. Any student of history knows that’s not the way it happens. Revolutions, like bankruptcies, come gradually, and then suddenly. One day, somebody sets himself on fire, then thousands of people are in the streets, and before you know it, the country is burning. And then there’s no time for us to get to the airport and jump on our Gulfstream Vs and fly to New Zealand. That’s the way it always happens. If inequality keeps rising as it has been, eventually it will happen. We will not be able to predict when, and it will be terrible—for everybody. But especially for us

***

The most ironic thing about rising inequality is how completely unnecessary and self-defeating it is. If we do something about it, if we adjust our policies in the way that, say, Franklin D. Roosevelt did during the Great Depression—so that we help the 99 percent and preempt the revolutionaries and crazies, the ones with the pitchforks—that will be the best thing possible for us rich folks, too. It’s not just that we’ll escape with our lives; it’s that we’ll most certainly get even richer.

Nick Hanauer is a Seattle-based entrepreneur.

– to the original: ➡

STORY TWO:

– The second story is quite long and it is written in three parts. You can catch the drift of what it is about by reading the titles of the three sections, just below.

– Clicking on any of the three titles will take you to that section of the overall article. And, these three sections are, themselves, excerpts from the book that David DeGraw is writing called, The Economics of Revolution.

1. Peak Inequality: The .o1% And The Impoverishment Of Society

2. Conditioned Consciousness: How The .01% Gets Away With Trillions

3. The Coming Revolution: Evolutionary Leap or Descent Into Chaos and Violence

– research thanks to Kathy G.

Posted in Financial melt-down, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | 2 Comments »

U.S. censors what its military personel can read

Friday, August 22nd, 2014

– Ominous.

– I’ve thought for sometime now that the U.S. military would eventually try to block access by soldiers to social commentary and criticism so that they would remain motivated if they are asked to go out and suppress social unrest in the U.S.

– To be fair, in this article they are suppressing a different kind of information. But the principle is the same and what we see here will be the thin edge of the wedge making its entry.

– The kind of unrest we’re talking about here is what will surface in the U.S. eventually, if the gap between the rich and poor keeps growing, if the weakening of the U.S. dollar keeps undermining the very fabric of people’s entire financial lives (even as the wealthy walk away with immense profits) and if the growing threats of climate change are not addressed and hundreds of thousands of people along the U.S. coastlines begin to find their lives, their futures and their properties vanishing beneath the rising waters.

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The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.

According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees—including those with top-secret security clearance—and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information.

A directive issued to military staff at one location last week, obtained by The Intercept, threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face “long term security issues.” It suggests that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a “potential new leaker” of secret documents.

The directive states:

We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled “The Intercept” for it may very well contain classified material.

As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was “illegal and a violation of national security” to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”

– Click the arrow for more of this story… ➡

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– Here’s another news article, below, that reveals that the Pentagon is preparing for mass civil insurrection in the U.S. The combination of the information these two articles is interesting in it implications.

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Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown

Social science is being militarised to develop ‘operational tools’ to target peaceful activists and protest movements

A US Department of Defense (DoD) programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various agencies. The multi-million dollar program is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

Among the projects awarded for the period 2014-2017 is a Cornell University-led study managed by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research which aims to develop an empirical model “of the dynamics of social movement mobilisation and contagions.” The project will determine “the critical mass (tipping point)” of social contagians by studying their “digital traces” in the cases of “the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the 2011 Russian Duma elections, the 2012 Nigerian fuel subsidy crisis and the 2013 Gazi park protests in Turkey.”

Twitter posts and conversations will be examined “to identify individuals mobilised in a social contagion and when they become mobilised.”

Another project awarded this year to the University of Washington “seeks to uncover the conditions under which political movements aimed at large-scale political and economic change originate,” along with their “characteristics and consequences.” The project, managed by the US Army Research Office, focuses on “large-scale movements involving more than 1,000 participants in enduring activity,” and will cover 58 countries in total.

– Click the arrow for more of this story… ➡

Posted in Conflict, Corruption, CounterCurrents, Culture - How not to do it, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | No Comments »

The free market is an impossible utopia

Thursday, July 24th, 2014

– This is one of the best things I’ve read in some time.

– Will it be generally appealing? I don’t think so.

– Most of us just want simple understandings and good guys and bad guys. We only need look around to see that sound bites predominate in the discussions among the average man.

– Among these, I would include the “Free Marketeers“. They want a world made of good guys and bad guys and a simple idealistic world in which entrepreneurs are absolutely free, where market economics solves all problems, and where all forms of government control simply withers away before the market’s profound self-balancing wisdom.

– This article says it cannot be so.

– dennis

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Article by Henry Farrell of The Washington Post about a book, The Power of Market FUNDAMENTALISM, by Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers:

Fred Block (research professor of sociology at University of California at Davis) and Margaret Somers (professor of sociology and history at the University of Michigan) have a new book, “The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi’s Critique” (Harvard University Press, 2014). The book argues that the ideas of Karl Polanyi, the author of “The Great Transformation,” a classic of 20th century political economy, are crucial if you want to understand the recession and its aftermath. I asked the authors a series of questions.

HF – Your book argues for the continued relevance of Karl Polanyi’s work, especially “The Great Transformation.” What are the ideas at the core of Polanyi’s thought?

FB & MS – Polanyi’s core thesis is that there is no such thing as a free market; there never has been, nor can there ever be. Indeed he calls the very idea of an economy independent of government and political institutions a “stark utopia”—utopian because it is unrealizable, and the effort to bring it into being is doomed to fail and will inevitably produce dystopian consequences. While markets are necessary for any functioning economy, Polanyi argues that the attempt to create a market society is fundamentally threatening to human society and the common good. In the first instance the market is simply one of many different social institutions; the second represents the effort to subject not just real commodities (computers and widgets) to market principles but virtually all of what makes social life possible, including clean air and water, education, health care, personal, legal, and social security, and the right to earn a livelihood. When these public goods and social necessities (what Polanyi calls “fictitious commodities”) are treated as if they are commodities produced for sale on the market, rather than protected rights, our social world is endangered and major crises will ensue.

Free market doctrine aims to liberate the economy from government “interference”, but Polanyi challenges the very idea that markets and governments are separate and autonomous entities. Government action is not some kind of “interference” in the autonomous sphere of economic activity; there simply is no economy without government rules and institutions. It is not just that society depends on roads, schools, a justice system, and other public goods that only government can provide. It is thatall of the key inputs into the economy—land, labor, and money—are only created and sustained through continuous government action. The employment system, the arrangements for buying and selling real estate, and the supplies of money and credit are organized and maintained through the exercise of government’s rules, regulations, and powers.

By claiming it is free-market advocates who are the true utopians, Polanyi helps explain the free market’s otherwise puzzlingly tenacious appeal: It embodies a perfectionist ideal of a world without “coercive” constraints on economic activities while it fiercely represses the fact that power and coercion are the unacknowledged features of all market participation.

– More… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Social Breakdown, Wealth Disparity | No Comments »

Let This Earth Day Be The Last

Thursday, May 22nd, 2014

– Strong words, these. But my own frustrations with all that is not happening run deep as well. When you can see that the car is being driven in the wrong direction and you can see that things are going to work out badly, how long should you persist in politely asking the driver to turn?

Until you are financially at risk? Until your health is at risk? Until your life and the lives of your children are at risk?

– There have to be limits.

-dennis

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“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”
—Frederick Douglass, 1857

Fuck Earth Day.

No, really. Fuck Earth Day. Not the first one, forty-four years ago, the one of sepia-hued nostalgia, but everything the day has since come to be: the darkest, cruelest, most brutally self-satirizing spectacle of the year.

Fuck it. Let it end here.

End the dishonesty, the deception. Stop lying to yourselves, and to your children. Stop pretending that the crisis can be “solved,” that the planet can be “saved,” that business more-or-less as usual—what progressives and environmentalists have been doing for forty-odd years and more—is morally or intellectually tenable. Let go of the pretense that “environmentalism” as we know it—virtuous green consumerism, affluent low-carbon localism, head-in-the-sand conservationism, feel-good greenwashed capitalism—comes anywhere near the radical response our situation requires.

So, yeah, I’ve had it with Earth Day—and the culture of progressive green denial it represents.

* * *

But why Frederick Douglass? Why bring him into this? And who am I to invoke him—a man who was born a slave and who freed himself from slavery, who knew something about struggle, whose words were among the most radical ever spoken on American soil? Who the hell am I? I’ve never suffered racial or any other kind of oppression. I’ve never had to fight for any fundamental rights. I’m not even a radical, really. (Nor am I an “environmentalist”—and never have been.) All I want is a livable world, and the possibility of social justice. So who am I to quote Frederick Douglass?

Let me tell you who I am: I’m a human being. I’m the father of two young children, a 14-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter, who face a deeply uncertain future on this planet. I’m a husband, a son, a brother—and a citizen. And, yes, I’m a journalist, and I’m an activist. And like more and more of us who are fighting for climate justice, I am engaged in a struggle—a struggle—for the fate of humanity and of life on Earth. Not a polite debate around the dinner table, or in a classroom, or an editorial meeting—or an Earth Day picnic. I’m talking about a struggle. A struggle for justice on a global scale. A struggle for human dignity and human rights for my fellow human beings, beginning with the poorest and most vulnerable, far and near. A struggle for my own children’s future—but not only my children, all of our children, everywhere. A life-and-death struggle for the survival of all that I love. Because that is what the climate fight and the fight for climate justice is. That’s what it is.

Because, I’m sorry, this is not a test. This is really happening. The Arctic and the glaciers are melting. The great forests are dying and burning. The oceans are rising and acidifying. The storms, the floods—the droughts and heat waves—are intensifying. The breadbaskets are parched and drying. And all of it faster and sooner than scientists predicted. The window in which to act is closing before our eyes.

Any discussion of the situation must begin by acknowledging the science and the sheer lateness of the hour—that the chance for any smooth, gradual transition has passed, that without radical change the kind of livable and just future we all want is simply inconceivable. The international community has, of course, committed to keeping the global temperature from rising more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above the preindustrial average—the level, we’re told, at which “catastrophic” warming can still be avoided (we’ve already raised it almost one degree, with still more “baked in” within coming decades). But there’s good reason to believe that a rise of two degrees will lead to catastrophic consequences. And of course, what’s “catastrophic” depends on where you live, and how poor you are, and more often than not the color of your skin. If you’re one of the billions of people who live in the poorest and most vulnerable places—from Bangladesh to Louisiana—even 1 degree can mean catastrophe.

But the world’s climate scientists and leading energy experts are telling us that unless the major economies drastically and immediately change course—leaving all but a small fraction of fossil fuel reserves in the ground over the next four decades—we are headed for a temperature rise of four or five or even six degrees C within this century. The World Bank haswarned that four degrees “must be avoided.” But we’re not avoiding it. Global emissions are still rising each year. We’re plunging headlong toward the worst-case scenarios—critical global food and water shortages, rapid sea-level rise, social upheaval—and beyond.

The question is not whether we’re going to “stop” global warming, or “solve” the climate crisis; it is whether humanity will act quickly and decisively enough now to save civilization itself—in any form worth saving. Whether any kind of stable, humane and just future—any kind of just society—is still possible.

We know that if the governments of the world actually wanted to address this situation in a serious way, they could. Indeed, a select few, such as Germany, have begun to do so. It can be done—and at relatively low cost. And yet the fossil-fuel industry, and those who do its bidding, have been engaged in a successful decades-long effort to sow confusion, doubt and opposition—and to obstruct any serious policies that might slow the warming, or their profits, and buy us time.

As I’ve said elsewhere, let’s be clear about what this means: at this late date, given what we know and have known for decades, to willfully obstruct any serious response to global warming is to knowingly allow entire countries and cultures to disappear. It is to rob the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet of their land, their homes, their livelihoods, even their lives and their children’s lives—and their children’s children’s lives. For money. For political power.

These are crimes. They are crimes against the Earth, and they are crimes against humanity.

What, are you shocked? The same industry, the same people committing these crimes—while we subsidize them for their trouble—have been getting away with murder along the fence lines and front lines for generations.

What is the proper response to this? How should I respond?

Remain calm, we’re told. No “scare tactics” or “hysterics,” please. Cooler heads will prevail. Enjoy the Earth Day festivities.

Fuck that.

The cooler heads have not prevailed. It’s been a quarter-century since the alarm was sounded. The cooler heads have failed.

You want sweet, cool-headed reason?

How about this? Masses of people—most of them young, a generation with little or nothing to lose—physically, nonviolently disrupting the fossil-fuel industry and the institutions that support it and abet it. Getting in the way of business as usual. Forcing the issue. Finally acting as though we accept what the science is telling us.

Um, isn’t that a bit extreme? you ask.

Really? You want extreme? Business as usual is extreme. Just ask a climate scientist. The building is burning. The innocents—the poor, the oppressed, the children, your own children—are inside. And the American petro state is spraying fuel, not water, on the flames. That’s more than extreme. It’s homicidal. It’s psychopathic. It’s fucking insane.

* * *

Coming to grips with the climate crisis is hard. A friend of mine says it’s like walking around with a knife in your chest. I couldn’t agree more.

So I ask again, in the face of this situation, how does one respond? Many of us, rather than retreat into various forms of denial and fatalism, have reached the conclusion that somethingmore than “environmentalism” is called for, and that a new kind of movement is the only option. That the only thing, at this late hour, offering any chance of averting an unthinkable future—and of getting through the crisis that’s already upon us—is the kind of radical social and political movement that has altered the course of history in the past. A movement far less like contemporary environmentalism and far more like the radical human rights, social justice and liberation struggles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Does that sound hopelessly naïve to you? Trust me, I get it. I know. I know how it sounds.

And yet here I am. Because I also know that abolishing slavery sounded hopeless and naïve in 1857, when Frederick Douglass spoke of struggle.

What I’m talking about is not a fight to “solve the climate crisis.” That’s not possible anymore. But neither is it simply a fight for human survival—because there are oppressive and dystopian forms of survival, not to mention narcissistic ones, that aren’t worth fighting for.

What I’m talking about is both a fight for survival and a fight for justice—for even the possibility of justice. It’s a fight that transcends environmentalism. It requires something of us beyond the usual politics and proposals, the usual pieties. It requires the kind of commitment you find in radical movements—the kind of struggles, from abolition to women’s, labor and civil rights, that have made possible what was previously unimaginable.

Because our global crisis—not merely environmental but moral and spiritual—is fundamental: it strikes to the root of who we are. It’s a radical situation, requiring a radical response. Not merely radical in the sense of ideology, but a kind of radical necessity. It requires us to find out who we really are—and, nonviolently, in the steps of Gandhi and King and many others, to act. In some cases, to lay everything—everything—on the line.

And it requires us to be honest, with one another and with ourselves, about the situation we face. We’ll never have a movement radical enough, or humane enough, until we are.

That is, until Earth Day is buried—and a day of reckoning begins.

– To the original article: ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Mental Irrationality, Politics - The Wrong Way, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

LANDMARK STUDY SAYS AMERICA IS NO LONGER A DEMOCRACY

Sunday, April 20th, 2014

“What world are the five conservative Supreme Court justices living in?” Sanders said after the McCutcheon ruling. “To equate the ability of billionaires to buy elections with ‘freedom of speech’ is totally absurd. The Supreme Court is paving the way toward an oligarchic form of society in which a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson will control our political process.”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders commenting after the U.S. Supreme Court’s McCutcheon v. FEC ruling

(NATIONAL) — What Senator Bernie Sanders evidently did not know when he spoke those words earlier this month is that America wasn’t just headed toward an oligarchy – a form of government in which a powerful, dominant class exercises control over the general population – but indeed had stopped being a democracy years ago and has been a full blown oligarchy for a considerable period of time.

It turns out that former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich was also wrong when in late March he wrote, “America is not yet an oligarchy,” but added that’s where a handful of billionaires are taking us.

Both men were flat wrong according to the results of a new study set to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics.

The authors of what appears to be a landmark and historically important study are Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. Their 42-page report is called “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.”

The study, done at Princeton and Northwestern Universities concludes that the U.S. government no longer represents the interests of the majority of its citizens – meaning average working class men and women – but those of the rich and powerful, of which the 1% are at the top of the heap in the power and control departments.

AVERAGE AMERICANS HAVE LOST CONTROL OF THEIR COUNTRY

In short: the wealthy few and powerful individuals in consort with big business interests now develop, move, manage and control public policy in this country to their wishes and designs while the average American has little power over anything in government anymore.

By extension that infers the average American no longer has control over his or her own life to a large degree or can even control in which direction the country is headed now or will be headed in the future because the act of voting – an act enshrined as the one thing that has always secured democracy in America – no longer works.

According to this study America, to a large degree, now has the type of government that has traditionally ruled Mexico or Russia.

The DailyKos reports the anecdotal evidence of that has long been there from, “Modest gun control proposals that saw 90% public support, to unemployment compensation, to infrastructure spending, to women’s rights; where a plurality exists even across party lines, the median public interest seems to hold no sway in policy making.”

The same report notes, “We are all losers here. Despite the trappings and tradition of a representative democracy, the truth is those are just theatrics. At this point, even the echos of democracy are becoming faint. Spectacles like GOP presidential nominees making the pilgrimage to kiss the ring of King Adelson now happen with full knowledge, the vampires are out of the shadows and discover it’s fun in the sun. While satirists rightly lampoon it, media practically celebrates it and the Supreme Court in practice has endorsed it as a victory for the 1st Amendment.”

Some Americans, if not many saw the control shift away from democracy developing many years ago.Writing in a Feb. 2010 piece in OtherWords, columnist Donald Kaul penned:

“Democracy has been in decline here for some time…just look at our pathetic voter turnouts…we have traded our democratic republic for a corporate oligarchy on the model of a banana republic.

Americans are fond of saying that we’re the greatest country in the world. Would the greatest country in the world make a trade like that? I don’t think so.

And the corporations to whom we’ve given the keys to the store aren’t even American companies. They’re multi-nationals operating in their own self-interest without regard for the national good.”

The study analyzed extensive data, comparing nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted between 1981 and 2002 looking at the expressed preferences of average and affluent Americans as well as special interest groups.

THE RICH + BIG BUSINESS INTERESTS = CONTROL OF U.S.

The results of the peer-reviewed report, say the authors, empirically verifies that U.S. policies are determined by the economic elite, not the democratic process.

“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence,” say the authors.

And if that isn’t frightening enough to millions of Americans who are not in that elite group that now runs the country, the authors point out that the data available to them – the numbers they crunched – are probably under-representing the actual extent of control of the United States by the super-rich.

Some items from the study:

~ A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. This paper purports to do just that, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.

~ Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. The authors say the study provides substantial support for theories of “Economic Elite Domination” and for theories of “Biased Pluralism,” but not for theories of “Majoritarian Electoral Democracy” or “Majoritarian Pluralism.”

~ Prior to the availability of the data set that the authors analyzed for the study, “No one we are aware of has succeeded at assessing interest group influence over a comprehensive set of issues, while taking into account the impact of either the public at large or economic elites – let alone analyzing all three types of potential influences simultaneously.

THE ILLUSION OF LIFE IN A DEMOCRACY

The authors also point out that despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy operating in this country, “Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts,” even though average working Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance such as regular elections, freedom of speech and freedom of association.

This study is getting a lot of buzz and attention on the Internet but seemingly less so in newspapers – many of which are now controlled by huge media organizations (business interests) that also own and control multiple radio and TV stations as well as other media – and even less play on the nightly news half hour shows on networks like CBS, ABC and NBC which, the study somewhat infers when it refers to intertwined impact of “business interests” in tandem with the elite, may be part of the problem

So far the results do not appear to have resonated much if at all with America’s Joe and Jill Sixpack who, the study’s authors intimate, may still labor under the delusion they live in a democracy.

For a many reasons it may be difficult for some Americans to wrap their heads around the idea they no longer live in a democratic country.

“The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence,” says the peer-reviewed study.

The study purports to be the first-ever scientific study of the question of whether the U.S. is a democracy because until recently it has not been possible to test “contrasting theoretical predictions [that U.S. policy making operates as a democracy, versus as an oligarchy, versus as some mixture of the two] against each other within a single statistical model.”

The authors say their report is an effort to do so using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.

They conclude the numbers show without ambiguity that the U.S. is not a democracy anymore. It is clearly an oligarchy.

Writing in CounterPunch Eric Zuess sums it up this way:

“American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious “electoral” “democratic” countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” That’s it, in a nutshell.”

HOW THE DATA WAS BROKEN DOWN

The two professors came to their conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions that were asked between the years 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues.

They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organized interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

A proposed policy change with low support among economically elite Americans (just 1 out of 5 in favor) is adopted only about 18% of the time. But they discovered “a proposed change with high support (4 out of 5 in favor) is adopted about 45% of the time.”

But on the other hand when a majority of average citizens disagrees with the economic elites and/or with organized interest groups, they generally lose.

What’s more, because of a strong “status quo bias” built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Finally, the DailyKos points out what it considers one additional and ominous note to the report that many Americans may have missed:

“The date range for the data set for this study was 1981-2002. Did you catch that? The set of data does not include study beyond 2002, yet the conclusion even then is that we’ve become an oligarchy. Consider all that’s then missing in the equation:

The Iraq War, drones, the 2008 criminally-caused economy crash, the rise of the Kochs, the most obstructive Congress in history, OWS beat down by government proven collusive with the banks, Citizen’s United, McCutcheon, Wikipedia’s leaks & Manning’s torture (arguably), Edward Snowden revelations.

Even without the rigors of research, it would be obvious to conclude that 2002 compared to today was practically a majoritarian paradise. It boggles the mind and fuels the urgency of the issue.”

– To the Original story… ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | 1 Comment »

The withering away of America

Wednesday, March 26th, 2014

The other day, I read a story about a Hedge Fund buying up foreclosed homes in Atlanta, Georgia. They bought up 4000 such homes on a single day and the story said they are buying more all the time.

Their plan, according to the article, is to hang onto these homes until the price of the houses rise and then they will sell them for a nice profit. In the mean time, they will rent them.

Apparently, these folks have a lot of money so they can afford to buy these houses up at distressed prices and then be patient until the market turns.

This is one of those stories where you could say these folks are pretty smart. Or not.

On a smaller scale, many of us, if we had a few extra dollars in the bank and if we saw a reasonable house come up on a foreclosure sale, we might just jump on that opportunity. We would fix it up a bit, rent it out and wait for its property value to go up and then, at some point in the future, perhaps at retirement time, we’d sell it for a tidy profit. And it would be all to the good.

Indeed, many of you who are doing fairly well with your finances probably already own one or more extra properties as investments that you are renting out just as the hedge fund folks are.

This is the American way, is it not? We get ahead by working hard, saving our money and by investing it well.

Some of you, as you are reading this now, are waiting for the “gotcha” fish hook to emerge out of this little story of mine, aren’t you?

Well, sorry, it’s not going to happen. At least not for all of those Mom and Pop investors among you. I am decidedly on your side in all of this. The hard working and smart saving American work ethic is one I embrace.

But, if we go back to the opening of this story and think about those Hedge Fund folks buying up thousands of foreclosed homes, I’ve got some problems there.

More is not always better

This Hedge Fund is buying up thousands and thousands of homes and taking them off the real estate market.

That means less homes are available for those people that want to buy. And that also means that the prices of the homes that are available for sale will rise given the inexorable logic of supply and demand.

Buyers on the lower end of the economic scale will not be able to buy in this situation and they will be forced into renting.

All of us know that renting, while done by many, is surely not the best way to spend your money. All you get is a roof over your head and as soon as you stop paying rent, the roof goes away and you have nothing. The best thing you can do as a renter, is to save money as quickly as possible so you can buy a place of your own and start building some equity.

Stacking the deck

So, here we have a case where a very large entity, the Hedge Fund, is driving the market in a way that highly favors them and disadvantages the smaller folks.

From the Hedge Fund’s POV, as they take more houses off the real estate market and put them away into their investment portfolio, they are causing the prices on the remaining houses to rise. As the prices of the remaining houses rise, less people can afford them and more are driven into the rental market.

And look who is there waiting? Its the Hedge Fund which has lots of houses to rent. Sweet, eh? It’s not unlike driving sheep into a pen.

Its sweet on all sides for the Hedge Fund beacuse as more folks compete for the available rentals, the price of rents will rise as well.

The Hedge Fund will always do well with this strategy so long as they pick their locations well.

All they have to know to win is that in desirable areas, the population inexorably rises because people want to live there for the environment and/or the work opportunities. And in such areas, more people means more homes are needed.

The bottom line here is that the Hedge Fund is using its enormous financial clout in a way that benefits them but not necessarily the rest of us.

Now, small folks with some accumulated savings can invest it by buying one or two extra homes and renting them out as we mentioned earlier and that’s just what the Hedge Fund is doing, isn’t it? Except they are doing it on a vastly huger scale.

And it is precisely this difference between the huge Hedge Funds of the world and the small folks like us which is the point of what this article is about.

The story of bigger and bigger

A small fellow starts a Mom and Pop business in his home town and it goes well. The local people like what he’s doing and they buy what he’s got.

He’s smart. He saves his profits and he opens a second shop across town. He employees more folks in the second shop. The situation is a winner all around.

He opens more shops all up and down the area of the state he lives in. More people are employed by him. He gives money to charities and he support the local Boy Scouts and the YMCA. The story is getting better and better.

At some point, he shifts from being a family owned business to being a corporation because that structure provides better protect for his family by separating their corporate assets from their family assets. And perhaps it works better for their taxes as well.

Soon, as things continue to grow, the owner opens subsidiaries or franchises and moves into other states.

And for this business and these people, things just continue to go from strength to strength.

Now, the owner knows State Representatives and State Senators on a first-name basis. He’s invited to sit on various boards for the YMCA and the local hospital.

At some point, his privately owned corporation may go public. And, if the public offering is successful, he and his family will make a large amount of money and the corporation will get a large influx of cash to fund its further growth.

Now, as a publicly held corporation, it has a board and stock holders and it becomes responsible to more than just the former owner and his family. Now, it becomes responsible to its stockholders who expect it to make a good return on their investment in the company.

This is all the stuff of magic. The stuff that every small business owner hopes will happen to his or her business. It is, literally, the stuff of the American Dream.

Ever onward and upward

The newly minted public corporation continues its growth. And with the wisdom now of its board of directors and of its corporate officers, (either of which may or may not include the former owner) the corporation becomes a real competitor in the market segment it competes in.

Somewhere along this spectacular rise, it expands out across the nation from its original state and soon it is eying international markets and establishing overseas subsidiaries. And, if the run of success last long enough, it will become an international success. It will become a global player.

Every national and global corporation you’ve ever heard of has followed this trajectory, unless it was spun off from earlier corporations. If you trace their roots back far enough, every corporation, or its antecedents, will have begun with one person, one family or a small group’s dream that they too could build something out of their hard work and creativity. It is a hugely commendable thing to build something like this out of nothing.

But can there be too much of a good thing?

Can there be too much competitiveness? Too much success? Too much market dominance?

Yes, there can be, Dorothy. Absolutely. Just because bigger seems better here in Kansas, or anywhere else, doesn’t mean it’s always the case.

Businesses can get so big that they becomes monopolies and bullies in their markets And when their competitiveness becomes market dominance, then serious systemic problems can develop. And those problems mostly affect the small folks.

Remember the U.S. breakup Standard Oil in 1911? Or the U.S. breakup of Ma Bell in 1982?

In both of these cases, the growth of the organizations had led to so much market power that they were in the position to virtually set any price they wanted for their goods. They had grown so strong that they had very little competition left.

So, what limits run away corporate power?

What has always limited corporate power, up until recent times, has been government power.
That was what did it with Standard Oil and Ma Bell.

Now, by many people’s definition, government is suppose to exist to look out for the people’s common good. See if you recognize this quote:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”

The founding fathers of the United States specifically said, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men….”.

When corporations are small, they are of a net benefit to all of us because of the the products and services they create and provide for us. But, when they get too large, this net benefit can become a net liability. And, when things get too far out of whack, corporations need to be controlled and regulated by the government for the common good.

And that’s the way it has worked with our government and corporations in the past. But things are changing, Dorothy.

To show you how things are changing, let me digress and tell you a short story about the environmentalist movement in the U.S. during the 1960s.

Bear with me, please, even if you are not an environmentalist. My story is relevant to the overall point of this article which is actually about the corrosive influence of mega corporations and big money on the American Democracy.

In the 1960’s there were numerous movements afoot to get laws passed that would protect the quality of our air and our water. These proposed laws were wending their way slowly through the legislative process at the national level and the corporate world was half attending to all of this but it is probably safe to say they weren’t too deeply worried about it.

Then some things happened that changed the game. There were reports about the utterly disgraceful state of some of the east coast’s rivers. The Cuyahoga River in particular caught fire in Cleveland. And the Interior Department was proposing to flood the Grand Canyon. And then there was the infamous Santa Barbara Oil Spill that occurred in 1969.

Almost overnight the environmental movement, which had been simmering, was galvanized by these events to do something now. And the bills in the legislature involving clean air and clean water were well positioned to benefit from the public’s new found passion for environmental protection.

As a result, these bills were passed decisively in a strong and undiluted form and became the new laws of the land.

The corporate world had been caught flat-footed by these rapidly moving events. Things had moved too quickly for them and suddenly there were powerful new laws that put serious limitations on what corporations could and couldn’t do with their waste.

And they couldn’t complain too openly about all of this because, after all, the new laws had widespread public support. The corporations couldn’t be seen in that political environment as opposing laws that protected the public commons from those who would abuse the air and the water for their own profits.

And about the same time that big business was realizing their vulnerability to such laws, the environmentalists were realizing that passing good environmental laws that just applied to the U.S. wouldn’t be sufficient, if the rest of the world just continued on as before. So, most of the people who were big players in the U.S. environmental movement shifted their efforts from being U.S. centric to being globally focused.

But never again

But, the business world is anything but stupid. They had learned their lesson the hard way and they resolved to never again be caught sleeping nationally or internationally.

And, indeed, they’ve kept this promise to themselves. Since those fateful days in the 1960’s and 70’s, when the Clean Air and Clean Water acts were passed, very little else of environmental significance has been signed into law within the U.S. or internationally because of effective and well focused resistance from the world business communities.

The only notable exception to this trend would be the Montreal Accord, which was ratified in 1989. This international accord limits the production and use of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which were decisively shown by scientists to be the smoking gun that was destroying the world’s Ozone Layer.

For those who might be interested in this type of history, I learned a lot of this from reading the books of James Gustave Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Speth is, and has been, one of the foremost actors in the U.S. and International environmental movements for many decades now.

The two books of his which I’ve read are, Red Sky at Morning – America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (2004) and The Bridge at the Edge of the World – Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (2008).

But now back to the main plot line

So, here’s how the story continues to unfold after the seminal events of the 60’s and 70’s:

The large corporations, whose bottom line’s were impacted by the new environmental laws, learned their lesson. Now they could not just dump their industrial wastes into the rivers nor put just anything they wanted to up their smokestacks. And those changes to what they could and could not do were going to cost them money and lower their profits.

Stung badly once, the corporate world began to pay attention to the environmental laws that were wending their ways through the world’s legislatures on their way to possibly becoming laws. And now, the corporate world began to put on the quiet full-court press to dilute or defeat such laws preemptively to protect their bottom lines.

These battles have mostly been fought in the smokey back rooms of the political world but sometimes they have erupted into public view.

Who doesn’t remember the Tobacco Industry executives testifying in front of Congress in 1994 on TV, no less, that smoking cigarettes was not harmful to public health?

They were prepared to, and they did, lie and say anything they could to deflect congress and the people’s will from diminishing their profits. The Tobacco Industry spent an enormous amount of money on dis-information campaigns trying to deflect the law makers. But eventually Congress, with the input of scientific data on the effects of smoking, saw through their smoke screen and national laws were passed to lessen the dangers of smoking to the American public.

But the corporations have won many of these battles as well.

For instance, have you ever wondered why we cannot read on the labels of the food we buy exactly what is in it and where it came from?

I could cite many examples where the corporate world has prevented the passage of laws to protect their own bottom line profits.

For a long time now, corporations have fought via their lobbyists in our legislatures to defeat or to water down bills that will impact their bottom line profits.

And regardless of the PR and the advertisements they put out which attempt to make them all look like our cuddly responsible corporate friends, these mega corporations and extremely high net-worth individuals, like the Koch brothers, are simply all about profits with little or no concern for the public good.

We’ve drifted from what the founding fathers envisioned

Do you remember the idea of one-man-one-vote that we all learned about in school?

We are not all equal voters. It is obvious that mega corporations or very high net worth people with big money behind them can inordinately influence which laws are passed and which are not through lobbying.

Some of you will say, “Well, it’s always been that way in politics.” And, probably, you are right.

But I’m not happy about it. Maybe I was corrupted by watching Jimmy Stewart in the 1939 movie ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘ too many times.

So, here we have the picture then of why the corporate world exerts so much of its financial muscle on lobbying in our nation’s capital. And the ugly truth is that it is to protect their own profits. And all of that power, which is being exerted to shape the nation’s laws, have little or nothing to do with the common good as the fathers of our nation intended it.

Ah, but don’t despair – it gets worse

It gets worse? Yes, it does. This battle between the various forces in our society for who gets to make the laws is an ongoing thing. And like any ongoing battle, the strategies and the rules change as new opportunities are realized.

At some point, the large corporations and the mega high net-worth individuals realized that they could better influence which laws get made and which don’t not by lobbying – but by influencing who gets elected to make the laws in the first place. Why hack at the branches if you can go for the roots, eh?

So big money has begun to pour huge sums into getting folks elected who will be sympathetic to the needs of business – rather than to the needs of the people. And lets be clear, again, about what those ‘needs’ are.

The needs of business are to have their way cleared of ‘unnecessary’ laws so they can increase their profits.

This process of gaming the system in American politics with big money has gotten quite advanced. And amazingly, most of the American public hasn’t noticed.

Big business isn’t stupid by any means. They know that they can still have their gains rolled back at the ballot box if people were to get aware of and upset about what’s going on.

So, you won’t see them promoting their side of this battle by saying things like, “The rich have every right to get richer regardless of the consequence to ordinary citizens.”

Instead, they push themes like, “We need less government regulation and interference. Such interference prevents small hard working Mom and Pop entrepreneurs all over this great country from reaching their full potential.”

They purposely, and cynically, associate themselves with the small and medium size business community and make it seem like these folks and big business have common cause.

And there’s just enough truth in what they say sometimes to make it plausible.

But the cynicism of why they are doing it is breathtaking. They don’t give a rat’s behind about the small and medium Mom and Pop folks other than to use them as a foil to distract the public’s attention from their devious gaming of the American political system.

Back near the beginning of this piece, I made a point to say that I applaud the Mom and Pop small and medium sized entrepreneurs of America. And I meant it. The are the engines of creation in this country. They make the country better.

But, the really big corporations, those whose sole motivation is to maximize their profits and minimize their costs, and the really high net worth individuals who never think they’ll have enough money, these folks are of a different breed altogether.

The signs that they are making inroads into controlling our legislative processes for their own benefit are all around us. But, these signs are largely hidden by the immense PR smoke screens they are putting up to confuse the public.

In this context, the ‘Citizens United‘ decision by the Supreme Court a few years ago to grant corporations the same rights as people was huge.

So, what is a corporation anyway?

I’ll tell you this – they are not our neighborhood fuzzy responsible community friends.

Consider that a large corporation is an entity that exists solely to maximize the investment returns of its stockholders. This is a simple cold hard fact. They have only one motivation and that is profit maximization.

They have zero motivation to consider what’s good for the nation or for the public unless the issue begins to interfere with their profits.

And, if some public concern does begin to impact their profits, they’ll make superficial changes and unleash a storm of PR designed to make us think that they are on our side and they have our best interests in mind and they are part of our community and they share our values and etc. and etc. We’ve seen it all. But few of us have recognized how deeply cynical it all is.

If this was a real person who had such a single minded focus, most of us would think they were a dangerous unfeeling psychopath walking among us.

But now, according to the Supreme Court, these entities can move among us with the same rights as sovereign citizens.

And the limits of how much they can donate to political campaigns have largely been lifted.

So, what causes do you think that these newly minted mega corporate ‘citizens’ donate money to? The only ones they care about, of course. And that’s getting folks elected who will not pass laws that will interfere with their right to maximize their profits.

Their audacity knows no limits

This corporate philosophy, of not hacking at the branches if you can go for the roots, is expanding in a frightening manner internationally now.

There’s something called the TPPA, the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. It has been under negotiation since 2005 and currently 11 nations from around the Pacific Rim are involved.

The stated purpose of the TPPA is:

… to enhance trade and investment among the TPP partner countries, promote innovation, economic growth and development, and support the creation and retention of jobs.

Whooo-ee. That sounds good, doesn’t it?

Folks in most of the countries involved in these negotiations have no idea these negotiations are even going on, much less the details of what’s actually being negotiated.

You see, the negotiations are being carried out in secret. In many cases, they are being kept secret from even from the legislators of the countries negotiating. Specially appointed government trade negotiators are conducting these negotiations and these folks are appointed people – not elected people.

It gets even more incredible.

In the U.S., which is the most dominate of the countries involved, the vast majority of the House and Senate membership are blocked from knowing the details of what’s being negotiated while representatives from a number of large U.S. corporations are allowed to sit in on the negotiations – as they occur.

Yes, you heard that right. Our elected representative are locked out and the mega corporations are sitting in as advisors to the negotiators.

Why the h*** would that be, you say?

Well, from the few documents that have been leaked from these secret negotiations, it turns out to be evident that only about 30% of these agreements actually have anything to do with free trade. While the majority of what’s being negotiated has to do with protecting corporate rights and profits!

I know, many of you at this point in this story think that I must have drunk the bad kool-aid on this one right?

Well, you’d be wrong. This is no straw man.

There’s ample documentation of what’s going on out there and of what’s intended to happen, if the corporations get their way.

Proof?

Here’s a statement by Ron Wyden, a U.S. Senator from Oregon expressing his deep frustration as how little, as a U.S. Senator, he’s been able to find out about what’s being negotiated.

In a floor statement to Congress Wyden said, “The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of US corporations — like Halliburton, Chevron, Comcast and the Motion Picture Association of America — are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.”

And here’s a recent article that appeared in the New York Times by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a U.S. Nobel Prize winning economist, about what he thinks the TPPA is really about and what’s wrong with it. I encourage you to read this.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/15/on-the-wrong-side-of-globalization/

This is huge, my friends. Just Google the TPPA and you will find a ton of commentary on the Internet about it. And then you might also reflect on why you never hear about this sort of thing on your evening news?

Just a bit more on the TPPA and then I’m going to wrap this up.

One of the worst aspects of what’s being proposed in the TPPA is that corporations will be able to sue sovereign nations – if those nations pass laws that diminish the profits of the corporations.

Yes, you heard that right.

Imagine that a country passes laws mandating that cigarette packs sold in that country have to have plain labeling and carry pictures of what happens to folk’s lungs when they smoke. Such a law would be passed for the good of the people, yes?

Or, perhaps they pass a law that no mining will be allowed in their national parks. Again, this is a law passed for the good of the people of that country.

But, of course, the profits of the cigarette manufacturers and those of the mining companies would be decreased.

Under trade agreement law, as it would stand post-TPPA, the corporations involved could sue the countries that passed such laws to recover their lost profits. And these law suits would be not be held in the courts of the countries involved but rather they would be decided by a three man international tribunal which would not be beholding to any country.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? And all of that is going on around you in secret. In secret even from your legislators.

When I tell folks that the large multi-national corporate world is infiltrating and taking over the sovereign functions of national governments as their latest strategy to increase their profits, some people look at me like I’m a nut case.

Make up your own mind

Pay attention to the news, now that you are aware of all of this. Keeping watching and see what you think.

Ask yourself if mega corporations, solely obsessed with profits and utterly indifferent to the welfare of the people or of the nation, should be considered to be people and allowed to walk around unchecked in polite society?

Ask yourself, if a corporation is suppose to be a person, if you’d actually associate with a real person that had such nasty and mercenary personal attributes?

Or even more to the point, given how things are going, ask yourself what you think about living in a country where the “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth” is, in sad fact, withering away before our very eyes and being taken over by mega corporations and the very greedy.

These are not idle questions in the world today, my friends.

-dennis

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