Tales of Change

How To Save the Planet Now: Admit We've Failed

It’s time for climate activists to admit our tactics have failed. I commend the movement for all of its efforts but the recent congressional takeover by Republicans demonstrates how ineffective we’ve been. Karl Rove is right, “Climate is gone.”

And we’re not alone. The first two years of Obama’s presidency have seen the failure of many progressive groups: anti-war and health care activists most notably.

So, who is winning? The wealthy, especially executives of multinational corporations. In Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote:

“The richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. … C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001. Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.”

We’re in the midst of a rapidly escalating class war marked by an increasingly successful movement by corporate leaders seizing power and rights from individuals.

Perhaps the greatest harm from this war is the nearly complete failure by Congress and the Obama administration to curb greenhouse gas emissions and move us in a significant way towards cleaner energy solutions.

The Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United decision was a massive victory that opened the floodgates for unlimited anonymous spending which helped Republicans gain control of the House on November 2nd. And, they’ll spend even more in 2012.

Thanks to Republican victories in state legislative races, they’ll be solidifying these gains for the next decade: the GOP gets to redraw 147 more Congressional districts than Democrats (see also gerrymandering).

The tactic of electing democrats to legislate sensible climate policy is clearly a dead end.

Time to Give Up on Failed Tactics

So, when the Democratic party starts rallying progressives and environmental nonprofits to get behind their candidates for 2012, it’s time to say, "No more!" When democrats say “if Republicans gain control of the Presidency and Senate, everything we care about will be lost,” we have to remember that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid never even brought the climate bill up for a vote.

In fact, it’s democrats who solidified the conservative voting bloc for the Citizens United case. Twenty-two democrats voted to ratify the nomination of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts  and none filibustered the nomination of Justice Alito.

Similarly, when <insert large environmental nonprofit here> asks you to make an end of year donation, instead ask them if they are ready to abandon their failed tactics. Hold onto your wallet and ask them what they plan to do differently.

So, How Do We Save the Planet?

First, we have to recognize that our movement has failed because we’ve hitched its success to the votes of elected officials whose influence is legally bought and paid for by corporate interests on an ongoing basis.

Climate activism is doomed as long as corporate money retains a central role in elections and government policy.

Second, we have to begin questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and its long history of granting rights not found in the Constitution to corporations. If not for the questionable Bush v. Gore decision, Roberts and Alito might not even be on the Court. Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito routinely rule on the side of wealthy shareholders. Says the People for the American Way:

“What is striking today, however, is how often the Roberts Court, like its predecessor the Rehnquist Court, hands down counter-intuitive 5-4 victories to corporations by ignoring clear precedents, twisting statutory language and distorting legislative intent. From labor and workplace law to environmental law, from consumer regulation to tort law and the all-important election law, the conservative-tilting Court has reached out to enshrine and elevate the power of business corporations --what some people have begun to call ‘corporate Americans’--over the rights of the old-fashioned human beings called citizens.”

Finally and most importantly, it’s time for environmental nonprofits and climate activists to work together in coalition to restore individual rights and reject this corporate takeover of our society.

We have to put as much effort as we’ve put into educating the public about climate change into educating people about how the rise of corporate power is blocking sensible climate policy, destroying our environment and putting future generations at risk.

With fifteen million unemployed Americans and anger on the left and the right about Citizens United, there is a huge opportunity to organize against the continued consolidation of corporate power.

Climate organizations and activists of all kinds need to unite to lead a movement to restore rights for individuals and the environment and reject the dominance of corporate power and money in our public institutions.

After Citizens United, with Republicans in control of the house and redistricting and many democrats already influenced by corporate interests, we’re not going to win by playing elections or by playing by the same old rules.

Now for what really matters...

I'm not too concerned about the outcome of Tuesday’s election. There's only one major issue facing America today and it's not that the Democratic congressional majority is too slim. It’s time to put to rest the myth that electing more democrats will lead to the change we believe in.

While you may not yet be ready to accept this, the primary issue facing America today is an increasingly successful movement by wealthy shareholders of multinational corporations seizing power and rights from individuals.

Choose any issue e.g. the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, health care, the environment, job loss and the decline of the middle class, immigration, gay rights, the drug war, campaign finance and you will find corporate influence either directly driving policy or manipulating the issue to build power.

The battle between industry and individuals pre-dates our republic but we are essentially in the midst of a rapidly escalating class war in which ordinary Americans are losing.

Despite the rabid media coverage of the Tea Party this year, few reports noted the common thread of concern for individual rights that stretches across the American political spectrum. This can be seen most clearly in the universal outrage to the Supreme Court's awful Citizens United decision, from radical left to radical right. Surely, there is an opportunity here to bring people together for change.

Oedipus Wrecks: Obama's Failing Presidency

From the day he took office, President Obama and his advisors have been working feverishly to avoid the "missteps" that led to the Clinton midterm backlash. That which they so deeply feared and worked to avoid may now be upon them. How did this happen?

Much of Obama's current political weakness stems from his adoption of terrible policy, often favoring corporations, which can be torn apart by both the left and the right.

The fact that everyone hates a bill does not necessarily indicate good compromise. In Obama's case, it's usually indicated bad policy that solves nothing for anyone.

I often joke that Obama is the most successful Republican president since Reagan. Most of the major legislation he's signed follows in the conservative mold, solidifying corporate power and occasionally giving lip service to the rights of individuals.

It's certainly possible that Obama is a progressive who has been poorly advised to govern as a centrist in order to avoid the kind of political midterm defeat that he ironically now faces. The problem is that he was elected on a platform for change and he's leading preservation of the establishment.

Compromise Legislation Not Values

It's simply not credible when the century's greatest orator throws up his hands saying he doesn't have the votes.

It's okay to compromise on legislation but never our values. Unfortunately, Obama compromises both, in his rhetoric and his legislation.

The health care bill is a blatant giveaway of tax dollars to corporate insurers without the consumer protections and cost controls needed to actually make anything work. The most blaring defect to me is the right of insurers to drop coverage of the seriously ill by paying a $100 per day penalty.

Similarly, there's no great mystery to why we're in the midst of a jobless economic recovery. Obama has continued decades old policies of globalization that reward the export of jobs and production by corporate entities that pay almost no tax here at home.

For some reason, Obama negotiates by staking out weak compromise positions on terrible legislation then fighting for them. He’s essentially been trying to lead towards the middle rather than advocating for sound public policy that works. This country needs not a Commander but an Educator in Chief willing to take risks to push us forward.

The events of this election cycle demonstrate that people across the political spectrum intuitively sense that there's something increasingly wrong with our country but don't necessarily know how to direct their energy. Sadly, President Obama abdicated the mantle of change the day he stopped leading the way to actual reform.

Neither has the Democratic Party fought for individual rights. Repeatedly over the past two years, mainstream democratic leaders with strong ties to corporate money and lobbyists have undermined sensible legislation.

The failures of this Congress have finally convinced me that electing more democrats will not provide the change we need. In fact, I’d rather have principled gridlock than what we have now - silent acquiescence to increasingly bankrupt policies. 

If anything, it’s the lack of leadership by Obama and the Democrats that have led to today’s widely predicted election losses. It’s certainly not the platform of unrestrained corporate power of the Republican Party and the fragmented Tea Party, itself a child of corporate lobbyists.

The Way Forward

What’s most notable to me about the first two years of Obama’s presidency is the near complete and utter failure of key progressive groups. Anti-war activists, climate activists and health care activists pretty much all failed to effect change.

It’s time for progressives to stop blindly funding and supporting the corporatist Democratic Party and its candidates hoping for change that never comes. 

Neither can we continue to fund the ineffective strategies used by many progressive nonprofit organizations. 

How hot will we let the planet get before we admit to ourselves that the tactics we’ve been using are failing? How broke our country? How corrupt our government?

It’s time for progressive nonprofits and activists to fight the growth and consolidation of corporate power as their primary agenda. It's time for us to collaborate to strengthen individual rights and deconstruct corporate power.

I’m a big fan of the Community and Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) for two reasons: 1) they are out there on the front lines teaching activists about the historical, cultural and legal framework of corporate power in America and 2) they are teaching activists how to focus on building rights rather than falling into the tired failed scripts that most organizations follow.

I think this election cycle has actually helped highlight the opportunities to build bridges between the left and right in America. As an example, CELDF often works with dyed in the wool Republicans working to protect their communities from the environmental and economic harms from corporations.

If we really are the ones we’ve been waiting for then it’s time we recognize the battlefield isn’t terrorism…it’s the wealthy shareholders of multinational corporations stealing our democracy, playing the least educated among us as pawns to cast the deciding vote.

What are we going to do about it?

Professor Lawrence Lessig on our Fundraising Congress

Recognizing you have a problem is the first step towards recovery. Professor Lessig succinctly put the problem with our country's federal policies in an excellent and concise essay in the San Francisco Chronicle today:

There was a way Obama might have governed differently. It would have been risky, but in his first speech to the nation, he could have built on the rhetoric at the core of his campaign. On Jan. 20, 2009, Obama could have said: America has spoken. It has demanded fundamental change. I commit to work with Congress to produce it. But if we fail, or more precisely, if Congress allows the special interests that control it to block change, it will be time to remake Congress. Not by throwing out the Democrats or the Republicans, but by throwing out both. If this Congress fails to deliver change, then we will change Congress.

Had he framed his administration in these terms, the failure to implement his agenda would not be the failure of Obama to woo Republicans. It would have been what America was already primed to believe: a failure of this corrupted institution.

We can hope that Obama recognizes these missteps. But as we've seen, hope will only get us so far. What's needed now is a citizens' movement to stop the Fundraising Congress. We need to demand change, including publicly funded elections, a seven-year ban on lobbying for any former member of Congress and amendments to the Constitution to assure that reform can survive the Roberts Supreme Court.

via articles.sfgate.com

As Democracy School leader Richard Grossman often points out, this is just more of the legalized corruption that is regularly accepted in our culture.

Move Your Money!

Update: You may also want to consider an Equal Exchange 3 Year Certificate of Deposit as a more socially responsible option. However, there is more risk than a money market account.

I'm quite excited about the Huffington Post's Move Your Money campaign. In a day and age crowded with ineffective, repetitive organizing, Move Your Money! could actually have some impact and re-energize populist tactics.

People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis. Fueled by the personal initiatives of thousands, it’s a grassroots effort that has the potential to shift power in the financial system away from Wall Street and to Main Street.

Since the FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000, there is no risk to consumers to make this move. 

While there are numerous disgusting aspects to the recent bank bailouts (under Bush and Obama), banks have actually been using taxpayer money to lobby against common sense regulation. But, when tens of thousands of Americans start withdrawing their money from the big banks, we will start to see some incremental change.

It's also important to give people a sense that they can still have an impact on big business. This is one way to do that.

Stay tuned - I am planning to move some of my own money to a local bank soon as well.

Watch Arianna Huffington's interview on Countdown:

Congress Only Proxies for Corporate Masters

In In House, Many Spoke With One Voice: Lobbyists’, The New York Times exposes examples of corporate lobbyists acting as puppet masters over Congressmen:

The lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress. 

Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, an unusual bipartisan coup for lobbyists. 

“One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology industry is that it is a homegrown success story that has been an engine of job creation in this country.” This written statement by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina on the health care bill was identical to one by Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer and used language suggested by lobbyists.

via www.nytimes.com

Interestingly, the lobbyists direct each party differently:

E-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that the lobbyists drafted one statement for Democrats and another for Republicans.

If foreign corporations such as Genentech think it's useful to get 42 members of Congress from both our political parties quote talking points into the record for the health care bill, just imagine the influence domestic health care corporations are waging right now to water-down reform.

If Congress is the people's house, it's clear that corporations have foreclosed on our interests. The cynics are right, the Democrats are just as susceptible to corporate money as Republicans.