Climate and the Constitution

My colleagues are I recently completed work on a short outreach video that features the Chairperson of 350PDX, Adriana Voss-Andreae, MD/PhD, telling her climate warrior troops that a critical piece of the solution for climate restoration is a Constitutional Amendment that will nullify corporate personhood and end money being treated as speech. 

Adrian does a masterful job of making the case for a 28th Constructional Amendment.  Now, we hope the video will add to the grassroots movement already pressing for Constitutional change.

Here is a link to Climate and the Constitution...  https://vimeo.com/115086397

The Richest 1% Owns Everything

A report was just released by Oxfam International. It showed that a handful of people have managed to take control of more of the world's privately held wealth than the other 99% of us combined. They have given new definition to the word, greed. The vast majority of people who are not part of that small, self-absorbed cabal of obscene wealth are fed up. - EMPDX

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In less than two years, if current trends continued unchecked, the richest 1% percent of people on the planet will own at least half of the world's wealth.

That's the conclusion of a new report from Oxfam International, released Monday, which states that the rate of global inequality is not only morally obscene, but an existential threat to the economies of the world and the very survival of the planet. Alongside climate change, Oxfam says that spiraling disparity between the super-rich and everyone else, is brewing disaster for humanity as a whole.
"Do we really want to live in a world where the one percent own more than the rest of us combined?" asked Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of Oxfam International. "The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the gap between the richest and the rest is widening fast."

According to the report—titled Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More (pdf):

Global wealth is becoming increasing concentrated among a small wealthy elite. Data from Credit Suisse shows that since 2010, the richest 1% of adults in the world have been increasing their share of total global wealth . Figure 1 shows that 2010 marks an inflection point in the share of global wealth going to this group. Figure 1 : Share of global wealth of the top 1% and bottom 99% respectively ; Credit Suisse data available 2000 – 2014. In 2014 , the richest 1% of people in the world own ed 48% of global wealth , leaving just 52% to be shared between the other 99% of adults on the planet. 1 Almost all of th at 52% is owned by those included in the richest 20%, leaving just 5.5% for the remaining 80% of people in the world. If this trend continues of an increasing wealth share to the richest, the top 1% will have more wealth than the remaining 99% of people in just two years with the wealth share of the top 1% exceeding 50% by 2016.

The report also shows that even among the über-rich there remain divisions, with an outsized majority on the list of the world's wealthiest people hailing from the United States. And it's not an accident. The world's most wealthy, as the Oxfam report documents, spends enormous amounts of their money each year on lobbying efforts designed to defend the assets they have and expand their ability to make even more.

The world's wealthiest, reads the report, "have generated and sustained their vast riches through their interests and activities in a few important economic sectors, including finance and insurance and pharmaceuticals and healthcare. Companies from these sectors spend millions of dollars every year on lobbying to create a policy environment that protects and enhances their interests further. The most prolific lobbying activities in the US are on budget and tax issues; public resources that should be directed to benefit the whole population, rather than reflect the interests of powerful lobbyists."
Released on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Oxfam says that the world's financial and political elite can no longer ignore, and should no longer perpetuate, inequality at this scale.

"Our report is just the latest evidence that inequality has reached shocking extremes, and continues to grow," said Byanyima, who was invited to act as co-chair for this year's Davos summit. "It is time for the global leaders of modern capitalism, in addition to our politicians, to work to change the system to make it more inclusive, more equitable and more sustainable."

She continued, "Extreme inequality isn't just a moral wrong. It undermines economic growth and it threatens the private sector's bottom line.  All those gathering at Davos who want a stable and prosperous world should make tackling inequality a top priority."

Contained in the paper is a seven-point plan of specific proposals which Oxfam says must be added to the agenda of all world leaders:

1. Clamp down on tax dodging by corporations and rich individuals
2. Invest in universal, free public services such as health and education
3. Share the tax burden fairly, shifting taxation from labour and consumption towards    capital and wealth
4. Introduce minimum wages and move towards a living wage for all workers
5. Introduce equal pay legislation and promote economic policies to give women a fair deal
6. Ensure adequate safety-nets for the poorest, including a minimum income guarantee
7. Agree a global goal to tackle inequality.

On her role as co-chair at the WEF summit this week, Byanyima told the Guardian she was surprised to be invited, because Oxfam represents a "critical voice" to most of the others who attend. "We go there to challenge these powerful elites," she said. "It is an act of courage to invite me."

However, part of the message contained in the report is that economic inequality of this magnitude is not just threat to the poor and disadvantaged but also to those who have traditionally benefited from the model of pro-growth capitalism. As growing amounts of research have shown—most prominently in the work of French economist Thomas Piketty—the nearly unprecedented levels of inequality is hurting modern capitalism even on its own terms.

But just as these levels of inequality are the result of government policies that have benefited the rich, Oxfam believes that a change in such governing structures is the key to reversing the trend.
As Byanyima told the Guardian, "Extreme inequality is not just an accident or a natural rule of economics. It is the result of policies and with different policies it can be reduced. I am optimistic that there will be change."

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Nature's Trust

Written by University of Oregon Law Professor, Mary Christina Wood, Nature's Trust provides a thoroughly researched review of the trust responsibility of government at all levels in America, to the people and to future generations.

Here is how Professor Wood puts that responsibility in the introduction of Nature's Trust.

The sovereign trust obligation offers a catalyzing principle to citizens worldwide in their common struggle to hold government's accountable for protecting life-systems. Nature's Trust and the primordial rights inculcating it create a populist manifesto that surfaces at epic times through the generations of humanity. These principles stand no less revolutionary for our time and our crises than the forcing of the Magna Carta on the English monarchy in 1215 or Mahatma Gandhi's great Salt March to the sea in 1930.  Resonating deeply and resolutely within the ancestral memory of humanity,  trust principles must now revive to stir a global assertion of citizenship in defense of humanity and all future generations.

Professor Mary Christina Wood has done an enormous service to society by reminding us how deeply entrenched the trust responsibility is in global governance.  We live in a time when the American political process has devolved in a circumstance of  'He who has the money makes the rules.'  Climate change, driven by the human addiction to dirty coal and oil, is a challenge that is not being addressed, primarily because of the failure of our elected representatives to recognize and live up to their trust responsibilities to the people and to future generations.

Trust law is no panacea. The best way to put government back on track would be a Constitutional Amendment that says, 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.   That's a very tough nut to crack. For now, Mary Christina Wood's  illumination of  natural trust law has inspired a number of court challenges, demanding a proper government response to climate change.  Nature's Trust provides a solid foundation for legal remedy against our government's failure to meet it's obligation to protect nature and the commons for future generations.

This is a very important book. I give it my highest recommendation, with one caveat. The price tag - $40 for a paperback book - creates an unfortunate accessibility problem. I would love to have Nature's Trust for reference in my own library. Perhaps, at some point, they will come out with a different edition at a more reasonable cost.  For now, when I need to visit this book, I will go to the library.

Here is a link to author Mary Christina Wood, appearing on the Bill Moyers PBS Show, talking about Nature's Trust...  http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-climate-crusade/

America Has a White Millennial Problem

This is a very interesting and somewhat troubling picture of young adult America. I don't think the polls are presenting an accurate picture of where most of millennials are politically. I think young people want clean air, reproductive freedom of choice,  and a biosphere that is protected from brutish exploitation by mindless profiteers. 

Maybe young people aren't polling so strongly for Democrats because they recognize that the Democratic Party is part of the problem.  What they want is a progressive alternative that is forward thinking, life-affirming, and sustainable.  To get that, the corruption that is pervasive in American politics must stop.  We need a 28th Amendment that says 'Corporations are not People' and 'Money is not Speech'.  That is the way to energize millennials. Give them a worthy pathway into the future..EMPDX.

Sean McElwee wrote this piece for AlterNet. Nice work Sean...

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

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Salon [1] / By Sean McElwee [2]          

 

December 17, 2014  | 

 

Nearly anytime Democrats lose an election, there is a pervasive narrative that, just around the bend, there will be an “emerging Democratic majority.” Originally projected to occur between [3] 2004 and 2008, it now appears further away than ever after last month’s midterm blowout. Republicans have a stranglehold on the House, where they control [4] their largest number of seats since 1948. That lead will be incredibly tough [5] to chip away at. Democratic chances of regaining the Senate in 2016, once considered a near certainty, are looking iffy [6]. Republicans control 31 governorships, as well as [7] 68 of 98 state legislative chambers. Democrats still have a strong chance of winning the Presidency, but given the importance of the states for shaping income distribution [8] and policy [9], even that victory will ring hollow.

Yet again, the Democratic Party faces bleak governing prospects in the short term, with only the nebulous promise of a demographic windfall somewhere off in the future — and even that prospect should be little comfort to progressives. While the “millennial” generation has widely been seen as the key to future of Democratic successes, there are reasons to believe that the liberalism of millennials, at least on certain key issues, has been overstated.

 

Yes, there is a strong case that younger voters on the whole are more liberal. For instance, a study by the Center for American Progress finds [10] that while the mean American’s ideological position is 209 (with 0 being most conservative and 400 being most progressive), those under 29 score 219.7 (Obama voters scored 244).  But while millennials are more socially liberal across the board, there are stark racial divides on economic issues. Younger voters are more likely than older voters to agree [11] with the statement, “Labor unions are necessary to protect the working person” and “the government should be doing more to solve problems.” These questions, however, are rather vague and positively worded. And other data suggest a large gap between white millenials and millenials of color. For instance, young white men [12] supported Romney in the 2012 election.
White millenials are also significantly less [11] supportive of Obama (54 percent) than black millenials (95 percent) and Hispanic millenials (76 percent). The most recent poll [13] of Obama finds that young whites and older whites have virtually identical approval ratings. A recent Pew survey of millennials finds [14] that on economic issues, there are strong gaps between young whites and young non-white millenials (see chart).
[15]
On social issues, however [14], these gaps are virtually non-existent. This suggests that while social liberalism will continue to be a political winner, economic liberalism may be tougher to sell to white millenials. Additionally, while white millenials say they [16] want to live in a racially equitable society, they are no more likely than their parents [17] to support policies to make that society come about. ”At the same time, whites [18] primed [19] with the reality of growing diversity become are less likely to say they support diversity and more likely to support the Republican party.”
Furthermore, even as minorities make up a larger and larger percentage of the electorate, these racial changes will not inevitably benefit Democrats. While Republicans have never won more than 40 percent of the Latino vote  – the claim  [20]that Bush won 44 percent in 2004, as widely reported, now appears to have been incorrect — they could do so in the future. Pew data, for example, show [21] that third generation Hispanics are more socially liberal, but more economically conservative than older Hispanics.
[22]
Additionally, a recent Gallup poll shows [13] support for Obama among younger Black Americans is modestly lower than support among their older counterparts. This actually hold strue among millenials as a whole; as there appear to be age gaps that would render the Democratic advantage ephemeral. Harvard’s Institute of Politics finds [23] that there is a distinct difference between the way young millenials (18-to-24) and older millenials (25-to-29) view Obama. Meanwhile, a 2012 American University poll finds [24] that college students in swing states supported Obama by 35 points, while high schoolers (13-to-17) in swing states supported Obama over Romney by only 7 points.
Discussing the future always presents challenges, particularly in the realm of politics. However, when we look at the ideologies that shape the parties, we can see a few general trends from these data. First, the economic liberalism of the millenial generation appears to be driven primarily by people of color [25], rather than by younger, more liberal whites. (On social issues, the generation appears to be more liberal across the board.) Second, while millenials lean Democratic, they are still effectively up for grabs. White millenials, the data show, may become suspicious of further government programs to advance racial equality, and young people of color may be open to a Republican party that eschews virulent racism. Finally, electoral structures combined with the geographic locations [26] of Democratic voters will bias the system toward Republicans for at least another decade, and possibly longer.
It’s difficult to know what parties will do to remain viable in a shifting American political landscape. However, it’s by no means certain that a new “Democratic majority” will be an economically liberal one. It’s plausible that the new Democratic party will embrace an Andrew Cuomo-esque neoliberalism. The Democratic party that appears to be emerging will be friendlier to finance and economically conservative, but also very socially liberal, particularly on gay marriage and women’s rights. The Democratic party will be committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but not at a terrible price to businesses. Public goods will be sold off at bargain basement prices and the safety net will be expanded only slowly, if at all. Both parties will pretend that racial grievances are a thing of the past and present a rosy vision of color-blind America. The ideological distance of both parties on foreign policy will remain where it is today: virtually indistinguishable. This is not inevitable, but what we know about millenials, particularly white ones, suggest this is the most plausible scenario. In the battle for the soul of the Democratic party, millenials might not be on Team Elizabeth Warren.

 

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/america-has-white-millennial-problem

Links:
[1] http://www.salon.com
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/sean-mcelwee
[3] https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/542835205548310528
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/09/in-the-states-the-gop-is-in-its-best-position-since-the-great-depression/
[5] http://cookpolitical.com/story/8123
[6] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/393732/will-democrats-take-back-senate-2016-michael-barone
[7] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/11/the_other_gop_wave_state_legislatures__124626.html
[8] http://web.utk.edu/~nkelly/papers/inequality/KellyWitko.pdf
[9] http://www.urban.org/uploadedpdf/412635-state-approaches-to-the-tanf-block-grant.pdf
[10] http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/03/pdf/political_ideology.pdf
[11] http://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/05/pdf/millennial_generation.pdf
[12] http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/26/young-voters-supported-obama-less-but-may-have-mattered-more/
[13] http://www.gallup.com/poll/179921/obama-loses-support-among-white-millennials.aspx
[14] http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014/03/07/chapter-2-generations-and-issues/
[15] http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/americas_white_millennial_problem_why_the_next_great_generation_might_not_be_a_liberal_one/millennial_1/
[16] https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/5edc56c3-f8c8-483f-a459-2c47192d0bb8/a0ba0ce883749f4e613d6a6338bb4455
[17] http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/5/917.abstract
[18] http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/04/02/0956797614527113.abstract
[19] http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/13/1948550614546355
[20] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2005/06/27/hispanics-and-the-2004-election/
[21] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/v-politics-values-and-religion/
[22] http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/americas_white_millennial_problem_why_the_next_great_generation_might_not_be_a_liberal_one/screen_shot_2014_12_12_at_8_55_48_pm/
[23] http://iop.harvard.edu/blog/iop-releases-new-fall-poll-5-key-findings-and-trends-millennial-viewpoints#sthash.Yk1PMHLA.dpuf.
[24] http://www.american.edu/media/news/20121101_poll_obama_romney.cfm
[25] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/19/midterm_demographics_didnt_sink_the_democrats_124701.html
[26] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/upshot/why-democrats-cant-win.html
[27] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on America Has a White Millennial Problem
[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/race
[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/millennials
[30] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economy-0
[31] http://www.alternet.org/tags/generation
[32] http://www.alternet.org/tags/republican-0
[33] http://www.alternet.org/tags/democrat
[34] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B






 

A Few Things That Suck

Here, we have another Earthmanpdx video. This one focuses on some of the things that are wrong in America, and about a Constitutional amendment as the best way to get our nation back on  a course that puts the public interest ahead of corporations, bankers,  and self-absorbed billionaires. 

The link is https://vimeo.com/113999042

At the end of the day, the way out of the mess we are in is to support www.movetoamend.org

The Mid-Term Elections - Last Gasp of Obstructionism Before Genuine Renewal?

This past week, common sense got whacked in the national mid-term elections.  Around the country, citizens who voted put Republicans firmly in power in both houses of the United States Congress. Republicans also took firm control of state legislatures around the country. How could this happen, given the narrow interests that Republicans support and the abject obstruction they represent on most important issues? 

The biggest reason for this political debacle is the corrosive influence of corporate power and money on our election process.  The conservative majority on our Supreme Court opened the floodgates on legalized bribery with their 'Citizens United' decision on campaign finance.  Corporations and billionaires  are able to buy the politicians and public policy they want by pouring essentially limitless amounts of money into our elections. Our system is rigged to serve the interests of the rich and powerful.

By a wide margin, the Republican Party is the principle conduit for the corruption of our politics. But the Democrats are only marginally better.  Both parties are up to their ears in a system built on moneyed influence.   The vast majority of politicians that are attracted to elective office these days are unprincipled opportunists lining up to feed at the 'dirty money' trough. 

A big part of the problem lies with citizens who don't vote.  Only about a third of the electorate voted in this mid-term election.  Most of those non-voters were registered Democrats or Independents. Some of their failure to vote can be attributed to indifference, but many citizens are just fed up with the open influence peddling that has replaced honest discourse in our system of governance.   Right or wrong, they register their displeasure by dropping out of the voting process.

Republicans don't have that problem. They cater to a handful of single issue voting blocks, who come out to support conservative politicians. I'm talking about gun extremists, anti-abortion zealots, anti-gay evangelicals, and people who have an aversion to taxation of any kind.  Only about twenty percent of registered voters make up the Republican base. They tend to be older, whiter, and male. No matter. They can be counted on to vote.  What amazes me is how many of these misguided souls are poor. For them, a vote for a Republican is ultimately always a vote against their own interests.  Because the Republican Party is a corporatist party.  They really don 't care about their base. They support the bases'  narrow issues, so the base will keep showing up with their votes on election day. The actual constituents  Republican represent are Wall Street bankers, self-absorbed billionaires, and corporatists that are focused on profit to the exclusion of all else.

So, here we are. Republicans, who have successfully obstructed and thwarted most of President Barack Obama's progressive agenda for the past six years, are now the majority in both houses of Congress.   They will continue to obstruct meaningful climate legislation, and they will continue to try to derail the affordable care act, the President's single most important legislative achievement.

Moreover, they will leverage their majority to push legislation that will 'amnesty' billions of dollars of corporate profits that have been hiding in plain sight for years in foreign banks to avoid being taxed.  They will squeeze the life out of the regulatory process by denying operating funds to the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, whose job it is to protect the public from bad corporate behavior.  They will look for reasons to funnel more  and more government money to military contractors, despite the fact that the Untied States already spends more on its military than all of the rest of the world combined.

The Republican majority will not do anything to help the middle class. They will not raise the minimum wage, or support job creation programs. They will aggressively resist any initiative that does not serve the interests of  their big money enablers. They will deny the most basic science, when it doesn't fit their political agenda.  Forget about meaningful action on climate change. Forget about reproductive choice. Forget about any kind of useful environmental legislation. The Republican game is more tax breaks for billionaires,  more subsidies for dirty energy, more cuts to anything that helps the middle class. 

The next two years are looking pretty bleak. Even before this last election, the American Congress only registered a 15% approval rating among voters.  The level of public discontent has never been higher, and it can only get worse. 

I see a silver lining in this unfortunate set of political circumstances .  We elect our governments  to protect us against foreign enemies, to maintain law and order, to nurture a healthy economy, to look out for the well being of all citizens.  That's a tall order for Republicans, whose stated goal is to 'drown government in a bathtub'.  Until the next election, Republicans will be in the lead. If they perform as they have over the past few decades, they will fail miserably in their responsibility. Despite their expertise in shifting blame, they will find it difficult to avoid being tagged with the ineptitude that will surely be reflected in their lack of achievement for anyone other than Wall Street, billionaires, and craven corporatists.

By 2016, the public disgust with the corporate plutocracy that has displaced democracy in America will likely be at a fever pitch.  In the next two years, I expect Republicans to thoroughly discredit themselves. 

Echoes of the coming public backlash can be seen in some of the state-level initiatives that passed in this most recent election.  In Wisconsin, Ohio, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Florida, dozens of communities had initiatives on the ballot calling for a Constitutional amendment that eliminates 'Corporate Personhood' and repudiates 'Money being treated as Speech'.  These political referendums all passed by as much as 70% of the voters, including many that characterize themselves as conservatives.

I am convinced that Move to Amend [ www.movetoamend.org }  is the .key to restoring true  democracy in America.   Its Constitutional agenda would take away citizen rights and 'personhood' status from corporations. It would affirm that corporations are nothing more than state chartered legal fictions that, by law, must be accountable to the people for their actions.  The Move to Amend Constitutional Amendment also says that money is property, not a form of speech. Having boatloads of money should not include the right to use it to buy politicians and pervert the American political process.   What we see every time Move to Amend finds its way onto a local ballot, is that voters sign on with their overwhelming support.

The most important response to America's political malfeasance over the next two years is to expand awareness of the Move to Amend agenda.   As a citizen, I believe serving that end is the most important thing I can do.

We cannot count on politicians to deliver the fundamental political change we need. It must come from the grassroots.  'We, the people' must step up and demand the brand of governance the founders of our nation intended, free of corporate dominance; and free of moneyed influence.   We must become the change we wish for.

Life, Liberty, and Happiness

Have you read the Constitution? An amazing document. It starts out, ‘We the people… We the people, in order to form a more perfect union’.  What does that mean? It's about governance; governance that serves the people; all of the people, not just a privileged few, who happen to have money and influence.

That’s how it’s supposed to work.   We’re all supposed to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.    Our government, the one we elect under our Constitution, is supposed to work for us. Job one for the people we elect is to work for us, and our right  to life, liberty, and happiness.

That’s not happening. It’s not happening. Not even close. Our government has lost its way.  It has become a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate America.  Those who have the money have the influence and make the rules.  It’s that simple.

The word corporation appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution.   When Jefferson and the founding fathers wrote the Constitution in the 18^th century,  they knew well the threat posed by the power and wealth of corporations. In the 18th century, it took an act by the legislature to charter a corporation. They had to have a civic purpose, and by law,  they had a limited life. When they’d served their purpose, they were supposed to go away.

A lot has changed since then. Now U.S. chartered corporations can live forever. They no longer need to serve a public purpose.  They put profit and shareholder interest above pretty much all else. Most troubling of all,  they have finagled something for themselves that used to be, and rightfully should  be, only for human, flesh and blood people.  Corporations are now considered persons under the law.   When I said finagled, that’s exactly what I meant. There has never been a law passed that says corporations are people.  There’s nothing in the Constitution about corporations. They are and always have been artificial legal constructs that are chartered with the understanding that they are accountable ultimately to the people.  How did corporations become ‘persons’?  It turns out, the entire fiction of corporate personhood began with and continues to expand under a perverted precedent established by the United States Supreme Court.  It started in 1886 with a decision known as Santa Clara versus Southern Pacific. The court’s decision said nothing about corporate personhood. It was a clerk of the court, a former corporate lawyer, who inserted language in the notes that accompanied the court’s decision that said, corporations are considered to be persons under the law.   From that deceitful court clerk’s notes, a legal precedent was established.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. In 1976, the Supreme Court gave us the Buckley versus Valeo decision that said ‘money equals speech’. In 2010, the majority corporate conservatives on the  Supreme Court gave us Citizens United, which opened the floodgates for corporate political contributions. In 2014, the same court majority led by Chief Justice Roberts gave us McCutcheon vs. FEC, which expanded corporate political influence even further.   

Bottom line: Our elections are driven by influence money, and our politicians, too often, have become sociopaths, willfully feeding on obscene amounts of corporate cash  It is bribery on a massive scale, made legal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would be easy to point the finger at the Republican party. The GOP is the corporatist party. They get the lion’s share of corporate influence money, and they have rarely been shy about where their loyalties lie. That would be with Wall Street, multi-national corporations, and the like.  But there's no denying, the democrats are also part of the problem.  They too have become accustomed to trading their legislative votes for campaign cash.

These days, nothing much worth doing gets done in Congress because that’s the way the corporate minders and lobbyists want it. In Washington, meaningful change on pretty much anything of consequence is damned near impossible.  The same kind of thing is happening at the state and the local level. The corruption is nearly complete. Our political system is dysfunctional.  Too many of the people we elect to office are hacks, who are shamelessly willing to take the money and serve the rich and powerful interests that put them in office.

Every single challenge of consequence to the American people languishes because of bought and paid for political intransigence.

The mess we find ourselves in starts with two very bad ideas bolstered by the corrupt actions of the U.S. Supreme Court. One is the idea that corporations are people. The other is the idea that money is speech.

When money is speech, the only people politicians listen to are those who offer them wads of cash. Corporations have also used their deep pockets to capture control the print media, radio, television broadcasters, and they now working to consolidate their control of the internet.  As long as money is treated as speech, Wall Street and large corporations will decide public policy, not the American people. 

Moreover, when corporations are treated as persons under the law, they can use their ‘human’ rights to subvert the rights of  flesh and blood living citizens in a whole range of ways. A company like Monsanto can lie and withhold information about the impact of its genetically modified seed, and its herbicides that kill beneficial insects like honey bees. Personhood was the shield cigarette makers used to lie and deceive the public about the dangers of smoking. Personhood allows corporations guilty of criminal activity to use their ‘right against self-incrimination’ to avoid prosecution. Personhood bestowed on a corporation allows them to be unaccountable for their profit driven actions.  It is the fiction they hide behind to profit, while the consequences of their actions are left for taxpayers to cleanup. 

Fixing what’s broken about our country starts with the way we govern ourselves.  That means, we must focus our grassroots energy on a Constitutional remedy to our political malaise. In fact, anything short of that will hardly slow down the corruption in government.

If what I have written resonates with you, join the resistance. Become a part of the solution, Support Move to Amend’s initiative for a 28^th Constitution Amendment, a 'We the People'  Amendment' that will say ‘Corporations are not People’ and ‘Money is not Speech.’


Here is a link to Move to Amend...  www.movetoamend.org



 

Success is Often About Constituency Building

I learned about constituency building from my friend and colleague, Bill Hoagland. In the late-eighties and early nineties, Bill was the Hydrogen Energy Program Manager for the U.S Department of Energy.  I first met Bill at a symposium on hydrogen energy held at UCLA in Los Angeles.  I ended up teaming up with him to do documentaries and educational videos about hydrogen energy.  In 1993, we started a non-profit group called, Hydrogen 2000.   Over a dozen years,  we produced video material that was distributed world-wide.  The media work we were doing on hydrogen outreach at that time was groundbreaking.  Hydrogen 2000 accomplished some things and made some headway, but our success at building the constituencies needed for a transition to a renewable hydrogen economy was modest at best.  It turns out, we were just ahead of the times. Hydrogen is emerging prominently as part of the clean energy agenda of the European Union.  Many of my entries in this blog report on hydrogen and renewable energy development.

One thing I took from my years focused on hydrogen was my appreciation of the critical importance of constituency building.   More recently, I have come to believe the American people must aggressively resist the corporate oligarchy our nation has become.  The best way forward I know, given that priority, is to support a group called Move to Amend.  It's entire reason for being is to champion a Constitutional amendment that says Corporations are not people and money is not speech.

So I decided to become associated with MTA, with the idea that I might make a contribution in the area of constituency building.   Media messaging must be created that very specifically reaches out to every kind of  group or cause that counts American voters as members.  It will take more than one or even a handful of motivated filmmakers to elevate Move to Amend 's Constitutional agenda.  

Take organized labor for instance.  I would like to see two minute outreach videos tailored to each of the major national labor organizations.  SEIU, CWA, ILWU, UAW, etc, etc. I would like to see these messages embedded in the web home pages of every union local in America. Many union leaders and workers are already on board. Millions of others would surely support a Constitutional Amendment,  if aware.

All citizens,  of every age, gender orientation, or ethnicity  have a stake in the fight with corporatists and oligarchs..  Environmentalists, educators, students, religious groups;  people with all types of  life affirming activism are natural constituents for Move to Amend. The more media outreach is done  with these various, diverse constituencies, the faster we will reach the groundswell needed to  affect real change.

David Delk,  leader of the Portland chapter of Move to Amend, recognizes the importance of media outreach. He was willing to work with me to develop a series of  short videos for the internet.   An initial cut of our first one,  Citizen's Amendment, has just been posted.  The link is    https://vimeo.com/94987111  It's the first of three we're doing. 

These videos are full of aspiration, despite their very modest, even home baked production values.   I would love to inspire a firestorm of video creativity, by dozens, hundreds, even thousands of  filmmakers.  We want them to apply their skills and passion to the process of  constituency building for Move to Amend.

Move to Amends'  webpage  indicates  they are looking for a person to handle media outreach.   Let me say, lest there be any misunderstanding, that I am not a candidate for that job.  It should go to someone young  and energetic, who has a record of creativity, especially with the emerging social media.  Once that person is in place, I hope she or he will broaden MTA's outreach and engagement with independent filmmakers.  I also will urge them to launch  a library of video b-roll with creative commons licensing.  I'm willing to contribute video material to such a library. I'm sure others would as well. Quality b-roll  is an important part of  a large share of the activist videos that are made. Having such a library on line would be a huge added motivation for filmmakers to champion Move to Amend.

I have no illusions that the little video pieces we are dong will win any prizes. They are modest by design and execution.  What I hope to see is a swarm of young, talented, social media savvy people get on board with this.  Move to Amend needs them. The world needs them.  Let's  get things rolling.  We needed to be at critical mass with Move to Amend's agenda yesterday.  Times a'wastiin'...

I Stand With Move to Amend

At the beginning of 2014,  while recovering from yet another surgery on my spine, I concluded that I needed to be more assertive as a citizen in pushing back against what I consider to be the greatest threat to peace, prosperity and the natural world. The threat I'm talking about is the abject corruption of our political system. The corrupted U.S. Supreme Court has handed the super-rich and large corporations the ability to buy our elected officials and our political process,  A series of court decisions, most recently Citizens United and McCutcheon vs. FEC,  allows those with  wealth to give unlimited amounts of campaign money to politicians.  In effect, this legalized form of bribery gives these special interests the ability to shape public policy, putting their own interests over the public good.

Every issue; every challenge we face as a society is impacted by this egregious and,  unfortunately, legal brand of political racketeering.

We know that the vast majority of the American public wants economic fairness,  an expanding job market,  a living wage for everyone. The vast majority wants equal rights and equal justice for women, for minorities, for all citizens, regardless of age, creed, gender or ethnicity. The polls show that most people want to protect our environment and the planet's biodiversity. It's clear that the biggest share of American voters are against the militarization of our law enforcement and the constant drumbeat for war and conflict with other nations. 

The public wants to trust their print and broadcast media. They want it to report the news honestly, without bias, without hidden agenda.  Instead, what we have - very nearly across the board -  is a  media that filters and shapes its news coverage to serve corporations and wealthy conservatives.

Probably the biggest issue facing all of humankind is global climate change.  It's already happening. The science is undeniable. Without some seriously assertive action, the effects of atmospheric warming will swamp coastal cities around the world well before the end of this century.  We're already experiencing a very unsettling increase in extreme weather events - floods, draughts, heat waves,  tornadoes, hurricanes.  Something like ninety-seven  out of a hundred climate scientists  around the world are all standing together, sounding the alarm.  Climate change could kill millions, perhaps billions of humans, destroy our environment, and devastate civilized society for centuries to come.

What are we doing about it? Very little, it turns out, because those who benefit from our continued dependence on dirty, fossil fuel energy are using their wealth to maintain their continued profiteering from coal, oil, and gas.  They sell a feckless kind of climate denial through their control of our public media. They pay off our elected officials to maintain their profits by obstructing  public policy that encourages a transition to clean, renewable forms of energy.

It doesn't matter what constituency you count yourself a part of , the enemy of progress, of any kind of  meaningful change, is the same. It's the small cabal of corporate leaders and super wealthy individuals who use massive amounts of money to resist change and thwart any idea that puts the common good over their private interests

Bottom line: no matter your cause,  the real enemy of progress is our broken system of governance. Making it right requires that we  do two things: reign in corporate power, and refute the influence of money on our politics. How do we do that?

Eliminating the sewer money and corruption from American politics will be no easy task, though it really isn't terribly complicated. When you examine all the facts, the answer is abundantly clear.  The culprit is the U.S.  Supreme Court.  The foundation of virtually all the corruption of our political system is built on two morally bankrupt legal constructs, sanctioned by a corporate conservative majority on the court.  The first bogus construct is the idea that money is equal to free speech. That's fine for those that have money. The problem is it disenfranchises the 99% of citizens who don't have big money to buy off politicians. The second corrosive legal construct is the idea that Corporations have the same rights as humans.  

The current law of the land says  a rich person's wealth is a form of free speech and that corporations can claim personhood to get away with all kinds of unethical or even illegal behavior. This must change.

The answer is pretty straight forward.  We need to change our Constitution.  We need a new, 28th Constitutional Amendment that says specifically and unequivocally that corporations are not people. They do not have the same rights as human citizens.  Second, this 28th Amendment should say that money is not the same as free speech, and that just because you have big money doesn't mean you get to use it to pervert our political system.

Move to Amend is a national grassroots campaign that is focused on accomplishing one goal - a Constitutional amendment that says Corporations are not people and money is not speech. Every American who cares about our nation and our planetary future should be standing with Move to Amend. 

My goal in becoming engaged with Move to Amend is to help build broad, well-informed citizen constituencies for the cause. This is a movement that crosses political boundaries.  It's not Democratic, or Republican, or libertarian.  Conservatives should embrace Move to Amend's Constitutional agenda as readily as liberals and progressives.

I am now working with David Delk, the leader of Move to Amend's chapter in Portland, Oregon.  We are developing a series of short outreach videos that  focus tightly on specific constituencies. The first three videos are currently in production.  We will be releasing them on the internet.  We hope they will inspire other filmmakers to do their own videos to expand the public's awareness and enthusiasm for Move to Amend.

Stay tuned. More on this in my next post.

McCutcheon Vs. FEC

Well, today the Supreme Court did it again. It ruled there should be no limits on campaign spending in our elections.   The floodgates have now opened for billionaires like the Koch Brothers to own America's political system.  It was bad enough when the slug bait conservatives on the court voted 5-4 for Citizen's United, the first step on the road to 'he who has the money makes the rules'. 

McCutcheon Vs. FEC effectively removes all remaining limits to the amount of money a corporation or an individual can spend to influence our elections.   We no longer have a democracy.  We have an oligarchy controlled by super-rich plutocrats.

The sad thing is most Americans still seem to be in the dark about this.  Just last week, a poll revealed that 52% of Americans don't know who the Koch Brothers are.   That is very disturbing, given the fact that the Koch's, who inherited their wealth from their father,  are the poster boys for egregious spending to buy the politics they want.

Though corporate conservatives, most of whom are Republican, are primarily responsible for the sewer money politics that prevail in this country, both parties are guilty of feeding on dirty money from the Koch's and other super rich political manipulators.

There is only one answer that will restore our Constitution. That is a 28th Constitutional Amendment that says specifically that Corporations are not people and money is not speech.  The people we elect to govern our country will not make this happen. They are part of the problem.  To make this right, the American people must step up and stand together in a grass root effort to rid our politics of big money influence.

There is a group called Move to Amend. It's one and only focus is on a Constitutional Amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not speech.  I support Move to Amend.  Every American has a duty to stand together to support Move to Amend's unambiguous and straightforward Constitutional remedy.

The Constitution is supposed to serve the interests of all the people, not just the rich and powerful.  If you aren't already onboard,  take the time to learn about Move to Amend, then join us and become part of the solution. We all have a stake in this fight.  It's time to step up and be counted.

Visit the Move to Amend website...www.movetomend.org

Silhouette Man Speaks

Here is a very clever reflection of a big part of what ails us in America.  It comes down to a whole range of perversely distorted priorities, caused mostly by the sewer money funneled by corporations and the super rich to the seriously corrupted, elected politicians that are supposed to be serving the public interest.

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Populists want Fairness

I pulled this piece on populism from the Campaign for America's Future website. The author is Columnist Richard Eskow.   I believe Eskow is right. America is not a moderate nation or centrist nation as the media likes to say. An overwhelming majority of our citizens want fairness. They want a political system that works for all the people, not just the richest, and they don't believe corporate rights should be put ahead of human rights.

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The Populist Moment

February 3, 2014

Richard Eskow

 

 

Of all the myths that circulate in Washington, perhaps none is more prevalent or intractable than the one that says that the United States is a “moderate” nation – and that the “center” of public opinion lies somewhere between the views of conservative Democrats and those of less extreme Republicans (a relative term at best).

The polling data shows conclusively that this is wrong, but the mythology refuses to die.

According to the myth, the rise of populism is to be condemned as “polarization,” a situation that the capital’s insider subculture routinely laments – even when it involves something that in other historical moments would be described as “a debate.”

In this worldview, “populists” are as extreme as Tea Party radicals and are to be treated with equal disdain. At best they’re useful naïfs who can be trotted out to stir up the base at election time, then to be conveniently sidelined again for the next four years. And that worst they’re childlike ideologues, to be condescended to and dismissed.

In this worldview, anyone who labels himself a “liberal” or “progressive” is pushing a hopelessly sentimental ideology that has been thoroughly rejected by an increasingly conservative public. If only these “extremists” on both sides would get out of the way, so the legend goes, then conservatively inclined Democrats could get together with their more pragmatic Republican colleagues to carry out the kinds of policies the American people want: deficit reduction, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, privatization, and other grown-up initiatives.

There’s one problem with this worldview: Poll after poll has consistently shown that it is wrong. It turns out that the American people, like those politicians of the left whom the pundits love to decry, are a pretty populist bunch.

Overall, more Americans still describe themselves as “conservative” then liberal, but that figure has fallen slightly as liberal identification has risen. And bear in mind: no major American politician has defended the “liberal” label for many decades, certainly not in the fearless way that Franklin D. Roosevelt did.

But self-labeling is probably the least significant part of the political equation. Politicians insist that the real key to victory lies in winning over independents and winnable members of the opposite party. (They tend to underplay the importance of turnout, which is driven by enthusiasm among the base. Fortunately, as were about to see, those two issues line up nicely – at least for the Democrats.)

if you believe that, then a key question for Democrats becomes: where do these two groups stand on populism?  The answer, as they say, may surprise you – especially if you are a Washington politician, pundit, or political consultant.

The classic definition of an “economic populist” is a person who feels that wealth is unfairly distributed in this country. Unsurprisingly, most Republicans don’t feel that way. According to surveys collected by PollingReport.com, more than a third of them agree that our economy’s distribution of wealth is unfair. That includes an overwhelming 80 percent of Democrats and 62 percent – nearly two-thirds – of “independents.”

That means that a Democratic candidate who pushes populism has a chance of attracting two-thirds of independents and more than one-third of the opposition party’s voters.

This enthusiasm translates into a desire for more government action, and the poll numbers become stronger as the questions get more specific. Of those polled by Pew, 53 percent thought that the government should be doing a lot to reduce poverty, for example, and 82 percent thought that it should do either “a lot” or “some” to help the poor.

More than two-thirds of those polled thought the government should do “a lot” or “some” to reduce inequality. Fifty-four percent of voters thought taxes should be raised on corporations and the wealthy. And voters have consistently said that the government should place more emphasis on spending to improve the economy than it should on reducing the budget deficit – at a time when it has consistently done the opposite.

What’s more, 69 percent of voters would rather protect Social Security then reduce the deficit and only 18 percent disagree. And yet cuts to Social Security have been proposed by both the Democratic president and his Republican opponents in Congress. Previous polls have shown that this opposition to Social Security cuts was shared by three-quarters of Republican voters, and even 76 percent of self-described Tea Party members.

Is it any wonder the polls also show that Americans are disillusioned with their system of government?

Americans are “populist” on the minimum wage, too. A Quinnipiac poll shows that voters overwhelmingly favor raising the minimum wage, by 71 percent to 27 percent.

Overall, Americans continue to believe that our government should be doing more to fix our broken economy. The Quinnipiac poll showed that 39 percent of voters consider the economy the highest priority for President Obama and Congress, and 20 percent of them gave other economically related issues the top ranking, but only 23 percent ranked the federal budget deficit the highest.

And yet, budget discussions will undoubtedly center on the extent and nature of additional cuts to be made. But there are signs of a potential shift on the horizon. We’ve seen an increasing number of leaders rise to national prominence on a populist platform, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley, Sherrod Brown, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. There’s been a shift in rhetoric from the President and other Democratic leaders, along with a renewed emphasis on populist issues like an increase in the minimum wage.

Still, the cultural forces that knit Washington’s tribal figures together are strong. That city’s myths and rituals are powerful. The call of self-interest, whether it involves revolving-door corporate jobs for lesser figures or hedge-fund driven wealth for former presidents, is undoubtedly even stronger.

That means there will be an ongoing temptation to respond to this shift in public opinion by offering some form of Populism Lite, a set of watered-down proposals designed to look like the fundamental change people want. But you can’t fake change. You certainly can’t fake change in an economic reality which people live through, and suffer through, on a daily basis.

The signs increasingly indicate that, however much the folkways of Washington may resist, this nation has entered a Populist Moment. If you live and work inside the Beltway, you ignore it at your own peril.

 

 

 

The Crash of 2016

Thom Hartmann's new book, The Crash of 2016 offers evidence and historical context for yet another economic collapse of our society. What happened in 2008 is about to happen again, only this time, it will be much worse.  That's the unambiguous conclusion of The Crash of 2016.  

I have read many of Hartmann's books. His worldview is built on solid research. In a nutshell, as he sees it, human civilization is on the precipice. Too many people, too few resources, and a  political system that is corrupt to the core.  What Hartmann calls Economic royalists have brought America to its knees before. In fact, there's a pattern. Hartmann's calls it the great forgetting, where every fourth generation removed from an economic meltdown caused by the hubris of corporations, banksters, and individuals exercising unrestrained self-interest, it happens again. In 1929, the world fell into a great depression, driven largely by the excessive gaming of the economic system by the rich.  In response, the people elected Franklin Roosevelt. As President, he launched a recovery with his progressive 'New Deal' ideas. Then World War Two came. In it's aftermath, America and the rest of the world moved into an extended period of economic growth and broadly realized prosperity.  Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President. He and his neo-conservative cabal cut taxes on the rich and launched an era of deregulation that set us on an inevitable course for another collapse.  The American middle class has been eviscerated by conservative, 'supply-side' economic policy.  The first reckoning came with the 2008 economic meltdown. Unfortunately, the response was entirely inadequate. The neo-conservatives who caused the meltdown were not held accountable.  Because of inadequate policy reforms, the recovery from 2008 has been tepid at best.   Now, as Thom Hartmann so effectively points out, we are headed toward another collapse. This one will be much more severe than what happened in 2008.  Hartmann makes a very strong case for another economic breakdown in 2016, give or take a year or two.

So, what do we do?  First, we brace for what appears to be inevitable; another collapse of our economic system.  As before, there will be a lot of finger pointing. The neo-conservatives will blame everyone but themselves. We will have a choice.  We can stay the course and allow corporations, the banksters, and the rich to run roughshod over what's left of our civilization, or we can elect leaders who will choose a progressive course and make much-needed reforms to our system of governance...reforms that will restore 'of, by, and for the people' to our way of life.

Thom Hartmann's The Crash of 2016 delivers  a clear prescription for what we as citizens must do to rebuild from the ashes of the crash that's coming. His vision offers hope for a new order that is both life-affirming and sustainable over the long term.

Highest recommendation.


Here is a link to Thom Hartmann's website and radio show...  http://www.thomhartmann.com/

The Way Forward

I am in awe of this reality we live in.  It is amazing to think about the size of the universe; amazing to think how it works; amazing  to think how it gives life to so much complexity.  How can one not appreciate these wonders?  How can we not see the life each of us has been given as a gift… a gift that comes with responsibility; a gift that obligates us to take care of the living fabric of our planet?

The problem is, we are not meeting our obligation. We are not taking care of the Earth. Start with climate change.  We humans are responsible for billions of tons of heat trapping pollutants  being pumped into the atmosphere from our cars, our power plants, even from the food choices we make.  The result: higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and more powerful weather events.   We are stripping the forest from our landscapes. We are polluting the sea and exhausting its biological bounty. We are abusing  our fresh water supplies shamelessly.  The soils we depend on are being parched of critical nutrients. We are propagating ourselves mindlessly, consuming all the resources nature has given us like there is no tomorrow.  There are now more than seven billion humans on Earth. How many is too many? We have ravaged our nest nearly to exhaustion. We are supposed to be intelligent beings. We are not behaving that way.  

If we make the Earth uninhabitable,  where else are we going to go?  Oh yes, some say, ‘no problem, we can go live on the Moon or on Mars’.  What are they thinking?   At best, we are hundreds of years from that possibility.  Even if this was not a fantasy; even if it could happen, have you seen pictures of the Moon and Mars?  Would you want to live there?  Isn’t it so much easier and smarter just to take care of what we have?

Some people believe it’s too late to make things right; too late to avoid civilization  scale collapse.  I hope that  is wrong, but there is no denying, we are already being tested by potentially  catastrophic forces like climate change;  forces we ourselves have unleashed.  It’s happening, and it will get worse. How much worse depends on the decisions we make as a global human culture now. Every moment we delay equates to more suffering for future human generations and  more destruction of the natural world we depend on. 

About three out of ten people totally get what I am saying. The rest are indifferent, undecided, or stubbornly resistant to science and reason. Those of us who share a progressive world view must be assertive. We must encourage our friends who are out of step to see the light.  We must urge them to be part of shaping a future that is sustainable and life affirming.  

 

Where Do We Start?

Our poor stewardship of the biosphere has consequences. Some cannot be stopped, but the worst may still be avoidable. Clean, sustainable technologies are emerging or are already here that can be transformative.   There are behavioral  changes and policy changes we can make that will allow us to reassert thoughtful control over the world we will leave to future generations.

As a first step, beyond the nationalities reflected in our passports, we must begin to see ourselves as citizens of the Earth. Insular thinking does not serve the best interests of society as a whole. Taking proper care of the biosphere must become everyone’s cause.

There is reason for optimism. Tens of millions of people around the world  are already asserting themselves as Earth citizens. They are engaged in progressive action on a whole range of human challenges.  That is a very good thing, but an assertive focus on a single narrow issue, no matter how worthwhile,  is not enough.  Women’s rights activists, and LGBT activists, and animal rights activists, and those fighting for economic fairness must devote a share of their activist energy toward the root cause of our dysfunction.   

Governance, on a local, national, and global scale, is the way the common good is supposed to be facilitated. But what happens when a small number of privileged elites are able to use their wealth and influence to pervert our political systems? What happens when the common good is trampled by self-centered corporate and special interests?   The answer to those questions is abundantly clear. We see the evidence revealed every day on one issue after another.  Everywhere we turn, we find public policy that is  shaped to serve private interests over the public good. 

What is the root cause of our inability to effectively take action on global scale challenges?  Here is the one word answer: corruption.  Governance, politics, the media, finance, health care: all of these arenas have been egregiously corrupted, favoring entrenched private interests over the public good. He who has the money makes the rules, that’s the unfortunate bottom line.  As long as we the people accept that; as long as so many citizens remain unaware or indifferent to that, we’re screwed.

It starts with governance. The congress runs on its own brand of legalized  bribery. The courts, particularly,  the Supreme Court, are corrupted.  Most agencies responsible for managing the government’s regulatory functions are deeply corrupted by industry ‘insider’ appointees.

Candidates for elective office at the local, state, and national level can’t get elected without the financial support of corporations, special interest political action groups, and rich campaign donors, all of whom expect allegiance to their narrow agendas in return. The Supreme Court’s ‘Citizen’s United’  decision opened the floodgates for anonymous and essentially limitless campaign contributions for candidates willing to pledge allegiance to their financial underwriters.  So, who gets elected?  In way too many cases, it’s the candidate with no principles who takes the political sewer money.  It amounts to a barely disguised form of legalized bribery.

Instead of wearing ourselves down fighting the symptoms of this corruption,  we need to get at the root cause.  The evidence suggests that the foundation for this particularly American style of political corruption lies with two morally bankrupt legal constructs. One is the idea that money equates to free speech. If you have money, you are allowed to run roughshod over  the political process; to spend as such as you like to control your own public policy agenda. Thus, we end up with elected officials, who are the best money can buy.

The second corrosive legal construct has never been codified in law. It is the precedent that corporations are considered persons under the law.  It is not the product of any legislation. It has never been properly vetted by the courts.  Yet, it is accepted as legal precedent.  This very bad idea blossomed back in the 19^th century during the robber baron era which, it turns out, had more than a little in common with the dysfunctional politics that prevail today.  Assigning personhood to corporations has led to all kinds of ethically repugnant behavior that puts their self-interest ahead of the public interest.

Getting rid of ‘money equals speech’ and ‘corporate personhood’ would do much to make populist political candidates more electable.   How do we make it happen?  It turns out, there is already a clear pathway. A non-profit populist action group called,  Move to Amend [www.movetoamend.com] has emerged. Its mission is tightly focused on one very specific goal: to pass a constitutional amendment that would end ‘money as speech’ and repudiate ‘Corporate personhood’. 

 Move to Amend is not the only group that claims to have a remedy for our constitutional malaise.  There are other initiatives with different focuses. Some are about turning back the clock on ‘Citizens United’.   The problem is ‘Citizens United’  is not the cause of our broken democracy, it is an exacerbation that makes a bad situation worse. The legal foundation for ‘Citizens United’ is the entire focus of Move to Amend.  A constitutional amendment nullifying ‘money as speech’ and ‘corporate personhood’ is a game changer; it is the closest thing to a cure that exists.  It is the critical first step; the foundation on which government can be revitalized and made accountable to its citizens again.  

No matter what the cause,  Move to Amend has the ultimate answer. A constitutional amendment nullifying ‘money as speech’ and ‘corporate personhood’ is the single most important thing that can be done to restore our democracy.  Every citizen needs to become part of the grass roots effort to get this done

Go to the Move to Amend website. www.movetoamend.com   Inform yourself, and become part of the solution.


 

Money as Speech - The Musical

When one closely examines the global scale challenges we face as a human culture,  we must depend on governance to address these issues.  After all, our governments are supposed to be looking out for our interests, right?    Very often,  way too often, that is not happening.  Instead,  the governance process has been coopted for the benefit of a handful of  elites, who use their wealth and power to manipulate public policy for their own narrow interests.

ProPublica's new music video tells that story in very entertaining fashion.

Here is a link to Pro Publica's very provocative and engaging  video...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d-bYU2cZ48

Rhymes With Smoky Joe

Here is a remarkable short video that focuses on a Texas Republican congressman named 'Smoky' Joe Barton.

In 1996, Barton was a central figure in the tobacco industry's effort to push back against clear evidence linking cigarette smoking with lung cancer and other health maladies.  Though the science was and is irrefutable, Barton was one of the chief deniers resisting pressure for the government to put warning labels on cigarette packages. Barton was clearly linked to big tobacco through large contributions to his congressional election campaign.  In this video, Barton can be seen swearing on a bible that his ties to big tobacco had no influence on his position defending that industry against further regulation. Of course, the evidence shows that Barton was lying through his teeth.

Congressman Joe Barton

More recently, Barton has been a leader of the climate deniers in Congress, resisting every effort to enact legislation to regulate atmospheric carbon emissions.  This man, who wears his religion on his sleeve, is a splendid example of why our government doesn't work. Here is a guy, who has shamelessly sold his soul to the highest bidder.   Barton is not unusual. In Washington, legalized bribery rules.  Both political parties are egregiously corrupted by big money from corporations and special interests. Our system of government has been perverted and rigged to favor sociopathic sellouts like Barton.  These days, that's why so very little that's truly useful and worthwhile gets done.  Enough said. Check out this video.

Here is the link to Rhymes with Smoky Joe...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj0PYdl99tI

Since I first posted this blog, Joe Barton has added another chapter to his litany of moral bankruptcy.  Now he is the congressional poster boy for abolishing the minimum wage. 

Joe Barton. The best congressman money can buy.

Top 10 Policies for a Steady-State Economy

Anybody who is paying attention knows that the economic engine that makes the global economy go has gone off the tracks.    It's too many people and too few resources, combined with the corrosive impact of the current predatory brand of market capitalism.  We live in a world where the super-rich and giant corporations use their money and influence to put their own interests first. The current market economic model serves the few at the expense of the many. We are squandering the planet's limited natural resources.  Our operating system needs a serious upgrade to one in which the needs of people - all people - are in balance with the planet's ability to provide.

Economist Herman Daly has long been a beacon for a steady-state economy, which is exactly what is required to balance a broadly realized quality of life for humanity with the enduring needs of our earth's natural systems. The article below by Herman Daly offers a clear prescription for reshaping our regulatory framework to foster a steady-state way of life.  It's not complicated. A number of European nations are already on this life affirming road. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are prime examples.  

The impediments to achieving a steady-state paradigm  are entirely political.  Our current system is mired in corruption. The first step to a life-affirming, steady-state economy is a Constitutional Amendment that declares that corporations are not people, and that  'Personhood' is s status given only to 'flesh and blood' humans. Further, this amendment must declare that money is not the same as speech.  Blunting these two morally bankrupt legal constructs will go a long way toward restoring 'of, by, and for' the people to our democracy.

The good news is a group called Move to Amend is aggressively promoting just such a Constitutional change.

 I urge the visitor to read the article pasted in below. If you want to encourage a world that works for future generations, Herman Daly's 'Top Ten Policies' are a very good place to start.

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Top 10 Policies for a Steady-State Economy

Posted By Herman Daly On October 28, 2013 @ 9:00 pm In Economic Growth,Economic Policy,Environment,Herman Daly,Jobs and Employment,Money and Investments,Population,Poverty Alleviation,Steady State Economy,Sustainability | 2 Comments

by Herman Daly

Let’s get specific. Here are ten policies for ending uneconomic growth ^[1] and moving to a steady-state economy. A steady-state economy is one that develops qualitatively (by improvement in science, technology, and ethics) without growing quantitatively in physical dimensions; it lives on a diet — a constant metabolic flow of resources from depletion to pollution (the entropic throughput) maintained at a level that is both sufficient for a good life and within the assimilative and regenerative capacities of the containing ecosystem.

Ten is an arbitrary number — just a way to get specific and challenge others to suggest improvements. Although the whole package here discussed fits together in the sense that some policies supplement and balance others, most of them could be adopted singly and gradually.

1. Cap-auction-trade systems for basic resources. Caps limit biophysical scale by quotas on depletion or pollution, whichever is more limiting. Auctioning the quotas captures scarcity rents for equitable redistribution. Trade allows efficient allocation to highest uses. This policy has the advantage of transparency. There is a limit to the amount and rate of depletion and pollution that the economy can be allowed to impose on the ecosystem. Caps are physical quotas, limits to the throughput of basic resources, especially fossil fuels. The quota usually should be applied at the input end because depletion is more spatially concentrated than pollution and hence easier to monitor. Also the higher price of basic resources will induce their more economical use at each upstream stage of production, as well as at the final stages of consumption and recycling. Ownership of the quotas is initially public — the government periodically auctions them to individuals and firms. There should be no “grandfathering” of quota rights to previous users, nor “offshoring” of quotas for new fossil fuel power plants in one by place by credits from planting trees somewhere else. Reforestation is a good policy on its own.  It is too late for self-canceling half measures — increased carbon sequestration and decreased emissions are both needed. The auction revenues go to the treasury and are used to replace regressive taxes, such as the payroll tax, and to reduce income tax on the lowest incomes. Once purchased at auction the quotas can be freely bought and sold by third parties, just as can the resources whose rate of depletion they limit. The cap serves the goal of sustainable scale; the auction serves the goal of fair distribution; and trading allows efficient allocation — three goals, three policy instruments. Although mainly applied to nonrenewable resources, the same logic works for limiting the off-take from renewable resources, such as fisheries and forests, with the quota level set to approximate a sustainable yield.


2. Ecological tax reform. Shift the tax base from value added (labor and capital) to “that to which value is added,” namely the entropic throughput of resources extracted from nature (depletion), and returned to nature (pollution). Such a tax shift prices the scarce but previously un-priced contribution of nature. Value added to natural resources by labor and capital is something we want to encourage, so stop taxing it. Depletion and pollution are things we want to discourage, so tax them. Payment above necessary supply price is rent, unearned income, and most economists have long advocated taxing it, both for efficiency and equity reasons. Ecological tax reform can be an alternative or a supplement to cap-auction-trade systems.


3. Limit the range of inequality in income distribution with a minimum income and a maximum income. Without aggregate growth poverty reduction requires redistribution. Unlimited inequality is unfair; complete equality is also unfair. Seek fair limits to the range of inequality. The civil service, the military, and the university manage with a range of inequality of a factor of 15 or 20. Corporate America has a range of 500 or more. Many industrial nations are below 25. Could we not limit the range to, say, 100, and see how it works? This might mean a minimum of 20 thousand dollars and a maximum of two million. Is that not more than enough to give incentive for hard work and compensate real differences? People who have reached the limit could either work for nothing at the margin if they enjoy their work, or devote their extra time to hobbies or public service. The demand left unmet by those at the top will be filled by those who are below the maximum. A sense of community, necessary for democracy, is hard to maintain across the vast income differences current in the United States. Rich and poor separated by a factor of 500 have few experiences or interests in common, and are increasingly likely to engage in violent conflict.


4. Free up the length of the working day, week, and year — allow greater option for part-time or personal work. Full-time external employment for all is hard to provide without growth. Other industrial countries have much longer vacations and maternity leaves than the United States. For the classical economists the length of the working day was a key variable by which the worker (self-employed yeoman or artisan) balanced the marginal disutility of labor with the marginal utility of income and of leisure so as to maximize enjoyment of life. Under industrialism the length of the working day became a parameter rather than a variable (and for Karl Marx was the key determinant of the rate of exploitation). We need to make it more of a variable subject to choice by the worker. Milton Friedman wanted “freedom to choose” — OK, here is an important choice most of us are not allowed to make! And we should stop biasing the labor-leisure choice by advertising to stimulate more consumption and more labor to pay for it. At a minimum advertising should no longer be treated as a tax-deductible expense of production.

5. Re-regulate international commerce — move away from free trade, free capital mobility, and globalization. Cap-auction-trade, ecological tax reform, and other national measures that internalize environmental costs will raise prices and put us at a competitive disadvantage in international trade with countries that do not internalize costs. We should adopt compensating tariffs to protect, not inefficient firms, but efficient national policies of cost internalization from standards-lowering competition with foreign firms that are not required to pay the social and environmental costs they inflict. This “new protectionism” is very different from the “old protectionism” that was designed to protect a truly inefficient domestic firm from a more efficient foreign firm. The first rule of efficiency is “count all the costs” — not “free trade,” which coupled with free capital mobility leads to a standards-lowering competition to count as few costs as possible. Tariffs are also a good source of public revenue. This will run afoul of the World Trade Organization/World Bank/International Monetary Fund, so….

 

Ten pieces of the policy puzzle for an earth-centric economy

 

 

6. Downgrade the WTO/WB/IMF. Reform these organizations based on something like Keynes’s original plan for a multilateral payments clearing union, charging penalty rates on surplus as well as deficit balances with the union — seek balance on current account, and thereby avoid large foreign debts and capital account transfers. For example, under Keynes’s plan the U.S. would pay a penalty charge to the clearing union for its large deficit with the rest of the world, and China would also pay a similar penalty for its surplus. Both sides of the imbalance would be pressured to balance their current accounts by financial penalties, and if need be by exchange rate adjustments relative to the clearing account unit, called the “bancor” by Keynes. The bancor would also serve as the world reserve currency, a privilege that should not be enjoyed by any national currency, including the U.S. dollar. Reserve currency status for the dollar is a benefit to the U.S. — rather like a truckload of free heroin is a benefit to an addict. The bancor would be like gold under the gold standard, only you would not have to tear up the earth to dig it out. Alternatively a regime of freely fluctuating exchange rates is a viable possibility requiring less international cooperation.


7. Move away from fractional reserve banking toward a system of 100% reserve requirements. This would put control of the money supply and seigniorage (profit made by the issuer of fiat money) in the hands of the government rather than private banks, which would no longer be able to live the alchemist’s dream by creating money out of nothing and lending it at interest. All quasi-bank financial institutions should be brought under this rule, regulated as commercial banks subject to 100% reserve requirements. Banks would earn their profit by financial intermediation only, lending savers’ money for them (charging a loan rate higher than the rate paid to savings or “time-account” depositors) and charging for checking, safekeeping, and other services. With 100% reserves every dollar loaned to a borrower would be a dollar previously saved by a depositor (and not available to him during the period of the loan), thereby re-establishing the classical balance between abstinence and investment. With credit limited by prior saving (abstinence from consumption) there will be less lending and borrowing and it will be done more carefully — no more easy credit to finance the massive purchase of “assets” that are nothing but bets on dodgy debts. To make up for the decline in bank-created, interest-bearing money the government can pay some of its expenses by issuing more non-interest-bearing fiat money. However, it can only do this up to a strict limit imposed by inflation. If the government issues more money than the public voluntarily wants to hold, the public will trade it for goods, driving the price level up. As soon as the price index begins to rise the government must print less and tax more. Thus a policy of maintaining a constant price index would govern the internal value of the dollar. The Treasury would replace the Fed, and the target policy variables would be the money supply and the price index, not the interest rate. The external value of the dollar could be left to freely fluctuating exchange rates (or preferably to the rate against the bancor in Keynes’s clearing union).


8. Stop treating the scarce as if it were free, and the free as if it were scarce. Enclose the remaining open-access commons of rival natural capital (e.g., the atmosphere, the electromagnetic spectrum, and public lands) in public trusts, and price them by cap-auction-trade systems, or by taxes.  At the same time, free from private enclosure and prices the non-rival commonwealth of knowledge and information. Knowledge, unlike the resource throughput, is not divided in the sharing, but multiplied. Once knowledge exists, the opportunity cost of sharing it is zero, and its allocative price should be zero. International development aid should more and more take the form of freely and actively shared knowledge, along with small grants, and less and less the form of large interest-bearing loans. Sharing knowledge costs little, does not create un-repayable debts, and increases the productivity of the truly rival and scarce factors of production. Patent monopolies (aka “intellectual property rights”) should be given for fewer “inventions,” and for fewer years. Costs of production of new knowledge should, more and more, be publicly financed and then the knowledge freely shared. Knowledge is a cumulative social product, and we have the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics, the double helix, polio vaccine, etc. without patent monopolies and royalties.


9. Stabilize population. Work toward a balance in which births plus in-migrants equals deaths plus out-migrants. This is controversial and difficult, but as a start contraception should be made available for voluntary use everywhere. And while each nation can debate whether it should accept many or few immigrants, and who should get priority, such a debate is rendered moot if immigration laws are not enforced. We should support voluntary family planning and enforcement of reasonable immigration laws, democratically enacted.


10. Reform national accounts — separate GDP into a cost account and a benefits account. Natural capital consumption and “regrettably necessary defensive expenditures” belong in the cost account. Compare costs and benefits of a growing throughput at the margin, and stop throughput growth when marginal costs equal marginal benefits. In addition to this objective approach, recognize the importance of the subjective studies that show that, beyond a threshold, further GDP growth does not increase self-evaluated happiness. Beyond a level already reached in many countries, GDP growth delivers no more happiness, but continues to generate depletion and pollution. At a minimum we must not just assume that GDP growth is economic growth, but prove that it is not uneconomic growth.

Currently these policies are beyond the pale politically. To the reader who has persevered this far, I thank you for your willing suspension of political disbelief. Only after a significant crash, a painful empirical demonstration of the failure of the growth economy, would this ten-fold program, or anything like it, stand a chance of being enacted.

To be sure, the conceptual change in vision from the norm of a growth economy to that of a steady-state economy is radical. Some of these proposals are rather technical and require more explanation and study. There is no escape from studying economics, even if, as Joan Robinson said, the main reason for it is to avoid being deceived by economists. Nevertheless, the policies required are far from revolutionary, and are subject to gradual application. For example, 100% reserve banking was advocated in the 1930s by the conservative Chicago School and can be approached gradually, the range of distributive inequality can be restricted gradually, caps can be adjusted gradually, etc. More importantly, these measures are based on the impeccably conservative institutions of private property and decentralized market allocation. The policies here advocated simply reaffirm forgotten pillars of those institutions, namely that: (1) private property loses its legitimacy if too unequally distributed; (2) markets lose their legitimacy if prices do not tell the truth about opportunity costs; and as we have more recently learned (3) the macro-economy becomes an absurdity if its scale is required to grow beyond the biophysical limits of the Earth.

Herman Daly

 

 

Well before reaching that radical biophysical limit, we are encountering the classical economic limit in which extra costs of growth become greater than the extra benefits, ushering in the era of uneconomic growth, whose very possibility is denied by the growthists. The inequality of wealth distribution has canceled out the traditional virtues of private property by bestowing nearly all benefits of growth to the top 1%, while generously sharing the costs of growth with the poor. Gross inequality, plus monopolies, subsidies, tax loopholes, false accounting, cost-externalizing globalization, and financial fraud have made market prices nearly meaningless as measures of opportunity cost. For example, a policy of near zero interest rates (quantitative easing) to push growth and bail out big banks has eliminated the interest rate as a measure of the opportunity cost of capital, thereby crippling the efficiency of investment. Trying to maintain the present growth-based Ponzi system is far more unrealistic than moving to a steady-state economy by something like the policies here outlined. It is probably too late to avoid unrealism’s inevitable consequences. But while we are hunkered down and unemployed, enduring the crash, we might think about the principles that should guide reconstruction.

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Article printed from Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy: http://steadystate.org