Concluding my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
17. Get Back on the Field – Literally
Yes, sports is one of Nader’s solutions. But not the professional sports of today which are all about two things, victory (at all costs) and profit (as much as possible). Professional sports distorts the lives of aspiring athletes, subjecting them to abusive coaches and parents with an anything-to-win attitude that reaches to ever younger athletes.
What Nader envisions is more community-based, perhaps a National Sports Commission. The NSC would make recommendations for a physically fit general citizenry, not just athletes. Here are some of the things Americans want changed in our sports culture.
* Instead of tax funded professional stadiums, there should be tax funded community sports centers. There are numerous health benefits to regular exercise. There are a lot of psychological benefits when sport is done for fun and social bonding rather than for the drive to win. These centers should have activities all ages, genders, and abilities. Get children used to doing, not spectating.
* Physical education reinstated in schools, but designed broadly enough that it fits the needs of all children.
This reminds me of my time in high school gym class (a few decades ago). We were supposed to learn how to play each of the major sports (thankfully, no hockey rink). A person like me who had no skill or interest in these sports didn’t fare well in class and didn’t get a lot of exercise. I’m glad gym didn’t count for my grade point average. It was bad enough that I didn’t want to exercise after high school.
Since then I’ve found swimming (though I don’t have a nearby pool), walking, and riding my bicycle. What if my gym class had been focused on enabling me to exercise in a way suitable for me rather than trying to indoctrinate me into the sports culture?
* More attention should be paid to the safety and health of the players.
* Sports for all Americans. Women’s sports still lag behind men’s sports. There should be plenty of opportunity for sports for people with disabilities.
* Get rid of the anything-to-win attitude so that college sports can get back to the primarily goal of education. That means getting rid of athletic performance targets in scholarships. It also means treating athletes ethically, safely, and humanely – no more bully coaches, no matter what their win-loss record is.
Showing posts with label Seventeen Solutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seventeen Solutions. Show all posts
Saturday, July 1, 2017
Monday, June 19, 2017
Seventeen Solutions – enlist enlightened super-rich
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
16. Enlist the Enlightened Super-Rich
There are indeed some really rich people driving politics these days. At the top of the list are David and Charles Koch. They – the Kochs and many others of the 1% – funnel huge amounts of money into the political process, both at the national and state levels. And they are successful at bending Congress and state legislators to their will.
The current GOP healthcare plan is an example of this. It is hugely unpopular with ordinary citizens. So why is Congress so intent on passing it? Because the rich want it.
But not all rich people are like that. Some are actually progressives.
There is a long history of rich people supporting such causes as abolition, women’s right to vote, and breaking up monopolistic oil. And with the rise of the tech millionaires, that wealth should be tapped again.
An example where that worked: In 2005, William Gates, Sr. (father of Microsoft Bill) recruited a thousand rich people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax. He teamed with an economic expert to write a little book “about the responsibility to pay the estate tax as payback for all the help that rich people like them have received over their lifetimes.” They spent millions over three years on this campaign.
An example that failed: In 2003 George Soros spoke out against going to war in Iraq, joining the voices of many outspoken former military and diplomatic people. But Soros didn’t put his money on the table – $200 million out of a wealth of more than $2 billion would have done it. And America started a disastrous war.
Another failure: Warren Buffet called on Congress to change tax laws so that “billionaires like me pay more in taxes.” He did a lot of talking about fairness, both to Congress and fellow rich people. But he hasn’t put his wealth behind the effort. And Congress is itching to do the opposite of what Buffet campaigned for.
Yes, lots of rich people donate the money for libraries, new college buildings, and hospitals. But there is a difference between charity and justice. “Money to charity eases the problem; money to justice destroys the problem.” This is the reason: spend the money on justice and everyone, including the rich, live in a better world.
In 2009 the estimated wealth of the Forbes 400 richest people in America to be about $1200 billion. Most of half of that ($600 billion) is “dead money,” only accumulating interest or dividends. It could be live money, by funding justice, by creating a better society.
16. Enlist the Enlightened Super-Rich
There are indeed some really rich people driving politics these days. At the top of the list are David and Charles Koch. They – the Kochs and many others of the 1% – funnel huge amounts of money into the political process, both at the national and state levels. And they are successful at bending Congress and state legislators to their will.
The current GOP healthcare plan is an example of this. It is hugely unpopular with ordinary citizens. So why is Congress so intent on passing it? Because the rich want it.
But not all rich people are like that. Some are actually progressives.
There is a long history of rich people supporting such causes as abolition, women’s right to vote, and breaking up monopolistic oil. And with the rise of the tech millionaires, that wealth should be tapped again.
An example where that worked: In 2005, William Gates, Sr. (father of Microsoft Bill) recruited a thousand rich people to oppose the repeal of the estate tax. He teamed with an economic expert to write a little book “about the responsibility to pay the estate tax as payback for all the help that rich people like them have received over their lifetimes.” They spent millions over three years on this campaign.
An example that failed: In 2003 George Soros spoke out against going to war in Iraq, joining the voices of many outspoken former military and diplomatic people. But Soros didn’t put his money on the table – $200 million out of a wealth of more than $2 billion would have done it. And America started a disastrous war.
Another failure: Warren Buffet called on Congress to change tax laws so that “billionaires like me pay more in taxes.” He did a lot of talking about fairness, both to Congress and fellow rich people. But he hasn’t put his wealth behind the effort. And Congress is itching to do the opposite of what Buffet campaigned for.
Yes, lots of rich people donate the money for libraries, new college buildings, and hospitals. But there is a difference between charity and justice. “Money to charity eases the problem; money to justice destroys the problem.” This is the reason: spend the money on justice and everyone, including the rich, live in a better world.
In 2009 the estimated wealth of the Forbes 400 richest people in America to be about $1200 billion. Most of half of that ($600 billion) is “dead money,” only accumulating interest or dividends. It could be live money, by funding justice, by creating a better society.
How much would it cost to get single-payer health insurance, prison and drug policy reform, a living wage, severe reductions in corporate crime and fraud, voluntary public funding of public campaigns, and organized consumer watchdog groups? How much would it cost to place our country on a sure path to replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power with renewable energies and massive energy efficiency technology? How much would it cost to implement electoral reforms, such as ending the practice of gerrymandering or removing ballot access obstructions to give voters a choice of many candidates of varied agendas? How much would it cost to enact a sales tax on Wall Street trading transactions, which would bring in hundreds of billions of dollars a year to salvage budgets and lighten up taxes on workers? How much would it take to enact the kind of carbon tax that’s been favored even by ExxonMobil? …
Unlike most major social changes – which rely on the kinds of behavioral change that’s almost impossible to mandate – these popular proposals need only to go through Congress and the president to take effect – and they already have solid intellectual, empirical, and public support. The only question is how much money it will take to organize a successful campaign to get them enacted.
As for who will provide these funds, the answer should be clear. The enlightened super-rich – those who are interested not just in money but in justice.
…
Without justice there can be no freedom and no liberty. “Philanthropy” means “love of mankind.” Collective love is at the core of justice. The wealthiest among us, those who have the broadest horizons to put forces in motion, should embrace that work as their own highest calling.
Seventeen Solutions – Congress with skin in the game
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
15. Get Congress to Have Skin in the Game
I started this series at the end of last August and it has been two months since I added a chapter. Life has been so interesting, prompting me to write about lots of other things – when I have time to write at all.
General citizens are annoyed with the gap between Congress and We the People – “the gap in wealth, power, privilege, and accountability.”
We can start closing that gap with these ideas that get rousing applause in Nader’s speeches:
* When military personnel are sent to another country, “all their able-bodied and qualified children and grandchildren will be drafted into the armed services. That should make them think twice about making war.”
* “The members of Congress can have no benefits unless the American people all share in those benefits universally. There would be no health insurance, no life insurance, no lush pensions, and no accessible gym facilities for the 535 members of Congress unless they saw fit to provide such benefits to all.”
Americans highly value fair play. Yet Congress has done a lot to exempt its members from the hardships the rest of us face. Two examples:
* Congressional pay is tied to the cost of living increases. Minimum wage is not.
* The recent healthcare bills in Congress show that not only are members exempt from the hardships the rest of us face, they are actively working to increase our hardships. The current bill is too new to be in Nader’s book, though Congress has long enjoyed a gold-plated health plan the rest of us can’t get.
Since Congress makes the rules about what Congress can and cannot do, how do we get them to enact these ideas that go against what they think of as their privileged status? How do we push, “If it’s good for you, it’s good for us?”
Nader says this solution is based on the previous one, the Congressional Watchdog Groups. The argument these groups use should be similar to this: Your pay should be the average of the workers in your district. If my child goes to war, yours does too.
15. Get Congress to Have Skin in the Game
I started this series at the end of last August and it has been two months since I added a chapter. Life has been so interesting, prompting me to write about lots of other things – when I have time to write at all.
General citizens are annoyed with the gap between Congress and We the People – “the gap in wealth, power, privilege, and accountability.”
We can start closing that gap with these ideas that get rousing applause in Nader’s speeches:
* When military personnel are sent to another country, “all their able-bodied and qualified children and grandchildren will be drafted into the armed services. That should make them think twice about making war.”
* “The members of Congress can have no benefits unless the American people all share in those benefits universally. There would be no health insurance, no life insurance, no lush pensions, and no accessible gym facilities for the 535 members of Congress unless they saw fit to provide such benefits to all.”
Americans highly value fair play. Yet Congress has done a lot to exempt its members from the hardships the rest of us face. Two examples:
* Congressional pay is tied to the cost of living increases. Minimum wage is not.
* The recent healthcare bills in Congress show that not only are members exempt from the hardships the rest of us face, they are actively working to increase our hardships. The current bill is too new to be in Nader’s book, though Congress has long enjoyed a gold-plated health plan the rest of us can’t get.
Since Congress makes the rules about what Congress can and cannot do, how do we get them to enact these ideas that go against what they think of as their privileged status? How do we push, “If it’s good for you, it’s good for us?”
Nader says this solution is based on the previous one, the Congressional Watchdog Groups. The argument these groups use should be similar to this: Your pay should be the average of the workers in your district. If my child goes to war, yours does too.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Seventeen Solutions – organize congressional watchdog groups
I am discovering several ways to resist the mess coming out of Washington. One is to make sure my senators and representative know my positions. Another is to join protest marches (though I haven’t done much of that lately). I can make sure a (slightly) larger audience knows the nasty things the nasty guy is doing by writing about them in this blog. I can discuss the ideas that build community – the opposite of ideas promoted in Washington. I can also resist by continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series. Alas, it has been two months since I last featured a chapter.
14. Organize Congressional Watchdog Groups
About 1500 corporations – ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, General Electric, and the rest – are able to get Congress to do their bidding.
And both major political parties (though GOP far more than Dem) are good at exploiting the disengagement or otherwise twisting the vote. I’ve documented many through the years. These tactics include gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws, and laws that obstruct smaller parties from getting on the ballot.
Safe seats mean lawmakers pay less attention to voters. That makes the voters cynical and tends to make them withdraw from the process – why bother? Which is exactly what the corporations want.
But that cynicism is sparking a renewed discussion of fairness (the book was published in 2012 when the Occupy movement was in the news, though examples from this year abound). And that is prompting a resurgence.
One way that resurgence can channel its efforts is through Congressional WatchDog groups. A CWD would form in a congressional district with a thousand people signing a pledge to work for the people’s agenda (all those policies that are favored by 65% of the voters, but which Washington is working hard to ignore). These thousand would also raise or donate $200 and volunteer 200 hours a year. The money would be used to set up an office and pay for full-time advocates, whose main jobs would be to (1) lobby Congress, (2) coordinate with CWDs in other districts, and (3) make sure the citizens know what the advocates are doing and how to help. The volunteer time would be to be that help and to recruit more members. Most citizen efforts are amateurish. We need professionals, but ones responsible to us, not corporations.
Lawmakers and their corporate masters are good at the long game, good at sensing their opponents show signs of flagging interest. An important part of the work of a CWD lobbyist is to stress this is for the duration. Once the advocates begin to show their representatives are listening, more citizens will join the process. The agenda of a CWD needs to be concrete and specific to withstand corporate backlash.
I like this idea. It seems sensible and practical. I could put some money behind it. I’d even volunteer. Many of the ideas in previous chapters, such as getting corporations off welfare, depend on Congress to implement. Under the current Congress, these ideas ain’t gonna happen. However, this chapter shows a way to make Congress listen (though it would still be a long slog, emphasis on being in it for the duration).
But Nader leaves out an important part. Who should get it going and how does the effort start?
Personally, I’m not one to go out and find a thousand people to pay for and volunteer for a CWD. So… who?
How about you Mr. Nader? With your position and influence have you worked to get a CWD going, perhaps proclaiming it as an example and template? Since you don’t mention it in this chapter I suspect you didn’t put any skin in the game. All talk and no action? How do you expect others to run with your idea?
14. Organize Congressional Watchdog Groups
About 1500 corporations – ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, General Electric, and the rest – are able to get Congress to do their bidding.
But only we have the votes that send these 535 men and women to Congress.But too often too many of us don’t vote or vote for the same party no matter the current conditions or are too disengaged to make a meaningful choice.
So if we hold the reins, then, why is it that the corporations control the horses? Because they know what the horses like to eat. Because they are there day after day, plying the corridors of Capitol Hill. Because they fund, socialize, play, drink, and vacation with these lawmakers. Because they have nice, cushy, high-paying jobs waiting for these legislators (as well as their assistants and their relatives) when they retire from their seats. Because they can apply a lot of pressure when these carrots don’t work. Because if a legislator doesn’t serve their interests, they can run someone more accommodating against him or her. Because they can make these legislators look bad – or undeservedly good – through deceptive advertisements and other seedy slanders or puffery.
Still, they don’t have a single vote. And you do.
Only We the People have the vote.
And both major political parties (though GOP far more than Dem) are good at exploiting the disengagement or otherwise twisting the vote. I’ve documented many through the years. These tactics include gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws, and laws that obstruct smaller parties from getting on the ballot.
Safe seats mean lawmakers pay less attention to voters. That makes the voters cynical and tends to make them withdraw from the process – why bother? Which is exactly what the corporations want.
But that cynicism is sparking a renewed discussion of fairness (the book was published in 2012 when the Occupy movement was in the news, though examples from this year abound). And that is prompting a resurgence.
One way that resurgence can channel its efforts is through Congressional WatchDog groups. A CWD would form in a congressional district with a thousand people signing a pledge to work for the people’s agenda (all those policies that are favored by 65% of the voters, but which Washington is working hard to ignore). These thousand would also raise or donate $200 and volunteer 200 hours a year. The money would be used to set up an office and pay for full-time advocates, whose main jobs would be to (1) lobby Congress, (2) coordinate with CWDs in other districts, and (3) make sure the citizens know what the advocates are doing and how to help. The volunteer time would be to be that help and to recruit more members. Most citizen efforts are amateurish. We need professionals, but ones responsible to us, not corporations.
Lawmakers and their corporate masters are good at the long game, good at sensing their opponents show signs of flagging interest. An important part of the work of a CWD lobbyist is to stress this is for the duration. Once the advocates begin to show their representatives are listening, more citizens will join the process. The agenda of a CWD needs to be concrete and specific to withstand corporate backlash.
In a presumed democratic republic like the United States, the ultimate governmental power is supposed to reside in the people. In the interest of practicality and expertise, the people delegate much of the daily exercise of this power to elected legislatures, which on the national level means Congress. But this delegation of authority shouldn’t mean disengagement from the responsibilities of citizenship. Our system can only work if our citizens are organized and vigilant in monitoring the ways of our 535 representatives, who each year speak for larger and larger populations, are using the power we grant them. Otherwise delegation will become abdication – first by the people, and then inevitably by Congress, until it falls conclusively into the hands of the corporate supremacists.
I like this idea. It seems sensible and practical. I could put some money behind it. I’d even volunteer. Many of the ideas in previous chapters, such as getting corporations off welfare, depend on Congress to implement. Under the current Congress, these ideas ain’t gonna happen. However, this chapter shows a way to make Congress listen (though it would still be a long slog, emphasis on being in it for the duration).
But Nader leaves out an important part. Who should get it going and how does the effort start?
Personally, I’m not one to go out and find a thousand people to pay for and volunteer for a CWD. So… who?
How about you Mr. Nader? With your position and influence have you worked to get a CWD going, perhaps proclaiming it as an example and template? Since you don’t mention it in this chapter I suspect you didn’t put any skin in the game. All talk and no action? How do you expect others to run with your idea?
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Seventeen Solutions – invent new tools for reform
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
13. Invent New Tools for Reform
Back in 1989 the Illinois legislature required Commonwealth Edison to periodically include am insert in its bills that was an invitation for its customers to join a Citizens Utility Board. Within 18 months 180,000 customers joined. The $5 annual dues hired a staff of lawyers, economists, and organizers to defend customer interests before the utility commission. The notice did not cost CE any money because the postage for bills did not go up. It also didn’t cost tax dollars.
It paid off. In 1993 the CUB caught Commonwealth Edison in overcharging its customers. The CUB case was so strong CE didn’t fight it and refunded $1.3 billion to its customers.
Such citizen boards don’t have to be restricted to utilities. They could be used to advocate in insurance, banking, credit card, and lots of other businesses. Perhaps also citizen boards to oversee government agencies in the areas of taxes, fuel efficiency, environment, Social Security, Medicare, the social safety net, education, and more.
Of course, utilities and other agencies who would be watched by a CUB (as well as GOP politicians), don’t like this idea. A California utility refused to carry such inserts and the case went to the Supremes – where a conservative majority said corporate personhood has freedom of conscience to refuse such mail inserts. Since then states haven’t wanted to touch the issue.
It is time for citizens to tell their legislators about the CUB idea and push to make it happen.
13. Invent New Tools for Reform
Back in 1989 the Illinois legislature required Commonwealth Edison to periodically include am insert in its bills that was an invitation for its customers to join a Citizens Utility Board. Within 18 months 180,000 customers joined. The $5 annual dues hired a staff of lawyers, economists, and organizers to defend customer interests before the utility commission. The notice did not cost CE any money because the postage for bills did not go up. It also didn’t cost tax dollars.
It paid off. In 1993 the CUB caught Commonwealth Edison in overcharging its customers. The CUB case was so strong CE didn’t fight it and refunded $1.3 billion to its customers.
A CUB is one way to build democratic participation in decisions on choices of energy, pollution, pricing, zoning, handling of consumer complaints, billing practices, quality of services, and the overall management of our utilities, which generally enjoy cushy relationships with their state and federal regulators.Where CUBs operate there is always consumer representation at public hearings and meetings between the utilities and their gov’t overseers. When that consumer representation isn’t there utilities almost always get their way.
Such citizen boards don’t have to be restricted to utilities. They could be used to advocate in insurance, banking, credit card, and lots of other businesses. Perhaps also citizen boards to oversee government agencies in the areas of taxes, fuel efficiency, environment, Social Security, Medicare, the social safety net, education, and more.
Of course, utilities and other agencies who would be watched by a CUB (as well as GOP politicians), don’t like this idea. A California utility refused to carry such inserts and the case went to the Supremes – where a conservative majority said corporate personhood has freedom of conscience to refuse such mail inserts. Since then states haven’t wanted to touch the issue.
It is time for citizens to tell their legislators about the CUB idea and push to make it happen.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Seventeen Solutions – reengage with civic life
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
12. Reengage with Civic Life
There are a lot of articles written each year about the abuses of power (and with the nasty guy in office we’re either going to get a lot more or criticism or the media will be silenced). Many of these articles trumpet Something Must Be Done!
But these articles rarely spell out what must be done and how a citizen is to go about doing it.
That citizen has not done these kinds of things before (though that changed for a lot of them last month), so here come the excuses: “I don’t know what to do.” “I don’t have the time.” “I don’t want to risk the backlash.” (This is one reason why the best people refuse to run for office). “Would it really make a difference anyhow? The Big Boys will get whatever they want.”
These statements of apathy are a sign of powerlessness. And much of that is because we’re not used to civic engagement and not skilled in doing it. We have a democracy gap at the lowest level. If “Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty,” we’ve forgotten how to pay that price.
Start by getting people into small groups to talk. First to get to know one another, then to kvetch about what the various levels of gov’t are not doing or doing wrong, and the to listen to experienced citizen activists talk about how much these small groups have accomplished in the past.
As meetings continue, talk about what kind of world we want to live in now and what we want for our descendants. Then talk about the skills that are needed and who has which skills or is willing to learn them. Who can give practical advice? Who can review lawmaker voting records? Who can run meetings? Who can lobby? Fundraise?
There are plenty of places to take classes in cooking or yoga. But, in spite of the empty storefronts across America, there are no storefront classes in civic engagement. We’re a culture of self-improvement and instant gratification. But this work requires working for the improvement of others and a great deal of patience.
Si Kahn wrote a political memoir, Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice. A summary of some of his pointers:
* Look for common self-interests.
* If institutions or people of power won’t join your cause convince them it’s in their self-interest to stay out of the fight.
* Imagine the instant before victory. Work backward from there.
* Advocate for the positive as well as oppose the negative.
* You can ask a few people to do several complicated things. You can ask masses of people to do one simple thing.
* Citizens, no matter how much they hate each other, can find a common connection.
* Citizens are always partly united and partly divided. Reinforce the unity and compensate for the divisions.
* Demonstrations worked in the 1960s and will work again today.
* Fellow justice workers need to know the risks – what might go wrong and what loss they might suffer.
* Frame questions so that others will want to answer, but will need to think deeply to get that answer.
* Laughter really is therapeutic and hope does heal.
* Avoid the arrogance of thinking you know what is right for other people.
* When those who have been without power gain it, there is no guarantee that they will exercise it more democratically than those who have had it before.
* Use the power of culture to help others see beyond their own tribe.
* Accusing you of inciting violence is a tactic to discredit what you do. Driving an exploitative enterprise out of business is not violence, it is justice.
* Personal relations still count. When recruiting volunteers let them choose from a list of campaign needs.
* We can’t predict what we can accomplish, so never compromise with injustice.
* Dr. King’s Beloved Community is not in the future. It happens when we walk and work together.
Back to Nader’s suggestions…
Get the kids involved so they know as much about civic life as they do about their smartphone. Visit the local court, the city council meeting, the source of their drinking water, their emergency services. Help teachers do this by campaigning against evaluation of education through testing and for evaluation through understanding the community, through diligence, stamina, curiosity, creativity, and idealism.
That last one makes me consider that politicians want education defined through testing because it is a way to make the students ignorant of civic life – and less likely to challenge their control.
Parents can help fill that void (and prod teachers) through field trips (mentioned above) and books, such as The Kid’s Guide to Social Action. And when schools tackle civic action it need not be expensive. The laboratory is the community.
I think we might be back where we started – with the excuses. I’d be interested in being part of one of these citizen groups. But am I the one to go knocking on doors to invite neighbors to a meeting and then somehow lead the group? See the comment about who has what skills.
12. Reengage with Civic Life
There are a lot of articles written each year about the abuses of power (and with the nasty guy in office we’re either going to get a lot more or criticism or the media will be silenced). Many of these articles trumpet Something Must Be Done!
But these articles rarely spell out what must be done and how a citizen is to go about doing it.
That citizen has not done these kinds of things before (though that changed for a lot of them last month), so here come the excuses: “I don’t know what to do.” “I don’t have the time.” “I don’t want to risk the backlash.” (This is one reason why the best people refuse to run for office). “Would it really make a difference anyhow? The Big Boys will get whatever they want.”
These statements of apathy are a sign of powerlessness. And much of that is because we’re not used to civic engagement and not skilled in doing it. We have a democracy gap at the lowest level. If “Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty,” we’ve forgotten how to pay that price.
Start by getting people into small groups to talk. First to get to know one another, then to kvetch about what the various levels of gov’t are not doing or doing wrong, and the to listen to experienced citizen activists talk about how much these small groups have accomplished in the past.
As meetings continue, talk about what kind of world we want to live in now and what we want for our descendants. Then talk about the skills that are needed and who has which skills or is willing to learn them. Who can give practical advice? Who can review lawmaker voting records? Who can run meetings? Who can lobby? Fundraise?
There are plenty of places to take classes in cooking or yoga. But, in spite of the empty storefronts across America, there are no storefront classes in civic engagement. We’re a culture of self-improvement and instant gratification. But this work requires working for the improvement of others and a great deal of patience.
Si Kahn wrote a political memoir, Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice. A summary of some of his pointers:
* Look for common self-interests.
* If institutions or people of power won’t join your cause convince them it’s in their self-interest to stay out of the fight.
* Imagine the instant before victory. Work backward from there.
* Advocate for the positive as well as oppose the negative.
* You can ask a few people to do several complicated things. You can ask masses of people to do one simple thing.
* Citizens, no matter how much they hate each other, can find a common connection.
* Citizens are always partly united and partly divided. Reinforce the unity and compensate for the divisions.
* Demonstrations worked in the 1960s and will work again today.
* Fellow justice workers need to know the risks – what might go wrong and what loss they might suffer.
* Frame questions so that others will want to answer, but will need to think deeply to get that answer.
* Laughter really is therapeutic and hope does heal.
* Avoid the arrogance of thinking you know what is right for other people.
* When those who have been without power gain it, there is no guarantee that they will exercise it more democratically than those who have had it before.
* Use the power of culture to help others see beyond their own tribe.
* Accusing you of inciting violence is a tactic to discredit what you do. Driving an exploitative enterprise out of business is not violence, it is justice.
* Personal relations still count. When recruiting volunteers let them choose from a list of campaign needs.
* We can’t predict what we can accomplish, so never compromise with injustice.
* Dr. King’s Beloved Community is not in the future. It happens when we walk and work together.
Back to Nader’s suggestions…
Get the kids involved so they know as much about civic life as they do about their smartphone. Visit the local court, the city council meeting, the source of their drinking water, their emergency services. Help teachers do this by campaigning against evaluation of education through testing and for evaluation through understanding the community, through diligence, stamina, curiosity, creativity, and idealism.
That last one makes me consider that politicians want education defined through testing because it is a way to make the students ignorant of civic life – and less likely to challenge their control.
Parents can help fill that void (and prod teachers) through field trips (mentioned above) and books, such as The Kid’s Guide to Social Action. And when schools tackle civic action it need not be expensive. The laboratory is the community.
I think we might be back where we started – with the excuses. I’d be interested in being part of one of these citizen groups. But am I the one to go knocking on doors to invite neighbors to a meeting and then somehow lead the group? See the comment about who has what skills.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Seventeen Solutions – reduce the military
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series. I’m aware that I left off this series just over two months ago. Since it is part of how we deal with the nasty guy I need to finish it off. I won’t promise I’ll do it quickly.
11. Reduce Our Bloated Military Budget
In 2012, the year this book was written, the federal budget allocated $806 billion for the military. That paid for general military readiness as well as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It did not cover the military parts of the National Security Agency or the CIA. It also didn’t cover disability payments to veterans. Overall the military gets 56% of the federal discretionary spending (which excludes Medicare and Medicaid).
We start with President Dwight Eisenhower, not with his famous railing against the military industrial complex in his farewell address, but with a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953 at a time Sen. McCarthy was whipping up anti-communist frenzy (which meant Eisenhower was ignored).
Congress is able to maintain this bloated military spending in a particular way. Because the military budget is so large the military is the nation’s largest jobs program both directly through the military and through its many contractors. And Congress has made sure some of those jobs are in every one of the 435 House districts. Talk of cutting military spending means cutting jobs – and every single House member is going to hear about it. That has effectively defeated any cuts.
Nader says that in the 1950s the concentration of effort in the military meant consumer products of the time were shoddy. And that gave the Japanese and Germans the opening to dominate our auto markets for a couple decades.
Our emphasis on military spending of course means we turn to the military for solutions, rather than looking for “preventive, diplomatic, and assistance missions.” Andrew Bacevich, professor and retired Army Colonel, wrote:
We may not want to conquer territory, but we do want to occupy and control it. That only works when there is an absence of dissent by those occupied and controlled. To get that absence out troops engage in brutality.
Some (like the nasty guy) will say that we need all that military power and more to keep us safe. Nader compares the lopsided capabilities of the US military to that of the Taliban. Which makes me think that the solution to the longest war in US history isn’t the military.
Another problem is the Department of Defense budget is, according to the Government Accountability Office, un-auditable and has been for years.
The DoD and its corporate masters love high-tech solutions. An example is the infamous F-22 plane that the military doesn’t need, yet has suppliers in every Congressional district. The thing is dangerous to pilots and the unit cost has soared to $410 million. Back in 1980 Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney reported:
Thousands of people – citizens, retired officials from the military, diplomatic, and national security service, taxpayer groups, labor leaders, scientists, technologists, current and former politicians – including mayors, humanitarian assistance leaders, business people for sensible priorities, religious leaders, professors, war veterans, peace advocates, philanthropists, neighborhood organizers, documentary filmmakers, and specialists in foreign culture – have spoken out against the ravenous military. And they’ve gotten little media coverage. What they haven’t done, says Nader, is to make their case as a unified whole.
Nader proposes a series of workshops to create this unified whole. These are:
* Itemize the lists of proposed Pentagon reforms that haven’t happened to put some spine in the GAO report.
* Make a list of projects to cut, going weapon-by-weapon and service-by-service. This is to force justification of each according to its military usefulness, not according to the jobs it creates.
* Study and report on the big picture of the overall security budget and the balance between military forces, homeland security, and prevention through nonmilitary international engagement.
* Seek new ways for America to become a humanitarian superpower, to help alleviate the conditions of poverty, destitution, and hopelessness. Humanitarian efforts cost much less than military deployment. The military already knows how to do rescues during natural catastrophes. This could harness the idealism of American youth.
* Figure out how to mobilize the rest of us to call for reform.
* Use veterans, including the high-ranking ones, to state their opposition to any use of the military, to remind us of the human cost of war, and to advocate for proper veteran services.
* Use mayors to list the ways to use the money redirected from the military. This could fund our infrastructure needs and various jobs programs – the jobs the current system protects.
All of these workshops sound like fine ideas. Nader says there are philanthropists ready to step in and fund the effort. Let’s go for it!
But I have a question for Nader. Actually, a complaint. Yes, Nader has written this helpful book. But if the voices are out there and the money is available and the big thing we need is a unity of voice, why hasn’t Nader used his influence to make it happen?
11. Reduce Our Bloated Military Budget
In 2012, the year this book was written, the federal budget allocated $806 billion for the military. That paid for general military readiness as well as wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It did not cover the military parts of the National Security Agency or the CIA. It also didn’t cover disability payments to veterans. Overall the military gets 56% of the federal discretionary spending (which excludes Medicare and Medicaid).
We start with President Dwight Eisenhower, not with his famous railing against the military industrial complex in his farewell address, but with a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953 at a time Sen. McCarthy was whipping up anti-communist frenzy (which meant Eisenhower was ignored).
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
Congress is able to maintain this bloated military spending in a particular way. Because the military budget is so large the military is the nation’s largest jobs program both directly through the military and through its many contractors. And Congress has made sure some of those jobs are in every one of the 435 House districts. Talk of cutting military spending means cutting jobs – and every single House member is going to hear about it. That has effectively defeated any cuts.
Nader says that in the 1950s the concentration of effort in the military meant consumer products of the time were shoddy. And that gave the Japanese and Germans the opening to dominate our auto markets for a couple decades.
Our emphasis on military spending of course means we turn to the military for solutions, rather than looking for “preventive, diplomatic, and assistance missions.” Andrew Bacevich, professor and retired Army Colonel, wrote:
Americans in our own time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedent in United States history, Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness, military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideals.
We may not want to conquer territory, but we do want to occupy and control it. That only works when there is an absence of dissent by those occupied and controlled. To get that absence out troops engage in brutality.
Some (like the nasty guy) will say that we need all that military power and more to keep us safe. Nader compares the lopsided capabilities of the US military to that of the Taliban. Which makes me think that the solution to the longest war in US history isn’t the military.
Another problem is the Department of Defense budget is, according to the Government Accountability Office, un-auditable and has been for years.
An un-audtiable budget is, by definition, a budget no one can control for waste, redundancy, corruption, cost overruns, complex billing frauds, or poor quality control.Which means Congress wants a DoD budget that can’t be audited. Want your hand in the gov’t pocket? Do it through the military. Congress is inviting your sticky fingers. And they’ve covered our eyes.
…
Two things leap out about this one report of Pentagon expenditure, exposed by a GAO that produces reams of reports about waste across the spectrum of the military budget. One is that no matter how many investigations the GAO does, the results fall on deaf ears among both the Pentagon leaders and their patron – Congress. The other is that almost no one ever gets fired or otherwise punished for such irresponsibility or dereliction of duty.
The DoD and its corporate masters love high-tech solutions. An example is the infamous F-22 plane that the military doesn’t need, yet has suppliers in every Congressional district. The thing is dangerous to pilots and the unit cost has soared to $410 million. Back in 1980 Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney reported:
Our strategy of pursuing ever-increasing technical complexity and sophistication has made high-technology solutions and combat readiness mutually exclusive.To which Nader adds:
He did not mention the corollary – that the real beneficiaries of such complexity are not the American people but the weapons manufacturers, which are only too happy to rise to each profitable new challenge.As I write this the nasty guy has called for both bombing the heck out of ISIS and a massive increase and modernization of the military. Which makes the average citizen wonder what can be done to stop all this reckless spending for something that will make humanity’s situation worse.
Thousands of people – citizens, retired officials from the military, diplomatic, and national security service, taxpayer groups, labor leaders, scientists, technologists, current and former politicians – including mayors, humanitarian assistance leaders, business people for sensible priorities, religious leaders, professors, war veterans, peace advocates, philanthropists, neighborhood organizers, documentary filmmakers, and specialists in foreign culture – have spoken out against the ravenous military. And they’ve gotten little media coverage. What they haven’t done, says Nader, is to make their case as a unified whole.
Nader proposes a series of workshops to create this unified whole. These are:
* Itemize the lists of proposed Pentagon reforms that haven’t happened to put some spine in the GAO report.
* Make a list of projects to cut, going weapon-by-weapon and service-by-service. This is to force justification of each according to its military usefulness, not according to the jobs it creates.
* Study and report on the big picture of the overall security budget and the balance between military forces, homeland security, and prevention through nonmilitary international engagement.
* Seek new ways for America to become a humanitarian superpower, to help alleviate the conditions of poverty, destitution, and hopelessness. Humanitarian efforts cost much less than military deployment. The military already knows how to do rescues during natural catastrophes. This could harness the idealism of American youth.
* Figure out how to mobilize the rest of us to call for reform.
* Use veterans, including the high-ranking ones, to state their opposition to any use of the military, to remind us of the human cost of war, and to advocate for proper veteran services.
* Use mayors to list the ways to use the money redirected from the military. This could fund our infrastructure needs and various jobs programs – the jobs the current system protects.
All of these workshops sound like fine ideas. Nader says there are philanthropists ready to step in and fund the effort. Let’s go for it!
But I have a question for Nader. Actually, a complaint. Yes, Nader has written this helpful book. But if the voices are out there and the money is available and the big thing we need is a unity of voice, why hasn’t Nader used his influence to make it happen?
Sunday, November 20, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – public works
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
10. Reinvest in Public Works
Nader wrote in 2012, when this book was written and after Obama’s big stimulus package that brought the growth in employment back to positive after the Great Recession at the end of the Bush years:
Nader lists these specific areas of public works that need investment.
The schoolhouse. Nationwide 60% of schoolchildren (32 million) attend a school with at least one inadequate building feature, such as roof, framing, floor, plumbing, heating, power, lighting, and safety. Most of these schools are affected by multiple deficiencies.
The health, safety, and environmental issues affect how well students learn and how well teachers teach. This isn’t just an inner city problem, though it is worst there. Schools in suburban and rural districts also must deal with deficient buildings.
Urban schools can spare only 3.5% of their budgets for facilities and 85% of that money goes to emergency repairs. They can’t afford what they need.
Estimates (somewhat before 2012) of the need are $268 billion for infrastructure and $54 billion for technological upgrades.
In the recent election Wayne County (which includes Detroit) asked its residents to tax themselves to pay a little bit more for schools. The request was made because the state has been so stingy. It thankfully passed 54% - 46%. The collection and funding formula means suburban residents will give a boost to Detroit schools.
Clean drinking water. This book was written before the water fiasco in Flint. Even so, there have been several cities around the country, including New York, that asked residents to boil water.
Yes, we have a Safe Drinking Water Act, but it is frequently violated. In addition, too many possible contaminants are not regulated. All this is “a public health nightmare waiting to happen – and one in which the poor, the young, the elderly, and the ill are especially vulnerable.” In 2006, the CDC estimated 16.5 million people became ill each year from waterborne illnesses related to drinking water. A 2010 estimate put the cost of hospital stays for 3 common waterborne illnesses at a half billion dollars.
Estimate of the cost in 2007 was $335 billion over 20 years. That includes $52 billion needed immediately to meet Safe Drinking Water Act requirements. The estimate includes both improvements at the plants and of transmission systems.
Roads, bridges, and highways. The national highway system gets about $150 billion a year in maintenance. But a 2009 estimate put the need at $930 billion. Bad roads affects the cost of travel, including vehicle costs, delay, and crash costs. Doing the repairs is a benefit to the economy through more jobs to do the work and less money lost through delay, crashes, and vehicle repair.
Parks. The National Parks Service, which maintains 58 parks, has a backlog of $10.8 billion of deferred maintenance and construction. Their operating shortfall is at least a half billion.
Because of these shortfalls the parks are not able to monitor their wildlife. The parks in the west have lost 29 mammal populations. Physical plants, roads, and playgrounds are falling apart. Historical artifacts, such as at Gettysburg, aren’t properly stored and are being lost to mildew and rot. Cuts in park staff means they’re not able to manage large crowds, which endangers the long-term health of the parks.
That’s just the national parks. State and city parks are also deteriorating and viewed as unsafe.
Mass transit. Maintaining mass transit systems at current levels needs $15.8 billion a year. Bringing the systems up to 2026 targets requires $22 billion a year.
During my two trips to Seattle this year I could see some of the existing mass transit systems. I rode the light rail system from the airport to the train station. I took a bus from a suburb to downtown. I also saw from the rush hour traffic jams (and not just on highways) how inadequate the system is. Nader says the money mentioned above only covers what planners envision, and Nader believes we need a great deal more. That more means comprehensive bus, light rail, and heavy rail systems both within metro areas and between them.
A public works agenda is an environmental agenda. It cuts down on pollution and deters sprawl. It is a pro-consumer agenda, providing clean water, less wear on cars, and better schools. It is a pro-worker, pro-development agenda, creating well-paying jobs that can’t be sent overseas.
Southeast Michigan (the Detroit metro area) has two transit systems, one for Detroit and one for the suburbs. I’m pretty sure it’s a race thing. One big effect is it keeps city residents from jobs in the suburbs. A comprehensive system, uniting the two, was designed and the various political structures created. This past election the entire region voted on a tax to fund the new comprehensive system. It lost – by 1% of the vote. Sigh.
10. Reinvest in Public Works
Nader wrote in 2012, when this book was written and after Obama’s big stimulus package that brought the growth in employment back to positive after the Great Recession at the end of the Bush years:
We are overdue to launch a major public works initiative to repair one of society’s greatest storehouses of shared wealth: the basic infrastructure we all rely on for critical services, the physical plant that has historically enabled commerce to expand and thrive like no other.
…
If our nation is going to fulfill its truly unmet needs, we must close the public investment deficit. It’s not always helpful to compare the government with a corporation, but consider this: any corporation that collected healthy revenues every year but allowed its plant to deteriorate would be considered reckless, a bad prospect to investors. It’s troubling to think that the same could be said for our government, which is recklessly failing to invest in the country’s long-term prosperity and well-being, as determined both by traditional economic yardsticks and by more citizen-oriented standards.
…
The benefits of public works are widespread. They are not confined to the corporate elite, but neither do they concentrate among the poor. Unlike the narrowly tailored subsidies for corporate welfare, whose benefits are captured by special interests, public works enhances the well-being of the entire society.
Nader lists these specific areas of public works that need investment.
The schoolhouse. Nationwide 60% of schoolchildren (32 million) attend a school with at least one inadequate building feature, such as roof, framing, floor, plumbing, heating, power, lighting, and safety. Most of these schools are affected by multiple deficiencies.
The health, safety, and environmental issues affect how well students learn and how well teachers teach. This isn’t just an inner city problem, though it is worst there. Schools in suburban and rural districts also must deal with deficient buildings.
Urban schools can spare only 3.5% of their budgets for facilities and 85% of that money goes to emergency repairs. They can’t afford what they need.
Estimates (somewhat before 2012) of the need are $268 billion for infrastructure and $54 billion for technological upgrades.
In the recent election Wayne County (which includes Detroit) asked its residents to tax themselves to pay a little bit more for schools. The request was made because the state has been so stingy. It thankfully passed 54% - 46%. The collection and funding formula means suburban residents will give a boost to Detroit schools.
Clean drinking water. This book was written before the water fiasco in Flint. Even so, there have been several cities around the country, including New York, that asked residents to boil water.
Yes, we have a Safe Drinking Water Act, but it is frequently violated. In addition, too many possible contaminants are not regulated. All this is “a public health nightmare waiting to happen – and one in which the poor, the young, the elderly, and the ill are especially vulnerable.” In 2006, the CDC estimated 16.5 million people became ill each year from waterborne illnesses related to drinking water. A 2010 estimate put the cost of hospital stays for 3 common waterborne illnesses at a half billion dollars.
Estimate of the cost in 2007 was $335 billion over 20 years. That includes $52 billion needed immediately to meet Safe Drinking Water Act requirements. The estimate includes both improvements at the plants and of transmission systems.
Roads, bridges, and highways. The national highway system gets about $150 billion a year in maintenance. But a 2009 estimate put the need at $930 billion. Bad roads affects the cost of travel, including vehicle costs, delay, and crash costs. Doing the repairs is a benefit to the economy through more jobs to do the work and less money lost through delay, crashes, and vehicle repair.
Parks. The National Parks Service, which maintains 58 parks, has a backlog of $10.8 billion of deferred maintenance and construction. Their operating shortfall is at least a half billion.
Because of these shortfalls the parks are not able to monitor their wildlife. The parks in the west have lost 29 mammal populations. Physical plants, roads, and playgrounds are falling apart. Historical artifacts, such as at Gettysburg, aren’t properly stored and are being lost to mildew and rot. Cuts in park staff means they’re not able to manage large crowds, which endangers the long-term health of the parks.
That’s just the national parks. State and city parks are also deteriorating and viewed as unsafe.
In a society as rich as ours is it smart that we refuse to invest in the parks – federal, state, and local – that bring us together as communities?
Mass transit. Maintaining mass transit systems at current levels needs $15.8 billion a year. Bringing the systems up to 2026 targets requires $22 billion a year.
During my two trips to Seattle this year I could see some of the existing mass transit systems. I rode the light rail system from the airport to the train station. I took a bus from a suburb to downtown. I also saw from the rush hour traffic jams (and not just on highways) how inadequate the system is. Nader says the money mentioned above only covers what planners envision, and Nader believes we need a great deal more. That more means comprehensive bus, light rail, and heavy rail systems both within metro areas and between them.
The social cost of moving people between cities by car is simply too high in terms of air pollution, greenhouse warming, and auto accidents, not to mention possible national security evacuation emergencies. Investment in rail should be given clear priority over investments in widening interstates.
These three elements – bus service, subways//light rail, and heavy rail – should be viewed not just as items on a checklist but part of an integrated, seamless plan to make metropolitan and intercity travel safe, easy, efficient, affordable, and at least as desirable as most auto transport. It should be a central part of how we create liveable cities, with reduced sprawl, pollution, and congestion and enhanced equity, mobility, and neighborliness.
A public works agenda is an environmental agenda. It cuts down on pollution and deters sprawl. It is a pro-consumer agenda, providing clean water, less wear on cars, and better schools. It is a pro-worker, pro-development agenda, creating well-paying jobs that can’t be sent overseas.
Southeast Michigan (the Detroit metro area) has two transit systems, one for Detroit and one for the suburbs. I’m pretty sure it’s a race thing. One big effect is it keeps city residents from jobs in the suburbs. A comprehensive system, uniting the two, was designed and the various political structures created. This past election the entire region voted on a tax to fund the new comprehensive system. It lost – by 1% of the vote. Sigh.
Friday, November 18, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – use government to spur innovation
his is a continuation of my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
9. Use government procurement to spur innovation
We frequently hear the claim (as part of the drumbeat to eliminate regulations) that we need to get government out of the way and business will unleash its creative zeal. Nader says that it isn’t a case of government doing too much, which supposedly has the effect of stifling innovation. It’s the case that government does too little, it doesn’t harness its purchasing power to drive innovation.
In 2010 the gov’t spent $528 billion on goods and services. The goods included office equipment, cars, drugs, foods, energy, electronics, appliances, paper, building materials, and road pavement. Here are ways the gov’t could harness its purchasing power.
Requiring gov’t buildings to be energy efficient would open new markets for alternative energy, speeding development of such sources. Obama has been doing some of this. Alas, in the case of energy, much of the gov’t is beholden to the fossil fuel industry (and after Trump ran on restoring coal, do you see him putting solar panels on the White House?).
Gov’t can instantly create a large market for a product. That improves a supplier’s economy of scale and lowers the risk of investing in new technology. And it can do so before there is much of a consumer demand.
Because the gov’t buys so much of a product, such as computers, it doesn’t have to accept what the suppliers offer. It can demand or encourage suppliers to be more imaginative, more efficient, and more responsible. It can boost the adoption of new products. It can require greater safety, a cleaner environment, and taxpayer savings (and, as Obama has done, demand fair treatment of LGBT workers).
For example, the patents for car air bags were issued in the 1950s and ‘60s. But carmakers were reluctant to put them in cars – until the gov’t specified the cars it purchased must have driver-side air bags, which it did in the late ‘80s.
Why doesn’t the gov’t do more of this? I’ve already mentioned political influences, such as the fossil fuel industry blocking the installation of solar panels on the roof of every gov’t building. Other reasons: Most purchases focus on initial cost, not life-cycle cost. The gov’t also doesn’t pay much attention to energy efficiency, environmental care, and social cost or benefit.
There is also bureaucracy. President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that all paper should use recycled content. But orders are ignored or undermined by inertia and incompetence.
Nader mentioned another type of bungle. The Department of Justice took Microsoft to court for abuses of its operating system monopoly. The outcome was an agreement that had far too many holes for Microsoft to weasel through and an expiration date. The gov’t could have been more effective if it used its purchasing power to demand such things as requiring the operating system be more open to third party vendors, stopping discriminatory pricing, providing support to those third-party vendors, and perhaps auctioning off licenses to some of Microsoft’s intellectual property to provide competition. The gov’t doesn’t need to be a passive consumer.
The gov’t needs to recognize its purchasing power and how it can drive benefits for consumers. Nader proposes purchasing guidelines.
9. Use government procurement to spur innovation
We frequently hear the claim (as part of the drumbeat to eliminate regulations) that we need to get government out of the way and business will unleash its creative zeal. Nader says that it isn’t a case of government doing too much, which supposedly has the effect of stifling innovation. It’s the case that government does too little, it doesn’t harness its purchasing power to drive innovation.
In 2010 the gov’t spent $528 billion on goods and services. The goods included office equipment, cars, drugs, foods, energy, electronics, appliances, paper, building materials, and road pavement. Here are ways the gov’t could harness its purchasing power.
Requiring gov’t buildings to be energy efficient would open new markets for alternative energy, speeding development of such sources. Obama has been doing some of this. Alas, in the case of energy, much of the gov’t is beholden to the fossil fuel industry (and after Trump ran on restoring coal, do you see him putting solar panels on the White House?).
Gov’t can instantly create a large market for a product. That improves a supplier’s economy of scale and lowers the risk of investing in new technology. And it can do so before there is much of a consumer demand.
Because the gov’t buys so much of a product, such as computers, it doesn’t have to accept what the suppliers offer. It can demand or encourage suppliers to be more imaginative, more efficient, and more responsible. It can boost the adoption of new products. It can require greater safety, a cleaner environment, and taxpayer savings (and, as Obama has done, demand fair treatment of LGBT workers).
For example, the patents for car air bags were issued in the 1950s and ‘60s. But carmakers were reluctant to put them in cars – until the gov’t specified the cars it purchased must have driver-side air bags, which it did in the late ‘80s.
Why doesn’t the gov’t do more of this? I’ve already mentioned political influences, such as the fossil fuel industry blocking the installation of solar panels on the roof of every gov’t building. Other reasons: Most purchases focus on initial cost, not life-cycle cost. The gov’t also doesn’t pay much attention to energy efficiency, environmental care, and social cost or benefit.
There is also bureaucracy. President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that all paper should use recycled content. But orders are ignored or undermined by inertia and incompetence.
Nader mentioned another type of bungle. The Department of Justice took Microsoft to court for abuses of its operating system monopoly. The outcome was an agreement that had far too many holes for Microsoft to weasel through and an expiration date. The gov’t could have been more effective if it used its purchasing power to demand such things as requiring the operating system be more open to third party vendors, stopping discriminatory pricing, providing support to those third-party vendors, and perhaps auctioning off licenses to some of Microsoft’s intellectual property to provide competition. The gov’t doesn’t need to be a passive consumer.
The gov’t needs to recognize its purchasing power and how it can drive benefits for consumers. Nader proposes purchasing guidelines.
1. Improve government employee health and productivity.
2. Spark innovation and benefit society as a whole.
3. Lessen our energy demands, advance consumer safety, and reduce environmental damage.
4. Reduce long-term economic costs.
…
Sound procurement policies represent a way for the biggest consumer – We the People – to say to the biggest sellers. Here is what we want to buy. Take it or leave it.
Seventeen Solutions – restore civil liberties
I left off this series two months ago. Writing about the election got in the way. Since I don’t want to write about the latest nasty person nominated to the nasty guy’s administration it is appropriate I get back to this series. That’s especially true since this series discusses an antidote to the nasty guy’s agenda, even if the GOP controlling the government is less likely to go along with it. This is a continuation of my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
8. Restore civil liberties
Erich Fromm says there are two basic freedoms, from which we get the Bill of Rights. The first is freedom from dictatorial authority. The second is a freedom to shape our community’s and country’s present and future. This second one is spelled out in freedom to speak and to petition government. Democracy depends on both.
A big threat to these two core freedoms: the politics of fear. Trump wielded fear effectively in this election as did Bush II 15 years ago, but Nader says Obama also effectively used this fear. Associated with fear is panic which, after the 9/11 attacks, we had plenty of. Wrote Nader:
But there is no cost-benefit analysis. Is the amount of money spent combating terror appropriate to the size of the threat? Usually not. Part of that is there is no analysis of how much of a threat there actually is. But a president can shout “Terrorism!” and the money flows, as does the power.
All that money spent against a comparatively small threat means money not spent on things that are desperately needed, such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure. In addition, that money usually gets spent to enrich cronies (see: Halliburton). And all that power flowing to a president means the loss of civil rights.
Throughout our national history wars and threats of wars usually mean the rule of law is weakened as the president claims more powers. The powerful president usually can find reasons why it is necessary to curtail civil liberties.
The big recent example is the Patriot Act, which needlessly authorized snooping on citizens. Nader lists other similar acts and what both Bush II and Obama have done with them.
Nader’s solution in this chapter leaves me dissatisfied. Congress, says Nader, should assert its control over the president and threaten impeachment if the president uses war or terrorism to grab more power. Nader describes an incident in which he believes Obama should have been impeached.
My complaint of Nader’s solution has a couple parts. First, Congress has, in many cases, specifically given up its check on the president because Congress doesn’t want to take the political heat (or wants to put that heat on the president). They’re unlikely to demand the return of that power.
Second, my calculations change with the recent election. It now looks like Congress and the president will work together to curtail civil liberties. They won’t be a check on each other. And they’ll soon reinforce the courts to approve those lost liberties.
Restoring civil rights is necessary. But this isn’t the solution.
8. Restore civil liberties
Erich Fromm says there are two basic freedoms, from which we get the Bill of Rights. The first is freedom from dictatorial authority. The second is a freedom to shape our community’s and country’s present and future. This second one is spelled out in freedom to speak and to petition government. Democracy depends on both.
A big threat to these two core freedoms: the politics of fear. Trump wielded fear effectively in this election as did Bush II 15 years ago, but Nader says Obama also effectively used this fear. Associated with fear is panic which, after the 9/11 attacks, we had plenty of. Wrote Nader:
This kind of atmosphere is poisonous to healthy social discourse, it can destroy any democratic society’s capacity to respond wisely and resourcefully.A president promoting fear can usually drown out dissenting voices.
But there is no cost-benefit analysis. Is the amount of money spent combating terror appropriate to the size of the threat? Usually not. Part of that is there is no analysis of how much of a threat there actually is. But a president can shout “Terrorism!” and the money flows, as does the power.
All that money spent against a comparatively small threat means money not spent on things that are desperately needed, such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure. In addition, that money usually gets spent to enrich cronies (see: Halliburton). And all that power flowing to a president means the loss of civil rights.
Throughout our national history wars and threats of wars usually mean the rule of law is weakened as the president claims more powers. The powerful president usually can find reasons why it is necessary to curtail civil liberties.
The big recent example is the Patriot Act, which needlessly authorized snooping on citizens. Nader lists other similar acts and what both Bush II and Obama have done with them.
Nader’s solution in this chapter leaves me dissatisfied. Congress, says Nader, should assert its control over the president and threaten impeachment if the president uses war or terrorism to grab more power. Nader describes an incident in which he believes Obama should have been impeached.
My complaint of Nader’s solution has a couple parts. First, Congress has, in many cases, specifically given up its check on the president because Congress doesn’t want to take the political heat (or wants to put that heat on the president). They’re unlikely to demand the return of that power.
Second, my calculations change with the recent election. It now looks like Congress and the president will work together to curtail civil liberties. They won’t be a check on each other. And they’ll soon reinforce the courts to approve those lost liberties.
Restoring civil rights is necessary. But this isn’t the solution.
Sunday, September 18, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – corporate charters
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
7. Create National Charters for Corporations
Who creates corporations? Most would say "investors." But they only finance a corporation. The creators are the states, who grant corporate charters. These charters, like a corporate constitution, stipulate the rights, powers, and duties of the board, officers, and shareholders. The state makes this agreement on behalf of the whole society.
However, lately the state's side of the bargain has been thin. Don't like what the corporation is doing? Sell your stock. Even though that leaves the rascals in charge.
Didn't used to be that way. The early American corporations were granted charters by specific acts of legislatures (today one simply files papers with a Secretary of State). The charters were granted for a specific mission which must be a worthy public purpose. And charters could be (and were) revoked if a corporation strayed from its purpose.
The corporate response is one we've seen reenacted in the modern day. Armies of corporate lawyers visited state capitols and lobbied to give corporations more privileges and more immunities. States were played against each other – if you don't give us what we want we'll set up our business in a friendlier state. It was a race to the bottom. Delaware won and about 60% of Fortune 500 corporations are chartered there.
That race to the bottom has meant states have abdicated their role as corporate overseer (and corporations still complain about too much regulation). Previous posts in this series have already discussed what corporations do without an overseer.
Since the state system of charters has failed it is time for a federal chartering of corporations. That idea was proposed by James Madison in 1787. He wanted Congress to have the ability to grant charters in case "the authority of a single state may be incompetent." No vote was taken. Around 1910 the idea was again in favor, but strong antitrust and regulatory laws were seen as sufficient substitutes. Another push in the 1930s was interrupted by WWII and the corporate fortunes made by the war allowed them to squelch the idea.
Since WWII the focus has been on regulation, litigation, tort law, and antitrust enforcement. But these have shown to have little effect on the corporate hold on Congress and the rest of society.
CorpWatch issued a report of Halliburton's actions during the Iraq war and the legal investigations the company now faces.
* A ban on corporate lobbying and on donations to electoral campaigns.
* A ban on advertising deadly products, such as tobacco.
* A ban on obstructing a regulator.
* A clause that a corporation may make money for shareholders, "but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public health or safety, the communities in which the corporation operates or the dignity of its employees."
* An end to shareholder primacy.
* An end to corporate personhood.
The goals of federal chartering have wide support of citizens, perhaps up to 95%.
7. Create National Charters for Corporations
Who creates corporations? Most would say "investors." But they only finance a corporation. The creators are the states, who grant corporate charters. These charters, like a corporate constitution, stipulate the rights, powers, and duties of the board, officers, and shareholders. The state makes this agreement on behalf of the whole society.
However, lately the state's side of the bargain has been thin. Don't like what the corporation is doing? Sell your stock. Even though that leaves the rascals in charge.
Didn't used to be that way. The early American corporations were granted charters by specific acts of legislatures (today one simply files papers with a Secretary of State). The charters were granted for a specific mission which must be a worthy public purpose. And charters could be (and were) revoked if a corporation strayed from its purpose.
The corporate response is one we've seen reenacted in the modern day. Armies of corporate lawyers visited state capitols and lobbied to give corporations more privileges and more immunities. States were played against each other – if you don't give us what we want we'll set up our business in a friendlier state. It was a race to the bottom. Delaware won and about 60% of Fortune 500 corporations are chartered there.
That race to the bottom has meant states have abdicated their role as corporate overseer (and corporations still complain about too much regulation). Previous posts in this series have already discussed what corporations do without an overseer.
Since the state system of charters has failed it is time for a federal chartering of corporations. That idea was proposed by James Madison in 1787. He wanted Congress to have the ability to grant charters in case "the authority of a single state may be incompetent." No vote was taken. Around 1910 the idea was again in favor, but strong antitrust and regulatory laws were seen as sufficient substitutes. Another push in the 1930s was interrupted by WWII and the corporate fortunes made by the war allowed them to squelch the idea.
Since WWII the focus has been on regulation, litigation, tort law, and antitrust enforcement. But these have shown to have little effect on the corporate hold on Congress and the rest of society.
Our current system, in short, has returned us to a kind of medieval feudal society – one in which citizens are expected to live in obedient resignation under the thumb of the corporate society – in an uneasy détente between the rules and the ruled.
…
The ultimate yardstick by which to judge these corporate wealth producers is whether they have delivered for the people – for the families, workers, consumers, savers, and retirees, and for the generations to come – and whether they have been good stewards of our planet. By just one measure – worker productivity – these companies have failed to share.
CorpWatch issued a report of Halliburton's actions during the Iraq war and the legal investigations the company now faces.
Now consider how a federal incorporation could have prevented such a rapacious company from sailing through such investigations unscathed. A responsible federal charter system would have required full public disclosure of all of Halliburton's contracts with the government (redacted only for strict national security considerations). It would have required full disclosure of the company's federal, state, and local tax returns, including foreign tax returns. It would have required full disclosure of all official investigation and audits of Halliburton's activities, and similar disclosure of all filings against the company by government workers, subcontractors, suppliers, and customers. Such disclosure is an early alert tool for internal whistle-blowers, conscientious staff, outside law and accounting firms, journalists, congressional committees, and inspector generals. As the great newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer once wrote, "There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a swindle, and there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy." Federal chartering would put an end to the secrecy under which many corporations conduct their shadiest business.Federal charters would also require corporations to honor union rights and empower shareholders to discipline or replace top management and board members after wrongdoing.
A democratic society cannot long withstand the kinds of massive inequalities in power, privilege, and immunity that exist today between large corporations and individual citizens. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once observed, "We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."A charter should contain:
* A ban on corporate lobbying and on donations to electoral campaigns.
* A ban on advertising deadly products, such as tobacco.
* A ban on obstructing a regulator.
* A clause that a corporation may make money for shareholders, "but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public health or safety, the communities in which the corporation operates or the dignity of its employees."
* An end to shareholder primacy.
* An end to corporate personhood.
The goals of federal chartering have wide support of citizens, perhaps up to 95%.
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – corporate crime
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
6. Crack Down on Corporate Crime
How many people have gone to jail as a result of causing the 2008-9 Great Recession by selling bogus mortgages, looting savings and pension funds, and otherwise crashing the economy and sending millions out of work and out of their homes, and then rigging a bailout that left us taxpayers with the bill?
Zero.
In 2007 homeless Roy Brown went into a bank and asked for money. Though the clerk put lots of bills in front of him, Brown took only $100. He later voluntarily surrendered to the police and plead guilty. His sentence:
Fifteen years, costing taxpayers at least a half million.
Here are reasons why corporate crimes go undetected:
* Corporate power has made sure there is no database on corporate crime.
* There is no public outcry against corporate crime because news media doesn't report it (and much of media is corporate).
* There is little scholarship or training in corporate crime. Lawyers are unprepared to prosecute it.
* Corporate crime is usually invisible. Such crimes as pollution don't sicken or kill quickly.
* Taxpayers are affected indirectly. When military contractors, for example, defrauds the gov't a bill isn't sent to taxpayers. They only see it in future taxes or in the gov't debt, which is meaningless to them.
* Criminal penalties have been scrubbed from the law.
* Corporations are in business with their watchdogs – through advertising dollars given to media, through donations to candidates, through dismantling laws that allow victims to sue (called "tort reform").
* Crimes can take years and decades to wreak their damage.
An example: Back in 1949 General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire violated anti-trust laws through a conspiracy to buy up and dismantle 100 electric trolley systems across America, forcing us to use cars (sold by GM) and buses, which created today's daily traffic jams, which wastes the time of millions of people and causes huge amounts of pollution. Recreating what was ripped out would cost maybe $300 billion. The companies were convicted. GM's fine: $5000.
6. Crack Down on Corporate Crime
How many people have gone to jail as a result of causing the 2008-9 Great Recession by selling bogus mortgages, looting savings and pension funds, and otherwise crashing the economy and sending millions out of work and out of their homes, and then rigging a bailout that left us taxpayers with the bill?
Zero.
In 2007 homeless Roy Brown went into a bank and asked for money. Though the clerk put lots of bills in front of him, Brown took only $100. He later voluntarily surrendered to the police and plead guilty. His sentence:
Fifteen years, costing taxpayers at least a half million.
Crime in the suites has always been punished much more lightly than crime in the streets. Yet corporate crime extracts a far greater toll. While politicians cry out about cracking down on street crime, they collect campaign money from politically powerful corporate crooks who are eager to see that enforcement budgets, prosecutorial will, and even data collection about their fraud, violence, and systemic abuse are to minimum. These corporate supremacists have achieved such control over the system that they're able to ensure what criminal laws are drafted to exclude their kind of crimes or to divert responsibility away from corporate bosses towards underlings or hollow company subsidiaries. They have managed to drive federal and state cops off the corporate crime beat to protect business as usual.To consider only one category, medical billing fraud and abuse costs patients and taxpayers at least $250 billion a year. In the early 1990s the Savings and Loan mess cost taxpayers at least $300 billion.
We think of street crime as more dangerous than corporate crime – because street crime involves immediate physical danger, often takes place at nighttime, and is viscerally upsetting. But each year far more people die, become injured or sick, and lose their money, homes, and other property because of corporate crime than they do because of street crime. The scale of devastation is not even close. Year in and year out, roughly 60,000 Americans die from workplace-related disasters and trauma, 70,000 from air pollution, 100,000 from hospital negligence, and another 100,000 from hospital-induced infection. … And the list of preventable, silent violence goes on. If one of your kin or close friends was a victim of such corporate violence, would it be any consolidation to hear that at least the loss of your loved one didn't occur at the hands of terrorists or a crazed killer on the street?
Here are reasons why corporate crimes go undetected:
* Corporate power has made sure there is no database on corporate crime.
* There is no public outcry against corporate crime because news media doesn't report it (and much of media is corporate).
* There is little scholarship or training in corporate crime. Lawyers are unprepared to prosecute it.
* Corporate crime is usually invisible. Such crimes as pollution don't sicken or kill quickly.
* Taxpayers are affected indirectly. When military contractors, for example, defrauds the gov't a bill isn't sent to taxpayers. They only see it in future taxes or in the gov't debt, which is meaningless to them.
* Criminal penalties have been scrubbed from the law.
* Corporations are in business with their watchdogs – through advertising dollars given to media, through donations to candidates, through dismantling laws that allow victims to sue (called "tort reform").
* Crimes can take years and decades to wreak their damage.
An example: Back in 1949 General Motors, Phillips Petroleum, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire violated anti-trust laws through a conspiracy to buy up and dismantle 100 electric trolley systems across America, forcing us to use cars (sold by GM) and buses, which created today's daily traffic jams, which wastes the time of millions of people and causes huge amounts of pollution. Recreating what was ripped out would cost maybe $300 billion. The companies were convicted. GM's fine: $5000.
When business theorists insist that corporations exist to make profits, and that so-called social responsibility is not their business, they tend to ignore the fact that obeying the law – and not corrupting its enforcers – should also be corporate business.Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter, said:
Corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live.We have an advantage, though it is little used. Though corporations have money (lots of it), they can't vote. We can. In every Congressional district there are people damaged by corporate rampages. Start with a small core and allies will join. Confront your representative with the need for an overhaul of federal corporate criminal laws. Force a few highly visible hearings. Make sure the laws include jail time. Ban convicted corporations from receiving gov't contracts.
One way to understand the extent of the corporate crime problem in America is to imagine it as a raging street crime epidemic in New York City – with only one hundred police on duty to enforce the law and with all the police superiors taking contributions from the gangs.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – corporate welfare
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
5. Eliminate Corporate Welfare
In 1996 the GOP, with the approval of Pres. Bill Clinton, enacted welfare reform. That eliminated aid to those pesky single moms who wanted to turn a handout into a hammock.
But nothing was done then, or since, about reforming handouts to corporations. A big reason is welfare moms don't contribute to political campaigns.
Nader gives details for a long list of gov't giveaways to corporations. It happens at the federal, state, and local levels. Frequently, once enacted there is no annual review. Such things as tax abatements don't appear in the state or city budget.
Why does all this matter? Because every dollar given to corporations (or not collected from them in taxes) is a dollar not spent on education, infrastructure, and the social safety net. All of which are in pretty bad shape these days. Corporate welfare allows management to take larger risks because they know if something goes bad the gov't will bail them out. And the things that go bad are more than money, they include environmental damage, injury and death to humans, and the trauma of social upheaval. Corporate welfare leads to greater income inequality, leaving even the middle class to struggle. It also undermines democracy.
There are stories of citizen groups that fight back. An example is the rejection of tax money for a new stadium for the New England Patriots. Alas, such examples are rare because the economic forces are too well organized, too powerful, and often too well hidden. In addition, courts remain hostile to reforms. When particular cases come before the courts, they are frequently thrown out with the ruling that citizens don't have standing to sue – which doesn't make sense because it is our money.
What to do?
Yes, gov't needs corporations to fulfill some of its goals. The market can't always meet those needs. But the relationship doesn't have to be reckless or at taxpayer expense. The relationship should be open, publicly deliberated, nonexclusive to the recipients, include repayment of gov't investment, and include ways to benefit the citizens and workers. The taxpayer should benefit as much as the corporation. And the handout must have a review, perhaps every three years.
We need new processes to allow citizens to call for change. One idea is to host town meetings to discuss specific issues. We may not get gov't to fund these, but private foundations can.
Other ideas: Require each corporation to list these handouts in its annual reports. The SEC could require this. If corporate leaders have been convicted of wrongdoing that corporation no longer gets subsidies. Give citizens the standing to bring lawsuits against these handouts and reward citizens who bring a successful suit by giving them a percentage of the money saved.
Finally, Nader puts out a call for a national coalition of taxpayers, workers, and small business owners to act against the corporate state. The sentinels of democracy – lawmakers, regulators, and judges – have failed to stop this raid on the Treasury. We must act.
5. Eliminate Corporate Welfare
In 1996 the GOP, with the approval of Pres. Bill Clinton, enacted welfare reform. That eliminated aid to those pesky single moms who wanted to turn a handout into a hammock.
But nothing was done then, or since, about reforming handouts to corporations. A big reason is welfare moms don't contribute to political campaigns.
For decades, I've been calling on Americans to recognize the phenomenon of corporate welfare as the poster boy for both the exploitation of taxpayers and the hypocrisy of free-market anti-big government ideologues.Money is given to corporations through credits, exemptions, grants, subsidies, loan guarantees, and such things as an agreement with the Federal Reserve to buy stock in and guaranteeing shaky credit of a huge teetering bank. There is also leasing of radio spectrum, oil, mineral, and land rights for a pittance – allowing exclusive use and profit making from what belongs to all of us. There is free licensing of research done at public universities. There are inflated contracts with the military and NASA. There are deals where the profits go to the corporation and the risk is covered by the gov't. The list goes on.
Uncle Sam's sugar daddy largesse is so rampant that no one has managed to compile a comprehensive survey of even a single department's or agency's giveaways.Such giveaways are usually sold to taxpayers (when they're visible at all) as job-creation measures. But these giveaways lead to unfair competition. Who will create more – and better – jobs, a series of small businesses that can't afford to make political donations or Walmart, which receives all kinds of tax abatements and is known for underpaying workers?
Nader gives details for a long list of gov't giveaways to corporations. It happens at the federal, state, and local levels. Frequently, once enacted there is no annual review. Such things as tax abatements don't appear in the state or city budget.
Why does all this matter? Because every dollar given to corporations (or not collected from them in taxes) is a dollar not spent on education, infrastructure, and the social safety net. All of which are in pretty bad shape these days. Corporate welfare allows management to take larger risks because they know if something goes bad the gov't will bail them out. And the things that go bad are more than money, they include environmental damage, injury and death to humans, and the trauma of social upheaval. Corporate welfare leads to greater income inequality, leaving even the middle class to struggle. It also undermines democracy.
There are stories of citizen groups that fight back. An example is the rejection of tax money for a new stadium for the New England Patriots. Alas, such examples are rare because the economic forces are too well organized, too powerful, and often too well hidden. In addition, courts remain hostile to reforms. When particular cases come before the courts, they are frequently thrown out with the ruling that citizens don't have standing to sue – which doesn't make sense because it is our money.
What to do?
Yes, gov't needs corporations to fulfill some of its goals. The market can't always meet those needs. But the relationship doesn't have to be reckless or at taxpayer expense. The relationship should be open, publicly deliberated, nonexclusive to the recipients, include repayment of gov't investment, and include ways to benefit the citizens and workers. The taxpayer should benefit as much as the corporation. And the handout must have a review, perhaps every three years.
We need new processes to allow citizens to call for change. One idea is to host town meetings to discuss specific issues. We may not get gov't to fund these, but private foundations can.
Other ideas: Require each corporation to list these handouts in its annual reports. The SEC could require this. If corporate leaders have been convicted of wrongdoing that corporation no longer gets subsidies. Give citizens the standing to bring lawsuits against these handouts and reward citizens who bring a successful suit by giving them a percentage of the money saved.
Finally, Nader puts out a call for a national coalition of taxpayers, workers, and small business owners to act against the corporate state. The sentinels of democracy – lawmakers, regulators, and judges – have failed to stop this raid on the Treasury. We must act.
Monday, September 5, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – family values
Continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
4. Protecting the Family Unit
I've posted many times about "family values." Usually in this blog it is about how LGBT are pulling the family apart or how LGBT people are corrupting children. Through it all there is lots of hand-wringing over the child's lost innocence and how we must protect children (who aren't as fragile as claimed). Childhood, even when we're not the threat, prompts lots of compassionate words from politicians (as they cut funding from schools again).
But all this political desire to protect disappears when up against the relentless onslaught of corporate advertising aimed at children. This isn't just through the TV. It also comes through phones, video games, and computer screens. It is to the point where children spend more time with these ads than with their parents. And trust their computer more than they trust Mom and Dad.
The citizen organization Commercial Alert (Nader is one of the founders) promotes a Parents' Bill of Rights. This includes the Leave Children Alone Act, which bans TV advertising to children under 12; the Commercial-Free Schools Act; the Product Placement Disclosure Act, to prevent sneaking ads into media that parents assume to be ad-free; the Child Harm Disclosure Act, requiring the disclosure of information that a product could substantially harm a child's health; and the Children's Advertising Subsidy Revocation Act, to eliminate various federal subsidies for ads aimed at children under 12. Of course, corporations will fight tenaciously to maintain their profits.
What to do? Join citizen action organizations. "Put the TV in the closet, the cell phones in the drawer, and eat their family meals together." Search local papers, community organizations, and libraries for family activities. Participate in community institutions, such as food coops, energy production, health clinics, public works departments, city council meetings, local courts, artisan shops, farms, firehouses, hospitals, and newspaper.
Children should be "raised not by corporations, but by caring, thoughtful, engaged families."
4. Protecting the Family Unit
I've posted many times about "family values." Usually in this blog it is about how LGBT are pulling the family apart or how LGBT people are corrupting children. Through it all there is lots of hand-wringing over the child's lost innocence and how we must protect children (who aren't as fragile as claimed). Childhood, even when we're not the threat, prompts lots of compassionate words from politicians (as they cut funding from schools again).
But all this political desire to protect disappears when up against the relentless onslaught of corporate advertising aimed at children. This isn't just through the TV. It also comes through phones, video games, and computer screens. It is to the point where children spend more time with these ads than with their parents. And trust their computer more than they trust Mom and Dad.
For the first time in human history, most children are born into homes where most of the stories do not come from their parents, schools, churches, communities, and in many places even from their native countries, but from a handful of conglomerates who have something to sell.Parents are losing this war over their children
because the corporations have overwhelming resources at their disposal and because the perverse logic of the marketplace dictates that they put those resource to the most exploitative possible uses.Though parents hold the dollars marketers have a three-step strategy to counter parents' control of child spending.
First, they entice children to nag their parents. Second, they take advantage of the absence of parents who travel or work long hours outside the home. Third they undermine the authority, dignity, and judgment of parents in the eyes of their children, thereby inducing kids to purchase or demand items regardless of their parents' opinions.Marlboro Man taps into "teenagers' yearning for independence and freedom". The McDonald's McWorld campaign portrays adults as "lame, stupid pains-in-the-butt." PlayStation ads "explicitly degrade and devalue parents." The overall message is, "We understand you better than your parents."
The citizen organization Commercial Alert (Nader is one of the founders) promotes a Parents' Bill of Rights. This includes the Leave Children Alone Act, which bans TV advertising to children under 12; the Commercial-Free Schools Act; the Product Placement Disclosure Act, to prevent sneaking ads into media that parents assume to be ad-free; the Child Harm Disclosure Act, requiring the disclosure of information that a product could substantially harm a child's health; and the Children's Advertising Subsidy Revocation Act, to eliminate various federal subsidies for ads aimed at children under 12. Of course, corporations will fight tenaciously to maintain their profits.
What to do? Join citizen action organizations. "Put the TV in the closet, the cell phones in the drawer, and eat their family meals together." Search local papers, community organizations, and libraries for family activities. Participate in community institutions, such as food coops, energy production, health clinics, public works departments, city council meetings, local courts, artisan shops, farms, firehouses, hospitals, and newspaper.
Children should be "raised not by corporations, but by caring, thoughtful, engaged families."
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – local economy and science
Most years my yard and neighborhood can have mosquitoes so thick I don't want to be outside, which can mean yard work doesn't get done. Some years the pesky things were good at getting into the house. This year there have been no mosquitoes – until a couple days ago. And one just buzzed my ear as I sat in the kitchen. I'm sure the series of August storms had something to do with it.
On to continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
2. The Local Economy
Local businesses have been largely replaced by outposts of national corporations. But these nationals have no stake in the health of any particular community. Their only goal is to maximize what goes into shareholder pockets. America feels abandoned. Nader delves into the problem, including the disconnect between what corporations create and what we need:
The disconnect between corporations and the rest of America is documented in many other posts. You can find them here.
What is the alternative? Nader proposes local cooperatives, business owned and controlled by the community. The coop has bargaining power to use against corporations including quality, safety, nutrition, durability and sustainability. It also can determine what products not to provide, such as foods with harmful ingredients. They can search for specialty products including what is made locally. They can branch into insurance, media, travel, and adult education. They can partner with other coops for manufacturing. The power is local and includes issues beyond profit, such as sustainability and the environment.
3. Science for the People
Back in the mid 1980s there was lots of news (or perhaps lots of mentions in the science fiction magazines I bought) about nanotechnology. I even bought a book about it, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler. I never actually got around to reading it and I probably lost it in my move to and from Germany a few years later – or perhaps lost in the basement flood five years ago.
With something that showed so much promise and the potential for being so revolutionary and newsworthy, what happened? Where are the medical nanobots? Where is my replicator?
Nader's answer: Nanotechnology is still being developed, but it has been swallowed by the corporate black hole. We might see the results on consumer products, but otherwise no light gets out.
Over the last few decades corporations have been very aggressive in exerting power of academic science, regulatory agencies, and the tort civil justice system. In the case of academia it means offering joint ventures that tie the hands of academic scientists. The contracts state research is owned by the corporation and turned over before the results are published in scientific journals. Sometimes the corporations appoint faculty.
This is why it is a problem:
* Much university research is subsidized by the US Government. This mean taxpayer money is funding research that benefits only corporations and not the public at large.
* It skews what kind of research is being done. We get research that benefits the corporation, not the general public, such as ecological problems. We don't get enough research into antibiotics, leading to microbes that are now resistant to known ways to combat them.
* It undermines the objectivity of university science while jeopardizing academic freedom.
* Professors face a hostile climate when serving as expert witnesses in product liability cases. Fewer are willing to face down the industry's well-compensated "experts."
* Professors are less able to argue for public safety when new technologies are developed. I had mentioned nanotechnology. If it is done wrong it could cause catastrophic damage to the environment. An example is a nanocritter that "eats" pollution. What if it also "eats" necessary algae? Corporations aren't paying much attention to anything but the profits. Someone needs to be the independent voice calling for proper safeguards and controls.
If academia's independence is corroded,
One part is to encourage and join civic movements. Some already exists. An example is the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI). They are challenging the Food Industry and informing citizens about foods that are both nutritious and delicious.
Faulty and fraudulent science must be exposed to the public, not buried in corrections and retractions in scientific journals.
Encourage citizen science. Train citizens how to do such things as measure pollution or the number of salamanders in a region as a guide to environment health. Teach science literacy – how to tell good science from bad.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels and start subsidizing renewables, especially solar.
On to continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.
2. The Local Economy
Local businesses have been largely replaced by outposts of national corporations. But these nationals have no stake in the health of any particular community. Their only goal is to maximize what goes into shareholder pockets. America feels abandoned. Nader delves into the problem, including the disconnect between what corporations create and what we need:
For decades, our corporate economy has been shifting its focus from fulfilling basic human needs (food, shelter, warmth) to fulfilling (and creating!) more trivial wants and whims. From commercial entertainment, video games, and spectator sports, to stylized snack foods, communication gadgets, and even redundant weapons systems, corporations have invested billions of dollars into research and development (R & D) on items that rob consumers of endless amounts of their not-so-disposable income. And this continues even though large segments of the population are suffering from inadequate nutrition, employment, capital ownership, shelter, transportation, and health care coverage.
The disconnect between corporations and the rest of America is documented in many other posts. You can find them here.
What is the alternative? Nader proposes local cooperatives, business owned and controlled by the community. The coop has bargaining power to use against corporations including quality, safety, nutrition, durability and sustainability. It also can determine what products not to provide, such as foods with harmful ingredients. They can search for specialty products including what is made locally. They can branch into insurance, media, travel, and adult education. They can partner with other coops for manufacturing. The power is local and includes issues beyond profit, such as sustainability and the environment.
Are consumers willing to step away from the creeping corporatization of their lives and take the time to empower their dollars by joining economic institutions that will endure and outlast their originators? The internet offers infinite new promise … Yet it will take more than just technology to interest the American people at large in the potential of community-based cooperatives; it will take a new awakening of interest in our shared standard of living.Lisbeth Schorr discusses successful pilot programs and wonders why they don't survive outside the pilot phase. She provides an answer:
The problems arise when the successful pilot program is to expand and thereby threatens the basic political and bureaucratic arrangements that have held sway over the decades … When effective programs aiming to reach large numbers encounter the pressures exercised by prevailing attitudes and systems, the resulting collision is almost always lethal to the effective programs.Nader says the solution requires
a concerted effort to educate the people on the benefits of local economic self-reliance – to show how much more secure, enjoyable, safe, and happy their lives can be when they participate in and reap the benefits of decisions about their own communities – decisions that are now being made thousands of miles away by a few powerbrokers who view them as mere subentries on an income statement.Yes, this is hard work.
3. Science for the People
Back in the mid 1980s there was lots of news (or perhaps lots of mentions in the science fiction magazines I bought) about nanotechnology. I even bought a book about it, Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler. I never actually got around to reading it and I probably lost it in my move to and from Germany a few years later – or perhaps lost in the basement flood five years ago.
With something that showed so much promise and the potential for being so revolutionary and newsworthy, what happened? Where are the medical nanobots? Where is my replicator?
Nader's answer: Nanotechnology is still being developed, but it has been swallowed by the corporate black hole. We might see the results on consumer products, but otherwise no light gets out.
Over the last few decades corporations have been very aggressive in exerting power of academic science, regulatory agencies, and the tort civil justice system. In the case of academia it means offering joint ventures that tie the hands of academic scientists. The contracts state research is owned by the corporation and turned over before the results are published in scientific journals. Sometimes the corporations appoint faculty.
This is why it is a problem:
* Much university research is subsidized by the US Government. This mean taxpayer money is funding research that benefits only corporations and not the public at large.
* It skews what kind of research is being done. We get research that benefits the corporation, not the general public, such as ecological problems. We don't get enough research into antibiotics, leading to microbes that are now resistant to known ways to combat them.
* It undermines the objectivity of university science while jeopardizing academic freedom.
* Professors face a hostile climate when serving as expert witnesses in product liability cases. Fewer are willing to face down the industry's well-compensated "experts."
* Professors are less able to argue for public safety when new technologies are developed. I had mentioned nanotechnology. If it is done wrong it could cause catastrophic damage to the environment. An example is a nanocritter that "eats" pollution. What if it also "eats" necessary algae? Corporations aren't paying much attention to anything but the profits. Someone needs to be the independent voice calling for proper safeguards and controls.
If academia's independence is corroded,
society loses exactly what President Eisenhower considered the crucial rule of a free university: to be a "fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery,"of "intellectual curiosity, "of "the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."What to do?
One part is to encourage and join civic movements. Some already exists. An example is the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI). They are challenging the Food Industry and informing citizens about foods that are both nutritious and delicious.
Faulty and fraudulent science must be exposed to the public, not buried in corrections and retractions in scientific journals.
Encourage citizen science. Train citizens how to do such things as measure pollution or the number of salamanders in a region as a guide to environment health. Teach science literacy – how to tell good science from bad.
Stop subsidizing fossil fuels and start subsidizing renewables, especially solar.
The sun is accessible to everyone, everywhere. No one owns it. No one can subject it to a cartel. No one can make it scarce. … And, for the energy companies, that's the problem. … Ordinary people just don't have the wherewithal to find coal, gas, oil, or uranium, or time mine them, or to refine them and transport them to market.
…
Solar power holds the promise of making our communities self-sufficient, reducing pollution and climate disruption, cutting our dependency on foreign resources, lowering our trade deficits, decreasing our risk of nuclear sabotage and proliferation, eliminating wars over oil, making our economy more efficient, all while demonstrating respect for both our planet and future generations.
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Seventeen Solutions – taxes
I usually have a book in my car. I take it with me when I know I'll have time to read – doctor waiting rooms, dentist chairs (while waiting for x-rays to be developed), physical therapy appointments (for the 15 minutes of ice after a workout), movie theaters, restaurants when I'm by myself, concert halls (for before the concert), Ruth Ellis Center (when taking a break), that kind of thing. I tend not to have a fiction book in the car. It needs to be something I can read in short bursts with perhaps several days before I open it again.
The book in my car I recently finished is The Seventeen Solutions, Bold Ideas for Our American Future by Ralph Nader.
Yes, that Ralph Nader. He made his name in 1965 with the book Unsafe at Any Speed about the poor safety record of American cars. He is credited with the passage of several important consumer protection laws, such as the Clean Water Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act. He ran for president six times and is accused of being a spoiler in the 2000 election, siphoning off enough votes in Florida so that George Bush and Al Gore ended up essentially tied.
And this year Nader annoyed some people (like me) with is criticism of Clinton and his (mild) praise of Trump. At 82 is his brain affected by old age?
The book, published in 2012, sat on my shelf for a couple years. My delay was because I thought proposing all these wonderful ideas isn't much good if you don't provide a way of getting the ideas past the GOP held Congress. We're in this mess because the GOP lackeys are beholden to big corporations and they're not going to give up power by nicely asking. So what is the plan in getting these ideas implemented? My skepticism continued while reading the book, especially when I saw how the corporate takeover of America has affected more and more areas of our lives. Corporations have overrun that too?
Even so, I thought the various ideas are what this country needs. Because I think the ideas are so great and explained so well, I'll review them here. I certainly won't get through all of them in one blog post. This, then, is the first in a series.
1. Tax Reform
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has published a brief overview of five principles of sound tax policy.
* Equity evaluates whether the tax system is fair. It comes in two varieties.
Vertical Equity means the poor pay as little or as much as the rich do in relation to their income. This is the classification of taxes into progressive or regressive. Regressive taxes, such as sales taxes and flat income tax rates, take a bigger (higher percentage) chunk out of the lower incomes than the wealthy incomes.
An often cited reason for progressive taxes is poor people feel the pinch when rates are raised, rich people don't. There are two more reasons. First, the rich have economic power. They can hold down the wages of the poor – check the rising ratio between the average worker and the CEO. Second, the rich have political power and can rig the laws to favor themselves. This can be done through corporate subsidies, free tech transfers, non-compete gov't contracts, undervalued mineral and timber licenses, and other tactics.
Horizontal Equity means different forms of income are taxed at the same rate. Currently, income from labor can be taxed as high as 33% while capital gains income is at 15%.
* Adequacy means the gov't has a stable and sufficient source of revenue to fund the public services we need. Our current method meets this goal in principle (though many state legislatures intentionally underfund what their citizens need in services).
* Simplicity allows for enforcement of the tax code. The current system means corporate tax attorneys can run circles around overburdened IRS auditors. Which means the IRS finds it easier to go after the petty violations of the middle class and working poor. A "tax industry" of lawyers, accountants, and consultants thrives on the complexity of our tax system.
* Exportability means preventing people from avoiding taxes by crossing state lines. When you travel to another state, you pay that state's sales tax. Business taxes are based on the amount of business in each state.
* Efficiency means a business is making decisions based on business reasons, not on tax avoidance reasons. For example, a Reagan tax break on commercial real estate prompted an oversupply of office buildings. These unused office towers meant more productive investments didn't happen – and were paid for by taxpayers.
Our current system fails on equity, simplicity, efficiency, and likely adequacy. Nader documents this well. Though we grumble about taxes there is an amazing little serious and thoughtful public discussion of tax policy. What we get instead is outrage and platitudes from pandering politicians. The proposed budgets by Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump perpetuate all these current failures.
The book in my car I recently finished is The Seventeen Solutions, Bold Ideas for Our American Future by Ralph Nader.
Yes, that Ralph Nader. He made his name in 1965 with the book Unsafe at Any Speed about the poor safety record of American cars. He is credited with the passage of several important consumer protection laws, such as the Clean Water Act and the Whistleblower Protection Act. He ran for president six times and is accused of being a spoiler in the 2000 election, siphoning off enough votes in Florida so that George Bush and Al Gore ended up essentially tied.
And this year Nader annoyed some people (like me) with is criticism of Clinton and his (mild) praise of Trump. At 82 is his brain affected by old age?
The book, published in 2012, sat on my shelf for a couple years. My delay was because I thought proposing all these wonderful ideas isn't much good if you don't provide a way of getting the ideas past the GOP held Congress. We're in this mess because the GOP lackeys are beholden to big corporations and they're not going to give up power by nicely asking. So what is the plan in getting these ideas implemented? My skepticism continued while reading the book, especially when I saw how the corporate takeover of America has affected more and more areas of our lives. Corporations have overrun that too?
Even so, I thought the various ideas are what this country needs. Because I think the ideas are so great and explained so well, I'll review them here. I certainly won't get through all of them in one blog post. This, then, is the first in a series.
1. Tax Reform
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has published a brief overview of five principles of sound tax policy.
* Equity evaluates whether the tax system is fair. It comes in two varieties.
Vertical Equity means the poor pay as little or as much as the rich do in relation to their income. This is the classification of taxes into progressive or regressive. Regressive taxes, such as sales taxes and flat income tax rates, take a bigger (higher percentage) chunk out of the lower incomes than the wealthy incomes.
An often cited reason for progressive taxes is poor people feel the pinch when rates are raised, rich people don't. There are two more reasons. First, the rich have economic power. They can hold down the wages of the poor – check the rising ratio between the average worker and the CEO. Second, the rich have political power and can rig the laws to favor themselves. This can be done through corporate subsidies, free tech transfers, non-compete gov't contracts, undervalued mineral and timber licenses, and other tactics.
Horizontal Equity means different forms of income are taxed at the same rate. Currently, income from labor can be taxed as high as 33% while capital gains income is at 15%.
* Adequacy means the gov't has a stable and sufficient source of revenue to fund the public services we need. Our current method meets this goal in principle (though many state legislatures intentionally underfund what their citizens need in services).
* Simplicity allows for enforcement of the tax code. The current system means corporate tax attorneys can run circles around overburdened IRS auditors. Which means the IRS finds it easier to go after the petty violations of the middle class and working poor. A "tax industry" of lawyers, accountants, and consultants thrives on the complexity of our tax system.
* Exportability means preventing people from avoiding taxes by crossing state lines. When you travel to another state, you pay that state's sales tax. Business taxes are based on the amount of business in each state.
* Efficiency means a business is making decisions based on business reasons, not on tax avoidance reasons. For example, a Reagan tax break on commercial real estate prompted an oversupply of office buildings. These unused office towers meant more productive investments didn't happen – and were paid for by taxpayers.
Our current system fails on equity, simplicity, efficiency, and likely adequacy. Nader documents this well. Though we grumble about taxes there is an amazing little serious and thoughtful public discussion of tax policy. What we get instead is outrage and platitudes from pandering politicians. The proposed budgets by Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump perpetuate all these current failures.
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