Mountaintop Pillage

The naked land reveals the naked truth. The greed of millionaires trumps the health of the poor, the purity of the water, and even the beauty of the hills. In an under-reported story, the Bush administration has made yet another rule change assaulting the environment and enriching the polluters. The practice of mountaintop removal will no longer be hampered by those pesky environmental rules designed to protect our waters.

Photo courtesy Vivian Stockman / www.ohvec.org
Flyover courtesy SouthWings.org

Couched in language which might initially incline a reader to think it is protecting the environment, the new proposed rules actually redefine terms, and reinterpret former acts of Congress, in such a way that mining operations which engage in the surface coal mining technology known as mountaintop removal are exempt from the 1983 requirement that prohibits mining activity within 100 feet of streams. In fact this practice routinely buries streams and valleys by tons of rubble, known as "excess spoil", which is stripped off the top of coal seams running through the tops of hills and mountains in West Virginia, Kentucky, and western Virginia.

The current rule change is subject to a 60-day comment period which will expire on October 23, though those looking for a response to their comment had best post it to OIRA_DOCKET@omb.eop.gov before September 24. Folks at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition have created this page of suggestions for citizen action.

So if the rule change is new, then how is it that about 1200 miles of streams have been tainted by this process (700 miles simply buried) since 1992? According to Vernon Haltom of Coal River Mountain Watch,

What happens is the permitting agencies grant variances, and they grant variances just pretty much willy-nilly. All the coal operator has to do is request a variance, and they’re granted pretty easily. Unfortunately, you know, this rule change would remove even that requirement.

The latest rule change is simply the latest in a series of changes which further undercuts environmental safeguards of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA). The lengthy new document, which is actually surprisingly readable, arguably does remove logical ambiguities from the original act, but ever in the direction of allowing practices which are suggested as possible where another part of the Act would logically prohibit them.

Viewing photographs of this obvious desecration, one might wonder why it isn't front page news, frequently reported by the mainstream press. Alternatively one wonders, "Well what's the other side of the story?" In fact Google searches of CNN, ABC News, CBS News, MSNBC, and Fox News consistently turn up surprising few hits on "mountaintop removal", in spite of the fact that is the acknowledged name of the practice. Neither can one find any bevy of editorials supporting this indefensible practice, though occasional editorial support of coal liquifecation technologies implicitly approve the practice, as mountaintop removal (MTR) provides much of today's raw materials for that process.

Furthermore I scoured the online versions of the local press from such places as Beckley, WV and Pikeville, KY. Very little in the way of articles on the process appear, though there were numerous letters to the editor almost unanimously in staunch opposition to the process. The Charleston Gazette did a better job of covering it, with an earlier series, and a recent editorial by Allen Johnson declaring the destruction of the mountains to be a moral issue. Johnson, of Christians for the Mountains, was featured on a recent episode of Bill Moyers' Journal which investigated the issue.

Well then, is it the jobs MTR is providing which is producing such silence on this destructive practice? In fact, it has the opposite effect on employment as the process uses bigger machines and fewer people than traditional mining practices. Vernon Haltom again:

You know, we hear about coal being cheap. Well, coal is not cheap when you consider all the externalized costs that are borne by these communities. It’s really -- it is unbearable. And so what you have, you have depopulation, you have decreased jobs. Mountaintop removal requires fewer miners, and therefore fewer jobs.

Really it boils down to wealth and influence. Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, has no lack of ties and connections to government and the regulators, while Ed Wiley, citizen of West Virginia, walked all the way from Charleston, West Virginia to Washington, DC, and still could get no hearing. Carmelita Brown can look up the hill at Blankenship's home, and yet her water frequently ran dark brown with contaminants from ground water ruined by Massey's irresponsible mining practices. Only after thirteen years of documenting the contamination and battling the authorities, did Brown and 300 other families get clean municipal water piped into their homes. Of course that doesn't fix the ground water contamination which continues apace, and will only accelerate when this rule takes effect. It doesn't fix the air pollution caused by the blasting which exposes the seams of coal, to the tune of 474,000 metric tons of explosives used in West Virginia alone in 2005.

The Administration's own report (page 3) acknowledges that there were 1079 excess spoil fills approved in Kentucky, 375 in West Virginia, and 125 in Virginia between October 2001 and June of 2005. These are those exemptions already granted for filling in creeks, which will no longer be necessary when the new rule goes into effect. The new language may remove ambiguity about what is and is not allowed (pretty much the polluters can do as they please), but the constraints, now often amount to vague suggestions that excess spoil and adverse environmental impacts be minimized, rather than enforcing specific standards. There remains the constraint that the spoil not be dumped into valleys lower in altitude than the lowest part of the seam to be mined, but that's easily skirted by making sure some mining occurs in a seam lower than the intended dumping area.

The champions of the free market love to claim that market forces can work to protect our environment, but when the distribution of wealth is so extremely skewed it just doesn't work that way. Billionaires buy the regulations they want, and the impoverished are left with no leverage. This isn't supply and demand; it's corruption pure and simple. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are on the take, but there is little question that the Bush Administration is front and center when it come to cementing the advantage for the wealthy elite.

EPA Action: Tardy, not Premature

If the Bush administration were honest, they would have renamed the Environment Protection Agency as the Corporation Protection Agency. Last week the Supreme Court sided with Massachussetts and other states in declaring that the EPA may regulate greenhouse gases. Yesterday EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency was looking at options, but it was premature to talk about it.

Premature indeed! When it comes to protecting our environment, this administration has always been a day late and a dollar short. It's a shame too. Even now the EPA is loaded with good people committed to protecting our environment, but often when scientists are ready to issue reports contrary to wishes of corporate big wigs in bed with the administration, those scientists are muzzled. When enforcement threatens the profits of companies too cozy with the Republican establishment, enforcement is defunded. And when regulating greenhouse gas emissions might cost Detroit too much, well the EPA Administrators assigned to rein in the environmental "excesses" of the rank and file declare that EPA lacks the authority to do so.

The Bush administration seems to have no problem exceeding its authority when it comes to abbrogating individuals' civil liberties in the so-called war against terror, but exercises illogical restraint on its authority when curbing corporate behavior that may risk our collective future.

The Supreme Court dealt a rebuke to that logic last week, when it instructed the EPA that it did have authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and would be required to defend lack of such regulations on a scientific basis.

With all due respect to Linda Greenhouse, coastal dwellers in future generations will be far less concerned about John Roberts' trepidation about the legal doctrine of 'standing' than they will about excess corporate control of government if that is not reined in before their communities are inundated.

My Land, Your Land, Our Land

My home state of Washington must fend off an atrociously crafted property rights initiative, I-933, in next Tuesday's election. A recent poll suggests cause for great hope in both this race and the other initiatives in my state. If it proves true, I believe it will be the first time ever that I voted on the winning side of every initiative here.

Property rights measures often succeed by appealing to Americans' notions about property ownership and the American dream. "Property fairness" is the rallying cry of its supporters. My own predisposition is to be very distrustful of property rights movements, which are often motivated by greed and selfishness at the expense of the public good. That doesn't mean I cannot acknowledge instances where simplistically crafted regulations constrain reasonable uses of people's land creating justifiable resentment against government. But the answer doesn't lie in a simplistically crafted initiative voted on by the public at large, rather than having elected representatives hammer out the details to mitigate problems with existing regulation.

Even the Yakima Herald-Republic in conservative eastern Washington farm country was able to recognize the problems with an initiative approach to solving these complex issues:

About the most positive thing we can say about Initiative 933 is that it is a good example of why it's bad public policy to write complex state laws by initiative -- absent the give-and-take of debate and compromise in the legislative arena.

No doubt their predisposition on property rights differs considerably from mine, but even so we've come to the same conclusion.

The down side to having such strong predispositions is that I'm less inclined to become as fully informed as I might about issues where I'm more doubtful of my own stance. I reacted strongly against an online libertartian-right "voters guide" sent me by a libertarian leaning friend. While I am sufficiently informed to be quite certain that I-933 would make bad law, that certainty has hampered me from doing the background research to make that case to someone who doesn't share my predispositions.

Hence my follow up answer to her was couched in some uncertainty:

I don't pretend to be an expert, but my impression is that 933 proponents claim that the state, counties, and municipalities frequently write regulations which are in abridgement of the state constitution because they do devalue the property without compensation, and that their initiative simply enforces the constitution.

I believe some claims of devaluation are specious, some are correct, and some are debatable. For just about any issue one can find gray areas. In my opinion this initiative gives ammunition to any property owner whose personal interpretation of any post-1996 regulation leads him/her to believe there property has been devalued to sue for damages or to have the regulation overturned. Having encountered folks I deem as "property rights yahoos" in action before, that has me seeing red. Lots of these folks are motivated by greed and get their undies in a bunch at some perceived injustice when reasonable regulations spell out that there are certain uses prohibited of their land. Some may even seek compensation for potential profits they are being denied that they really didn't even intend to take advantage of.

If someone buys land at some point when regulations at the time of purchase allow them to build a residence and regulations change to disallow that, then I believe the current constitution should come into play to protect their interests, and they should either be allowed to build or be compensated for takings. Again, I'm not an expert, but I believe such cases don't require this initiative. While there may be cases where an owner has been unreasonably hurt by regulation, and deserves redress, this initiative is not the silver bullet for providing that redress. In spite of a few exceptions written into 933, its language adopts a far too broad approach which in the completely accurate words of the No campaign "goes too far, and costs too much."

I further acknowledged that there are some cases of eminent domain abuse, such as the Kelo decision, where I actually sided with the conservative justices. The public good argument didn't fly in that case for me - rather it seemed like a municipality caving to moneyed interests. Especially in an instance where the result of the decision is to force someone out of their own home so it can be developed into a condominium to be sold to wealthier people.

So I am not always kneejerk reactive against property rights, but an early fondness for William Faulkner and the Native American sensibility about the land and ownership do cause me to cast a wary eye toward those for whom property rights is their most burning issue. So while I won't be burning the paperwork that the bank has given me regarding my investment in a certain plot of land, I will always regard it with a certain bemused attitude toward the concept that human beings own little pieces of the earth's crust. Any piece of land is part of a system which takes precedence over anyone's putative ownership of that piece. An ownership system is fine as long as ownership obliges the owner to appropriate stewardship of their holding. The land after all will be around long after we depart.

Thanks to Land Use Watch from neighboring Oregon for the pointer to the recent encouraging poll.

Prohibition

Aside from revenue questions, in judging what government should do, really the fundamental question is what should government prohibit. Extreme libertarians or anarchists sometimes feign a belief that prohibition is always bad, but I don't really believe them. Everybody has some things they want prohibited.

On the other side, extreme authoritarians want to prescribe a very narrow band of behavior that everyone should adhere to, often following the dictates of some particular religious practice.

But most people recognize, whether consciously or not, that things work best if people and institutions are granted considerable latitude in their choices, but prohibited from making a defined set of choices that are widely considered "bad".

Public debate about what should and should not be prohibited is a good thing, because we benefit from multiple perspectives. How people and institutions are defined politically is largely based on which activities they want to see prohibited and to what extent. Sometimes people get very passionate fighting over tiny distinctions, while at other times behaviors which most would find abhorrent are blithely ignored, while others which most would think to be no big deal are quietly disallowed.

Drawing lines for criminalization

Speaking generally, I believe in granting as much latitude as is practicable to human behavior, but defining clear lines beyond which certain behaviors are absolutely disallowed. For the smaller peccadillos, it is best if the morés of society do the job of regulating behavior. For really objectionable acts, though, the government should intervene, and assess punishment sufficiently severe to provide an unquestionable deterrent. This way government resources aren't wasted fussing with the small stuff, while people are legally allowed to push the limits of societies norms a little, with a strong deterrent from going too far.

This doesn't work for everything. It is vitally important for safety's sake that drivers not careen down residential streets at 70 miles per hour (110 kph), but the posted limit needs to guide the driver, who may not be familiar with the road, toward a truly safe speed, for instance 30 mph (50 kph). Hence we need a graduated punishment schedule ranging from a warning to a fine to a jail sentence depending on extent to which the limit is broken. But it is expensive to hire the cops to enforce these graduated punishments, so for most misbehaviors it is better to rely on the norms of society, rather than law, to encourage goodness, while relying on law to forcefully deter the clearly undesirable behaviors.

The rub is in determining what is clearly undesirable. As a liberal, I am inclined to draw the line more restrictively with respect to corporate and institutional behaviors, and less so with respect to personal behaviors. Often lost in the unnecessary rancor of these necessary debates is the fact that most liberals and conservatives agree on the overwhelming majority of which behaviors should be prohibited and which should not. Murder, rape, property theft, dumping lethal doses of toxins in rivers, forced labor, and blatant consumer fraud should be illegal. Personal insults, bad hygiene, hatred, leveraging a competitive advantage to drive smaller companies out of business, overcompensating executives, and creating waste in manufacture may all be undesirable, but most would agree that criminalizing them is not the appropriate measure for their control.

Examples of even the most blatant offenses on the corporate/institutional side of the equation are more awkward to describe, and so unfortunately defining the best reasonable lines for what should and should not be allowed is complex and nuanced. Where a simple law comes reasonably close to disallowing the undesirable while allowing mostly free commerce, that is preferable to a complex suite of regulations with multiple dependencies. It is reasonable to suggest that law should prohibit the blatant behaviors while industry should self regulate the details where complexity requires that. Unfortunately many industries become controlled largely by the bigger players, and the power they obtain in setting the rules mandates the need for independent oversight. Sometimes that means government intervening to look out for the interests of those without the power to insist on fair treatment.

Unequal Power

My liberal inclination to legislate corporate and institutional behaviors more strictly than personal behaviors has its basis in the fact that larger institutions and corporations accrue power as they grow. This does not make them a priori any more evil than an individual, but common sense dictates that it does make them more dangerous, and if they do misbehave the consequences are magnified. The corporate executives who are tempted to believe the report that the toxic release which would save their company millions over the alternative may not have the murderous intent of the criminal punk who has been hardened by years on the street, but if that report is wrong their choice may be far deadlier.

Economic conservatives often mock liberal "anti-corporatism", but I see their trust that the market is sufficient to control corporate excesses as frighteningly naive. I actually agree with them that the market is a good tool for directing the production of goods toward items which have actual value, but even if the market were truly free, which it isn't, that tool is certainly not sufficient for reining in excesses. And in an age where increasing monetary inequity exacerbates the power inequity, a healthy distrust of corporations should inform our politics. I'd like a show of hands - who thinks that corporations don't have enough power and influence? And yet the tired out Reaganesque arguments about burdensome regulations quashing innovation persist. I'm all for eliminating regulations which don't make sense, and am happy to stipulate that many exist, but give me a break, corporate behavior which is unseemly and ought to be stopped is rampant in our world.

We are hostages to Corporate Personhood & stockholder primacy

Two simple changes to U.S. law could go a long way toward righting the power imbalance between the common people and the mega-corporations. One would be the elimination of the concept of Corporate Personhood (not to be confused with the protection against liability afforded by incorporation), which was created out of a gross misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment (pdf) in multiple court rulings late in the nineteenth century.

While society was grappling with bringing former slaves into U.S society, the power and influence of corporations was also on the rise. While very few people were turning their attention and energy to bringing former slaves into society – indeed, far more energy was being put into NOT bringing them into society – corporations were using a great deal of their wealth to hire lawyers to advance their interests in the courts. The Fourteenth Amendment offered an opportunity to advance corporate interests, and the corporate attorneys set out to exploit it.
Of the 150 cases involving the Fourteenth Amendment heard by the Supreme Court up to the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896 that established the legal standing of “separate but equal,” 15 involved blacks and 135 involved business entities. The scope of the Fourteenth Amendment to secure the political rights of former slaves was so restricted by the Supreme Court that blacks won only one case. The expansive view of the Fourteenth Amendment that comes down to Constitutional Law classes today is the result of corporations using the Fourteenth Amendment as a shield against regulation.

These cases sought to establish personhood for corporations, culminating in a statement by Chief Justice Waite in 1886 commenting on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railway:

The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.

Who believes that an amendment written to grant equal protection to all races really meant that corporations should be protected as citizens? Again I'd like to see a show of hands on that one. Call me a judicial activist, (ok, I AM a judicial activist), but this is one precedent that needs to be shot down, stare decisis be damned.

Stockholder primacy is the other concept which works in concert with a myopic devotion to free market principle to not only work against ethical behavior by corporations, but arguably to legally require it. Lawsuits by investors against corporations frequently cite actions which might go against the interest of investors. Taken to the extreme, such arguments suggest that where money can be saved by doing so, corporations are required to push right up to the limits of the law, even if moral compunctions might argue otherwise. Of course, such arguments can be countered by pointing out that long term investor interest is actually positively served by the good will generated by corporate responsibility. Still, I find it offensive that the interests of stockholders should take precedence over the interests of the workers, the consumers, and the communities where the corporations exist.

I love to imagine a million people marching on Washington holding signs "Eliminate Corporate Personhood" & "Our Interests Trump Stockholder Interests". Not exactly slogans there for a populist groundswell, I know. But the impact of these two legal principles are enormous, and I dare to believe that if you forced every civic minded person to learn about these issues and vote on them, both would be overturned by whopping majorities.

Skepticism

Opponents of the Kyoto accord or the teaching of evolution to school children sometimes claim to ground their opinions in healthy skepticism, pointing out that the holdings of scientist do shift over time as deeper understandings displace shallower ones. Well skepticism is great, and the best of scientists are always skeptical, but this skeptic's eyebrows are raised far more by the claim that human activity is not the major contributing factor to the current rate of global warming, than by the much more widely accepted claim that it is.

As Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate writes:

Absolute credence in one obscure publication while distrusting mountains of 'mainstream' papers is a sure sign of cherry picking data to support an agenda, not clear-thinking scepticism.

The quote works just as well in reference to supporters of the teaching of Intelligent Design. Schmidt's worthy article draws on the logic of one of my own favorite skeptics of the last century, Bertrand Russell.

Sure the Kyoto Accord had flaws, and yes it would be foolish to sign onto it and believe our job was done. But to defiantly refuse to sign it with dismissive rhetoric, given the difficulty of getting multiple nations to agree to any small positive steps, is the height of irresponsibility. Fortunately numerous American cities are going around our now fully regressive federal government and instituting emission limits on their own.

I was reminded of RealClimate by a newly discovered site What is Liberalism? after one of its writers, Lawrence Krubner, was kind enough to drop by and leave a comment on Choosing Hope related to the shocking injustice being perpetrated on Cory Maye in the state of Mississippi. And yes Lawrence, I will be doing something with one of Laura's buttons in the very near future. Unfortunately, Cory Maye's is but one of many cases of prosecutorial misjustice involving a capital case. Tonight PBS's NOW featured the case of Anthony Graves in Texas. It's bad enough that these people are not freed tomorrow -- that they are on death row is an utter outrage. Fodder for another post, but more importantly a call to action. Stay tuned.

Corporations as Teenagers

60 Minutes ran a segment tonight on Merck and its continued marketing of Vioxx in spite of internal knowledge of studies implicating it in life threatening cardiovascular side effects. It got me to thinking about one of my recurring themes here. My profound concern remains that the extraordinary power vested in corporations is one of the gravest threats to a healthy and happy future for humanity that exists today. The depth of my concern about this particular topic is what puts me in the eyes of many as a "far-left winger".

While it is true that this fear of mine engenders some sympathy from me for the "anti-corporate" crowd, I don't count myself among their number. No, corporations have provided us with such an extraordinary capabilities and tools, that I am not ready to rage against the machine and advocate violent revolution. Nor do I believe that nationalization of industry is a panacea which will quell the corporate beast and protect us from its excesses. Such a solution simply transfers the power to a different entity, replete with a new set of dangers which are all too evident in so many of the last century's experimentations with Marxism.

What I seek is balance and moderation, but what I see in the love affair which the right currently has with free market capitalism is anything but balanced or moderate. In their eyes, anyone seeking to rein in corporate excess is left-wing whacko, in bed with communists and opposed to freedom. In my eyes, I am actually right of center, because I advocate a free market system with govermental regulatory control, rather than a socialist system with added market incentives to promote innovation. Much of the disagreement actually comes in what is perceived to be the current state of affairs. Certainly what exists in the United States, and much of the Western World is a flavor of what I advocate, but with what I believe to be a dangerous erosion of controls, as the corporate boardroom increasingly permeates the halls of government power.

The right leaning reader of those words will perceive a socialist hatred of corporations, but that is a misperception. I do not hate corporations. I do not believe most corporate executives are "capitalist pigs" who want to put profits before people. But I do believe that the rules of the game are being bent in such a way that more and more corporations are pressured to put profits before people, and no amount of laissez faire theory is going to convince me that is a good thing.

Markets are amoral. Human beings are not, nor do they want to be. The trick is in allowing the markets to work, while encouraging the human beings who control the corporations to behave as moral human beings. This should not be an impossible task. I agree that regulation should not be unnecessarily cumbersome or burdensome, but it should be strongly prohibitive of inhumane or dangerous practices, with such severe consequences for non-compliance that no executive team should ever be weighing the financial risk of wrongful death lawsuits against the lost revenue of not going forward with a dangerous product. The consequences should be sufficient to guarantee an ethical decision.

Such strong regulations do not only benefit the consumers, workers, or neighbors of industry that they are designed to protect, they benefit the corporate decision makers who are no longer put in the moral dilemma of choosing between the interests of the stockholders or the lives or well-being of their other stakeholders. Severe regulatory consequences keep the interests of stockholders and the other stakeholders in alignment.

I believe corporations actually want tougher regulations, but are simply unwilling to say so. Like teenagers, they will push their limits, but they really want the limits to be there. A few loud mouths on the radical extreme have pushed for massive deregulation and demonized those who cry foul as either entrenched bureaucrats or leftists, largely muting the voices of reason which should be emanating from within industry.

It may well be that in spite of the current deregulatory trends there are still too many regulations. It is certainly true that some regulations are too stiff while others are too loose. I do not claim to have the facts to know which way the bars should move overall. But common sense tells me that when lives and health are at stake, the consequences of corporate misbehavior need to be far more severe than is currently typical, given the huge amounts of money involved in some of these decisions. To some extent, any pecuniary consequences should probably be scaled to the size of the corporation, to keep size from cushioning them. But more frequently where corporate decisions play roulette with the lives of others, criminal penalties should fall to the decision makers, and the protection of incorporation should not apply.

Merck was under tremendous pressure when Vioxx was their up and coming drug, to have a new blockbuster product to keep their R&D going. Combining that with a loosening culture around FDA approval (some of which made sense, some of which did not), and a lack of regulation around advertising practices and when a product should be pulled in the face of mounting evidence that there might be a problem, put an undue pressure on the decision makers to cross their fingers and hope that the bad news might prove to be a red herring. I really don't believe that they had incontrovertible evidence that Vioxx was killing people and just didn't care. I believe that there was somebody willing to push the possibility that the danger was overblown, and the decision makers had too much financial incentive to hope against hope that such was the case.

Consumers and Conservationists

Most of us are both.

Whether we define ourselves as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, evangelical or agnostic, rich or poor, most Americans do want to protect the environment, and almost all of us want to be able to purchase goods at competitive prices. All but the most rabid libertartians will concede that it's worth a few cents of increase in the cost of goods to have regulations which, for instance, prevent industry from contaminating our air to toxic levels. Where the debate grows fierce is both in how and by whom regulation should be applied, and what level of regulation is necessary to forestall catastrophe.

There is a lot of macro speculation that is necessarily part of the analysis, and many on both sides of this debate are guilty of taking certain facts as articles of faith while dismissing arguments to the contrary as stupid or uninformed. The precautionary principle reasonably warns that if there is a significant risk of global catastrophe, it is prudent to take steps to curtail that risk rather than gamble our future on the rosier speculation of those who think the risk is overblown. The precautionary principle can be taken too far, however, and stultify the possibility of our working through a problem and developing new technologies which may render the dirty ways of doing things unnecessary. The idea of nothing ventured, nothing gained can apply to civilization as a whole. In spite of the possibility that we may have planted the seeds of our own demise in following the cultural mandate beyond our planet's capability to sustain us, who among us is really wishing that we still lived in the stone age?

In these times, however, dire warnings about global warming, topsoil loss, disappearing fisheries and forests, and population growth seem supported by enough top scientists to warrant taking a precautionary approach in BOTH curbing the excesses which exacerbate these frightening trends, AND aggressively pursuing new technologies which can bring more comfort to those in developing nations without depleting our resources for future generations. Whether it's already too late for our species, or we are on the brink, or our survival instinct will keep us innovating out of self-destruction, or the "doom and gloom crowd" are just wrong, can't we find the grace to undertake respectful dialogue on these issues without resorting to mockery of those who disagree with us?

At the very least we need to separate the most compelling risks from the lesser ones, and stop assuming truth or falsity by association. Wrong once doesn't mean always wrong, and right once doesn't mean always right.

When our future is at stake, it is more important that we get it right together, than that we win any particular argument.

Fighting Corporate Power

[UPDATE: This has generated some worthwhile debate over at WatchBlog.]

That title suggests a belligerent anti-corporate agenda of the sort that draws wails of mockery from most conservative and libertarian quarters. But this warrior against corporate excess and power is perfectly happy to stipulate that much is owed over the last century and more to enterprises which have their genesis in corporate activity. I'll also allow that there are instances where regulations on industry go too far and squelch desirable innovation. But the strong trend over the last quarter century has been a disturbing acceleration of the ability of corporations to wield their wealth to gain power to create more wealth. It is terribly naive to believe that the common good will be preserved by the scruples of CEOs and market forces when so much power has been accorded the corporate decision makers.

No I do not hate corporations or believe that corporate executives are evil, but yes I do believe the current trend toward corporate empowerment is nearly as dangerous and frightening as the fundamentalist extremism of some Muslims or Christians. At least those threats are drawing widespread concern and attention from powerful adversaries, whereas the opponents of extended corporate power are routinely labeled as leftist or Communist in an attempt to marginalize that natural opposition. Unlike fundamentalist extremists, corporations hold great power for good in the world, but in the absence of a reasoned and effective authority to rein in their potential excesses, that potential will be squandered. Those corporations with the greatest proclivity to contribute to the common good are either overwhelmed or pressured away from doing so by their need to compete with the under-regulated competition who do not share their scruples.

I've written before about the need for right regulation, rather than necessarily harsher or more lenient regulation, but the current trend is certainly dangerously in favor of deregulation, both here in the United States and internationally. Many people have the perception that there is some sort of balance, at least in the United States, between those protecting the interests of corporations and those protecting the interests of workers, consumers, and the environment. Some incredibly believe that corporations are too pushed around. That comes from our tendency to focus on a story at a time, rather than looking at the big picture.

We see the investigative reports, some of which are eventually adjudicated against the corporate interest, but those are the tip of the iceberg and those stories which don't make the news overwhelmingly favor the corporations. Indeed many of them are hardly stories at all, as there are not the resources to engage every instance of regulatory change in favor of corporate interests. The current administration, and that of former President Reagan, were both relentless in rewriting regulations and procedures, and in reducing the extent of enforcement of existing laws, when it came to protecting the interests of those whose money did so much to elect them. Even though Bush I and Clinton were both far more moderate in their approach, the moneyed interests of corporations still played a huge role in retaining much of their gains during the Reagan era, and the current administration has unabashedly pushed through a flagrantly pro-corporate agenda.

Jim Hightower in "Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back" uses over five pages chronicling 125 actions of the Bush Administration, which he declares represent only a subset of their "assault on Mother Nature to empower their polluter pals at the expense of our earth, our health, and future generations." Here's but a small subsample:

+ Delayed implementation of mining regulations intended to protect watersheds + Tried to shrink boundaries of nineteen national monuments and to allow oil and gas drilling on all public lands + Froze environmental rules finalized by Clinton, including one to minimize discharges of raw sewage + Defunded program to implement court rulings in Endangered Species cases brought by citizens + Suspended the right-to-know regulation requiring utilities to inform consumers about arsenic in their water +
Rejected freedom-of-information request for a list of corporate participants in Cheney's energy policy task force + Supported nuclear industry's proposal to store waste in Yucca Mountain, despite scientific objection + Cut 270 positions from the EPA's enforcement division + Announced a plan for recycling radioactive waste into consumer products, from lawn chairs and zippers to spoons and baby cribs + Stalled implementation of rules requiring utilities to reduce toxic emissions from expanded power plants + Relaxed nationwide permit rules so coal companies, developers, and others can fill in thousands of streams, swamps, and other wetlands, without public notice or comment + Issued a new policy abrogating the national goal set by Bush I of "no net loss" of wetlands + Announce new targets for power plant emissions, allowing 50 percent more sulfur emissions (acid rain) than current law, three times more toxic mercury emissions, and tons of additional nitrogen oxide (smog) + Killed funds to support environmental education in public schools + Eliminated funds for EPA grants for graduate student research in environmental sciences + Increased taxpayer subsidy for timber company purchases of trees from our national forests by 35 percent + Tried to strip the state of California's right to review Bush proposals to allow oil drilling off its coast + Eliminated scientific committees that disagreed with its policies, stacking new committees with scientists who have ties to regulated industries, including on PC&E hireling who fought Erin Brockovich + Expanded oil exploration in Colorado's Canyons of the Ancients National Monument + Killed a proposal to establish a citizen review panel to oversee the trans-Alaska pipeline + Supported plan to let chemical giants in Louisiana emit more cancer-causing pollutants in exchange for reducing emissions of less dangerous pollutants + Doubled the number of open-pit limestone mines to be opened in the Florida Everglades, eventually creating a thirty-square-mile hole in the middle of this irreplaceable water wonder + Put industry-backed amendment into Homeland Security Bill that effectively exempts chemical plants, utilities, and other polluters from the public's right-to-know laws, which require corporations to tell their neighbors what poisons are being spewed on them + Sent memo to all EPA employees urging them to "express support for the president and his program" when off duty + Withdrew Clinton rule requiring cleanup of polluted rivers and substituted a voluntary program + Cut the civil penalties that polluters have to pay by half + Stacked the CDC advisory committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention with industry scientists + Instructed EPA to discount by 63 percent the value of lives of senior citizens when assessing whether to impose new restrictions on industries that pollute the air

And the list goes on, and on, and on. Here's another subsample. Does Hightower have an agenda here? Sure. Does he paint each policy in the most unflattering light? Sometimes, maybe, but neither is he making this stuff up out of whole cloth. I've certainly not researched all of these items, but the trend is undeniable.

Indeed it can be exhausting to fight the current deregulatory madness, and no one person can do it alone, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty within the corporate world who are privately dismayed about the extent to which rules are disappearing, hence favoring their most unscrupulous competition. My hope is that such individuals can begin to network and find a public voice to add to the conversation, showing that it is not only the left, labor, environmentalists, and consumer rights groups who see the imbalance. One of the most hopeful developments over the last twenty years has been increasing cooperation between labor and environmentalists, who put aside years of distrust to work together on numerous issues of shared concern. The current extremism in protection of corporate interests, while extremely frightening, may yet plant the seeds for its own demise by going too far and alienating too many of its own putative interests.

Globalization further complicates potential solutions, but America remains the center of gravity of the corporate world, and to the extent that we abdicate our responsibility to keep corporations in check, how can we expect developing nations to exhibit any scruples.

Wangari Maathai

There's so much to moan about with respect to the powers that be, that it's a blessed delight to realize that there is also much to celebrate on this planet. Powerful and inspirational people abound, and it's vital to rekindling hope to shine a bright light upon as many of these luminaries as possible.

Wangari Maathai, one such uplifting figure was interviewed tonight on PBS' NOW by David Brancaccio. Educated in biological sciences in the States and Germany in the sixties, Maathai, recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, returned to her native Kenya where after holding prestigious positions in Veterinary Anatomy at the University of Nairobi, she helped found the Green Belt Movement, assisting women in planting over 20 million trees on farms and school and church compounds. In 1986 the Movement founded a Pan African Green Belt Network, expanding the program across that troubled continent.

In her address accepting the Nobel Prize, Maathai intoned:

In the course of history, there comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other.
That time is now.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has challenged the world to broaden the understanding of peace: there can be no peace without equitable development; and there can be no development without sustainable management of the environment in a democratic and peaceful space. This shift is an idea whose time has come.

Not every effort will meet with success, but tireless individuals such as Maathai inspire us to keep trying.

Going "Geo-Green"

Best known as a foreign policy wonk, and Middle East expert, Thomas Friedman has coined a new term, as he unleashes on the continued insanity from the Bush administration.

By adamantly refusing to do anything to improve energy conservation in America, or to phase in a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax on American drivers, or to demand increased mileage from Detroit's automakers, or to develop a crash program for renewable sources of energy, the Bush team is - as others have noted - financing both sides of the war on terrorism. ...

The neocon strategy may have been necessary to trigger reform in Iraq and the wider Arab world, but it will not be sufficient unless it is followed up by what I call a "geo-green" strategy. As a geo-green, I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the United States could pursue today. Imagine if Bush used his bully pulpit and political capital to focus the nation on sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax.

Friedman introduced his geo-green concept a couple of weeks earlier in an article which has enjoyed wide distribution across the political spectrum. So if the threat of global environmental catastrophe is not enough to wake up institutions that we need to change the way we're doing business, will more people exposing the fiscal and geo-political necessity of doing so finally begin to get traction?

Maybe, but it's almost become an article of faith to some on the right, many of whom are in the Bush Administration, that environmentalists outside of the corporate boardroom greenwashers must wear the "wacko" label, and any concessions to their agenda might legitimize other reforms at odds with the corporate agenda. This is exactly the sort of adversarial relationship that must be overcome in order for sanity to prevail. Folks like Friedman should be giving the right cover for adopting at least portions of an environmental agenda for national security reasons, but the good-old-boy corporate networking dies hard, and I don't expect much capitulation while Bush still resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in spite of the lip service he paid to hydrogen fuel cells in his 2003 State of the Union address.

As Friedman concludes his article, "The president's priorities are totally nuts."

Cross-Ideological Alliances

With divisive partisanship, culture wars, and worldview analysis all seemingly on the increase, is there reason to hope for moderation, compromise, and indeed simply the willingness for those on different sides of a debate to acknowledge some truth in the arguments of their adversaries? My take is that there is always hope - at least long term - for forward steps toward healing, understanding, and enlightenment. More often than not enlightenment implies a realization that some assumption one has been operating under is either mistaken or incomplete. Enlightenment therefore is more likely to come by reading and paying attention to views which are contrary to one's own. It does not necessarily mean "switching sides", though it may mean realizing that the accepted separation into sides is a false one.

I have recently discovered an ideological soul mate in David Brin, who asks:

With whom should you ally yourself? Someone who shares your immediate political campaign, while disagreeing with you utterly over long-term goals? Or someone who shares your deep agenda for a better world, but disagrees over immediate tactics?

Most people -- when it is posed that way -- choose the latter. After all, tactics are a matter for pragmatic debate. We can try out all sorts of methods. Success may call for a mix of your way and mine.

When conservatives argue that there's a tendency among liberal academics to subscribe to certain orthodoxies about what is true, and what can be mockingly dismissed, they are largely correct. Of course they don't as readily see the same phenomenon operating on their side of the fence. They are aware of all the differences of opinion there, which are freely aired, just as the academics are keenly aware of their own differences among themselves. On both sides however, there are subjects which are taboo - but shouldn't be.

There is an understandable concern that ceding certain points is strategically dangerous, because "the other side isn't going to give an inch, so we can't afford to." This sort of turf protection, though, is short-sighted and forces people into silly corners where they are left defending indefensible positions.

In the run up to last year's election, in spite of my dismay that it wasn't blazingly obvious to most sensible people, regardless of how they self-identified, that Bush was a dangerous choice, I discovered that the constellation of people with whom I can most naturally relate included a fair number who made (sometimes nuanced!) decisions to support Bush. As perplexing as their choice may be to me, it is nonetheless very encouraging to know there is potential for dialog across this divide.

There are two sides to what has been referred to as polarization in our society. To be sure the vilification of the other which accompanies it, is hurtful and stymies progress toward solutions. But if passion can be harnessed with calm reason, people will realize that there are areas of agreement. Natural cross-ideological alliances can be nurtured to bring change that most will be happy with, and good can happen even in the darkest times.

For example, we can look for allies on "the right" who agree that the worst examples of corporate wrong-doing often need much stronger penalties. I look at the successes of Eliot Spitzer in reining in excesses in the financial industry. This interview of James Cramer by David Brancaccio on NOW was instructive:

BRANCACCIO: You're a man who has long experience hanging out with captains of industry, people in the business community. What do they tell you when the name Eliot Spitzer comes up in conversation?

CRAMER: If they're in a group, they'll tell me that he's the Anti-Christ. If they're individual and we're alone at a bar, best thing. Best thing that ever happened. Because for the most part people want to be good, but whole cultures have flourished where the people who are honest don't do as well as the people who are dishonest. I think that Eliot is changing the calculus back to where the honesty is rewarded and the dishonest is out of favor again. Most people want to be honest.

And while seeking areas where our supposed adversaries, are actually inclined at some level to agree with us, we should be willing to cede areas where those traditionally thought of as "the other side" have the stronger argument. For instance, we can acknowledge that there are indeed plenty of individual regulations, such as the total ban on DDT, which were in retrospect too onerous, and need revision. There is a temptation to see every potential concession as a bargaining chip, but every instance where we defend a weak position in anticipation of a trade, becomes instead a liability which can be used to tarnish the whole of what are important principles.

So while I won't shy away, for now, from referring to myself as liberal or progressive, the label should never substitute for particulars, and if you catch me bending to orthodoxy rather than reason, please challenge me.

I Need Help Painting this Picture

I don't keep it a secret that I have a profound distrust of corporations. That doesn't mean that I don't ALSO recognize that corporations have provided society with riches unimaginable by cave people, and pretty astonishing for many of us even over the course of our lifetime. There are many things corporations can do that neither small groups of entrepreneurs, nor centrally controlled governments can manage very effectively. It would be foolish to federalize all large-scale production in the world. It is equally foolish to naively trust that just because capitalism has spawned industry which provides us with modern wonders, that we should just trust that corporations will naturally act for the greater good. Greed is real, always has been, and there has always been a balance between giving corporations the freedom to allow innovation and controlling the misbehavior of those within the system who would abuse the system to their own ends. More troubling still is a corporate culture which encourages an adversarial view toward ethical restraints and corrupts an industry as a whole to sacrifice the public good, the well-being of its own workers, or its consumers in order to increase the wealth for those at the top.

What is the truth?

I suspect as ever that the picture is mixed. Understanding the picture and demanding corporate accountability for providing independent researchers with accurate data necessary to evaluate industries in detail, is critically important. Corporate influence in politics works against accountability, and yet those of us who speak out against this influence are routinely labeled as radical anti-capitalist leftists. Seeking truth has nothing to do with ideology, and I think it is high time that ordinary citizens band together and demand the truth.

But we also need to accept responsibility for playing our role in seeking facts and educating others. It's a daunting task, though, and no one person can be an expert in every field. The process of discovery also tends to get one mired in details, which is not conducive to stepping back and seeing the whole picture.

I would like to start with a SPECULATIVE canvass.

Without naming particular industries or particular companies or particular excesses, I will present here a generic picture of the way things MIGHT be. My hope is that by creating a big picture of possibilities, truth gatherers have a place to position the truths they find in a larger context.

I may later expand this post to start my picture, or I may do it elsewhere, but I intend to paint a picture that covers the gamut of industries: from those where the entirety of the industry is corrupt and a danger to our world; to those where market forces have succeeded in reining in the worst excesses, but there is a lot of variability among the players; to those where regulations have hampered the industry's ability to act as effectively as it might otherwise. And naturally many industries in this picture will exhibit a mixture of these effects.

In later posts and further dialog, I am interested in exploring what corrective measures might realistically address industries where greed has run amok.

In all of this, I need help, and will appreciate pointers to organizations, studies, books, and articles which have made attempts at this sort of analysis.

The relationships between corporations and society, and between corporations and national governments play such a huge role in our world today that we ignore them at our own peril.

Tipping Points

Here is an article which has a ring of truth to it. It has long struck me that we ignore that which is either uncomfortable or difficult to understand, in favor of the less important issues with easier solutions. It's part of what I was trying to get at in my earlier post. [End of Post]

We Feel Your Pain - Here's the Solution

Another commitment caused me to miss the President's address at the RNC on Thursday. Glutton for punishment that I am, I recorded it and finally listened to it last night. I've always contended that the man is far better than the average speaker at delivery, and of course talented speechwriters are hired for each and every one of them. Naturally a host of constituencies were found whose concerns could be expressed, with assurances that each will be addressed with compassion. There has been a lot of well-founded skepticism that the programs implied by these assurances can be paid for in the light of making the tax cuts permanent and continued military expenses. But I have just as much skepticism that the so-called solutions do anything but make the problems worse.

From where he began:

To create more jobs in America, America must be the best place in the world to do business. To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation and making tax relief permanent.

through:

In this time of change, government must take the side of working families. In a new term, we will change outdated labor laws to offer comp time and flex time. Our laws should never stand in the way of a more family friendly workplace.

what this observer hears is "things may not be the best for you right now, but by providing more money for corporations and the wealthy, business will improve and everybody will be lifted up." Trickle down theory is alive and well in spite of an ever increasing gap between the wealthy class and the middle class, and the increasing misery of the poor. The Republicans' ability to sell this story to those who are being disadvantaged by it never ceases to amaze me.

Right Regulation

Arguments today about government regulation often degenerate into citations of examples intended to prove either that there is too much regulation or too little regulation. Of course it is easy to find such examples to support either argument, which suggests to me that "too much vs. too little" is the wrong argument. Regulations are not, nor can they ever be, a perfect tool for enforcing responsible behavior on the part of individuals and corporations. Does that mean we should start eliminating them every time we see a case where someone is unjustly hurt or inconvenienced by their enforcement? Of course not! It's work, but the emphasis should always be on making regulations right and reasonable, tweaking them as necessary to assure that the worst abuses are outlawed, while harmless practices are not punished.

It is a useful metaphor to think of that which needs to be controlled, whether it is pollution, or mistreatment of employees, or the creation of unsafe products, as a body of water on a hill which ought to be constrained from flowing down the hill. Gravity is analogous to the greed or convenience which would cause the bad stuff to escape. Dams are analogous to the regulations which hold it back. It is not necessary or desirable to place a concrete cap over the whole lake to control it (over-regulation), but it is foolish to allow a torrent of water to cascade from a gaping mouth in the lake (under-regulation). The thing that people don't seem to get is that it is possible to have both over-regulation and under-regulation within a single system. In fact, sadly, it is often easier to establish rules which control minor leakages, than to fight for the major regulation that would stanch the rampant abuses. In my analogy, this is like creating little dams to stop places where rivulets are escaping from the lake, while allowing the gaping mouth to remain open.

Those who fight regulations at every turn are forever shining a spotlight on those cases where onerous requirements prevent reasonable actions, and arguing that we are fundamentally over-regulated. Those who want to keep misbehavior in check will shine the spotlight on the rampant abuses, and sometimes argue that we are thus under-regulated and therefore defend even ineffective regulations on the grounds that we can't afford to undo any regulations if they have any effect on curbing something undesirable. This is what I call turf-protecting, and I see that many environmentalists are guilty of it. It's time to concede that there is both under-regulation and over-regulation, and for both sides to cede ground in the regulation wars. My fear is that it is always easier to blow up those little dams controlling the rivulets than it is to construct the big one that would block the gaping mouth. [End of Post]

Of Small Consequence

Some may do so, but I will not feign outrage at Dick Cheney's recent use of obscenity on the Senate floor directed against Senator Patrick Leahy. Indeed, I'm not outraged, I'm delighted. Perhaps that's a petty partisan reaction, but Cheney's outburst did not result in a single war casualty, nor the unfunding of a single vital social program, nor the relaxation of a much needed regulation for the protection of our environment. The only likely lasting effect, in fact, should be a further undermining of Cheney's image, and especially among some of the constituents more important to Bush's reelection chances. Why shouldn't I be happy that an event, which draws attention to the meanness of our sitting Vice President, gets national scrutiny? His defense of his behavior shouldn't help him either. Several sources quoted Cheney as having been upset that Leahy had "challenged my integrity" in his recent criticisms of the Vice President's role in the Halliburton subsidiary war contracts. What integrity? [End of Post]