Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2010 4:27 AM
Subject: FW: Why we need more parties.
From a friend in DC.
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude
and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him,
"Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour
ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air
balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground - elevation of 2,346 feet above
sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude - and 100
degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Democrat."
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically
correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still
lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."
The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going.
You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a
promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your
problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but
somehow, now it's my fault."
***
From: "Joseph Maizlish" <goodwork@igc.org>
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 12:35 PM
Subject: Drill baby drill, spill baby spill, kill baby kill
Ed,
In the discussions about the coal and oil disasters, let's include the
simple chemical and nuclear basics: The highly concentrated sources of
energy are inherently dangerous to mine, drill for, extract, transport,
refine, and use. The oil and gas are volatile -- that's the point of
going after them, that's what makes them useful as fuels and profitable
to control. The coal is associated with volatile gasses; if the
mountains are removed instead of mined, there are other problems. As
humans have to dig and drill deeper for these concentrated and therefore
commercially controllable sources, the increased competition and desire
for control and profits perverts politics everywhere and brings that
extension of politics -- war.
The most concentrated energy source of all is the most dangerous:
radioactivity. Too hot to handle, too hot to use, too hot to dispose
of. But just right for bombs.
The non-volatile and non-radioactive sources are healthier all around.
A wind turbine or a bank of them may kill some birds if not planned and
sited well, but it's not going to contaminate the Gulf of Mexico, the
California coast, the Niger delta, and can't be misdirected into weapons
technology. Solar collectors don't contaminate the Alaskan wilderness
or cause endless wars when the overconsuming societies try to control
the resources and politics of many lands. The sustainables have the
potential to be used at both large and small scale -- some alert
societies are encouraging use at all scales by paying equally per energy
unit whether produced by a home wind turbine or a bank of them.
The loud disputes may be about where to drill and where not to, about
which lands and shores are to be put at risk, or about which lands have
or don't have the right to further pollute the planet with nuclear
contamination. But the fuels they depend on are inherently dangerous in
chemical, radioactive, and political terms.
Joe Maizlish
***
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_capitalist_hagiography_has_little_room_for_saints_20100505/
The Capitalist Hagiography Has Little Room for Saints
By Stuart Whatley
Posted on May 5, 2010
This article appeared previously on The Huffington Post.
Perhaps the most enervating element of the BP-Deepwater Horizon disaster is
its eerie familiarity-the sheer, inexorable predictability of it all. There
is poetic injustice in its propinquity on the calendar to the Obama
administration's decision to expand offshore drilling last month, and to the
Supreme Court decision just this year that further did away with any
distinction between 'corporate rights' and 'individual rights'.
Equally predictable is the route the story will take, the revelations that
will arise, and the conclusions that will be reached. Talk of lax regulatory
standards already runs rampant through a wide array of media outlets.
Righteous cries of 'I told you so' resound. Surely this disaster was
avoidable ... it must have been. But from Goldman Sachs to Massey Energy
to-now-British Petroleum (and, unsurprisingly, possibly Halliburton), how
much will things change? Ultimately the recourse is dictated by the laws we
already have in place. And constantly these laws and regulatory structures
turn out to have been rendered obsolete and toothless by precisely the
entities they purport to oversee.
The gulf story will likely be no more about corporate corner-cutting than a
broken political system-the recurring motif of this year. And regrettably,
in a nation that incarcerates people by the hundreds of thousands for
victimless crimes of self-indulgence it is yet inconceivable that those who
wreck global ecological and financial systems could ever suffer anything
exceeding the "cost of doing business." When a corporation falls short of
regulatory standards it does not do so accidentally or unwittingly. Rather,
it is a calculated choice based on risible enforcement efforts and piddling
penalties passed by legislators on the political take.
Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch explosion that left 29 miners dead last
month was a teachable tragic moment. As Mine Safety and Health News' Ellen
Smith thoroughly documented here at HuffPost and elsewhere, dozens of past
violations did nothing to alter the toxic cynicism that prioritizes profit
margin before safety and lives. Whether those pointless deaths and the
pressure from survivors' families will yield real changes to that reality is
yet to be seen. But either way, the likelihood of true justice for this
incident seems low. As Smith writes, "Curiously the only individuals who
might be held personally liable under the Mine Act for the current disaster
are the mine supervisors and foremen. There are no provisions to hold
accountable those people who are responsible for safety policies and
procedures, or the corporate executives who insisted it was more important
to 'run coal' than to build ventilation controls, or the board of directors,
which is ultimately responsible for the conduct of the corporation."
Despite lofty guarantees from the president, the same may as well be said
for the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its so far cataclysmic aftermath. As
the New York Times reports, "Under the law that established the reserve,
called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig
face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be
claimed by individuals, companies or the government, although they are
responsible for the cost of containing and cleaning up the spill."
Beyond the costs of actual clean-up, will BP suffer in the long run? Will
Americans stage mass boycotts against the company through consumer
discrimination? Will it become the industry pariah that politicians
ostracize, even if it provides jobs in their states and districts? Don't
count on it. With gasoline prices already on the uptick and likely to rise
more going into the summer season the lowest price per gallon will sell, no
matter who you are. This is why the greed always pays off, and it is why
neither producer nor consumer can realistically be expected to fix things.
Solutions must come from an intermediary in the form of good governance.
Unfortunately we can't count much on that these days either. It is little
wonder that our regulatory structures are so reliably unreliable. And even
if there turns out to have been no regulatory failure in the case of BP, the
resolution and restitution regime for disasters of this scale is obviously
lacking. The fact that OpenSecrets.org-the Center for Responsive Politics
website that closely tracks political contributions and special interest
"heavy hitters"-is suffering site traffic overloads this week is telling.
OpenSecrets does indeed label BP a heavy hitter because in the 2008 election
cycle it "contributed half a million dollars to federal candidates. About 40
percent of these donations went to Democrats. The top recipient of
BP-related donations during the 2008 cycle was President Barack Obama
himself, who collected $71,00." It also reports that in 2009 BP spent $16
million on lobbying and that in the first quarter of 2010 it's already
expensed $3.53 million for the same purpose, putting it second behind
ConocoPhillips for the industry.
Though it's chump change in BP's overall budget, half a million bucks in an
election cycle can go an astoundingly long way. In their "Iceberg Theory of
Campaign Contributions" [pdf], Marcos Chamon of the IMF and Ethan Kaplan of
Stockholm University explain the power of special interest threats (made far
more credible by Citizens United) as a part of lobbying and electioneering.
It basically goes as follows: We'll give two-thousand bucks to your
reelection campaign, but if we're not pleased with your vote, we'll give
your challenger ten. Taking into account the leveraging that goes into these
threats (spending $2,000 for $12,000 of influence), $500,000 all of a sudden
becomes much, much more. Chamon and Kaplan cite the U.S. sugar industry for
their example, which in 1998 turned $2.8 million in campaign contributions
into over $1,000,000,000 in federal subsidies. And sugar doesn't even
compare to "black gold."
Firms like BP, Massey and Goldman Sachs (to name Public Enemies one, two,
and three these days) are the definition of a "special interest." There is
no political, ideological or religious component to their wants. It's all
about the money, and no potential friend on the Hill is precluded.
Legislators from both parties enter office with implicit agreements all the
time to include this or that subsidy, or to go soft on this or that
regulation to hold up their end of the bargain with their electoral
benefactors. And when it's all told one is left with bodies of legislation
that appear to be (sometimes actually are) written completely for and by the
industry itself.
BP will hang its head for now, but when the class action lawsuits come
rolling in from the industries destroyed by Deepwater Horizon, don't expect
to see an overly munificent defendant ready to make amends. And don't
expect it to not scapegoat the owner of the rig, Transocean, Ltd. In the
end, John Galt will always capitalize and Joe Six-Pack will always look for
the best bargain. Ignoring rudimentary economic axioms won't change
anything.
If corporations may participate in political expression, will they also be
subjected to potential political or criminal repercussions that make the
cost of doing certain kinds of business too much to even consider? Will
"limited liability" continue to apply to unethical and illegal behavior as
well as investment? Will stakeholders such as employees, customers and the
surrounding environment be kept in mind alongside profits? The compounded
frustration with BP, Massey, Goldman and anyone else lurking behind the next
crisis will shunt many important questions like these to the forefront of
policy discussions. But in the background will always be the money that oils
the gears of a perversely incentivizing political system. Until that sees
fundamental change, mine ventilation could easily remain inadequate,
emergency stop valves optional, and casino-style financial products hidden
in the shadows.
