Author: telegraph

Thinking Beyond Trump: A Federal Jobs Guarantee

Posted on May 22, 2018

We must not forget the economic frustrations that helped fuel Trump’s election. For too long, too many Americans have faced lousy jobs or no jobs. One answer: A guaranteed job at a living wage.

The Republican answer won’t work

Republicans continue to push for work requirements for recipients of Medicaid, food stamps, and public housing benefits. But the real problem is there aren’t enough adequately-paying jobs to go around.

Even today, with a low official unemployment rate, millions who work part-time jobs want full-time work. Millions more are too discouraged to look for work, having endured the brutalities of job discrimination for far too long, or unable to move to where the jobs are.

And a large and growing number of jobs don’t pay enough to get people out of poverty.

A federal jobs guarantee would work

At the same time, a lot of work needs to be done – “greening” our nation’s infrastructure, caring for the elderly, teaching in our public schools, adequately staffing national parks, you name it.

So why shouldn’t the federal government create jobs and connect them directly to people who can’t otherwise find one, with decent, predictable hours and at a living wage?

An added plus: The availability of such jobs would give more bargaining power to many low-wage workers to get better hours and wages – because if they don’t get them from their employer, they’d have the option of a public job. In this way, a federal job guarantee would raise the floor for job quality nationwide.

And a job guarantee would act as a giant economic stabilizer during downturns, when the first to lose their jobs are usually the most economically marginalized.

We can afford it

Can we afford a job guarantee today? Yes. It’s estimated to cost around $670 billion in its first year – $30 billion less than the defense budget.

But that tab would quickly shrink. With more people working at better wages, Americans would have more purchasing power to buy goods and services. This would lead to more hiring by the private sector, and eventually, less need for the federal job guarantee.

More people working would also generate more tax revenue, partially offsetting the direct cost of the job guarantee.

Additional savings would come from fewer people needing public assistance. The Center for Labor Research and Education at Berkeley estimates that the federal government now spends over $150 billion a year because workers aren’t earning enough to get out of poverty. Doesn’t it make more sense to use this money to create guaranteed jobs at a living wage?

So, let’s think beyond Trump – to what Americans need. Few things are more important than a decent job. Full employment through a federal job guarantee makes sense – for workers, for the economy, for America.

Hit Fossil Fuels Where It Hurts – The Bottom Line

Posted on May 21, 2018

The divestment movement is having a big impact, and holdouts may be missing their one great chance to really change the world.

An envelope arrived from the New York State Comptroller’s office the other day, with a check inside for $108. Apparently I’d left it sitting in some bank account years ago, and now it was being returned. Free money is good fun, and where we live $108 buys you the best dinner in town, which my wife and I enjoyed, raising a small toast to the efficiency of the Empire State’s comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli.

But only a small toast. Because as smoothly as DiNapoli seems to perform the basic duties of his office, he has so far whiffed on the one great chance he’ll ever have to really affect the world. He’s continuing to invest billions of pension dollars in big oil, even as the industry refuses to grapple seriously with global warming. Because of his high-profile insistence on “engagement” with the industry, he’s become a stand-in for a thousand other political “leaders” who can’t quite summon the nerve necessary to break with the fossil-fuel industry, even when science and economics are making it clear where the future must lie. It’s so much easier to keep doing what you’ve always done – but at this point inertia is the planet’s most powerful enemy, and DiNapoli is threatening to become inertia’s avatar.

The movement for fossil-fuel divestment was partly born in the pages of this magazine six years ago, when an essay of mine went unexpectedly viral. That piece showed the new math of climate change: The big oil, gas and coal producers had reserves in the ground that contained five times the carbon any scientist said we could burn and stay below the catastrophic temperature rises that the planet’s governments had pledged to avoid. That is, the business plans of Exxon and Chevron and Shell and the rest committed them to wrecking the planet – simple math, simple physics and simple morality. If it’s wrong to wreck the planet, it’s wrong to profit from the wreckage.

That argument was enough to get the ball rolling. Students at hundreds of campuses around the world launched divestment campaigns that echoed the one against South African apartheid a generation ago. The first school to divest was tiny Unity College in Maine, which pulled its $13 million endowment in November 2012. By this winter, the University of California system, biggest in the hemisphere, had joined, along with a third of the universities in the U.K., and the World Council of Churches, and dozens of Christian denominations and Catholic diocese, as well as many of the biggest foundations on the planet. Even the Rockefeller heirs, who trace their fortune to the original oil baron, have sold their shares. By now endowments and portfolios worth more than $6 trillion have divested in part or in whole, and it’s become by far the biggest effort of its kind in history.

And intriguingly, most of the recent converts have been moved as much by self-interest as by moral fervor. As the years have gone by, the fossil-fuel sector has dramatically underperformed the rest of the economy. That’s because it’s under increasing and unrelenting pressure from new technology – the ever-cheaper solar and wind power that everyone can see will take a huge chunk of their business away. So now it’s also the largest insurance company in France that’s divested, and the sovereign wealth fund of Norway (the biggest pool of money on Earth, earned from North Sea oil wells). When New York City decided to divest in January, the press conference was held in a building flooded by Hurricane Sandy – clearly fear of climate change was the key reason for divestment, and they lit up the Empire State Building green that night to make the point. But the green, as Mayor Bill de Blasio was quick to point out, also stood for the money the city was saving its pensioners by ensuring that they weren’t stuck paying for the fossil-fuel decline.

There have been holdouts, of course – Harvard, run by a “board of overseers” drawn heavily from Wall Street, refused to participate officially. And then there’s DiNapoli, who’s played the most intriguing role. So far he’s failed to divest the state’s $200 billion in pension funds from fossil fuels despite a demand from New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo that he do so, and despite the example set by the state’s biggest city, whose own comptroller, Scott Stringer, has become an outspoken advocate for divestment. Though DiNapoli clearly has the political backing to divest the state’s holdings, he’s continued down a different path, promising to “engage” with the fossil-fuel companies instead, to somehow turn them green. In the meantime, it’s business as usual. In fact, the state continues to run up its investment in Exxon, filthiest of them all – it’s now the fifth-biggest investment in New York state’s portfolio.

Shareholder engagement with companies can be a powerful tool: Big investors routinely use their clout to argue for, say, more diverse representation on company boards of directors, or for modest changes in the way they do their business. But it’s an approach that’s never made much sense with the fossil-fuel industry, where the problem is not some flaw in the business plan. The flaw is the business plan. Exxon exists to dig up hydrocarbons and sell them so they can be burned. DiNapoli apparently thought he could force real change: For years he and others sponsored resolutions at Exxon annual meetings demanding reforms. Finally, a year ago, the company grudgingly agreed to prepare a “climate risk report” showing how the fight against global warming might stress their business model. It wasn’t much of a victory, but it seemed like something to show for all that work. DiNapoli, being a politician, issued a press release praising himself. “Exxon’s decision demonstrates that investors have the power to hold corporations accountable and to compel them to address our very real climate-related concerns,” he said.

But he and his like-minded colleagues were being played for fools. Exxon took just a few weeks to prepare the report, and when it came out it showed the company hadn’t changed one whit. Climate change posed essentially no risk to its future, Exxon insisted. It still planned on burning almost all its reserves, and indeed would go on exploring for new oil. It was Lucy with the football, and DiNapoli was Charlie Brown lying on his back. To add insult to injury, the industry arranged for the Trump administration to lift a block on offshore oil drilling along the Atlantic coast – including Long Island, where DiNapoli began his political career. As an environmentalist.

How To End Partisan Gerrymandering

Posted on May 18, 2018

One of the biggest challenges to our democracy occurs when states draw congressional district lines with the principal goal of helping one political party and hurting the other. It’s called “partisan gerrymandering.”

Unlike racial gerrymandering – drawing districts to reduce the political power of racial minorities, which the Supreme Court has found to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment – partisan gerrymandering would seem to violate the First Amendment because it punishes some voters for their political views.

In North Carolina in 2016, for example, Republicans won 10 of the state’s 13 House seats with just 53 percent of the popular vote.

In the 2018 elections, because of partisan gerrymandering, Democrats will need to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points to win a majority in the House of Representatives. No party has won this margin in decades.

So what can be done?

The Supreme Court will soon decide on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering. Hopefully, the Court will rule against it. But regardless of its decision, here are two other ways to abolish it:

First, state courts could rule against partisan gerrymandering under their state constitutions, as happened this year in Pennsylvania – where the state court invalidated a Republican congressional map that gave Republicans 13 out of 18 congressional seats even though the state is about evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. The state court implemented its own map for the 2018 election, creating districts that are less biased in favor of Republicans.

Second, states can delegate the power to design districts to independent or bipartisan groups. Some states, like California, have already done this.

But if you want your state to end gerrymandering, you’re going to have to get actively involved, and demand it.

After all, this is our democracy. It’s up to us to make it work.

Europe Must Confront America’s Extraterritorial Sanctions

Posted on May 17, 2018

Europe’s biggest challenge in resisting US sanctions on Iran is not legal or even geopolitical. It is psychological: European leaders act as if the US still cares about a trans-Atlantic alliance of shared interests, values, and approaches.

Donald Trump’s renunciation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and the reimposition of US sanctions on that country threaten global peace. Europe’s security depends on defending the agreement with Iran despite the US withdrawal. That, in turn, requires Europe, along with Russia, China, and other United Nations member states, to ensure that economic relations with Iran can develop. And that can happen only if Europe confronts, and ultimately overturns, America’s extraterritorial sanctions, which aim to deter trade and financial activities with Iran by non-US actors.

The purpose of Trump’s move is clear and indeed explicit: to topple the Iranian regime. Given this folly, European citizens accurately sense that Europe’s security interests are no longer closely aligned with those of the United States.

America’s bullying approach to Iran has been seconded – indeed championed – by two Middle Eastern allies of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Israel invokes US power to avoid having to make any compromises with the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia invokes US military power to contain its regional rival, Iran. Both are hoping for a direct US war with Iran.

America’s previous efforts at regime change in the Middle East yielded horrendous results for the US and Europe (to say nothing of the disasters that befell the countries caught up in the US-provoked mayhem). Such “wars of choice” have been the major factor in the surge of migration to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa. Even when regime change has “succeeded,” as in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the aftermath has been violence and instability. And when regime change has failed, as in Syria, the result has been ongoing war.

The humiliating failure of French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince Trump to remain in the JCPOA was predictable. The US decision reflects two converging forces: a deep-seated foreign-policy tendency – manifested by all recent US administrations – to seek hegemony in the Middle East, and Trump’s peculiar brand of psychopathy. Trump delights in embarrassing European leaders; their squirming is his triumph.

Yet they are not powerless. The agreement with Iran can still be salvaged, precisely because it is a multilateral agreement, endorsed by the UN Security Council (Resolution 2231), not an agreement solely between the US and Iran. Indeed, under Article 25 of the UN Charter, all UN member states, including the US, are obligated to fulfill the JCPOA. Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA is itself a violation of international law.

The essence of the JCPOA and Resolution 2231 is Iran’s cessation of activities that could lead to the development of nuclear weapons. Strict compliance by Iran is linked to the normalization of international economic relations, including the lifting of UN-agreed sanctions.

Even if the US now absents itself from the JCPOA, it has only two means to block the implementation of the agreement between Iran and the rest of the world. The first would be to foment war. This clearly is on the US agenda, especially with the neoconservative doyen John Bolton back in the White House as National Security Adviser. The world must steadfastly resist another ruinous US military adventure.

Extraterritorial sanctions are the second way the US could kill the JCPOA. It is one thing for the US to decide that it will not trade with Iran. It is quite another for the US government to attempt to block trade with Iran by non-US parties. This is America’s intention; it is up to Europe and China to defeat it, in the interest of global peace, as well as in their own direct economic interest.

In practical terms, the US will be able to enforce anti-Iran sanctions on companies operating in its domestic market, and most likely on subsidiaries of US firms operating abroad. Yet the US will try to go much further, by trying to block non-US companies from dealing with Iran. The US will probably succeed in clamping down on dollar-based transactions, as these are generally cleared through the US banking system. The real issue will come with non-US companies operating outside of the US and interacting with Iran via non-dollar currencies such as the euro and renminbi.

The US will certainly try to punish such companies, whether by targeting their local subsidiaries, by trying to haul them into US courts, or by denying them access to the US market. Here is where the European Union must take a strong stand and move beyond begging Trump for “waivers” for specific European business deals, a process that would make European countries even more subservient to Trump’s whims. Europe should defend a firm and unequivocal “No” to US extraterritorial sanctions, notably on companies operating in non-dollar currencies.

The EU should insist that extraterritorial sanctions violate international law (including the Resolution 2231 and therefore the UN Charter) and the rules of the World Trade Organization. They should recognize that acquiescence would be tantamount to handing the US a blank check to set the rules of war and peace beyond the UN Security Council, and the rules of global trade beyond the World Trade Organization. The EU should be prepared to use the WTO dispute resolution process against the US, and to bring its case to the UN Security Council and General Assembly. Where Europe is afraid to tread, China will surely swoop in to capitalize on business opportunities in Iran. And China would be right to do so.

Europe’s biggest challenge is not legal or even geopolitical. It is psychological. European leaders act as if the US still cares about a trans-Atlantic alliance of shared interests, values, and approaches. Sadly, this is no longer the case.

The US and Europe do still have many shared interests; but they have many divergent ones as well, especially when the US violates international law. Europe needs its own security policy, just as it needs its own trade and environmental policies. The showdown over the JCPOA is therefore a moment of truth. World peace depends on Europe’s defense of the UN Charter and the rules of international trade.

Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

Posted on February 1, 2018

The announcement by the CEO’s from JP Morgan Chase, Amazon and Berkshire-Hathaway that they are forming a new healthcare company signals the symbolic end of the ACA-reform era. They recognize the inefficiencies and profiteering of the private insurance companies, who add no value to businesses dealing with healthcare. And should there be any doubt that the end of the ACA is nigh, there’s this from Trump: “We repealed the core of disastrous Obamacare. The individual mandate is now gone.”

Given the record of the CEO-in-chief who now occupies the White House, it’s doubtful we can expect improved healthcare, or lower costs, under his leadership, which should give us pause before putting CEOs in charge of our health.

If the ACA had fulfilled its promises, a new company by these CEOs would not be needed. The ACA sought to lower costs by forcing consumers to put more “skin in the game,” in Obama’s Budget Director Peter Orzag’s infamous phrase. Yes, patients are spending more, and in 2017 insurance premiums went up over 25% in many areas, deductibles have continued to climb to an average of $1440 for employees in large groups, and drug prices have skyrocketed for long-standing medications like Insulin and newer specialty drugs like Harvoni for Hepatitis C. High-deductible plans and a steady shift so workers pay more for insurance (on average 30% of premiums that are $18,000/year) has not lowered overall costs. Even worse, patients who have paid high premiums are not able to get care because they cannot afford the out-of-pockets costs their expensive insurance does not cover.

Into the breach come the heroic CEOs Bezos, Dimond and Buffett (BDB*). What do they offer? A company that can control costs. How will they do it? With technology, of course. Apparently we have come full circle: since the government regulatory program couldn’t enact effective cost control and utilize technology to save money, let’s have a corporation do so. But it is precisely the industry model that has created our dysfunctional, “money is the metric” approach to health. In the present healthcare industry, the war for revenue between insurers, drug companies, and hospital corporations, along with medical equipment manufacturers and other suppliers, has raised prices and created immense profits. Electronic Medical Records, and other technological innovations are supposed to anchor the new healthcare system. They are expensive, in fact more expensive than any savings they generate. The result of the ACA push to pay for “performance” has been to punish clinicians and hospitals with high-needs patients, no lowering of costs, and increased denials of care since there is an incentive to avoid rather than treat patients who will lower your “performance” score.

Somebody or some entity is going to make the decisions regarding the healthcare we get. Do we really believe CEO’s rather than clinicians should make those decisions? If the decisions are based on corporate bottom lines we can expect continued cost shifts to workers, deployment of labor-displacing technologies with unproven impacts on patient care quality, and fragmentation as each corporate castle fortifies its strategic market position: Aetna-CVS will go toe-toe-toe with BDB* as the Ascension hospital corporation (nation’s largest) pushes back, for example. Since less care equals greater profits, and more covered lives means greater revenue, we can see that money will likely remain the metric.

Those who control capital, like the richest guy in the world, investment banks and investors, favor capital-intensive approaches to social problems. Technology fits that bill. Yet, technology only serves the purposes for which it is designed: it is neither socially neutral nor a panacea. Nurses know, however, that human health cannot be reduced to an algorithm, subject as it is to the particularities of an individual’s family history, environment and most fundamentally, socio-economic status. Let’s hope the technologists and CEOs quickly learn from direct care RNs. Standardization of treatments whether through algorithms, protocols, or budget-mandates do not match the needs of individual patients.

Alternatively, the US could expand and improve the current program that puts clinicians in charge, is popular, and works at controlling costs: Medicare. With administrative costs as low as 5–6% compared to the 13% or higher for private insurance, Medicare is more efficient. The growth in Medicare spending, around 2.4% annually, is much less than growth in overall healthcare spending and far less than recent premium increases. Under Improved Medicare for All, benefits would be expanded to include those that ACA, Medicaid and CHIP provide, and Medicare will negotiate prescription drug prices. The biggest shortfalls in Medicare, the escalating privatization pushed by the insurance-financed politicians that have resulted in higher out of pocket costs for seniors, over payments to the private Medicare Advantage plans and the “donut hole” in the private the prescription drug benefit, would be eliminated through a robust Medicare for all plan, such as proposed nationally in Sen. Bernie Sanders S 1804 bill or the California single payer bill SB 562.

Moreover, traditional Medicare enables physicians to deliver the care their patients need without onerous “gate-keeping,” prior authorizations or narrow networks that insurers use to restrict access, limit choice of providers and undermine the clinical judgment of doctors and nurses. In fact, since older Americans tend to be the most intensive users of health services, expanding the pool by including everybody especially low-needs patients will make the program more sustainable.

Should patients, workers and employers be on the hook for the excessive compensation and enormous profits of the health insurance industry? In California between 2011–16, insurers made $27 billion in profits/net income. Why should we subsidize the failed business model of health insurers? (Employers get $342 billion each year in tax subsidies to lessen the cost to them of private health insurance.)

On this BDB is right—health insurance companies add no value, and the profits in healthcare are obscene. That recognition matters and can point the way toward real reform. The solution is not more of the same. We must contain prices in order to control costs. An industry approach cannot do that and also place patient care at the center of a reformed system.

Why Don’t Americans Vote?

Posted on May 14, 2018

We call ourselves a Democracy – a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. However, the sad truth is that America has very low rates of participation in our “democracy.”

Only 55.7% of Americans voted in the last election (around 27% each for President Trump and Secretary Clinton). This is not normal or healthy for advanced democracies. The fact that our Senators, Representatives, and even President are selected by a small portion of our population, contrasts sharply with our democratic ideals. Ultimately, our system fails to encourage full voter participation. Therefore, to begin movement towards a better democracy, we looked into the many barriers that Americans face when heading to the polls.

Based on an analysis by the Pew Research Center, the United States falls far behind other developed democracies in voter turnout:

It is important to note that this number for the United States voter turnout is from 2016 — a presidential election year. During off-years the voter turnout is much lower. In 2014, turnout in the United States was 36.4%.

These low turnout numbers are not an anomaly. Voter turnout in the United States during presidential election years has remained around 50%-60% of the voting eligible population since the early 1900s. (It is important to note, however, that the voting eligible population differed significantly from the voting age population for much of U.S. History.)

So, the question arises: Why is this happening? Why are almost half of voting-age Americans not voting? The answer lies in our flawed voting system.

Let’s look at all of the populations that are restricted from voting entirely.

UNAFFILIATED PRIMARY VOTERS

In his farewell address, President George Washington warned: “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Despite this impassioned warning, the United States has developed a strong two-party system in the past two centuries, which has allowed our Founding Father’s grim vision to take hold. In fact, the last time a third-party candidate won any state’s electoral college vote for president was in 1968. Americans are ultimately given a choice between only two candidates on the day of the general election.

What makes matters worse is that a substantial number of Americans are barred from voting to decide on who those final two choices will be. According to the organization Open Primaries, thirteen states and DC hold closed primaries for presidential primaries (laws vary for congressional and states primaries.) The National Conference of State Legislatures explains that in closed primaries, “a voter seeking to vote … must first be a registered party member…. Independent or unaffiliated voters, by definition, are excluded from participating in the party nomination contests.”

In addition, other states have less strict rules but still bar certain voters from participating. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures:

Partially closed primaries: “Permits political parties to choose whether to allow unaffiliated voters or voters not registered with the party to participate in their nominating contests before each election cycle”;

Partially open primaries: “Permits voters to cross party lines, but they must either publicly declare their ballot choice or their ballot selection may be regarded as a form of registration with the corresponding party”;

Open to unaffiliated voter primaries: “Allows only unaffiliated voters to participate in any party primary they choose, but do not allow voters who are registered with one party to vote in another party’s primary.”

The only primaries that allow for total participation from all voters in the state are open primaries. There are 16 open primary states.

The map below shows which states have Closed, Mixed, or Open Primaries for presidential elections:

According to Gallup, a little under half (46%) of Americans do not identify with a political party. Only a quarter (25%) identify as Republican, and 27% identify as Democrat. This means voters are either forced to choose between a political party they may not fully identify with or they are barred from participating in many state primary elections.

If we want to consider ourselves a democracy, we should allow all of our citizens to participate fully in choosing who leads our country. Otherwise, the votes these people are allowed to cast on election day could be practically meaningless.

PEOPLE WITHOUT IDENTIFICATION

Thirty-four states currently have laws that request or require citizens to show some form of identification to vote. The ACLU points out that ten states have strict voter ID laws “under which voters must present one of a limited set of forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a regular ballot -– no exceptions.” While for some, having an ID is a normal part of life, more than 21 million Americans do not have government-issued photo identification.

Proponents of voter ID laws argue that it helps prevent in-person voter impersonation. However, numerous studies have shown that this type of fraud is exceedingly rare. The Brennan Center for Justice found that the incidence of this type of fraud is between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent and that it is more likely that an American “will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.”

Instead, these laws disproportionately disenfranchise the elderly, the poor, and minorities. A quarter (25%) of African American voting age citizens do not have a government-issued ID, compared to only 8% of white Americans. In fact, a number of voter ID laws across the country have been ruled discriminatory and are “now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression rather than of fraud prevention,” according to Judge Richard A. Posner, a member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

A Washington Post study found “a significant drop in minority participation when and where these laws are implemented.” In contrast, white voters are largely unaffected. Below is a chart that shows the turnout gap between different minority populations and the white population. It shows that strict voter ID laws exacerbate the voting gap and that this is particularly true of primary elections.

The Post explains its chart this way: “In general elections in non-strict states [states without strong/any voter ID laws], for instance the gap between white and Latino turnout is on average 4.9 points. But in states with strict ID laws, that gap grows to a substantial 13.2 points.”

FELONS

6.1 million Americans cannot vote because of felony disenfranchisement.

Rates of felon disenfranchisement vary dramatically between states. In Vermont and Maine, felons never lose their voting rights, while in others, felons regain their right to vote when the state deems they have paid their debt to society – either after they are released or after parole and/or probation. Still other states, however, do not restore voting rights to felons unless they apply for and receive a Governor’s action or court action allowing them to vote.

In addition, this disenfranchisement disproportionately affects African Americans. According to the Sentencing Project “1 of every 13 African Americans has lost their voting rights due to felony disenfranchisement laws, vs. 1 in every 56 non-black voters.”

Some states, however, have begun to look into these laws. A judge recently deemed this practice unconstitutional in Florida. Currently in Florida, convicted felons cannot vote unless they are granted restoration through a governor’s or court order. The judge stated “[Elected], partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards… Its members alone must be satisfied that these citizens deserve restoration. … The question now is whether such a system passes constitutional muster. It does not.”

Similarly, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced that he “intends to restore voting rights to felons on parole, a move that could open the ballot box to more than 35,000 people.”

Despite these advancements, in many states, these disenfranchised Americans are people who have served their debt to society and yet continue to be punished well beyond their time served in prisons, jails, probation, and parole.

Ultimately, these men and women across the United States have little to no political recourse for challenging or changing the laws that took away their vote. While some of these laws address actions that will always be felonies, keep in mind that possessing marijuana can still accrue a felony in many states despite support (61% of Americans) for legalization.

CITIZENS OF D.C., PUERTO RICO, THE VIRGIN ISLANDS, AMERICAN SAMOA, NORTH MARIANA ISLANDS, AND GUAM

About 4.4 million Americans live in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, North Mariana Islands, Guam and the District of Columbia.

However, unlike other American citizens in the 50 states, residents in American territories and the district have their voting rights significantly curtailed.

D.C. residents do not have full representation in Congress but are represented in presidential elections by three electoral college votes. In the other branches of government, Washington D.C. has no Senators and only one delegate in Congress, who cannot vote during floor Votes.

Residents in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, North Mariana Islands and Guam also have the same sort of “delegates” in Congress. However, their territories do not have electoral college votes and therefore, they cannot vote in presidential elections.

Last year, Puerto Rico suffered a devastating hurricane. More than four months after Hurricane Maria, nearly half a million Puerto Ricans are still without power. These three million Puerto Rican Americans do not have any voting member of Congress –- House or Senate –- who can speak to their need for aid, and they are not being helped by a president whose election they were not a part of.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why people who legally can vote, are held back from voting.

Voting in the United States is not easy. The rules can vary state by state and sometimes within the states between the two parties in primaries. This places heightened burdens on people who are struggling to get by. When one has to choose between doing extensive research and jumping through hoops to vote, and putting food on the table, voting all too often becomes of secondary importance.

Here are some of the hoops Americans must jump through to vote:

SEPARATE REGISTRATION AND VOTING

In the United States, at the age of 18 every American male is automatically sent a letter telling him he could potentially be called for the draft. In contrast, not a single American is automatically registered to vote in the same way.

On top of this, voting registration deadlines are notoriously confusing. Voter registration deadlines for the general election range by state from 31 days before an election to in-person on the day of the election.

To complicate matters, states have different laws for different types of registration. For instance, a Maryland resident must register to vote in person, online or by mail 21 days before the election. However, if voting during the early voting period, that Maryland resident can register in person between 13 and 5 days before the election. Some states do not even allow voter registration online.

This process becomes even more difficult when Americans want to participate in elections leading up to the general election.

These complicated and varying laws by state mean that extensive research is needed to know when and how to register to vote in each state. This can be extremely difficult for populations that have little or no access to the internet or time to know whom to ask.

Ultimately, this convoluted registration system is decreasing turnout in many areas in the United States. We know this because same-day voter registration has a history of increasing voter turnout and therefore voter participation in our democracy.

A report by Nonprofit Vote looked at voter turnout by state in 2016 and highlighted the states with same-day registration. The report found a high correlation between voter turnout and states with same-day registration in 2016.

Nonprofit Vote has tracked this difference between states that have same-day voter registration and those that do not since 1996. States that have same-day registration have consistently shown higher turnout.

Approaching this issue from another angle, some states have implemented legislation that approximates universal registration which has led to positive results: In Oregon, eligible voters are automatically registered to vote if they have a driver’s license; The Brennan Center for Justice reports that since that legislation was passed in 2015, Oregon has seen significant registration increases.

TUESDAY ELECTIONS

In most democracies around the world voting day is on a Sunday, a weekend, or a voting holiday. This allows most working men and women to make it to the polls without taking time off.

In the United States voting is on a regular Tuesday in November. The organization Why Tuesday? explains that, “In 1845, before Florida, California, and Texas were states or slavery had been abolished, Congress needed to pick a time for Americans to vote. We were an agrarian society. We traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the three days of worship. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday, but Wednesday was market day. So, Tuesday it was.”

It is no surprise that our society has changed over the course of almost 200 years. The same laws that created conveniences for Americans during the 1840s are now an inconvenience for many Americans.

Many people who are working paycheck to paycheck may not have the luxury to take time to vote. In fact, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.8 million Americans work two jobs. These working conditions make it even less likely to for them to be able to make it to the polls. Unfortunately, this is also a population whose day-to-day lives, paychecks, and health care are directly impacted by the decisions that Congress is making right now regarding the minimum wage, welfare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

On top of the inconvenience of holding elections on Tuesdays, polls open and close at different times in different states. A state where polls open late and close late may work for voters who get off work at regular times but may not help those whose schedules only allow for free time during the morning.

EARLY VOTING

Thirty-seven states and DC have taken steps to make voting easier for their populations. While election day remains on a Tuesday, these states allow their citizens to vote during times leading up to election day.

A study from the Brennan Center for Justice puts together a strong case for early voting. It argues that “As Americans’ lives become more complex -— for many each day is a struggle to balance the needs of work and family -— confining voting to a single 8- or 12-hour period is simply not reflective of how most voters live. Additionally, having polls open for such a short time can lead to numerous problems, including long lines, as poll workers — who perform the job infrequently at best –struggle to cope with hordes of voters.”

The study finds that some of the key benefits of early voting are:

Reduced stress on the voting system on Election Day;
Shorter lines on Election Day;
Improved poll worker performance;
Early identification and correction of registration errors and voting system glitches; and
Greater access to voting and increased voter satisfaction.

While most states have taken the step to allow some form of early voting or no-excuse absentee voting, almost 64 million Americans in 13 states do not have that option.

SOME VOTES COUNT MORE THAN OTHERS

People are far more likely to vote if they think their vote matters.

While most elections in the United States are winner-take-all by popular vote, our presidential election is different. The president of the United States is elected by the electoral college. The U.S. Archives describes it this way: Each state in the United States is allocated a certain number of “electors” based on how many members of Congress (both the House of Representatives, which is based on proportional representation, and the Senate, which is allotted two senators per state) that state has. When the citizens of that state vote for president, the candidate with the majority receives the votes of all of the “electors” in that state. It takes a majority of the electoral college votes to win the presidency.

This setup distorts a popular vote for presidency and gives more weight to smaller states. It can also lead to situations where the popular vote outcome is different from the electoral college outcome.

2016 was the second presidential election in the past five presidential election cycles where the votes of the majority of the American people have been overruled by the electoral college. According to CNN’s presidential race results tracker, President Trump received 306 electoral college votes to Secretary Clinton’s 232. In drastic contrast, Secretary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,516 votes to President Trump’s 62,984,825 votes. While the electoral college makes the 2016 election look like a solid victory for President Trump, in reality, he received three million fewer votes than Secretary Clinton.

More than half (54%) of Americans favor amending the Constitution to elect the U.S. president by popular vote rather than the Electoral College.

Ultimately, elections like this past 2016 presidential election do little to encourage faith in our democratic institutions.

Americans can easily find out how much their vote counts in presidential elections. Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig compiled data that compares electoral votes to population by state. His data set reveals how much each vote counts.

Professor Lessig’s findings give a clear picture that not all votes are equal in America. In Wyoming, each voter accounts for 0.00124% of an electoral vote, while each voter in Michigan accounts for 0.00031% of an electoral vote. Ultimately, this means that a vote in Wyoming is worth 4 times as much as a vote in Michigan due to the electoral college.

In fact, a vote in Wyoming is worth more than three times more than a vote in each of the following states: Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Illinois, Minnesota, Tennessee, New Jersey, New York, Indiana, Washington, South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Iowa, Alabama, Texas, California and Arizona.

Ultimately, this lack of equality affects voter turnout. In a 2016 study, The Washington Post compared electoral integrity and voter turnout (electoral integrity was measured “using 49 core indicators, such as whether district boundaries were fairly drawn, elections were well managed, the electoral register was accurate, votes were counted fairly, and newspapers provided balanced election news”). The Post found that as electoral integrity increases, so does voter turnout.

Election law in America is complicated and convoluted. There are many ways that Americans are disenfranchised and many others that place unnecessary burdens on potential voters. American politicians call the United States the “greatest democracy in the world,” yet our democratic participation, bound by unnecessary restrictions and burdens, demonstrates that that is not always the case. We owe it to ourselves, our children, and the legacy of the United States of America to move our country forward. We need laws that encourage and reflect our democratic identity.

Remarks At The Ethics In Action Conference

Posted on February 1, 2018

My remarks will focus on the ethical challenges of one particular aspect of the financial system: the investment management industry. Given the increasing size and importance of this industry globally, I believe that it is of utmost importance that we develop an ethical framework for its functioning.

In my remarks today, I would like to argue that there is a quiet, large scale “illicit financial flow” happening under our noses – and that is from everyday savers and pensioners to the employees of the financial sector and the shareholders of these companies. I believe that this “illicit financial flow” is deeply problematic for the end investor, who is trying to save for retirement or important expenses in their lives, and for our broader economic and planetary system, which does not have the appropriate stewards in the financial sector. I believe that without a transformation in how our collective savings are managed, we will not be able to achieve the broader goals of sustainable development.

My comments will focus on three particular aspects of the investment management industry that constitute the key pillars of the ethical challenges of the industry: 1) costs and fees, 2) time horizon mismatch the investment management industry versus the beneficiaries, and 3) lack of active stewardship of investments. I will end with a few comments on innovations in the industry that are trying to tackle some of the challenges I have outlined and will close with some reflections on whether they are moving in the right direction.

Before I begin, let me give you a sense of the size of the global investment management industry:

When I speak about the “investment management industry,” I am referring to the thousands of companies involved in the management of our savings in our pension funds, insurance accounts, additional savings we may have accrued.
The total size of the asset owner community – pension funds, SWFs, Endowments and Foundations, Mutual Funds, and Insurance Funds – is approximately $131 trillion. This number has been growing at between 5 and 7% per annum for the past 10 years.
The total size of all professionally managed, third-party investments has reached $79.2 trillion at the end of 2017. Roughly half of these assets – $37 trillion – are in the United States, $22 trillion in Europe, and $13 trillion in Asia excluding Japan.
The total direct revenues associated with the management of professional assets have reached approximately $200-$250 billion a year and is growing as global wealth increases.

The first major ethical challenge of the investment management industry is the extraordinary level of fees that are charged by the various intermediaries involved in the management of money. A recent study by Professor Andrew Clare of the Cass Business School has found that in between you as an end investor placing your money within a pension fund or into an investment account, and that money earning a return in a publicly listed security, there are over 100 fees placed on you by various intermediaries in the financial industry. A recent study by Grant Thornton, a global accounting and audit firm, has found that someone who entrusts a GBP 100,000 with a financial advisor in the UK will end up paying 2.56% annually in the various fees that are levied, which would mean that after ten years, 40% of your return would be eaten up by fees along the way. Given the fact that over 90% of actively managed equity portfolios underperform their low cost benchmark over a ten year period, this is quite troubling. And despite the growth of automation, robo financial advice, the number of financial advisors to manage assets of all kinds is increasing significantly, not decreasing. I could go on and on about the fee structure of the investment management industry, but I will spare you all for the time being.

The second major ethical challenge of the investment management industry is the mismatch of time horizons between financial market participants and the beneficiaries for whom they are managing money. The average, asset-weighted portfolio turn over rate for US mutual funds from 1984-2017 is 57%, which means that the average US mutual fund turns over their entire portfolio less than every two years. What is the benefit of such turnover? It is certainly not for the end investors, who pay a significant cost to the traders, accountants, book keepers, stock exchanges and more for their investors to churn portfolios. In addition, if the average professional investors has less than a 2 year time horizon for holding a stock, do we really think that they will be thinking about long-term, systemic risks in the global economy and financial system – things like climate change, inequality, corruption and so on?

This brings me to the third and final ethical challenge of the investment management industry, which is that of stewardship. Owning a stock of a company, or owning the bond of a company or country, gives you a right to future earnings of these entities, but it also gives you a responsibility as a small owner of the security. It gives you a vote in the election of the company’s board members, it gives you the right to issue resolutions for the company’s board to consider reform their practices on certain issues ranging from environmental impact to pay gaps to gender diversity on corporate boards and more. Over the past forty years, what has happened is that stock ownership has moved from individuals, who in the early 1980s owned 80% of the stock market directly, to institutional investors and asset managers, who now own a large majority of publicly listed companies on behalf of individuals. Although this may have created some efficiencies, it has also delegated an important set of decisions to intermediaries such as pension funds and asset management firms, who I believe, are not putting sufficient resources in being representative stewards of capital on behalf of their beneficiares. To give you one important anecdote, in 2017, there were 63 climate change related resolutions for publicly listed corporations, a small number to begin with compared to the multiple thousands of publicly listed companies. The average vote outcome was only 33% in favor, and only 3 positive outcomes. Do we really think that asset managers and institutional investors are voting in line with the best, long term interests of their clients and customers with a voting record like this? I think not.

Over the past few years, there has been a significant amount of hope that “institutional investors” and “private sector financial institutions” would be leading actors for sustainable development. Every UN and World Bank meeting related sustainable development financing since 2014 has had a significant discussion on “how to get the investment management industry through institutional and retail investors” to contribute to the SDGs? The intuition may be right, given the size and influence of this industry, but the reality is a lot more challenging than what most people expect.

The good news is that innovation is under way to tackle some of the challenges that I have outlined. Low cost index investing has the potential of bringing down the costs of investment management by 1, if not 2, orders of magnitude. Behavioral finance insights are being used to decrease the churn of portfolios. New platforms are being built to give retail investors a mechanism to express their voting preferences to their fund managers so that they vote according to their beneficiaries interests on Environmental and Social issues. But all of this is still at the margin, and a lot more work is needed.

Thank you.

How To Reinvent Infrastructure

Posted on January 31, 2018

There was only one reference to the deficit in last night’s State of the Union speech, and it had nothing to do with the federal budget. I found that refreshing — we can carry a deficit if the money’s spent wisely — but that’s another story. What President Trump talked about was America’s staggering infrastructure deficit, a whopping $2 trillion fault line in the backbone of the American economy, according to the latest estimates from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The president’s proposal sounded like an ambitious plan to take a big bite out of the problem. He urged Congress to produce a bill that would “generate at least $1.5 trillion” to modernize our decrepit infrastructure. The problem — at least for Democrats — is that the bulk of the financing is apparently supposed come from private investors, who would ultimately shift most of those costs onto to the public in the form of user fees and tolls. Most Democrats won’t sign onto this kind of legislation.

Yet without the support of many Democrats, there can be no bill. So where does that leave us?

Doing nothing is itself costly. As water mains break, roadways deteriorate and bridges crumble, businesses forgo trillions in sales, families lose an estimated $3,400 a year in disposable income, and our economy sacrifices millions of jobs. That’s why Larry Summers, the former Democratic Treasury secretary, urged the next president to “go big — yuge, even — on infrastructure spending.”

If Democrats were in control, they would be pushing not only for the brick-and-mortar projects the president spoke of last night, but also for enormous investments in high-speed broadband and renewable energy. Unfortunately, the president wants to spend more money on 20th century technology — so-called clean coal — instead of modernizing our electric grid and reorienting our economy away from coal and other fossil fuels.

So, how can Democrats find a way to get things into an infrastructure bill that (a) are good policy and things they would want anyway and (b) can be tied to goals of the Trump administration and a certain number of moderate Republicans in Congress?

If done right, infrastructure can actually deliver in four areas the president emphasized again and again in his speech last night: a boon for the economy and the Trump administration; addressing the high cost of health care; tackling the opioids epidemic ravaging the country; and the safety of the American people.

Mr. Trump talked about repealing the individual mandate, but offered no plan to make good on his campaign promise to give every American health care. He talked about opioids and helping people get treatment but offered no specific plan to deal with the crisis. He talked about terrorist threats and keeping Americans safe but said nothing about the threat of epidemics and bioterrorism.

What Democrats can propose that will touch on all those areas: a national network of community health centers (C.H.C.s).

“America is a nation of builders,” the president said. A bipartisan plan for hundreds of C.H.C.’s across America would reduce the cost of health care, bring down premiums, deal with the opioid crisis and help keep Americans safe by serving as centers of preparedness for epidemic and bioterrorist events.

America’s health care system is a costly, bureaucratic mess, and virtually every American knows it. C.H.C.s will improve health outcomes, remove primary care from insurance coverage and reduce the cost of health insurance premiums. Bringing premiums down will be critical for Mr. Trump, because according to CBO, repealing the individual mandate will drive insurance premiums up by as much as 10 percent for millions of Americans.

C.H.C.s can also serve as treatment centers for services related to the opioid epidemic. They can also act as treatment centers of preparedness for epidemic and bioterrorist events, helping to keep Americans safe.

The blueprint such a bipartisan plan already exists. Democrats and Republicans just need to come together to build on it. Community health centers already provide services to millions of Americans, and they do it at an exceptionally low cost — less than $1,000 per person per year. For a fraction of what we’re paying now, we could provide a free base of primary care with mental health and dental care as part of a large-scale buildout of community health centers.

They already claim bipartisan support. Of course, with a plan of this size and scale, C.H.C.s would offer bureaucratic challenges.

But they may offer a bipartisan way forward as an infrastructure plan that doubles as a health care plan.

3 Strategies To Get To A Fossil-Free America

Posted on January 25, 2018

When the next phase of the US climate movement launches with a nationally streamed rally at the end of the month, the wound-licking will be over. Yes, the Trump administration has upset any hope of a smooth and orderly transition to a new energy world. Yes, it’s pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement and opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. Yes, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry have made a mockery of hurricane victims and fire victims and flood victims, from San Juan to Montecito to Houston.

But the fossil-fuel industry doesn’t hold all the high cards. We’ll start playing our own aces for a Fossil-Free United States on January 31, when Bernie Sanders and an all-star lineup brought together by 350.org that includes everyone from indigenous activist Dallas Goldtooth to NAACP organizer Jacqui Patterson to star youth climate organizer Varshini Prakash lay out a coordinated plan for the year ahead.

The basic outlines are pretty simple. None of the strategies rely on Washington’s doing anything useful. In fact, because DC has emerged as the fossil-fuel industry’s impregnable fortress, our strategies look everywhere else for progress. In every case, real momentum has emerged, even in the last few weeks.

Job 1: Push for a fast and just transition to renewable energy in cities and states. The Trump administration has done what it can to slow down sun and wind power, even recently raising tariffs on imported solar panels, but it has not been able to change the basic underlying math. With each passing month, the technology that powers renewable energy gets cheaper and cheaper. It’s already generating massive quantities of electrons at prices cheaper than any other technology has ever managed in the past. A recent report by the International Renewable Energy Agency reports that renewables will be consistently cheaper than fossil fuels by 2020. That’s why mayors and governors have felt free to make ambitious pledges about the future. So far, 51 cities have joined a campaign led by the Sierra Club promising to convert to 100 percent renewable energy; five are already there.

Of course, that leaves tens of thousands of cities and towns that can make a similar pledge—and activists will be fanning out to their councils and selectboards and mayors in the months ahead. They’ll do it knowing this is a movement with real breadth: It’s not just the San Franciscos and Madisons that are on board, but the San Diegos, the Atlantas, the Fayettevilles. I mean, Salt Lake City is signed up. You know those blue dots on the election-night maps, the ones that contain most of the country’s innovation? They’re making the commitment, and those commitments will push the engineers to keep innovating.

During the Bush years, when Dick Cheney effectively ran energy policy, Washington was similarly closed to real progress. So state governments adopted Renewable Portfolio Standards, which went on to spur much of the spread of sun and wind power. The same thing is happening now, except at an even faster pace.

Job 2: Stop new fossil-fuel projects. The welter of pipelines and fracking wells and coal terminals that the industry is attempting to build will, if completed, lock us into decades more of spewing of carbon and methane. But many of these are vulnerable to citizen action.

Take, for instance, the Keystone Pipeline, where the infrastructure fights really began more than half a decade ago. Donald Trump doubtless believes that it’s been built. In a treacly paean titled “This Thanksgiving, Thank Donald J. Trump” the right-wing National Review announced that “after languishing under Obama,” Keystone XL was “under construction.” In fact, great organizers in Nebraska and Dakota have the thing tied up in endless knots; they’ve even installed fields of solar panels in the proposed path. The Cornhusker State approved a route for Keystone XL in November, but it’s not the path that pipeline developers TransCanada Corporation preferred. Now the surveyors—and the lawyers—have seasons of work ahead before a shovel will hit the ground. Even if TransCanada decides to push ahead, 20,000 people have pledged to travel to the upper Midwest to protest. The lessons of Standing Rock have not been forgotten.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, the thin green line against massive fossil-fuel projects has continued to hold. Five years ago it seemed almost certain that a massive terminal for oil trains from North Dakota’s Bakken Shale would be built along the Columbia River in Vancouver, Washington. Six giant ports had also been proposed along the coast for shipping coal from the Powder River basin of Montana and Wyoming off to China. There was no way to stop the drilling or mining back in the interior, since the fossil-fuel industry holds sway in those states. But the carbon had to pass through Washington and Oregon, and savvy organizers there—led in several cases by environmental-justice and indigenous groups, like the Lummi Indians near Bellingham—have managed to beat every single plan. In Portland, these activists even passed a law banning any new fossil-fuel infrastructure, period, end of story.

Many of these heroes also took to the water a couple of years ago—they were the kayaktivists who did such harm to Shell’s brand that the company backed away from drilling in the Arctic. A variant of that same strategy may help blunt Trump’s ugly plan for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines. Yes, this land is now open for leasing—but any oil company that steps through that door is going to be the target of an endless onslaught. You really want to be known as the company that digs up wildlife refuges? Okay, go for it.

Job 3: Cut off the flow of money to the fossil-fuel industry. Sometimes that means one bank customer at a time. One remarkable spinoff of the Standing Rock movement has been the Mazaska Talks campaign, led by indigenous organizers who have persuaded cities, towns, and individuals to pull their cash from banks that won’t stop lending the money that fuels climate destruction. On a memorable October morning, activists protested outside dozens of Bank of America branches in Seattle, shutting down several. The city government had already sworn off Wells Fargo because the bank couldn’t break its pipeline habit.

Pressure keeps building on investors as well. The fossil-fuel-divestment movement, for instance, has become the biggest corporate campaign of its kind in history, with endowments and portfolios worth a combined $6 trillion having sworn off coal and gas and oil in part or in whole. In the fall, a pair of studies summed up its success. One demonstrated that the campaign had catalyzed the rest of the climate movement, driving the debate towards grappling with the harsh reality that we had far more carbon than we could ever burn. The other pinpointed the falls in share values that divestment had caused, helping dry up the capital needed for more exploration and drilling.

But the divestment movement’s greatest successes actually came a bit later, around the holidays. First, the managers of Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the largest pool of investment capital on planet earth—recommended divesting from oil and gas. Since Norway made its money in North Sea crude, the pledge was especially profound. Clearly, the country’s economic leaders have decided that the future lies in renewables, and so they’re getting out while the getting is good. Shortly after, the World Bank announced it would no longer fund oil and gas exploration—that’s another striking signal for the world’s financial industry.

But the biggest win of all came just after the new year, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced two things. First, the city would be divesting its massive pension funds—nearly $200 billion dollars, one of the 20 largest pension funds on earth—from fossil fuels. And second, the city would be suing ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP for the damages caused by climate change. Their legal theory, he said, was simple: “They tried very intently to cover up the information about climate change and to project a propaganda campaign suggesting that climate change wasn’t real and go ahead and keep using your fossil fuels.” In other words, ExxonMobil=Philip Morris. Everyone remembers how that one ended.

Following years of relentless work from local activists, perhaps the most important part of de Blasio’s divestment announcement was the flat rejection of the idea that “engaging” with the fossil-fuel companies was a viable strategy. Many timid politicians have taken that approach, arguing that it was fine to keep investing in these companies as long as “dialogue” was underway. ExxonMobil, for instance, responded to pressure last year by promising “climate risk disclosure” about new projects. That’s not nothing, but it’s pretty close to nothing—especially since, at the same time, the companies were busy in Washington making sure they opened up the US coastline to new drilling. New Yorkers aren’t chumps, de Blasio pointed out. “Today, we are saying ‘No more.’”

All this financial pressure is made easier by the fact that the fossil-fuel industry is no longer minting money. It’s been underperforming the rest of the economy—and no wonder. Sun and wind are ultimately free, and that puts remarkable price pressure on the stuff you have to dig up and burn. Every single day, the electric car moves further along the path from novelty to normal. That means every single day Chevron’s position erodes a little further. The question now is not whether big oil is going down; the question is how fast—and how we make sure the transition is a just one. The answer to that question will determine exactly how far down the road to climate ruin we actually travel.

The political saliency of the climate issue grows stronger too, especially as it becomes clear that it’s not some niche concern of affluent suburbanites with a weekend home in the country. Polling makes clear that African Americans and Latinos are the two groups most concerned about climate change, which makes sense since they’ve borne the brunt of the effects so far. (All it takes is a record rainstorm to find out who lives at the bottom of the hill.) These are also the groups taking the lead in climate organizing, giving it a new and vital energy. Vice, the CNN of the young, reported this month that “the next millennial trend is suing big oil for destructive climate change,” apparently replacing avocado toast.

None of which means that the fight is won. Big Oil has had a big year, and they hold most of the levers in Washington. But they’re beginning to lose in a lot of other places—including in people’s hearts and minds. Destruction like that wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and Maria; tragedy like that wrought by California’s fires and mudslides—it takes a toll. No lie lives forever, and 2018 may be the year that the most dangerous deceit in the planet’s history finally unravels for good.