Author: telegraph

The US Plutocracy’s War On Sustainable Development

Posted on November 2, 2017

Billionaire US plutocrats such as Charles and David Koch, Robert Mercer, and Sheldon Adelson have long played their politics for personal financial gain – even if it means boosting inequality at home and blocking sustainable development worldwide. To stop them, US citizens will need to regain the upper hand in electoral politics.

The US plutocracy has declared war on sustainable development. Billionaires such as Charles and David Koch (oil and gas), Robert Mercer (finance), and Sheldon Adelson (casinos) play their politics for personal financial gain. They fund Republican politicians who promise to cut their taxes, deregulate their industries, and ignore the warnings of environmental science, especially climate science.

When it comes to progress toward achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the US placed 42nd out of 157 countries in a recent ranking of the SDG Index that I help to lead, far below almost all other high-income countries. Danish author Bjørn Lomborg . How could such a rich country score so low? “America-bashing is popular and easy,” he surmised.

Yet this is not about America-bashing. The SDG Index is built on internationally comparable data relevant to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 157 countries. The real point is this: sustainable development is about social inclusion and environmental sustainability, not just wealth. The US ranks far behind other high-income countries because America’s plutocracy has for many years turned its back on social justice and environmental sustainability.

The US is indeed a rich country, but Lord Acton’s famous aphorism applies to nations as well as to individuals: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The US plutocracy has wielded so much power for so long that it acts with impunity vis-à-vis the weak and the natural environment.

Four powerful lobbies have long held sway: Big Oil, private health care, the military-industrial complex, and Wall Street. These special interests feel especially empowered now by Donald Trump’s administration, which is filled with corporate lobbyists, not to mention several right-wing billionaires in the cabinet.

While the Sustainable Development Goals call for mitigating climate change through decarbonization (SDG 7, SDG 13), US fossil-fuel companies are strenuously resisting. Under the sway of Big Oil and Big Coal, Trump announced his intention to  from the Paris climate agreement.

America’s annual energy-related per capita CO2emissions, at 16.4 tons, are the highest in the world for a large economy. The comparable figure for Germany, for example, is 9.2 tons. The US Environmental Protection Agency, now in the hands of lobbyists from the fossil-fuel sector, dismantles environmental regulations every week (though many of these actions are being challenged in court).

The SDGs also call for reduced income inequality (SDG 10). America’s income inequality has soared in the past 30 years, with the Gini coefficient at 41.1, the second highest among high-income economies, just behind Israel (at 42.8). Republican proposals for tax cuts would increase inequality further. The US rate of relative poverty (households at less than half of median income), at 17.5%, is also the second highest in the OECD (again just behind Israel).

Likewise, while the SDGs target decent jobs for all (SDG 8), American workers are nearly the only ones in the OECD that lack guaranteed paid sick leave, family leave, and vacation days. The result is that more and more Americans work in miserable conditions without job protections. Around nine million American workers are stuck below the poverty line.

The US also suffers from an epidemic of malnutrition at the hands of the powerful US fast-food industry, which has essentially poisoned the public with diets loaded with saturated fats, sugar, and unhealthy processing and chemical additives. The result is an obesity rate of 33.7%, the highest by far in the OECD, with enormous adverse consequences for non-communicable diseases. America’s “healthy life expectancy” (morbidity-free years) is only 69.1 years, compared to 74.9 years in Japan and 73.1 years in Switzerland.

While the Sustainable Development Goals emphasize peace (SDG 16), America’s military-industrial complex pursues open-ended wars (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, to name some of America’s current engagements) and large-scale arms sales. On his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump signed a deal to sell over $100 billion in weapons to the country, boasting that it would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in America’s defense sector.

America’s plutocracy contributes to homegrown violence as well. The US homicide rate, 3.9 per 100,000, is the highest of any OECD country, and several times higher than in Europe (Germany’s rate is 0.9 per 100,000). Month after month, there are mass shootings in the US, such as the massacre in Las Vegas. Yet the political power of the gun lobby, which opposes limits even on assault weapons, has blocked the adoption of measures that would boost public safety.

Another kind of violence is mass incarceration. With 716 inmates per 100,000 people, America has the world’s highest incarceration rate, roughly ten times that of Norway (71 per 100,000). Remarkably, America has partly privatized its prisons, creating an industry with an overriding interest in maximizing the number of prisoners. Former President Barack Obama issued a directive to phase out private federal prisons, but the Trump administration reversed it.

Lomborg also  the US gets a low score on global “Partnership for the Goals,” even though the US gave around $33.6 billion in official development assistance (ODA) in 2016. The answer is easy: relative to gross national income of almost $19 trillion, ODA spending by the US amounted to just 0.18% of GNI – roughly a quarter of the global target of 0.7% of GDP.

America’s low ranking in the SDG Index is not America-bashing. Rather, it is a sad and troubling reflection of the wealth and power of lobbies relative to ordinary citizens in US politics. I recently helped to launch an effort to refocus state-level US politics around sustainable development, through a set of America’s Goals that candidates for state legislatures are beginning to adopt. I am confident that a post-Trump America will recommit itself to the values of the common good, both within America and as a global partner for sustainable development.

Student Activism: A Force For Change

Posted on March 6, 2018

This month, a school full of children suffered an enormous tragedy. Again. Seventeen young people were gunned down inside a Florida high school but instead of devolving into the same cycle of meaningless debate, we’re seeing a new moment of student leadership. In a time of crushing grief and anger and fear, these students have chosen to rise up and fill the vacuum of leadership that many of our leaders have created. And they’ve been joined in their activism by their peers all across the country.

For decades, the NRA and the politicians backed by them have stymied any effort to push for stronger gun legislation. After Sandy Hook and Pulse and Las Vegas, efforts failed and the conversation faded away time and again. The callousness with which NRA-backed Republicans have shirked away from their responsibilities to play a role is sickening. Again and again, we go through the same ritual — tragedy, debate, defeat, repeat.

We’ve gone as far as convincing ourselves that there’s nothing we can do — as if we’re doomed to eternally suffer these tragedies. But we know what the issue is and we know the steps that needed to be taken. At the moment, the only thing holding us back is the lack of courage it takes for politicians to do away with the NRA and the checks they write. It’s a horrible reason and one that these student activists have now dedicated themselves to ending.

I, for one, think they’ll succeed.

The poise, grace, and passion that these students have conducted themselves with has been inspiring. Their movement is a heart-wrenching call to action from our youngest generation, a rebirth of student activism which may feel new to us now, but I know the power that student activism can have.

As students across the country engaged in Brown v. Board litigation, at 12, my mother joined that fight and sued Western High School in Baltimore so she could desegregate the school when she was 15. She would become part of the first class of black girls to attend that high school from freshman year through graduation. Along with young men and women across the country, they fought for their rights and the rights of young people that would follow them.

My mother raised me on protests. At Columbia, participating in a protest against the university’s plan to tear down the site of Malcolm X’s assassination would get me suspended. It was the first student suspension for activism in nearly three decades, when the famed protests against the Vietnam War rippled through college campuses nationwide.

During my suspension, I went to work for the NAACP in Mississippi, where I trained as an organizer. During my time there, I met other incredible student activists, like Stacey Abrams and Derrick Johnson. This training would come in handy during the uprisings in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray. I found myself in a church teaching young people how to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience that would maintain the purity of their message, protect them, protect innocent bystanders, and protect members of the police seeking to keep the peace.

Student activists have the ability to be the loudest and most powerful voices. They’re not hemmed in by the equivocating and hedging that hampers most political discourse. These students know what will keep them safe and they’re not going to stop until they accomplish the change they want to see.

Student activists, and these student activists from Marjory Stoneman Douglas in particular, are the best of us. They’ll do things we’ve told ourselves are impossible.

And I’ll be here, doing everything I can to help them.

Speaking With Nina Turner Before The Women’s Convention

Posted on October 27, 2017

Nina Turner is one of the most energizing, sharpest, and effective figures representing the progressive movement. At a time when Republicans are waging a class war and the Democratic Party still seems intent on ensuring that the needs of Wall Street, the health care lobby, and its corporate donors are a priority, Turner is a loud clear voice on the left who fights for Medicare For All, a $15 per hour minimum wage, and other similar policies.

The Cleveland-born-and-bred former Ohio state senator (2008 to 2014) now heads up Our Revolution, a political action group born out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign that works to elect progressive candidates, push progressive causes, and get people involved in the political process. As Turner puts it, the organization exists “to reclaim Democracy for the? working people. For people who feel like they have been forgotten, and to ?take that energy, that synergy and create a political revolution.”

She’ll partake in several panels at The Women’s Convention in Detroit this weekend — including the Medicare For All talk — so we took the opportunity to catch up with her.

Tell me a little about why Medicare for All is the solution to our broken health care system. There are a lot of people who still aren’t on board with such an idea.
Yes, but I think the American people are really coming around. A lot of polls show that a majority of Americans across the political spectrum do believe that the government should run a system that helps us with our medical care.

We are the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have a Medicare for All type of program, and that’s an idea whose time has come. It is the morally right thing to do … as Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.’

This our health, and this is not about political affiliation or who somebody votes for or supports. This is really about our humanity and our moral commitment to one another, and how as Americans we want to best invest our money. We’re paying for people who are underinsured or uninsured right now. We just don’t see it because it’s indirect.

But to say as a country that we will invest our money to ensure that everyone has access to hospital services or ambulatory patient services, prescription drugs … well, I believe if we can go to the moon, then we should find a way to have a universal healthcare program in this country. It is vitally important for everybody.

Why do we need a women’s convention in 2017? Why is this important?
First, I commend the conveners. This is their convention — their first convention after the ?historic Women’s March, which was the largest single day march in the history of our country. That ?really tapped women — and men who support women — all across the? country.

I think it’s very fitting that the theme is “Reclaiming our time.” The ?headliner is Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and it’s a good time to have women? come together, reaffirm, uplift one another, and talk about the issues that matter ?to us. The issues that matter to women also matter to communities … and these issues have a ripple effect all ?across the country.

And the purist sense of the feminist tradition — feminism is not? anti-man. It is pro-humanity. And that is what I’m hoping will come out of the convention. That women get together to reaffirm who we are, what we? are, and why we are, and ultimately this is about humanity.

How have things changed since this last election for women? Is there more urgency to some of these issues that women face?
Oh, yes. Absolutely, but there always has been. But we have these moments in history that remind us that we ?have a lot of work left undone. You know, women not making dollar for dollar the same as a man is not new. It’s been that way since day zero, since the founding of this? country. And when you ?put African-American women and Hispanic women into the mix it’s even worse than ?that. The latest? revelations about Harvey Weinstein — not new. Women have always had to fight off ?predators … who treat them like they’re just a piece of? meat instead of with the respect that they deserve. That has ?been happening since day zero.

But we have these touch points and so now we are ?more of aware …. that we have work to do ?in the areas of racism, sexism, and I would even say ageism, too. Because I? think that is the new type of discrimination that’s around.

So, we have to, as a? country, be reminded that we have more battles to create a more equitable? and socially just society. The events that are happening over the last eight, nine? months — we’re just being reminded that we have much more work to do in the area? of social justice and equality, and we ?can’t leave this work undone. Until we advance the ball on these issues, we will always have moments where we are reminded that these things are happening.

How do you advance the ball at the political level? What are some of the solutions?
Passing the Equal Rights Amendment would be one great step, and the federal government certainly can implement ?policies, and we need state and local officials to do the? same thing.

Also, when the government awards ?contracts, we need to make it explicit that they? must pay a living wage, that they can’t pay any less than $15 an hour,? for example. And I want to say depending on what the industry, it should be higher than that. But because it is the tax payer’s dollars,? we can mandate that, we can make that our rules of engagement.

Paid family medical leave is also something that we need. So many working poor in this country will lose their ?job if they get sick, or if they have? children and their children get sick. They can’t afford it. That’s inhumane. These are the types of things policy makers can push.

Who are some of the women taking on leadership roles that you’re excited about and why?
Well, I’m excited for Stacey Abrams, who is ?running for governor in the great state of Georgia. We both served in the legislature at the same time. She excites me because she is taking on the challenge of running? for governor and … there has never in history been an African-American woman elected governor. That might be hard for people to ?believe, but it is true. So, I just really respect the fact that she’s willing ?to take this risk for a greater good.

Other women? that I admire, many of them are no longer with us. But when I think about why ?I fight so hard, I think about people like Fannie Lou Hamer, like Mother Jones. You know, all of these women didn’t have fancy ?titles but they had a commitment that was bigger than themselves … and they both put?things on the line to make this country and their communities better.

And even closer to home — my grandmother, who I talk about all the time. Again,? nobody with a fancy title, but she just really had a pure energy and a pure? commitment that continues to push me to this day. For that, I am just absolutely? obligated to use my strength and my abilities to make this world a better ?place. And although she is not here, I would like to think she is proud that I? am doing just that.

Last week the DNC purged some of its more progressive members from key leadership positions and replaced them with lobbyists for oil companies, Citigroup, Fox News, and so on. What’s your take on that and the DNC’s drift?
The purge was short-sighted and it’s going to do more harm than good. I mean, if they want to talk about unity and bringing people together, that’s not how you do it — by purging people. All of whom had some link to either Senator Sanders or Congressman Keith Ellison — so it’s just wrong to do that. That makes it harder for progressive folks like me to try and pull other progressives into the party.

You take out somebody like Dr. James Zogby, who has committed his life to this party? Who has a lot to give, who also represents the Arab-American community, who worked for reverend Jesse Jackson’s campaigns in the ’80s, trailblazing at that time when the establishment Democrats didn’t even want reverend Jesse Jackson running.

You take out [Barbra Casbar Siperstein], the DNC’s first transgender? person, as well, just because she supported Keith Ellison’s candidacy? That is ?short-sighted and harmful … and won’t bring unity to the party.

We saw leading up to the 2016 election that progressives were dismissed by centrists as “Bernie Bros.” That always seemed a little bit insulting to progressive women, but at this point in 2017 it seems even more inaccurate than it was last year. It seems like there’s a more diverse crowd on the left, but maybe I’m wrong. You’re out there traveling the country, what do you see when you look at the party’s more progressive wing these days?
You’re not wrong about that. It’s unfortunate that we were maligned so in 2016 for political expediency. You know, I just got back from a five-city tour in Texas. I went to five cities in three days — 900 miles — to Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Tyler. You know, bright red Tyler, Texas? And at each one of these gatherings, it was a mosaic of humanity. There are people of all walks of life gathering to reaffirm that they are on the right track and that they are doing the right thing. So, if that’s what people want to call “Bernie Bros,” then have at it. Ninety-four-year-old women to 26-year-old millennials — we span the gambit. So it’s unfortunate that that label was put on people who were in support of Sen. Sanders … because nothing can be further from the truth.

What I see are people who care about their families, I see people who care about their communities. And they just want to know what can they do. Some people really feel helpless … in this environment. Unfortunately, they have to be reminded that they’re not powerless and that they’re not helpless. That they have to gather together and be prepared and get out there to vote, to vote for mayor, to vote for members of the state legislature, to vote for members of Congress and to vote for the presidency. It’s coming in 2020, but we have to be prepared today.

All of the great social justice advances that we ever had in this country have come not from people with big titles and not from people at the top, but just from everyday people getting together saying “Enough is enough. I’m going to change this, and I’m going to get involved, and I am going to be engaged.” So I hope — as we move forward — that those labels will go away.

Harry Belafonte On Finding His Voice

Posted on March 1, 2018

Even before Harry Belafonte won global fame as a performer, he saw himself as part of a grand tradition of artists who use their voices for change. His role model was Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and activist whose career was derailed by McCarthyism. CBS News’ Vladimir Duthiers sat down with Belafonte, who drew a direct line from his years traveling the world with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., back to something Robeson told him when he was just starting out.

 

Nina Turner Explains The Recent Reports Of Workplace Harassment

Posted on October 27, 2017

Throughout her career in local government and as an Ohio state senator, Nina Turner was asked plenty of times if she could “handle” being a wife, a mother, and a public servant all at the same time. Now as the president of Our Revolution, an organization that supports the election of progressives, she’s encouraging women who feel they have something to give to their community, state, or country to feel the same sense of belonging that she says men feel when they wake up in the morning and decide they want to run for president.

Ahead of giving remarks at the opening night of the Women’s Convention, a Women’s March-organized conference held in Detroit, Michigan, Turner spoke to Cosmoplitan.com about channeling your “inner man” to run for office and why she thinks it’s important to incorporate men in the fight against institutionalized sexism.

You’ve said before that Our Revolution is more interested in endorsing candidates based on beliefs, rather than endorsing along party lines. Does that mean Our Revolution could endorse a Republican?
Our grassroots affiliate organizations nominate [candidates] up. I can give you real examples — they have nominated Green Party members and we have endorsed Green Party members. But, for the sake of argument, if there is a progressive Republican out there that seeks their endorsement [from] Our Revolution, and they go through the local affiliate, there is a strong possibility that they could be endorsed.

Dr. Bernice King gave a speech earlier this year to the DNC. She said that, today, people are not looking for people just based on whether they’re Democrat or Republican — they’re looking for people who will stand up for humanity. I embrace that personally, and Our Revolution embraces that, too. Any candidate from any walk of life, any background, they have a chance of being endorsed by Our Revolution. We are not just going to dismiss them because of some party affiliation.

But it hasn’t happened yet that you’ve endorsed a Republican?
Not yet. But listen, any day now. It could happen.

A recent survey Cosmopolitan ran found that even more women felt less likely to run for office after the election than felt inspired to run. What advice would you give to women who are feeling discouraged to run or are feeling disillusioned by the election results?

It’s alright to feel disappointed and discouraged. We all have moments like that. But [don’t] let that cripple you and your desire and your drive to run for office, because that is probably the very person that we need to run for office.

I would encourage any young woman who has the desire to run, if they feel like they can do something better, if they feel obligated to help and lift their community, if they have something to give, then don’t let this small blip on the screen – and it is small, it seems enormous right now, in the moment, but it is, in fact, a blip on the screen – to deter them from getting out there to use that passion and drive and determination that they have to make their community, their state, and this country, a better place.

There are studies — even before Mr. Trump ascended to the presidency — that showed that women need to be asked several times to run. It’s just the way that women have been unfortunately socialized in this society. But I want women to know that they can shake and shape the world, and that we need more women to get out there and shake the world and to be that change, and not to be paralyzed. There is a shift coming, and women need to be within that shift. Women need to be pushing that shift.

You must’ve had moments like this when you were starting your career.
Oh my god, many times. I remember, when I was running for city council in 2005, being asked by a man if I could handle being a wife, a mother, and a councilwoman. And that’s just crazy — 21st century, you’re still being asked those questions. Even today, that’s still there. Can women handle it? Are they mentally capable of handling it? Yes, we are. Because we are the best multitaskers this world has ever seen. Women can handle it.

Women can be uniquely who they are – they don’t have to try to be a man. They should be exactly who they are in this space. As a black woman in particular, it’s not just my gender that makes people question whether or not I can complete a task. Oftentimes it’s also my race. So for women like me, it is a double-edged sword. But I am living proof, and so have been other women that have come before me, that we can surmount those challenges and prove to the world that we are more than capable of being great public servants, and mothers if we are mothers, and married if we are married.

We can do it all and have it all. That’s what I want young women to know. Make their own music. If nobody’s making music for them, make your own. Do what you are passionate about and don’t let anybody or anything stop you or convince you that you are not worthy. Most men that run for office wake up in the morning and say, I am worthy to be the president of the United States of America. I want women to channel their inner man and say, Oh yeah, I am worthy.

One of the other things women have to face, and this has been a big conversation the past few weeks, is what women in state legislatures have called a pervasive culture of sexual harassment. When you see these reports, are you surprised? Is this something you knew was happening?
I’m surprised that we’re surprised. Just like racism, sexism is as old as the founding of this country. Since day zero.

We’re always reminded that we have more work to do in these areas, so whether it’s pushing back against racism – and I’m not talking about just one individual not liking somebody that’s African American, Hispanic, or a person of color. I’m talking about institutional racism. It’s the same with sexism. It’s not just one man saying something to a woman, it is embedded in the institution that is America.

When I was a state senator — I’ll never forget — I was in the judiciary committee and I was jousting back and forth with the chairman of the committee, and getting the best of him, I might say, and it pissed him off so much that he hammered his gavel. Shut up, Senator, he said something like that. And I was just happy that he said the word senator behind telling me to shut up in committee. So I know what it’s like. And even in that moment, I didn’t know if that was happening because I was a woman or because I was black, or was it a combination of things.

I know that might be mild compared to what some other women are talking about, but it’s the building of all of that level of disrespect for women in this country that we must confront. I am proud that women are speaking their truth and that we are creating an environment in this moment where women feel confident enough to speak their truth. I just hope that it lasts. Is it just a blip on the screen and then it’s going to go away, and women are going to suppress it again, and then something else happens that shakes our consciousness, and then women have to start it all over again? I am hoping that this outpouring of women, giving their testimony about the sexism that they have had to endure, is something that they will always feel comfortable about coming forward [with]. That will require both men and women, whether it’s in the private sector or in the public sector, to create that kind of space.

There was a pretty significant backlash to the Women’s Convention when Bernie Sanders was announced as one of the opening speakers. What did you think of that backlash?
Unfortunate. I respect the women who feel as though Senator Sanders should not have been invited. I get it, because I try to put myself in somebody else’s shoes, but I disagree. Because I also respect the women of the Women’s March who decided that they wanted to invite Senator Sanders to speak and the other gentlemen – there were only two men at the time, but that has changed — who were invited to speak. It was only one man that triggered the outreach by some women. Not all.

To flip that, there were some women — not just me, I guess it was obvious how I was going to feel — who thought it was good for Senator Sanders to be invited to speak. You know, the most popular active politician in the country to be invited to speak. And in the truest sense of feminism. Feminism is not anti-man, it’s pro-humanity. For all the advancements that we hope to have as a society, we need partners of the male persuasion too.

Although I respect those women to be able to have that opinion, I disagree with the opinion. I thought that the backlash, that kind of public backlash, was unnecessary. We are coming together in a true sense of sisterhood, and while we might not agree on every issue, we are coming here to talk about to talk about how do we advance, how do we reclaim our time.

Why We Need Rise-Up Economics, Not Trickle Down

Posted on February 27, 2018

How to build the economy? Not through trickle-down economics. Tax cuts to the rich and big corporations don’t lead to more investment and jobs. 

The only real way to build the economy is through “rise-up” economics: Investments in our people – their education and skills, their health, and the roads and bridges and public transportation that connects them.

Trickle-down doesn’t work because money is global. Corporations and the rich whose taxes are cut invest the extra money wherever around the world they can get the highest return.

Rise-up economics works because American workers are the only resources uniquely American. Their productivity is the key to our future standard of living. And that productivity depends on their education, health, and infrastructure.
Just look at the evidence.

Research shows that public investments grow the economy.

A recent study by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth found, for example, that every dollar invested in universal pre-kindergarten delivers $8.90 in benefits to society in the form of more productive adults.

Similarly, healthier children become more productive adults. Children who became eligible for Medicaid due to expansions in the 1980s and 1990s were more likely to attend college than similar children who did not become eligible.

Investments in infrastructure – highways, bridges, and public transportation – also grow the economy. It’s been estimated that every $1 invested in infrastructure generates at least $1.60 in benefits to society. Some research puts the return much higher.

In the three decades following World War II, we made huge investments in education, health, and infrastructure. The result was rising median incomes.

Since then, public investments have lagged, and median incomes have stagnated.

Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush’s tax cuts on the top didn’t raise incomes, and neither will Donald Trump’s.

Trickle-down economics is a hoax. But it’s a convenient hoax designed to enrich the moneyed interests. Rise-up economics is the real deal. But we must fight for it.

How To End Croney Capitalism

Posted on October 24, 2017

The largest corporations and richest people in America – who donated billions of dollars to Republican candidates the House and Senate in the 2106 election – appear on the way to getting what they paid for: a giant tax cut.

The New York Times reports that business groups are meeting frequently with key Republicans in order to shape the tax bill, whose details remain secret.

Speed and secrecy are critical. The quicker Republicans get this done, and without hearings, the less likely will the rest of the country discover how much it will cost in foregone Medicaid and Medicare or ballooning budget deficits.

Donald Trump has been trashing democratic institutions – the independence of the press, judges who disagree with him, uncooperative legislators – while raking in money off his presidency. But don’t lose sight of the larger attack on our democracy that was underway even before Trump was elected: A flood of big money into politics.

Lest you conclude it’s only Republicans who have been pocketing big bucks in exchange for political favors, consider what Big Tech – the industry that’s mostly bankrolled Democrats – is up to.

It’s mobilizing an army of lobbyists and lawyers – including senior advisors to Hillary Clinton’s campaign – to help scuttle a proposed law requiring Google, Facebook, and other major Internet companies to disclose who is purchasing their online political advertising.

After revelations that Russian-linked operatives bought deceptive ads in the run-up to the 2016 election, you’d think this would be a no-brainer. But never underestimate the power of big money, whichever side of the aisle it’s aimed at.

Often, it’s both sides. Last week The Washington Post and “60 Minutes” reported that Big Pharma contributed close to $1.5 million to Democrats as well as Republicans in order to secure enactment of the so-called “Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act of 2016.”

This shameful law weakened the Drug Enforcement Authority’s power to stop prescription opioids from being shipped to pharmacies and doctors suspected of taking bribes to distribute them – a major cause of the opioid crisis. Last year, Americans got 236 million opioid prescriptions, the equivalent of one bottle for every adult.

Overwhelming majorities of House and Senate Democrats voted for the bill, as well as Republicans, and President Obama signed it into law.

There you have it, folks. Big money is buying giant tax cuts, allowing Russia to interfere in future elections, and killing Americans. That’s just the tip of the corrupt iceberg that’s sinking our democracy.

Republicans may be taking more big money, but both parties have been raking it in.

Average Americans know exactly what’s going on. 

I just returned from several days in Kentucky and Tennessee, both of which voted overwhelmingly for Trump.

A number of Trump voters told me they voted for him because they wanted someone who’d shake up Washington, drain the swamp, and get rid of crony capitalism. They saw Hillary Clinton as part of the problem.

These people aren’t white nationalists. They’re decent folks who just want a government that’s not of, by, and for the moneyed interests.

Many are now suffering buyer’s remorse. They recognize Trump has sold his administration to corporate lobbyists and Wall Street. “He conned us,” was the most polite response I heard.

The big money that’s taken over American politics in recent years has created the biggest political backlash in postwar American history – inside both parties.

It’s splitting the Republican Party between its large corporate patrons and a base that detests big corporations and Wall Street.

Trump is trying to straddle both by pretending he’s a champion of the working class while pushing for giant tax cuts. But if my free-floating focus group in Kentucky and Tennessee is any indication, the base is starting to see through it.

Which you might think creates a huge opportunity for Democrats heading into the 2018 midterms and the presidential election of 2020.

Think again. Much of the official Democratic Party is still in denial, continuing to debate whether it should be on the proverbial “left” or move to the “middle.”

But when it comes to getting big money out of politics and ending crony capitalism, there’s no right or left, and certainly no middle. There’s just democracy or oligarchy.

Democrats should be fighting for commonsense steps to reclaim our democracy from the moneyed interests – public financing of elections, full disclosure of all sources of political funding, an end to revolving door between government and business, and attempts to reverse the bonkers Supreme Court decision “Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.”

For that matter, Republicans should be fighting for these, too.

Heres’a wild idea. What if the anti-establishment wings of both parties came together in a pro-democracy coalition to get big money out of politics?

Then it might actually happen.

Have We Lost the Common Good?

Posted on February 22, 2018

In 1963 over 70 percent of Americans trusted government to do the right thing all or most of the time; nowadays only 16 percent do. 

There has been a similar decline in trust for corporations. In the late 1970s, 32 percent trusted big business, by 2016, only 18 percent did.

Trust in banks has dropped from 60 percent to 27 percent. Trust in newspapers, from 51 percent to 20 percent. Public trust has also plummeted for nonprofits, universities, charities, and religious institutions.

Why this distrust? As economic inequality has widened, the moneyed interests have spent more and more of their ever-expanding wealth to alter the rules of the game to their own advantage.

Too many leaders in business and politics have been willing to do anything to make more money or to gain more power – regardless of the consequences for our society.

We see this everywhere – in the new tax giveaway to big corporations, in gun manufacturer’s use of the NRA to block gun controls, in the Koch Brother’s push to roll back environmental regulations, in Donald Trump’s profiting off his presidency.

No wonder much of the public no longer believes that America’s major institutions are working for the many. Increasingly, they have become vessels for the few.

The question is whether we can restore the common good. Can the system be made to work for the good of all?

Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, and hatefulness. But I don’t believe it hopeless.

Almost every day I witness or hear of the compassion of ordinary Americans – like the thousands who helped people displaced by the wildfires in California and floods in Louisiana; like the two men in Seattle who gave their lives trying to protect a young Muslim woman from a hate-filled assault; like the coach who lost his life in Parkland, Florida, trying to shield students from a gunman; like the teenagers who are demanding that Florida legislators take action on guns.

The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land – a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major institutions of America.

We have never been a perfect union; our finest moments have been when we sought to become more perfect than we had been. We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort.

I started my career a half-century ago in the Senate office of Robert F. Kennedy,  when the common good was well understood, and I’ve watched it unravel over the last half-century.

Resurrecting it may take another half century, or more. But as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.”

Just Say ‘No’ To Arctic Refuge Drilling

Posted on October 23, 2017

The high Arctic is almost unbearably beautiful. The plains that turn tawny gold and rust red come autumn, the flat tundra that rises sharply into icy peaks, the vast herds of caribou. For decades these images have been enough to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling — it is, after all, a wildlife refuge, and people who’ve never been there can nonetheless deduce simply from that name that it is no place for oil rigs.

But we are in a season of wreckage right now in Washington, and so there is real risk that the budget now under consideration will allow oilmen into that refuge. In fact, the final decision may come down to a small group of House Republicans who have announced that they’re interested in “climate solutions.” With the heroic help of the Citizens Climate Lobby, which turns 10 this fall, 60 members of Congress — 30 from each party — have been persuaded to join a caucus that aims “to educate members on economically viable options to reduce climate risk and protect our nation’s economy.”

If they take that mandate seriously, saying “no” to Arctic Refuge drilling should be the ultimate no-brainer. For one thing, it’s not going to make the government any money. Proponents have been claiming that there’s $1.8 billion, with a “B,” in it for the government; a new analysis puts revenues closer to $37.5 million, with an “M.” And that, of course, is the revenue before you count up the losses.

Which would be enormous. The refuge is not only a beautiful, wild, serene place, it is a safe storage container for something very dangerous. That something very dangerous is the carbon that the oil will produce if it’s ever burned. The possible 7.7 billion recoverable barrels of oil the refuge may contain, if piped down to civilization, would release carbon equivalent to opening 820 new coal-fired power plants and running them for a year, which is something even our coal-crazed president has not proposed. It would be like putting 23 million new cars on the road and operating them for the next three decades. This is precisely the opposite of what politicians who say they’re interested in “climate solutions” should be doing, as absurd as solving the opioid epidemic by building a pipeline to carry millions of pills an hour into rural America.

There’s no great mystery about the price that our climate negligence carries, and there’s no argument that we’re insulated from it here in North America. We’ve watched Harvey, Irma and Maria slam into our shores in recent weeks, and economists say that beyond the lives lost and the homes ruined, the cost will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. California’s wildfires aren’t even out yet, but the recovery work could well be the most expensive in modern world history.

“The Arctic Refuge is not only a beautiful, wild, serene place, it is a safe storage container for something very dangerous.”

Some cynics have suggested that the Climate Solutions Caucus is just a convenient way for vulnerable Republicans to signal their concern about climate change to interested voters without actually, you know, solving anything. And in truth, there’s reason for skepticism. The caucus includes members such as Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia, who has a 3% lifetime voting record from the League of Conservation Voters. In the last few months, she’s voted to eliminate the Stream Protection Rule against coal ash pollution of drinking water, to allow offshore oil drilling along the Atlantic Seaboard and even to overturn U.S. Fish and Wildlife protection for Alaska’s bears and wolves.

But people can change — I have no doubt that the valiant folks who set up the Climate Solutions Caucus will be working hard with people such as Comstock to help them understand.

Because some climate solutions are not actually that complicated. Basically we need to keep coal and oil and gas in the ground. Right now the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is performing that job admirably, and all Congress needs to do is leave it alone. What could be simpler?

Roma And African Americans Share A Common Struggle

Posted on February 20, 2018

On 20 February, we mark the abolition of Roma slavery on the territories of today’s Romania. Much has changed across continents but the enslavement of people in both Romania and the US has converted into new forms of exploitation and control.

The impetus to kill and chain Roma and African American bodies remains one of the appalling facets of how the criminalization and demonization of these peoples have historically translated into action. For example, in Romania, Levente, a 21-year-old Roma man, was recently shot dead by a police officer in front of two Romakids, aged 10 and 14.

According to Marian Mandache, the executive director of the Roma rights group Romani CRISS, the young man was unarmed. In the US, police killings of black Americans are common too, with Amadou Diallo to Manuel Loggins Jr, Ronald Madison, Kendra James, Sean Bell, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Alton Sterling just a handful of the victims.

From early on in their histories, Roma and African Americans have crossed similar paths, as white policymakers continued to employ similar tactics to maintain white normativity, social power, and privilege.

Since 1853, Mihail Kog?lniceanu, one of the most progressive Romanian intellectuals of all time, has pointed out the comparable struggles of African Americans in bondage and enslaved Roma people.

His preface about Roma slavery and the translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin – the first American novel to be published in Romanian – increased a consciousness of shame about the brutality of slavery across a few strands of Romanian society. Kog?lniceanu was one white intellectual among many in both Europe and the Americas who, along with fellow abolitionists, denounced slavery and advocated for its eradication.

But the moral responsibility and paideia of some intellectuals did not concur with the decisions and actions of governing institutions. Along with a litany of unfulfilled promises – for example the 40 acres and a mule promised in the US by former masters – the losses of African Americans and Roma people have not been restored.

If in the US there is some level of acceptance of this atrocious legacy, Romania still lacks acknowledgement and a break with its own past, starting with public apologies from state institutions and the Orthodox Church, both of which enslaved Roma.

The widening adoption of international human rights instruments over the past 70 years might suggest that the end of humanity’s dark heritage of state-sponsored atrocity was in sight, and that a consciousness of shame, discomfort, or even compassion would prompt immediate and effective condemnation. Yet many atrocities continue unnoticed, and most of those who stand up for the minority, the poor, and the weak are still perceived as radicals.

Whiteness, gadjo-ness, or the supremacy of the dominant still resides at the heart of the world’s dogmas and practices, without being challenged much. New policies, laws, and discourses in place do not seek to dismantle the system that discriminates and devalues the descendants of enslaved people but rather conserve in many a belief in their own inferiority.

Essentially, whiteness and gadjo-ness, are still perceived by many African Americans and Roma people as a naturally superior state of being. More broadly, those that do not belong to the dominant group, be they Roma, African Americans, Dalits, migrants and many others, are still more valuable to the supremacist when they fail.

Overt structural discrimination is as harsh a reality for many minority and marginalized groups across the world. Paradoxically, most seem intrinsically equipped with the hope that they will find the humanity in the very societies that have dehumanized and traumatized them for centuries. In resistance, they have found within themselves the grace to embrace the oppressor with forgiveness, and in fear, to respond with obedience and compliance to white normativity. Yet, global solidarity among the oppressed fails to materialize.

One would also expect that in times of global communication and social media, social movements and social justice intellectuals across continents would be better able to harness their collective resources in the face of similar structures of domination and subordination.

Even among those who actively fight injustice, many fail to speak up when it does not affect their own group. They even fail, for instance, to claim reparations for the comparable histories of enslaved people, as social movements in the US, Romania, or the Caribbean islands remain divided by identity-defined silos.

And yet, the issue of global solidarity must find the momentum and build on it to work toward a unified movement against injustice across historical and geographical spheres.