Standing Fast at Standing Rock

On January of this year Ammon Bundy and a small gang of like minded people occupied The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon. They demanded, among other  things, that the Federal Government cede control of public lands to local authorities. About 40 days later they were arrested. The Feds charged them with criminal conspiracy.  A week or two ago a jury found them innocent.

By coincidence, Law Enforcement officials in riot gear chose the same day that the men in Oregon were acquitted, to fire bean bag rounds and mace at protesters in Morton County, ND. The protesters, mostly Native Americans, are protesting the construction of a pipeline which, they say, threatens their water supply on the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and interferes with sacred burial grounds.  150 protesters were arrested.

Observers in North Dakota noted that the  seriously armed occupiers in Oregon were left unmolested by authorities and were arrested only upon leaving Malheur to attend a meeting. The mostly Native American protesters, unarmed and non-violent, in North Dakota bore the brunt of violent attacks by police and massive arrests. The difference in treatment of armed white Oregonians and unarmed, non-violent Native Americans in North Dakota has attracted a good deal of comment.

But the Oregon and North Dakota protests differ in other ways that are important to notice. The occupiers of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge were, to be frank, a small group of crackpots trying to protest Federal control of public lands. Except for one person in this group, no one was a rancher, or lived off the land. They were city folk in cowboy boots and Stetsons demanding local control of Federal lands.

The issue in North Dakota is very different. It concerns the construction of an oil pipeline to move oil produced by fracking to a terminal in Illinois. As planned the pipeline will will cross 209 rivers, creeks and tributaries. It will destroy more than one Native American burial ground.

In the background looms the entire issue of our national energy policy. Oil companies continue to drill wells and build pipelines as if they had not heard of the environmental crisis. Government co-operates instead of redoubling its efforts to reduce the use of petroleum. The protesters at Standing Rock are not merely standing up for Native American rights to their land and their water supply. They are standing up for all of us and for future generations, my children and yours, and the children they will bring into the world. Will future generations be heirs to a livable environment or will they be tormented by wild storms, excessive heat and drought, by farmland turned into deserts? 

The answer to that question depends directly on what this generation does about global warming. If the energy companies have their way, the outlook for the future is gloomy. If the Standing Rock protesters get their way, we may have a chance to survive.
But as the attack by Law Enforcement and the arrest of protesters suggests, the government is solidly on the side of the energy companies. With Republicans controlling the White House and Congress the outlook is gloomy indeed.

There is, then, another pressing issue at play: saving our democracy from utter corruption by the monied interests, large corporations, financial firms and the politicians who call their corruption “realism.” In the face of urgent need to have the government adopt stringent policies to reduce fossil fuel use, the energy companies can bribe the government to foster expanded oil exploration. Our government is no longer for sale; it has already been sold.
As we have seen in the electoral campaign: politicians have little to say, but money talks very loudly. It talks so loudly that we cannot hear the message from Standing Rock: energy use must be dialed down TODAY. Extraction of petroleum must be reduced. No more pipelines, no more fracking, if we want future generations to have an inhabitable environment.

The "Free Market" – once again.

Congress seems poised to turn its back on the "No Child Left Behind" educational nightmare. But many of the supporters of this shift of direction in educational policy are not particularly interested in providing a good education for our children. They are interested in states rights. They distrust the federal government. They are worshipers in the church of the Free Market.

The belief in the blessings of the free market are indeed a religion-- facts have nothing to do with it. It is all a matter of faith.

But we live in the real world where facts are available; we should certainly not ignore them. Indifference to actual events regularly leads to disaster. If a truck is bearing down on you, you'd better run. If your house is on fire, you'd better leave. If your bank account is empty, you'd better not write checks.

Hence it is important, from time to time, to look at the reality of the free market. A couple of examples of the gross malfunction of the free market have come to my attention and I want to share them.

Both of them have to do with the privatization of law enforcement. It is a well-known fact that many prisons in the United States are run by private companies. The two largest ones are Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO. It is also well-known that "private prison companies have indirectly supported policies that put more Americans and immigrants behind bars – such as California's three strikes rule and Arizona has highly controversial anti-illegal immigration law." (Washington Post April 28, 2015)

It is less well known that private prison corporations house almost half of the immigrants arrested as undocumented. Some immigrants who have been held in these private detention facilities have recently sued GEO, the company that owned a facility outside Denver, for being made to do janitorial work in the facility for one dollar a day. The company makes a huge profit by forcing inmates to do their own maintenance and paying them a pittance.

People in detention have not had a trial. Some of them are being detained without justification. One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit agaainst GEO was, in fact, a legal resident of the United States. He suddenly found himself being practically enslaved, having to work for next to no pay cleaning toilets and washing floors. That clearly violates the most basic standards of how residents of the United States should be treated. Even if it turns out that the persons detained do not have the requisite documents, they still should not be subject to forced unpaid labor before they have had a trial and have been sentenced.

Our cash strapped cities could significantly improve their bottom line, if police would go around arresting citizens who, while detained, were forced to work for nothing, for instance cleaning streets, hauling garbage, and doing other undesirable work for practically no pay. There would be a major uproar if we did this to citizens. The fact that this is being done to people, accused of being illegal immigrants, does not make it any less outrageous.

The private companies, the "free market", in this case clearly violate basic human rights. That's hardly a blessing.

Another example of the failure of privatization: some municipalities in Alabama and elsewhere have farmed out their collection of traffic fines to a private collection company, Judicial Corrections Services. This company collects payments on traffic fines and every time they get a payment they collect an additional $40 fee from the person paying.

The victims of this scam had been in court and the judge imposed a fine on them. But the $40 fee is charged on top of the fine imposed by the court. It has no legal justiification.

This particular arrangement disproportionately burdens poor people who are unable to pay large fines at one time and therefore have to pay their fines in installments. JCS adds their $40 fee to every installment paid.

The government establishes certain rules, such as traffic and parking rules, and attaches a schedule of punishments for violators. It is essential that government be impartial, that no private party profit from government actions. Where that impartiality is violated and government action brings profit to private individuals, we speak of corruption. Where ever private parties enrich themselves by using the power of government they are corrupting those powers.

For-profit companies collecting fees for fulfilling government functions are one more example of clear corruption. It is no different from the policeman who accepts a bribe for not writing a ticket, or the government bureaucrat who needs to get paid under the table in order to process a form.

The blessing of the free market, in this instance, is in fact the corruption of our government. Justice falls victim to private enrichment.

Congress for Sale?

Until a few days ago, campaign finance law limited how much money altogether any campaign donor could contribute to political candidates in any given year. Yesterday the majority of the US Supreme Court declared that such a limitation "intrude[s] without justification on a citizen's ability to exercise the most fundamental First Amendment activities," namely expressing one's opinion about a political candidate.

The Court's opinion recognized that there is “only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. Moreover the only type of corruption Congress may target is quid pro quo corruption. Spen- ding large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in the effort to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption.”

This passage is a direct quotation from the Supreme Court decision issued on April 2, 2014. Let's look at it.

1. Campaign contributions can either be exercises of free speech—the donors state their political preferences (and put their money where their mouths are)-- or be Quid pro quo corruption when the campaign funds are given in exchange for the politician's vote in a specific case.

2. Quid pro quo corruption is further identified as wielding“ control over the exercise of the officeholder's functions.” One very important function of officeholders, elected representatives in federal, state, or local legislative bodies is to pass legislation. If a representative changes his or her votes to meet the desires of a large contributor to electoral campaigns, we have a case of quid pro quo corruption.

That's fair enough.

But the Court adds that

3. A campaign donor who gives generously to a candidate's campaign but does not ask for specific votes to meet the donor's political agendas is not engaging in corruption. The campaign donations should be counted as a case of speech protected by the Fist Amendment.

But how do we distinguish between a bribe I give to an elected representative and a campaign contribution? That is surely the key question here. We try to limit monetary contributions to political campaigns because we think that the large donors buy influence over the votes a representative will cast. Citizens widely believe that large campaign donations are, in fact, not expressions of political opinion but are plain and simple bribes.

The Court will have none of that. Unless the donor is buying the representative's vote outright, there is nothing to worry about.

But how do we know that?

Most obviously, rarely, if ever, are there explicit deals made, committed to writing-- unmistakable records of unambiguous corruption. It is, in most cases, very difficult to tell whether the donor is buying votes or just uttering political opinions. The court seems to believe that unless there is an unambiguous record of the representative promising to vote certain measures up and down in accord with the donor's demands, campaign donations are just expressions of political opinions.

But consider this. You are an elected representative. Campaigns are every year more expensive. You spend an inordinate amount of time fund raising. If it were not for a few individuals who contribute as lavishly to your campaigns as the law allows, you would not be able to get reelected. So if your big donor calls to have lunch, you will find the time. Just a friendly lunch; you talk family, you gossip a bit, and, yes, your donor lays out the case for some legislation he cares a lot about. Will you have time to listen to a lobbyist in the donor's employ who makes a very good case for this legislation? Yes, of course.

You vote as your donor had hoped you would. He may give you an investment tip or two. [Recent news stories had it that more than half the members of Congress are millionaires. How did they earn that much money?]

What happened to the other side in this issue? Did you have a chance to listen to people who oppose your donor's position? Too bad, that you were too busy but of course the demands on a politicians time are really crazy.

In the view of the majority of Supreme Court justices this is not corruption. It is constitutionally protected political speech.

Is that naïve . . . or corrupt?

Here is some good old-fashioned dirt, republished from Common Dreams.

Published on Friday, October 11, 2013 by ProPublica

NY Fed Fired Examiner Who Took on Goldman

by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica

In the spring of 2012, a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that Goldman Sachs had a problem.

 

(Photo: americans4financialreform/cc/flickr) Under a Fed mandate, the investment banking behemoth was expected to have a company-wide policy to address conflicts of interest in how its phalanxes of dealmakers handled clients. Although Goldman had a patchwork of policies, the examiner concluded that they fell short of the Fed's requirements.

That finding by the examiner, Carmen Segarra, potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank's own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices.

Before she could formalize her findings, Segarra said, the senior New York Fed official who oversees Goldman pressured her to change them. When she refused, Segarra said she was called to a meeting where her bosses told her they no longer trusted her judgment. Her phone was confiscated, and security officers marched her out of the Fed's fortress-like building in lower Manhattan, just 7 months after being hired.

"They wanted me to falsify my findings," Segarra said in a recent interview, "and when I wouldn't, they fired me."

Today, Segarra filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the New York Fed in federal court in Manhattan seeking reinstatement and damages. The case provides a detailed look at a key aspect of the post-2008 financial reforms: The work of Fed bank examiners sent to scrutinize the nation's "Too Big to Fail" institutions.

In hours of interviews with ProPublica, the 41-year-old lawyer gave a detailed account of the events that preceded her dismissal and provided numerous documents, meeting minutes and contemporaneous notes that support her claims. Rarely do outsiders get such a candid view of the Fed's internal operations.

Segarra is an expert in legal and regulatory compliance whose previous work included jobs at Citigroup and the French bank Société Générale. She was part of a wave of new examiners hired by the New York Fed to monitor systemically important banks after passage in July 2010 of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, which gave the Fed new oversight responsibilities.

Goldman is known for having close ties with the New York Fed, its primary regulator. The current president of the New York Fed, William Dudley, is a former Goldman partner. One of his New York Fed predecessors, E. Gerald Corrigan, is currently a top executive at Goldman. At the time of Segarra's firing, Stephen Friedman, a former chairman of the New York Fed, was head of the risk committee for Goldman's board of directors.

In an email, spokesman Jack Gutt said the New York Fed could not respond to detailed questions out of privacy considerations and because supervisory matters  are confidential. Gutt said the Fed provides "multiple venues and layers of recourse for employees to freely express concerns about the institutions it supervises."
"Such concerns are treated seriously and investigated appropriately with a high degree of independence," he said. "Personnel decisions at the New York Fed are based exclusively on individual job performance and are subject to thorough review. We categorically reject any suggestions to the contrary."

Dudley would not have been involved in the firing, although he might have been informed after the fact, according to a Fed spokesman.

Goldman also declined to respond to detailed questions about Segarra. A spokesman said the bank cannot discuss confidential supervisory matters. He said Goldman "has a comprehensive approach to addressing conflicts through firm-wide and divisional policies and infrastructure" and pointed to a bank document that says Goldman took recent steps to improve management of conflicts.

Complacency

I recently completed a series of conversations about democracy with a group of retired people. The average age was between 70 and 75. In their working life, these men and women had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers or business people.

We talked about different versions of democracy and about some of the shortcomings of actual democracies, including our own.

In a democracy all citizens are equal; every person has one vote. Everybody's ideas and needs are as weighty as those of any other citizen. But, the members of the group asked, is this democratic equality realizable in a society as unequal as ours?

That thought led to the main complaint: the role of money in politics. Citizens elect representatives to represent their desires and interests. But once elected, the representatives cater to the people with money, often living in different electoral districts, not to the people who elected them.

There are clearly many reasons for that: electoral campaigns tend to begin on the day after the previous elections. Campaigns are becoming more and more expensive. Rich people can flood campaigns with money thereby buying access to the Congressperson, if not the Congressperson him or herself. The others are left out in the cold, unheard, unheeded.

These were some of the topics touched upon in our conversations.

The last meeting was to be dedicated to a summary. Everyone was to bring in a problem and a suggestion for fixing it.

That conversation was complex and interesting. But as we came to the end of it, various people kept saying that, all in all, with all the difficulties we had touched upon, “the democratic system works.”

There was considerable agreement to that. After a series of conversations examining in some detail how the democratic system does not work, because workplaces are, on the whole, dictatorial and authoritarian, because the democratic system we have reflects the inequalities of our economy, and citizens are not equal participants in politics, everyone settled in with a happy sigh and agreed that, nevertheless, the system works..

I was struck by this complacency that made people say that money plays an excessive role in politics, that our government is, often not a government of the people, but is for sale to highest bidders but that nonetheless “the system works.”

That struck me as a gross contradiction. These were intelligent people. How can they say that the system works while they complain that they are not represented, that money again and again carries the day in Washington?

There are a number of explanations for this complacency: If we seriously believe that our democracy is in danger, we need to act. Being complacent is a lot less work.

Add to that, that while we tend to brag about our freedom and our democracy we also tend to believe, indoctrinated by periodic witch hunts like the McCarthyism of the 1950s, that it is unpatriotic to be critical of how our system works. It is true that we can be openly critical, much of the time, without being persecuted by the police. But our fellow citizens are not as tolerant.

The truth of course, is the opposite. Complacency betrays our institutions and our ideals.

Our democracy is in great danger. Not the least threat comes from the complacent “nevertheless the system is working.”

Occupy Wall Street and 70 other cities

The slogan of all the 70 occupations in the US, “We are the 99%,” has received high praise because it captures the pervasive sense of how unjust our present economic system is. We have known about inequality for a long time. Now we have a vocal and passionate protest.

But the slogan also misrepresents this movement because its complaints are much more complex.

Wherever there is an encampment, there are General Assemblies where those present discuss what needs discussing at the moment. The assemblies I witnessed were exemplary in the respect with which everyone treated everyone else, for the painstaking effort to ensure that everyone was heard. Groups make a major effort to establish far-going equality. They want to function without leaders.

This is not some sort of youthful anarchism from people who have dipped into Bakunin or Kropotkin or have read some pages from Emma Goldman. The deliberative practices are based on a sophisticated explanation of the raging inequality which the occupiers deplore.

This inequality, they imply, is the result of our existing political system. Ordinary citizens do not participate in policy discussions. They pick representatives who then disappear in Washington, DC where they make laws that favor the rich. Our representatives are corrupted by large campaign donations from those with money. The present economic disparities are the result of a failed version of democracy.

It is simply not true that the occupy movements do not have any proposals. They have a very concrete proposal, to reconstruct democracy so that everyone is heard, everyone can participate, everyone gets a respectful hearing.

Now many people will say that such a project is not practical and the Occupy folks should instead work to reelect Obama. The only way to make change is though the electoral system.

But the Occupiers remind us, that electoral democracy has landed us in the mess we are in. It is our electoral democracy itself that needs changing.

Now, no one knows how to do that. But the Occupiers are trying. No one else is trying, certainly not all the liberal pundits like Bill Clinton or ex-radicals like Mark Rudd, who keep saying, in effect, our form of democracy is the only possible form of democracy. Everything else is worse. How do they know that?

It is to their great credit that the Occupiers do not believe that. They do not believe that a nominally democratic system that effectively disenfranchises most citizens and yields political power to global corporations, who do not pay taxes but massively foul the environment, is the best, let alone the only kind of democracy available.

They are working to discover better versions of democracy. They challenge us to do the same. Our leaders will not do that since they are in the pay of the corporations that like our democracy—more accurately “their democracy”--as it is.

So we will have to do that work of building a new democracy ourselves.

Why we are unable to prevent ecological disaster.

Green is clearly in. Even the large oil companies are presenting themselves to the public as purveyors of green energy.

But it is too soon to celebrate the end of global warming.

Here is a small story that should make us understand why the US will not tackle environmental problems in the foreseeable future.

One of the highly respected engineering colleges in the Northeast has chosen the CEO of Exxon Mobil as this year's graduation speaker.

Exxon Mobil is the world's largest publicly traded oil company. It is among the companies that has suddenly become bright green. It is telling the public that it is investing in technology “to develop energy from alternative sources.”

But it is not telling the public about its continuing support of organizations that deny global warming. In 2005 they gave them $3.5 million. This support has since been reduced. But in spite of their public promises to end all donations to global warming deniers, they still continue their financial contributions to organizations that seriously inhibit efforts to face up to the climate crisis. (http://www.reuters.com/ article/2007/05/18/environment-exxon-contributions-dc-idUSN1843960820070518)

The engineering college that invited Exxon Mobil's CEO prides itself on its progressive stance on matters of climate change and alternative energy. But they refuse to reconsider their invitation in the face of vocal protests by students and faculty.

The reason? Exxon Mobil employs a lot of the college's graduates and – more importantly – has given more than $1.3 billion to the engineering school over the last so many years.

You may think that this is one more tempest in a teapot but it actually shows very clearly why we have not made any headway to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels – with the exception of planning to build nuclear power plants.

The story clearly shows the political dynamics underlying our unwillingness to take global warming as seriously as we should. The large power companies are making obscene profits. Exxon Mobil last year took in greater profits than ever before. They will fight tooth and nail to keep the profits rolling in, to keep drilling – even in deep water such as the Gulf of Mexico. They will continue to pollute the atmosphere until the large cities on the East Coast will be flooded and other major disasters hit us.

Their gigantic profits allow them to spread their money around and finance global warming deniers and to finance elected representatives that will not lift a finger to save us from the impending troubles. They spread their money around to engineering schools and the schools will show their gratitude by giving standing and prestige to the leaders of these companies.

That makes the fight for a sensible energy policy extremely difficult.

For this reason this is not just a tempest in a teapot. It is one of the places where resistance is essential. The defenders of a sensible energy policy must use every opportunity to unmask the duplicity and gross selfishness of the large energy companies and the politicians, foundations, yes and college presidents they have bought.

Lobbying -- its a crime.

Lobbying – it's a crime.

A few days ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accompanied by the Secretary of Defense, Gates, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Napolitano, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and similarly highly placed administration officials swooped down into Mexico City to talk about the war against the Mexican drug cartel. In recent times, these drug cartels have been said to have killed 18,000 people. But no high-placed US officials took those deaths sufficiently seriously for a hurriedly arranged, high level delegation to visit the Mexican capital. What was different this time was that the drug dealers killed three people connected with the US Consulate in Ciudad Juarez.

A report in the Dallas newspaper stated: “One of the country's [i.e. Mexico's] foremost experts on drug violence and judicial reform said his studies show that cartels now have near total control over 980 communities [ in Mexico], comparing those 'pockets' of lawlessness to 'failed states like Somalia. Inside pockets of these territories, local police corruption and social control [by drug traffickers] make it impossible for the government to have any control in situations marred by the current violence,' said Edgardo Buscaglia of the Metropolitan Autonomous Technical Institute, or ITAM.”

Many people believe that the success of drug dealers in Mexico, as well as, of course, in the United States, depends, in part, on their support by law enforcement agencies who are on the take. Not only do the drug dealers kill many people but they corrupt the government and the judicial system. Not only the weapons but also the money of the drug cartels are genuine threats to the functioning of the Mexican and the US government.
Put that next to data collected about lobbying in Washington DC by the Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org). According to CBS news: In the run-up to passage of the new health care reform bill, “Makers of pharmaceuticals and health products spent $267 million lobbying, the most ever recorded by a single industry in a year. Business associations spent the second highest total, $183 million. Among individual groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was easily the biggest spender at $145 million. Exxon Mobil Corp. was a distant second at $27 million.”

How is this expenditure by large associations of businesses, labor unions, and universities so very different from the money spread around as bribes by the drug cartels?

You will say: the difference is obvious-- the drug cartels break the law. And that is, of course, perfectly true. But then consider this, lobbyists and their employers in industry and elsewhere, give bribes to the people who make the laws.

If Mexico's government has a tenuous hold on power, what about ours? How close have we come to government of, by, and for thosed private interest groups who can afford to hire lobbyists?

Corruption is in the Eye of the beholder--Episode II

Corruption is in the eye of the beholder—Episode II

On Monday, Pres. Obama sped quietly in and out of Kabul. As the papers reported his visit, it sounds as if he was there just long enough to give President Hamid Karzai a stern lecture about political corruption in Afghanistan. Was he a little least bit embarrassed after two presidential elections won by questionable methods by George Bush, or after having given up most of his ideas for health reform because the insurance and drug industries managed to get legislators on their sides by spending significant amounts of money?

Campaign finance reform in the United States is an old topic. Congress keeps trying and not getting anywhere. Now the State of Maine has taken the initiative. Candidates running for public office in the state of Maine can get substantial sums of public money for their campaign if they can collect 3250 contributions, none of them larger than five dollars. Candidate who can find that many persons of ordinary means to support them will be given state money and will not be allowed to accept contributions larger than five dollars from private individuals.

In this way, once they reached the threshold of five dollars donations, candidates don't have to worry about fund-raising anymore. More importantly, the private donations candidates receive are each no larger than five dollars. There are no fat cat political contributors, no industries that have great clout when ordinary citizens do not because they don't have large sums of money to give to candidates.

The Maine plan is actually in operation. It models one way in which we could substantially reduce the influence of money interests on our political system.

We can see how deeply corruption is ingrained in our political process by the fact that only one state has managed to eliminate large contributions from the electoral process. While the state of Maine has shown that elections do not need to give exceptional power to the rich, the failure of other states and the federal government to adopt anything like the Maine plan shows that we have no business going around the world criticizing corruption of other governments.

The Supreme Court and Corporate Free Speech

The Supreme Court and Corporate Free Speech

I have yet to meet anyone who does not deplore the role money plays in elections. Everyone knows that having more money for advertisements, signs, hiring high-priced consultants and a large staff will provide an edge to a candidate. Most people deplore that and therefore support legislation to curb private contributions to electoral campaigns. Limiting corporate campaign contributions seemed appropriate because corporations have a lot more money than even the richest private individuals. The Supreme Court decision abolishing previous limits on corporate campaign contributions raises the level of money that will be spent in elections. It will further raise the cost of elections and thus make it even more impossible to run for public office unless you are wealthy and/or very well connected to people who are.

In addition, many observers fear that business corporations now can use their large financial resources to affect public policy even more than they have in the past. Pro business policies will dominate even more than they have so far.

But, of course, not all the money in elections comes from business. According to the numbers used by conservatives, labor unions have outspent corporations in some recent elections. The Supreme Court decision does not exclusively empower big business. It also gives some support to Big labor. It gives pretty free rein to any group with lots of money.

In a contentious situation, like this one, opposing sides have different facts and it is difficult to know which are most reliable. But the fact that pro-business conservatives are jubilant about this decision, while liberals uniformly execrate it, suggests that most people agree that this decision will enhance the political influence of pro-business groups more than that of any other organization.
This Supreme Court ruling is not about whether corporations are human beings--everyone knows that they are not--or about the free speech rights of corporations. It is not even about the relative power of Democrats or Republicans--both parties are over their ears in private interest money. It is about whether groups that have more money, will, for any political issue, be able impose their perspective to the full extent of their bulging moneybags.

The ultimate victim of the Supreme Court ruling is the traditional conception of democracy. There are different forms of democracy: there is democracy that is a struggle between interest groups. Everyone is out for him or herself; the political process is a struggle for private advantage. The goal is to get your hands into the government piggy bank. Those citizens who do not have the money to be significant players in the political process will remain unrepresented. Their share of government support and resources remains small. To that large class belong children, the working poor, small farmers, small business people, the vast majority of American workers who are not members of any labor union. The spoils go to the moneyed interests and, prominently among them, to global businesses. The banks “too large to fail” receive billions of dollars in bailout money. Homeowners unable to pay their mortgages are still waiting for help from Washington.

But interest group democracy was not what the Founders had in mind. I mentioned in a earlier blog James Madison's chapter in The Federalist where he condemns “factions”--his name for interest group politics. Legislators should try as far as they could make laws to benefit all, not just themselves and people like themselves.

We abandoned this public interest democracy, that is supposed to serve all citizens, a long time ago. The Supreme Court decision will serve to entrench interest group democracy more deeply in our political life. The motto of the people who support the action of the Supreme Court is “more for us.” From now on we will have government by moneyed interests, of moneyed interests, and for moneyed interests.

Corruption abroad and at home

Corruption abroad and at home.
Corruption is a central topic in discussions of Afghanistan. From the American side the matter looks very simple: the Afghanis are corrupt; we are not. There is some support for that view. In the index of 180 countries compiled by Transparency International, Afghanistan is second from the bottom. The only country more corrupt is Sudan. The United States ranks 19 from the top just above Barbados and Qatar.
But recent reports from Afghanistan show that corruption in that country is much more complex.
The American and NATO troops in Afghanistan need to be supplied with everything from armored vehicles, to weapons, to toilet paper. These supplies come into the country in large convoys of trucks that often move through hostile territory where the convoys are liable to come under attack. To meet that problem a number of Afghani security companies have come into existence to protect these convoys. Some of the most important of these security companies are owned and run by, for instance,the son of the defense minister, or by cousins of the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. You need to be well-connected in order to get ahead in Afghanistan. We regard that as a form of corruption.
In the United States, in the meantime, a small uproar concerns the taxes to be paid by private equity companies and hedge funds. Private equity companies buy up existing enterprises. Sometimes they manage to improve the enterprise's efficiency and thus to enhance the viability of the firm. In many other cases, the companies bought up by private equity firms are overloaded with debt and end up going out of business while the private equity firm walks away with profits in the millions of dollars. ( This is how Mitt Romney got to be rich.) How should those profits be taxed? The current tax rate on these profits is 15%. Private equity firms are lobbying furiously against proposals to raise that tax rate. They may well succeed in this because they too are well connected. Being well-connected in Afghanistan means that you have family relations to the powerful; being well-connected in the United States means that you give money to the right legislators and bureaucrats. Getting advantages from family connections is corrupt; getting advantages from handing out campaign funds... is what?
Is it really true that the Afghanis are corrupt and we are not?
But there is more. Let us go back to the Afghani security companies that protect supply convoys for US and NATO troops. They are not well armed. They protect their convoys by bribing the Taliban not to attack. The money for these bribes comes from the US government. It is our government that pays its enemies – the Taliban – not to attack us. If Afghanistan is corrupt to the point of buying off their enemies, our government is involved in this corruption because it hires the security companies and supplies the pay-off money.
There are several lessons to be drawn from the stories. The first goes back to the New Testament: if you see a mote in the eye of the other, do not overlook the beam in your own.It is easy for a nation to be self-righteous; it is better to be as critical of oneself as one is of others. The second lesson is this: as long as we remain involved in Afghanistan we will be involved in maintaining its corrupt practices. If we want a clean government in Afghanistan, the first thing we need to do is to leave the country. If we want to have a clean government at home, the same it true: we need to leave Afghanistan.

Rampant Dishonesty

Corruption is in the news A Massachusetts state senator recently was forced to resign after being accused of publicly groping several women. State Representative Diane Wilkerson had to resign after she was photographed accepting money for procuring a liquor license. The Speaker of the House is under heavy suspicion of corrupt practices. One of our local state representatives almost lost his recent reelection to a last-minute challenger because of personal conduct and financial transactions that appeared corrupt to many voters.

These are merely some examples of political corruption in Massachusetts and in Worcester. I do not have space to document pervasive corruption across the nation.

We have become accustomed to widespread public dishonesty but now a national survey shows that significant numbers of young people steal and lie. Dishonesty is no longer limited to business transactions or to politics. "In the past year, 30% of US high school students have stolen from a store and 64% had cheated on a test according to a new, large-scale survey..." Have you talked to your son or daughter about dishonesty lately?

Widespread dishonesty among young people is no doubt encouraged by the blatant corruption of our elected officials and the pervasive dishonesty in business that has brought our economy to the brink of collapse. If our political leaders as well as the business people who are "successful" -- who drive BMW’s up to their trophy homes -- get ahead by cutting corners, our young people will, of course, do the same.

Our nation does not only face the possibility of economic collapse; much more seriously, we are losing our moral standards. We are becoming a nation of liars, of thieves and petty chiselers.

What has happened to us?

Morality is anchored in personal relations. Lying to or stealing from persons you know seriously affects relationships. If your neighbors no longer trust you, your life loses security and comfort. If the people in your neighborhood think of you as untrustworthy, your place in the community changes for the worse. Dishonesty within the family creates serious problems.

But, in our world, we have fewer and fewer relationships within our immediate locality. Shoplifters do not steal from the local store whose owner may be a neighbor. They steal from an international corporation with stores not only in the US but all over the globe. The employer you lie to about being sick when you take a day off to do your Christmas shopping may have its headquarters in some foreign country. The businesses we may be tempted to steal from -- the drugstore or the insurance company – are vast international corporate giants. Your relationship to your employer is similarly impersonal. You have no personal relationship to the people you work for. You are not working for any human being but for an impersonal bureaucracy designed to put money in the pockets of its stockholders.

The government has, similarly, become large, impersonal, and distant. Local programs in Worcester are largely financed by the state of Massachusetts and the income tax it collects, as well as by the federal government and the taxes it takes from us. The city has little money of its own and little say-so over what happens here. Like businesses, the government has moved away and is no longer under our control. We may know some city politicians but they have very limited powers. Al they control is fixing roads and sidewalks.

Personal integrity has shrunk because it matters only in very limited contexts. It matters within the family, it matters with your friends. Many people in cities do not know their neighbors; many do not know their children's teachers. With a few exceptions we do not know who owns the local stores. The sales people we deal with, come and go.

Improved transportation has made a lot of difference. People move everywhere and rarely die anywhere either the place where they were born. A few years ago my neighbor died in her 80s in the house in which she was born. There are not many people like that left in America. Most of us are from “somewhere else.” Frequent moves disrupt personal connections between neighbors.

It is not enough to bemoan how footloose we have become and how impersonal life in our cities is today. Within limits, we can make efforts to know our neighbors, to engage in community improvement projects, to know who lives near us and to establish personal relations with them. Some neighborhoods managed to organize themselves to try to deal with local problems, to organize a crime watch, to build a park or playground. Most neighborhoods no longer do that. We do not know the people living close to us.

Efforts to maintain human relations in one's community are one way of maintaining our moral standards. It is easy to cheat and to deceive a global corporation because they are things; they are not human beings. But in relations to real human beings who live close to us, we find ourselves hesitating to practice deceit and dishonesty. It is more difficult to look in the face of the persons you have defrauded. Our moral obligations to our neighbors, like family members, are very powerful.

We should respond to reports of dishonesty from all quarters by redoubling our efforts to maintain human communities. For many city dwellers, their neighbors are as distant as the strangers on the bus. Go out and meet your neighbors; if there are problems you can try to tackle them together You can improve your neighborhood, get it cleaned up, make it more livable. Only a place where people know one another and work together for common goals will support a common morality.