Thomas Sullivan's Open Salon Blog

Lobbying For Change

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:10:14 -0400

The county in which I live (King County, WA) recently released it proposed budget. It’s draconian. Not surprisingly, the worst of the cuts target those with the least resources and the least political power. Particularly targeted are women in vulnerable situations and the elderly. Consider these numbers:

County funding for sexual assault services:

Down 83% (from $557,000 to $96,000)

County funding for domestic violence prevention

Down 82% (from $835,000 to $150,000)

Similar cuts are proposed for senior day health programs, food banks and meals programs, transitional housing programs, and foreclosure prevention programs. The effects of these cuts will be devastating and the level of desperation among county residents is guaranteed to rise. But customers are not the only ones certain to suffer. People providing these services will lose jobs or employment hours, further aggravating the unemployment and lack of aggregate demand that is keeping the real economy from rebounding.

No doubt, similar cuts are happening or forthcoming in counties and states all over the country. So what can be done?

An October 21 article in the New York Times reported that America's Health Insurance Plans reported spending $2.4 million on lobbying during July, August and September. As legislation for reforming Wall Street practices works its way through congress similar lobbying is certain to come from the financial industry. And therein lies an opportunity.

Congress should enact a simple law requiring that for every dollar spent on lobbying, an industry be required to donate a matching dollar toward America’s neglected and threatened emergency support sectors. The funds raised could be pooled in a fund administered by a responsible nonprofit and distributed to the neediest food banks, shelters, community clinics, etc.

According to the Governmental Ethics Commission, lobbyists spent $1,121,771.99 between January and August of 2009. The underlying reason industries pay so much to lobby is that the profits gained from regulatory changes obtained through lobbying far exceed the cost of lobbying. This is largely how Wall Street made such absurd profits this past decade (it's not because they are good at their jobs.) Everyone knows that lobbying distorts public policy away from the real needs of people and will never be sufficiently reformed. But, at least it could be harnessed and modified to actually do some good for the most needy and desperate people in the country, who have almost no one lobbying on their behalf.

Rate Hikes and Nature Hikes

Wed, 20 May 2009 21:05:28 -0400

Wahoo! The recent credit card bill will make it harder for companies to shift rates arbitrarily or use other sleight-of-hand tricks to squeeze more “earnings” out of cardholders. This is a long overdue and welcome development. But also tucked into the bill protecting consumers is a measure allowing visitors to carry loaded concealed weapons in National Parks.

What? Is that where the Wall Street crooks are hiding now?

This is how legislating is often done. A special interest group with a pack of pliable/scared representatives eying future contributions takes a “must pass” bill and inserts an entirely unrelated measure into the legislation, thereby taking it hostage. It’s like a marriage partner withholding sex until the other agrees to buy that expensive new SUV. This is how an education bill ends up containing tax breaks for hog farms whose waste ponds sicken schoolchildren.

Those of us who don’t visit parks (including, now, me) probably have more pressing things to worry about, but the people who spend their days in the parks aren’t elated by the news. The Association of National Park Rangers opposes the change and, though no one ever asks them what they think, I imagine the animals dwelling peacefully in the parks also oppose it. Consider these April 2008 comments from Michael D. Snyder, the National Park Service's Denver regional director:

“Untrained visitors with firearms will be tempted to use firearms when they feel threatened.” Such shootings “could result in injury and death to employees and visitors, not to mention wounding of animals.” “The danger of wounded animals would immediately apply to other visitors.”

source: (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a69BuzdsGj8k)

Bet you’re gonna see park employees lining up to get the 4^th of July off. It’s the same tired old fight we have wherever guns and public spaces intersect – gun owners rave about their right to bear arms, but never consider the rights of potential bullet recipients to remain free of harm, be it accidental or intentional.

But, there is a bright side to all this. When some guy mistakes your hairy chest for a bear coming down the trail, you’ll have more room on the Mastercard to pay for the Life Flight to the hospital.

Falling On Your Own Sword

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:04:50 -0400

I’ve been reading lately about what happened to Spain in the 1500s following its conquest of Latin America. The Spanish created mines and drained the area of its gold and silver, receiving a huge infusion of unearned money. One might suspect that this windfall turned Spain into an economic powerhouse.

But some funny things happened when the easy money arrived. The Spanish king proceeded to spend a huge amount of the nation’s reserves on wars against the enemies of Christianity. The nobility and upper-classes poured vast sums into new estates, palatial homes, and luxury goods imported from other countries. Many in the “lower classes”, attempting to emulate the gilded, ostentatious lifestyle of those “above them”, abandoned productive jobs and rushed into speculative pursuits. Little of the new money was invested in domestic industries and tariffs were dropped to meet consumer demands. In the end the new money flowed out of Spain, the local industries crumbled, and the nation ended up nearly bankrupt.

Sound familiar? Replace the words “gold” and “silver” with “credit” and “leverage” and you have a pretty accurate description of the USA over the last fifteen years or so. The parallel experiences of Spain and the US five hundred years later seems to suggest that you put the interests of finance and speculation over real investment and production at you own peril. It also suggests that there’s a big difference between creating wealth (as real industries do) and making money (as stock market players and bubble speculators do). You can make a ton of money and not create any wealth. Making $100,000 flipping a house or trading stocks creates the same amount of real wealth for a country -- zero.

An enticing idea has been floating around for a while but not getting much attention or traction. The idea is simple and straightforward: place a small transaction tax of one penny on every stock market trade and use the proceeds to invest in real industries that create real wealth. In this way you tap speculation (ie money making) and use it to create real, long-term wealth. At a very small cost to speculators the nation could give itself the means to launch a real program for building the industries of tomorrow that it desperately needs.

Getting that penny out of the speculators will undoubtedly be a fight. But if the tea-partyers are any indication, working people won’t be ponying up the investment money anytime soon. And they shouldn’t have to. They’ve been surrendering their pennies for long enough while they work at companies that create America’s wealth.

This Representative Did His Job

Thu, 9 Apr 2009 15:04:26 -0400

Vermont's legislature approved gay marriage this week. Depending on your point of view (cave man or modern man), this is either a step forward or a step backward. But buried below all the struggle and drama, something truly remarkable happened in Montpelier.

Representatives did their jobs in a representative democracy.

Though hailing from a conservative district, representative Robert South changed his original position and supported the bill after 228 constituents directed him to support the bill and 198 urged him to oppose it. He didn't look ahead at his own political future and cringe at the wave of conservative money that will attempt to defeat him next time. He didn't focus on how the vote would affect fundraising or his future in his party. In fact, Mr. Smith commented in the NY Times that he very well might lose his seat over the vote ("I probably sealed my fate").

He put the expressed interests of his constituents ahead of his own interests. This is exactly what is supposed to happen in representative democracy -- representatives reflecting the majority will of the people, not their own political interests.

It takes guts to do your job in a state or federal congress in this era of talk radio, Fox News, and assasination-by-blog. America lacks many of the things its people need and want because so few in Congress have the courage to stand up to corporate money (though admittedly, when we the people fall for misinformation and emotion-tapping campaign attack ads we don't help the courageous to remain in Congress -- we let ourselves be scared and abandon the people we need at our own peril).

The men and women like Robert South are true heroes -- regardless of what you think about gays and marriage, you need to recognize that the integrity of unselfish representatives is the only thing that can keep a teetering democracy from morphing into the political equivalent of a drug cartel family.

So send Mr South a note of support. Thank him for having integrity in a world of wheeling and dealing sleeze. Applaud him for doing his job. And then go out and buy a jug of maple syrup.

Get Me A Rack Of Shame!!

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:03:03 -0400

With so many complex and pressing problems to address, Congress and the Obama administration have understandably relegated lobbying reform to the back burner. And no one really expects them cut off their primary income stream. But the Unhappy Gods of Good Governance just won't let the issue die -- everyone wants political corruption to just dissolve away on its own like a mortgage company operating out of a battered trailer, but it sticks around like an infected, uninsured tooth.

Hence, a recent article in the New York Times about one of Washington DC's "star lobbyists" (someone had to fill the void left by Jack Abramoff), whose shop is under federal investigation for campaign finance violations. According to the chef at the luxurious restaurant where now-nervous senators were fed like pharohs, the "star lobbyist" would swagger into the kitchen like a hairy-chested actor in a pork barrel porno and shout:

Get me some Oysters! Get me a rack of lamb!

The chef didn't disclose wether the lobbyist ever marched into the kitchen and shouted "Get me a conscience!" But reading about a scene like this makes the truth all too clear -- when it comes to lobbying and campaign finance, congress is like the alcoholic who has switched to beer and wine.

So what can we do? We, the people, need to something to break the drug cartel-style relationship between corporate money and congress. Those AIG bonuses everyone got so understandably mad about pale in comparison to this issue. And similar episodes will keep coming back, over and over, until the campaign finance cancer is finally and fully removed.

I have one idea, which involves food (since it seems to be part of the problem, it can also be part of the solution). And I welcome ideas from others, food related or not.

Here's my idea:

Foodbanks are struggling to keep up in a climate of rising need and declining contibutions. So, we get Obama to issue an executive order (or some other king-like procedure put in place by Bush, Jr.) that in effect says "Sure, go ahead and keep doing your slimy drug deals, but from now on the only place in-person contact can occur is inside food banks. And, the membership cost for the priveledge of operating in the real world is $100,000 per firm, payable to said food banks"

The positive impacts:

Foodbank funding shortages? Gone, in the ultimate marriage of greed and need.

Improved constituent contact? Met, in a PR spin of epic proportions, with senators shaking constituent hands while lobbyists fume over plates of Reduced For Quick Sale chicken.

Healthcare reform? One TB sneeze floating across a senator's face will do more to affect change than a million op-eds ever did.

The negative impacts:

Some hair-gelled stud destined for prison marching into the kitchen and shouting "Get me more Ramen!"

Well, you can't have it all. Change takes time.