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I have a friend who writes all of his Facebook status updates in haiku, and I have recently taken up the practice. Here’s my latest:
Congress is broken
Corporations make the rules
The people suffer
The health care debate that culminated in March’s monstrosity of a bill is the most visible reminder of who pulls the strings in our legislative process. Obama sold out to Big Pharma before the process even started, and then ended up with a bill that’s a blatant giveaway to Big Insurance – but that’s been well-documented.
What hasn’t received as much attention is how the failed climate change legislation also pandered to corporate interests every step of the way. Ryan Lizza has just published a detailed account of the debacle in The New Yorker in which he describes how the co-sponsors of the Senate bill (John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman) willingly made concessions to a litany of industry lobbyists – even letting them write parts of the legislation themselves. Lizza’s report is sickening at times: . . .
“In 2009, (Graham) raised nothing from the electric-utility PAC’s…In the first quarter of 2010 (when the legislation was being crafted), the utilities sent him $49,000.”
“The theory about how to win the Republicans’ support was to go straight to their industry backers. If the oil companies and the nuclear industry and the utilities could be persuaded to support the legislation, then they would lobby Republicans.”
“On January 20, the three senators sat down in Kerry’s office with Tom Donahoe, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, perhaps the most influential interest group in Washington. Donohue, who has headed the Chamber since 1997, had in that period helped kill several attempts to pass climate-change legislation.”
“(T. Boone Pickens) had just one request: include in the climate legislation parts of a bill that Pickens had written, called the Natural Gas Act, a series of tax incentives to encourage the use of natural-gas vehicles and the installation of natural-gas fueling stations. In exchange, Pickens would publicly endorse the bill.”
“Kerry wanted the oil companies, which had already spent millions attacking Waxman-Markey (the House climate bill), to support his bill. So the senators proposed a deal: the oil companies would get the policy they desired if they agreed to a ceasefire.”
And it wasn’t just the corporate pandering that watered-down and ultimately torpedoed the chances of an effective climate bill. The KGL team also cowed to the smear tactics of Fox News and the bait-and-switch routines of Republicans like Olympia Snowe, not to mention a nasty double-cross and an overall lack of support from the Obama administration. Graham finally quit the effort in frustration, which effectively killed the bill.
Tragically, the only time any people outside the Beltway or the MSM figured in the debate was when Graham returned to South Carolina and faced an angry town hall gathering of right-wing constituents The voices of the people from the left and the middle were completely silenced.
The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill was likely the last hope for major climate-change legislation for a number of years. With Obama on the defensive and unwilling to spend political capital on the issue, and with Congress certainly getting more Republican in November, a great window of opportunity has been missed.
Nonetheless, there are still a number of ways for us to keep working on the problem of climate change. The solutions will have to come from “we the people”, not from elected officials and lobbyists, at least for the time being.
In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to write a series on where we stand in the fight against climate change, how corporate interests continue to spread their dollars and their misinformation to block change, and how ordinary citizens can get involved and do the work our elected officials are unwilling and unable to do.
We’ll start next time by looking at the upcoming elections and how climate change is ridiculously absent from the debate.
[Photo: Feggy Art via Flickr]
8 Comments
As bad as it is, we can’t give up. It appeared that even Michelle Bachmann was going to be re-elected. However, as of today she has agreed to three debates which should be more than enough to do her in.
You would think the oil industry has done enough to do it in and of course they have but it takes most people time to understand. We just have to keep shedding light on things.
Excellent, Jim! We are all extremely upset about Health Care Legislation and other issues. Just came in from a short trip and listened to Rush to see what his topic of the day was. It was the Health Care bill and tax increases on the rich. Look out for all the tweety speeches on every channel to parrot that.
In the meantime, we do still have to work and try to be heard over the pundits that take cue from Rush.
“Nonetheless, there are still a number of ways for us to keep working on the problem of climate change. The solutions will have to come from “we the people”, not from elected officials and lobbyists, at least for the time being.”
You said it! We the People are going to have to do it and we are going to have to push the issues because Congress is only interested in chasing those dollars and not real leadership or legislation. They proved that plenty the past two years while all eyes were on them to do what is right with Healthcare. Rush and repugs are blaming away as if they had nothing to do with it.
The 60 votes to pass legislation is a mockery. I’m also wondering where the Veep is and why he can’t slide in after hours like Cheney did to steamroll all things republican.
We have done a very bad job of selling the issue.
While corporations will stand to gain from inaction, the very ordinary folk will stand to lose from our proposals. We can say that the green revolution will be more economical, but most do not see it that way. Heavier regulation and stricter standards will make the purchase of a car and the fuel to run it more expensive – the end may be good, but the means are doing us in.
Everything that we buy and use requires energy and the common perception is that all energy costs will go up. Businesses that provide virtually every product that we use will increase their prices. Who pays? It is the least progressive “tax” system that we could design.
We as a movement need to have a proposal that is more in tune with the way we live and is not so harsh on the least affluent among us.
Greybeard – You make a good point. We need to make sure “greening” isn’t done on the backs of the poor and working class – which is why I am a big proponent of measures that individuals citizens can choose to take. For example, it’s a lot easier to sell the idea of people voluntarily buying more fuel-efficient cars than, say, passing a hike in gas taxes. Stay tuned. There’s a lot of material to mine in this topic.
I’ve read that buying a new, more fuel-efficient car actually adds more to one’s footprint than keeping an older car.
We have two much older cars in our household, one of which has not needed an emissions inspection for a number of years, since I drive it less thatn 3,000 miles a year. Mostly, I use public transit.
The other car rides more miles, but it gets the emission inspection each year.
Good work, Jim. Thank you for bringing this to the fore.
Back on May 14, I reacted to the Bill in my Seminal Diary:
Kerry is My Senator. I was pleading with him:
“Don’ Taze me, bro!”
He looked the other way, and acted like he couldn’t hear me: Massachusetts is Embarrassed, Humiliated by Senator Kerry’s Disgraceful Climate Fraud Bill
Karen – I’ve heard that, too – which makes me and my ’93 Accord feel good. What I was referring to was people who are going to buy a new car anyway. Better to get a Prius than a Tahoe.
Evidently Lizza has access to the tapes that record every congressional office conversation and even the ones used to preserve the repartee at meals in plush D.C. restaurants. Hopefully in the future we’ll be able to listen to these tapes and come to our own conclusions. Is the microphone in Kerry’s office hidden in the big model of the Swift boat?