According to Philip Howard, a Washington lawyer who represents corporations and does their will, the ills being suffered by our society are due to too many laws and regulatory restraints. Howard has whined about this many places, but most recently in a Washington Post OpEd. This sounds a lot like what Republicans have been telling us for years. The American Legal Exchange Council (ALEC) has been conning Republican state legislatures into limiting the ability of the average citizen to sue a corporation which has harmed them. Republicans call this "tort reform". I call it, protecting corporations from the consequences of their own crimes.
Enraged citizens forced tobacco companies to put warning labels on their deadly products by suing corporations in court with class action suits. People dying of cancer on account of exposure to asbestos forced corporations to pay for their medical bills using class action suits. Drivers forced car makers to recall dangerously defective models by suing them in court. Now, citizens are suing coal and oil companies to stop them polluting the environment with mountaintop removal, fracking, and greenhouse gases.
These crimes have been huge and corporations would have gotten away with them but for laws that protect us. The conspiracy of energy moguls to keep spewing out greenhouse gases is the most deadly of all these crimes. Worldwide, millions of people are threatened by global warming, but the energy companies spend millions on propaganda trying to convince us that there is no problem here, and we should just move on. The problem affects the entire planet, of course, and we have nowhere to move on to.
Lawyer Howard does not attempt to hide his sympathies. He lists the plaintiff's bar as one of the culprits in What Broke Washington. The plaintiff's bar is what gives people the right to sue corporations when they lose a lung or break a leg due to some action of an irresponsible corporate executive. Without a plaintiff's bar, corporations can do as they please and let the public pay to clean up the mess later. Some people call this policy "libertarianism". I call it plutocracy, the rule of the many by the most wealthy.
Howard claims another problem is our huge deficit. Many others disagree. They say the deficit is not now nor ever has been a problem. We can pay it down slowly, when the economy is healthy, but we should never make budget cuts that affect the poor when the poor are already bearing the brunt of failed policies of the past. We should rather force the wealthiest 1% to disgorge their millions through a tax on wealth that they can well afford and that will not affect the other 99% of Americans.
Howard blames our failure to repair our aging roads and railroads on Obama and the economic stimulus act passed in 2009. The economic stimulus act budgeted a mere 3% for road repair. Somehow, Howard expects us to believe that the law itself is to blame, perhaps by magic. But it was politicians, Republicans and conservative Democrats, who cut infrastructure funds from that bill and concentrated on giving tax refunds. Tax refunds may be laudable, but they will never repair our potholes.
Lawyer Howard is trying a classic courtroom maneuver, getting his readers to ignore the real problem by pointing to smaller, inconsequential ones. Everyone knows (or should know by now) that what broke Washington is the influence of corporations and their money. Congress can't pass an energy bill, or an immigration bill, or a farm reform bill, or a tax reform bill, or an infrastructure repair bill, because conservative congressmen are too cowardly to vote against the lobbyists who fund their campaigns and send them on junkets to Abu Dhabi.
The solution to congressional deadlock is not to further weaken laws that protect the people from the powerful and irresponsible 1%. The solution is to elect congresspersons with brains and backbones who will pass laws necessary to resolve our problems. These congresspersons will necessarily represent the people and not the 1%. This is a meaningful goal, and not impossible. Lawyer Howard's suggestions would make the 1% happier and sink the rest of us deeper into the morass of plutocracy.
Howard has formed Common Good, a non-profit organization, to push these libertarian doctrines. On its home page, Common Good pretends to be a non-partisan reform coalition, with new ideas. On closer examination, these claims prove false. The Advisory Board includes some middle-of-the-road Republicans like Howard Baker and Jeb Bush. Otherwise, the Board is not a coalition at all, but a bunch of Republicans and corporate front groups like the Manhattan Institute and the Blackstone Group. The ideas Common Good espouses, as noted above, are not new and have been advocated by ALEC and the ultra-conservative American Tort Reform Association, since as early as 1986. I conclude that Common Good itself is a front group for medical corporations and legal firms that want to limit their liability while they continue to kill us.
There once was a liberal on the Common Good Advisory Board: George McGovern. He is still listed on their "about-us" page, but McGovern died in 2012. I don't blame Common Good for mentioning him, though. They want to preserve a semblance of bipartisanship that no longer exists.
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington Post. Show all posts
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Vanessa Redgrave: Slash and burn book review in Washington Post
The Washington Post has sunk to a new journalistic low by publishing Lloyd Rose's book review of Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave. These days newspapers frequently insert editorial comment into news stories. Fox News consists of nothing but editorial comment, usually from three different commentators all competing to be the most biased and insulting.
Book reviews, however, are supposed to be immune from this sort of sniping. After all, the main purpose of the review is to present the book and help the reader decide whether to read it. In Vanessa, Rose makes no pretense of reviewing the content of the book or checking it for accuracy, probably because fact-checking takes time that Rose would prefer to use attacking foreigners and socialists.
In the first line of the review, Rose calls Redgrave "maddening". Certainly this has more to do with the contents of Rose's head rather than the contents of the book. Vanessa's political views are "offensive...trivial and silly." Her politics were "clodhopping".
Rose reserves special opprobrium for Redgrave's speech on the Academy Awards broadcast in 1978. He says she called the Jewish Defense League "Zionist hoodlums", a "remark taken by many as a sweeping anti-Semitic statement." While this statement of Rose is probably true, it is also true that many others took Redgrave's criticism of JDL's bullying tactics as a courageous stand in defense of the Palestinian people. JDL had burned her in effigy while picketing her appearance outside the Academy awards theater. Such demonstrations have been known to irritate their targets.
Among those who agree with Redgrave's estimation of JDL is the Southern Poverty Law Center which describes JDL as a violent anti-Arab group, saying that
That vow was not enough for JDL founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, who wrote a book, Vanessa, I am a Zionist, attacking Redgrave. Rose attributes her remarks to "political dopiness". Redgrave gave offense to the powerful by speaking her mind directly. She called Guantanamo a concentration camp, which it is and remains to this day.
Redgrave was outspoken in her criticism of the War on Terror at a time when few dared raise their voices against the unconstitutional excesses of the Bush administration. She said the Bush administration betrayed the memory of those who fought against Nazi Germany in the name of democracy. Specifically, she said,
Book reviews, however, are supposed to be immune from this sort of sniping. After all, the main purpose of the review is to present the book and help the reader decide whether to read it. In Vanessa, Rose makes no pretense of reviewing the content of the book or checking it for accuracy, probably because fact-checking takes time that Rose would prefer to use attacking foreigners and socialists.
In the first line of the review, Rose calls Redgrave "maddening". Certainly this has more to do with the contents of Rose's head rather than the contents of the book. Vanessa's political views are "offensive...trivial and silly." Her politics were "clodhopping".
Rose reserves special opprobrium for Redgrave's speech on the Academy Awards broadcast in 1978. He says she called the Jewish Defense League "Zionist hoodlums", a "remark taken by many as a sweeping anti-Semitic statement." While this statement of Rose is probably true, it is also true that many others took Redgrave's criticism of JDL's bullying tactics as a courageous stand in defense of the Palestinian people. JDL had burned her in effigy while picketing her appearance outside the Academy awards theater. Such demonstrations have been known to irritate their targets.
Among those who agree with Redgrave's estimation of JDL is the Southern Poverty Law Center which describes JDL as a violent anti-Arab group, saying that
[JDL] has orchestrated countless terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad, and has engaged in intense harassment of foreign diplomats, Muslims, Jewish scholars and community leaders, and officials.Furthermore, Rose takes Redgrave's Academy Award comment out of context, in a tactic much abused by right-wing propagandists. Redgrave's remarks also included statements describing the movie for which she won the award as depicting two of the millions who gave their lives in the fight against fascism and racism in Nazi Germany, and a vow to continue to fight against anti-semitism and fascism.
That vow was not enough for JDL founder, Rabbi Meir Kahane, who wrote a book, Vanessa, I am a Zionist, attacking Redgrave. Rose attributes her remarks to "political dopiness". Redgrave gave offense to the powerful by speaking her mind directly. She called Guantanamo a concentration camp, which it is and remains to this day.
Redgrave was outspoken in her criticism of the War on Terror at a time when few dared raise their voices against the unconstitutional excesses of the Bush administration. She said the Bush administration betrayed the memory of those who fought against Nazi Germany in the name of democracy. Specifically, she said,
democracy meant: no torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial...[Such] techniques are not just alleged [against the governments of the U.S. and Britain], they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being 'far left'...to uphold the rule of law.I did not read the book, only the review. I do not know how much of the anti-democratic rhetoric in the review was actually present in the book. But Rose makes it clear, by his choice of material and parenthetical remarks, that he considers Redgrave a dope and a dupe. It is clear from her actual words that she is a remarkably brave, thoughtful, and outspoken person. To imply otherwise is simply biased journalism.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Robert J. Samuelson reminds us of his ignorance: Washington Post lets him do it
In an article that appeared in the Washington Post opinion section, Robert J. Samuelson, who is already known for denying a link between climate-change deniers and the oil industry, again puts on the blinders that only come from an unwillingness to seek solutions. Samuelson tells us that climate-change is inevitable and that we have no solution.
Samuelson belongs to a class of pundit known as denier-deniers. They don't deny the existence of global warming; they deny that we can do anything about it. This means they deny that they are climate change deniers, but they embrace all the conclusions that deniers draw while claiming not to agree with them.
The original denier-denier was G.W. Bush. As President, Bush announced that he agreed with scientists that global warming existed but refused to adopt the Kyoto Protocols on CO2 emissions reductions because, among other things, the protocols were not fair to the US. Bush overlooked the greater progress made by the Europeans toward energy conservation. The Europeans had been moved to action by the oil embargo of 1979; the Americans had ignored it.
Bush and his supporters also complained about the lack of standards that applied to developing nations like India and China. The denier-deniers claimed that they were holding out for better and fairer standards. In the event, no other standards were proposed or approved by the Americans.
In his article, where his position is almost identical to Bush's in 2001, 13 years earlier, Samuelson made the claim that the technology does not exist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He made the same claim in a Newsweek article in 2007. This claim is demonstrably false. The average passenger car in 2012 was 27% more efficient (mpg) than that produced in 2001. Much greater efficiencies are already possible but not yet implemented. For example, people could be coaxed out of their SUVs (2012 avg. mpg. 23.5) into regular passenger vehicles with average mpg of 35.6, resulting in an efficiency improvement of approximately 50%.
A wind turbine in 2012 produced 15 times as much electricity as one produced in 1980; at times, wind energy accounts for 25% of the Texas energy grid. Solar electricity installation costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, but remain nearly twice as high as in Germany, showing that large cost reductions are possible with current technology.
I have two issues with the Washington Post publishing Samuelson's column on its opinion page. First, Samuelson claims that technology does not yet exist to solve global warming problems. But such technology does exist; if current technology does not solve the entire global warming problem, it can solve much of it. Since this is a fact, Samuelson's opinion is demonstrably false and the Post should explain this falsehood to its readers. Instead, the Post's editors permit Samuelson to make up his own facts.
Second, the Washington Post bills itself as a newspaper. As such, its articles, in order to be newsworthy, must contain new and important information. Samuelson's opinions have not changed since 2007. They are not new. The Post does not usually publish editorials from 7 years ago as if they contained new information. The Post permits Samuelson to publish this nonsense out of shear laziness.
There is a great deal to be said about improving technology to combat global warming. Samuelson has not said it, and the Post has not published it, at least not in this article.
Samuelson belongs to a class of pundit known as denier-deniers. They don't deny the existence of global warming; they deny that we can do anything about it. This means they deny that they are climate change deniers, but they embrace all the conclusions that deniers draw while claiming not to agree with them.
The original denier-denier was G.W. Bush. As President, Bush announced that he agreed with scientists that global warming existed but refused to adopt the Kyoto Protocols on CO2 emissions reductions because, among other things, the protocols were not fair to the US. Bush overlooked the greater progress made by the Europeans toward energy conservation. The Europeans had been moved to action by the oil embargo of 1979; the Americans had ignored it.
Bush and his supporters also complained about the lack of standards that applied to developing nations like India and China. The denier-deniers claimed that they were holding out for better and fairer standards. In the event, no other standards were proposed or approved by the Americans.
In his article, where his position is almost identical to Bush's in 2001, 13 years earlier, Samuelson made the claim that the technology does not exist to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He made the same claim in a Newsweek article in 2007. This claim is demonstrably false. The average passenger car in 2012 was 27% more efficient (mpg) than that produced in 2001. Much greater efficiencies are already possible but not yet implemented. For example, people could be coaxed out of their SUVs (2012 avg. mpg. 23.5) into regular passenger vehicles with average mpg of 35.6, resulting in an efficiency improvement of approximately 50%.
A wind turbine in 2012 produced 15 times as much electricity as one produced in 1980; at times, wind energy accounts for 25% of the Texas energy grid. Solar electricity installation costs have fallen dramatically in recent years, but remain nearly twice as high as in Germany, showing that large cost reductions are possible with current technology.
I have two issues with the Washington Post publishing Samuelson's column on its opinion page. First, Samuelson claims that technology does not yet exist to solve global warming problems. But such technology does exist; if current technology does not solve the entire global warming problem, it can solve much of it. Since this is a fact, Samuelson's opinion is demonstrably false and the Post should explain this falsehood to its readers. Instead, the Post's editors permit Samuelson to make up his own facts.
Second, the Washington Post bills itself as a newspaper. As such, its articles, in order to be newsworthy, must contain new and important information. Samuelson's opinions have not changed since 2007. They are not new. The Post does not usually publish editorials from 7 years ago as if they contained new information. The Post permits Samuelson to publish this nonsense out of shear laziness.
There is a great deal to be said about improving technology to combat global warming. Samuelson has not said it, and the Post has not published it, at least not in this article.
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