Clean Energy, Job Creation, and the US Supreme Court
At this early point in the development of my new book on clean energy job creation, I’m still just trying to find my feet. As the creation of new jobs for Americans is largely a subject of politics and macroeconomics, and as I’m an expert in neither, my choice of interview subjects and understanding exactly what I’m attempting to glean from folks in these areas is going to be of paramount importance. Thus, I’m treading very slowly and carefully at this point.
Having said that, I’m starting to make some rough guesses as to what direction this project will ultimately take. And here’s an early front-runner: an exploration of the effects of the January 2010 US Supreme Court decision (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission) to grant corporations (fictitious persons) the same rights under the Constitution as real persons. The implications to our precious democracy are staggering, the tip of the iceberg of which we are just now starting to feel. Within a few years at the outside, we can expect the transnational corporate entities to extend their powers over every aspect of public policy, owning and controlling the actions of everyone from the President of the United States down to your local assemblyman.
Think this is some sort of nutty exaggeration? Let me ask you a few quick questions:
- Is most of the food you eat genetically modified? Yes. Is that a good thing? To be honest, I’m not sure. But I’m sure of this: Neither you nor your elected representative had anything whatsoever to do with making that decision; it was made by Monsanto and ADM.
- Who made our national policies in healthcare? Although the vast majority of Americans (and their doctors) favor universal healthcare, the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies create the policies that determine who get healthcare and how they get it.
- What about energy and transportation? As we’ve discussed so often here, I urge you to ask: who created the terrain of the playing field on which oil and coal receive 12 times the subsidies that are given to renewable energy? The answer is as clear as it is sickening: the energy industry itself, with its 7000 lobbyists who control every thought and every breath of the Congress you think is working for your best interests.
I’m going to go out a limb here and make my guess. I have to think that the decision to grant corporations the right to affect our democracy, with no limit to the money they can spend to buy your votes and corrupt the process, is going to be central to the book. How can it not be?
For what it’s worth, corporations themselves are not to blame; in fact, fictitious entities with limited liability serve an important, time-honored purpose. Corporations played a critical role in the development of ancient Rome (universities, aquaducts, roads, the Colosseum), the exploration of the New World, and the colonization of what is now the US. Corporations are not evil; they’re just a tool, like a hammer or a knife, that can be sued for good or evil — a tool that is now grossly misused by a legal system that has provided them with rights and powers that were never even intended.
Once I understood the impact of the Supreme Court ruling, I saw that the migration to clean energy will be excruciatingly slow until that decision is overturned. If we fail to install a Constitutional amendment that reinstates the crystal clear intent of the founding fathers, i.e., that government exist of, by, and for the people, we’re all spinning our wheels, watching our fledgling industry flounder and our democracy implode.
I hope you’ll want to learn more. Check out MoveToAmend — the move to amend our Constitution so as to restore our government to the people.
Several little additions I’d like to put out there:
In 2009, there were 11,000 corporate and special interest lobbyists for our 535 congress members – a ratio of over 20 lobbyists per member. That total number is equivalent to a military division – a body of men currently considered sufficient to establish security in a 24,000 square mile area of Iraq just south of Baghdad. These lobbyists spent $3.47 billion in 2009 alone – divided evenly, that would be about $6½ million per member!
Now that was before “fictitious persons” were said to possess the Right of Free Speech. Now, with the SCOTUS decision (“Citizens United” vs. Federal Elections Commission) recklessly granting the status of human beings to corporations, CEO’s are now free to spend rampantly from the treasuries of the companies they head in any political race across the country – without any assenting vote by the shareholders that actually own the company. A public relations firm in Maryland called Murray Hill has even satirically announced that it will run for public office – what’s next, President ExxonMobil?
For the much weakened financial ‘reform” bills that just squeezed their way forward against fierce GOP opposition, the number of lobbyists (mostly from the interested Wall Street, banking and insurance corporations) was 1500 – that’s nearly a ratio of 3 to 1. That fifteen-hundred-strong band of bankster banditos is equivalent to three military battalions. That’s equal to a force that is now judged adequate to secure the approximately 70 miles of ruggedly mountainous tropical border between the murderously hostile factions on either side in East and West Timor.
The Bush/Cheney/Paulson bankster bailout opened our treasury to the tune of $12.3 trillion (see Bloomberg’s news reporting) – that’s a tidy sum of $41,000.00 for every American man woman and child – all paid as ransom to the “too big to jail” on Wall Street.
Oh, but there’s no money to spend on a national program for universal health, or energy efficiency, or infrastructure maintenance and conversion.
Of course, each family would have likely used such a distributed sum to pay back mortgages and credit card debt, and maybe buy a new car – and the banks and the automakers would be sitting pretty – but we wouldn’t still all be indentured servants, would we…
Back in 2009 our nation reached another fearful landmark – the financial division between the poor and the wealthy in America reached its widest point in recorded history.
As columnist William Astore recently remarked, the current state of the Union reminds him of Abe Lincoln’s remark about a nation half slave and half free, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” which itself is a notion taken from Matthew 12:25 in the New Testament – “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.”
The current state of things in America is to me far more reminiscent of an older observation – that of the 1st Century Greek historian and essayist Plutarch, “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
What’s the bigger threat to our democratic republic…?
The tactics attributed to 19 terrorist hijackers with box-cutters?
…Or existence of 11,000 (and growing) lobbyist troops surrounding our capitol with the cold and unswerving intent of permanently undermining the authority that our people once rightly possessed over our leadership?
Folks, we’re all being stood up against the wrong enemy.
As for the frankenfood… 75% of processed food products on the shelves (and in your pantry) today contain genetically modified organisms that have never had any long-term clinical trials – and many of which have the ability to carry those modifications into the very genes of your gut flora and fauna… and you won’t find these organisms declared on the labels – the mad scientists are not sufficiently proud of their creations to advertize them.
As for healthcare… or the medical industry (take your pick) – every other advanced nation has seen the benefits of spreading the financial risk of catastrophic injury and illness and the cost of quality health care for all people evenly across the whole population, of using the bargaining power of the whole population, and of prioritizing early prevention and the discovery of cures over the expensive and continual treatment of mere symptoms. Meanwhile, and increasingly for decades, we over here have had the real world “death panels” – corporate committees and even whole departments tasked with finding a reason (any reason or no reason) to deny paying for care, even if it means the person’s life. In France, doctors are paid more the healthier their patients are – here, the sicker you are, the more they make… which system is sane?
We here in America aren’t the very wisest, nor are we the most powerful people (except perhaps when it comes to killing), but we are very often the most imitated by ‘developing’ societies.
We the People need – desperately – to wake up and open our eyes, and take note of the very best lessons that lay around us, and act on them – NOW!
If we don’t, we and our children – and our precious jewel of a planet – will be gobbled up by vicious constructs of our own making.