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Scotland: The Union Has Survived So Put Away the Flags |
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Friday, 19 September 2014 07:17 |
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Kettle writes: "The effects of Thursday's no vote are enormous - though not as massive as the consequences of a yes would have been."
A Union flag and Saltire blow in the wind near Glen Coe, Scotland, March 24, 2014. (photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images)
Scotland: The Union Has Survived So Put Away the Flags
By Martin Kettle, Guardian UK
19 September 14
The immediate political question now suddenly moves to London: a new constitutional settlement needs to be on the table by the end of next month
 ike the battle of Waterloo, the battle for Scotland was a damn close-run thing. The effects of Thursday’s no vote are enormous – though not as massive as the consequences of a yes would have been.
The vote against independence means, above all, that the 307-year Union survives. It therefore means that the UK remains a G7 economic power and a member of the UN security council. It means Scotland will get more devolution. It means David Cameron will not be forced out. It means any Ed Miliband-led government elected next May has the chance to serve a full term, not find itself without a majority in 2016, when the Scots would have left. It means the pollsters got it right, Madrid will sleep a little more easily, and it means the banks will open on Friday morning as usual.
But the battlefield is still full of resonant lessons. The win, though close, was decisive. It looks like a 54%-46% or thereabouts. That’s not as good as it looked like being a couple of months ago. But it’s a lot more decisive than the recent polls had hinted. Second, it was women who saved the union. In the polls, men were decisively in favour of yes. The yes campaign was in some sense a guy thing. Men wanted to make a break with the Scotland they inhabit. Women didn’t. Third, this was to a significant degree a class vote too. Richer Scotland stuck with the union — so no did very well in a lot of traditonal SNP areas. Poorer Scotland, Labour Scotland, slipped towards yes, handing Glasgow, Dundee and North Lanarkshire to the independence camp. Gordon Brown stopped the slippage from becoming a rout, perhaps, but the questions for Labour — and for left politics more broadly — are profound.
For Scots, the no vote means relief for some, despair for others, both on the grand scale. For those who dreamed that a yes vote would take Scots on a journey to a land of milk, oil and honey, the mood this morning will be grim. Something that thousands of Scots wanted to be wonderful or merely just to witness has disappeared. The anticlimax will be cruel and crushing. For others, the majority, there will be thankfulness above all but uneasiness too. Thursday’s vote exposed a Scotland divided down the middle and against itself. Healing that hurt will not be easy or quick. It’s time to put away all flags.
The immediate political question now suddenly moves to London. Gordon Brown promised last week that work will start on Friday on drawing up the terms of a new devolution settlement. That may be a promise too far after the red-eyed adrenalin-pumping exhaustion of the past few days. But the deal needs to be on the table by the end of next month. It will not be easy to reconcile all the interests – Scots, English, Welsh, Northern Irish and local. But it is an epochal opportunity. The plan, like the banks, is too big to fail.
Alex Salmond and the SNP are not going anywhere. They will still govern Scotland until 2016. There will be speculation about Salmond’s position, and the SNP will need to decide whether to run in 2016 on a second referendum pledge. More immediately, the SNP will have to decide whether to go all-out win to more Westminster seats in the 2015 general election, in order to hold the next government’s feet to the fire over the promised devo-max settlement. Independence campaigners will feel gutted this morning. But they came within a whisker of ending the United Kingdom on Thursday. One day, perhaps soon, they will surely be back.
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FOCUS | Anthony Weiner and the Revolving Door |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=27766"><span class="small">Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News</span></a>
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Thursday, 18 September 2014 09:45 |
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Warren writes: "Where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine."
Senator Elizabeth Warren responded to Anthony Weiner. (photo: AP)
Anthony Weiner and the Revolving Door
By Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Reader Supported News
18 September 14
 hen former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) took a job with the investment bank Moelis & Co. earlier this month shortly after resigning his Congressional seat, he became the latest example of the tight-knit relationship between Wall Street and Washington. In an interview, I called this out for what it is: another sign that the revolving door still spins freely in Washington. Cantor had little experience in financial services, and the value of people like him to Wall Street firms is influence peddling, plain and simple.
Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time -- long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem -- an infestation, really -- a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.
So when former Congressman Anthony Weiner -- a Democrat from New York -- dismissed my concerns, it was business as usual. Identifying himself as a liberal, Weiner called my criticism of the revolving door culture "overblown" and "petty."
Let's start with some facts.
The Cantor move to Wall Street is not some isolated incident. Just look at the influence of one mega-bank -- Citigroup -- on our government. Starting with former Citigroup CEO Robert Rubin, three of the last four Treasury secretaries under Democratic presidents held high-paying jobs at Citigroup either before or after serving at Treasury -- and the fourth was offered, but declined, Citigroup's CEO position. Directors of the National Economic Council and Office of Management and Budget, the current Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. trade representative, also pulled in millions from Citigroup.
That's what the revolving door looks like at just one Too Big to Fail Bank. What about others? The influence of Goldman Sachs in Washington has been much documented, including here at Huffington Post. JPMorgan? Shortly before the Cantor episode, another former member of Congress -- Democrat Melissa Bean -- took the same senior job at JPMorgan Chase previously held by Democrat Bill Daley before his recent service as White House Chief of Staff. Yes -- this is just a single position at JPMorgan Chase, evidently reserved for the latest politician ready to cash in on Wall Street.
I could go on -- and I will. Soon after they crashed the economy and got tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, the biggest Wall Street banks started lobbying Congress to head off any serious financial regulation. Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics found that in 2009 alone, the financial services sector employed 1,447 former federal employees to carry out their lobbying efforts, swarming all over Congress. And who were their top lobbyists? Members of Congress -- in fact, 73 former Members of Congress.
According to a report by the Institute for America's Future, by the following year, the six biggest banks employed 243 lobbyists who once worked in the federal government, including 33 who had worked as chiefs of staff for members of Congress and 54 who had worked as staffers for the banking oversight committees in the Senate or the House.
The point here is simple: Eric Cantor isn't the exception -- he's the rule. The ties between Washington and Wall Street run deep.
When former Congressmen call, when a Senator's ex-Chief of Staff is on the line, when someone who worked on the Banking Committee for years calls, it's hard to ignore them. Relationships matter, and anyone who doubts that Wall Street's outsized influence in Washington has watered down our government's policies toward still-too big-to-fail banks isn't paying attention.
It is dangerous when key economic positions in our government fall under the control of a small group like the Citigroup clique. Groupthink can become a serious issue -- old ideas stay around after they're useful, and new ideas too often don't get a fair hearing. Small, tight-knit groups also tend to consolidate their power over time using the hiring process in ways that undermine the public interest. Too often, people get jobs based on who they know - not what they know. And too often, the dominant group is confident that not just insiders, but their insiders, are best for the key jobs. The Citigroup clique, for example, includes some effective public servants, but as a whole it has also crowded out others who would have brought different and valuable perspectives to their service.
There is one thing Anthony Weiner and I agree on: there are a lot of smart, hard-working people in the financial industry. In fact, when I worked to set up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, we hired some of them. Private sector experience shouldn't disqualify someone from federal employment, but we can agree on that and still acknowledge the extent to which it defies probability that so many of the very best people chosen for top policymaking positions in Washington all happened to have had high paying jobs on Wall Street. There are experienced and innovative people throughout the private and public sectors who are more than qualified for these jobs, and that's just a fact.
Let's be honest -- the revolving door is only part of a larger problem. There's also a huge imbalance in advocacy resources. During the debate over Wall Street reform, the big banks spent more than a million dollars a day lobbying against new regulations. That's a lot of lobbying. And according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the "financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties," contributing nearly $300 million to candidates, parties and political action committees in the past two years.
When you put all this together -- all the influence peddling and campaign contributions and lobbying imbalances -- what you have is a really big mess. Or, to be more specific, you have large financial institutions that are dramatically bigger today than they were in 2008 back when we all called them "Too Big to Fail" -- you remember, back in the context of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression caused by - you guessed it -- many of the same participants in the Washington to Wall Street revolving door we're talking about.
If we want Washington to work better for families, we need to limit Wall Street's outsized influence on economic policymaking. It's bad for the country when so many people on Wall Street continually angle for key economic policymaking jobs, and so many people in key economic policymaking jobs angle for jobs on Wall Street. The government is supposed to work for everyone, not just those who can hire armies of lawyers, lobbyists, and former (and future) government officials.
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The People's Climate March: Meet the Next Movement of Movements |
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Wednesday, 17 September 2014 13:17 |
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Klein writes: "The most important climate gathering next week will not be happening at the UN, but in the streets: thousands upon thousands of us will be sounding the climate alarm, literally, at the historic People's Climate March on September 21."
Naomi Klein. (photo: The Guardian UK)
The People's Climate March: Meet the Next Movement of Movements
By Naomi Klein, NaomiKlein.org
17 September 14
 he most important climate gathering next week will not be happening at the UN, but in the streets: thousands upon thousands of us will be sounding the climate alarm, literally, at the historic People’s Climate March on September 21. While the decision was made not to have speeches during the march, at 12:58pm there will be two minutes of silence followed by the unleashing of a chorus of magnificent sound—part of what organizers are describing as a global call for climate justice—complete with church bells and some 32 marching bands. (Bring your noisemakers!)
The sounding of the climate alarm is an important metaphor: it reminds us, as I write in my book, that “politicians aren’t the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too.”
And many of the people making the noise are already showing us the path forward, the real exits from the crisis. They are, for example, the daring activists saying “No!” to new carbon frontiers around the world—heroic denizens of a global, roving conflict zone known as Blockadia, waging nonviolent resistance to fossil fuel expansion plans and putting their bodies on the line from East Texas to the Niger Delta, to Northern Greece.
And they are the frontline communities most directly impacted by extraction and climate change, who are also pioneering some of the most exciting models for making a “just transition” away from fossil fuels. (Like solar co-ops in Richmond, California, where workers have been living under the shadow of the local, notoriously dirty Chevron oil refinery; or a Navajo proposal to convert abandoned mining land on their reservation into solar arrays that could power their communities and urban centers beyond; or the idea that we could compensate Indigenous groups for protecting the carbon buried under their ancestral forests or sequestered in the trees, instead of kicking them out in order to safely market forest “offsets” to polluting corporations.)
They are also the dogged young campaigners of the fossil fuel divestment movement, which has swept across hundreds of campuses, cities, states, charitable foundations, and religious institutions with startling speed. This is just the first stage of a growing effort to delegitimize the profits of the fossil fuel industry, and – most excitingly – to figure out how to redirect those resources in the service of real climate solutions.
“To change everything, we need everyone,” goes one of the slogans of the People’s Climate March, and that is absolutely right: our movements and solutions must be as varied and numerous as the depth and scope that this crisis demands. We need everyone in the climate fight—the labour movement, health care workers, teachers, farmers, everyone defending the public sector and community values and solidarity where they live. We’re not there yet, but powerful glimpses of the kind of deep and diverse movement we need are starting to appear.
That is what this march is about for me: it is an expression of how profoundly the climate movement has changed since the days of elite summit hopping and the inside-game of beltway cap-and-trade fights. Indeed the People’s March is the physical convergence of many new and resurgent climate movements, united in their firm belief that the time to confront the climate criminals in now.
And these movements are ready for a fight. On the day after the family-friendly march, many will be back on the streets, engaging in civil disobedience at centers of financial power around the world—including, of course, Wall Street.
Two years ago, the force of Superstorm Sandy literally flooded New York’s financial district. Who can forget the image of Goldman Sachs surrounded with sand bags. Or the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek, with the headline, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”
The thing is: capitalism is kind of stupid. The big brains on Wall Street all know climate change is real. They go on about “stranded assets” and “carbon bubbles” and climate change creating an atmosphere of “risky business.” But even knowing all these medium and long term risks to their very survival, they still can’t resist the short term profits that flow from cooking the planet. As I explore in my book, former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg himself – perhaps the most climate conscious billionaire going — invests his personal fortune in a fund specializing in oil and gas assets.
Clearly, Wall Street needs some help. Which is why we are going to flood them again. With our bodies this time. Wearing blue. If you are in the neighbourhood, come too.
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Food Science: What's the Harm |
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Wednesday, 17 September 2014 13:14 |
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Nader writes: "The world has never seen such an ingenious, power-concentrating machine as the modern, global corporation."
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader. (photo: Meet the Press)
Food Science: What's the Harm
By Ralph Nader, Reader Supported News
17 September 14
 orporate CEOs are always strategizing in their quest for greater revenues and profits. Often these strategies -- and their resulting, insidious successes -- have shaped our elections, our government, our education system, our media, our publicly funded research and development, our tax and credit systems, our trade agreements and so on. The world has never seen such an ingenious, power-concentrating machine as the modern, global corporation.
Even science, which ideally should carry the banner for rigid standards, openness and integrity, has suffered the undue influence and control of autocratic, commercially-driven multinational corporations. In many disturbing cases, independent science has been increasingly displaced by the far more devious "corporate science" which places profits over people, above safety, and above revealed scientific method and peer-reviewed accountability.
The food we eat is increasingly engineered by such corporate science. Biotech companies like Monsanto and DuPont have moved towards monopolizing the seed market -- an antitrust investigation of Monsanto by the Department of Justice was quietly ended in 2012, and no steps have been taken by regulators since.
Monsanto, with its massive, relentless marketing and harassing litigation campaigns, has repeatedly claimed that its genetically-modified patented seeds (GMOs) are superior to traditional seeds -- claiming that genetically modified foods are safe, cheaper, higher yielding, more nutritious, requiring lower chemical inputs, and resistant to drought and blight. Yet Monsanto has refused to meet its burden of proof about these claims with evidence. Moreover, it intimidates independent scientists from testing its proprietary products!
Corporate science is, above all else, secretive. The flimsy excuse of "trade secrets" is used to prevent independent or academic scientists from evaluating exaggerated corporate claims. Scientists who wish to replicate or test the biotech industry's claims about their products find a paucity of available grants, obstructed access to the products, and a litigiously backed up refusal to disclose. Research on the migration of genetically-modified pollen from farms to non-GMO-farms; the level of developing bacterial, viral, and insect resistance to GMO-linked herbicides; and longer-run studies of the consequences of GMO seeds and crops on the environment is grossly underfunded, whether by government agencies or foundations. The cover-up continues.
One Monsanto claim is that GMO seeds provide higher yields than traditional seeds. A report released earlier this year by the USDA's Economic Research Service showed that those claims are untrue. The report states:
Over the first 15 years of commercial use, GE [genetically-engineered] seeds have not been shown to increase yield potentials of the varieties. In fact, the yields of herbicide-tolerant or insect-resistant seeds may be occasionally lower than the yields of conventional varieties.
Lester Brown, founder of WorldWatch and President of the Earth Policy Institute, puts it more bluntly: "...no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields... Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields."
And there is the issue of farmers who enter into one-sided adhesion contracts with GMO seed suppliers and find themselves ensnared in a tight web of control. Under these contracts, farmers are forbidden from saving seeds (forcing them to buy new seed every season), are subject to intrusive inspection provisions, and much more. (See faircontracts.org)
Other claims, such as the long-term effects of consuming genetically-modified food remain inconclusive, largely for lack of consumer-oriented testing.
Basic openness has been pushed aside in the realm of commercialized global agriculture. Take for instance the fact that consumers overwhelmingly want the right to know what is in their food by mandating the labeling of genetically engineered food. A poll in The New York Times last year showed that 93 percent of Americans support labeling of food containing GMO's.
Public sentiment shows that Monsanto is in trouble. While the seed production conglomerate has fought off several attempts by states to require GMO labeling, ballot initiatives to require labeling in Oregon and Colorado this November are promising developments in the food safety movement. GMO labeling has already passed in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine, although only Vermont has put the law into effect. Over 60 countries, including the members of the European Union, Australia, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Russia and China have also required labeling of GMO's. The new book, The GMO Deception: What You Need to Know about the Food, Corporations, and Government Agencies Putting Our Families and Our Environment at Risk is a comprehensive, definitive collection of essays by leading experts on the subject of genetically-modified food. Edited by Sheldon Krimsky, arguably the nation's leading advocate of ethics in science, and lawyer Jeremy Gruber, this book is essential reading for those interested in the ongoing debate about the future of our food. (I wrote the introduction.) Sheldon Krimsky puts it best in his summary conclusion of the anthology:
The real and potentially adverse effects of GMOs have been understated or negated by many in the scientific community who accept uncritically a corporate-crafted message. A fair-minded and unbiased individual looking at all the evidence must reach the conclusion that there is a great deal we do not know and what we do know impels us to be both cautious and concerned, skeptical of an early manufactured consensus, and critical of a framing that fails to recognize the diversity of public objections to GMOs.
The history of corporate marketing has long used secretive corporate science and engineering to promote products. This has been the case with polluting products, pharmaceuticals, nuclear power and industrial materials and chemicals. GMOs follow these practices in the more ominous process of changing the nature of nature.
Together with resisting farmers, challenging scientists, and liberated civil servants, an aroused public will recognize that its own interests and those of posterity must be preeminent over these corporate monopolists and their short-range, narrow commercial pursuits.
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