By Matthew Rothschild

Transcription

June 2010 Cover (UPC - A):November 2005 Cover (UPC)
5/6/10
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TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS VISITS THE WHITE HOUSE
JIM HIGHTOWER ON KING COAL
June 2010
Chomsky’s Nightmare:
Is Fascism Coming
to America?
www.progressive.org
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SAKO SHAHINIAN
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COVER BY SAKO SHAHINIAN
TOC 6.2010:TOC 12.2005x
June 
Volume , Number 
14 Cover
4
Editor’s Note
5
No Comment
6
Letters
8
Comment Boycott Arizona
10 On the Line
22
Cover 14 Chomsky’s Nightmare Matthew Rothschild
Is fascism coming to America?
Features 22 The Man with the White Hat Terry Tempest Williams
Call me cranky, but as a Westerner, wilderness is not an abstraction.
29 Patently Unjust Kari Lydersen
Filmmaker Joanna Rudnick did not like the idea that a company
owned the rights to the breast cancer gene.
29
Interview 33 Elinor Ostrom Amitabh Pal
“I’ve been interested in democratic governance at the very base,”
says the first woman to get the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Culture 36 Overconsumption Goes Viral Jason Mark
Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff has become an online
phenomenon.
39 Poem David Moolten
40 Dave Zirin won’t be rooting for the Diamondbacks.
41 Will Durst unveils the Dems’ secret weapon.
36
42 Books Ruth Conniff reviews ECONned: How Unenlightened Self
Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, by
Yves Smith.
46 Jim Hightower questions the “deep concern” of coal mining execs.
42
Editors Note 6.2010:Editors Note 12.2005x
5/4/10
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Editor’s Note Matthew Rothschild
EDITOR
Matthew Rothschild
POLITICAL EDITOR
Ruth Conniff
MANAGING EDITOR
Amitabh Pal
CULTURE EDITOR
Elizabeth DiNovella
EDITORIAL COORDINATOR
Ben Lembrich
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
David Barsamian, Kate Clinton, Anne-Marie Cusac, Edwidge
Danticat, Susan J. Douglas, Will Durst, Barbara Ehrenreich,
Eduardo Galeano, Jim Hightower,
Fred McKissack Jr., John Nichols, Adolph Reed Jr.,
Luis J. Rodríguez, Dave Zirin
PROOFREADERS
Diana Cook, Jodi Vander Molen
EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
Ben H. Bagdikian, Barbara Ehrenreich, Martín Espada,
Richard Falk, Colman McCarthy, Robert W. McChesney,
Daniel Schorr, Jane Slaughter, Urvashi Vaid, Roger Wilkins
ART DIRECTOR
Nick Jehlen
ART ASSOCIATE
Phuong Luu
PUBLISHER
Matthew Rothschild
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR
Maribeth Batcha
CIRCULATION MANAGER
Erin Grunze
CONTROLLER
Carolyn Eschmeyer
MEMBERSHIP DIRECTOR
Jodi Vander Molen
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
Erika Baer
WEB MASTER
Tamara Tsurkan
WEB ADMINISTRATOR
Scot Vee Gamble
WEB CONSULTANT
Sheldon Rampton
PROGRESSIVE MEDIA PROJECT
Matthew Rothschild and Amitabh Pal, Co-editors
Andrea Potter, Development Director
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Matthew Rothschild, Chairman.
Gina Carter, Ruth Conniff, James Friedman, Stacey Herzing,
Barb Kneer
This issue of The Progressive, Volume 74, Number 6, went to press on May 4.
Editorial correspondence should be addressed to The Progressive, 409 East Main
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www.progressive.org
4
◆
June 2010
A Prayer Victory
G
ore Vidal once said, “Whenever
a friend succeeds, something
inside me dies.” But I’m not dying,
I’m cheering, because a couple of
friends of mine, Annie Laurie Gaylor
and Dan Barker, recently scored a
tremendous victory.
They run the Freedom From Religion Foundation, one of the leading
groups of atheists, agnostics, and
freethinkers in the country. They
happen to be based right here in
Madison, Wisconsin. We shop at the
same neighborhood co-op, and I
even coached their daughter in soccer
for a year or two. (Fuller disclosure:
They also advertise with us.)
Fearless and cheery, they go to
court whenever they see government,
at any level, violating the separation
of church and state.
So I wasn’t surprised they sued
over the National Day of Prayer.
But I was a little surprised, and
very pleased, that they won, thanks
to a courageous federal judge, also of
Madison, whom I see occasionally on
the tennis courts.
I’m referring to U.S. district judge
Barbara Crabb, who ruled in April
that the National Day of Prayer violates the first ten words of the First
Amendment: “Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of
religion.”
The National Day of Prayer is
unconstitutional, she ruled, “because
its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no
secular function in this context.” She
added: “In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that
must be left to individual conscience.
. . . The government may not use its
authority to try to influence an individual’s decision whether and when
to pray.”
This decision lets those who want
to foist their religion upon us know
that this is not what the founders
believed and this is not what the
Constitution requires.
L
ast month, we ran an in-depth article by Virginia Sole-Smith on the
exploitative conditions in Mexico’s
squid shops. Regrettably, we neglected
to credit the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, which helped underwrite Sole-Smith’s excellent piece. Our
apologies to the Nation Institute.
A
fter I heard Noam Chomsky talk
twice in one week about the risk
of fascism in America, I knew I had
to write about it.
The first time was at Howard
Zinn’s memorial in Boston, which
was a sad but uplifting affair.
Howard’s daughter, Myla, spoke
beautifully. Marian Wright Edelman
thanked Howard for his guidance at
Spelman in the early days of the civil
rights movement. Matt Damon and
his mom, longtime neighbors of
Howard’s, were poignant. Marge Piercy and Martín Espada read powerful
poems. Bernice Johnson Reagon led
the audience in a rousing rendition of
“Down by the Riverside.” And
Chomsky told a lovely story of how
he and his wife would occasionally
sail with Howard and his wife, Roz,
on Cape Cod and enjoy a glass of
wine at sunset. But Chomsky wouldn’t leave us with that idyllic image.
Instead, he warned us of the “clouds
of fascism” heading our way, and
urged us to be resisters like Zinn.
A few days later in Madison,
Chomsky fleshed out his argument in
much more detail when he spoke to
an overflow crowd at the Orpheum
Theatre. I present and assess his argument this month.
I look forward to your reaction to
this serious question of fascism. We’ll
print a sampling of the letters we
◆
receive in an upcoming issue.
No Comment 6.2010:No Comment 12.2005
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No Comment
Immigrant Implants
A Woman’s Place
At a GOP forum for congressional hopefuls in Tama
County, Iowa, one candidate seeking the nomination
called for new measures to stem illegal immigration.
“I actually support micro-chipping them,” said Pat
Bertroche, an Urbandale physician, according to the
Cedar Rapids Gazette. “I can micro-chip my dog so I
can find it. Why can’t I micro-chip an illegal?”
Representative Betty Sutton, Democrat of
Ohio, was incensed to find a campaign
mailing from her opponent that said, “Let’s
take Betty Sutton out of the House and send
her back to the kitchen.” Bill Heck, chair of
the Medina County Republican Party, said he
saw the mailing, “but I didn’t think there was
anything particularly wrong with it.”
Stimulating Disclosure
“New England construction companies that have
received millions of dollars in federal stimulus contracts failed to disclose to Massachusetts officials, as the
state requires, serious pollution or workplace safety
penalties levied against them in recent years,” reports
The Boston Globe. “Thirteen companies that have been
awarded nearly $54 million in contracts this year have
a history of environmental or workplace safety penalties, state and federal records show. Nine of those companies did not disclose those violations as required.”
Can Loyalty Test Be Far Behind?
Representative Steve King, Republican from Iowa,
told Fox News that Arizona Congressional District 7,
represented by Democrat Raul Grijalva, may have
been “already ceded” to Mexico, reports Talking
Points Memo. King also suggested that Grijalva is
“advocating for Mexico rather than the United
States.” Grijalva has called for a boycott on his state
for its new immigration law.
Marlboro Man
From AP: “The Adams County Courthouse meeting
room will soon be getting an official portrait of
President Barack Obama nearly eighteen months after
Obama was elected. The portrait will hang in a spot
that had held a framed black-and-white image depicting the President with a cigarette hanging from his
mouth. That photo—a notorious fake—drew a complaint from a county official who found it disrespectful. County Supervisor Eldon Orthmann, a
Republican, told the Nebraska Hastings Tribune that he
had the smoking photo matted and framed at his own
expense . . . as a joke.”
Readers are invited to submit No Comment items. Please
send original clippings or photocopies and give name and
date of publication. Submissions cannot be acknowledged or returned.
Obama, the Wrath of God
At a conservative rally in Tyler, Texas, state representative Leo Berman told the crowd, “I believe that
Barack Obama is God’s punishment on us today,”
reports the Tyler Morning Telegraph.
Civic Duty
Tea party members in Oklahoma are working with conservative legislators to introduce a bill creating a volunteer state militia
to defend against the federal government,
reports AP. “[The Founding Fathers] were
not referring to a turkey shoot or a quail
hunt,” said state senator Randy Brogdon.
Banned in Portland
The archbishop of Portland canceled his subscription
to The Oregonian and asked Catholic pastoral ministers to do the same, reports Harper’s. “The editors,”
the Most Reverend John G. Vlazny wrote, “arrogantly scolded the church for its past failures in handling
this matter of child abuse and, in an insulting and
unfair attack, chose this most holy time of the year,
during our church’s Year of the Priest, to connect the
practice of celibacy among our clergy with the problem of child sexual abuse, when everyone knows that
most abusers by far are married persons!”
Now We Know
During the first Republican gubernatorial debate,
South Carolina lieutenant governor Andre
Bauer blamed “flat-out lazy” people for
allowing illegal immigrants to thrive in his
state, reports Huffington Post. Explained
Bauer: “The problem is we have a giveaway system that is so strong that people
would rather sit home and do nothing
than do these jobs.”
The Progressive
5
STUART GOLDENBERG
◆
Letter 6.2010:Letter 12.2005
5/4/10
8:26 PM
Page 6
Letters to the Editor
On Obama-bashing
Ruth Conniff was absolutely right in
her editorial decrying President
Obama’s lack of meaningful political
leadership, but the problem is that
she didn’t go far enough (“A Deficit
of Leadership,” March issue).
Since the harmful Presidency of
Ronald Reagan, we have had two
Democratic Presidents, both of them
elected solely on the basis of having
more pleasing personalities than their
Republican opponents. Both Bill
Clinton and Barack Obama campaigned largely (although not entirely) as progressives, and then governed
like warmed-over Republicans.
In Obama’s case, the situation is
dire; he seems to be doing nothing
more than wring his hands, while
occasionally remarking that he certainly does wish that the Republicans
would somehow come together with
the Democrats to get something done.
Meanwhile, the chances that the
party of Tom DeLay and Newt Gingrich will suddenly be going along
with Barack Obama, or with anyone
else slightly to the left of Attila the
Hun, are exactly nil, but Obama
doesn’t seem to believe that. This is
naive on his part.
As a lifelong (nearly seven
decades) liberal Democrat, I call
upon all progressives to come out of
their terrible case of denial, and recognize the truth: The Democratic
Party is dead. It has sold out to the
same lobbyists to which the Republicans have been willing and eager
slaves for more than a century.
The people currently in government
and calling themselves Democrats are
traitors to a heritage that includes FDR
and LBJ. The latter was a man who got
Vietnam all wrong, but who was such a
virtuoso of domestic policy that his
civil rights achievements may never be
equaled, let alone surpassed.
We may as well recognize that the
Obama Administration is already a
failed one, and begin to come up
6
◆
June 2010
with some sort of Progressive Populist Party to take the place of the
horrible two-party system under
which we currently suffer.
David Pino
Wimberley, Texas
I am very disappointed at The Progressive’s lack of engagement on the health
care debate. Progressive physicians
have fought for years not only to
expand coverage and for single payer
financing, but also for systemic reform
of health care. Ruth Conniff suggests
that cuts to Medicare should be a negative development, yet reasonable
reform is the progressive position.
When more than one-third of all
health care dollars are spent in the
last six to twelve months of life, while
a mere 3 to 5 percent is spent in pediatrics, the system is broken.
While health care is important, it
is not the primary determinant of
health. Instead of spending 20 percent of our money on mostly fruitless
interventions, we could be using our
resources for education, job programs, nutrition, and other efforts
that actually improve the health of
our population.
Reuven Bromberg, M.D.
Palo Alto, California
I love The Progressive and would
never dream of asking you to cancel
my subscription. However, along
with others, I’m getting tired of the
Obama-bashing. If you’re going to
compare Obama to FDR, please
recall that when FDR was President,
there was a strong socialist movement
in this country to act as a counterweight to the right.
Where is that socialist movement
today and how much does its absence
handicap Obama?
To paraphrase Shakespeare, the
fault, dear Progressive, lies not in the
President but in ourselves.
Morris D. Fried
Richardson, Texas
I have no scorched-earth plan to cancel my subscription, but please consider reducing the negative energy
towards the President. I hover
between the center and left and am
satisfied that this is the best we can
expect for the time being.
Don’t shoot the messenger who is
trying his best to get us that oftpromised change. Hell, it’s only been
a year. They gave the New Deal eight
to ten years, depending on who’s
doing the counting.
Dan Nichols
via e-mail
A Token Green Effort
I appreciated Jason Mark’s article,
“Beyond the Green Niche,” in the
February issue, but feel there is
another important angle to the issue
of local sustainability. As national
security has lately become the main
impetus (or excuse) for any and all
government action, it would seem
logical that local access to energy and
food should be made a priority.
Whether the disruption of power or
transportation to deliver our food
supply from thousands of miles away
were caused by a terrorist act, severe
weather, or infrastructure failure, our
actual national security would be
greatly enhanced if communities had
local access to those basic necessities.
The immediate isolation we would
experience in the face of most any
kind of disaster would be greatly mitigated by the ability to locally provide
energy and food.
Cynthia McCulloh
Dillon, Montana
In any of the bazillion articles I have
now read about the green economy,
there is no mention about how profoundly ecologically ignorant Americans are.
When the government passed environmental regulations such as the
Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air
Act, the Clean Water Act, to name a
Letter 6.2010:Letter 12.2005
5/4/10
8:26 PM
Page 7
these students as a resource.
Why not make a national effort to
create classes that teach Spanish to
native English speakers and English
to Spanish speakers, using a paired
“buddy” system and small group discussions to practice the new language
learned in classrooms? Both sides
would benefit.
Lesley Woodward
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
few, there should have been a public
education component to them so people could have understood the science.
If a strong public education component would have been implemented,
the “average citizen” would have
learned what an endangered species is
and why endangered species need to be
protected. There should also be a science and environmental education
department in our government to
tackle the phenomenal level of ecological ignorance in this country. In the
end, it will be ecological ignorance that
kills us or, more aptly, what is killing us
now. Environmentally caused cancer is
only one example of the price we pay
for ecological ignorance.
Until the green economy includes
education in the very green it claims
to care about so much, it will continue to be what it has always been—a
token effort.
Virginia Moran
Grass Valley, California
Missed Opportunity
It’s appalling that Spanish-speaking
students are still ostracized simply
because they speak their own language in school (“Slurring Spanish,”
by Luis J. Rodríguez, March issue). I
taught English in many overseas
countries and know how difficult it is
to function in a culture where I didn’t speak the language.
Unlike students in other countries,
most American students graduate
from high school speaking only
English, and many are proud of their
ethnocentric ignorance. As a nation
that is rapidly becoming bilingual, we
are missing a wonderful opportunity
to create language programs that use
Striving for Civility
Terry Tempest Williams’s February
column stresses the importance of
cultivating greater civility in our personal, social, and political realms
(“Dinner Party Diplomacy,” February issue). It was a fine essay: comforting, warm, hopeful.
But with all due respect, now in
my old age, I disagree. Life on Earth
appears teetering on the brink. Our
species, with all its good intentions
and wondrous wisdom, is completely
overrunning and overwhelming this
planet and its biological systems.
I believe striving for civility is no
longer effective in today’s world. If
anything, only firm, focused, and
committed stands might be able to
preserve enough of the natural world
to allow for possible survival.
Mary McBee
Tama, Iowa
Thank you, thank you, thank you for
taking on Terry Tempest Williams as
a monthly columnist.
Eloise Heimann
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The editors welcome correspondence
from readers on all topics, but prefer to
publish letters that comment directly
on material previously published in
The Progressive. All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness, and may
appear either in the magazine or on its
web page. Letters may be
e-mailed to: [email protected].
Please include your city and state.
The Progressive
◆
7
Comment 6.2010:Comment 12.2005x
5/4/10
8:27 PM
Page 8
Comment
Boycott Arizona
T
he cowardly decision by Arizona Governor Jan
Brewer to sign the racist anti-immigrant bill
on April 23 cannot be allowed to stand. This
isn’t America when police can stop you and demand
your papers because they have a “suspicion” that you
may not be here legally.
The Fourth Amendment prevents this kind of
police state behavior. It states that people have a right
to be “secure in their persons,” and that the state
must have a warrant and probable cause to search
someone.
But the Constitution doesn’t seem to apply in
Arizona.
This law empowers local law enforcement to share
information about a person who is suspected of being
in the U.S. illegally with all levels of government, far
and wide. It empowers local law enforcement officers
to transport the suspect outside of their jurisdiction.
And it lets any local citizen sue the police or local
government agencies if that citizen perceives that they
are not enforcing federal immigration laws to the
fullest extent.
The law also criminalizes almost any kind of aid to
someone without proper documentation if the person providing the aid is “in violation of a criminal
offense.” This may include efforts to transport an
undocumented immigrant “if the person knows or
recklessly disregards the fact that the alien has come
to, has entered, or remains in the United States in
violation of law.” Providing sanctuary is
also verboten: It is forbidden to
“Every Latino in
“attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield
Arizona will be in an alien from detection in any place in
harm’s way with
this state, including any building or any
this law.”
means of transportation, if the person
—The Reverend knows or recklessly disregards the fact
Miguel Rivera, that the alien has come to, has entered,
founder of the or remains in the United States in violaNational tion of law.”
Coalition of
The new law goes out of its way to
Latino Clergy & enshrine harassment of poor Latinos in
Christian Leaders Arizona. It makes it illegal to attempt to
8
◆
June 2010
hire or pick up day laborers if the driver is impeding
the normal flow of traffic, or if the worker getting
into the car is impeding traffic.
This outrageous law has fortunately sparked a
firestorm of condemnation.
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Arizona,
denounced it as “disgusting,” “unwise,” “stupid,” and
“racist.”
“Governor Brewer and the Arizona legislature have
set Arizona apart in their willingness to sacrifice our
liberties and the economy of this state,” says Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of
Arizona. “By signing this bill into law, Brewer has just
authorized violating the rights of millions of people
living and working here. She has just given every
police agency in Arizona a mandate to harass anyone
who looks or sounds foreign, while doing nothing to
address the real problems we’re facing.”
The religious community has also been outspoken.
Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, says, “This law
would force us to violate our Christian conscience,
which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love
your neighbor in Arizona.”
Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles calls it
“the country’s most retrogressive, meanspirited, and
useless” immigration measure in the land.
John McCullough of the National Council of
Churches deems it “reactionary and hateful.”
Democrats, including President Obama, harshly
criticized the law. And even some Republicans did,
such as Jeb Bush and Karl Rove, who had made an
effort at winning over Latinos to the Republican side.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast believes that
Brewer actually signed the law to suppress Latino
turnout in upcoming elections.
“What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign
the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the
exploding number of legal Hispanics, U.S. citizens
all, who are daring to vote—and daring to vote
Democratic by more than two-to-one,” says Palast,
who notes that Brewer, as secretary of state, tried to
disenfranchise voters. “Unless this demographic loco-
Comment 6.2010:Comment 12.2005x
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8:27 PM
Page 9
motive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their
party will soon be electoral toast.”
Brewer, a rightwinger to start with, is facing a
tough primary challenge for reelection. She may not
have wanted to enrage the rightwing base. But whatever her motives, this heinous law is now on the
books.
I
t’s time to turn up the heat on Arizona, just as we
did when that state was an embarrassing holdout
over the Martin Luther King holiday.
More than words are required. Protests, lawsuits,
and boycotts are needed.
And they are happening.
The protests began in Arizona even before the governor signed off on the law, and they have continued
ever since. On May 1, hundreds of thousands of people in cities around the country rallied for immigration rights, with a focus on Arizona.
The lawsuits have also started.
Tucson police officer Martin Escobar filed one of
the first suits, saying that the law violates the Constitution and interferes with police work.
The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and
Christian Leaders also went to court to seek an
injunction on the basis that it violates people’s due
process rights.
The ACLU and other groups also are considering
court challenges, as is the Obama Justice Department.
But putting all of our hopes on the courts would
be a mistake. Lawsuits can take a long time. And we
can’t sit around and wait for the Supreme Court to
rule on its obvious unconstitutionality—especially
this current Court. Who knows how the conservative
majority would rule?
Better to take nonviolent action and press our case
with a boycott.
San Francisco is leading the way. Mayor Gavin
Newsom issued an executive order that prevents city
officials from traveling on official business to Arizona.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association
understandably yanked their fall conference out of
Arizona.
And you, as a consumer, should boycott, too.
So if you were planning on taking a vacation to the
Grand Canyon in Arizona this summer, please cancel
it, and send a note to the Arizona Office of Tourism
at azot.gov telling them why you did so.
If you were planning on going golfing there this
winter, please cancel and contact the Arizona Golf
Association at azgolf.org.
If you were planning on going white-water rafting
in Arizona, there are plenty of other states with excellent rides available. So please go somewhere else, but
JOY KOLITSKY
first notify raftarizona.com of your reasons.
If you were planning on attending a business conference there, please decline, tell the conference organizers why, and send a copy to the Arizona Chamber
of Commerce at azchamber.com.
If you were planning on rejuvenating yourself at an
Arizona spa, try one in New Mexico instead. And be
sure to notify the Arizona Spa Association at azspaassociation.com.
Or if you’re like me and you were planning on going
birdwatching in southeastern Arizona to find the elusive Elegant Trogon, postpone your trip, and notify the
Arizona Audubon Society at az.audubon.org.
T
he Arizona law is just the latest manifestation of the ugliness that is marring America
right now. Virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric
can be heard at almost any tea party rally, and it is
a feature of many a Republican candidacy. We’ve
seen before in history what happens when a society
starts to scapegoat a minority and then codifies
this prejudice with laws aimed to
humiliate that minority.
The scapegoating of Latino immi- “Mexican
Americans are not
grants has got to stop.
And the place to stop it is in Arizona. going to take this
◆ lying down.”
And the time to stop it is now.
—Matthew Rothschild —Linda Ronstadt
The Progressive
◆
9
OTL 6.2010:OTL 12.2005
5/4/10
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On the Line
Artless
in
Atlanta?
PHOTOS © MIKE GERMON
Atlanta
n April 19, musicians, actors, and puppeteers gathered at the Georgia state capitol to protest
funding cuts for the arts. The budget passed by the Georgia House would eliminate the Georgia
Council for the Arts. Officials of the National Endowment for the Arts say federal arts funding could
be jeopardized if the arts council is completely cut.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/THE JOURNAL & CONSTITUTION/VINO WONG
O
X Marks the Spot
Transit
workers put
giant X’s on
the Atlanta
area buses
that could
be cut.
Public transportation is taking a hit across the country. More than
80 percent of transit systems are resorting to layoffs, fare hikes, and
service cuts. Transportation Equity Network organized a national
day of action to resurrect mass transit on April 20. Rallies were held
in Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
For more information, go to transportationequity.org.
PAULA CHRIN DIBLEY/TRANSPORTATION FOR AMERICA
10
◆
June 2010
OTL 6.2010:OTL 12.2005
5/4/10
8:34 PM
Page 11
On the Line
AFP PHOTO/UPI/ART FOXALL
Phoenix
Phoenix
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC/MATT PAVELEK
Standing Up for Immigrants
I
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/
ROSS D. FRANKLIN
n mid-April, protesters held a candlelight vigil outside the Arizona
governor’s house calling on her to veto new immigration legislation. After
Governor Jan Brewer signed the bill, people demonstrated at the state
capitol.
Earlier in April, the Service Employees International Union protested
the Obama Administration’s
immigration enforcement policies
outside the U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement offices around
the country, including in Los Angeles,
Boston, and Minneapolis.
For more information, go
to presente.org.
Phoenix
San Jose
© 2010 NORBERT VON DER GROEBEN
Dearborn, Michigan
AFP PHOTO
Boston
© 2010 AARON DONOVAN
The Progressive
◆
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8:35 PM
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On the Line
FRITZ MYER
M
FRITZ MYER
FRITZ MYER
Pressuring Publix
ore than 1,000 farmworkers and fair food
activists rallied in Lakeland,
Florida, on April 18, wrapping
up a three-day march designed
to put pressure on Publix Super
Markets. The Coalition of
Immokalee Workers is asking
Publix to pay tomato pickers
one penny more for every
pound of tomatoes they pick
and to sign on to a code of conduct that would
prevent the supermarket chain from buying
tomatoes from growers that do not meet basic
working conditions.
For more information, go
to ciw-online.org.
© OMAR DE LA RIVA
© OMAR DE LA RIVA
FRITZ MYER
12
◆
June 2010
OTL 6.2010:OTL 12.2005
5/4/10
8:36 PM
Page 13
On the Line
Clean Up Sodexo
SEIU/DAVID SACHS
SEIU/DAVID SACHS
Gaithersburg, Maryland
Police arrested actor Danny Glover and eleven others during SEIU’s protest at the Maryland head-
SEIU/KATE THOMAS
quarters of Sodexo, an international food
service company. The arrests capped a week
of actions at Sodexo workplaces across the
country. Members of the French and British
unions representing Sodexo workers in their countries also joined the protest in Maryland.
The Service Employees International Union was protesting what
it calls Sodexo’s unfair and illegal treatment of workers. Sodexo says the
union is spreading misinformation.
For more information, go to cleanupsodexo.com.
Six U.S. military veterans chained themselves to the White House fence
on April 20 demanding a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
More than 13,000 members of the military have been
discharged since the law was enacted in 1993.
End the Ban
For more information, go to getequal.org.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS
The Progressive
◆
13
Rothschild 6.2010:FeatureD 12.2005x
5/5/10
3:56 PM
Page 14
Illustration by Sako Shahinian
Chomsky’s Nightmare:
Is Fascism
Coming to
America?
O
n April 8, Noam Chomsky came
to Madison, Wisconsin, to
receive the University of Wisconsin’s A. E. Havens Center’s award for lifetime contribution to critical scholarship.
He spoke at the Orpheum Theatre to
more than 1,000 people, and he used the
occasion to warn about the risk of fascism
coming to the United States.
“I’m just old enough to have heard a number of
Hitler’s speeches on the radio,” he said, “and I have a
memory of the texture and the tone of the cheering
mobs, and I have the dread sense of the dark clouds
of fascism gathering” here at home. “The level of
anger and fear is like nothing I can compare in my
lifetime,” he said. He cited a statistic from a recent
poll showing that half the unaffiliated voters say the
average tea party member is closer to them than anyone else.
“Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious
error,” Chomsky said.
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive.
14
◆
June 2010
5/5/10
The attitudes of the tea party people “are understandable,” he said.
“For over thirty years, real incomes
have stagnated or declined. This is in
large part the consequence of the
decision in the 1970s to financialize
the economy.”
There is class resentment, he
noted. “The bankers, who are primarily responsible for the crisis, are
now reveling in record bonuses while
official unemployment is around 10
percent and unemployment in the
manufacturing sector is at Depression-era levels,” he said.
Obama is linked to the bankers,
Chomsky explained.
“The financial industry preferred
Obama to McCain,” he said. “They
expected to be rewarded and they
were. Then Obama began to criticize
greedy bankers and proposed measures to regulate them. And the punishment for this was very swift: They
were going to shift their money to the
Republicans. So Obama said bankers
are fine guys and assured the business
world: ‘I, like most of the American
people, don’t begrudge people success
or wealth. That is part of the free
market system.’ People see that and
are not happy about it.”
He said “the colossal toll of the
institutional crimes of state capitalism” is what is fueling “the indignation and rage of those cast aside.”
“People want some answers,”
Chomsky said. “They are hearing
answers from only one place: Fox,
talk radio, and Sarah Palin.”
Chomsky invoked Germany during the Weimar Republic, and drew a
parallel between it and the United
States. “The Weimar Republic was
the peak of Western civilization and
was regarded as a model of democracy,” he said.
And he stressed how quickly
things deteriorated there.
“In 1928, the Nazis had 2 percent
of the vote,” he said. “Two years later,
millions supported them. The public
got tired of the incessant wrangling,
and the service to the powerful, and
the failure of those in power to deal
3:56 PM
Page 15
with their grievances.”
He said the German people were
susceptible to appeals about “the
greatness of the nation, and defending it against threats, and carrying
out the will of eternal providence.”
When farmers, the petite bourgeoisie, and Christian organizations
joined forces with the Nazis, “the
center very quickly collapsed,”
Chomsky said.
No analogy is perfect, he said, but
“People want some
answers,” Chomsky said.
“They are hearing answers
from only one place: Fox,
talk radio, and Sarah
Palin.”
the echoes of fascism are “reverberating” today, he said. “These are lessons
to keep in mind.”
W
hat to make of Chomsky’s
dire warning? “He’s exactly right. It’s time for a conversation about it,” says Chip Berlet,
senior analyst at Political Research
Associates and an expert on the
rightwing in America. “It’s starting to
smell pretty bad. There is real danger
here.”
“Rightwing populist movements
seldom become full-blown fascist
movements or take power,” he says.
“But none of that has to happen to
have harmful or even deadly consequences.”
Berlet says we can already see
“scapegoating of immigrants, the
poor, and other targets,” and he worries that some on the far right will
engage in “mob violence, terrorism,
or even selected assassinations.”
Here’s how he sees things playing
out.
“The mentally unstable people act
first,” he says. “They fly a plane into
an IRS building in Texas or they
shoot police officers in Pittsburgh,”
referring to Andrew Joseph Stack and
to Richard Poplawski. “What happens next? Some underground cells,
whether out of a militia or white
supremacist movement, do a ‘propaganda of the deed’ [a dramatic violent
act] to move the tea party into armed
revolt.”
Berlet says such an action wouldn’t
necessarily discredit the far right.
“After Timothy McVeigh, the militia
movement continued to grow for two
years,” he says, and mainstream politics moved to the right.
Berlet is particularly concerned
about the social base of the current
rightwing movement.
“A very large rightwing populist
middle class revolt is extremely
volatile,” he says. “It’s like a tornado.
It has all this energy. It’s unpredictable. It can blow away in ten seconds, or it can blow society up.”
W
hat about the “F” word?
Many scholars discount
the possibility of fascism,
per se, taking hold in the United
States. They tend to define fascism as
a mass-based, racist, ultranationalist
movement, often centered in the
lower middle class, which extols the
nation over the individual and relies
on the use of paramilitary violence to
transport the country to a mythic
place. Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s
Germany are the classic cases.
“I don’t think there’s any chance of
fascism coming to America,” says
The Progressive
◆
15
5/5/10
UCLA sociologist Michael Mann,
author of a 2004 book entitled Fascists. “Nowadays, fascism is really
dead. The word has become just a
term of abuse to throw at anyone we
don’t like.”
In an e-mail, Mann draws what he
considers to be a crucial distinction
between the current rightwing movement in America and traditional fascists. “The extreme right in the
U.S. is anti-government, whereas fascists were very pro-government,
believing that government coercion
can solve all problems,” he says.
Columbia University emeritus
professor of European history Fritz
Stern agrees. “There’s a great deal to
worry about, but it’s not a question of
fascism,” he says. “As I look at the
scene, at the organized discontent,
organized rage almost, I see a radical
rightwing swing, which is indeed
frightening. But that has nothing in
common with fascism because fascists believed in an acknowledged
dictatorship and in grandiose ideas
about foreign policy and military
might.”
University of Wisconsin professor
Stanley Payne, in his landmark work,
A History of Fascism, 1914-1945,
deemed the possibility “very slight.”
He wrote in 1995: “The enormous
cultural, social, and economic
changes [since 1945], together with
the lengthy development of democratic systems, makes anything genuinely resembling a historic fascism
almost impossible.” Reached by
phone recently, he said, “We’re in for
some difficulties, but not fascism as it
is used historically with its concrete
characteristics. Major historical
events don’t repeat themselves. They
have different morphologies.”
C
ertainly, using the term “fascist” to describe all or even
most of the tea party participants would be a mistake. It’s a movement that encompasses a variety of
rightwing conservatives, and it does
have a strong libertarian streak,
which seems so antithetical to tradi16
◆
June 2010
3:56 PM
Page 16
tional fascism.
I went to the tea party rally in
Madison, Wisconsin, on April 15,
attended by about 4,000 people.
“Don’t Tread on Me” signs were common. “The federal government is
only designed for forming a militia
and signing treaties,” said Don
Cochart, seventy-eight.
The anti-tax and anti-spending
sentiment was widespread, though
the crowd was on the tame side.
John Berry, an engineer in his forties holding a huge “Don’t Tread on
What about the “F” word?
Many scholars discount the
possibility of fascism, per se,
taking hold in the United
States.
Me” flag, said he was “disappointed
at how our politicians are making
decisions that are unconstitutional
and spending my money recklessly.”
He called Obama’s health care law an
“unconstitutional usurpation of
power.” And he was upset about
taxes. “I pay a lot of taxes, and the
money gets squandered.”
Ron Bott, a fifty-one-year-old
printer, had a sign that read: “Stop
spending like my ex-wife. Cut up the
credit card.”
Jake B. of Milwaukee, forty, had a
sign that said, on one side: “Socialism: My Tax Dollars at Work for
Those Who Won’t,” and on the
other, “I Will Not Grab My Ankles.”
“I want my freedom back,” he said.
“They’re taking it little by little.” As
an example, he said, “Why should I
pay taxes for people who won’t? Why
should I pay taxes for illegal immigrants?”
Some were there, in part, because
they have suffered during the recession.
Jennifer Wilkins, thirty-seven, of
Wauwatosa, is a realtor. “I’ve seen my
workweek go down from forty-five
hours a week to twenty-four hours a
week,” she said, and she blames
Obama for that. She voted for John
McCain, as did every one of the more
than two dozen people I interviewed.
Almost all of them said they did so
reluctantly because he wasn’t conservative enough for them.
“I sure do love Sarah Palin,”
Wilkins said. “I think she’s great. She
tells it like it is. She’s hardworking.
She takes care of her husband and
family. She likes small business.” A
man standing next to her nodded and
said, “She’s the all-American
woman.”
Dennis Barthenheier, sixty, a general contractor from Milwaukee, is
also feeling the pinch. “Just prior to
the great Barack Obama being elected, I had sixteen employees. Now I’m
down to four,” he said. “Obama’s
spend, spend, spend agenda has done
nothing for jobs.”
Some were concerned about civil
liberties. Pat Lewis, forty-six, of
Menomonee Falls, held a sign quoting Jefferson: “When Injustice
Becomes Law, Resistance Becomes
Duty.” “Our freedoms are eroding,”
he said. “They’re taking away the free
rights of citizens.” But he acknowledged “a lot of that goes back to Bush
and the Patriot Act.”
Dawn Holecek, a forty-five-yearold accountant from Pewaukee, carried a sign with quotes from Jefferson
and this one from Reagan: “Man is
not free unless government is limited.” She said she opposes Obama’s
health care plan because “I don’t want
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my doctor taken away, and I don’t
want to stand in line for my health
care.” She added: “I’m for the free
market. I’m a capitalist.” She wanted
me to know: “We’re nice people.”
And she sure seemed like one, as did
her friend Mary Guthrie, forty-two,
who was holding a sign that said:
“Obama: Robbin’ Us, Not Robin
Hood.”
Then there were those who mixed
their love of capitalism with Christianity.
A middle-aged man who would
identify himself only as Tom carried a
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18
◆
June 2010
3:56 PM
Page 18
sign that said, “On the 8th Day, God
Created Capitalism.” A homeremodeler for the past thirty years,
Tom said that capitalism is “the most
honorable practice in the history of
the planet.” When I mentioned the
bankers on Wall Street, he said,
“That’s not capitalism. That’s greed.”
Tom Borgstrom, fifty-three, of
Antioch, Illinois, held a sign that said
“Serve Jesus, Not Government,” on
one side and “Keep Out of My Pocket” on the other. “Ultimately everything will take care of itself if we give
Him the glory.”
Shortly after I talked with Borgstrom, the Reverend David King,
head of a group calling itself the Milwaukee God Squad, took the podium
and led the crowd, asking “Who’s our
leader?” and answering, “Jesus!” He
also referred to Obama as “Judas.”
The next person I spoke to was a
man from Madison who would only
give his name as Mark. He runs a
commercial printing and carpetcleaning business. “It is my Christian
duty to fight back against tyranny
wherever I see it,” he said.
A
fter attending the rally, I got
to wondering about the
notion of limited government
that many tea party people espouse, a
notion that is very serviceable to the
big business community, which
wants less regulation. Is the anti-government sentiment a trope? After all,
the rally was draped in patriotic symbols, with American flags everywhere
and the Pledge of Allegiance recited
en masse at the beginning. After all,
there wasn’t a middle class rebellion
over the government’s trampling on
our rights when Bush approved the
widespread illegal spying on Americans, or when he passed the Patriot
Act, or when he pushed through the
Military Commissions Act.
So is it “government” most of
them don’t like?
Or is it “liberal” government?
Or is it Obama?
One person in the crowd held a
red, white, and blue sign that said
“Why, Mr. Obama, do you hate my
America?”
A recent New York Times/CBS
News poll of tea party people showed
an extremely high level of animosity
toward the President. Only 7 percent
of tea party members had a favorable
opinion of him, compared with 43
percent of the American public and
14 percent of Republicans. More
than 90 percent of tea party supporters believe Obama “is moving the
country toward socialism” (more
than half the public surprisingly
shares that belief ).
And 52 percent of tea party members said that “in recent years too
much has been made of problems
facing black people,” whereas only 41
percent of Republicans share that
view. According to a Harris poll, 24
percent of all Republicans believe
that Obama may be the real live
Antichrist.
If many of the tea party people, as
I suspect, actually despise not big
government but “liberal” government, especially one that is led by a
black man, then there is false comfort
in the claim that this resurgent
rightwing movement is largely libertarian. For it’s conceivable that a segment of this constituency might
readily abandon its surface libertarianism and march behind an ultranationalist leader who promises to
restore America’s mythic honor.
S
everal Republicans seem to be
vying for that spot. Back in
2008, Representative Michele
Bachmann of Minnesota told Chris
Matthews of MSNBC: “I wish the
American media would take a great
look at the views of the people in
Congress and find out, are they proAmerica or anti-America?” In March
2009, she said: “I want people in
Minnesota armed and dangerous”
over the issue of cap and trade.
At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference on April 8, Liz
Cheney denounced Obama because
he “surrendered” our nuclear deterrent and adopted “policies of
5/5/10
appeasement” toward Iran. He has
sowed “weakness” and “confusion,”
she said, with his “self-serving lectures that put down America.” His
rhetoric, she said, “dishonors this
nation and the brave men and
women who died for our freedom.
President Obama, stop apologizing
for this nation and start defending
it.”
Sarah Palin also criticized Obama’s
nuclear strategy and compared him
to a weakling on the school playground who says, “Go ahead, punch
me in the face and I’m not going to
retaliate. Go ahead and do what you
want to with me.” And Palin berated
Obama on April 17 for saying America is a military superpower, “whether
we like it or not.” She retorted: “I
would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to
be a dominant superpower. I don’t
understand a world-view where we
have to question whether we like it or
not that America is powerful.”
O
ne element of traditional fascism is a virulent assault on
all things “liberal” or “leftwing.” This assault is under way
every day, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck,
and Bill O’Reilly.
On January 8, as Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting has noted,
Beck linked progressives to the Holocaust. “This was a progressive idea,”
he said. “Not the extermination
camps, but eugenics, which led to the
camps. You see, the progressives in
America always thought they were
superior. And it was the stupid people that were just slowing us down.
Hitler just took that to the next level,
as did Stalin. The progressive tactics
haven’t changed much since then.”
On January 20, Beck said that
progressives “will cheat. They will lie.
They will steal. And they have, in the
past, blown things up if it helps them
win.”
“There is a disease in the Republic, and it is the progressive movement,” Beck said February 19. He
3:56 PM
Page 19
has referred to progressivism as a
“cancer” several times, as recently as
February 26 on The O’Reilly Factor,
where the host agreed with him. Beck
said progressivism is a “disease” that
is “set up to eat our Constitution,” a
theme he echoed at his speech before
the Conservative Political Action
Conference.
Sean Hannity, who wrote a book
entitled Let Freedom Ring: Winning
the War of Liberty Over Liberalism,
even went so far as to praise tea party
people for wanting to be like Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in
1995, killing 168 people. On March
30, on his Fox program, Hannity did
a show from the Reagan Library,
claiming that the rightwing actually
won the health care debate. Here was
his evidence: “When you think about
the vast majorities that they have in
Congress and they had to bribe,
backroom deals, corruption, that’s all
because the tea party movement, the
people—all these Tim McVeigh
wannabes here.” And at that, the
crowd broke out into applause.
W
e have yet to see one telltale sign of fascism, which
is widespread paramilitary
violence, with all the trappings of
uniforms and insignia. But the
threats of violence are at unusual levels. Hate groups have more than
tripled since 2008, according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center. And
members of Congress received an
extraordinary number of death
threats surrounding the passage of
the health care bill.
As Newsweek reported, “Senate
Sergeant at Arms Terrance W. Gainer
said . . . that serious threats to members of Congress had nearly tripled,
from fifteen in the last three months
of 2009 to forty-two in the first quarter of 2010, with most of them coming in March during the height of the
health care debate. Some of the calls
and e-mails were ‘very vicious’ and
included threats to members’ homes
and families. You had people saying,
The Progressive
◆
19
5/5/10
3:56 PM
‘I’m going to get your kids, I’m going
to get your wife,’ ” says Gainer. “It
was very disturbing to members.”
One person who got a death threat
was Senator Patty Murray, Democrat
of Washington. Charles Alan Wilson,
who appears to have attended at least
one tea party rally, repeatedly sent her
voice mail messages filled with hate
over her vote for health care reform.
“Somebody’s gonna get to you one
way or another and blow your fucking brains out,” he allegedly said in
one voice mail message, according to
the Seattle paper The Stranger. “If I
have the chance, I would do it.” In a
separate call, he allegedly said: “Fuck
you, you fucking slut, you fucking
cunt. . . . We are coming after you,
bitch.” Police arrested Wilson on
April 6.
Far right groups connected to the
military also are an ominous sign.
One is called the Armed Forces Tea
Party Patriots. Founded by an active
duty Marine Corps sergeant, the
group vows to “defend our Constitu-
Page 20
tion that is threatened by a tyrannical
government.”
Another is the Oath Keepers,
which defines itself as a coalition of
“currently serving military, reserves,
National Guard, veterans, peace officers, and fire fighters.” The group’s
founder says its mission is “to stop a
and they brought their guns.
I
We have yet to see one telltale sign of fascism, which
is widespread paramilitary
violence.
dictatorship from ever happening
here.” On April 19, the Oath Keepers
held a “Restore the Constitution”
rally in a national park in Virginia,
’ve always been cautious about
using the “F” word. America is
not a fascist country today. If it
were, the Democratic Party would be
abolished. If it were, the government
would be rounding up dissidents. If it
were, trade unions would be illegal.
To call the United States a fascist
country today does a disservice to the
millions of people who’ve suffered
under genuinely fascist rule.
We’re not there now. Not yet.
And fascism may never take root.
“Institutionalized liberal democracy
is proof against fascism,” writes Professor Mann.
But is it?
British political scientist Roger
Griffin, author of The Nature of Fascism, writes that while it may never
seize power again, “there is every
indication that it will remain a permanent component of the ultra-right
in democratized or democratizing
societies, providing an inexhaustible
The Empire Within
Challenge for Change
N E W I N PA P E R
Postcolonial Thought and Political
Activism in Sixties Montreal
Sean Mills
Activist Documentary at the National
Film Board of Canada
Edited by Thomas Waugh,
Michael Brendan Baker, and Ezra Winton
Foreword Naomi Klein
The World and Darfur
“Challenge for Change is amongst the most exciting, bold, and innovative moments in the history
of film. Now we are fortunate to have the perfect
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Bravo!”
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Darfur.” –Gerard Prunier, author of The
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Activists, take note!”
–Steven High, history, Concordia University
International Response to Crimes
Against Humanity in Western Sudan
Second Edition
Edited by Amanda F. Grzyb
Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide and
Darfur: An Ambiguous Genocide
–Toby Miller, author of Global Hollywood 2
Radical
Reading
20
◆
June 2010
M c G I L L - Q U E E N ’S U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S
| w w w. m q u p . c a
5/5/10
well of organized xenophobia and
ultra-nationalism.”
Professor Robert O. Paxton,
author of The Anatomy of Fascism,
asks the following questions in his
book: “Is fascism over? Is a Fourth
Reich or some equivalent in the offing? More modestly, are there conditions under which some kind of neofascism might become a sufficiently
powerful player in a political system
to influence policy?”
To the latter question, he seems to
answer yes. And he warns: “An
authentically popular American fascism would be pious, anti-black, and,
since September 11, 2001, antiIslamic as well. . . . New fascisms
would probably prefer the mainstream patriotic dress of their own
place. . . . No swastikas in an American fascism, but Stars and Stripes (or
Stars and Bars) and Christian crosses.
No fascist salute, but mass recitations
of the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Paxton writes that if there would
be a big “setback to national pres-
3:56 PM
Page 21
tige,” that could also incite Americans to support a fascist enterprise.
S
o how close are we? As of yet, we
don’t have a full-blown neofascist movement in America.
What we have are protofascist or
Here are some things to
watch out for: more armed
rallies, mob violence, the
assassination of a liberal
elected official or media
star, the celebration of that
violence.
cryptofascist manifestations that
could transform themselves into
something more menacing.
The anti-immigrant law in Ari-
I
I
I
I
I
I
zona could be a precursor. And the
repressive statutes and executive
orders that Bush and Cheney put in
place could make it easier for fascists
if they ever seized power.
Here are some things to watch out
for: more armed rallies, mob violence, the assassination of a liberal
elected official or media star, the celebration of that violence by members
of the rightwing mass movement and
by one or two of their cheerleaders on
Fox or talk radio, the accommodation of some elected officials with
supporters of that violence, a failure
of the mainstream political system to
redress the genuine economic
grievances of the populace, and some
national humiliation to seize upon.
While it’s unlikely that an out-andout fascist party will develop, and
while it’s even more unlikely that any
such party would actually gain power
here in the United States, the problem
is, the unlikely sometimes happens—
especially, as Noam Chomsky reminds
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The Progressive
◆
21
Williams 6.2010:FeatureD 12.2005x
5/4/10
8:47 PM
Page 22
By Terry Tempest Williams
Illustration by Zina Saunders
The
Man
With
the
White
Hat
I
t is April 16, 2010. We have convened in the auditorium at the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., to participate in the White House Conference on America’s
Great Outdoors. Ken Salazar, secretary of the interior, welcomes the 500 participants.
“One hundred and two years ago, Teddy Roosevelt held the first conference on conservation in 1908,” Salazar
says. “One hundred and two years later, we are hosting the first conference on conservation in the twenty-first
century. . . . Fifty million people are represented here today: hunters, ranchers, farmers, anglers, local, state, and
tribal governments, cultural preservationists, the National Rifle Association, Ducks Unlimited, Natural Resources
Defense Council, the Sierra Club. . . . We have called you all here to find a unity agenda for conservation.”
Secretary Salazar, a gentle and genuine presence in an oftentimes contentious arena, shares his story of watching the sun rise over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in southern Colorado, where he and his Latino family
have ranched for generations.
“Farmers and ranchers are the greatest stewards the land has,” he says. “I want you to know I understand this.
Terry Tempest Williams is the author of “The Open Space of Democracy” and, most recently, “Finding Beauty in a Broken World.” She is the Annie Clark Tanner Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the University of Utah.
22
◆
June 2010
5/4/10
. . . We are here to start a collective
conversation about how to address
these conservation challenges. To
connect wildlife corridors. To work
with habitat fragmentation. We need
to identify the significant landscapes
in America, to identify great urban
parks, to protect and enhance waterways in America, to support farmers
and ranchers, to preserve their lands.”
I listen. I have been skeptical of
Ken Salazar, finding him too moderate for my tastes as a hard-core public
lands advocate working on behalf of
Utah wilderness for the past thirty
years. But I am open, and I understand the secretary of the interior’s
desire for a unified conversation on
private, public, and working landscapes. We all want a more humane
dialogue.
We also hear from Secretary of
Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Administrator Lisa Jackson from the Environmental Protection Agency, and
Nancy Sutley from the White House
Council on Environmental Quality.
We are given a wash of rhetoric, as
bland as possible, rarely if ever hearing the word “wildness” or “biodiversity” or “climate change.” What we
do hear is that 80 percent of Americans live in urban landscapes, that
“the iconic weekend camping trips
give us an opportunity to reconnect
with our family in outdoor places
and open spaces.” Vilsack says,
“Nature is God’s art.” He tells us,
“Our farm fields and forests are the
source of our food and our water,
fuel, energy, and wood . . . a place of
intrinsic values such as relaxation and
recreation.”
I begin to feel my blood pressure
rise and I wonder how long we
will have to endure this government
infomercial and listen to language
destined to bore third graders, let
alone an audience that understands
the hard edges of conservation work
within their own communities.
Administrator Jackson stands and
says, “America’s Great Outdoors have
shaped our history and driven our
progress from artists to pioneers.”
8:47 PM
Page 23
She talks about the importance of
“signature laws” from the Clean
Water Act to the Clean Air Act. And
just when I think finally we are going
to be given some substantive ideas,
she says, “The Great Outdoors bring
people together.”
I want to leap to my feet and
shout to this Administration, “What
are you afraid of? Speak to us as if we
have a brain. Give us something real
to think about and discuss. Help us
find our way to the true conversations about conservation so we can
sit in the center of our disagreements
and arrive at alternative solutions
born out of deep listening.”
But like everybody else in the
room, I just sit there, polite, bored to
death, waiting for robust language,
wondering why I traveled halfway
across the country to listen to bloodless language that must have polled
well between the extremes of tea
partiers and those activists still spiking trees.
Just then, we were asked to watch a
video on “The Great Outdoors” that
speaks of “a shared heritage” and tells
us in a booming male voice, “Innovation and collaboration will be required
with innovative partnerships.” I hear
my own voice whispering “blah, blah,
blah,” in my neighbor Bill Hedden’s
ear. Bill, who like me, lives in Castle
Valley, Utah, is the executive director
of the Grand Canyon Trust, responsible for one of the largest ranches in the
Colorado Plateau, the 850,000-acre
Kane Ranch on the border of the
Grand Canyon. He smiles, shakes his
head, and says nothing as the trumpets crescendo and we are told again,
“The Great Outdoors is for everyone.”
I
am not by nature a cynical person, but on this day, it is hard not
to think back to the Bush-Cheney
Administration, which had no hesitation about laying out its oil and gas
agenda in bold terms. Secretary of the
Interior Gale Norton spoke
unabashedly about America’s need
for energy independence and argued
unapologetically that the natural
resources held within public lands
must be extracted by whatever means
possible, from Wyoming to the
Dakotas to Colorado and Utah to the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Norton’s public mantra may not
have been “Drill, Baby, Drill,” but
every employee who worked for the
Bureau of Land Management knew
that the Bush-Cheney priority for
public lands was to accommodate,
support, and supply private access on
public lands to coal companies, oil
and gas companies, and those
extracting coal bed methane gas from
family farms and ranches in the interior West, regardless of how it used
and fouled precious groundwater.
One only had to visit the once wild
country at the base of the Wind River
Mountains in Sweetwater County,
Wyoming, to witness the oil drilling
that utilized the chemical fracking
process that later left close to 100
wells contaminated with benzene.
Their language was neither lame
nor limp, but confident and aggressive in their right to exploit, extract,
and export our natural resources for
the common good in the face of terror. Wildlands took a hit while oil
companies got richer. Both Bush and
Cheney spoke with the zealotry of
patriots dressed in their own black
suits tailor-made from the oil that
brought them into power.
The video on the Great Outdoors
ends. President Obama emerges on
stage. The atmosphere is electric. We
stand. We clap. I am taking pictures
of our President with my Blackberry
held high above my head. He raises
his hands for us to stop. We obey and
sit down.
President Obama speaks of a commitment to America’s Treasured
Landscapes. Unlike Teddy Roosevelt,
who was a legendary conservationist
and hunter, he says, “I will probably
never shoot a bear, that’s a fair bet,
but I do intend to enhance this legacy, a legacy passed down one generation to the next.”
He pauses.
“I signed a Public Lands Act,
The Progressive
◆
23
5/4/10
8:47 PM
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whereby two million acres of
wilderness and 1,000 miles of scenic
rivers and three national parks were
protected.”
He pauses again.
“But we must also adapt our
strategies to meet the challenges of
our time: climate change and pollution.”
The President comments on how
there are 1,600 land trusts in America that have protected ten million
acres of private lands and working
landscapes. How the Farm Service
Agency has protected another thirty
million acres of lands. “This collaborative spirit is at the heart of the
Great Outdoors Initiative,” he says.
Then he rolls out Salazar’s Great
Outdoors Listening Tour, which, the
President tells us, will “collect the
best ideas that come out of our communities.”
He outlines his Administration’s
main points of focus that would
build on what has already been done:
1) We are committed to reconnecting Americans to rivers and
waterways and other outdoor landscapes.
2) We will help build upon successful local conservation approaches
and determine how the federal government can best support them. We
will listen to local, state, and tribal
governments. We will work with
farmers and ranchers who care about
taking care of their lands as stewards.
3) We will use science-based management to restore and protect lands
and waters.
4) We are committed to fostering
a new generation of parks in urban
landscapes.
5) We believe this Great Outdoors
Initative will spur economic growth,
creating green jobs as was done in the
Depression through the CCC, be it
in forest restoration or recreation.
“Even in times of crisis,” the President says, “we are compelled to take
the long view on behalf of our natural heritage.”
He signs a memorandum on the
Great Outdoors Initiative, shakes
26
◆
June 2010
Page 26
hands with the government officials
present, gives Salazar a hug, and then
exits the stage.
F
or the next two hours, we listen to
two panels, one on working landscapes, moderated by Vilsack, and
the other panel on public lands,
moderated by Salazar. All participants are thoughtful and polite.
Some are even visionary, such as
Mayor Cory Booker of Newark, New
Jersey, who speaks of “the powerful
disconnect” between his constituents
and the environment, the challenge
The conservation of
public lands is not a
priority with
President Obama.
His environmental focus
is on passing an
energy bill.
of showing ways a connection to the
land will significantly change and
enhance their lives.
When Jaime Pinkham, a member
of the Nez Perce tribe and vice president of the Archibald Bush Foundation, mentions the fourteen million
hunters in America, Mayor Booker
says, “Hmmm, maybe if I can introduce wildlife into my city parks in
Newark, perhaps I can get people to
shoot the animals instead of each
other.”
It feels good to laugh, a release
from all the good behavior.
And then, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico stands up and
acts like a coyote that has been caged
and then suddenly released. He
speaks passionately about the hard
issues, the issues no one has dared to
touch. It is a brave and, at times,
shocking speech.
“We need to expand our wilderness systems and national parks and
monuments,” he says. “We need to
protect wildlife by expanding wildlife
corridors and connect to the larger
lands to avoid habitat fragmentation.”
He asks for full funding of the
Land and Water Conservation
Fund. And he takes on the advocates
of growth.
“We must stop the building of
new roads and unbridled development,” he says. “We have to develop
strategies of resilience to protect the
wildest lands from degradation.”
Above all, he stresses the urgency
of the moment. “This is not a
decade-long project,” he says. “It has
to happen now. . . . I propose an
Omnibus Wilderness Bill that moves
ahead on the expanded national
parks and monuments plan.”
Finally, someone dares to speak
the truth.
Salazar stands up in the midst of
roaring applause and says, “Well,
Governor, I agree with most everything you said, but then, you’ve never
been shy to say what’s on your
mind.”
A well-known powerbroker within
the environmental movement, sitting
behind me, leans forward and says,
“Well, there’s some red meat for you
faithful.” I answer: “It’s not about red
meat for the faithful, it’s about speaking in specific terms with a call for
bold action with a long-term vision.”
C
all me cranky, but as a Westerner, these issues are not abstractions; they are at the very heart of our
lives as we watch pronghorn antelope
unable to migrate from Pinedale,
Wyoming, to Jackson Hole because
their ancestral routes, open for 6,000
years, are now blocked by oil and gas
extraction and development. Wilderness is not an idea but a place, and we
5/4/10
know these places by name. Meanwhile, off-road vehicles are ripping
into fragile desert terrain that then
creates red dirt tornados as erosion
deepens in the face of drought and
climate change.
Just look down on the mountain
peaks when flying from Denver to
Grand Junction and notice the dirt
blown in on glaciers that accelerates
snowmelt. Water in the West is
scarce, but that doesn’t concern the
oil and gas companies as they continue to use millions of gallons of water
in the fracking processes flushed with
chemicals that eventually find their
way into local wells at the expense of
residents’ health.
At lunch, I thank Secretary Salazar
for withdrawing seventy-seven leases
from the oil and gas sales set in place
by the Bush-Cheney Administration
in October 2008. Most of these leases were parcels of land adjacent to
Arches and Canyonlands National
Parks, with other parcels located near
Desolation Canyon, Dinosaur
National Monument, and wilderness
study areas inside Nine Mile Canyon,
where miles of galleries of ancient
rock art appear on canyon walls. By
withdrawing the leases, Salazar made
a crucial gesture to protect hundreds
of thousands of acres of wild lands
with wilderness character against
development.
Salazar seems serious in his desire
and commitment to creating a
diverse constituency for “the treasured landscapes” of America. He
seems to want to leave a legacy of
protected wildlands because he carries a love and longing for what they
bring to the human spirit. He seems
to have a good and generous heart.
He seems to hold a deep regard for
the land that is rooted in his own
agrarian background.
But is he strong enough to fight
for the big changes Richardson outlined, especially as this White
House advises him to slow down on
his conservation agenda? This
Administration doesn’t want any
more controversy from the radical
8:48 PM
Page 27
right. The conservation of public
lands is not a priority with President
Obama, who is facing two wars and a
sick economy with millions of Americans out of work. His environmental
focus is on passing an energy bill.
And here is the irony for the
White House. Without the protection of America’s public lands, especially the last large remaining ecosystems in the Colorado Plateau and
Rocky Mountains, we won’t have the
carbon sinks needed to offset climate
change. Water storage alone in our
alpine watersheds needs protection,
as do animals like beavers, which,
through their dam building, slow the
water down, cool it, and allow it to
seep into and saturate the soils below.
If we can’t come up with the collaborative spirit and hard thinking to figure out the best uses of our public
lands, we won’t be able to move
toward a sustainable green future.
O
n Monday, April 26, ten days
after the White House Conference on America’s Great
Outdoors, Salazar, sans his white
cowboy hat, came to Utah, making
Salt Lake City his first stop on his
national listening tour. The first
question to be asked is: Who is he listening to? He met with Governor
Gary Herbert and his Balanced
Resource Council at the state capitol.
This council is anything but balanced, with no environmentalist sitting at the table. The secretary
announced that he is listening to
Utahns’ complaints and “eager to
work out compromises on roads,
national monuments, endangered
species,” and other contentious
issues.
Secondly, Salazar stated to Governor Herbert that President Obama
would not use his authority under
the Antiquities Act to establish any
national monuments without local
permission (which means there will
not be any). Two wild areas void of
protection in Utah are under consideration: the San Rafael Swell and
Cedar Mesa. This means that basical-
ly Salazar gave Utah’s governor veto
power over the President of the United States’ discretion to create new
national monuments, discretion that
almost every President has used since
passage of the Antiquities Act in
1906. Nobody looking back through
the lens of history has ever said making a national monument was a bad
idea, including those who organized
a cattle run through Grand Teton
National Monument to protest its
expansion into a national park. Former governor Cliff Hansen of
Wyoming, who led the brigade,
admitted years later that he had been
wrong.
Governor Herbert just signed legislation declaring that Utah can take
control of federal lands under eminent
domain now, even though the lands
are the domain of the Department of
the Interior. This is craziness. These
are public lands, America’s commons,
now given over to the right fringe, the
loud-mouth tea partiers who have
managed to intimidate a man who
wears a white cowboy hat with an ear
open toward unity.
And that’s not all. The Obama
Administration under the leadership
of Ken Salazar has defended and
implemented the atrocious Bush land
management plans affecting eleven
million acres that opened vast portions of southern Utah to off-road
vehicles and energy development.
Obama and Salazar have refused to
accept their legal authority to establish and protect new wilderness study
areas, authority that had been recognized and utilized by Republican and
Democratic Administrations until
George Bush and Dick Cheney’s
regime.
Salazar has also refused to overturn
the “No Wild Settlement” policy set
in motion by former Utah governor
Michael O. Leavitt and Gale Norton
in 2003, behind closed doors. By
accepting this policy, Salazar now
supports undercutting the authority
of the Department of the Interior’s
ability to reassess and reinventory
those wildlands with wilderness charThe Progressive
◆
27
5/4/10
8:48 PM
acter to be placed under interim protection until a wilderness designation
can be made.
Salazar had the opportunity to
change this policy. Instead, he has
chosen to let this anti-wilderness policy stand.
Lastly, on day one of his national
listening tour to create The Great
Outdoors Initiative, Salazar disavowed America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act that would protect more
than nine million acres of Utah’s
wildlands. This Act before Congress
now has more than 100 sponsors in
both the House and the Senate led by
Representative Maurice Hinchey and
Senator Richard Durbin. Salazar said,
“I do not plan on making any wilderness or monument without local support. . . . America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act is the wrong way to go. . . .
I prefer the county by county
approach.”
In a few short hours in Salt Lake
City, Salazar blew new life into the
Page 28
Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s.
Why now would county commissioners in the reddest state in the
Union even think about coming to
the table to talk to conservationists about a collaborative approach to
wilderness? The power has just been
handed over to them. With local
control, there will be no wilderness
bills or monument designations.
Salazar may have forgotten that
while local support is important,
these are not just Utah lands, these
are America’s lands.
One of the environmental activists
at the gathering with Salazar said, “I
was spoken at, not spoken to. So
much for a listening tour.”
This saddens me. I want to support Secretary Salazar. I want to
believe in his intentions to create a
broad-based constituency for America’s Treasured Landscapes. But listening to only the radical right and compromising the core values inherent in
public lands is a sign not of strength
Philip Smucker
but of weakness when it comes to
visionary leadership. It is a shortterm hand-off to a vocal few at the
expense of both the land and its
rightful stewards, all American citizens for whom wilderness is a deeply
held value, as we heard at the first
conservation gathering at the White
House in the twenty-first century.
I want to stand with Salazar. But
as of this moment, I cannot. How sad
that what the conservation community in this country managed to fight
off—bad public lands policies initiated within George W. Bush’s Administration—Salazar gave away all by
himself. If this is the kind of public
lands policy that is being established
by our own “progressive” Administration, friendly to environmental concerns, we are in trouble.
If I were a grizzly bear or coyote or
a Utah prairie dog, I would take
cover. The only unity I see in Salazar’s
vision of community is retreat from
◆
protection of our public lands.
D. R. Burgess
My Brother,
My Enemy
The World for Ransom
America and the Battle of Ideas
across the Islamic World
Piracy Is Terrorism,
Terrorism is Piracy
240 pp / HC / $25.98
ISBN 978-1-59102-704-1
345 pp (Photos) / HC / $26.00
ISBN 978-1-61614-184-4
“My Brother, My Enemy is a riveting, firsthand account of the war on terror—and
what has gone wrong with it—since 9/11.
Philip Smucker has met, talked to, and even
lived with Jihadists from Yemen to Iraq,
Timbuktu to Waziristan. He tells the story
of what happens when America goes abroad
‘in search of monsters to destroy.’”
—Paul Wood, BBC Mideast
Correspondent, Jerusalem
“With a writer’s passion and a
historian’s precision, D.R. Burgess
has written about piracy in a way
that illuminates how deeply it has
always intersected with American
history, and how relevant it
remains as Americans continue to
explore the frightening world that
lies just offshore.”
—Ted Widmer, Beatrice
and Julio Mario Santo Domingo
director and librarian, John
Carter Brown Library
World Perspectives from Prometheus Books
Prometheus Books
28
◆
June 2010
Toll Free: 800-421-0351 / www.prometheusbooks.com
Lydersen 6.2010:FeatureD 12.2005x
5/4/10
8:52 PM
Page 29
By Kari Lydersen
Illustration by Edward Kinsella
Patently Unjust:
No Company Should
Own the Breast Cancer Gene
J
OANNA RUDNICK WANTED
to be a health reporter. When she
began a master’s program in science
......journalism at New York University in
2000, her goal was to explore how medical advances affect patients and policy.
Little did Rudnick know how personal this mission would soon become.
Shortly after returning from a trip to India in
2001, she got a call from her older sister, Lisa, asking
nonchalantly, “Have you heard about the test?” Lisa
is a mammographer who spends her days diagnosing
breast cancer. Their mother, Cookie, was diagnosed
with ovarian cancer at age forty-three, and survived
the often-deadly disease. There is an extensive history
of ovarian cancer on Cookie’s father’s side of the family and of breast cancer on Cookie’s mother’s side.
The test Lisa was referring to is for a mutation on
the genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 (named
simply for BReast CAncer). Women with harmful
mutations on these genes are five times more likely to
develop breast cancer than a woman who does not
have such a mutation and ten to thirty times more
likely to develop ovarian cancer. The Rudnicks are
Ashkenazi Jews (of European descent)—a group at
particularly high risk for the mutation and hence the
cancers. Doctors told Joanna that she might have as
high as an 80 or 90 percent risk of breast cancer.
Rudnick’s mother found a genetic counselor in
Kari Lydersen is a freelance writer in Chicago.
The Progressive
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8:52 PM
New York to do the test for Joanna,
and flew out to be with her when she
got the results. At dinner the night
before, a waiter remarked on how
similar Joanna and her mother
looked, and Joanna got the sinking
feeling that she did indeed have the
gene mutation. The next day, her
fears were confirmed. She collapsed
crying in the arms of her mother,
who was wracked with guilt at having
passed on the mutation.
That afternoon, Joanna went back
to work and tried to act as if nothing
had happened. But she had to start
considering her options. Many
women with the gene mutation opt
to have their breasts and/or ovaries
removed preemptively to greatly
reduce their cancer risk. She wanted
to have kids but was not in a serious
relationship at the time and hadn’t
felt any big rush. Suddenly it seemed
the clock was ticking.
After finishing her master’s,
Rudnick moved to Chicago and
began working for the acclaimed
independent documentary film
production company Kartemquin
Films. Kartemquin’s mission is to
“examine and critique society
through the stories of real people,”
taking on topics including disability, PTSD, immigration, and the
death penalty, its website states. (Its
best-known work may be Hoop
Dreams, the 1994 documentary
about two Chicago inner-city teens
with their eyes on the NBA.)
As Rudnick began to navigate the
world of living with a serious genetic
mutation and the looming decisions
it entailed, she naturally turned the
lens on herself. She embarked on
making the documentary In the Family, which eventually was nominated
for an Emmy. She filmed the most
intimate parts of her life: the promising beginning and sad deterioration
of a relationship, moments of fear
and loneliness, the torturous process
of deciding whether to have preemptive surgery, frank discussions about
how that would affect her sex life.
The project soon took on a much
30
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June 2010
Page 30
more political and socially conscious
focus.
In the course of her research, Rudnick learned that a Utah-based company called Myriad Genetics held
several patents on the BRCA genes
and any scientific use of them.
The more Rudnick met uninsured
or underinsured women having trouble affording the $3,000-plus BRCA
mutation test, the more concerned she
became about the patents and their
When filmmaker
Joanna Rudnik discovered
she had the breast cancer
gene, she naturally turned
the lens on herself.
ethical and practical implications.
Rudnick was also disturbed that
women could not typically get a second opinion, since only Myriad
offers the test in the United States.
“Women are actually making lifelong
decisions about removing body parts,
and they can’t get a second opinion,”
she tells me.
And in the bigger picture, she did
not like the idea that a company essentially owned the rights to her genes.
“That’s like patenting thumbs,” she
says in her documentary.
M
yriad is far from the only
patent holder on human
genes; about 20 percent of
the human genome is patented. This
basically means that only the patentholder can offer testing and other services related to a specific gene.
Patents currently cover genes related
to other diseases, including
Alzheimer’s, asthma, colon cancer,
muscular dystrophy, and spinal muscular atrophy, a hereditary disease
that kills children at a young age.
But a recent court victory may
change all that. The ACLU and the
nonprofit Public Patent Foundation
sued Myriad and the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office on behalf of individual plaintiffs with the gene mutation, leading geneticists, and such
organizations as the American Society for Clinical Pathology and American College of Medical Genetics.
The ACLU had for some time
been planning a lawsuit to challenge
the ethical and constitutional issues
raised by gene patents. It chose the
BRCA genes because breast cancer
impacts so many Americans and
because Myriad has been aggressive
in guarding its intellectual property—filing several patent infringement lawsuits and sending cease and
desist letters to universities.
It is illegal to patent a product of
nature, but the patent office’s policy
was that genes can be patented if they
are “isolated from their natural state
and purified.” The ACLU and the
plaintiffs argued that genes—even
removed from the body and “purified”—are clearly products of nature
and hence shouldn’t be patented.
Dr. Mark H. Stoler, president of the
American Society for Clinical Pathology, termed “specious” Myriad’s argument about isolated genetic sequences
being different from “natural” genes.
“They didn’t change the
sequence,” he said. “You can’t patent
gold, even though you purify and isolate it. It’s not an argument that holds
water. They did a lot of work, but it
wasn’t all their work—they didn’t
invent sequencing, they didn’t invent
DNA isolation procedures. The people who invented those procedures
don’t have patents on them.”
Stoler and Rudnick point out that
5/4/10
significant federal dollars have gone
toward the BRCA research, which
made the test possible. “That’s taxpayer money,” says Rudnick.
The ACLU was also concerned
that since only Myriad offers the test
commercially, it controls the repository of demographic and other data
revealed by the test that, if widely
analyzed, could provide more insight
into the genes and cancers.
“When one company controls that
kind of information, it really downstream negatively affects the patients
because they don’t benefit from the
research that would have been done
otherwise,” says Sandra Park, staff
attorney for the ACLU’s Women’s
Rights Project. “And there’s also the
cost—if there were no patents, certainly there would be labs offering
this testing at low or no cost.”
Myriad and other biotech companies countered that patents and the
finite exclusivity they offer are necessary to provide the financial incentive
for the expensive development of
drugs and tests. Myriad said that
without the patent, the company
would not have had the incentive to
create and refine the test and push
insurance companies to cover it.
For In the Family, Rudnick interviewed Myriad founder Mark Skolnick.
“The facts are that women are getting tested, and their lives are being
saved, and I guarantee you they
would not be being tested if it weren’t
for Myriad,” Skolnick said, informing Rudnick that she herself would
never have been tested if it weren’t for
Myriad’s work.
She asked him why the test is so
expensive and whether the price will
come down.
“In the U.S. what you charge for a
test is a complex equation of what it
costs you to do it and what people
will pay,” he said, adding that he
hoped he could lower the price soon.
B
ut a federal judge didn’t buy
Myriad’s arguments. In his
March 29 decision, Judge
Robert W. Sweet concluded that
8:52 PM
Page 31
actions Myriad claimed were “transforming” natural DNA into something different were actually merely
“data-gathering steps.” He ruled
Myriad’s patents failed the legal test
necessary to categorize something
derived from nature as patentable.
“The patents issued by the
USPTO are directed to a law of
nature and therefore were improperly granted,” Sweet wrote. “DNA
represents the physical embodiment
In March, a judge
invalidated the patents
on the gene. “It’s an
incredible victory,”
says Rudnik.
of biological information, distinct in
its essential characteristics from any
other chemical found in nature. . . .
DNA’s existence in an ‘isolated’
form alters neither this fundamental
quality of DNA as it exists in the
body nor the information it
encodes. Therefore, the patents at
issue directed to ‘isolated DNA’ containing sequences found in nature
are unsustainable as a matter of law
and are deemed unpatentable subject matter.”
Rudnick takes great comfort in the
judge’s ruling.
“It’s an incredible victory for all of
the families living with BRCA, for
the scientists and physicians working
to improve the lives of these families,
and for the advancement of personalized medicine,” she says. “I know
there is a long road ahead with this
case, but we are going to keep on
fighting, and I believe we have the
public on our side.”
I
n the first months after testing
positive for the BRCA mutation,
Rudnick felt “flawed, marked,
stigmatized,” she says. There were
days she wished she had never gotten
the test and the burden of knowledge
it entailed. But she came to feel
empowered by the information,
hence her insistence that all women
have access to the test and related
counseling and care. She has not had
preemptive surgery but plans to by
age forty at the latest. If she hasn’t
had kids by that point, she may freeze
her eggs for in vitro fertilization.
Meanwhile, she maintains a strict
early detection and healthy living
regimen that has allowed the personal impact of the mutation to take a
backseat to her filmmaking career
and advocacy work.
This spring, she was in Kenya and
the Middle East producing a documentary about fashion photographer
Rick Guidotti, who left the runway
world to explore how those with
genetic abnormalities are impacted
by societal definitions of beauty.
Rudnick and Guidotti documented
the discrimination and stigma suffered by albinos in Kenya.
She is also producing Prisoner of
Her Past, about a Chicago Tribune
reporter’s investigation of his mother’s long-lasting PTSD symptoms
from her Holocaust childhood.
Rudnick says knowing about her
gene mutation has ultimately
helped her grow in her life and
work. That motivates her to make
sure other women at risk have the
same opportunity.
“Now I think the information is a
gift,” she said. “It can help me do
something to prolong my life and
avoid getting this disease. All women
should have that right, and it shouldn’t
be controlled by just one company.” ◆
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T H E P R O G R E S S I V E I N T E RV I E W
by Amitabh Pal
Elinor Ostrom
E
linor Ostrom is the first woman ever to win the Nobel
Prize in Economics in its forty-one-year history.
She made her name critiquing a concept in the social sciences called the
“tragedy of the commons.” This concept assumes that common property will
inevitably be overused and degraded in the absence of private ownership. Not
necessarily so, Ostrom said. She studied communally owned property in places
ranging from Southern California and coastal Maine to Nepal and Kenya.
“Self-organizing arrangements enable people to learn more about one another’s
needs and the ecology around them,” she writes in Understanding Institutional
Diversity. “Learning problem-solving skills . . . enables them to reach out and
more effectively examine far-reaching problems that affect all peoples living on
this Earth.”
It was this insight the Nobel Committee appreciated. “Elinor Ostrom has
challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed
Amitabh Pal is the managing editor of The Progressive.
The Progressive
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33
5/4/10
8:55 PM
Page 34
and should be either regulated by central authorities
or privatized,” it stated on awarding her the prize last
fall.
Ostrom received her Ph.D. in political science
from UCLA, and for more than three decades has
been teaching political science at Indiana University.
She is a past president of the American Political Science Association, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
I met Ostrom in February at the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. Her office is in a small
building in a residential-looking neighborhood. The
waiting area had artifacts from all over the world and
was adorned with a banner congratulating Ostrom on
her Nobel. At the end of the interview in a large conference room, we chatted about her visits to Nepal,
where she has studied how rural communities have
managed irrigation systems to the benefit of all.
Q:
What was your initial reaction to being awarded
the Nobel?
Elinor Ostrom: You don’t want me to scream now.
[Laughs.] I was surprised and thrilled. It was at 6:30
in the morning. It was an unbelievably wonderful
phone call.
Q: How has your life changed in the months after
that?
Ostrom: I was teaching in the fall. In fact, I taught
the day after the Nobel phone call. My students were
surprised I came, but I did. Since then, I’ve been very
busy.
Q: Could you summarize your work?
Ostrom: I’ve been interested in democratic governance at the very base. A lot of work has focused on
the national level—elections and all the rest—and
that’s very important. But if we keep our image of
democracy as having elected national officials, this
moves toward taking away the capabilities of people
at the smaller scale: from schools and parks to fisheries and irrigation systems. We need to be thinking
about governance at multiple scales.
Q: And what are the broader implications in terms
of policy-making?
Ostrom: We need to give people capabilities to adapt
systems to their local setting and their local norms,
and not presume that every local unit has the same set
of rules.
Q: How does that tie into the current debate about
climate change?
Ostrom: I advocate a polycentric approach. If we
change our life patterns, our health is better, the heating bills are less, the community doesn’t have to build
a new power plant, there can be very substantial positives at a small to medium scale. As more and more
people see that, we can do quite a bit. Still we need to
be challenging those guys up there: “C’mon, let’s get
the global agreements that we need.” But there is no
single solution.
Q: What’s your stance on privatization and property rights?
Ostrom: I don’t equate them. So, and in the Nobel
speech I state this very clearly, at an earlier juncture
we thought that property rights meant one right and
only one right: the right to sell. That was what I
learned in graduate school, and that was the dominant thinking. As we were doing massive analysis of
what people were doing out there in the field, we
found many people who did not have the right to sell
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34
◆
June 2010
5/4/10
8:55 PM
Page 35
but had managed well. Many groups are able—if they
can have management and decide who is in and who
is out—to do very well, even if they can’t sell. They
still have property rights.
Q: And how would that relate to your position on
privatization of common resources?
Ostrom: In some places, privatization has worked
well. I’m not anti-it. I’m anti-it as a panacea.
Q: Libertarians have tried to co-opt your work by
saying it shows the unsuitability of large-scale,
top-down economic arrangements.
Ostrom: A question is: How do we change some of
our governance arrangements so that we can have more
trust? We must have a court system, and that court system needs to be reliable and trustworthy. The important thing about large-scale is the court system. For
example, you would not have civil rights for people of
black origin in the United States but for a federal court
system and also the courage of Martin Luther King
and others—people who had the courage to challenge,
and a legal system where, at least in some places, the
right to challenge was legitimate.
We have a colleague working in Liberia. You had
thugs recruiting young kids until recently. Having a
legal system that does not allow thugs to capture kids,
torment them, and make them use weapons is very
important.
Q: What are you working on now?
Ostrom: I’m trying to understand that when we’re
dealing with social ecological systems—and this
would be large-scale forests, the oceans of the world,
climate change—how do we get a better framework
for analysis? Fortunately, we’d had a very major book
that we had been working on for several years, and it
was sent to Princeton University Press in January.
Q: Your getting the Nobel Prize in Economics is
significant in that you’re the first woman to win it.
Ostrom: I hope it’s more for my work than my gender. I was thrilled, I was honored as a woman, having
fought a lot of my life against the presumption that
women would not be professionals. I think that’s
changing. We now have more women graduate students in the social sciences. There were a number of
women last year who received the Nobel, and so that
was a good sign to the future. I don’t think it will be
very long, and there’ll be another woman. Maybe
◆
even this year. Who knows?
JOHANNA GOODMAN
“I’ve been interested
in democratic
governance at the
very base. We need
to be thinking about
governance at
multiple scales.”
The Progressive
◆
35
Mark 6.2010:FeatureD 12.2005x
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By Jason Mark
Overconsumption
Goes Viral
Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff
V
iewers of Fox News’s Glenn Beck have heard by now that the enemies of the Republic
are legion: the community group ACORN, the labor union SEIU, the Tides Foundation, former White House adviser Van Jones, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor, the Democratic Party, the liberals, the elites, Annie Leonard. . . .
Annie who? You might not have heard of her, but according to Beck—who dedicated two days of his show last year
to attacking her—Leonard is responsible for “propaganda going on in our schools.” She is, he said, spreading an anticapitalist message, “this indoctrination stuff ” that suggests, among other things, that our society’s consumerist frenzy
and the advertising industry’s constant manufacturing of wants have contributed to a social malaise.
The target of his ire is The Story of Stuff, a twenty-minute web video focused on the perils of overconsumption.
Leonard developed the film—which is nothing more than a rapid-fire narration by Leonard accompanied by cartoonJason Mark is a co-author of “Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots.” He is the editor of Earth Island
Journal and a co-manager of Alemany Farm in San Francisco.
36
◆
June 2010
5/4/10
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W
hat’s all the fuss about? The
Story of Stuff opens with
Leonard confessing to an
obsession with her iPod. From there,
she launches into a whirlwind tour of
the “materials economy”—the chain
of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal—
that explains where our stuff comes
from and where it ends up. Along the
way, she manages to touch upon the
United States’ bloated military budget, sweatshop abuses, global migration and urbanization, toxins in breast
milk, externalized costs, planned
obsolescence, and child labor in the
coltan mines of the Congo.
The video is pithy and funny: “If
it looks like the corporations are bigger than the government, it’s because
the corporations are bigger than the
government,” she deadpans. It’s kind
of like a unified field theory of environmental destruction, exploitation,
and imperialism delivered via a car-
toon. An Oxford University economics professor who has used the
movie in his classes says The Story of
Stuff “encloses the ocean in a bowl.”
Its synthesizing skill is a large part
of what has made the movie so
appealing.
“It provides a lot of entrée points
for people,” Leonard told me during
a conversation in her loft office in
Berkeley, California, which is fur-
nished with recycled wooden desks
and tables. When she speaks, her
words cascade out of her.
“I sort of think of it as a buffet—
come nibble wherever you want,” she
says. “The women like the shoe heel
parts, and the kids like the ‘you suck’
part, and the geeks like the computer
part. The indigenous people like the
‘these people don’t matter’ part. There’s
something for everybody there.”
The movie is successful because it
uncovers something hiding in plain
sight: the dangerous consequences of
our consumption-driven economy.
“I feel like we took the temperature
of the world and realized that people
are ready for a much deeper level of
conversation than mainstream groups
are putting out there,” Leonard says.
“The public has this growing sense of
dis-ease. People know things are
wrong, in such a variety of ways,
which are all so connected.”
Leonard remains mystified about
her film’s popularity, though.
“When we first made the film, we
thought that 50,000 [viewers] would
be a success,” she says. “I think we
got that in like four hours. We were
floored. We had no idea that was
going to happen.”
L
eonard became obsessed with
the materials supply chain in
college. She grew up outside of
Seattle, and her frugal mother rarely
threw anything out. It was a shock,
then, when she arrived at Barnard
College in Manhattan and, walking
to and from class, passed huge piles
of trash bags along the sidewalk.
Where did all the garbage come
from, she wondered, and where did it
go?
“I always told people, there’s a reason they make garbage bags black—
because they don’t want you checking
what’s inside,” she says. A field trip to
the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten
Island was a like “a bolt of lightning.”
She realized then that “we have developed this entire economy based on
trashing stuff. It just felt so fundamentally wrong.” Her senior thesis
was a case study on why New York
City shouldn’t burn its garbage.
After a brief graduate school stint,
Leonard landed a position at Greenpeace. The job was perfect, as it
allowed her to indulge her fascination
with garbage. For the next ten years,
she worked as an investigator on
Greenpeace’s toxics campaign, tracking the international shipment of
The Progressive
◆
37
ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF FREE RANGE STUDIOS
ish line drawings—with the modest
intention of getting “activists in the
progressive movement” to go “a little
deeper in our analysis.”
To Leonard’s great surprise, her
video has become an online phenomenon, picking up the kind of
viral energy usually reserved for the
latest Kim Kardashian gaffe. In the
six months following its December
2007 debut, some three million people viewed the movie. In total, nearly
eight million people have seen The
Story of Stuff online. More than
10,000 DVDs have been distributed
to classrooms and churches.
But with popularity often comes
notoriety, and its helpmate, controversy. The Competitive Enterprise Institute developed a detailed critique of
the film. At least one school district, in
Missoula, Montana, voted to prohibit
the film from being shown in its classes. Former CNN host Lou Dobbs
joined Beck in denouncing the video.
After the Beck episodes, Leonard, a
veteran environmental campaigner
accustomed to political combat,
received death threats.
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8:58 PM
Page 38
waste and trying to organize local emotionally powerful script that
communities in poorer nations to avoided jargon. Instead of starting
halt the importation of the industrial with garbage and working backward,
world’s cast-offs.
she took the listener through a clear
“I was very popular,” she says. storyline that starts by looking at
“Often U.S. environmentalists will go where our stuff comes from in the
to some other country and say, ‘You first place.
shouldn’t cut down your forests.’ But I
She then teamed up with Free
was warning, ‘Hey, my country is Range Studios—a left-leaning aniabout to dump toxic waste on you.’ ”
mation firm that had scored a major
The fast-paced work was incredibly hit with its anti-industrial agriculture
exciting. It was also risky: After expos- cartoon, The Meatrix—to make the
ing a well-connected Indian business- talk into a movie. When it was comman’s involvement with the improper pleted, the Free Range producers sugdisposal of hazardous wastes, she gested to Leonard that she might
received threats, and Greenpeace had want to consider forming some type
to hire a bodyguard for her.
of organization to channel viewers’
Leonard’s muckraking efforts and energy into political action. Leonard
a global network of allies helped lead was baffled by the suggestion. “I was
to the creation of the Basel Conven- like, ‘What do you mean? It’s just a
tion, an international agreement to twenty-minute cartoon.’ ”
reduce the transfer of hazardous
But the producers were on to
waste from rich countries to poorer something. During the video’s first
nations. (172 nations have ratified month online, it received so many
the agreement, with the United views that Leonard’s monthly fee for
States and Afghanistan as notable web hosting was $8,000. She had
holdouts.)
budgeted $400.
In the mid-nineties, Leonard left
he Story of Stuff has inspired a
Greenpeace to co-found GAIA—the “
lot of people, and I think a
Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance. It
big part of that is because
was about that time that Leonard
started to deliver a lecture (“much Annie is an inspiration,” says Lafcafunnier than the movie,” she says) dio Cortesi, a campaigner at Rainabout the chain of production and forest Action Network who has been
disposal. The speech was popular, but a close friend and housemate or
the presentation had one major neighbor of Leonard’s for more than
weakness: It was all facts, and very lit- twenty years. “She is the most enthusiastic person in the world. And she
tle emotion.
This problem became clear to gets people excited.”
“Overall, the environmental
Leonard during a year-long training
with the Rockwood Leadership Insti- movement has not done a good job
tute, a kind of incubator for up-and- of engaging people,” says Robert
coming progressives. After hearing Gass, who was one of the Rockwood
her materials economy stump speech trainers while Leonard was there.
during a Rockwood workshop, Eli “There has been too much of an
Pariser, one of the leaders of attempt to engage people through
Moveon.org, said to Leonard: “I have fear and statistics. And The Story of
no idea what you just said. . . . What’s Stuff engages the hearts and minds
a material? I have nothing to do with and spirit of people. It pulls people in
a way that a page of facts doesn’t.”
materials. I work on democracy.”
At the same time, the film is
“They challenged me to come
down from my head to my heart,” unapologetically smart.
“I think people can have a deeper
Leonard told me. By the end of the
Rockwood training, Leonard had conversation if we talk to them as
reworked her presentation into an adults, because they’re actually adults,”
T
38
◆
June 2010
she says. “One of the goals was to turn
the discourse up, and it worked.”
On the eve of the climate negotiations in Copenhagen, she released a
new film called The Story of Cap and
Trade. (This is just one in a forthcoming series that will include The Story of
Bottled Water and The Story of Electronics, along with a book published
this spring by Simon & Schuster.)
In the new movie, she says that
using the market to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions is a “carbon racket” that
would lead to just another speculative
bubble that “won’t just take down the
stock market, it could take down
everything.” Prominent environmentalists called the film a hit-job. David
Roberts of the influential green web
magazine Grist.org wrote, “There’s no
plausible story about power here, and
no real effort to tell one. . . . It’s irresponsible.” The general counsel of
Environmental Defense, a major cap
and trade backer, called Leonard’s
office to ask for a meeting.
“The reason this has been a
tougher issue is because the people
with different viewpoints aren’t necessarily jerks,” she told me, saying
The Story of Cap and Trade was
designed to shift the center of climate
politics to the left, and away from a
strategy that many greens privately
concede is flawed.
“I’ve talked to a bunch of them
who don’t necessarily believe in carbon trading,” she says. “But I think
that either they’ve had their sense of
political possibility beaten out of
them by eight years of the Bush
Administration, or they’re afraid of
appearing radical. They want to
appear reasonable.”
Leonard, in contrast, is fearless, a
trait that, beyond everything else, is
the source of her appeal.
“I understand that in politics you
have to make compromises, but at
some point you compromise so much
that your solution isn’t a solution anymore,” she says at the end of our conversation. “Where I am right now, I
am not into making compromises. I
◆
don’t need to do it for my job.”
Poem 6.2010:Poem 12.2005
5/4/10
8:59 PM
Page 39
Poem
Bad Crowd
Scared or loyal or scheming his pilgrimage
Like the day she found a gulf in her life
Back to park shadows where junkies supplicate
Where the TV once stood. So she translates
Small bags and the purity therein, he won’t
The repercussions politely listed by law clerks
Yield the name like a synonym for the face
Into slaps about his head, knowing it won’t work,
That goes with the hand proposing them,
That there’s a code of silence about despair,
The only thing he owns not yet hocked or soiled
Why she avoids friends and family, whispers
Out of habit. The prosecutor dangles
Now but with conviction about the bastards
A plea bargain better than any deal
Who did this to her world. She gives it
In North Philly and when her son says no
To him straight, he loves the wrong kind of people,
It sends chills, makes her sick. Forget pushers
And he confesses—with a door slam’s dumb truth,
And their ilk, vampires, slavers. Forget heroin,
Absence, need in human form, the fallow lot
That powdered whore, what it does wholesale
Where he’s found breathing, though barely—so do you.
To the body. It’s him as an old snapshot
Of childish innocence, her own humble dreams
—David Moolten
That corrupt and absolutely. Desperate, she’s tried
Detox, methadone, even filched blank scripts
From the clinic he could forge for clean needles.
They want just one of his slow murderers,
And she’d seen one, a centipede scar crawling
Down his shoulder. She’d followed her son, watched them
Hug-slap each other’s backs, two boys, two drafts
Of the same futile effort to get it right.
He puts on soft eyes, the nice shirt she bought
Because none of his did him justice, conscious
He’s a living fix for her moods, her sorrows
All these sixteen years and she loses patience,
David Moolten works for the Red Cross in Philadelphia. His first book, “Plums & Ashes,” won the 1994 Samuel
French Morse Poetry Prize. A second volume, “Especially Then,” was published in 2005. His 2009 book, “Primitive
Mood,” won the T. S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press.
The Progressive
◆
39
Zirin 6.2010:Conniff 12.2005x
5/4/10
9:05 PM
Page 40
Edge of Sports Dave Zirin
Boycott the Diamondbacks
Gonna find a way
Make the state pay
Lookin’ for the day
Hard as it seems
This ain’t no damn
dream
Gotta know what I mean
It’s team against team
—Public Enemy,
“By the Time I Get to Arizona”
mode. We do, however, live in baseball cities where the Arizona Diamondbacks come to play.
When they arrive in my hometown in D.C., my back will be
turned, and my television will be off.
This is not merely because they happen to be the team from Arizona.
The D-backs organization is a primary funder of the state Republican
Party, which has driven the measure
T
his will be the last column I
write about the Arizona Diamondbacks in the foreseeable
future. For me, they do not exist.
They will continue to not exist in
my mind as long as the horribly
named “Support Our Law
Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act” remains law in Arizona. This law has brought echoes
of apartheid to the state.
The law makes it a crime to
walk the streets without clutching
your passport, green card, visa, or
state ID. It not only empowers but
absolutely requires cops to
demand paperwork if they so
much as suspect a person of being
undocumented. A citizen can, in
fact, sue any police officer they see
not harassing suspected immigrants. The bill would also make it
a class one misdemeanor for anyone to “pick up passengers for work”
if their vehicle blocks traffic. And it
makes a second violation of any
aspect of the law a felony.
In response, Representative Raul
Grijalva, who’s from Arizona itself, has
called for a national boycott against
the state. He got so many hateful
threats during the week the bill
became law that he had to close his
Arizona offices at noon that Friday.
Many of us aren’t in either the
imminent vacation or retirement
Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s
History of Sports in the United States.”
40
◆
June 2010
Kendricks follow in the footsteps of
team founder and former owner Jerry
Colangelo. Colangelo, along with
other baseball executives and ex-players, launched a group called Battin’
1000: a national campaign that uses
baseball memorabilia to raise funds
for a Campus for Life, the largest
anti-choice student network in the
country. Colangelo was also deputy
chair of Bush/Cheney 2004 in Arizona, and his deep pockets created
what was called the Presidential
Prayer Team—a private evangelical
group that claims to have signed
up more than one million people
to drop to their knees and pray
daily for Bush.
Under Colangelo, John McCain’s family also owned a piece of
the team. The former maverick
said before the bill’s passage that he
“understood” why it was popular
because “the drivers of cars with
illegals in it are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway.”
T
PATRICK MARTINEZ
through the legislature.
As the official Arizona Diamondbacks boycott call states, “In 2010,
the National Republican Senatorial
Committee’s third highest Contributor was the [executives of the] Arizona
Diamondbacks, who gave $121,600;
furthermore, they also contributed
$129,500, which ranked as the eighteenth highest contribution to the
Republican Party Committee.” The
team’s big boss, Ken Kendrick, and
his family members, E. G. Kendrick
Sr. and Randy Kendrick, made contributions to the Republicans totaling
a staggering $1,023,527. The
he Diamondbacks’ owners
have every right to their politics, and if we policed the political
proclivities of every owner’s box
there might not be anyone left to
root for (except for the Green Bay
Packers, who don’t have an owner’s
box). But this is different. The law is
an open invitation to racial profiling
and harassment. The boycott call is
coming from inside the state.
If the owners of the Diamondbacks want to underwrite an ugly
edge of bigotry, we should raise our
collective sporting fists against them.
A boycott is also an expression of solidarity with Diamondback players
such as Juan Gutiérrez, Gerardo
Parra, and Rodrigo Lopez. They
shouldn’t be put in a position where
they’re cheered on the playing field
and then asked for their papers when
◆
the uniform comes off.
Durst 6.2010:Durst 12.2005x
5/4/10
9:07 PM
Page 41
Off the Map Will Durst
The Democrats’ Secret Weapon
I
t may be the best
news the Democrats
have received all year.
Not the passage of
health care reform.
Not their poll numbers climbing out of a hole deeper
than the chasm inside of Dick
Cheney’s heart.
No, the best news the Democrats
have gotten all year is that the head of
the Republican National Committee
is likely to keep his job. The
Democrats have a secret weapon, and
his name is Michael Steele.
Steele is not just a major
post in the GOP big tent
movement, he’s the post, the
flaps, the ties, and the canvas.
Party leaders are not going to
dismiss the first African
American chairman of the
RNC. During an election
year. Most of the places he
visits, he’s not just the only
black guy in the room, he is
often the only black guy
admitted to the grounds
without a police escort.
He got hired in the wake
of Barack Obama altering
the rules of order because if
America wanted a black guy
to run things, then, by
God, the Republicans were
going to make sure they didn’t lag
behind in the “We Got the Coolest
African American in Politics Sweepstakes.” The big difference is that the
nation got a superintelligent hardworking political animal, and the
Republicans got somebody who too
perfectly exemplified their philoso-
Will Durst is a San Francisco-based
political comic who often writes. This
being a conspicuous example. His new
CD, “Raging Moderate” from StandUp Records, is now available on both
iTunes and Amazon.
phy of “Me First!”
Right out of the box, the new
RNC chairman ruffled enough feathers to stuff a Hilton full of pillowcases. Going on D. L. Hughley’s CNN
show in February, he referred to Rush
Limbaugh as both “an entertainer”
and “incendiary.” Rush’s fans—the
vocal, visible, thick, and dense end of
the Republican base—went freaking
crazy, bulging the Internet like a belly
explosion in a cartoon. The scorching
outrage from dittoheads forced Steele
to backtrack faster than a paddle ball
PAUL CORIO
on an elastic string. And the mea culpas followed.
First he had to get down on hands
and knees and beg the poster-boyfor-Oxycontin’s forgiveness. To say
that Rush was less than gracious is
like implying that goose fat makes for
substandard bicycle spokes. Further
supplication demanded by the Fox
News Nation required that Steele kiss
Rush’s ring. Some reports indicate
Rush didn’t bother taking it out of his
back pocket.
Since then, Steele’s inclination to
live and travel above his pay grade,
and a penchant for not tempering
remarks with—how do you say?—
forethought, have rankled party regulars with a frequency approaching
daily basis.
He told The Washington Times the
GOP needed to “uptick our image
with everyone, including one-armed
midgets,” angering all shapes and
sizes. When GOP cognoscenti heard
about Steele’s desire to buy a private
jet with party money, many heads
slowly shook. That sort of frivolity is
not to be wasted on the help.
When it was reported an
RNC staffer was reimbursed for $2,000 spent at a
Los Angeles club called
Voyeur, all hell broke loose.
Prospective donors demanded to know why party
money was being spent at a
Hollywood strip and fetish
club, and they weren’t taking “excellent appetizers” as
an answer. And who can
blame them? Most Republican bigwigs understand
paying for lap dances, just
not paying for somebody
else’s lap dances.
Most damaging was an
internal investigation finding the party’s national governing body is losing money
on its major donors’ fundraising program, spending a dime more for
every dollar raised. Two grand at a
strip club is one thing, but not bringing in cash: Now them’s fighting
words.
Some party luminaries are so dismayed with Steele’s performance
they’re creating new 527s as a way to
funnel GOP donations outside his
grasp. Karl Rove is one of those architects. In the Republican Party, when
Karl Rove is not on your side, you
better get used to your own company.
◆
On or off a private jet.
The Progressive
◆
41
Books 6.2010:Books 12.2005x
5/4/10
9:10 PM
Page 42
Books
Free Market Meltdown
ECONned: How Unenlightened
Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism
By Yves Smith
Palgrave Macmillan. 362 pages. $30.
By Ruth Conniff
W
hy are so many of the best
Wall Street watchdogs
women? From regulator
Brooksley Born, who sounded the
alarm about the derivatives shell
game, to lawyer and TARP overseer
Elizabeth Warren, to financial journalist Bethany McLean, who exposed
Enron, add the name Yves Smith, a
twenty-five-year veteran of the financial services industry, including stints
at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey &
Co., and the creator of the finance
blog Naked Capitalism. Smith, like
Born, Warren, and McLean, is a brilliant financial analyst who has made
a practice of pointing out when the
smartest guys in the room aren’t so
smart after all.
One hint at a reason for women’s
overrepresentation among Wall Street’s
detractors appears early in Smith’s new
book, ECONned: How Unenlightened
Self Interest Undermined Democracy
and Corrupted Capitalism.
She describes Yale economist
Robert Shiller recounting how, as a
member of the economic advisory
panel to the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York, he felt the need to “softpedal his concerns about the developing real estate bubble: ‘In my position on the panel, I felt the need to
use restraint. While I warned about
the bubbles I believed were developing in the stock and housing markets,
I did so very gently, and felt vulnerable expressing such quirky views.
42
◆
June 2010
In her first few chapters, Smith
gives a powerful indictment of neoclassical economics, and the mandarin class of economists who subscribe to this “Potemkin science, all
façade and no substance.”
“Leaders at the U.S. Treasury and
the Federal Reserve are still clinging
desperately to a failed orthodoxy that
in turn helped create and now serves
to justify an overly powerful and selfinterested financial services industry,”
she says.
In Chile and Russia, Smith writes,
neoliberal economics led to “a scramble by the wealthy and well-connected to seize what they could. The
result was not trickle-down prosperity, but dislocation, instability, and a
lower quality of life save for those at
the very top.”
AARON ROTH
Ruth Conniff is the political editor of
The Progressive.
Deviating too far from consensus
leaves one feeling potentially ostracized from the group, with the risk
that one may be terminated.’ ”
Maybe women, who don’t have
such a comfortable place at the table,
are more inclined to question economic group-think.
That is exactly what Smith does so
well in this book. Starting at the very
beginning, in straightforward but not
simplistic prose, she debunks everything you thought you knew about
economics, from the supply-anddemand graph to the conventional
wisdom that you should diversify
your investments.
Along the way, she also exposes
mainstream economists’ naive faith
in free trade, deregulation, and the
self-correcting nature of markets.
5/4/10
9:10 PM
In America, we are now experiencing the same process, since “regulationfree markets lead to honesty-free markets, which lead to quality-free
markets, which lead to market meltdown.”
The shocker is the inside poop
Smith delivers on how thoroughly
and outrageously corrupt the markets
really are.
Back in 1994 and 1995, long before the current financial crisis,
Bankers Trust was sued for preying on
high-profile clients, including Gibson
Greetings and Procter & Gamble.
These sophisticated corporations
had invested in the first generation of
complex derivatives. The products
were so arcane only Bankers Trust
could tell how they should be priced
and whether their clients won or lost
on their bets. There was no way to
get an independent analysis.
“The firms could have gotten
other bids, but that might have
annoyed Bankers Trust, and another
bank might not have provided a very
good price anyway,” Smith writes.
So the clients took Bankers Trust’s
word—and they got screwed. Gibson
made a trade worth between
$550,000 and $750,000. Bankers
Trust hid the profit and gave Gibson
$260,000. “The fact that Gibson had
closed out an initial, fairly simple
trade for much less than it was worth
told BT it had a sucker ready to be
fleeced,” she writes. “The bank went
on to lure Gibson into increasingly
complicated and risky trades, incurring a loss of $17.5 million, then
advising the firm to try to recover
that amount, only to report another
loss of $20.7 million.”
Procter took a similar battering
and pursued RICO charges. Bankers
Trust settled.
Smith quotes from tape recordings
of the bank produced in court:
“We set ’em up.”
“They would never know. They
would never be able to know how
much money was taken out of that,”
says one salesman. In reply: “Never,
no way, no way. . . . That’s the beau-
Page 43
ty of Bankers Trust.”
The objective was “to lure people
into the calm and just totally fuck ’em.”
The interesting thing about
Bankers Trust, as Smith so elegantly
explains, is the way it undercut the
basic assumptions that had governed
business dealings up to that point.
“Bankers Trust’s actions look
bizarre, beyond comprehension to a
Main Street businessman,” she
writes. “You don’t prey on your customers, at least if you plan on ending
up with something more enduring
than a fly-by-night scam. How did
Wall Street come to operate with
vastly different rules?”
Smith shows how free market ideology led directly to the current financial
crisis. The driving force of business
evolved from simple, old-fashioned
greed into the sociopathic culture of
looting we see on Wall Street today.
One overlooked factor in this evolution was the demise of the partnership
at investment houses. It used to be that
bankers had a personal stake in not
looting their own firms, since they
were personally liable. Today’s giant
corporate entities no longer operate
that way. Traders earn supersized
salaries and bonuses, and use highly
specialized skills on products their own
bosses don’t understand. Add to that
the pressure to turn a quick profit and
the lack of value in sustaining relationships either with clients or with their
own firms, and you have a recipe for
fraud and looting.
Firms that everyone regarded as
legitimate businesses were free to
behave like crazed predators, out to
rape and dismember their own clients
in the new, deregulated markets.
It was, to say the least, not the old,
white-shoe image of Wall Street.
Smith quotes ex-Morgan Stanley
derivatives salesman Frank Partnoy:
“I began to crave the sensation of
ripping someone’s face off,” Partnoy
says of his job. “At First Boston, I
never ripped a client’s face off, and I
certainly had not blown up anyone.
Now as I watched Morgan Stanley’s
derivatives salesmen in action, I
began to like the idea. Scarecrow [a
manager] and others encouraged me.
Morgan Stanley carefully cultivated
the urge to blast a client to
smithereens. It was no surprise I had
caught that fever so soon. Everyone
had caught it, particularly the most
senior managing directors.”
And yet the mandarins remained
blissfully, willfully oblivious. Here is
where Brooksley Born, the new head
of the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission (CFTC), makes a
cameo, having lunch with Alan
Greenspan around the time Morgan
Stanley was converting to “rip-yourface-off ” business practices. She
wanted to talk to Greenspan about
fraud. “But Greenspan refused to
believe that such behavior could ever
occur,” Smith writes. He told Born,
“A customer would realize he had
been treated badly and would find a
new broker.” Born was incredulous,
having seen how networks of conspirators could work. “Well, Brooksley,”
Greenspan said, “I guess you and I
will never agree about fraud.”
While Greenspan has had to
rethink that position, Robert Rubin,
Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner
are still drinking the Greenspan KoolAid, Smith points out. In 1997, Born
started trying to regulate derivatives,
including the now-infamous credit
default swaps. Greenspan and Rubin
went to Congress to bar her from acting until “more senior regulators”
could intervene. Congress “gave the
CFTC a stunning rebuke, blocking
the commission’s regulatory authority
for six months.” Born resigned, and
the “senior regulators” saw to it that
her agency’s powers were permanently
gutted.
Smith traces how, with the regulators’ blessing, the incentive to destroy
not only clients but the very institutions the bankers work for led to the
current crisis. The wheels are off the
free market wagon. Businesses not
only don’t act with enlightened selfinterest; they are willing to destroy
their own institutions by going so far
out on a limb, giant banks come
The Progressive
◆
43
5/4/10
9:10 PM
Page 44
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◆
June 2010
crashing down.
“For a host of reasons, the balance
of power has shifted entirely toward
the forces that encourage looting,”
Smith writes.
Looting 2.0, as Smith calls it, has
created “doomsday machines.” There
is no check on “systemically important” firms that are not allowed to
fail. Without regulation, without
criminal charges, these monsters continue their dangerous, fraudulent
practices to this day.
It’s no surprise that Smith concurs
with former IMF chief economist
Simon Johnson that the United States
is in the hands of financial oligarchs—
“a banana republic in denial.”
“A common emerging economy
road to ruin is that a successful cadre
of businessmen becomes more and
more powerful. Emboldened, they
make bigger gambles, recognizing
that they can likely fob off any bad
outcomes on to the government,”
Johnson says.
In the end, they will drive our
whole economy off the cliff.
S
mith holds out little hope for
the Obama Administration,
which has kept the same regulators who got us here in charge.
But she does hold out hope for
breaking the hammerlock of free
market orthodoxy that has held the
public in thrall and done so much
damage for decades now.
Free market ideology has served as
“a Trojan horse for a three-decade long
campaign to tear down the rules that
constrained the financial industry.”
Smith skewers both the “mathedup” pseudo-science of economics and
the testosterone-fueled boys’ club on
Wall Street. The result is an enlightening and tightly argued book. “Both
experts and charlatans rely on intimidation, such as the use of arcane
(even if useful) terminology and a
dismissive attitude to deter reasonable queries,” she writes.
Good on her for stepping up and
asking those reasonable questions that
are finally, belatedly, being heard. ◆
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5/4/10
9:11 PM
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◆
45
Hightower 6.2010:Durst 12.2005x
5/4/10
9:14 PM
Page 46
Vox Populist Jim Hightower
King Coal
B
y gollies, one
group in our country has what it takes!
One group has done
more than just strut
around at tea party rallies, barking loudly about nullification, secession, militias, and other
big-talk threats to stop federal intrusion into our lives and businesses.
This group has put the walk to the
talk, acting again and again to
restrain the reach of government so people can prosper.
And last month, the fates
delivered a fresh and forceful example of the benefits
that our society receives
from this group’s all-out
devotion to its “live free or
die” ethic.
Of course, twenty-nine
West Virginia coal miners
did actually have to die
because of the group’s success at hog-tying the feds—
but hey, the freedom to
prosper comes at a price.
Those twenty-nine miners suffered a terrible and
unnecessary death when
methane gas was allowed to
accumulate in the Upper
Big Branch mine.
“A tragedy,” wrote the media. “A
horrible accident,” decried politicians.
BS.
The fates did not blow up these
twenty-nine people. They are dead
because self-serving profiteers in the
coal industry have routinely used their
enormous political clout to fend off
commonsense safety regulations by
the big bad government, thus making
Jim Hightower produces The Hightower Lowdown newsletter and is the
author, with Susan DeMarco, of
“Swim Against the Current: Even a
Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow.”
46
◆
June 2010
these “accidents” inevitable. In the
case of Upper Big Branch, the profiteer is one of America’s biggest coal
corporations, Massey Energy Company, along with its rightwing, multimillionaire CEO, Don Blankenship.
King Coal, as the industry is
known both in Appalachia and on
Capitol Hill, deploys more than 100
Washington lobbyists and doles out
millions of dollars in campaign donations. All of this political firepower is
JEM SULLIVAN
used to sidetrack the simplest safety
measures and muzzle the federal
mine safety watchdog. How tight is
the muzzle? Deliberate violations of
safety rules that lead to deaths are
treated as misdemeanors!
Upper Big Branch has been cited
by the feds for more than 3,000
worker safety violations since 1995,
and its record of dangerous disregard
has gotten worse in recent years. Last
year, it had nearly 500 violations,
roughly double the number in 2008,
including ones that create life-threatening conditions for miners. Yet its
“punishment” was $168,393 in fines,
with no effective requirement to
improve conditions. This is chump
change to Massey, which had $104
million in profits last year.
In 2003, Blankenship blithely
declared that “we don’t pay much attention to violation count.” Indeed,
Upper Big Branch received fifty-three
fresh citations in March alone,
including problems with its mine
ventilation system, which is supposed
to prevent methane explosions. On
Monday morning, April 5,
federal inspectors issued
two more citations at Upper
Big Branch, then left. That
afternoon, the mine exploded.
In a radio interview,
Blankenship expressed his
bottom-line compassion for
the dead in these words:
“Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the
mining process.”
Such callousness is King
Coal’s calling card. After a
series of mine fatalities in
2006, for example, federal
regulators
considered
requiring better seals to
keep methane from seeping from one mining area
to another. The New York
Times reports that at a 2007 hearing
on the proposal, the president of the
Kentucky Coal Association demanded that officials ignore the pleas by
victims’ widows for new safety seals.
“Did you know that 750 people die
each year in the U.S. from eating
bad or ruined potato salad?” he
asked.
Astonishingly, federal regulators
under the Bush regime swallowed the
“bad potato salad” defense, sparing
this multibillion-dollar-a-year industry the minor expense of installing
better safety seals.
◆
Live free or die.
Co N
nt o
ra
ct
FirstST-Jitterbug Ad_6.2010:Layout 1
5/4/10
9:15 PM
Page 47
Finally, a cell phone
that’s… a phone!
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small I can’t see the numbers, much less push the right one. They all have cameras, computers and
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The cell phone that’s right for me. Sometimes I think the people who designed this phone and
the rate plans had me in mind. The phone fits easily in my pocket, but it flips open and reaches
from my mouth to my ear. The display is large and backlit, so I can actually see who is calling.
With a push of a button I can amplify the volume, and if I don’t know a number, I can simply
push one for a friendly, helpful operator that will look it up and even dial it for me. The
Jitterbug also reduces background noise, making the sound loud and clear. There’s even a dial tone,
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8888129277
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phone gets service virtually anywhere in the country.
Monthly Minutes
Monthly Rate
Operator Assistance
911 Access
Long Distance Calls
Voice Dial
Nationwide Coverage
Trial Period
50
100
$14.99
24/7
FREE
No add’l charge
FREE
Yes
30 days
$19.99
24/7
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No add’l charge
FREE
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30 days
Other plans available. Ask your Jitterbug expert for details.
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Order now
and receive a
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New Red
phone shown
Also available
in White and Graphite.
Call now and get a FREE GIFT. Try Jitterbug for 30 days and if you don't love it, just return it. Why wait, the Jitterbug comes
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answer your questions.
Jitterbug Cell Phone
Call now for our lowest price.
1-888-812-9277
www.jitterbugdirect.com
47429
Please mention promotional code 39860.
IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: All rate plans require the purchase of a Jitterbug phone and a one-time set up fee of $35.00. Coverage and service is not available everywhere. There are no additional fees to call Jitterbug’s 24-hour U.S.
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full price of the Jitterbug Phone will be refunded if it is returned within 30 days of purchase, in like-new condition, and with less than 30 minutes of usage. A Jitterbug Phone purchased from a retail location is subject to the return policy of that retail
location. The Jitterbug phone is created together with worldwide leader Samsung. Jitterbug is a registered trademark of GreatCall, Inc. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and its related entities. Copyright ©2010
GreatCall, Inc. Created together with worldwide leader Samsung. Copyright © 2010 by firstSTREET for Boomers and Beyond, Inc. All rights reserved.
Gift Subs Ad 6.2010:Layout 1
5/4/10
9:17 PM
Page 48
Wisdom
Inspiration
Energy
That’s what your friends or relatives will get when you give them a
gift subscription to The Progressive.
You’ll get their gratitude (and ours).
And it’s only $14.97 for a year’s worth of The Progressive.
That’s 68% off the newsstand price.
Please use the form below to send your gift, or visit
www.progressive.org.
FROM:
TO:
NAME (PLEASE PRINT)
NAME (PLEASE PRINT)
ADDRESS, APT.
ADDRESS, APT.
CITY
STATE
Give the gift of
The Progressive!
ZIP
CITY
F0FHA1
Return this
form to:
PO Box 433033,
Palm Coast, FL
32143
STATE
ZIP
❑ My payment is enclosed
❑ Credit card ➠ ❑ MasterCard ❑ Visa
CARD NUMBER
SIGNATURE
EXPIRATION DATE

By Matthew Rothschild

Transcription

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