Democrats Adopt Fossil Fuel Industry’s Plan On Climate During Highly Choreographed Platform Meeting

-by John Laesch

While there were some small wins by the Sanders representatives on the Democratic Platform, it remains far from the, “most progressive platform ever” as toted by the party. Unfortunately, I also saw the Democratic Party fail future generations when they adopted the fossil fuel industry’s plans to “mitigate” the climate crisis. Furthermore, the Biden representatives voted down multiple progressive platform pieces that might have moved voters to the polls in November. You can watch the entire 5-hour meeting here

WHAT AMENDMENTS...

Despite the organized process on camera, behind the curtain, the process was very undemocratic including the fact that platform members received information at the very last-minute, or not at all. I logged onto the virtual meeting an hour early as instructed by the DNC. The 200+ amendments that we were supposed to vote on were still not available to platform committee members. I sent an e-mail to the DNC secretary to see if it would be uploaded to the portal or to determine if I was doing something incorrectly. By 12:30, half an hour before the meeting started, I noticed that the platform amendments had been uploaded. I downloaded, printed, and started reading.

There were two categories of amendments. The bulk of amendments were listed under, “The Chair’s Amendments” and included almost 200 amendments that both campaigns agreed upon. I didn’t see any of my proposed amendments here.

The other category of amendments listed as “Amendments for consideration” were the amendments that would be discussed and actually voted on. I didn’t see my proposed amendments here either.

My primary amendment challenged the use of tax subsidies for fossil fuel companies that extracted the dirtiest and hardest to reach oil. I had submitted a total of 9 amendments on climate. Four of the nine were an effort to strip Democratic support for the fossil fuel industry’s plan that focuses on carbon capture and storage. I want to give credit to fellow climate activists, June Sekera and RL Miller for helping draft language and amendments. The primary amendment I was fighting for read:

I move to amend page 46, line 20 to bring back and improve upon a sentence from the 2016 Democratic Platform, “Democrats believe the tax code must reflect our commitment to a clean energy future by eliminating special tax breaks and subsidies for fossil fuel companies, including any tax subsidies for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), carbon capture and storage (CCS) or direct air capture (DAC).

The problem of course was that the Biden people didn’t want a public debate over climate; they wanted unity. My concern over a Biden administration advancing Enhanced Oil Recovery to mitigate the climate crisis is that it would be like Donald Trump trying to solve the Coronavirus crisis without masks, testing or social distancing. CCS coupled with EOR will produce more carbon, not less. For the moment I want to return to my account of the platform committee meeting.

Wheeling, Dealing & coercing TO DROP AMENDMENTS

Around 9:00 AM the morning before the platform meeting a Sanders staffer called and was pressing me to once again drop my amendments. This was the third of such calls and this time she amped up the Biden threats. If we didn’t drop these amendments, the Biden people would pull more progressive measures from the platform that we had successfully negotiated. Her final offer was an opportunity to speak for 2-3 minutes, but only if I dropped the amendments. I rejected that offer and said that I would prefer a “moral defeat” and an actual vote. Even though I did not drop my amendments, someone made the decision to break DNC rules and just dropped the amendments anyway. Apparently other platform members had accepted speaking opportunities in exchange for dropping their amendments.

The most moving speaker was Patrisse Cullors, who became a community organizer with Black Lives Matter because police beat and abused her mentally disabled brother, Monty. Patrisse in her speech expressed the thrill of being on the platform committee as an opportunity to fundamentally change things and give black people a stronger voice in the platform, but then she openly called out party leaders for ignoring her recommendations. “Unfortunately, I learned that all my recommendations made by and for families like mine from across the country had been rejected.”

Other platform committee members who made speeches in exchange for pulling their amendments included Peter Rickman, a union leader from Wisconsin and Ryan Dietsch, a Parkland student who survived the mass shooting and still suffers from PTSD.

MORAL DEFEAT TIMES THREE

What was interesting is that the Biden camp used some of the Sanders’ “moral defeats” to send a strong message to their corporate donors that there was no danger of the American people taking back their government under a Biden administration.

Defeat #1: Healthcare

Climate wasn’t the only top issue on the chopping block. Several amendments to healthcare were voted down from Medicare for All, Expanded Medicare for Children, A Public Option, and even Individual States to make their own determination on a public option.

Dr. Abdul El Sayed and Michael Lighty, the former political director of the National Nurses Union, advanced several unsuccessful proposals to add Medicare for All into the Democratic Platform. It was all theater and when I called Lighty to hear the back story, he said that there was real hope that the Biden campaign would advance a state single payer plank as part of the Chair’s Amendments.

According to Lighty there was significant dialogue over content leading up to the morning of the platform meeting, but support was pulled at the last minute. Corporate healthcare lobbyists have been fighting single-payer healthcare for decades and their financial investment in the Democratic Party is no secret.

The defeat of Medicare for All also guaranteed that the 2020 Democratic Party Platform is indeed not the most progressive in American History. According to a recent article by The Nation Magazine, the 1972 Democratic Party Platform took a very bold position on healthcare that read, “establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered.” Almost 5 decades later, the Democrat’s platform like their party continues to move towards a corporate state.

Defeat #2: Palestine

The second moral defeat that seemed staged was a wink and nod to wealthy Democratic donors that a Biden presidency would not change a thing with respect to foreign policy in the Middle East. Amendment 331611 acknowledged human rights abuses and the continued occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel, but it was defeated by a vote of 34-117 with 5 abstentions.

The Sanders supporters and a few Justice-oriented Biden supporters voted in favor of the amendment that was presented by Clem Belanoff, a veteran platform member who also served in 2016. To counter Clem’s powerful presentation that used the words of both Barack Obama and former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sheron, the Biden team used two speakers. One was the Hillary Clinton 2016 whip, Wendy Sherman. The other was Dan Shapiro. The point is that team Biden got two people to speak against the amendment and only Clem was allowed to speak in favor of the amendment.

Defeat #3: Cannabis

The third moral defeat was a vote on legalizing marijuana at the federal level. Several other platform committee members later told me that this vote had more to do with Biden’s personal views on marijuana. Several Biden representatives voted in favor of the amendment that was presented by Dennis Obdusky from Colorado. Amendment 58848 failed by a vote of 50 - yes, 106 – no and 3 abstentions.

Better than Trump though

AN IMAGE OF UNITY ON ISSUES OF RACE AND CLIMATE

While the Biden people welcomed the opportunity to publicly shoot down language on healthcare and human rights they knew that they couldn’t paint a picture of disunity throughout the entire meeting. One of the places where they sought to push unity was climate, and one of the proposals that was initially suggested by RL Miller did help improve the platform language. It was more of a technical fix than a substantive change, but the high-profile introduction of the amendment by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave the impression that this was a unified progressive platform. The original draft platform read:

Democrats will immediately rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and convene a world summit aimed at new and more ambitious global targets to reduce carbon pollution.

The amended language read:

Democrats will immediately rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, commit the United States to doing its fair share and leading the world in the effort to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and convene a world summit aimed at new and more ambitious global targets to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

After the amendment was introduced by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sunrise Movement leader Varshini Prakash spoke in favor of the amendment. It passed unanimously and gave the impression that progressives were making real milestones in advancing the Democratic Party Platform on the topic of climate.

The reality is that the amendments that really changed things were dropped or watered down.

BACK TO CLIMATE AND WHY CCS + EOR ARE THE WRONG DIRECTION

The fossil fuel industry has been purposely misleading the public on the topic of global warming since scientists started talking about it back in the 70’s. The most comprehensive body of research that I have read on the topic has been produced by investigative journalist, Amy Westervelt in her podcast, “Drilled.” She documents how the fossil fuel industry used countless op-ads, misleading research and paid media to convince the public that global warming is a hoax even while they were planning to build offshore oil rigs that accommodated for rising sea levels.

After decades of denial, the fossil fuel company is now coming up with their “solution” to global warming. It is commonly referred to as carbon capture and storage. They are using the same communication tactics that they used to mislead the American public for the last 40 years. If you google “carbon capture” you will find a host of fake environmental groups advocating for CCS. They have put a number of pro-fossil fuel scientists in front of a camera talking about how great CCS will be. The Carbon Capture Coalition is a fossil fuel organization that used to be called the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative that has been advancing CCS, tax credits and direct cash incentives for companies that capture and store carbon. Some environmental groups are even starting to embrace CCS even though it is relatively new, requires substantial energy to capture carbon, and very little research has been done to prove that it will efficiently remove carbon from the air.

The coalition and other CCS proselytizers have slipped language into bi-partisan spending bills that create 45Q tax credits that incentivize capturing carbon, enhanced oil recovery, and storing carbon underground. But there has been little accountability and/or oversight for companies that have claimed the tax credit. In May of this year, Senator Bob Menedez (D-NJ) got the IRS Inspector General to look into how or whether tax credit claimants were documenting their claimed CO2 storage. The IG found that most were not. The oil companies who took $1 billion in carbon capture tax credits under the “45Q” tax credit program neglected to document actual storage for $900 million of the tax credits they took. How is this not another blank-check bailout?

For those who are new to the CCS/EOR debate. Enhanced Oil Recovery is a process that oil companies have perfected over the past 30 years. I’m oversimplifying the technical aspects, but basically, they use water and CO2 to push more oil out of the ground. Normal drilling operations leave about 25% of the oil in the ground and EOR is a very expensive way to extract the last 25%. To make the process profitable, oil companies need federal subsidies. They found a way to justify the subsidies by using captured carbon from power plants to access cheap CO2. Now they are selling this approach to congress and the general public as something that will mitigate the climate crisis. It won’t even come close.

A review of the scientific literature by June Sekera has revealed that CCS/EOR generates more carbon than it removes. Plus, it does not reduce the amount in the atmosphere because, with this smokestack capture method, you can never bury more than you capture coming out of the smokestacks. Under the most optimistic of assumptions, and if the CO2 is simply stored and not sold for re-use, the best that CCS smokestack capture could possibly do is slow down the rate at which emissions are adding to the stock of CO2 in the atmosphere. Another reason that this plan will fail is because we don’t have a large-enough capacity to remove a meaningful amount of carbon with mechanical means. Operating at a climate-significant level would require as much infrastructure and pipelines as now exist for the oil and gas industry. And, even then, you’re not reducing atmospheric CO2, you’re just slowing its buildup, and even that’s not certain.

Another term that you need to become familiar with is Direct Air Capture (DAC). This mechanical-chemical method of carbon capture uses enormous fans to suck in air and then uses thermochemical processes to separate out the co2. A few DAC startup companies have been launched with money from venture capitalists and oil companies. Bill Gates has put money into one of these DAC businesses. The 45Q tax break also subsidizes DAC.

A Harvard scientist who’s been engaged in the Bill Gates-funded project, David Keith, was quoted laying out the vision for their DAC company, Carbon Engineering. A 2011 Fortune Magazine article described their business plan: the company would to build its first carbon-capture plants in places where there is cheap gas, cheap labor, cheap land, and ideally, a strong demand for CO2. Keith said: "If we can find all of those at once, we’re printing money.” This makes me wonder why organized labor is advocating so hard for DAC plants.

As it turns out, the company has partnered with Occidental Petroleum to build a DAC plant in the Permian Basin in Texas in order to do enhanced oil recovery. The business plan for this partnership relies on a variety of public subsidies for carbon capture. It also relies on a high price of oil, since the process is extraordinarily expensive, and given the recent price implosion, the planned operation and promised jobs may not materialize.

The huge fans and thermochemical processes for DAC require an enormous amount of energy and some have proposed using solar panels to power the fans and “make the process green.” Scientists have estimated that scaling the DAC process to remove 1 gigaton of CO2 would require 3,500 Twh of energy, which equates to nearly all the electricity generated in the United States in 2017. So let me get this straight. Instead of shutting down the coal plants and powering peoples’ homes directly with solar energy we are going to build massive solar farms to capture carbon that power plants still produce? How is this sane?

The land required is also extraordinary. To remove just 1 gigaton of CO2 would require a land area ten (10) times the size of Delaware. This estimate is based on information in a 2019 report by the National Academies of Sciences. (And this does not count the land area required for pipelines to transport of the captured CO2 or the tremendous underground space needed for geologic storage.)

So we cover large swaths of land with solar panels to remove 1 Gt of carbon. This is like draining an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a straw; consider that the United States produces 5 Gt of carbon per year and global CO2 production is 37 Gt. This has to be the most ludicrous idea ever presented by the techno-utopians who miss the obvious, straightforward solutions. Instead consider a simple three-pronged approach that better utilizes taxpayer money to benefit working families and the environment.

• Prong one involves incentivizing and mandating energy efficient commercial and residential building standards and renovations. We also need to move quickly to electric vehicles or carbon free transportation.
• Prong two involves keeping fossil fuels in the ground and pursuing alternative energy like solar and wind and integrating them into an improved power grid as rapidly as possible.
• Prong three involves using foreign trade agreements to leverage changes in other heavy carbon-producing countries like India and China.

These three prongs are oversimplified and of course there are other excellent ideas that need to be part of the discussion, like a carbon tax to pay for the aggressive changes that are needed to address the climate crisis.

Like Patrisse I thought that we would have a real, substantive discussion on climate. Below are the other amendments that I proposed that were dropped without my consent. All of them were designed to move the country in the right direction on climate. Unfortunately, we are going to have to find a new strategy.

I Move to Amend page 45, Line 36 to exclude the words, “and carbon capture and storage.”

To replace the words on page 48, line 25, “direct air capture and net negative emissions technologies” with the words, “and technologies that support and enhance proven biological methods of carbon drawdown and sequestration.”

To amend the words on page 48, line 27 to read, “including requirements that industries utilize carbon capture and sequestration that permanently stores greenhouse gases without prior utilization for enhanced oil recovery.”

As we approach this critical election it is important that Democrats be the party of climate scientists, not oil profiteers. That we be the voice of reason in healthcare coverage as many lose their jobs and insurance during this pandemic.

Breaking The Mold Isn't Just A Democrat vs Republican Thing

Old status quo politicians-- I usually refer to them as careerists-- feel very threatened when Democratic constituencies elect younger non-establishment representatives. That's the dynamic we've been witnessing with the calumny heaped on AOC and the refusal by most Democrats to ever try to understand what she's trying to accomplish with the Green New Deal and why raising the margin tax rate from annual income over $10 million (an extremely modest proposal).

On Friday, NPR's Jeff Brady reported that despite few details and much doubt, the Green New Deal generates enthusiasm... among people, not among lobbyists the donor class and politicians.

The resolution has few details, but it aims to overhaul the U.S. economy and spread wealth more evenly. It calls for a speedy shift in energy generation, from fossil fuels to renewable sources like wind and solar, and for "a fair and just transition for all communities and workers."

Much of the early criticism revolves around the scope of the plan, which backers say is big to match the challenge of the climate change problem.

"All great American programs, everything from The Great Society to The New Deal, started with a vision for our future," said co-sponsor Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

But this vision is for an extremely near-term future.

"I'm afraid I just cannot see how we could possibly go to zero carbon in a 10-year time frame," former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz tells NPR's All Things Considered.

Moniz, now CEO of Energy Futures Initiative, agrees that the U.S. needs to "pick up the pace" of its shift away from carbon, but he calls the decade-long time frame "impractical." He worries it could turn off key constituencies needed in the climate effort, including labor unions, oil companies and the business community.

The Green New Deal doesn't even mention some of the usual ideas for addressing climate change, such as a carbon tax or cap-and-trade program. Instead, it calls for lots of spending to create, among other things, infrastructure and transport that don't rely on fossil fuels.

Environmental groups generally support the resolution.

"It is a breath of fresh air to see leaders in Congress discussing climate solutions that rise to the scale of the challenge," said Aliya Haq, federal policy director for the Climate & Clean Energy Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council in a statement.

These days, transportation accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions. Green New Deal backers say they want more high-speed trains to make airline travel less necessary, and more electric cars and charging stations. But experts warn that changing the existing fleet of cars in the U.S. would be an extraordinary effort.

"There's 350 million liquid fuel cars on the road today in the United States and most Americans don't buy a new car except every decade," says Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the program on Energy Security and Climate Change at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Change is always hard. Big change takes extraordinary efforts. And extraordinary leaders, rather than careerist politicians of the status quo. And AOC and her ideas aren't the only targets for establishment pols. Pelosi appointed AIPAC's chief lobbyist in Congress, New Dem Eliot Engel, to head the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He's from the other side of the Bronx from Ocasio Cortez-- rich, white, Jewish Riverdale. And he filled his lid when Rashida Tlaib started making waves about Israel. She announced she's not going on the AIPAC-sponsored trip to Israel that every freshman is "supposed" to take. Instead she proposed a trip to see what life is like for Palestinians. Smelling salts and fainting couches on both sides of the aisle! Texas dentist Brian Babin (R), a dullard, sent a letter to each Democratic House Committee chair demanding they deny her the right to take such a congressional delegation, insisting it would threaten the U.S. relationship with Israel.

Babin didn't have to lobby Engel, who quickly tried to silence Rashida and condescendingly claim that she, a Palestinian-American, did not know what she was talking about when it comes to the Middle East. "Instead of her talking about things-- she’s new here-- she ought to listen and learn and open her mind and then come to some conclusions,” Engel told Al-Monitor. “If you’re going to be close-minded and have your views, no one’s going to change her views. But I would hope that once you’re elected to Congress, you would at least care to see the other side of the coin.”

Completely mind-boggling from someone who was appointed chairman of the Committee precisely because he is so utterly close-minded! And there are worse assholes than Engel. On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Kevin McCarthy is promising to take action against Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. He's demanding "action" from Pelosi and Hoyer and says if they don't take any, he will. "This cannot sustain itself. It’s unacceptable in this country." He said their questioning of the nature and scope of U.S. relations with Palestine "were equal to King’s and more so."

There is no member of Congress and no district safe from the wrath of AIPAC. Earl Hilliard served in the Alabama state legislature from 1975 through 1992 when he was elected to serve as the member of Congress from the gerrymandered district that managed to twist and turn all over the state to encompass as many back areas as possible, from the black neighborhoods of Birmingham to the back neighborhoods of Montgomery to Tuscaloosa and the Black Belt rural counties of middle Alabama. No Republican and no white politicians was ever going to offer Hilliard an obstacle to reelection. But in 2001 Hilliard voted against a bill funding military support increases for Israel and opposing criminalization of Palestinian politicians. AIPAC set out to destroy him with the use of a conservative black corporate whore and AIPAC pawn, Artur Davis, who, by the way, later switched parties and became a Republican. It isn't the first time Israel has interfered directly in American elections through AIPAC. And now they're after Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Today, scummy Blue Dog Max Rose and Chelsea Clinton, as well as Liz Cheney, came down on the side of AIPAC against Ilhan, of course. Other right-wing New Dems like Seth Moulton (MA), Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Elaine Luria (VA) have jumped on the bandwagon as well, hoping to be rewarded by AIPAC for their efforts against their colleague. Just disgusting. If you'd like to contribute to Ilhan's reelection efforts, the thermometer on the right goes to an ActBlue page for incumbents doing an especially good job.

This repulsive and misleading statement came from Pelosi's office this afternoon, just as I was finishing up this post. It made me sick to my stomach, but I bet Kevin McCarthy is laughing about how easy it was to get Pelosi and the House Democrats to dance to his tune:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James E. Clyburn, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján, Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries and Caucus Vice Chair Katherine Clark issued this joint statement condemning anti-Semitic comments made over Twitter by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar:

“Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception.

“We are and will always be strong supporters of Israel in Congress because we understand that our support is based on shared values and strategic interests. Legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech and democratic debate that the United States and Israel share. But Congresswoman Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes and prejudicial accusations about Israel’s supporters is deeply offensive. We condemn these remarks and we call upon Congresswoman Omar to immediately apologize for these hurtful comments.

“As Democrats and as Americans, the entire Congress must be fully engaged in denouncing and rejecting all forms of hatred, racism, prejudice and discrimination wherever they are encountered.”

Naturally that didn't satisfy the Republicans, not when they smell blood in the water and sense an opportunity to drive a wedge been the AIPAC-loving Democratic establishment and the Democratic grassroots that generally abhors AIPAC and other lobbyists trying to dictate American policy. After Pelosi's surrender, the NRCC immediately released their own statement: "It’s time for Angie Craig, Dean Phillips and Collin Peterson to take a stand against anti-Semitism and bigotry by calling for Ilhan Omar’s immediate removal from the House Foreign Affairs Committee." I wonder if Pelosi will cave on this too.

The Party's Over For The Banksters? Fat Chance. But Sir Status Quo Can Party Heartier Than UK Banksters Today

Somewhere in the back of your unconscious is probably a vague recollection from last year of a Chicago-based outfit called Northern Trust Corp. They got a bit over $1.5 billion in taxpayer bailout money-- and then proceeded to spend it lavishly on some fancy entertainin', primarily on golf and rock. It's unlikely their parties will be featuring live performances by Sheryl Crow and Earth, Wind and Fire this year, or anytime soon.

John Kerry, the Democratic senator, said the parties were an "idiotic abuse of taxpayer money," while Barney Frank, chairman of the House of Representatives' financial services committee, said the celebrations showed "extraordinary levels of irresponsibility and arrogance."

Rick Waddell, Northern Trust's chairman and chief executive, admitted that the scandal contributed to the general antipathy towards banks.

"It was a part, along with all the other incidents," he told the Financial Times. "There's almost not one large institution that has been spared the focus of the media or Congress. In the financial system clearly there were excesses. There's plenty of blame to go around."

Mr Waddell said the bank "clearly misjudged the political environment." But he added: "The political environment in Washington was that they were looking for targets."

Northern Trust will continue to fulfill its sponsorship obligations next year, Mr Waddell said, but in a more humble manner.

"We're not having any live entertainment," he said. "It's going to be more of a traditional hospitality event. We've pared our budget back."

In the same issue of the Financial Times I read on the plane back from London today, I also read about how the Labour Government in London didn't much feel like having banksters knighted this year. "The CBE for Dyfrig John, who retired as chief executive of HSBC Bank in March, is the only high-profile gong for a sector still seen as politically toxic. Executives from banks that needed multi-billion pound taxpayer bail-outs are notable by their absence."

Good that the English are at least not celebrating the banksters, but when Roland asked me if I'm planning to see Wall Street 2, I said, "No, unless I hear it ends with firing squads." That isn't likely-- unless the banksters get to put the rest of us up against walls more literally than they've already been doing! Here in the U.S., banksters have the power. I'd like to say they have power despite the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress, but let's face it, even without the Rahm Emanuel factor, our entire political establishment is a bought-out/sold-out mess, enslaved to Wall Street. That's the true nature of bipartisanship these days. And it's why Blue America will endorse no incumbents who aren't co-sponsors of HR 1826 or S 752 (the twin Fair Election Now bills) and will endorse no challengers who don't pledge to cosponsor the legislation once they take office.

And it's why Queen Elizabeth is knighting Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt of Status Quo instead of a bunch of greasy banksters. You may like Camper Van Beethoven's version better-- or even the one Ozzy did for the Howard Stern movie-- but "Pictures of Matchstick Men" from Picturesque started life as a 1968 hit by The Status Quo, a band not all that well known in the U.S. but, believe it or not, with more chart hits in the U.K. than any other rock group in history! (More on knighthoods for rockers.)

If God Loved The Poor People He Wouldn't Let Them Get Sick

Some people really do want to have an overarching need to preserve the status quo and guarantee the power of elites trumps pesky concepts like democracy. Otherwise why would there be a Republican Party or Blue Dogs? Billionaires For Wealthcare has the best explanation ever.




Do you think it's related to this? (I know you do; otherwise you wouldn't be at DWT right now):

Change... It's Not Free And It's Not Easy

We voted for "change," right? And Obama wants "change," right? And even if the filibuster-mad obstructionists in the Senate can stop every single thing he tries, there seems to be something at work for the status quo even more venal and deadly dangerous than the tactics employed by McConnell, Kyl, Cornyn, Burr, Coburn and Isakson. Reading between the lines at Glenn Greenwald's Salon post this week, you can detect a mighty powerful CIA might resistant to any kind of substantive change. (And these are, after all, the forces that got away with assassinating John F Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, a President and a senator running for president.)

The Wall Street banksters, reviled by nearly everyone in the country, are vigorously pushing back against Obama's very modest plans to rein them in a tiny bit. They vowed to bring America down if they don't get what they claim in their rightful due. Netroots activists in Michigan are pushing back against JP Morgan today with a call to boycott Chase until JP Morgan agrees to stop undermining the U.S. economy. Watch the great video Emptywheel did explaining-- and demonstrating-- what they're doing. Meanwhile the Congressional Oversight Panel has the right idea about what to do with the thieving, corrupt, avaricious banksters. “All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets,” the panel, headed by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report. Hyper-corrupt politicians on the panel, John Sununu (R-NH) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), both notorious shills for Big Money Interests, dissented from the report, as expected-- and as they were paid to do.

This week we saw the hysteria when Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried reshuffling the priorities for Defense spending. Fattened special interests-- war profiteers and the members of Congress they own-- will not go down without a fight and the security of the nation is the last thing on their minds. Right-wing Blue Dog Dan Boren (R-OK), who didn't support Obama in November, has joined with Republicans in attacking Obama as "soft on defense."

The battle over health care and insurance reform is another with powerful vested interests that will stop at nothing to keep their sacred cows from being gored. The list is endless and whichever way President Obama turns he is forced to confront dug-in and powerful special interests that will not budge.

Today, one of Israel's biggest newspapers, Haaretz, reports that that country's new far right prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is ready to confront Obama on his plans to make even the most nuanced of changes in U.S. foreign policy towards the Middle East, a foreign policy that should be only about America's security and best interests but that has become a captive to special interests and the members of Congress who do not put America first.

But there's another report in the media today, on a seemingly less explosive topic (less explosive if you don't live in a farming district), that demonstrates the deeply entrenched resistance to change Obama is finding: U.S. farm policy. Again, powerful vested interests that have spent immense sums on buying the fealty of corrupt and powerful members of Congress. Over the last ten years AgriBusiness has spent $136,880,412 on lobbying federal officials. And since 1990 they have spent another $461,144,666 in direct payments (legalized bribes) to federal elected officials, mostly members of Congress. Two to one the AgriBusiness bribes have gone to Republicans but huge amount have gone to conservative Democrats, primarily Blue Dogs, who vote with Republicans and prevent changes in farm policy that would in any way disadvantage agricultural corporations. The dozen biggest recipients of legalized bribes from AgriBusiness in the House (bolded names serve on the House Agriculture committee and starred names serve on the Budget committee):

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)- $1,559,273
Devin Nunes* (R-CA)- $1,449,107
Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)- $1,364,395
John Boehner (R-OH)- $1,245,813
Wally Herger (R-CA)- $1,162,058
George Radanovich (R-CA)- $1,157,891
Tom Latham (R-IA)- $1,148,125
Bob Etheridge* (Blue Dog-NC)- $1,120,768
Allen Boyd* (Blue Dog-FL)- $1,055,954
Jerry Moran (R-KS)- $1,048,318
Greg Walden (R-OR)- $1,043,380
Ranking member of Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture Jack Kingston (R-GA)- $1,018,298

And in steps President Obama who is proposing to place limits on federal subsidies to large, profitable farm operations. Ma and Pa Kettle on their little family farm are not the ones who have shoveled over half a billion dollars into the coffers of friendly members of Congress. Large, profitable farm operations have-- corporate farms and as CQPolitics pointed out this morning, the changes Obama wants to make are decidedly not "the sort of change that agricultural interests, or their powerful advocates in Congress, are likely to believe in."

[B]ackers of subsidy caps to larger farm operations still hope they can harness Obama’s popularity and transfer mounting populist anger over corporate bonuses from the boardroom to the feedlot to produce renewed traction for the plan in Congress.

That strategy won’t be easy. The administration’s plan was to use the fiscal 2010 budget process as the vehicle to revamp the subsidies program. But in adopting their budget resolutions last week, both the House and Senate rejected a key feature of the plan-- a proposal to cap subsidies to individual farmers at $250,000. Another proposal to phase out subsidies to farmers with gross annual retail sales of $500,000 or more was turned down as well, with North Dakota Democrat Kent Conrad, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, calling it “just a mistake,” and Minnesota Democrat Collin C. Peterson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, deriding it as simply “stupid.”

Stupid? Peterson, who many think is the single most corrupt member of Congress-- yes more corrupt that Jerry Lewis, more corrupt than Jack Murtha, more corrupt than Charlie Rangel, even more corrupt that John Boehner (although that is really a stretch)-- has a "D" next to his name but votes with Republicans more than almost any other Democrat in the House and is especially interested in funneling as much money into the corporations that have financed his sleazy career as he can. How about "stupid" being that "taxpayers provide about $16 billion a year to farmers for crop subsidies, conservation payments and disaster relief." Most of that accrues to the benefit of already extremely wealthy corporate farmers, not to family farms. (In 2006 farm subsidy payments went to nearly 23,000 individuals with adjusted gross incomes of over half a million dollars. That's your tax dollars Collin Peterson and his Republican allies are redistributing. Think for a minute about how hypocritical Blue Dogs are always wailing how they stand for a balanced budget too!)

One reason the backers of the Obama plan have already run into stiff resistance is that the farm lobby is made up of more than just farmers. Department of Agriculture figures show that as average farm size increased, the number of farms in the United States shrank to 2.2 million last year, from 6.3 million in 1940. But those numbers don’t reflect the broader reach of agriculture interests in rural America’s business establishment, including small-town bankers, insurance agents, farm equipment dealers, rural land speculators, and seed and fertilizer merchants.

Then there is the concentrated power of the House and Senate Agriculture committees themselves. A study by the liberal Environmental Working Group found that 43 percent of all farm payments between 1995 and 2006 went to the congressional districts with representation on the House committee. States with seats on the Senate panel accounted for 58 percent of the total.

“It is no surprise that the large bulk of agriculture subsidies go to just 30 congressional districts in the entire nation, and they are well represented on the Ag committee,” said Rep. Ron Kind, a Democrat from Wisconsin dairy country who has broken ranks with the milk lobby in the past over retooling farm subsidies. “They are going to try to protect the status quo and protect the programs as they exist. That’s why I don’t think you’ll get real ideas of reform and change and a new direction for agriculture policy coming from the Agriculture Committee.”

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