The New Economy Won't Be Like the Last One

Despite the best efforts of the Obama administration, the economy is a long ways from recovery. The speculative system that created the mess remains intact, and foreclosures and unemployment continue to rise. But at the same time, a new economy is taking form. It’s built on a recognition that the only thing too big to fail is the Earth itself. It is designed to build sustainable wealth for families, communities, and ecosystems, and it’s our best chance to improve prospects for future generations, instead of leaving them with ever-growing debt, conflict, and environmental destruction.

Politicians, pundits, and financiers defend deepening our national debt to bail out the institutions of a failed Wall Street system. But this system, built on speculation and the rule of money, is undermining the health of the planet and the well-being of all but the wealthiest few.

It’s time to let it go.

The new economy is built on new forms of money, and on democratic finance and business. In the summer 2009 issue of YES!, we report on worker-owned cooperatives that distribute the benefits of hard work to employee-owners who call the shots in democratic workplaces. These co-ops spend locally and are rooted locally, so they are long-term boons to their local economies. And they don't close down in favor of sweat shops in low-wage regions.

Money, though hidden in plain sight, is another critical piece of the puzzle. As currently created, it destabilizes our economy and concentrates wealth. Many communities are developing new means of exchange that work even when there is a global shortage of credit. And the issuing of money could be a public service, rather than a profit center for private banks.

We’re told we need Wall Street in order to finance business. But Wall Street has quit serving the real economy and, with the continued blessing of the Obama administration, is acting as a global casino, creating exotic and toxic packages of “assets” that have no function but to make money for the already wealthy.

In the new economy, credit is provided through local banks rooted in the communities they serve. Credit unions, community development banks, and other democratic institutions also serve, rather than cannibalize, the real economy.

Americans know we’ve been living beyond our means, and we’re cutting back. That means the segment of the old economy centered on encouraging wasteful consumption will continue shrinking.

The new economy—sometimes with the aid of President Obama’s stimulus spending—is moving in to meet needs unmet by a system centered on mega-profits. New jobs are being created to install renewable energy and weatherize homes, raise food through more labor-intensive and less damaging means, build public transit systems and inter-city rail, and rebuild schools, bridges, water systems and neighborhoods. We can no longer defer these vital investments as we did when we oriented our economy around the desires of the ultra-rich.

The new economy is about increasing quality of life, improving health, and restoring the environment. The resources to pay for this will be the resources that previously went into multi-million-dollar CEO pay packages and oversized returns on speculation.

With reduced consumption, we’ll no longer need to fight for an excess share of the world’s resources, so we can slim down our bloated military budget. We can save on prisons and police, since people with access to good education and jobs less often turn to crime.

An Earth- and human-centered economy is not inevitable. We could revert to a winner-take-all system in which a few benefit and everyone else fights over the scraps. The current economic downturn, though, offers an exceptional opportunity to rebuild and, this time, to make it an economy that works for all.

The Planet is Saved ... Pass it On

World leaders negotiate an historic climate agreement. ... Temperature rise will be kept below 2 degrees, averting runaway global heating and chaotic weather. ... Celebrations break out. ... World leaders at Copenhagen thank the citizens of the world for the months of protests that created the political will to take on the climate crisis while there was still time:

"It was only thanks to your massive pressure over the past six months that we could so dramatically shift our climate-change policies.... To those who were arrested, we thank you."

You've probably figured it out by now.

These announcements are part of a fake issue of the International Herald Tribune, dated December 19, 2009. The newspaper is another hoax by the Yes Men (sadly, no relation to YES! magazine), this time in collaboration with Greenpeace. All the headlines are made up.

But it all could come to pass. As real news continues to come out about the climate crisis, the alarm is spreading. Next December's global climate talks in Copenhagen may seal the deal -- world leaders will either step up to the crisis with binding commitments to cut their own emissions and help the poorer nations to do the same, or we may be in for runaway climate catastrophe.

The headlines in this faux newspaper contain the news that many hope for, crediting mass nonviolent civil disobedience for the changes.

"Non-violent civil disobedience has been at the forefront of almost every successful campaign for change," Andy Bichlbaum of The Yes Men, said in announcing the prank newspaper. The Yes Men are also behind the technology at BeyondTalk.net, a new database where people can sign up to do civil disobedience, or, through "action offsets," financially support others willing to risk arrest for the climate.

"Especially in America, and especially today, we need to push our leaders hard to stand up to industry lobbyists and make the sorts of changes we need."

Security in Pakistan: Let's Try Generosity

Two million refugees have fled the violence in the Swat region of Pakistan, the largest movement of people since the genocide in Rwanda. This follows attacks by the Pakistan military--reportedly at the urging of the U.S.--aimed at routing out the Taliban. Reporters are prohibited from entering the area, so there are no independent reports of the number of casualties, but refugees report seeing thousands of bodies left on the road as they fled.

Is there a better way to keep the Taliban out?

Kathy Kelly, of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, thinks there is. Kelly is traveling and blogging in the region. She offers some insight into reasons the Taliban was so successful at making inroads in the region:

"In villages where people don’t have enough resources to feed their children, the Taliban would initially move in with plans to build schools and offer two meals a day, plus clean clothes, to the children. Later, they would exercise increasingly fierce control over villages. But their initial forays into villages were marked by offers to reduce the gaps between “haves and have-nots.”

An insurgent effort like that of the Taliban requires the cooperation of civilian populations. Yet bombardments by the Pakistan military and drone attacks by the U.S. military traumatize and alienate those same populations.

Might we have more success if we help these impoverished populations rather than supporting continued attacks on them? In particular the way the refugees are treated right now could lay the groundwork for peace or for continued insurgency.

Kelly reports on the extraordinary generosity of ordinary Pakistanis towards the refugees. And this generosity sparks an idea: the U.S. could respond to the humanitarian crisis represented by the massive flood of refugees by putting on hold the construction of the new U.S. embassy. Instead of spending $800 million on one of the most expensive diplomatic compounds in the world, we could use the funds to assure that all of these refugee families get the food, shelter, and medical care they need, and that they get help rebuilding shattered lives. Kelly writes:

"The maxim that guides this idea is simple: to counter terror, build justice. Build justice predicated on the belief that each person has basic human rights, and that we have a collective responsibility to share resources so that those rights are met. This means eliminating the unjust and unfair gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots.' It means weaving new relationships that don’t rely on guns and bombs for security."

The most powerful country the world has ever known was massively disrupted by a few fanatics with box cutters. Security is not found in a bigger military or more massive weapons systems, and certainly not in a world with expanding nuclear capacities. It's found in a world where every child is safe and can look forward to a secure future.

You can follow Kelly's reports from the region here.

Photo is of children from the Swat Valley by Razia Ahmed, from the Voices for Creative Nonviolence website.

Tribute to Thomas Berry RIP

Thomas Berry, priest, scholar of Asian and indigenous spiritual traditions, and cultural historian died yesterday in his hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. He was 94 years old. Berry was a visionary who inspired many with his teachings about the new cosmology.

"If the dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the Sun, and formed the Earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and the seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the Universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture."

Photo courtesy Bullfrog Films

Howard Dean on Single Payer Health Care

Probably the top priorities at "America's Future Now" conference (formerly Take Back America) is getting universal health care adopted this year.

Progressive groups announced plans to spend $82 million to press for adoption of Obama's health care plan. The coalition, made up of MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, USAction, Campaign for Community Change, Rock the Vote, AFL-CIO, SEIU, the Children's Defense Fund, and others, together represent 30 million Americans.

Making sure the "public option" is contained in health care legislation is a top priority of the coalition. Likewise for the congressional Progressive Caucus and the Black, Hispanic, and Asia Pacific American caucuses, which recently sent joint letters to President Obama and House and Senate leadership emphasizing that they would only support health care reform if it contains the public option.

The public option allows Americans to choose between private insurance and a public plan. (I wrote about the public option here.)

The momentum is strong -- in June, there will be petitions, lobby days in Congress, and the beginnings of a grassroots and eventually an advertising campaign.

The public option is not enough to satisfy single-payer advocates. But if Congress can withstand intense pressure from the private health care industry -- which doesn't want to have to compete with a more efficient public plan -- and if Congress can refrain from watering it down, it does represent an enormous step toward universal, quality health coverage.

This approach may be a good way to go. But that is no reason for Senator Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and President Barack Obama to exclude single-payer health care advocates from the summits, forums, and hearings on health care reform. Even the "America's Future Now" conference had no speakers advocating for single-payer health care.

At a press conference today, I got a chance to ask Howard Dean why single-payer advocates are not at the table. Here's his responses, followed by what I think (but did not say):

Dr. Dean: We really weren't anticipating that question...

Me: Really? Everywhere there is a public forum on health care, people are shouting from the audience about single-payer since they are almost never included on the official panels.

Dr. Dean: They should be at the table.
The Right has managed to turn "single-payer" into a bad word, like "liberal."

Me: All the more reason to insist on considering the policy on its merits, not based on a foregone conclusion about what is politically plausible. After all, if you have the insurance and medical-industrial complex pushing for no public plan, wouldn't you want the single-payer movement pushing from the other side? Then the Obama plan can take its place as a centrist policy, which is what it is.

Dr. Dean: Opponents have used confusion to sow doubt. People may not like the health care system, but they like their doctor or hospital.

Me: in other words, we need to keep everyone on message. Not sure I buy that when public opinion polls show a majority of Americans favoring single-payer health care -- even if they have to pay higher taxes. That's extraordinary support for a proposal with few public figures advocating it and a virtual media blackout on the topic.

In his opening remarks, Robert Borosage of Campaign for America's Future, said: "We need to build independent movements, organizing outside of Washington, demanding real change." Let's start by including members of the movement for single-payer health care in the dialogue.

Dr. Dean: President Obama's plan is realistic. Even in Britain, where medicine really is socialized [doctors offices and hospitals are publicly owned] 15% of health care dollars go to private insurance. Private insurance isn't going away. Americans should be the ones to choose. If they like their current, private insurance, they can keep it. If they aren't satisfied, they should be able to choose a public plan. Respect Americans' ability to decide.

Me: Respect for Americans' ability to decide. Just what the doctor ordered.

Alice Walker on the continuing detention of Aung San Suu Kyi

President Obama has joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other international leaders in calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. The military rulers of Myanmar (Burma) are trying Suu Kyi for violating the terms of her detention because a U.S. citizen entered her home.

Writer and activist Alice Walker was recently in Myanmar, and these reflections are from her blog:

"What makes Aung San Suu Kyi so very special – and Buddhists will yawn – is that she is a meditator. This means her mind is well trained to grasp the implications of actions, especially violent ones, too many of our world leaders seem clueless about. They talk about annihilating, obliterating, beggaring, starving, impoverishing, raping and pillaging other human beings as if this behavior has no consequences to themselves or to those they represent. This is an incredibly antique way of looking at our problems: that we can bomb them away. War is a dead end, literally. And, what is more, we simply can’t afford it. Not morally, and not financially. How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed? We see, if we care to look, that everything really is connected, and, not only connected, it is the same thing. Aung San Suu Kyi gets this, which is why she renounces violence in the face of one of the most violent regimes in the world, while at the same time not condemning those who, driven to desperate measures by their mistreatment by the regime, resort to violence in an attempt to defend themselves.

"I can’t think of anything more important than Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle, which she is waging so brilliantly. She has proved she is not afraid of death, and one feels imprisonment will be to her - as being jailed was for Martin Luther King - simply part of a necessary pilgrimage of the soul. I am not as concerned about her, to be honest, as I am about the rest of us. We need Aung San Suu Kyi. We need her example of integrity, courage, a raging and revolutionary loving kindness that has kept her steady in her long years under house arrest."

There's much more on Alice Walker's blog, from her visit to Myanmar and from a long letter written to Suu Kyi. How are we to respond? What can we do? These are questions so often asked. The answers, even in a day of global connectivity, are as illusive as ever. But "showing up" and taking some action, Walker assures us, are important nonetheless.

Single-Payer Advocates Deserve a Place at the Table

At a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, this week, President Barack Obama was asked why he has taken single-payer health care off the table.



It's a great question.

Not only have the Obama administration and top Democrats taken the option off the table, they are excluding single-payer advocates from the official forums on health care reform, while advocates of the for-profit medical system turn up and have their say. This in spite of the fact that President Obama has repeatedly admitted that single-payer is good policy. (Single-payer health care is a system, like Canada's, in which the government provide health insurance for everyone. It is simple, straightforward, much lower cost, and it works.)

The Obama administration believes they have a good plan. It includes an option for public coverage so that families can opt for a public health care coverage if they are uninsured or not satisfied with the private insurance they now receive.

At a conference in Washington earlier this year, I asked Jacob Hacker, one of the architects of the plan, why they were not advocating single-payer health care, a system that has proven successful in other industrialized countries, as we showed in a special YES! issue on health care options.

Hacker's response was similar to Obama's response in Rio Rancho. People are afraid to give up their employer-provided plan. Although single-payer may be a better system, the private/public plan is more likely to escape the "Harold and Louise" treatment, and is more likely to get adopted than single-payer health care.

It could be that Obama and Hacker are right.

But here's the thing. Right now, the medical-industrial complex is working hard to eliminate the public option. That way, there wouldn't be a public system to compete with them and set a standard for good quality, non-bureaucratic health care. Why would they want to compete? It's great having a monopoly on our health-care dollars.

Since the private insurance lobby is at the table every day, pushing to eliminate the public option, wouldn't it be smart to allow people on the other side -- the single-payer advocates -- to come to the table, too? Then the Obama plan can take the place it belongs, as a centrist compromise.

Allowing people to the left as well as to the right of the Obama position into the discussion is good strategy. And doing so would recognize two important facts -- that single-payer happens to be great policy and it has support from a large number of Americans -- maybe even a majority. In a healthy democracy, a good policy with widespread support should be part of the debate.