Returning from India, I find that the political landscape looks like a hurricane hit it. Pollsters like Stan Greenberg speak of a political "meltdown," because previously untouchable, gerrymandered Republican house seats like that of California Congressman John Doolittle are suddenly nailbiters. There's lots of speculation as to why. Jim Carville and Tom Friedman say it's all about energy security. A lot of the Democrats are going back to the idea that Washington is awash in a culture of corruption. Both true -- but I think something bigger, and more disturbing, is going on.
As I flew across the Atlantic and looked at the news, it was hard to escape the notion that the sheer "out of touchness" of our current leadership has gotten out of control -- whether those leaders are political or business. Our current leadership may no longer even understand the concept of "the common good" or "the public's business." Leadership, for them, is all about feathering their own nests, not serving the rest of us. How else to explain these kinds of stories:
On the political side there is Congressman Charles Taylor, from Western North Carolina, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, routinely obtained federal funding for projects that benefited his business interests: "Last year, Mr. Taylor added $11.4 million to a big federal transportation bill to widen U.S. Highway 19, the main road through Maggie Valley.... His companies own thousands of acres near the highway there and had already developed a subdivision called Maggie Valley Leisure Estates. Mr. Taylor also got $3.8 million in federal funds for a park now being built in downtown Asheville .... directly in front of the Blue Ridge Savings Bank, flagship of his financial empire."
Taylor's response: Since his business interests are located in his district, his constituents benefit as well. "Before I won a seat on the Appropriations Committee, folks in our region had spent decades being ignored by their own federal and state government. We're not going back to that."
On the business and non-profit side, I was greeted on my return by a recent Congressional report showing how lobbyist Jack Abramoff converted a whole series of non-profit organizations into lobbying agents for his business clients. Senate investigators said that Abramoff and the non-profits "appear to have perpetrated a fraud" on the government by using tax-deductible organizations to benefit for-profit companies. (One of the groups, the Council for Republican Environmental Advocacy (CREA), founded by Norquist and Norton, includes a former Sierra Club Executive Director, Doug Wheeler, as one of its board members.) CREA appears to have been used "as an extension of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying organization," the report said. "Abramoff directed his client Indian tribes to donate a total of about $500,000 to the group, telling them that the donation was a way to cultivate Norton at the Interior Department, which oversees the tribes and their casinos."
In another demonstration of elite cluelessness, Congressman Tom Tancredo thinks that the issue of offshore oil drilling is important -- why? Because some of the workers on those oil rigs might not be American citizens. So he wants Speaker Dennis Hastert to add a provision forbidding such workers from our oil fields. (Of course, very few of the workers on Mexican, Venezuelan, Nigerian, or Norwegian oil rigs are Americans -- and most of the companies themselves are foreign-owned. But Tancredo hasn't yet blamed BP's Alaskan debacle on the fact that the company is foreign-owned -- perhaps that is yet to come. More likely Tancredo is simply milking our energy folly to fuel his favorite hobbyhorse, anti-immigration -- a self-indulgence that marks our current governing culture.)
And, again on the corporate side, it turns out that Asarco, an allegedly bankrupt company, once American-owned but now transferred to Mexican ownership (this doesn't seem to bother Tancredo), "pretended for years to recycle metals while illegally burning hazardous waste in a notorious El Paso smelter," according to a new report from the Environmental Protection Agency. But the EPA didn't voluntarily release the report; the Sierra Club and local environmental groups had to ferret out the data and force it into the light of day.
Throwing the rascals out sounds like a better and better idea.
This Is What the Scientists Told Us Global Warming Would Be Like
The increased risk of hurricanes in Florida has sent insurance premiums so high that people are having to move out of the state. "Living in Florida has been great," said John Grogan, a middle-class mortgage broker who lives on a barrier island next to the Atlantic Ocean. "However, continuing to live in Florida is no longer realistic." Property and casualty insurance rates in Florida have reached levels where "regular folk" like Grogan, a native Floridian who lives in suburban Indialantic, can't pay their premiums, businesses that can't find coverage are in technical default on loans, and real-estate deals are stalling.
And This Is What We Can Do About It
The Sierra Club Board of Directors has eliminated one of its in-person meetings, choosing to do more work on conference calls, and avoiding an estimated 31,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.