While reading this NYT Magazine piece, think about the past year, but also think about the future- the Supreme Court will soon decide this coming year on campaign finance (possibly giving corporations the same First Amendment rights as individual citizens) as well as overall financial oversight by the government.
From TruthOut.org:
Despite previous promises, beleaguered insurance giant American International Group (AIG) has failed to return tens of millions of dollars in bonus payments the firm doled out to executives following the company’s spectacular unraveling and subsequent multibillion government bailout, according to arecent report by the special inspector general for the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).Earlier this year, when it was revealed that AIG distributed $165 million in bonuses to employees in its Financial Products division, the unit responsible for AIG’s collapse, President Barack Obama vowed to “pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”
From Treehugger.com :
According to Reuters, the
new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.
Such a mandate, as pointed out by Climate Progress, is certainly not likely in the cards for the US–just imagine the cries of ’socialism’ or God-knows-what if any politician were to attempt such a law at this point. But we nonetheless need better incentives for renewable energy–there’s absolutely no doubt about that. Tax incentives (like those included in the stimulus) are fine, but they’re still not enough to level the playing field with the too-cheap cost of coal power (where externalities remain criminally unaccounted for).
China’s aggressive renewable energy laws are positioning the world’s second largest economy to become a leader in what is likely to be the major economic driver of the next decades: clean energy technology and manufacturing. If we hope to compete, and keep our own economy vital and relevant, we’re going to have to do better–and the best option we have on the table right now is climate legislation.
I seem to be on tear here with these ‘top of 2009′ items, so here is one more from Doctors Without Borders:
Civilians attacked, bombed, and cut off from aid in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), along with stagnant funding for treating HIV/AIDS and ongoing neglect of other diseases, were among the worst emergencies in 2009.
Continuing crises in north and south Sudan, along with the failure of the international community to finally combat childhood malnutrition were also included on this year’s list. The list is drawn from MSF’s operational activities in close to 70 countries, where the organization’s medical teams witnessed some of the worst humanitarian conditions.
District activist Peter Craig put the brakes on highway constructionMonday, December 28, 2009; A14We applaud the Dec. 20 obituary [”Peter Craig, lawyer in D.C. highway battles, dies at 81″] and Dec. 23 editorial [”The roads not undertaken”] on the life and work of anti-highway activist attorney Peter Craig, who died Nov. 26. Mr. Craig, Sammy Abbot, Reginald Booker and many other citizens prevented the devastation of many more highways being built in the District, and the building of yet another bridge across the Potomac River on Three Sisters Island. Ultimately, their work and that of others led to the creation of the Metrorail and Metrobus system and high-occupancy-vehicle lanes on Interstate 66 and other highways that we now all take for granted.Arlington activists worked closely in the 1960s and ’70s with D.C. activists — particularly Sammy Abbot, but also Mr. Craig — to prevent the building of Interstate 66 through Arlington until it was scaled down and modified.If Mr. Craig were alive today, he would doubtless cheer Arlington environmentalists’ efforts to keep an environmentally sound I-66 through Arlington and to prevent its needless and wasteful expansion from its current four lanes into neighborhoods and parklands.B. Audrey Clement and John Reeder,ArlingtonThe writers filed a lawsuit in October in U.S. District Court in Alexandria against the Virginia and U.S. departments of transportation in an effort to halt the widening of I-66 in Arlington.
From stopthedrugwar.org :
As 2009 prepares to become history, we look back at the past year’s domestic drug policy developments. With the arrival of a highly popular (at least at first) new president, Barack Obama, and Democratic Party control of the levers of power in Congress, the drug reform gridlock that characterized the Bush years is giving way to real change in Washington, albeit not nearly quickly enough. A number of this year’s Top 10 domestic drug stories have to do with the new atmospherics in Washington, where they have led, and where they might lead.
But not all of them. Drug reform isn’t made just in Washington. Under our federal system, the 50 states and the District of Columbia have at least some ability to set their own courses on drug policy reforms. In some areas, actions in the state legislatures have reflected trends — for better or worse — broad enough to earn Top 10 status.And Washington and the various statehouses notwithstanding, movement on drug reform is not limited to the political class. Legions of activists now in at least their second decade of serious reform work, a mass media that seems to have awakened from its dogmatic slumber about marijuana, a crumbling economy, and a bloody drug war within earshot of the southwestern border have all impacted the national conversation about drug reform and are all pushing politicians from city councilmen to state legislators to US senators to rethink drug prohibition.
For drug reformers, these are interesting times, indeed. Herewith, the Top 10 domestic drug policy stories of 2009…
From AlterNet:
Wall Street’s return to robustness and Main Street’s continued deterioration are the main takeaways for 2009 that stemmed from the 2008 choices to flush the financial system with capital and leave the real economy to fend for itself. Lies that exacerbate this divide only perpetuate its growth. With that, here is my top 10 list of lies. Please consider adding your own, and let’s all hope for a more honest New Year.
From AlterNet.org - The stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.
WASHINGTON - December 22 - For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness.
From the Times Dispatch:
“I think you can really make a case that this is the civil-rights issue of our generation,” said Ernst, an associate professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.Ernst, 39, emerged as a fresh voice on the bay in 2003 with the publication of his book “Chesapeake Bay Blues.” He followed that last month with his second book on the topic, “Fight for the Bay.”His message is grim: Decades of efforts to restore the bay have failed because politicians, government officials and environmentalists have treated polluters as partners and sought their compliance mainly through ineffective voluntary programs.He calls that approach “light-green environmentalism,” and says what’s needed is a “dark-green” approach that forces cleanups.“I’m saying you and I have a right to clean water, and nobody has a right to diminish that.“It doesn’t matter how expensive it is, it doesn’t matter how inconvenient it is. . . . Your property rights end when they pollute our public waters.”Howard has become “the foremost independent scholar of the Chesapeake Bay and its needs,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry J. Sabato.Howard received his doctorate in political science in 2000 from U.Va., where he served as Sabato’s head teaching assistant. Now, Ernst is a senior scholar at U.Va.’s Center for Politics, which Sabato directs.The once-bountiful bay suffers from pollution that washes off farms and developed land and also flows from sewage-treatment plants. That pollution creates low-oxygen “dead zones” that are unfit for fish.Ernst says the bay also suffers from a “political dead zone” — a condition in which politicians do little more than pay lip service to the bay, and environmentalists are too submissive to fight for real change.
From CounterPunch.org :
The nascent movement for single-payer in the United States has to learn the correct lessons from the health care debacle that has unfolded for the last year and is about to conclude. The number one lesson: DON’T TRUST THE DEMOCRATS – NOT A ONE. Especially the progressive Democrats. Millions believed Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to create a humane, affordable and inclusive health care system and rein in the copious abuses of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. On the campaign trail, Obama proclaimed these corporations were greedy and more concerned about profits and patents than the needs of patients. Some thought because Obama was a former supporter of a single-payer system, he might just enact it when he won the Whitehouse. How wrong they were.
No one could have predicted how much influence and control over health care reform President Obama would give to the very corporate interests killing and bankrupting the American people, and who just a few months earlier, had fiercely attacked and called out by name. No one could have predicted the scale and scope of the sell out. It is truly astounding given the soaring rhetoric of before and the cruel and sleazy reality of now.