Disaster in Massachusetts and a Supreme Court Decision that Disgraces Democracy

Two pieces of calamitous news in two days. Both pretty much impossible to swallow, but both realities moving forward.

The Massachusetts Senate Election

On Tuesday, Massachusetts voters elected the little-known Scott Brown to assume the late Ted Kennedy's seat. Kennedy spent decades fighting tooth and nail for health care reform, and now reform is severely threatened by Brown's impending inauguration. He has already vowed to obstruct the Democrats from passing a bill (nothing new for a Republican), and now Democrats are starting to back off any ambition they once had for making the bill strong and thorough. Massachusetts voters, who had been enamored of Ted Kennedy for decades, voted to betray his dying wish. I am not saying that the successor to his seat should have espoused his every view; I am saying that whatever values Ted Kennedy held that Massachusetts citizens ostensibly held in such high esteem for so long, they instantaneously turned their backs on.

There are innumerable factors that likely lifted Brown to victory, most of which have been discussed at length. Coakley ran an awful campaign. Voters were still disillusioned by the nation's employment and housing crises. The election was taken for granted by Democrats for too long. But whatever the reason for the shocking defeat, there are now 41 Republicans in the Senate, opening the possibility of interminable filibusters and continued obstruction until November, when Republicans will point out to Americans that Democrats have accomplished next to nothing, despite holding the Presidency and both Houses of Congress by sizable majorities.

The House climate bill can be completely scrapped. (Why do we even have a House, by the way? Sure, they're much more representative of our country than the Senate, but who needs representatives, when they don't seem to have a say in anything?) The relatively progressive House health care bill will likely give way entirely to the Senate health care bill so that at least something is passed (if there's no health care bill passed at all this year, Democrats can probably say goodbye to legislative chamber majorities come November). Who knows if there will be a jobs bill (even though that's what people are most concerned about right now). Financial regulations will pass, but likely in a weak bill that will maintain much of the status quo for the very sharks who helped push the world economy into a deep recession.

What exactly were Massachusetts voters voting for, then? Were they trying to send a message that they're mad? Because like it or not, Scott Brown will not get back at Wall Street. Scott Brown will not help create short-term jobs (his solution is to cut taxes). And by the way, when you're out of a job, Scott Brown certainly won't help you get health insurance. Oh, unless you're from Massachusetts, where progressive Democrats already passed legislation to ensure that for you. Ted Kennedy's dream, and life's work, which was so close to fruition, has been betrayed by his own loving constituents, solely because of his death. The irony is excruciating.

The U.S. Supreme Court Decision

In other horrible elections news, today the Supreme Court ruled that the government can't ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. I've talked at length about this issue before. While I have problems with the inherent idea of democracy (see: Massachusetts voters voting against their own interests and the interests of their country), I still acknowledge that it is the only form of government that reflects the ideals of human freedom, justice, and equality. It has its flaws, of course, and must be periodically improved so that these core tenets are not betrayed. Today, they were betrayed.

The four conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court and one alleged (but woefully misguided) moderate have further opened the election process to unprecedented levels of cash injections from big businesses, arguing that they are defending the first amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.

Let me first say that money is not speech, and conflating those two concepts is nefariously deceptive. But we have to remember here that the Constitution has been bent, twisted, and adulterated incessantly over the past 200+ years, to behoove whomever was "interpreting" its words. In this case, conservative judges who maintain Republican allegiances and were all appointed by Republican presidents, ruled against a bipartisan law that was designed to make elections fair and unbiased, untainted by the influx of money from self-interested groups corporations.

What is democracy now? Does the prefix demo- not mean "people"? What the majority of the Court failed to acknowledge was the underlying foundation of our democratic republic: the right of the people to choose their leaders, and the right for any person to have a chance to become one of those leaders, assuming they can compel the electorate to afford them enough votes. Now corporations will hold undue influence in all federal elections, the wealthiest of them having the biggest say in which politicians will be elected (think: Walmarts who exploit employees, Exxon Mobils and Southern Companies who unabashedly contribute to climate change, Pfizers and Aetnas who exploit the sick for massive profits, and Citigroups who get away with inciting economic turmoil and run away with unfathomable bonuses).

Whatever politicians who are still around that you thought were truly serving the interests of their constituents--that average "Joe the Plummer" that Republicans just love evoking--will soon be a vestige of a previous era of American politics. Don't get me wrong: Democrats are often just as guilty as Republicans when it comes to being beholden to special interests. And elected progressive Democrats who want to reform our election system to make it fair and democratic will soon be few and far between. Unbridled capitalism has commandeered our democracy. Our election system, the basis of American idealism, is truly tarnished in an irrevocable way (unless today's atrocious ruling is one day revoked).

It's been a really bad week for America.

Images: Scott Brown (New York Times), spineless Democrats (photobucket.com), Supreme Court Justices (Zimbio.com), Guy with sign (scu.edu)

A Green New Deal?

Yesterday, Barack Obama laid out a plan for economic recovery that looks a lot like Roosevelt’s New Deal in ambition and scope. Its purpose is to help revitalize the economy by pouring hundreds of billions of federal dollars into public restoration projects, focusing primarily on repairing roads and bridges that have been widely neglected by state and local governments due to insufficient funds. The short run consequences of the plan include another massive blow to the federal deficit, as well as the creation of myriad new jobs, with governors predicting 40,000 jobs will be created with every 1 billion dollars spent.

In the long run, according the Obama transition team, the country will be able to preserve hundreds of thousands of jobs, while creating up to 2.5 million more. With last month’s job losses in the US being the highest since 1974, it’s hard to imagine a better way to help the economy get back on track than creating millions of jobs. And jobs for the public good can’t be bad, can they? They’ll be preventing disasters like the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last year, maintaining our national parks, and retrofitting schools and other public buildings to be more energy efficient, among many other projects that have been left on hold pending funding.

Still, many conservative economists believe that public works spending is not an effective way to bolster the economy. Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute told the New York Times that creating such jobs in the public sector would only take jobs away from the private sector. I guess that’s ignoring the fact that 533,000 Americans, most of whom were probably in the private sector, just lost their jobs last month? I appreciate fiscal conservatives’ point of view, but it seems like in cases like this, where the very livelihood of our country is at stake, we should be taking bold, drastic measures that will seek to address the problems in a responsible and publicly beneficial way, rather than sitting on our hands and hoping the markets will readjust and take us back in the direction of prosperity. Wasn’t putting too much faith into the markets a big part of what got us into this mess?

Perhaps the most promising part of the plan, though, is Obama’s dedication to energy conservation, efficiency and clean energy. He says that at least a portion of the federal funding will go toward energy-efficiency retrofitting in public buildings, mass transportation, updating electrical grid systems, and installing renewable energy generators. This is one of the most important steps toward fixing our energy problems: inciting an energy revolution that will create millions of jobs, actively push the country toward energy independence, and cut carbon emissions to desired levels.

Advocates like Van Jones even cite the societal advantages of getting youth and ex-convicts involved in the green revolution, a two-birds-with-one stone approach that can help to alleviate our nation’s considerable prison enrollment ills. Perhaps taking such an outside-the-box look at ways to clean up our economic problems, while also cleaning up other problems, is exactly the right idea. But one thing is certain: if we don’t focus on energy and climate change as part of our solution to the economic crisis, we’ll only be further hurting ourselves economically in the long run.

Now is an opportunity, as bad as times are in our country, to make an impact on other impending crises, the consequences of which will cost us much more if we don’t prevent them than they will cost to mitigate. That is, using government money to adapt to climate change (or even the future costs of “energy dependence”) will greatly outweigh the costs of cutting emissions now. Obama is right to focus on energy issues in addressing the economy, but the focus has to be sweeping, unrelenting, and pointing drastically in the right direction (wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). It’s too late at this point to let politics get in the way of progress.

Images: Obama/Roosevelt (Time Magazine), Unemployment (ConnectMidMichigan.com), Solar Installers (Saint Francis U.), Van Jones (San Francisco Sentinel)