Book Review: With Liberty and Justice for Some

With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by Glenn Greenwald (2011, Metropolitan Books, New York) reports the news: powerful people have attacked a founding principle of the United States, equality under law. These people, politicians and corporate interests, have reached a point where they dismiss Federal laws and international agreements openly, even boastfully. Greenwald provides in-text sources for the modern-day events and quotes the Founding Fathers or gives Constitutional sources for his background references. However, he does not give footnotes or endnotes should a reader wish to check the references.

Greenwald’s communication strength rests on his passion. He does very well at saying, “This happened, here’s proof it happened, and it’s wrong because it’s against the Constitution and the intentions of the Founding Fathers!” He makes this statement in reference to equality under the law very thoroughly, focusing on events from the President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon to President Obama’s refusal to investigate or prosecute either Bush Administration torturers or Wall Street’s grand-scale fraudsters.

Greenwald spares neither parties nor personalities; liberals, conservatives, and moderates will each find some discomfort here. He also removes the illusions of those who still see the media as eager to expose wrongdoing. Greenwald concludes with a contrasting chapter on the lot of the less powerful, pointing out that the US prison population is huge and tends to be minorities and poor people. He points out that this growing prison population, largely non-violent drug users, does not correlate to either lower crime rates or reductions in drug use. In this chapter, he gives a good background to suggest why this continues despite its inability to achieve the stated results.

The flaws in Greenwald’s communication derive from his failure to go beyond passion. Except in the last chapter, he gives little background for his characters or their times. For example, why would Nixon do something as desperate as the Watergate break-in when he was leading in the polls and very likely to be re-elected without that? Why do people who make millions of dollars annually seek to make more millions by violating the law?

More importantly, he only cries foul; he does not suggest changes to make or even consequences of the current course. This negates his passion. Moving people to strong feelings without asking them to do something brings them depression and frustration, not understanding and satisfaction.

In short, With Liberty and Justice for Some gives a clear and impassioned picture of the decay of equality under law in the United States, but does little to help one understand why this is happening or what to do about it.

Book Review: Willful Blindness

Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, by Margaret Heffernan; 2011, Walker & Company, New York.

According to the bio on her book jacket, Margaret Heffernan is a former producer for BBC radio and TV and has been CEO of several interactive media companies. She came across the term “willful blindness” in the transcript of the Enron trial, and it so interested her that she eventually wrote this book about it. The term “willful blindness” means “you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something that instead you strove not to see (p. 2).” It matters not whether this avoidance was conscious or not. As with so many books, the subtitle makes the point. This becomes a communication topic because none of us can reach an audience that will not listen.

Heffernan goes on to examine in detail ten important causes of willful blindness, with examples ranging from match.com’s use of affinity (like attracts like) to the role of fatigue in the disastrous explosion at BP’s Texas City oil refinery to the factor of being too sure of one’s ideas in the collapse of the world economy.  She makes interesting connections by means of these causes. For example, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, held onto the idea that “free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies (quoted on p. 59)” long after the derivatives market endangered the economy in ways that he, of all observers, should have seen. He chose to hold onto what he already believed rather than see the facts in front of his face, a trait he shares with much of the world’s population, including some folks who believed that an alien space ship would save them from a world-ending flood back in 1954. Even after their entire prophecy proved false, most of them continued to believe, just as many American politicians continue to believe in “free, competitive markets” today.

Heffernan uses a chapter to examine each of the ten causes of willful blindness, and then gives us hope by including a chapter on people who do not blind themselves and one more chapter on ways to reduce one’s own blindness. Heffernan weaves her stories together very neatly around her themes, never losing track of the need to keep the reader involved. She uses a wide range of history and research to support her ideas, but this book reads far better than an academic paper. (Following up the endnotes is optional.) She gives a good bibliography and index, each of which increases the academic value and believability of Willful Blindness.

If you ever ask, “What was he thinking?” or “How could they not know?” read this book.

Party pooper re health insurance changes

Yep, they changed the laws about health insurance. I can expect a fine if I don't buy health insurance in 2014, assuming I live that long without health insurance. From an insurer viewpoint, profits from the 30 or so million new customers ought to offset the new rules. Please note that the new laws do nothing for prices and do not require very many specific coverages. Of course, the long lag time before the laws take effect gives insurers time to escape unwelcome new provisions by using the same scare tactics and heavy applications of cash that sabotaged the current bills.

Congress failed at two very important things. First and worst, they did not remove the antitrust exemption that health insurers enjoy. All of these politicians going on and on about the value of competition are either lying or grossly ignorant. Health insurers are exempt by law from competition.

More people are aware of the failure to include a public option in the changes. This also relates to competition. A publicly funded health care plan would (a) probably reduce costs a bit due to government entities not needing to make profits and (b) give the private companies a real incentive to compete that is lacking today. Such a large operation would also (c) provide leverage in negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, hospital chains and other large providers of care.

All in all, as an uninsured American, I don't see this as helpful. It's just a political gesture, "sound and fury signifying nothing."

Supreme Court Enables Corporate Corruption

The Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS), in its alleged wisdom, has decided that corporations may use essentially unlimited money to influence candidates' elections under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The legal issue here is that US law treats corporations as if they were individual people. This is ludicrous. People create corporations as devices to make money. For-profit corporations, by law, serve the sole purpose of increasing the wealth of shareholders. They cannot have any sort of moral values above greed. None. Thus, treating a corporate entity as if it should have concern for its customers, neighbors or environment, as most individual people do, makes no sense. Such concern, carried out in action, could bring about shareholder lawsuits.

Corporations differ from persons in another important way. Most corporations have money, and thus power, that only an elite few individuals can even imagine. They can invest in politicians freely, and the return on those investments far exceeds any honest way of making a living. It is the sole duty of corporations to make money, and using politicians is the easiest way of doing so in many cases. A wealthy individual might invest in politicians in order to benefit the town where he lives, to forward a personal cause he favors or for the feeling of power. Corporations do it strictly for the money.

Two appropriate responses to this decision come to mind. The first and the more obvious, lies in making the status of corporations better fitted to their function. We need to recognize that companies cannot be responsible for their own ethical behavior; too many conficting factors inhibit that. Regulation obviously fits the bill here, but with additions such as a "death penalty" (dissolution) for those corporate entities that repeatedly violate the laws affecting them. Another good idea is to hold directors and/or executives criminally responsible for the behavior of the corporate entities they control.

The more important response to the Supreme Court decision is to change our election financing system. In this, we already lag behind most of the developed world. Put simply, the politicians will respond to the people only to the degree that the people hold the power over their election. So long as elections are financed by corporations and wealthy donors, the odds of that remain as slim under the Democrats as they were under the Republicans. The chances of third parties gaining power under the current system and being able to change it are even smaller. Implementing one form or another of public financing will result in major government budget savings as contributors lose the power to buy pork barrel projects worth orders of magnitude more than the contributions, to block reforms aimed at making them pay taxes and to commit various other acts of greed. Other special interests would also find themselves less favored by the politicians they currently elect. For one example, a variety of conservative Christian organizations recieved $206 for providing "abstinence-only" sex education in 2006. They would probably would have to recognize the abundant evidence that their product does not serve any of its stated purposes. They would lose that money unless they can produce believable progress. Results would begin to count. All in all, public election financing is both cheaper and a far better investment than bridges to nowhere, oil industry subsidies or "abstinence only" sex education ever have been.