Always Low Wages, More Pollution: Why Barack and Michelle Obama Relentlessly Shill for Walmart

Sunday, 01 June 2014
By Bruce A. Dixon, Black Agenda Report


Earlier this month President Obama visited a Bay Area Wal-Mart to praise the world's largest and most anti-union retailer for its supposed environmental responsibility. The fact is that Wal-Mart's maintenance of diesel-fueled supply chains between its stores and wherever on the planet wages are lowest and environmental restrictions are totally absent make it a major ongoing contributor to runaway climate change. The president's appearance therefore, was simply a hypocritical exercise in greenwashing for Wal-Mart.

Though it was an insult to working people and to many of his abject and fervent supporters, it should have been no surprise. It wasn't President Obama's first wet kiss to Wal-Mart and with almost three more years in office to go it won't be his last. Still the willingness of the Obama Administration to do the bidding of Wal-Mart shows just how hollow has become the pretense of elected black Democrats to representing the poor and oppressed.

There was a time when Democrats in the White House did not dare openly shill for the giant retailer. Hillary Clinton served on Wal-Mart's board of directors through most of the 1980s, while her husband Bill was governor of Arkansas. Even then, Wal-Mart was notorious for overworking and underpaying its workers, violating labor laws to thwart unions, and sopping up prodigious amounts of corporate welfare in the forms of tax breaks and subsidies of all kinds. Being in bed with those crooks wasn't just an embarrassment, it was a hypocritical affront to Democratic voters, so somewhere on the 1992 road to the White House, Hillary resigned from Wal-Mart's board. Similarly in 2007 with her husband on the way to the White House, Michelle Obama felt compelled to resign from the board of TreeHouse Foods, a major Wal-Mart vendor. “I won't shop there,” said presidential candidate Barack Obama when questioned about Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO labor forum.

Of course labor audiences in 2007 and 2008 were where Obama pledged to renegotiate NAFTA, and immediately raise the minimum wage as soon as he took office. The president never mentioned raising the minimum wage again till about 2012 when Republicans were safely in control of the House of Representatives, and instead of renegotiating NAFTA, President Obama is engaged in secret negotiations to extend it across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Evidently the Obama that promises is a different guy, and far less powerful, than the Obama that acts.

Safely in office, Michelle and Barack Obama have enthusiastically embraced Wal-Mart. The first lady allowed the unscrupulous retailer to leverage her personal image as an advocate of exercise and healthy eating in her “Let's Move” initiative, and spouting the company line that the best solution to urban “food deserts” is opening more Wal-Mart neighborhood grocery stores. Michelle Obama's many appearances at and pronouncements around Wal-Mart have done the retailer more good than she and Hillary could ever have done in another decade or two apiece on its board of directors.

Right now Wal-Mart is approaching 30% of the US retail grocery market, with far lower wages, fewer hours, skimpier benefits, and longer and dirtier supply chains than its major competitors. As I said a couple years ago in an article about Michelle Obama's cynical embrace of Wal-Mart:

    Wal-Mart's business model of corrupting public officials, lying about job creation numbers, rampant sex and race discrimination, relentlessly low wage and benefit levels, and aspirations to monopoly control of local markets across the country make it a bad neighbor, a worse boss, an unfair competitor and sometimes a criminal enterprise.

Obama Is Negotiating the Biggest Trade Deal in Human History - It Would Gouge the American Economy

AlterNet/ By Thom Hartmann
May 12, 2014 |

Right now - the Obama administration is negotiating the biggest trade deal in human history.

If approved - The Trans-Pacific Partnership - or TPP for short - would create a whole new set of rules regulating the economies of twelve countries on four different continents bordering the Pacific Ocean. While TPP is its official acronym, because it's a deal that involves Southern Hemisphere Asian countries as well as us and others, I prefer, instead of TPP, to call it the "Southern Hemisphere Asian Free Trade Agreement" or SHAFTA.

Because SHAFTA or the TPP is being negotiated almost entirely in secret - we don’t know a lot about it - and what we do know comes almost entirely from leaks. And according to those leaks - the TPP/SHAFTA would give big pharmaceutical companies virtual monopoly patent power - it would let corporations sue countries in international courts over regulations that those corporations don’t like - and and it would gut American environmental and financial rules. The TPP/SHAFTA is a huge deal - the type of story about which the media should be informing the American people. But here’s the problem: almost no one in the mainstream media is talking about it.

According to Media Matters for America - during one six month period between August 2013 and February 2014 - only one nightly network news show - The PBS Newshour - mentioned the trade deal - and they only mentioned it once.

And that one mention occurred essentially as a plug for the TPP/SHAFTA, when a scholar from a right-wing DC think tank said that signing on to the TPP was essential for “improving relations with Asian nations."

Cable news did a little better when it comes to TPP coverage. While Fox So-Called News had no mentions - CNN talked about it once and MSNBC talked about it thirty-two times. But those thirty-two mentions were mostly on one show - “The Ed Show” - and because MSNBC is only available by premium subscription - there’s a very good chance most Americans never watched Ed talk about the TPP/SHAFTA.

Of course - the only thing worse than not talking about the TPP/SHAFTA - like TV news networks have been doing - is talking about it in a misleading way.

And that’s exactly what most mainstream newspapers have been doing. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting recently looked into TPP/SHAFTA coverage at two of the country’s most influential newspapers - the New York Times and the Washington Post - and found that “…on the rare occasions the papers covered TPP/SHAFTA over the last year, the sources they quoted tilted heavily in favor of the treaty.”

The total media blackout on actually critical coverage of the TPP/SHAFTA is a story in and of itself. Here we are, about to enter an once-in-a-generation economy-changing free trade deal, and the people who are supposed to be telling us the truth are either silent or on the side of giant multinational corporations.

Americans deserve to know what their government and big business are doing together behind closed doors.

And it’s outrageous that the mainstream media doesn’t seem think this is true when it comes to the TPP.

US to allow spy agencies to monitor citizens' finances

RT: March 14, 2013

Washington is reportedly considering opening all US financial records to national intelligence agencies in order to prevent future crimes. Only the FBI has had unlimited access to such databases; other agencies had to file case-by-case requests.

The Obama administration is preparing legislation to enable the country’s numerous security and intelligence agencies to spy on the accounts of US citizens, Reuters has revealed. The scheme’s stated aim is to help to identify and track terrorist cells, expose money-laundering schemes, trace criminal syndicates and curb corruption.

"It's a war on money, war on corruption, on politically exposed persons, anti-money laundering, organized crime," Amit Kumar, the UN advisor on Taliban and a fellow at the Democrat-established Center for National Policy think tank told Reuters.

The plan, dated March 4, is in its early stages but appears to have no judicial obstacles, as US legislation does not prohibit the exchange of information between government bodies. However, human rights activists have already criticized the plan

The planning document obtained by Reuters that the US Treasury’s financial database, which previously was only fully accessible by the FBI, will soon be integrated with national criminal, intelligence and other databases to become accessible to “law enforcement, counter-terrorism agencies, financial regulators and the intelligence community.”

Today, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) does not only collect data on clients of financial institutions, it also gathers reports of so-called ‘suspicious client activity’.

An estimated 25,000 financial institutions operating inside US territory – like banks, money transfer agencies, securities dealers and casinos – are obliged to report any activity considered suspicious, such as large (over $10,000) cash transfers, strangely account structures, computer hacking, counterfeiting and suspected money laundering.

The system is arranged so that if a bank is revealed to have not reported its clients’ suspicious activities, it risks of paying severe fines. Many banks err on the side of caution, and file reports on any activity deemed even slightly unusual: Every year, 15 million ‘suspicious activity reports’ are filed to the US Treasury, which allocates considerable resources to deal with them all.


If the Obama administration’s financial spy plan is enacted, US government agencies will have access to virtually all financial information on citizens or foreigners doing business in the US.

Currently, investigating a financial crime involves unraveling a tangle of evidence that could lead to a certain person, such as demanding a specific financial dossier from FinCEN. Once agencies like CIA, NSA or Counter Terrorism Center are allowed unrestricted access to FinCEN data, it would become possible for them to target an individual and arrest them for a crime for which they are not currently under investigation.

A US Treasury spokesperson vowed the agencies will adhere to safeguards outlined in both the Bank Secrecy Act and the US PATRIOT Act: “Law enforcement and intelligence community members with access to this information are bound by these safeguards.”

But Michael German, the senior policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Reuters that “the intelligence community simply ignores the rules” when it comes to how sensitive information is used.

German recalled Congress had refused to approve a similar plan a decade ago, but now “the guidelines were subsequently loosened… It’s in a black hole.”

‘Citizens caught up in financial crosshairs’


The new plan will do little in increasing the efficacy of “keeping America safe,” while potentially increasing, at least partially, the risk of an innocent or “wrongly-profiled” individual being caught through a misreading of banking information, Margaret Bogenrief, a founding partner of ACM Partners financial advisory firm told RT.

“The continued efforts to 'keep its citizens safe,' the US government seems be to struggling to walk that line between protection and invasion of American citizens’ privacy,” Bogenrief said. “More citizens could end up being caught up in the financial crosshairs.”

Considering that financial institution are already over-reporting on questionable activity this new plan of enforcement and power “almost guarantees an abuse, whether intentional or not,” she added.

The true unintended tragedy of this plan is that it won’t bring a significant increase in arrests of high-profile criminals, Bogenrief believes.

“Truly sophisticated criminals – whether they be members of organized crime, gangs, or terrorist groups – will already have the structures and teams in place that will assist these criminal groups in both skirting these rules and avoiding prosecution.”

The Obama administration’s financial spying plan is a shocking attack on personal freedom, independent journalist and founder of Wide Awake News, Charlie McGrath says.“Sold as an effort to stop international terror groups, the proposed measure pushes us ever closer to a complete Orwellian Police State where you are guilty without cause, evidence, or even accusation,” McGrath told RT.

Payoff in the Pit of the Plutocracy

Burning Every Bridge

by RUSSELL MOKHIBER

 

Jeff Connaughton was a lobbyist, a Senate aide and a White House lawyer. He says he came to Washington, D.C. as a Democrat and left as a Plutocrat.

Now he’s written a book – The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins (Prospecta Press, August 20, 2012.)

This book is about corporate crime – although that phrase doesn’t appear anywhere in its 288 pages.

It is in fact one of the best books on how corporate criminals manipulate the system to get away with their crimes.

One way is to enforce silence among the elites who know how the system works.

“Party cohesion and the desire to make a munificent living in DC go a long way to enforce silence,” Connaughton writes.

But Connaughton is silent no more.

“I’m willing to burn every bridge,” he writes. “Now that I’ve mutinied and fled to a remote place, I want to set flame to the ship that would take me back there.”

Connaughton says there have been no Wall Street prosecutions because the Obama Justice Department failed “to take a timely, targeted, all-in approach to the problem.”

“The truth is, the Justice Department never made investigating these actions a high priority,” he writes. “It never formed strike forces of investigators and lawyers that had sufficient resources and backing to doggedly pursue the obvious potential wrongdoers as long as it took to bring a fraud case.”

Prosecutors never used provisions in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which put in place tough criminal sanctions in the wake of Enron and other cases of massive corporate frauds, to indict those executives responsible for misleading financial reports.

“If Obama had appointed aggressive trial lawyers – and (Vice President Joe) Biden knew plenty of them – to these Justice Department positions and backed their efforts, there’s a good chance they would’ve hunted the worst Wall Street fraudsters relentlessly.”

“If the explanation for the inadequate effort is corruption (the administration could not afford to anger Wall Street contributors), the revolving door, or a belief that the health of the financial industry is more important than legal accountability, then we have an actual double standard. I don’t know the explanation, but in terms of faith in our institutions, it may not matter whether the double standard is real or apparent. That double standard has torn the social and moral fabric of our country in a way I find to be unforgivable.”

Connaughton says that two sources were telling him that Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, “was complaining to friends that Rahm Emanuel, then White House chief of staff, had sent her a message – in effect, throttle back on antitrust enforcement, because the top priority is economic recovery.”

“I was concerned that Attorney General Holder had gotten the same message about investigating Wall Street crime,” he writes.

Connaughton quotes Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner as saying – “The stuff that seemed appealing in terms of…Old Testament justice…penalize the venal, would have been dramatically damaging to the basic strategy of putting out the panic, getting growth back, making people feel more confident in the future.”

“Geithner’s statement would seem to indicate that he believes utilitarian outcomes justify overlooking potentially criminal behavior by banks,” Connaughton writes.

Connaughton worked as chief of staff for Senator Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware.) Kaufman was appointed as Biden’s replacement and dedicated his two years in office to demanding accountability for Wall Street’s crimes.

During one meeting with Justice Department Criminal Division Chief Lanny Breuer, Breuer said the department was dependent on the “pipeline” to bring forward cases against Wall Street banks and their executives.

“That’s when I lost my temper,” Connaughton writes. “‘Lanny, you need to go down into your pipeline and make sure the FBI and U.S. attorney’s offices are making this a top priority.

Organize and shake your pipeline hard and get it to bring you cases. Don’t just sit back and wait.’”

“I also couldn’t resist invoking our mutual history in the White House Counsel’s office and even exhorting him to emulate the tactics of our former antagonist,” he writes. “‘You need to be like Ken Starr. You need to target some of these guys like they were drug kingpins, just like Starr targeted Clinton, and squeeze every junior person around them until you can get one to flip and give evidence against the senior people.”

The scene at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was not much better.

SEC Enforcement Division Director Robert Khuzami, when asked about federal judges rebuking the SEC for paltry fines, said to Kaufman: “I’m not losing any sleep over them.”

And SEC chair Mary Schapiro wasn’t much more responsive.

“Near the end of the [October 2009] meeting [Kaufman] told [SEC Chairman Mary] Schapiro, ‘I don’t believe you’re going to do anything about high-frequency trading.’ Looking him straight in the eye, she replied, ‘You just watch.’”

“We watched for nearly three years,” Connaughton writes. “It wasn’t until July 2011 and June 2012 that the SEC approved minimalist rules that would force market participates to collect the data that would enable the SEC to begin – begin – the process of understanding HFT’s impact on markets. In effect, Ted and I and America are still watching and waiting for the SEC to take meaningful action.”

“If my tenure as Ted’s chief of staff taught me anything, it’s that the C in SEC doesn’t stand for the speed of light.”

Kaufman introduced legislation with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to break up the big banks.

But Brown-Kaufman could muster only 33 votes in the Senate.

“Senator Diane Feinstein – one of the most liberal members of the Senate – asked [Senator Dick] Durbin, the majority whip, ‘What’s this amendment?’ [referring to the Brown-Kaufman amendment to break up the mega-banks]. According to Durbin, he replied: ‘To break up the banks.’ Giving the thumbs-down sign, Feinstein said bemusedly: ‘This is still America, isn’t it?’
Connaughton and Senator Kaufman tried to get enforcement authorities to move aggressively against Wall Street criminality. They tried to break up the big banks. To no avail.
They were up against The Blob.

And The Blob won.

“The Blob – its really called that – refers to the government entities that regulate the finance industry – like the Banking Committee, Treasury Department, and SEC – and the army of Wall Street representatives and lobbyists that continuously surrounds and permeates them,” Connaughton writes. “The Blob moves together. Its members are in constant contact by e-mail and phone. They dine, drink, and take vacations together. Not surprisingly, they frequently intermarry. No lobbying restrictions yet promulgated can prevent pillow talk between Blob spouses.”

Connaughton holds out hope for reform – but not until there is another Wall Street crisis.
In the meantime, he says it’s time to “stop voting for the lesser of two evils” – and stand on principle.

He has burned his bridges.

And he wants you to burn yours, too.

Yesterday Was a Sad Day for Dallas

DALLAS OBSERVER - Thu., May 3 2012  
By Jim Schutze

I sat in the front row of the folding chairs yesterday and gazed around the ceremonial "flag room" at City Hall. Mayor Mike Rawlings and a majority of the Dallas city council** were ganged up around the podium endorsing a plan to build a two-billion-dollar toll road next to the Trinity River between downtown and Oak Cliff.

Leaning against the long inside wall of the room like crows on a wire were the old rich white guys in suits, representing the city's traditional elite. Most of the chairs behind me were filled with their claque, an array of people who depend on them for jobs or appointments.

At the front of the room in the first row was the ever-dwindling and meager little pack of local reporters who still cover this sort of thing. And then to our right, outside I.M. Pei's glowering wall of glass, was the city, blanched and beleaguered on this warm windy day, gazing back at us as if hoping somebody in here would know what to do.

The whole thing was sad.

The basic concept -- wreck the riverfront to build a highway -- is an absurd buggy whip of an idea, an anachronistic concept so out of synch with modern urban reality it would be laughable if it didn't involve ruining this city's only natural geographic feature.

The mayor engaged in a serious amount of double-talk about regionalism and gridlock, knowing full well that none of that is the reason for this road. It was left to southern Dallas council person Vonciel Hill to blurt the truth -- at least what she's been told is the truth by the rich crows on the wire -- that, "where the road goes go the dollars." They think doing this will make them money. That's the real joke. Their secret agenda is a stupid agenda.

The ancient white leadership of the city has sold the hungry black leadership of the city on the notion that building a superhighway along the river will promote real estate development along its route, eventually including the tail-end of that route in black southern Dallas.

That's the stupid. That's the buggy whip. It won't work in black Dallas. It won't work in white Dallas. It won't work. The crows on the wire don't understand that urban districts don't grow on highways any more, if they ever did. They understand nothing about how the new inverted cities of the 21st century grow or why.

It's interesting that these people who have maintained relatively tight control over City Hall all these years actually made most of their own money on suburban raw-land development, betting successfully on flight.

Their basic template -- "access is success" -- comes from the 'burbs. That's what they are trying to replicate along the Trinity River. In their culture, bicycles are for village idiots; the only people who walk around are burglars; if you really want to see nature, get a plane ticket.

The crows on a wire really and truly believe that building a honking, roaring, stinking expressway on top of the river is going to make a lot of rich people want to come live in condo towers along the expressway. And people like Vonciel Hill really believe that the rich people have finally divulged how they do it, so she's along for the ride.

It's no ride. It's sad. Really. It's a lot of other things, too. But when I looked out through that big leaning window yesterday at that skyline waiting out there for answers, more than anything else I felt sad for our city.

** You might remember that 3 or 4 years ago, a majority of the Dallas City Council were under investigation by the FBI...~~jef

Researchers Hid, Ignored Bad Results in Massive Drug Trial Corruption

April 17, 2012
Patrick Gallagher | NaturalSociety

Pharmaceutical medication has always been very highly regarded in society, and its continued use shows that many individuals seem to use it without knowing — or more likely, even thinking — about the content of the drugs that they so hastily consume. Recently there has been yet another study that shows the Food and Drug Administration, trusted by millions and yet funded with trillions to overlook some of the most detrimental health risks, cares even less about drug trial regulation than previously thought.

The study reveals the varied corruption deeply rooted within the FDA, vying for approval of drugs that serve no medical purpose, sometimes with more harmful effects than good. Specifically, the drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir) — the drug praised as the be all end all cure for the ‘deadly swine flu epidemic‘.

The entire article debunks the use and distribution of the effectively worthless drug, as well as the FDA’s reasons for approval:

“If sales can be considered a proxy for utility, the controversies surrounding even the most successful drugs (such as blockbuster drugs) seem all the more paradoxical, and have revealed the extent to which the success of many drugs has been driven by sophisticated marketing rather than verifiable evidence… Prior to the global outbreak of H1N1 influenza in 2009, the United States alone had stockpiled nearly US$1.5 billion dollars worth of the [drug].”

The researchers continue:

“This analysis, conducted by Kaiser and colleagues, proposed that oseltamivir treatment of influenza reduced both secondary complications and hospital admission. In contrast, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approved Tamiflu in 1999 and was aware of these same clinical trials, concluded that Tamiflu had not been shown to reduce complications, and required an explicit statement in the drug’s label to that effect.”

This study only covers one single drug that has only been approved solely for profiteering; the FDA is known to have approved thousands upon thousands of commercial drugs from the big pharmaceutical corporations over the decades, with many questioning their serious side effects. Such is the case with highly-popular cancer drugs, which have been shown to make cancer worse and actually kill the patient more quickly. It has become abundantly clear that citizens cannot and should not place any sort of trust in many of these corporate-pushed these medications and their supposed ‘benefits’.

Cited:http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001201http://blogs.mercola.com/sites/vitalvotes/archive/2012/04/13/massive-corruption-revealed-to-be-at-the-core-of-many-drug-approvals.aspx

Corruption Is Responsible for 80% of Your Cell Phone Bill

In the case of Big Telecommunications, buying politicians pays off handsomely by killing the competition.
By Matt Stoller, Republic Report
Posted on April 11, 2012

Last year, a new company called Lightsquared promised an innovative business model that would dramatically lower cell phone costs and improve the quality of service, threatening the incumbent phone operators like AT&T and Verizon. Lightsquared used a new technology involving satellites and spectrum, and was a textbook example of how markets can benefit the public through competition. The phone industry swung into motion, not by offering better products and services, but by going to Washington to ensure that its new competitor could be killed by its political friends. And sure enough, through three Congressmen that AT&T and Verizon had funded (Fred Upton (R-MI), Greg Walden (R-OR), and Cliff Stearns (R-FL)), Congress began demanding an investigation into this new company. Pretty soon, the Federal Communications Commission got into the game, revoking a critical waiver that had allowed it to proceed with its business plan.

And so Americans continue to have a small number of expensive, poor quality cell phone providers. And how much does this cost you? Take your phone bill, and cut it by 80%. That’s how much you should be paying. You see, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, people in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Finland pay on average less than $130 a year for cell phone service. 

Americans pay $635.85 a year. That $500 a year difference, from most consumers with a cell phone, goes straight to AT&T and Verizon (and to a much lesser extent Sprint and T-Mobile). It’s the cost of corruption. It’s also, from the perspective of these companies, the return on their campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures. Every penny they spend in DC and in state capitols ensures that you pay high bills, to them.

This isn’t obvious, because much of how they do this has to do with the structure of the industry.

 

Telecommunications isn’t like selling apples, where you have a lot of buyers and sellers. In a business like buying or selling apples, all you need is an apple tree to get into the business. Cell phones aren’t like that. It’s a business where you sell services on top of a network of cell phone towers that can transmit phone calls and data, and these networks cost tens of billions of dollars to build. But even if you have the money to build one, you still might not be able to, as the Lightsquared example shows. These networks all use public airwaves, or “spectrum”, and you need government permission to use it. Remember the electromagnetic spectrum you learned about in school? The government literally leases that out to companies, and they make radios, microphones, wifi routers, and cell phones that use it.

This has implications for your cell phone bill. Once AT&T or Verizon has paid for its network and licensed spectrum from the government, the cost of adding an additional customer is very low. That means that the biggest providers with bigger networks and more licensed spectrum make more money. It’s not only that their costs are lower, but also because they can keep other players out through control of the political system. That is, they can move towards monopoly in the industry. And monopoly means higher prices for you, and more profits for them. Here’s the data.

Verizon and AT&T’s Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) are substantially higher than any other national carrier’s. Verizon’s wireless profit margins (EBITDA) are substantially higher than all other carriers except AT&T. And Verizon and AT&T together control four-fifths of the entire wireless industry profits, the only two major carriers to control double-digit shares of the industry’s total profits. Over the past 3 years Verizon and AT&T’s share of total industry profits has steadily increased while everyone else’s declined.

This of course doesn’t mean that these companies are investing more in their networks, for better service for you and me. In case you haven’t noticed, cell phone coverage is still really bad, and calls drop routinely. The chart below can explain why. The data is from the CTIA, or the Wireless Association, and it shows the effect of industry consolidation.

Basically, what this chart shows is that in the 1990s, cell phone companies bought up other cell phone companies, and Congress and the FCC were happy to go along because of the power of industry lobbying. Once these companies had an effective cartel, their amount of investment dropped. If you didn’t like your cell phone company, you couldn’t really switch, because the other big cell phone company was just as bad. In 1997, the industry was putting 50 cents of every dollar of revenue into investing in more cell phone towers. By 2009, that number dropped 12.5 cents of every dollar. CTIA has made it much harder to find this data since 2004, but it is obscure filing comments at the FCC. Pretty soon, we should expect the public not to even be able to track why our cell phone’s usage is so bad.

To reduce prices in such a system, you need either competition in the form of more networks (with the same or different technology) or price regulation. The Federal Communications Commission has neither forced more competition, nor has it restricted price gouging. In fact, by doing things like killing Lightsquared, it has ensured high prices for all of us. Furthermore, the FCC has allowed a small number of big players like AT&T and Verizon to buy up much of the public airwaves (or “spectrum”) available for cell phone use, just to keep out competitors. It tends to allow big mega-mergers to go through (with the exception of the recent T-Mobile and AT&T merger). Meanwhile, Congress is trying to tie the hands of the FCC on making more spectrum available for anyone to use, and broadcasters are also throwing their lobbying into the ring, because they want to be able to control more spectrum to transmit television signals.

Why does the FCC and why does Congress want us to have high cell phone costs? Well, they don’t, not really. It’s more accurate to say they don’t particularly care about our problems, but are responding to an entirely different problem that is completely unrelated to cell phones. The government is responding to the need for campaign contributions for politicians.

Politicians need huge sums of money to run for office. Just a regular Congressman (and remember, there are 435 of these) needs $2 million on average to win reelection – which is about $20,000 per week he’s in office. He needs this money to buy TV ads. Unlike in other countries, where political parties get free TV time or public money to pay for elections, American politicians get this money from private interests. Some of the biggest donors, in fact the single biggest donor, is AT&T, with Verizon in the top 100. These politicians lobby regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission to make sure these companies can do what they want, and politicians make sure that phone companies get to buy up other phone companies, eventually creating a near monopoly situation. And we all know that monopolies charge more and deliver less to their customers. As telecom legal expert Marvin Ammori said, “It’s proven cheaper to buy politicians than invest in high speed broadband or to provide good customer service at a fair price. ”

In other words, we are stuck with big bad cell phone companies not because those companies are good at providing cell phone service (which anyone with a dropped cell phone call knows), but because they are good at corrupting markets through political donations. AT&T has the single biggest donor group (known as a “Political Action Committee”) in Washington, DC.

Again, that’s on average $500 a year, $40 a month, or $1.50 a day, from you, straight into the pockets of Verizon and AT&T.

No Fault Corporate Crime

Holding Holder to Account
by RUSSELL MOKHIBER

Ten years ago, if you wanted to quickly find out what was going on in the world of corporate crime, you would just type in the word “fined” into a news database.

Up would come a series of penalties or fines brought against big corporations by federal law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C.

Exxon fined for pollution.

Or ADM fined for antitrust violations.

But over the past decade, corporate lobbyists have worked their will in Washington, and enforcement against corporations has been watered down to the point where now corporate crime enforcement is way down the list.

Last night I typed “fined” into Google News – and these were the top five stories that came up:

1. A french perfume executive was fined for making racist remarks.
2. Fifteen people were fined for spitting in India.
3. The NBA fined Los Angeles Clippers foward Reggie Evans $25,000 for making an obscene gesture.
4. Only twenty five dog owners in northeast Scotland have were fined in the last year for dog fouling.
5. And the Houston Dynamo soccer midfielder Colin Clark was fined for using a gay slur at a ball boy.

Story number six did have to do with corporate crime – but it was from Europe.

Last week, the EU fined 14 air-shipping companies a combined $225 million for price fixing.

Now, try typing in the phrase “corporate crime” into Google News.

The phrase has been pretty much banished from American journalism and politics.

So, when you type in the words “corporate crime” into Google News, you will primarily see reports from overseas say the Irish Times or a newspaper in Australia – or you will see a quote from Ralph Nader, or a story from Corporate Crime Reporter.

Last night, I typed in the words “corporate crime” into Google News, and much to my surprise the first thing that came up was a Reuters story about the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

I have been reporting on Holder since he took office three years ago.

As far as I can tell, last month was the first time in his three years as Attorney General that he uttered the phrase “corporate crime.”

And this is what he said at a meeting of state Attorney Generals in Washington.

“We’re gonna make some news with regard to holding individuals responsible for things we tend to think of as corporate crimes,” Holder said.

Get it?

We’re going to hold individuals responsible.

Not hold corporations responsible.

Hold individuals responsible for things we tend to think of as corporate crimes.

Now, what Holder said here is important.

Because he comes from a corporate law firm – Covington & Burling – where he represented primarily corporations, not individuals.

And when he leaves office, Holder most likely will return to Covington & Burling.

Where he will represent primarily corporations – not individuals – against federal law enforcement officials, in their increasingly weakened state.

Every week in Corporate Crime Reporter, we run a question/answer format interview with someone who has something to say about corporate crime.

When we started Corporate Crime Reporter 25 years ago this month, our first ever interview – the first of now over 1,200 interviews – was with Rudy Giuliani – who at the time was the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.

At the time, Giuliani believed that if you were to bring a case against a major American corporation, you secured a guilty plea, or took the case to trial.

Or you just didn’t bring the case.

And Giuliani’s view was the view of federal law enforcement back then.

Bring a criminal charge if you have a criminal case. And secure a guilty plea. Or don’t bring the case.

As a result, major American corporations were convicted of crimes on a regular basis.

Because they engaged in crimes on a regular basis.

And the message was sent – you commit a crime, you will be convicted and publically shamed.

Today, major American corporations are still committing crimes on a regular basis.

But the difference is today major American corporations are rarely convicted of their crimes.

It’s not that they no longer engage in corporate criminal behavior.

It’s that they have set up a system where they no longer have to plead guilty to their crimes.

Instead, they settle these major corporate crime cases with deferred and non prosecution agreements.

These are the criminal equivalents of the neither admit nor deny consent decrees used for decades by the Securities and Exchange Commission and that recently have come under fire by federal judge Jed Rakoff in New York.

And so, if you are a criminal defense attorney at Holder’s former firm of Covingon & Burling, this is how you practice corporate crime law:

1. Your client comes to you with evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the corporation.
2. You approach the Justice Department and disclose it.
3. The Justice Department offers you a deal.
4. The Justice Department says to you – if you cooperate in the criminal investigation against the individuals involved at the company, we will let you off the hook with a deferred or non prosecution agreement.
5. There will be no criminal conviction against your corporate client.
6. But you must cooperate against the individuals involved.
7. And those individuals will likely be convicted and go to jail.

Thus, Holder’s statement – “We’re gonna make some news with regard to holding individuals responsible for things we tend to think of as corporate crimes.”

Last month, we interviewed David Uhlmann.

Uhlmann is the former head of the Environmental Crimes Section at the Justice Department.

And he’s currently a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.

When Uhlmann was head of the Environmental Crimes Section, he didn’t use deferred and non prosecution agreements in corporate crime cases.

Uhlmann says that deferred and non prosecution agreements have no place in major corporate crime cases.

These agreements were originally meant for minor street cases, not major corporate crime cases.

When the Department entered into a non-prosecution agreement last year to resolve criminal investigation into the Upper Big Branch mine disaster, Uhlmann wrote a scathing opinion article in the New York Times titled For 29 Dead Miners, No Justice.

“Twenty-nine miners died in West Virginia. They died because Massey had a history of mine safety violations,” Uhlmann told us.

“They died at a facility where the company kept a double set of books – one for internal purposes, which documented violations, and one for mine safety officials that covered up those violations.”

“To enter a non-prosecution agreement in a case where 29 people died and there is so much evidence of criminal wrongdoing reflects poorly on the Justice Department.”

Uhlmann says that the Environmental Crimes Section to this day does not settle corporate crime cases with deferred and non prosecution agreements.

Maybe that’s why Holder and his aides stripped the Environmental Crimes Section of authority over the criminal investigation into the Gulf oil spill cases and gave it to the Criminal Division.

Uhlmann believes that it will be a travesty of justice if the Department doesn’t secure guilty pleas in the Gulf oil spill cases.

But they didn’t in the Massey Energy case.

And the odds are not good that they will in the BP oil spill cases.

Not that crimes weren’t committed in the Gulf oil spill cases. They clearly were. But after all, Holder is from Covington & Burling. And he’s going back to Covington & Burling. And his top deputies came from corporate law firms and they are going back to corporate law firms.

Obviously, this practice of no fault corporate crime has taken hold at the top and been filtered right down through the entire federal enforcement system.

Last month, I caught this headline from a Canadian newspaper:

“Wal-Mart Pleads Guilty in Teen’s Death.”

The story began:

“Walmart Canada pled guilty Tuesday in the case of a teenager who was electrocuted on the job last year."

When I saw that, I went to our federal OSHA web site and searched for a similar case. And I found one also from last month where a Verizon worker was electrocuted on the job. OSHA proposed a civil fine of $140,700.

The point is that a criminal conviction sends a message that a civil fine or a deferred and non prosecution can’t.

A criminal conviction says to the corporation – what you have done is serious and we are bringing out our most serious weapon to bear – a criminal conviction.

Corporations get it.

What big corporations fear most is the reputational hit of that headline –“Wal-Mart Pleads Guilty in Teen’s Death." Corporations will do – and have done – everything in their power to avoid that headline.

So, our criminal justice system is out of whack.We must get back to the days of when you brought a case, you secured a guilty plea or you went to trial. Like Professor Uhlmann says, deferred and non prosecution agreements have no place in corporate crime practice.

And now the question becomes – how to bring back some balance to our corporate criminal justice system?

There is a clear power imbalance in Washington with the corporate law firms holding the upper hand. Young law students would much rather go for the fancy offices and big salaries of a corporate law firm than a Justice Department cubicle.

When I was a teenager, I had an uncle who would warn me about U.S. colleges being high priced tool factories for the corporations. The choice of which college or law school to go to was not nearly as important as the choice of what you did with your education.

Education for what? – was the question we were asked. And it was made clear to us that a decision to work for a corporate law firm or not was a moral choice.

And that’s what is missing. A moral code and a shaming mechanism to enforce it.

We were told, in effect, – shame on you if you decide to slave away working to undermine the criminal justice system on behalf of Wal-Mart and BP or Massey Energy.

Sure, every corporation deserves legal representation. But it doesn’t have to be you.

We must also shame our public officials into securing convictions when convictions are warranted. To insist on corporate criminal prosecutions in worker death cases where warranted. To do away with deferred and non prosecution agreements in corporate crime cases. To demand action where action is due.

It’s shameful that more than three years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy there has not been a single prosecution of a Wall Street firm even though fraud and financial misrepresentations played a significant role in the meltdown.

Even Sixty Minutes pointed this out in December of last year.

But still, nothing.

And before he goes back to Covington & Burling, Eric Holder has to be held to account.

It is shameful that Holder cares more about individual wrongdoing than he does about corporate wrongdoing.

Most importantly, we need to support our local corporate crime police, to bolster their enforcement budgets, to begin to level the playing field between corporate criminals and the police.

Court Rules FDA is Harshly Censoring Foods and Supplements

Court Rules Against FDA In Landmark Health Freedom Case
Mike Barrett, NaturalSociety, March 23, 2012


If you are the maker or seller of health supplements, or follow the decisions made by the Food and Drug Administration, then you probably know of the blatant corruption and injustice revolving around the FDA. Through examining and following the FDA’s decisions, anyone can see that the organization continuously pushes pharmaceutical drugs while censoring health food and supplements and their ability to heal. Such is the case with a company known as Fleminger, Inc. and their green tea product.


In 2004, Fleminger Inc. submitted a health claim petition to the FDA for their green tea product. Scientific research is available showcasing green tea’s ability to boost the immune system, promote graceful aging, and help to fight cancers, and so Fleminger Inc. rightfully thought to promote these health advantages. But the FDA responded a year later with a proposed disclaimer that the “FDA concludes that it is highly unlikely that green tea reduces the risk” of breast cancer and prostate cancer — health claims that Fleminger wanted to promote. In 2010, after threatening to seize Fleminger Inc.’s products and enforce the use of new exact language proposed by the FDA, the organization sent over another revised claim which they insisted the company use:

“Green tea may reduce the risk of breast or prostate cancer. FDA does not agree that green tea may reduce the risk because there is very little scientific evidence for the claim.”

Being shocked and appalled by the FDA’s force, Fleminger created a suit in the US District Court. The Food and Drug Administration simply gave Fleminger no choice but to use their exact words in claims or risk facing the penalty by the FDA. Thankfully, judge Bryant ruled in favor of Fleminger, saying:

”The FDA’s language “effectively negates the substance–disease relationship claim altogether….There are less burdensome ways in which the FDA could indicate in a short, succinct and accurate disclaimer that it has not approved the claim without nullifying the claim altogether.”

Unfortunately, companies promoting food and supplements are seldom allowed to showcase specific health benefits resulting from use of their product. As shocking as it may seem, the FDA deems food and supplements as drugs if they are marketed with health claims. Furthermore, these ‘drugs’ would need to go through costly drug trials, and can’t be patented like all other real drugs can be.

This is also the case with Diamond Foods and their walnuts. In response to claims by a company named Diamond Foods that walnuts possess health benefits, the FDA sent the company a letter informing them of their wrongdoing. According to the FDA, claims made by Diamond Foods that omega-3′s found in walnuts produce health benefits make their walnuts ‘drugs‘. As far as the FDA is concerned, these “drugs” can not be legally marketed in the United States without an approved new drug application.

There are many cases similar to those experienced by Fleminger Inc. and Diamond Foods. Why is the FDA absurdly censoring foods and natural supplements while promoting deadly prescription drugs? Well, to put it simply, the organization really does not care about your health.

Explore More:

1. Court Rules Smokers May Sue Tobacco Industry Over Disease Such as Lung Cancer
2. GMO Crops Continually Banned Around the World in Display of Health Freedom
3. FDA Claims Walnuts to be Illegal Drugs | Government Lunacy at its Best
4. U.S. Appeals Court OKs Health Care Law
5. New Government Regulations Signify Crackdown on Natural Health
6. FDA Issues New Rules on Sunscreens

How Privatizing Government Shovels Cash to Parasitic Corporations and Undermines Democracy

From schools to prisons, outsourcing government's works typically ends with cronyism, waste and unaccountability
By Mike Konczal, Salon
Posted on February 5, 2012,

Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century.

Everything we once expected the government to do — from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management — it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

Privatization is one of the few political projects that enjoys bipartisan support: Conservatives cheer the rollback of the state, and liberals like to claim that the virtues of the free market are being used towards the egalitarian ends of public policy. The fraud and waste that often come with outsourcing these services has been well-documented. The private management in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the lobbying efforts of corporate prisons have all provided horror stories of what happens when cronyism guides decision-making on behalf of the state. But privatization as standard government practice has problems that go far beyond the abuses of any single incident.

Rather than solving problems with government, privatization often amplifies those issues to new extremes. Instead of unleashing market innovation, it often introduces new parasitic partners into the decision-making process. Instead of providing a check on the power of the government, it allows the state to circumvent constitutional and democratic accountability measures by merging with the private sector. And ultimately, the practice replaces the set of choices and constraints found in democracy, with another set found in the marketplace. Today’s political conversation is blind to these problems out of a mistaken faith in the efficiency and fundamental equality of markets, contrasted to the ineffectiveness and corruptibility of the state.

What advocates miss is that the logic of markets creates private-sector coalitions capable of extracting just as much from taxpayers as the state. Corporations, lobbyists and other market actors can have just as much political agency as the government, and privatization can mobilize businesses to rewrite market practices.

This political process plays out in the quality of the services provided and the structure of the companies providing them. Privatization has sometimes meant that the most lucrative and easiest parts of these government obligations go into private hands, creating private profit, while the most difficult and dangerous parts remain with the public. This can range from the “privatizing the gains, socializing the losses” of various parts of the financial sector to the “cream-skimming” that goes on in many other industries.

If privatization is meant to put a check on the size and power of the state it often backfires, as the practice can be used to circumvent normal mechanisms that exist to hold the state accountable. A whole array of transparency laws and constitutional checks don’t carry over when the government outsources its responsibilities and activities to independent businesses.

Privatization as a way of avoiding constraints and accountability measures has two particularly troubling consequences.

First, the government can use independent agents to do things that they themselves cannot do, betraying the whole point of keeping government in check. Especially in the world of surveillance, this practice can act as a way to get around constitutional protections enjoyed by citizens.

Second, accountability measures that have evolved through decades of public law are jettisoned when a service leaves the public sector, allowing companies to do the government’s work in a network of secrecy. Ways the public keeps a check on the government, from the Freedom of Information Act to the Administrative Procedure Act to whole regimes of other transparency laws, do not bind outside businesses.

The Constitution prohibits the delegation of significant state powers, but the Supreme Court currently puts few constraints on the government to outsource many of its important duties. What today’s discourse ignores is an understanding of the liberal conception of what public and democracy itself is good for — as a way to check private and government power, and promote accountability and responsiveness.

These blur into dark scenarios where private-public relationships give public agents maximum discretion in exchange for giving private agents advantages over their competition. For example, after FedEx’s CEO announced that his company would be cooperating with the government following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the firm received a number of rewards. Ranging from special access to security databases, to a prize seat on a regional terrorism task force (the only private company represented) and special state licenses, these benefits amplified the firm’s power in the marketplace over noncooperative competitors like UPS, all in exchange for amplifying the power and reach of the state.

Defenders of privatization also argue that the marketplace creates innovation. Competition, the profit motive and the “creative destruction” of the market system can be deployed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government services. But what this outsourcing really does is move constraints from one space to another. It transforms the strengths and weaknesses, the limits and the constraints, from government to the market.

Privatization replaces the democratic role of citizens finding solutions to collective problems and transforms it into consumers trucking and bargaining in a marketplace. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self. The market emphasizes cost-benefit thinking, profit-seeking strategies, bargaining and the satiation of individuals’ wants; good things in many circumstances, but not necessarily when it comes to the powers of the state.

A regime of privatization shifts the debate away from the functions of government towards the allocation of those functions. For all the talk about innovation by outside contractors, what privatization largely does is preserve the scope of government services while looking for efficiency gains. And since the scope of what the government does is held constant, the real gains come from minimizing costs.

Take prisons, for example. With the addition of privately run prisons, the debate narrowly focuses on how much to spend on prisoners. Minimizing costs here will often be the result of simply providing less good at a worse quality, and the debate will focus on the optimal extent of these privatization contracts. Meanwhile, the greater question of when the state should imprison people fades to the background.

What’s actually public about these responsibilities disappears from the conversation. Privatization assumes that cost quantifying solutions are more fundamental to government than any discussion of ethics or values. The move away from democratic accountability is particularly worrisome because in many of these fields, the ultimate motivator of private markets, the profit motive, is in direct conflict with the public administration. The basic values, concepts and institutions of liberal democracy — political participation, elections, equal distribution of individual liberties, checks on concentrated power — do not work towards economic competitiveness.

The ideology that the government is just one among many providers of goods and services is a seductive one in this age of markets. But the government isn’t simply just another agent in the market, and firms that are empowered to carry out the role of the state can be as abusive as the worst bureaucracy.

We need new arguments for the government, with all its strengths and weaknesses, to be allowed to do its jobs knowing that it won’t always be perfect. The alternative is government by cronyism, delegated marketplace winners exploiting what works about markets with none of the normal checks we expect on a functioning democracy. There are no doubt weaknesses in the current functions of government, but for those who resist privatization, that is a call to political reform rather than one of abandoning the public arena altogether.

The tyranny of tiny minds and big money

SUNDAY, FEB 5, 2012
After three years, its time for Obama to deliver on his promise to curb money in politics

BY LAWRENCE LESSIG

Four years ago, Sen. Barack Obama, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, began to draw into focus a meme that for many of us defined what was different about his campaign, and what made his election critical. As he said in Columbia, S.C., on Jan. 26, 2008,

We are up against the belief that it’s all right for lobbyists to dominate our government — that they are just part of the system in Washington. But we know that the undue influence of lobbyists is part of the problem, and this election is our chance to say that we’re not going to let them stand in our way anymore.

On April 2, he told an audience in Philadelphia:

If we’re not willing to take up that fight, then real change — change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans — will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.

Two weeks later, Washington, D.C.:

But let me be clear — this isn’t just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it’s about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans

One week later, Indianapolis:

Unless we’re willing to challenge the broken system in Washington, and stop letting lobbyists use their clout to get their way, nothing else is going to change.

And just as he had said in Pittsburgh the week before, he repeated in Indiana again:

The reason I am running for president is to challenge that system.

This “challenge” was an essential element in Obama’s argument. Without such reform, the aspirations of his campaign — from healthcare reform, to global warming legislation, to reform of the banks, to an overhaul of the tax system — would not just have been audacious. They would have been insane. All the money in the world was not simply going to be lulled to sleep by Obama, the great speechifier. Only by effecting a real change of its power within the system of our government would the Obama agenda be even possible.
That’s because the system of government that we have now is corrupt. Not corrupt in the traditional Rod Blagojevich sense of corruption. Our Congress is not filled with crooks. Quid pro quo bribery is not its central crime. Instead, corrupt in the sense that the attention of Congress is constantly drawn away from where it would be focused if it were an institution, as the Framers intended, “dependent upon the people alone.”

It is not. As members spend more and more of their time raising money (estimates range between 30 and 70 percent), Congress becomes an institution dependent upon its Funders, too. And as “the Funders” are not “the people”— .26 percent give more than $200 in a congressional campaign, .05 percent give the max to any individual candidate, and just .01 percent of Americans, 1 out of every 10,000, give more than $10,000 in an election cycle — that dependency corrupts Congress. Seventy-five percent of Americans believe “campaign contributions buy results in Congress.” Barely 10 percent have confidence in Congress. This institution, the core of our democracy, is politically bankrupt. And it was therefore appropriate, indeed, essential, that the president make its reform the catalyst for any real “change.” If this indeed was to be “change you could believe in,” changing Congress had to be part of the plan.

Yet three years into this administration, we have yet to see the plan. In Obama’s first year as president, reform of Congress was nowhere on his agenda. Then a year (and a day) after his inauguration, the Supreme Court, in its Citizens United decision, gave birth to the age of the super PAC. Yet his State of the Union address in response proposed little more than disclosure as a remedy — as if seeing the corruption more clearly was going to make Americans more trusting. And then, after his shellacking in the midterms, Obama said this:

We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn’t change how things got done. And I think that frustrated people.

Yet still, there was no plan. Nothing in the reforms that Obama even hinted at would have changed the fact that it is the tiniest slice of America that funds the largest chunk of the costs of America’s campaigns.

And then there is this year’s State of the Union address. “I’ve talked tonight,” Obama told us, “about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street.”

“But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad — and it seems to get worse every year. Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix that.”

Here, I confess, my heart skipped. Obama, I thought, was back. Obama, the reformer, the candidate talking about the change that would make change believable. Here I thought was the obvious lead in to a plan for change that would make it possible for sane souls to believe that the substantive changes that he promised were even possible.

So what were these “steps to fix” it? What is the plan?

Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact. Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress, and vice versa — an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.

Seriously, Mr. President? These are the “steps to fix” the divide between Washington and the rest of the country? This would end the “corrosive influence of money in politics”?

Don’t get me wrong: Obviously, these changes would be good. The insider trading issue looks bad, no doubt, though there’s a real debate about whether there is any there there. Serious scholars crunching the numbers have yet to find a systemic advantage, even if a selective view might suggest something different.

But no one credible believes that the dysfunction of Congress comes from day trading on the floor of the House. And no one credible could believe that the core corruption that is our government would end if members of Congress were banned from owning stock.

Likewise with the ban on bundlers lobbying Congress “and vice versa” (though notice, nothing is said about bundlers lobbying the executive): It is certainly true that one core dynamic of the corruption of this government comes through the influence of “lobbyists.” But no one even seems to know any more who a “lobbyist” is. Former Sen. Tom Daschle tells us he is not “a lobbyist.”  He’s merely an “advisor.” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich promises he was not “a lobbyist.” He sold his advice and access, he tells us, as “an historian.” Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) promised Connecticut he wouldn’t lobby after leaving Congress. And he didn’t: He merely took over Hollywood’s chief lobbying association, the Motion Picture Association of America.

The point is not just about the individuals who find a way to skirt regulations. The point is about the obvious consequence of any plan that focuses exclusively upon limits. If you ban “lobbyists” from bundling, there will be fewer “lobbyists” and many more historians. If you ban advisors and historians from bundling, there will be fewer advisors and historians, but more CEO’s of lobbying associations. It is just an elaborate game of Whac-A-Mole, each suppression creating a new bubble, in an endless and futile game of reform.

The problem here is obvious: Obama has surrounded himself with tiny minds. “Audacity” has been banished from their dictionary. The most they can timidly suggest is the smallest step that has any chance of passing. Let’s get what we can, declare victory and move on. As if the battle was about making Obama a successful and popular president, as opposed to the battle to make this democracy work again.

The corruption of this government is a cancer. And you don’t launch an attack on cancer by prescribing good eating and exercise. Nor can you make change believable by pushing for reforms that won’t change anything in that corruption. What Obama must do if he is to make American democracy possible again is to speak boldly, not practically, about reform. He has to give us the big ideas that would actually have an effect, not the pathetic tinkering that only makes the lobbyists laugh. He needs to begin the process of persuading the nation that fundamental reform is necessary and possible. He must “take up that fight,” for unless he does, then “real change — change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans — will keep getting blocked by the defenders of the status quo.” He must stop, by his silence, defending the status quo. He must begin again the fight to change it.

This is the point that Andrew Sullivan’s repeated defense of the president misses. If Hillary Clinton had been elected instead of Obama, and if she had achieved precisely as much as Obama has achieved — which obviously is significant and important — liberals would certainly be “deluded,” as Sullivan calls us, for criticizing her. But Obama promised something more than Clinton did, and if there is delusion here, it is the thought that he could achieve even a tiny fraction of what he promised without this reform. Reform is an essential part of making the Obama agenda even possible. And so it is both fair to criticize the president for forgetting this essential step, and right to urge that he “take up that fight” again.

How? The clue is the throwaway line at the end of his supposed plan for reform: “an idea that has bipartisan support, at least outside of Washington.” For as much as the chatterati love to set the left side against the right, the real divide in American politics today is between the inside and the outside. There is a politics within the beltway of D.C. Within that politics, nothing real is possible. And then there is a politics outside the beltway of D.C. — where on the left and on the right there is cross-partisan support for the sort of reforms that would really change Washington.

Outside Washington, in the grassroots of American politics,  Democrats, independents and Republicans all support a radical change in how we fund campaigns. The bloated and bureaucratic “public funding” of the 1970s is despised, and rightly so. But a system of small-dollar, citizen-funded elections, either through matching funds or tax rebated vouchers, is supported across the political spectrum. Likewise with the mother of Super PACs — Citizens United: While there is a strong division among Americans about whether any one group should be silenced, there is overwhelming support for the idea of limiting the role of independent expenditures in political campaigns.

The president needs to appeal to this cross-partisan outsiders movement. He needs to inspire them to dream about the real reform that they could make possible, if only they would organize and demand the way they organized and stopped SOPA/PIPA. This president and this Congress are not going to change the economy of influence of D.C. But this president and the next Congress could — if Obama made this issue the focus of this campaign.

And if not Obama, then some other candidate.

And if not some other candidate, then us.

For the critical insight that more and more are coming to see is that the critical force in politics today, not just in America, but across the world, comes from the amateur, not the professional. From the outside, not the inside. That’s what MoveOn taught us 14 years ago. That’s what the Tea Party showed us 2 years ago. That was what Occupy Wall Street proved just last fall.

It is time we recognize the potential of these outsiders and celebrate it. The inside might be able to inspire them. But it will be they, or us, the outsiders, who will determine whether the cancer that is Washington gets cured.