DENVER, COLORADO- Do you know about the lawsuit brought on behalf of the COLORADO RIVER, suing the State of Colorado for interfering with its right to flow into the sea? It’s a “Rights of Nature” initiative which suggests that if corporations can have rights, why shouldn’t natural stakeholders? Although environmental entities have been granted recent legal protections by various progressive nations around the world, the Colorado team bringing the lawsuit is widely expected to be rebuffed. The court has already delayed the initial hearing where first arguments will be presented, but this week brought a surprise development that suggests that the lawsuit’s defendants give the case better prospects. This week the Colorado Attorney General’s office served a letter to the plaintiff’s lead council, attorney Jason Flores-Williams, warning they would initiate sanctions against him if he did not voluntarily withdraw the lawsuit. Intimidating, but really a very good sign.
Tag Archives: Stakeholders
Stakeholders means property owners essentially, for whom the original constitution was drafted, not you.
When you see “stakeholder” it’s the brushoff. When government representatives hold hearings for stakeholders, they want to hear from monied interests and not you. Stakeholders are businesses and their periferal entities which may or may not include community members organized into public interest groups mobilized to grease private profits. Big Green. No room at the table upstarts or activated people whose stake is not commodified. In the West, stakeholders are energy companies, ranchers, and maybe an environmental advocacy group already willing to give industry what it wants. The stakeholder concept pleases conservatives who harken to the founding fathers, who intended the independent colonies be ruled by land holders only. When you’re a have-not, you haven’t a stake.
OMG. Trump is not the Fourth Reich. You are!
The face of American Fascism is ugly ugly ugly, by art deco spiffy uniform standards. To pluralist, multicultural tastes, it’s warm and fuzzy. You probably find it palatable, you don’t mind it telling you why we must settle for war, poverty and injustice. You recoil in fear when its faces tell you that Donald Trump is Fascism on the rise. American Fascism has been in high gear since consolidating everyone else’s trading monoplies, resources, and colonies. It began with the Louisiana Purchase and lept from the continent gobbling Spain’s former possessions. Our Veterans of Foreign Wars were the Nazis before the Nazis. Instead of targeting the Jews, the scope of Western genocide has been much broader. Today our Mandarins have friendly faces but their final solution is merciless and straddles the planet. On their domestic list are the homeless, the healthcare-less, the zero-stakeholders, essentialy the 99 percent. Internationally it’s everybody who doesn’t serve a purpose, for example, refugees. If you are complicit in this exceptionalism, you are the “Fourth Reich” everyone is warning you about. Donald Trump is an egomaniac with a Napoleon complex. Maybe he wants to liberate the common people from the old guard, cut the purses of the bankers, and crown himself emperor. The US presidency isn’t a dictatorship, but Trump’s foes sure are worried about him succeeding. This time round there might remain no monarchs to banish Napoleon to Elba. Trump has got no friends, and don’t be fooled, neither do you.
A bird in the hand is worth health care and a climate consensus in the bush
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. It’s better than nothing. We’re getting it from all direction now, from Copenhagen to the health care bill. The message is delivered by experienced elder statesmen whose benevolence we do not question because they are retired and have no horse in the race -yet they have access to the halls of power where real stakeholders are denied? Silver hair and silver tongues pitch: “Those who say a bad deal is better than no deal are dead wrong.” You’re kidding me Grandpa.
And what’s this for a perverted adage: “One step forward is better than two steps back?”
I’m seeing Obama being praised for revising his schedule to get to Copenhagen on the last day, for knowing how late is fashionable when the party’s a dud. But that’s not a leader. Obama could have given life to the party, instead he ops to give the Gettysburg Address.
Sen Udall oks metaphorical health care
The only medicine our senators want their constituents to take is the hard-to-swallow metaphorical variety. Senator Mark Udall’s monthly email explains his part in the Senate health care holdup. Two things: Udall and ten fellow freshmen set a roadblock to improve the HCR bill with cost containment, approved, Udall adds proudly, by industry experts. Next, he’s crossed the aisle to join a bipartisan fiscal task force to limit congressional spending with an eye to reducing the federal deficit. That ol’ deficit doesn’t come up when the issues are war, tax cuts for the rich, or “bailouts” for banks and industry. Apparently health care is the last straw we cannot afford. That’s the: “It will be hard to swallow, but it is medicine we need to take.”
Udall’s amendment package to “improve” the health care bill is endorsed “by many of the nation’s leading business, consumer, policy, and health provider organizations, such as the Brookings Institution, AARP and Business Roundtable, a group of leading American CEOs.”
The 11 Democrat freshmen signing on are Sens. Mark Begich (AK), Michael Bennet (CO), Roland Burris (IL), Kay Hagan (NC), Ted Kaufman (DE), Paul Kirk (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Mark Udall (CO), Tom Udall (NM) and Mark Warner (VA).
The bipartisan task force will include eight Democrats and eight Republicans, which I’m inclined to believe will target privatization of whatever is left of the US treasury.
I didn’t mention the third subject of Senator Udall’s email: To combat the bark beetle infestation of Colorado forests, Udall has crossed the aisle again, this time to conservative Idaho Senator Jim Risch, to introduced the National Forest Insect and Disease Emergency Act of 2009 to give the US Forestry service “additional tools and resources.” By “resources” they probably mean roads into protected roadless areas, and “tools” is not even a metaphor for saws.
For the record, here’s the gobbledegook proffered as improvements to the current health care reform proposal:
A summary of the specific amendments follows.
Working More Closely with the Private Sector on Cost Containment
These amendments transform payment systems and improving quality to require the public and private sectors to move forward together on the shared goals of cost containment, improved quality, and delivery system reform.
- CMS Innovation Center: We give the new Innovation Center explicit authority to work with private plans to align Medicare, Medicaid and private sector strategies for improving care.
- Independent Medicare Advisory Board: We broaden the scope of the new Independent Medicare Advisory Board to look at total health system spending and make nonbinding, system-wide recommendations.
- Quality and Value in Private Insurance: We require the Secretary to consult with relevant stakeholders to develop a methodology for measuring health plan value, which would include the cost, quality of care, efficiency, and actuarial value of plans. Developing the tools to assess health plan value will help consumers and employers make better apples-to-apples comparisons when they shop for health insurance and get the best value for their health care dollar.
Stepping-up the Commitment to Reduce Regulatory Barriers and Fight Fraud
These amendments require the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to aggressively pursue streamlined regulations and anti-fraud initiatives to ensure that all sectors of the health care system work together to improve value.
- Administrative Simplification: We require HHS to develop standards that will allow efficient electronic exchange and streamlining of information among patients, providers and insurers.
- Health Care Fraud Enforcement: We direct HHS to better utilize technology to prevent health care fraud.
- Eliminating Legal Barriers to Care Improvement: In tandem with this package, the freshman Senators will be requesting that the U.S. Government Accountability Office study current laws and regulations to identify barriers to implementing innovative delivery system reforms. We also will request that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission work together to provide clearer guidance to providers who wish to enter into innovative collaborative arrangements that promote patient-centered, high quality care.
Aggressively Moving Toward Delivery System Reform
These amendments allow HHS to experiment with promising new models to further lower costs, increase quality and improve patient health.
- Value-Based Purchasing: We require Medicare to implement pay-for-performance for more providers sooner, adding hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, psychiatric hospitals and others.
- Broader Payment Innovation: We allow a broader, more flexible transition to new payment models for Accountable Care Organizations (ACO).
- Medicare System Upgrades: We require HHS to modernize data systems so that valuable Medicare data can be shared in a reliable, complete, and timely manner.
- Good Quality Everywhere: We promote greater access to tele-health services, strengthen the provider workforce and the availability of high-quality hospital services to bolster health care access for Americans in underserved and rural regions.
The consumer goods Killer App -KILLED
Finally a real KILLER APP. A free iPhone application called the Good Guide lets you scan the barcodes of (eventually) every consumer good to learn immediately its goodness rating on a scale of 0-10. No more Consumer Report printouts, mental notes or improvisational evaluation. The Good Guide score is the synthesis of three criteria, the ratings for which are also shown: health, environment and social. How healthy is this item? How environmentally friendly? And how socially-responsible is the producer? Notably missing is a ranking for price, sidestepping the inescapable real world cost vs. benefit compromise.
According to an article in Grist, GoodGuide emerged from a project called TAO IT, created by Dara O’Rourke, associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Management and Policy. Goodguide’s aim sounds like a watchdog function better administrated by a regulatory agency. I can already see industry lobbyists setting up offices to influence the GoodGuide analysts.
A lot will depend on the transparency of the GoodGuide benchmarks and the objective distance they can keep from market interests. For example, the PR budget of one conglomerate alone could create a faux ratings mechanism to usurp GoogGuide as consumers-aid du jour. A recent processed food industry Smart Choices badge comes to mind.
The GoodGuide evaluation policies do give a good impression.
GoodGuide aggregates and analyzes data on both product and company performance. We employ a range of scientific methods – health hazard assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment – to identify major impacts to human health, the environment, and society. Each of these categories is then further analyzed within specific issue areas, such as climate change policies, labor concerns, and product toxicity. Currently, GoodGuide’s database has over 600 base criteria by which we evaluate products and companies.
Health Performance
As an example, for health performance, GoodGuide’s system takes into account both the impacts of a company’s operations on its workers and local communities, and the impacts of using a specific product on your health. Our team has gathered data on important health hazards such as:• Cancer risks
• Reproductive health hazards
• Mutagenicity
• Endocrine disruption
• Respiratory hazards
• Skin and eye irritationOur research currently uses a simplified health hazard assessment process that allows us to rate thousands of products along standard criteria. It should be noted that while these ratings are not risk assessments of products or chemicals, they do highlight potential hazards associated with the use of these products.
Environmental Performance
For environmental performance, GoodGuide is aggregating data on the life-cycle impacts of products, from manufacturing to transportation to use to final disposal. For companies, impact categories include:• Environmental emissions and their impacts on air, water, land, and climate
• Natural resource impacts
• Environmental management programsGoodGuide uses these categories to generate overall environmental performance ratings for companies.
Social Performance
For social issues, GoodGuide aggregates data on the social impacts companies have on their employees:• Compensation
• Labor and human rights practices
• Diversity policies
• Working conditionsIn addition to impacts on employees, Social Performance ratings consider impact on consumers and communities. The social scoring system also brings together information on corporate governance, disclosure policies, and overall practices.
OUR RATINGS
Types of Information
Different types of information flow into GoodGuide’s system: absolute measures, relative measures, and binary measures. Absolute measures describe measurable activities of a company or product. For example, the pounds of toxic air emissions released per year, the CEO’s salary, or the amount of money a company donated to charity. Relative measures are scores, such as a numerical grade of “6.5 out of 10” or a textual grade of “bad” to “excellent.” Binary (or Yes/No) measures indicate whether a product or company does or does not have specific characteristics. For example, a product may or may not have earned an environmental certification, or a company may or may not test its products on animals.The GoodGuide Rating
These measures are then used to create GoodGuide’s ratings. To calculate a single rating for a product or company, we convert all of the existing measures into a 0 to 10 score. In GoodGuide’s system, a score of 10 is the best and a score of 0 is the worst. Products and companies are rated relative to the performance of similar products or companies in the same industry.The initial ratings are based on a set of selected criteria from a broad pool of data available within the GoodGuide database. We think these criteria are some of the most representative and understandable. As this is the first time all of this data has ever been aggregated in the same place, we are currently working to assess the consistency and comparability of measures across our many data sources. We would love to hear your suggestions on the relative importance of these various measures of product and company performance.
GoodGuide recognizes that even the most quantitative assessment of environmental, health, or social issues requires value judgments about the relative importance of various issues. For example, rational people can disagree over the relative importance of animal testing in evaluating a product or company. We have used our best scientific judgment in building our current ratings, and in future versions we will flag issues where personal values and preferences are particularly relevant. We will then enable people to create personalized ratings based on their own concerns.
In order to facilitate your ability to assess the data, we will also be providing an assessment of data uncertainty, completeness, and quality. These assessments can be used to weight the existing data within the GoodGuide database.
Incomplete Data
In some cases data is unavailable for a company or a product. This may be because we have not yet identified a credible data source for a given issue or topic. It may also be that the data is not publicly available because companies have not disclosed critical information. One goal of this project is to work collaboratively with key stakeholders around the world, including government agencies, non-profit organizations, private research firms, and companies to promote the quantity and quality of disclosure of important data to the public.
End of your empire
This is not the end of the American Empire by a long shot. It’s the end of YOUR share in it.
Bush & Co, the Carlyle Group for example, and fellow owners of private capital, our oligarchs if you will, are pulling away from the station. They don’t need you or I anymore. The apparatus is in their hands, the control of money and the control of the weapons. The most powerful arsenal in the world is now protecting them. The rest of us, once stakeholders, join the downwardly mobile working class.
It’s hard to feel sorry for the American middle class, ejected at the eleventh hour from the gravy train. What was necessarily our right to claim the world’s bounty, gleaned from the health and happiness and lives of the poor, its rightful and needful inheritors? It’s not like we had been doing our best to invite everyone on board to share in earth’s resources equitably. Now at least we’ll get the share we deserve, the leftovers we thought good enough for everybody else. Exploitive capitalism lives on. For want of capital to invest ourselves, we are no longer members. We join the same side of the wall as the Mexicans and the Palestinians, the globalized masses.
Capitalism’s intellectual apparatchiks surround us from the TVs, newspapers, think tanks and college campuses. Are they your peers, in income level and security, as they maintain the fiction of your continued prosperity? When you finally face the impenetrable wall where you used to believe you had access to your ruler, the government that used to administrate communal affairs at your behest, you’ll see their smiling faces atop that wall, perfectly satisfied to keep you out.
Now the trouble is, where do we look for a break in that wall? We won’t get very far shouting HEY, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SHARE THAT LOOT WITH US!
There’s still a belief that truth and a sense of propriety could overcome the courtiers and Praetorian guard. But truth about what? WMD? Black-box voting? Nothing yet has seemed egregious enough. The folks behind the 9-11 Truth movement, seemed to know that all along. A few very brave people are still hoping their truth will win out.