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Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Buying Congress in 2012
Buying Congress in 2012
Startling numbers of Americans are “underwater” -- homeowners and students alike -- and so, for that matter, is Congress, even if in quite a different way. In these last years, it’s been flooded with money. Millionaires, including at least 10 centimillionaires, now make up nearly half of our representatives there, and as a group, they have been growing ever richer as Americans grow ever poorer. Bad times? Never heard of them. Congress’s median net worth rose by 15% between 2004 and 2010 -- and this news, in a recent front-page New York Times piece, hardly caused a stir.
Of course, everything is relative. Compared to the giant energy companies, ours is a Congress of paupers. After all, the Big Five oil outfits (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) announced a combined 36 billion dollars in profits in the second quarter of 2011. Exxon alone pulled in $10.7 billion (and spent more than half of those profits simply to buy back its own stock). In the third quarter, the same five companies returned for an encore. They made another $32.6 billion in profits, with Exxon at $10.3 billion (about half of which it again spent on stock buybacks).
...
This is political (and corporate) life as we now know it, and most Americans are remarkably resigned to it. Not Bill McKibben, TomDispatch regular and author most recently of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. As he showed with the ongoing dispute over the Keystone XL pipeline, when he sets his mind to it, he has a way of making us take another look at the previously accepted and acceptable. (To listen to Timothy MacBain’s first Tomcast audio interview of the new year in which McKibben discusses how the rest of us can compete with a system in which money talks, click here.)
Startling numbers of Americans are “underwater” -- homeowners and students alike -- and so, for that matter, is Congress, even if in quite a different way. In these last years, it’s been flooded with money. Millionaires, including at least 10 centimillionaires, now make up nearly half of our representatives there, and as a group, they have been growing ever richer as Americans grow ever poorer. Bad times? Never heard of them. Congress’s median net worth rose by 15% between 2004 and 2010 -- and this news, in a recent front-page New York Times piece, hardly caused a stir.
Of course, everything is relative. Compared to the giant energy companies, ours is a Congress of paupers. After all, the Big Five oil outfits (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell) announced a combined 36 billion dollars in profits in the second quarter of 2011. Exxon alone pulled in $10.7 billion (and spent more than half of those profits simply to buy back its own stock). In the third quarter, the same five companies returned for an encore. They made another $32.6 billion in profits, with Exxon at $10.3 billion (about half of which it again spent on stock buybacks).
...
This is political (and corporate) life as we now know it, and most Americans are remarkably resigned to it. Not Bill McKibben, TomDispatch regular and author most recently of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. As he showed with the ongoing dispute over the Keystone XL pipeline, when he sets his mind to it, he has a way of making us take another look at the previously accepted and acceptable. (To listen to Timothy MacBain’s first Tomcast audio interview of the new year in which McKibben discusses how the rest of us can compete with a system in which money talks, click here.)
This is a fascinating argument by Bill McKibben, and I wasn't even able to excerpt one word from his argument, this is the Tomgram excerpt, which I thought was a better overview. I really encourage readers to check out the full argument.