Unstoppable (9 page)

In the summer of 2010, a most unlikely group of politicians gathered a group of experts spanning the ideological spectrum whose charge was to reduce the military budget. The conveners, Representatives Ron Paul and Barney Frank, were not lonely outliers.
And a majority of Congress silently supported their effort, being well informed about military financial profligacy, which has been regularly documented by the investigative arm of the Congress, the Government Accountability Office, in report after report on the waste, fraud, and duplication that absorbs huge amounts of money. Pentagon contractor fraud, theft, huge cost overruns, and defects, also pointed out by public Pentagon audits, are old news to members of Congress. They know all about it, but they are not about to openly take on the powerful “military-industrial complex” about which President Eisenhower warned. Even moving against obsolete or redundant weapons systems or yet another aircraft carrier or submarine, which would seem natural following the end of the Soviet Union, and which even retired generals and admirals have called for, has proven to be too much for these politicians. Too much campaign cash, too much economic muscle in their districts, often backed by labor unions, which see such contracts as jobs programs, are weighed in the balance. Taxpayers are still paying massive billions of dollars for the ill-advised F-22, the troubled Osprey helicopter, the skyrocketing costs of the F-35, which continue to be in production at a time when their purpose—countering the Soviet Union—is no more. So, again, the task force's findings came to nothing.
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In 2010, a grand alliance of conservatives and liberals organized around expanding the whistle-blowing rights and remedies of federal government employees. The bipartisan appeal of this legislation made it about as invulnerable to attack as any bill in modern congressional history. After all, who could oppose assuring protections for courageous public servants who want to expose fraud, waste, and corruption mostly by corporate contractors on the government? Well, for a start, the many companies and consulting firms, such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, CACI, and Booz Allen Hamilton, that benefit from federal employees who facilitate corrupt practices. Then there are the members of the executive
branch who look to these companies for future jobs. But this time these vested interests couldn't really go public. They worked behind the scenes to dilute provisions of the bill, but they could not seriously gut it. At the very end of the session, Republican and Democrat sponsors (Senators Burris, Cardin, Carper, Collins, Grassley, Leahy, Levin, Lieberman, Mikulski, Pryor, Tester, and Voinovich) and their supporters, most prominently the whistle-blower-defending Government Accountability Project, were figuratively ready to break open the champagne bottles.
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Suddenly, they learned that a secret hold had been put on the bill by two undisclosed senators, as the paralyzing Senate rules permitted. The bill died in the Senate. S. 372 would probably have received a 90 percent approval by the American people if it could have been put to a vote. But President Obama did sign a similar bill (S. 743), which finally passed in 2012, when time overcame the effect of last-ditch holds, who turned out to have been Republican senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Commercial interests do not tolerate federal study commissions either, even when proposed by members of both parties in Congress, if there is any chance they will be shining light on their business practices. In 2002, Senator John McCain introduced a bill to establish a federal commission on corporate welfare (S. 2181: Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission Act). The reaction was swift by the corporate welfare kings working behind the scenes. It never received a hearing, nor did he reintroduce it during the next session, although his bipartisan charge related intimately to the then-urgent debate on deficits and taxes. The Arizona senator has never reintroduced this sensible measure.

In another example, Democratic senator Jim Webb introduced S. 306 to establish a National Criminal Justice Commission on prison reforms, a subject long overdue for consideration. Again, though attracting supporters from both sides of the aisle, it has not even been given a Senate hearing. The prison-industrial complex,
including its union backers, made sure that the bill withered on the vine, blocking Senator Webb's move. Again, were it put to a private vote in Congress, the yeas would have carried.

It might be asked: If there are majorities in favor of these varied measures, how can lobbies block these initiatives from even leaving the gate or not making that one last step before expected victory? The answer can be called “the Khyber Pass block strategy.” Corporatists know in amazing detail where and when the various bottlenecks (Khyber Passes) afford the opportunity to stop the actions of even a great majority of senators. They know the procedures, the timing, the tight schedules, the personalities, the stealth moves to make. The mere threat of a filibuster is enough to get the Senate majority leader to not take the bill to the floor for debate. And always lurking is the campaign money given, withheld, or awarded to a primary challenger. After all, as the Oklahoma sage Will Rogers said eighty years ago: “Congress is the best money can buy.”

When Hands Have Met

Consider, on the other hand, the convergence that did come about to advance air bag installation in motor vehicles at a moment when the contact point for action—a government procurement agency—was beyond the auto industries' lobbying clutches. In 1985, frustrated with the auto companies blocking the Department of Transportation from issuing a mandatory air bag standard for motor vehicles, I decided to do an end run by going through the government procurement process. I knew that through the General Services Administration (GSA), its purchasing arm, the federal government bought over forty thousand new cars a year for its federal employees. Taking the motto “The customer is always right” down to the GSA's chief, Gerald Carmen, an arch antiregulatory New Hampshire conservative, I made the arguments that he should get air bags in any new cars he bought because it
would save lives, save taxpayer money, and establish a large private market for promoting air bags as a result of the stimulus of a government purchase. Carmen eyed me cautiously. I knew he was a former auto parts dealer as well as, in the key New Hampshire primary, an early backer of Ronald Reagan. He was rich and did not need the job. Most importantly, he had no awe of the auto companies, having been a part of a supplementary industry that was not always treated well.

To Carmen, my request was not one for regulation, but one for smart, efficient buying on behalf of the taxpayer. He let Ford, GM, and Chrysler know of GSA's intention to issue specifications for a preliminary buy of five thousand cars with driver-side air bags. GM knew what was in the works and did not like it. At a social gathering, a GM lobbyist came up to Carmen and tried to dissuade him. No dice. One car company, Ford, said they would bid and, being the only bid, won the job to sell and equip five thousand Tempos with the safety system.

What happened next showed that domino effects are not always negative. Chrysler's Lee Iacocca, long a vocal derider of air bags, switched positions and, in a dramatic number of full-page newspaper ads showing his picture, he exclaimed in large bold print: “WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T TEACH AN OLD DOG NEW TRICKS?” He was announcing driver-side air bags as standard equipment on several Chrysler models. It wasn't long before the Department of Transportation finally moved to require air bags for drivers and front-seat passengers as standard equipment on all motor vehicles. Many lives were saved and injuries were prevented.

Carmen had full authority to do what he did, but I'm sure he checked with the White House as a courtesy. He became a believer in using government purchasing as a taxpayer efficiency tool, delivering a major address on the subject. Had I prejudged him according to the stereotype, defining him solely as a very conservative businessman and supporter of Ronald Reagan, my initial trip
to GSA would never have occurred. There was common ground between us on this matter, though not on many other policies of the Reagan administration.

Potential Pitfalls on the Route to Convergence

There are many ways to cross the aisle inside and outside of government. The challenge is to root these convergence movements as deeply as possible in common values and solid facts. Outside of government, existing or likely common ground has to become sufficiently visible so that the participants can reach first base, and that means confronting and overcoming some pretty mundane but persistent obstacles.

What transpired before and on February 20, 2010, and thereafter provides an instructive example. On that day in a Washington, DC, hotel, forty persons gathered, all opposed to militarism, wars, and the American empire. To any observer this would seem to be nothing special so far, until they learned that around the large conference table was a multiracial attendance of libertarians, progressives, conservatives, centrists, and radicals—self-described with the usual qualifications—who were going to deliberate for the entire day. The conference was inspired and funded by Republican and former Cold War hawk George D. O'Neill Jr., of Lake Wales, Florida, and coordinated by former Green Party Senate candidate and legal scholar Kevin Zeese.

The meeting participants were outspoken and un-sandpapered. Obviously, those at the table came from a common consensus of what they wanted to stop, and they proceeded to discuss in more detail both the malady and what needed to be done. Many had their own constituency from decades of activism, writing, rallying, and taking their lumps. They included Doug Bandow, Medea Benjamin, Glen Ford, Tom Hayden, Bill Kauffman, William Lind, Daniel McCarthy, Carl Oglesby, Robert Pollin, Cindy Sheehan,
Jeffrey Tayler, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jesse Walker, Dave Wagner, George Wilson, Thomas E. Woods Jr., and others. Woods spoke of previous Left-Right coalitions against war, including one that involved Andrew Carnegie, who was against the Spanish-American war, while Zeese laid out the components of a detailed “effective antiwar movement.”

The gathering met its title, “The Across the Political Spectrum Conference Against War and Militarism,” causing Paul Buhle to say that “there never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my fifty-year political lifetime.”
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As the hours wore on, some fissures emerged over tactics and on what to do with the huge savings, which would come from cutting military budgets. The savings were an incentive to oppose war making and could also fund a redirecting of our country. The most difficult subject of who, how, and when to mobilize was not expeditiously or functionally considered.

Around three or four
PM
, people started moving to catch their planes. Few if any volunteered to assume the tasks that would have brought the goals of the meeting to the next step, though email addresses were exchanged. The truth was these were busy people, some of whom were plumb tired and philosophically pessimistic after decades of struggle. Okay, so how much could we expect from one meeting? At its end, I didn't sense that this was a breakout event.

George O'Neill, with assistance from Buhle, Kauffman, and Zeese, gathered together many short, to-the-point articles by the participants and published them in early 2011 under the title of
ComeHomeAmerica.us
.
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In his note accompanying the copy he sent me, O'Neill related that “we are all working toward a larger and more public conference this year.” It never happened.

What did happen? Certainly there was passion; these were not theoretical, armchair philosophers. But their cups were full with what they chose to make their daily work, as was mine. A few went
back to nonviolent civil disobedience against America's wars; others displayed their outrage in a variety of individual ways. All seemed busy with their various work and family responsibilities. But their sum (postconference) was less than their parts, which isn't exactly what the participants may have had in mind when they accepted O'Neill's bold invitation.

Making Effective Convergences Happen

Welcome to the world of well-meaning but ultimately nonproductive, secularly ecumenical conferences, especially ones that do not hammer out a proclamation or call to action like the Ripon statement or the Declaration of Independence. What were the problems? First, the conference was too short. It needed to break down into workshops the next day with declared programmatic outcomes, ones that would explore many directions, in many dimensions. One such workshop could have focused on enlisting some thoughtful, generous, super-rich sponsor to provide the essential resources for field organizers, communicators, and grassroots lecturers, creating the type of infrastructure that propelled forward the populist-farmer movement in the 1880s and 1890s, which was so successful.

Think of starting a business, building a trade union, or launching a nonprofit institution, and imagine what efforts have to follow any such convening meeting for the plan to come to fruition.

Initiators who put forces in motion are usually those who commit their time to these objectives, day after day spreading the dynamic and rooting the mission. If the mission is too large for the number of available participants, then a small secretariat needs to be set up that can work to broaden the base beyond that of the founders. This group can tap into focused energies and build up a critical mass of the involved to ready the project for takeoff.

Obviously, disparate motivations will attract different people to support a cause: anything from making money in a new field to
resisting felt injustices in the workplace to being driven by a singular vision. That's the point: multiple motivations will drive the joining of unlikely activists in one cause. During preparations for beginning a project, people's motivating passions need to be identified and given opportunities to constructively proliferate so that they cannot easily be discouraged or sidelined by other activities. Of course, for success, some of the proponents have to see the mission as their number 1 commitment.