Obfuscation As Art Form

I had the opportunity several weeks ago to listen to an ostensibly "fair and balanced" presentation about global warming. They even showed a major portion of "An Inconvenient Truth". It was, however, followed by "The Great Global Warming Swindle", a British shockumentary that contends that dramatic global climate change is a scam and has several allegedly important scientists backing up it's claims. 

The whole thing was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, plus a plethora of local Republican legislators, and featured James M. Taylor, the Institute's featured writer on environmental matters, as host and chief naysayer. Mr. Taylor came armed with lots of "facts" that asserted that: 1. The earth is not warming and is in a natural cycle of climate fluctuation, probably going colder than warmer. 2. If, indeed, the planet is warming it is definitely not anthropogenic (caused by man). Notwithstanding that these are mutually exclusive statements this scenario was interesting to me in that the Heartland Institute is considered a free market think tank. Here is their mission statement, quoted from their website.

" Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do better than government bureaucracies."

 

Reading through this mission statement it is clear, to me at least, that the Heartland Institute is by no means a free-market advocate and is instead a sock puppet for preserving the status quo in major corporate interests and promoting new age conservative ideals. All of their stated missions have more to do with maximizing corporate profits and undermining government than simply advocating for free markets. They reveal a worship of the University of Chicago School of Economics championed by Milton Friedman. According to Friedman the free market is better than government in providing public services. In that sense the Heartland Institute is a free market advocate. However, new age conservative politicians have co-opted Friedman style economics to suit their own global domination politics. To them Friedman's economics means that only profit is moral and that government is always bad. It is these folk who use the Heartland Institute to forward their own purposes.

One must remember that Freidman was also a strong social libertarian and had an extremely narrow view of government intervention in people's lives. This viewpoint informed his economics and has led new age conservatives to the distorted contention that all that is needed to save the world is to give all the money to private corporate interests. This is what the Heartland Institute is really advocating. If they were truly champions of the free market they would recognize the solid science behind global warming and favor economic development of alternative energy sources and means of delivery as the natural shift in paradigms that they are, and allow the market to adjust as is normal.

Instead they advocate for the obfuscating statement "market based approaches to environmental protection". According to the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" and Mr. Taylor's rhetoric this simply means continued use of carbon based fuels for energy. Their denial of global warming in the face of overwhelming scientific information is not a call for a free market solution but support for an old paradigm in the face of a natural switch to a new one. By denying that global warming exists they claim that carbon based fuels are cheaper and therefore better than wind, solar, safe hydroelectric and other alternative fuels. This position could only arise from abject monetary support from the oil and coal industries and does not represent the spirit of the supposed mission of the Heartland Institute at all.

It is a sad world where anyone with enough money can buy scientific support for their agendas. This means anyone, on either ends of the various political spectrums, can buy junk science and claim anything. As a result science is being cheapened as we move away from a rational world into one where things are true simply because someone says so. 

How sad is that?

Mere Hours in the Limelight

Would that there were a way to assure that those hard working, long suffering, non-whining political activists, the ones who get everything done without complaining or expecting any great reward, could be the very same delegates who get to choose party nominees and conduct other party business at the state conventions held every two years. Alas, it would be extremely difficult to insure that these folks, the ones who know how to get things done, were elected to those august positions. The system is set up to promote democracy, which is a different thing altogether from efficiency.

The way the DFL system works (I have no desire to spend much time finding out how the Republican system works) delegates move forward either by being elected by vote of delegates present at senate district or county unit conventions (from those elected at precinct caucuses) or by an enigmatic system known as walking sub-caucuses, a system I will not attempt to describe, it being so esoteric as to confuse even the most knowledgeable politico. Suffice it to say that in either case if one is a comfortable, polished public speaker able to persuade one has a better chance of being elected. Unfortunately not all knowledgeable, dedicated activists have this requisite skill. Many folks who know what is going on with the party and in their own communities, and would make excellent delegates, are averse to tooting their own horn in public. It is not in their natures to gloat over their accomplishments.

The result of these truths is, although meant to increase democratic participation, the system often elects delegates who simply want to be in the spotlight for that one weekend every two years the party meets to convene. They hang out, go to the parties, feel important when the candidates want to personally talk to them, do some voting and then disappear into the crowd, not to be seen again until the next time delegates are selected at the precinct caucuses, starting the selection process for another election cycle's convention.

Try as I might I have yet to figure out a way this peculiar type of perversion can be overcome without also ruining the democratic process. Perhaps we will just have to get used to having democracy run by those who know how to worm their way into the photo ops without ever doing any appreciable work. Wait, aren't we already governed by professional election winners instead of real statesmen. Maybe if we could see past how well a person looks in a suit or how effectively they can sell themselves we might be able to elect delegates and subsequently nominate and elect candidates who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get a little dirty for the common good.

Heaven forbid we elect citizen/statesmen/women who actually remember how to manifest good old American know how.