RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY .. ---October 24, 1996--- .
HEADLINES: .
THE INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT
"The business class dominates government through its ability to fund political campaigns, purchase high-priced lobbyists, and reward former officials with lucrative jobs. Meanwhile, the working-class majority of the American people has felt its economic and political power diminish or disappear.... Many of the social institutions that should be the bulwark of grassroots democracy --stable neighborhoods, vigorous unions, independently-owned small farms and businesses --are rapidly disappearing. Fewer than half of eligible Americans even bother to vote, and those who do vote have little faith that good will come of it, telling pollsters they are often voting for the 'lesser of two evils.' Both major parties have become wholly dependent upon the same corporate dollars to pay a new professional class of PR consultants, marketers and social scientists who manage and promote causes and candidates in essentially the same manner that advertising campaigns sell cars, fashions, drugs, and other wares....
"This degraded political environment has created a rich bed of business opportunity for the public relations industry. As citizens remove themselves in disgust from the political process, the PR industry is moving in to take their place, turning the definition of 'grassroots politics' upside down by using rapidly-evolving high-tech data and communications systems to custom-design 'grassroots citizen movements' that serve the interests of their elite clients."
This description of contemporary America, which probably rings true to nearly everyone who is paying attention, is taken from the recent book, TOXIC SLUDGE IS GOOD FOR YOU (subtitled, Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry) by John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.[1] If you think you are already about as cynical as it is possible to be, this book will jolt you: the situation is worse than anything you could have imagined.
If you want to know how American-style "democracy" works in the late 20th century, you simply MUST read this short book. In recent years, Stauber and Rampton have made it their business to describe the PR industry, which manipulates the media, public opinion, and elections to control public debate and public policy. Since publishing their riveting little book, Stauber and Rampton have kept up a steady stream of eye-opening reports in their quarterly journal PR WATCH.
The current PR WATCH (available on the world wide web at https://users.aol.com/srampton/center.html) reveals a typical instance of democracy subverted by PR corporations who engineer consent for the Fortune 500 using "dirty tricks."
In this instance, PR WATCH reveals that the Philip Morris Company ---the tobacco and food giant with 1991 earnings of $39.1 billion --has paid a PR firm to create a phony "public interest" organization called Contributions Watch which is masquerading as an "independent nonprofit" group, supposedly gathering unbiased data on campaign contributions in all 50 states.[2] In reality, Contributions Watch is doing something quite different. According to internal company documents leaked to Stauber and Rampton, Contributions Watch was created with bundles of Philip Morris money for the specific purpose of influencing the Presidential election, creating massive pressure on Congress for "tort reform," and tarnishing the reputations of legitimate consumer advocacy groups such as Consumer's Union, publishers of CONSUMER REPORTS, and the public-interest law firm, Trial Lawyers for Public Justice.
Tort reform was a key piece of the Republican Party's "Contract With America" when Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House of Representatives in 1994. The goal of "tort reform" is to shield corporations by limiting the amount of money that juries can award to plaintiffs injured by medical malpractice or by harmful consumer products, such as cigarettes. Both the House and the Senate --for the first time in our history --passed tort reform legislation in March, 1996, but President Clinton vetoed it, saying such a law would encourage "misconduct" by "irresponsible companies willing to put profits above all else."[3]
Until PR WATCH blew the whistle on Contributions Watch, the Philip Morris plan was succeeding. Wittingly or not, newspapers like the WALL STREET JOURNAL were regurgitating stories served up by Contributions Watch.[4,5] Contributions Watch was creating support for "tort reform" using the argument that rich plaintiffs' lawyers are distorting the democratic process with their money, supporting Bill Clinton for President. This is in fact true, but the proper public policy to restore democracy would be far-reaching campaign finance reform, including full public financing of elections, not tort reform. (See REHW426 and REHW427.) Tort reform would merely shield corporations from liability while de-funding the Democratic Party, to the delight of Republicans. What Contributions Watch --and the WALL STREET JOURNAL --failed to mention is that Philip Morris itself is the largest single campaign contributor in America --having spent a total of $2.7 million during the past 18 months trying to influence elections --$2.1 million of it to elect Republicans.[6]
The PR industry and dirty tricks are not new. What's new is that they have grown out of control. The PR industry traces its roots to the work of Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays frankly discussed his public relations discoveries --using science to manipulate the public from behind the scenes --in several books. For example, in PROPAGANDA in 1928, Bernays said, "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it." And: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country."[1,pgs.23-24] He proudly called his scientific techniques of opinion-molding "the engineering of consent."
Bernays in his later years claimed to be morally motivated. He had spent a good part of his life nefariously promoting tobacco products, yet he said, "No reputable public relations organization would today accept a cigarette account, since their cancer-causing effects have been proven." However, in a 1994 survey of 38 PR firms, 29 said they would accept a tobacco account if they had the chance.[1,pg.32]
Even in the early days, it should have been obvious to anyone who thought about it that a group of corporations with large budgets dedicated to subverting democracy would succeed. Computers, fax machines, and overflowing corporate treasuries have simply made it much easier. Now in the U.S. there are more than 150,000 individuals employed as "PR specialists." To put this number into perspective, there are only 130,000 journalists in America and the number is shrinking steadily as news organizations jettison reporters and rely more and more on "news" manufactured by PR firms. (In 1991, 38% OF 2432 JOURNALISTS SURVEYED SAID THEY GET HALF THEIR STORIES FROM PR FLACKS; 31% said they relied on PR people for 5 to 10 stories a week; 15% said they relied on them for more than 10 stories; 17 PERCENT SAID THEY USED PR PEOPLE FOR EVERY STORY. Local news reporters said they get only 15% of their stories from PR people; editors of lifestyle pages put the figure at 60%, and among entertainment editors, the figure is 75%. REPORTERS CREDITED PR PEOPLE AS THE SOURCE FOR 90% OF ALL STORIES ON HEALTH. The environment, of course, is part of the "health" beat.[7])
As Mark Dowie observes, "A single public relations professional with access to media, a basic understanding of mass psychology, and a fistful of dollars can unleash in society forces that make permanent winners out of otherwise-evident losers --whether they be products, politicians, corporations or ideas."[1,pg.4]
Stauber and Rampton document the dirty tricks that are routinely used by the PR industry, such as:
** Spying on legitimate citizen groups to learn their strategies, and in some instances publishing phony documents on the letterhead of legitimate groups to discredit them;
** Manufacturing phony "grass-roots" groups to create the impression that there is a groundswell of "real people" supporting a particular corporate agenda. Michael Dunn of the Washington PR firm Michael E. Dunn says, "The purpose of the grass-roots program is NOT to get more Americans involved in the political system. The purpose of a grassroots program is one purpose period, and that is to influence legislative policy."[1,pg.88]
** Conducting smear campaigns against books before they are published to intimidate editors into not reviewing them;
** Manufacturing gobs of phony news for TV and newspapers;
** Infiltrating groups to urge activists to resort to violence, even including murder.[1,pgs.61-64]
** Calling every registered voter in a particular district to find out what issue they care about most, then writing a letter to each one saying that Candidate X is the champion of their favorite issue (whether it is true or not).
Such "grass-roots" campaigns are only possible for those with immense budgets. The NEW YORK TIMES reports that some phony grass-roots campaigns cost upwards of $3 million per month --pocket change for a corporation that nets billions each year.[8]
What is the larger meaning of these realities for the republic? Here is Lewis Lapham, editor of HARPER'S MAGAZINE: "The permanent government, a secular oligarchy... comprises the Fortune 500 companies and their attendant lobbyists, the big media and entertainment syndicates, the civil and military services, the larger research universities and law firms. It is this government that hires the country's politicians and sets the terms and conditions under which the country's citizens can exercise their right --God-given but increasingly expensive --to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Obedient to the rule of men, not laws, the permanent government oversees the production of wealth, builds cities, manufactures goods, raises capital, fixes prices, shapes the landscape, and reserves the right to assume debt, poison rivers, cheat the customers, receive the gifts of federal subsidy, and speak to the American people in the language of low motive and base emotion."[9]
Such descriptions of our homeland have become troublingly familiar. For people who care about America, it is time to bring back outrage. Time to remember our history; it hasn't always been this way. Time once again for the people to define what corporations can be, can become, and can do.[10]
--Peter Montague
Simply put, GDP is a measure of all market activity, all money that changes hands in a country during a year. GDP measures total output, the dollar value of all finished goods and services.
Now some economists are asking whether the GDP is an adequate measure of the nation's well being.[2] When GDP goes up are the American people necessarily better off? They point out, for example, that real wages have declined nearly 14% since 1973 while GDP has risen 55% during the same period.[2,pg.7] GDP seems to be missing what's actually going on. GDP says we are better off, but are we really? It's a fair question.
A number of economists are rejecting GDP as the basic measure of the nation's well being, and are proposing an alternative measure, which they call GPI (genuine progress indicator). Three economists in particular (Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe) point to at least 3 major problems with GDP:
1. GDP only counts money transactions, so it leaves out many "goods" that people provide for each other free. Major parts of the household economy are ignored. Examples: care for the elderly and for children, home maintenance and cleaning, food preparation, and voluntary service for neighborhood, church and civic groups. GDP assigns all these activities a value of zero. This can lead to distorted public policies. For example, if the "Family Leave Act" is criticized because it reduces GDP, such a criticism is inaccurate because it fails to reflect the increases in many household economies that the Act initiates.
2. GDP treats all transactions as positive. Crime, divorce, pollution, and depletion of natural resources are all treated as gains. Thus GDP treats the breakdown of the social structure, and the natural environment as gains. If someone buys a car, GDP goes up. If the car gets into an accident and requires major repair, GDP goes up. If the driver is hospitalized, GDP goes up. If a lawsuit follows, GDP goes up again. GDP makes no distinction between activities that contribute to well being and those that diminish it. It's like keeping accounts using a calculator that has an "add" function but no "subtract" function. So long as money changes hands, GDP increases. Any business that kept its accounts this way would never know where it stood. Such a business would have an exceedingly rosy picture of its condition, but it would be a false picture. So it is with countries that rely on GDP to measure well being.
3. GDP treats depletion of natural capital (assets) as current income --an obvious violation of good accounting principles. If a forest is converted to lumber, or farmland is turned into parking lots, GDP treats all the money involved as current income and none of it as capital depreciation. Again, any business that kept its accounts this way --treating depletion of assets as current income --would have a very rosy picture of its financial condition, but the picture would be quite wrong. So it is with countries that rely on GDP to measure well being.
Much of GDP is made up of three things:
1. FIXING MISTAKES AND SOCIAL FAILURES FROM THE PAST. Superfund sites are an example. Such cleanups just get us back to where we once were; they are not real progress. The prison system is another example. Prisons are a response to earlier failures to help young people gain a valued place in the economy and society. Superfund sites and prisons are not progress, yet the GDP treats them as if they represented real gains in well being.
2. BORROWING RESOURCES FROM THE FUTURE. Agricultural output grows each year because of enormous chemical use, but this occurs at the expense of depleted natural capital (fertile soil and clean water). This represents a borrowing from our children. It imposes real costs on future generations. GDP treats these costs as zero or, even worse, as positive contributions to the nation's well being. Obviously, this is an inappropriate accounting practice.
3. SHIFTING FUNCTIONS FROM THE TRADITIONAL HOUSEHOLD AND COMMUNITY TO THE MONETARY ECONOMY.
** Baby sitters and nannies substitute for parents.
** Psychotherapy, TV sets and VCRs substitute for close contact between friends, neighbors and family members.
** Burglar alarms and police officers substitute for neighbors keeping an eye on things.
** Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken substitute for the home kitchen.
In each of these cases, free services (free in the sense of not being compensated by money) have disappeared and, in their place, a monetary relationship has been established. In many instances, this represents an INCREASE in GDP but a DECREASE in the strength of the social fabric that holds communities and families together.
New Measures of Progress
New measures of progress are needed. The GDP is giving us a false sense of well being. GDP makes no distinction between the secure skilled worker in a high-paying job and the recently-laid-off worker who is holding down two jobs without benefits just to make ends meet. Clearly their incomes do not represent equivalent levels of well being. GDP treats pollution as a double positive --it is counted as a gain when it is first created as a byproduct of some other activity, and it is counted as a gain again when society pays to clean it up. Several new measures of well being have been established.[3] The one we like best is called the Genuine Progress Indicator, or GPI, developed by an organization called Redefining Progress in San Francisco.[2]
The GPI starts with the same data that underlies the GDP, but then it is modified by both additions and subtractions.
** The GPI is weighted for income distribution. The GPI accounts not only for increasing total income, but also for the way income is distributed within society. The top fifth of American households took 48.2% of the nation's income in 1993; the bottom fifth received just 3.6% --an historic record for inequitable distribution of income in America. GPI takes into account such inequitable distribution of income.[4]
** Certain defensive expenditures are subtracted. Defensive expenditures are such things as locks, burglar alarms, and other security devices, which merely help maintain the status quo but don't represent real increases in well being. Costs of automotive repairs after accidents, and household water filters, fall in this "defensive" category as well.
** The depreciation of natural capital (environmental assets and natural resources) are subtracted. The following items are subtracted: Costs of air, water and noise pollution; loss of wetlands, farmlands, and old growth forests; depletion of earth's ozone layer. And so on.
The GPI is "conservative" in the sense that it does not go as far as it could in subtracting negative factors. For example, loss of species is omitted entirely because the authors couldn't put a dollar value on species lost. Likewise, many Americans regret much of their consumption and this could be subtracted from GDP because it represents a "negative" in many peoples' lives. For example, half of all Americans believe they are overweight from eating too much, and 70% of cigarette smokers wish they could quit. Clearly such "addictive consumption" could be subtracted from GDP, but GPI does not go this far.
In sum, GPI is an important and reasonable new attempt to measure well being. It tries to take into account real factors that GDP ignores --real positives (such as household work) and real negatives (such as time spent commuting to work) --to give a better overall measure of the economy as people actually experience it. Figure 1 shows the result: when social and environmental costs are take into account, the overall health of the U.S. economy has steadily declined since the mid-1970s. --Peter Montague
According to the POST, herpetologists (scientists who study amphibians and reptiles) have reported finding frogs with missing legs, extra legs, misshapen legs, paralyzed legs that stuck out from the body at odd places, legs that were webbed together with extra skin, legs that were fused to the body, and legs that split into two half-way down. They have also found frogs with missing eyes. One one-eyed frog had a second eye growing inside its throat.
Robert McKinnell, a geneticist and cancer researcher at University of Minnesota (St. Paul, Minn.), said he initially thought the reports of deformed frogs didn't amount to much. Frogs have a small number of birth defects naturally. Then McKinnell began visiting various sites in Minnesota and finding a large proportion of deformed frogs (96% at one site). Now he says, "The whole state appears to be affected. We should be alarmed."
Frogs are amphibians. They spend their lives both in the water and on dry land. Beginning life as eggs floating on the surface of still waters, they develop into swimming tadpoles, eventually changing completely, becoming frogs. These major changes in form occur under the control of hormones, which are chemical messengers that travel throughout the organism, turning on and off bodily processes.
Since August, 1995, when the first deformed frogs were found in south-central Minnesota, researchers have been searching for the cause, without success. So far, they say, they believe inherited genetic mutations are not involved. This would mean the deformities are being caused by something that affects the frogs during early life, when they are eggs or tadpoles. Judy Helgen, the research scientist who is leading the investigation on behalf of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says she thinks the cause will eventually be discovered to be chemicals of some kind, though it could take several years to pin it down.
Little research has been done to study the effects of environmental chemicals on amphibians. It seems that most researchers have been focused on confirming or refuting the reported worldwide decline in populations of frogs, toads and salamanders. (See REHW #246, #380.) Indeed, some of the recently-reported declines are large, mysterious and compelling. For example, a study published in April compared amphibian populations in 1915 vs. 1992 in Yosemite Park in California. The study found that seven kinds of amphibians are declining in numbers, and three have disappeared entirely from Yosemite.[2] Yosemite isn't truly pristine because of air pollution from distant cities, but it is about as clean an environment as you can find in the lower 48 states. Dr. Ronald Heyer, a researcher with the Smithsonian Institution (and chair of the Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force [DAPTF] of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission) says, "It's kind of chilling in its effect. Here we have what we consider to be a relatively protected place, and amphibian declines are occurring even there."[3]
Amphibians are particularly sensitive to chemical pollution because they live both in water and on land. Furthermore, they breathe through their skin. Some researchers suspect that toxic heavy metals and pesticides building up in aquatic food chains, plus serious air pollution, may be what's killing some frogs, toads, and salamanders.
Many researchers now believe that increased ultraviolet radiation may be affecting frogs' eggs, which float on the surface of the water, absorbing sunlight.
Despite scientists' intense focus on population decline and extinction, recent studies have begun to try to find the causes of birth defects in frogs in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
At the Great Lakes Declining Amphibians Conference in Milwaukee March 30, Robin E. Jung from the University of Wisconsin at Madison described new studies indicating that leopard frogs collected at a PCB-contaminated site on the Fox River in Wisconsin had more spinal deformities than frogs collected at a cleaner Green Bay site.[4]
A few previous studies had linked frog deformities to pesticides.[5,6,7] Still, to date, remarkably little testing has been done to see if environmental chemicals cause birth defects in frogs.
On the other hand, a recent large study has linked birth defects in humans to pesticide use in Minnesota.[8]
Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) linked the Minnesota birth registry for the years 1989-1992 with information about pesticide use across the state.
Two pictures emerged: (1) the birth defect rate for all birth defects was significantly increased in children born to private pesticide appliers, compared to the general population; and (2) births in the general population of western Minnesota (the area of highest use of pesticides) showed a significant increase in birth defects, compared to the rest of the state. This second effect was most pronounced among children conceived during the spring.
Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) examined 210,723 birth records in the state of Minnesota covering the four-year period 1989-1992.
They first focused on 4935 children born to state-licensed private pesticide appliers in Minnesota (of which there are 34,772). They found statistically significant elevations in the occurrence of all birth defects taken together, as well as in specific subcategories of birth defects: circulatory/respiratory defects, musculoskeletal defects; and urogenital defects.
Secondly, they focused on the general public. They divided the state into two regions, agricultural and non-agricultural. They found that "data show that families residing in predominantly agricultural regions of Minnesota are more likely to have children with birth anomalies." This finding was statistically significant.
Third, they subdivided the agricultural part of Minnesota into smaller areas, based on the kinds of crops that dominate. They then examined 12 specific herbicides. The most consistent results were obtained for the herbicides 2,4-D and MCPA [4-chloro-2-methylphenoxyacetic acid]. Areas designated by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture as "high use" areas for these herbicides, when compared against "low use" areas, had significantly increased birth defects (about an 86% increase) for defects of the central nervous system, circulatory/respiratory, urogenital, and musculoskeletal systems, as well as a 51% increase for all birth defects combined.
In regions where chlorophenoxy herbicides are in use (such as 2,4-D and MCPA), infants conceived in the spring had about 30% more birth defects than infants conceived in other seasons. This effect was not noted in regions reporting low or no use of chlorophenoxy herbicides.
The researchers reported that in the five counties with the highest reported use of 2,4-D herbicide, registered appliers gave birth to only half as many children in 1990 as did the general population. The researchers noted that this finding was consistent with an earlier study showing that 2,4-D is toxic to sperm in pesticide appliers.
Finally, the researchers observed that the sex ratio of live births is usually in the range of 104 to 107 males born for each 100 females. In Minnesota in 1989-1992, the sex ratio was 105 males to 100 females for normal births and 138 males to 100 females for births with defects. The researchers say they believe something in the pesticides used in Minnesota is suppressing the births of female children or favoring the births of males.
Interestingly, a recent study examined the sex ratio among the first 74 children born to parents exposed to dioxin during an industrial accident at Seveso, Italy.[9] Among highly dioxin-exposed parents, female children outnumbered males (26 males vs. 48 females, a ratio of 54 males for every 100 females). This skewed sex ratio lasted for 8 years after the Seveso accident, then returned to normal.
Children may be the victims of pesticides and dioxin, yet they still offer hope. The first deformed frogs were discovered in Minnesota in August 1995 by middle school children --10 year olds --on a field trip to a farm.[1] After they noticed a one-legged frog, they started collecting others. In a morning they collected 22 frogs, 11 of them with major birth defects. "I think the kids got kind of scared," says their teacher, Cindy Reinitz. "They immediately started asking me what the cancer rate was in the area." Now that's an impressive question from a group of 10 year olds. When all our health officials and corporate CEOs are as alert, insightful and concerned as those children, we'll no longer have to rely on frogs to give us warning.
--Peter Montague (National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO)MEASURING PROGRESS
