Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-Senate Rules Must Change for America to Succeed
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Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2010 10:09:48 EST
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For  America to Succeed in the  21st Century, Senate Rules Must  Change 

As momentum  grows to change the rules of the United States Senate, it’s 
important to look  beyond partisan battles and evaluate the effect of the way 
we make major  decisions on the prospects for American success in the 21st  
Century. 
In his book Collapse, Pulitzer  prize-winning physiologist and 
ethno-geographer Jared Diamond studies the  collapse of six ancient societies. He also 
looks at successful decision-making  that staved off potential collapse in 
four other societies -- as well as modern  collapse scenarios in Rwanda  and 
Haiti.  
Some of the societies he studies successfully adapted to change.  Others 
did not. Diamond writes:  How can we understand such differing  outcomes?  A 
society’s response  depends on its political, economic, and social 
institutions and on its cultural  values.  Those institutions and  values affect 
whether a society solves (or even tries to solve) its problems.  
Why don’t societies recognize and correct their problems before it’s too  
late?   
Diamond lays out four reasons why societies fail to make the right  
decisions: 
1)  Failure to anticipate the problem before it  arrives. 
Often a society or its decision makers have no prior  experience that a 
particular course of action will lead to a particular  outcome. 
The Norse Greenlanders invested heavily in walrus hunting  because there 
was a major market for ivory from tusks in Europe in the Middle Ages.  They 
had no way of knowing that the  Crusades would re-open Europe’s access to Asia 
and Africa and elephant ivory.  They also had no way of anticipating  that 
climate change would increase sea ice and impede traffic from Greenland to  
Europe.  Those factors ultimately lead to the society’s collapse. 
Other societies fail to anticipate because they rely on  false analogies 
with familiar situations.  The French military prepared for World War II by 
building the famous  Maginot Line.  It was intended to  defend France from the 
kind of infantry  attack that characterized World War I.  World War I had 
involved heavily-defended defensive lines and trench  warfare.  The WW II 
German attack,  when it actually came, was spearheaded by tanks and armored 
divisions that  passed the Maginot Line through forest formerly thought 
unsuitable for  tanks.  Failure to anticipate often  results from planning for the 
last war. 
2)  Failure to perceive a problem that has actually  arrived. 
Of course, some problems are very difficult to discern  with the naked eye. 
 Without the  tools of modern science, for instance, there was no way for 
the first colonists  of Mangareva in the Pacific to know that their 
activities were causing the soil  nutrient exhaustion that was a critical factor in 
the society’s  demise. 
The most common reason for the failure to recognize a  problem is that it 
takes the form of a slow trend, concealed by wide up-and-down  fluctuations.  
The most salient  modern example is global warming. 
Medieval Greenlanders had similar problems in discerning  that the climate 
was getting colder.  The Maya and Anasazi had trouble discerning that their 
climates were  becoming drier.   
Diamond refers to the problem as “creeping normalcy” –  slow trends hidden 
in noisy fluctuations.  If educational performance, the economy, traffic 
congestion or anything  else changes gradually, our baseline for evaluating 
them gradually changes,  too.  You get “landscape amnesia” –  until you see 
an old picture of the seacoast where a huge glacier once ran into  the sea, 
and suddenly realize that it has shrunken and receded for  miles. 
To use an old analogy, if you put a frog in a pot of  boiling water, it 
will jump out.  You put a frog in a pan of cool water, and gradually increase 
the  temperature, and you get a boiled frog. 
Part of the answer to the mystery of why the residents  of  Easter Island 
completely  deforested their island is that every year there were fewer and 
fewer trees, and  fewer people alive who remembered how things used to be.  
At the point when someone cut down the  last fruit-bearing adult palm, the 
species had ceased to have economic  significance. 
3)  Failure to attempt to solve a problem even when it has been  
identified. 
This turns out to be the most common, and surprising,  reason why societies 
collapse. 
The major cause is “rational behavior” by actors – and  decision-making 
elites – that benefits some individual or private self-interest  but is 
harmful to the prospects of the entire society.   
This is often complicated because the benefits to a small  group that 
profits from the action is great in the short run, and the resulting  damage to 
everyone else is not very palpable or immediate, except over  time. 
When the hard-rock mining companies in Montana polluted the  environment, 
they profited enormously. Those who got scarce jobs benefited as  well.  The 
fact that they were  poisoning the rest of us was not as immediately 
obvious.  So the stakes for the small group with a  special interest were much 
higher than they appeared for each individual who was  negatively impacted.   
The “tragedy of the commons” also plays a role here.  It is in the private 
interest of every  fisherman to maximize his catch in the fishery.  But it 
is in the interest of all –  including the long-term interest of every 
fisherman – that the renewable  resource of the fishery should be preserved for 
everyone by limits on  catches.  The same goes for all  potentially renewable 
resources from trees to soil nutrients to  wildlife. 
Common action is necessary to address these kinds of  problems. 
Often societies fail to act to solve obvious problems  when elites think 
they can insulate themselves from the consequences of communal  disaster. 
For generations, the governing elite in  Haiti felt insulated from the 
effects  of deforestation and poverty. As in other societies where rich people 
believe  they can buy their way out of common problems by living in gated 
communities,  buying bottled water and sending their children to private 
schools, they were  simply not as inclined to make decisions in the interests of 
the entire  society. 
In America today, the massive power of  the financial sector, the insurance 
industry, the energy companies – and the  disproportionate wealth of a tiny 
percentage of the population -- represent our  biggest hurdle to solving 
the long-term problems that threaten our long-term  success. 
Another major reason why societies fail to  solve perceived problems is a 
heavy focus on short-term interest instead of  long-term interest.  The  
worldwide liquidity of capital markets has helped contribute to the growing  
pressure from those markets on next-quarter’s profits.  
The government, reflecting the long-term interests of  society, is the only 
real counterweight to this tendency in the private  sector.  But this 
requires a  government that is not dominated by those very same vested interests 
whose  interests it must offset. 
Diamond presents two final categories of reasons why  societies fail to act 
even when they perceive a problem: 
·       Crowd  psychology 
·       Denial 
As we know, people are pack animals.  They get swept up into the goals and  
activities of the pack.  Peer  influence has a huge impact in determining 
what each of us defines as “common  sense.” 
Support for the Crusades became “common sense” in  Medieval Europe – even 
though it caused a massive drain of society’s scarce  resources.  Germans 
were one of the  most highly educated populations in Europe  before World War 
II, but they were swept up by Nazi propaganda. 
A key factor that allows these kinds of excesses is the  suppression of 
critical thinking, public debate and the legitimacy of  dissent.  These all 
tend to occur in  climates of fear.  Fear has always  been the principal 
rationale for the suppression of individual rights that are  the precursors to “
group think.”  That was as true in George Bush’s America as it was in the old 
Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany. 
Denial is yet another factor that paralyzes action.  The prospect of an 
imminent disaster is  so terrifying that we simply deny it.  Action to solve 
problems requires hope that the problem can be  solved.  If the situation 
appears  hopeless, the safest psychological course is to deny it exists or to 
believe  that the problem isn’t important.  If Easter Islanders didn’t 
believe they could do anything to bring back  trees, it was better to deny that 
the deforestation was a problem in the first  place. 
There is of course one final reason that societies  collapse. 
4)  Even after recognizing and attempting to solve the problem, they fail 
to do  so. 
They fail either because the solution is beyond their  means, or their 
efforts backfire, or it’s simply too late. 
Even if the Easter  Islanders had done everything they could on their 
isolated island to reforest,  at some point there was a qualitative tipping 
point, and nothing more could be  done.  Maybe if they had access to  other 
societies with seedlings, or modern science, the result would have been  
different.  But given the  geographic, environmental and historic context of the 
Easter Island society, there came a point where nothing  else could be done. 
Waiting too long has real  consequences. 
What does all of this have to do with the rules of the  United  States  
Senate? 
The rules of the Senate – and their systematic abuse by  the Republican 
minority – now effectively require a 60 vote supermajority to  pass any kind of 
legislation.  That  requirement paralyzes action – particularly when the 
Republicans believe they  can achieve partisan advantage by completely 
stopping the Obama agenda.   
And if they succeed they will be right. The voters never punish or reward 
political  leaders because of procedural maneuvers.  Voters care about the 
effect of the policy  on their lives, and they expect those in power to 
actually deliver real  solutions.  The excuse that the  other side uses 
obstructionist tactics doesn’t really matter to the  voters. 
And it’s not just the filibuster. The rules requiring  unanimous consent to 
proceed on most items of business, empower individual  Senators to impede 
or delay action. 
The Senate was constructed by the Founders to be a  conservative body.  By 
its nature it  allows small states like Vermont to have the  same 
representation as a state such as California that includes almost ten percent of  the 
country’s total population.  
But the rules  that now prevent or slow action were not envisioned in the 
Constitution – and  for good reason.   
Some argue that  the Senate rules promote bi-partisan action.  In fact, the 
opposite is true.  The current rules incentivize the  Republicans to 
obstruct action.  If  action required a majority vote, they would be much more 
likely to negotiate  bi-partisan action in good faith because they would not 
have a shot at using its  minority to completely stop action of any sort. 
What’s worse, those rules are now being used by the most  powerful elites 
in the country to prevent action on a wide array of matters that  critically 
impact the ability of America to succeed in a changing world.   
Why do we spend twice as much on health care per person  than any other 
country and are 37th in health care outcomes?  Blame the rules of the U.S. 
Senate.  Even if we succeed – as I think we will  – at passing health insurance 
reform by using Senate budget reconciliation rules  – the filibuster rules 
will be responsible for defeating a public option that  could have 
materially reduced the cost of health care in America.  Why?  To protect the private 
health insurance  industry. 
Why do we have such difficulty dealing with the critical  problem of 
climate change and the development of new sources of energy?  Blame the Senate 
rules that protect the  power of the oil companies. 
Why is it so hard to rein in the exploding financial  sector whose 
recklessness and greed caused the current recession, cost seven  million American 
jobs and almost caused the collapse of the world economy?  The Senate rules 
help protect the power  of Wall Street. 
Economists say the Obama stimulus bill created or saved  from 1.5 to 2.5 
million jobs.  But  as Paul Krugman says, it was too little of a good thing. 
Why?  Because the 60 vote requirement in the  Senate kept the new Obama 
Administration from doing everything that was  necessary to restart our economy.  
 
The Senate rules empower a tiny, economic elite whose  interests run 
contrary to the public interest. They prevent the American  government from making 
decisions quickly and forcefully -- to address the needs  of the long run 
instead of the short-term interest of investment banks and  insurance 
companies.  Presidents  since Harry Truman have tried to reform health care.  The 
Senate rules have prevented  action. 
Change – accelerating change – is the central fact of the  modern world.  
If America is to  succeed and survive in the 21st Century it must have a 
government  that can make timely decisions, look at the long haul, and act in 
the public  interest – rather than represent the interests of tiny elites 
whose personal  interests conflict with those of the society at  large. 
That requires that we change the Senate rules to make the  Senate into a 
responsive, decisive body that represents the public interest and  can no 
longer be used by the most powerful special interests to maintain their  wealth 
and power at the expense of America’s future. 
Robert Creamer is a long-time  political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can  Win, 
available on _Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-1)

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