CHAPTER 10
During the month of May, gas prices continued their upward spiral. Politicians were feeling the heat from the voters back home, but not enough to overcome their fear of and feeding by the oil and gas industry, with its omnipresent, accommodating lobbyists. Although winter was more than six months away, it would take time to get the oil companies to disgorge some of the ill-gotten gains from their profiteering -- say, through a windfall tax or a $10 billion charitable contribution to help the poor pay their fuel and heating bills, for starters. Whatever pressure might be brought to bear on the oil giants -- and Analysis was preparing a devastating report on their collusion in the form of joint ventures with the overseas cartels and strange, well-timed domestic refinery shortages -- the focus had to be on arousing the public to pressure Congress and the oil-marinated White House.
Enter "Read all about it!" and Phil's idea at Maui Four of using it against the oil companies. Through his work on the Egalitarian Clubs, Bernard had located two dynamic people in their late twenties, one working with minority children to put out a community newspaper in South Central Los Angeles, and the other helping youngsters in East New York to create their own radio programs. Ray Ramirez and Nicole Joyner were more than enthusiastic when Bernard approached them about the Daily Bugle, as the new paper would be called. They passed their Recruitment interviews with flying colors and started in right away.
Ray and Nicole were tailor-made for the job of finding a battalion of young people to distribute the Bugle during the afternoon rush hour at a thousand intersections in scores of cities -- Connecticut Avenue and K Street in Washington, corners around Times Square and Union Square in New York, the Boston Commons, Chicago's Loop, Fountain Square in Cincinnati, and so on. It would be a nice paying task for youngsters in need, and would also draw out promising young leaders who were gregarious and assertive -- traits they had to have to reach out to millions of passersby. The Bugle would be a four-page tabloid with big headlines and arresting pictures. Bernard called Barry and lined up a team of four journalists from Promotions to write the crackling copy. Yoko set him up with a graphic artist who would design the paper so that even the typeface and layout expressed indignation. With their staff in place, Ray and Nicole set a target date of one month to get the project up and running.
Meanwhile, the consolidation and deployment of the Clean Elections Party was proceeding at a furious pace. All kinds of deadlines were looming, and the finest talent was recruited to move this eagle forward fast and flawlessly. What continued to amaze Warren and his organizers was the sheer electoral and managerial talent that came out of the woodwork. It seemed that over the years the country had accumulated a stockpile of frustrated candidates, fundraisers, strategists, logistical specialists, street-level neighborhood organizers, and get-out-the vote geniuses, all waiting with fading hope for a new burst of political freedom. At once professional and refreshingly driven by ideals, they were just the sort of people the CEP needed as field organizers and for the all-important teams of administrators, compliance officers, and volunteer coordinators.
Bill Hillsman agreed to take on the promotional work for the party, from posters, lawn signs, bumper stickers, and conversation-generating buttons to TV and radio spots that would take full advantage of the sharply divergent political views of the CEP's two spokespeople, Phyllis Schlafly and John Bonifaz, to make the case for clean elections. He also planned to produce a series of demographically targeted DVDs that would be distributed by the hundreds of thousands to challenge and inspire voters and enlist their support for the clean elections agenda. That agenda was in the process of being refined by Warren's Electoral Reform project staff, along with a concise fact sheet showing specifically how clean elections would translate into a positive political climate and an improved standard of living -- decent wages, affordable housing, universal Medicare, experienced-based education, and all the rest.
The drive to meet the deadlines was going well, in part because of the talent and resources applied to the endeavor, in part because of Recruitment's usual brilliance -- in this case, in finding good candidates -- and in part because of conventional political thinking on the part of the two major parties. The Democrats and Republicans were in possession of polls telling them that "electoral reform," "campaign finance reform," and the like bored the public and wouldn't change any votes on Election Day. They therefore made no effort to use obstructionist state laws or phony litigation to deny the Clean Elections Party ballot access or force it to miss deadlines. This major party inertia augured well for the project of cutting the Gordian knot that tied elections to the yoke of big money. And it didn't hurt that the new party had the backing to focus on Congress, where there was no atavistic Electoral College standing in the way.
The speed with which developments were coalescing was a tribute to the way Warren and his project manager had structured the CEP. It was not organized from the top down but as a broad tract of parallel pathways, each with district- specific goals. That enabled the state parties to make sure the operational tasks were completed competently and in time to beat the calendar, which was no mean feat. Warren also wanted the CEP campaigns to mesh with the reform initiatives that would be coming from the Blockbuster Challenge and the Congress Watchdogs, but that was a dicey area because strict election laws prohibited any coordination between political parties and nonprofit citizen action groups. He just had to hope that all those bright, energetic CEP staffers would pick up the ball on their own.
The day after the filing deadlines, forty-seven House incumbents and ten Senate incumbents found themselves in the teeth of a robust wind from the Clean Elections Party and its flotilla of candidates with all sails unfurled. These incumbents, who included the congressional leadership and key committee and subcommittee chairs, were soon to realize what a competitive election was all about. For the first time, they would be facing sterling candidates who were not dialing for the same corporate dollars or taking their cues from the same stale crowd of political consultants. They were about to be caught in the act of selling the voters down the river once again, and the Capitol was reverberating with the tremors. The incumbents suspected that the Clean Elections Party would be very successful at raising funds from "the little people" and raising Cain to bring media attention to its "new day" polities, and they were right. Leonard was full of ideas about how to get small contributions from large numbers of people -- they were not trade secrets -- but to succeed, the party needed integrity, authenticity, and the communications ability to reach these people. Fortunately, all the activities of the Redirections projects would work to the advantage of the CEP as long as there was no organizational coordination between them. Theresa Tieknots and her staff of top-flight attorneys were standing by to advise and monitor full compliance with FEC regulations.
Among the incumbents who awoke to the new day was Congressman Billy Beauchamp, who was shocked to discover that he had an opponent from the Clean Elections Party, a forty-seven-year-old dirt farmer by the name of Willy Champ. An ex-marine, tall, muscular, and outspoken, Willy had received some television coverage two years earlier for his spectacular rescue of a two-year-old girl who had been abandoned by a terrified teenage babysitter fleeing a raging fire. The footage of Willy emerging from the collapsing house carrying the little child with his jacket on fire was played again and again on the local news. Unforgettable!
But Willy Champ was more than a brave man. He was deeply steeped in the progressive history of Texas and Oklahoma, birthplaces of the great populist movement that swept much of the country between 1887 and 1912. Not far from his farm was Elk City, where Dr. Michael Shadid started the first prepaid cooperative hospital in the nation in 1928 and launched the prepaid medical care movement that led to Kaiser Permanente and the famous Puget Sound Health Care Cooperative. As Willy sat in the local library reading books, articles, and newspaper clippings about the farmers' revolt against the giant railroads and banks that were squeezing them, he could hardly believe the Oklahoma of today. It was dominated by big business from one end to the other, and its politicians were mostly on the take and on the double for their corporate overlords.
The Clean Elections Party organizer for Oklahoma's Fourth District had spent days going to one town after another in search of a candidate to run against Billy Beauchamp. The trail led to Willy, not surprisingly, for he was a talker, a joiner, and a helper to hundreds of people. During the talking, joining, and helping, he loved to expand on his favorite topic of returning the political process to the people it was designed to serve. After several conversations with his wife, Felicity, while their three teenage children were asleep in their rooms, Willy decided to take Billy Beauchamp on.
His first act as a candidate was to issue a public invitation to Congressman Beauchamp to join him in the auditorium on the campus of Southwestern Oklahoma Community College for an informal discussion about politics in America and the need for change. His tone was polite and low-key but did not conceal a note of authentic urgency. "Impudent whippersnapper," Billy Beauchamp expostulated to his chief of staff. "I'll be damned if I'm going to dignify his candidacy by appearing on the same stage with him. Turn him down. Now!" He hoped his bluster concealed the nervous agitation he was feeling as he contemplated the upcoming campaign and recalled the unsettling conversation at Fran and Freddy's Feed.
***
Over at Regulation magazine, published under the auspices of the American Enterprise Institute, the editors were noticing a disturbing trend. Petitions submitted to the whole array of governmental regulatory agencies by "interested parties," as the statutes called them, were sharply on the rise, even in hitherto dormant areas involving corporate subsidy and contracting programs at the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, and Commerce. There was no apparent pattern among the petitions. Some came from academics, others from environmental and consumer groups, some from businesses, others from parents who had lost a child to an unsafe medication or household product or toxic chemical. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Department of Labor had received a raft of petitions from labor unions, the SEC and the bank regulatory agencies from investors and depositors.
The editor in chief of Regulation, Tom Topfield, called a special breakfast meeting of the editorial board to discuss the matter. As they sliced into their cantaloupe, crunched their cereal, and scraped through their scrambled eggs, they agreed that they had never seen so many petitions come into the agencies and departments in such a short time and over such a staggering range of issues -- nothing remotely comparable. The one trait the petitions had in common was legal competence. The editors surmised that some top-notch regulatory and contract attorneys must be vetting them for legal and factual accuracy. Sleepy-time "regulatory Washington" -- an oxymoron for years -- was about to get a big wake-up call, they foresaw with a sense of foreboding, but also a perverse elation because of the heightened importance their business contributors would accord the AEI's labors. Raising his tall skinny latte, Tom Topfield exclaimed, "Gentlemen, hold on to your hats!"
The Regulation deregulators were not exaggerating. A huge backlog of petitions that had built up in a climate hostile to regulation was now moving front and center. It was as if a dam holding back thwarted reformers had burst and was flooding the valley of business crime, fraud, abuse, and freeloading. Little did the editors know that even as they were breakfasting, some of these petitions were being redrafted as bills that would shortly be submitted to Congress for action, and would form part of the explanation for why the Clean Elections Party was on the ballot.
To beat its competitor deregulatory think tanks and be first at the trough for prestige and corporate contributions, the AEI put its swarm of analysts into high gear to process the Federal Register and the public dockets at all the agencies. It took them just over a week to produce an exhaustive document with specific recommendations and alerts to a vast network of trade associations, law firms, accounting firms, and dealer and agency associations at the state and local level nationwide.
The document broke the petitions down by type. One cluster of them simply sought to update existing health and safety regulations for motor vehicles, railroads, aviation, drugs, food, and hospitals. These were the hardest to oppose, since the necessity of the regulations had been institutionalized and their obsolescence was beyond argument. They were so much out of date by years or decades that companies were able to boast in their advertising that their products "exceed federal standards."
A second cluster had never before touched the desks of the regulators and policymakers. These petitions "of first impression," as the lawyers say, called for the regulation of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology, including the labeling of supermarket foodstuffs made with genetically modified crops. Bill Joy's astute advice had not been lost on the Meliorists.
Another group of petitions dealt with fraud in Medicare and other federal health payment programs, claiming that billions of dollars a year could be saved through tighter reporting, auditing, and enforcement standards. The agencies regulating credit card companies and bank transactions were asked to declare certain fine-print clauses invalid per se in standard sign-on-the-dotted-line contracts -- for example, binding arbitration provisions that stripped consumers or employees of their right to go to court, or provisions stipulating that the vendors could unilaterally manage the contract in any way at any time. A group of home economics teamers presented the Federal Trade Commission with a petition sure to shake the advertising world to its foundations. All claims asserted in ads would have to be substantiated in electronic files accessible to both consumers and the FTC. The teamers included vivid details about bogus advertising claims for cars, cosmetics, drugs, food, and assorted other products from light bulbs to tires.
A coalition of taxpayer associations from around the nation petitioned the office of Management and Budget to require all agencies and departments to provide a cost-benefit analysis for existing corporate subsidy programs, including cash payments, loan guarantees, bailouts, and government giveaways of research and development or natural resources like hard rock metals -- gold, silver, molybdenum, etc. The petitioners called upon the OMB to prepare taxpayer impact statements on the steady flow of government assets and resources to corporations, and to publish these statements in the Federal Register each year for comment. They indicated that legislation might be necessary if the OMB chose not to act on the petition.
Investor groups, organized in part through Warren's work, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to rule that any publicly held corporation receiving federal subsidies, as carefully defined in the lengthy petition, must issue bylaws giving shareholders approval over the compensation packages of top executives, again precisely defined. The roars of rage from Wall Street would be heard all the way to Houston.
Comparable decibels were likely to issue from the gigantic government contracting industry, with its tens of thousands of vendors partaking annually in over $500 billion in government business and grants. A petition filed before the OMB by several radio and television stations, no less, sought to require that the full texts of all government contracts and grants of more than $100,000, whether to companies, partnerships, or individual recipients, be posted online for full public review and improved competitive bidding, though there was an allowance for redactions in cases involving national security, legitimate trade secrets, and individual privacy rights. A whole universe of government-business-university relationships would suddenly become visible to anyone interested in them. Timber, coal, oil, gas, and other leaseholds, overseas business promotional grants, agreements with the ubiquitous consulting firms that performed all kinds of governmental functions, including writing speeches for cabinet secretaries, would see the light of day as a matter of routine.
The think-tankers paused to remark on the sheer audacity of what they were surveying. In their wildest exaggerations of the regulatory mind-set of their adversaries, they could never have conceived of the phenomenon they were now analyzing for their various clients. The breadth, depth, speed, quality, and radiating cascades of these petitions took their breath away. What central brain was orchestrating all this, they wondered, and to what end? And why had the safety nuts and the home ec teachers and the investors and all the rest of them filed their petitions so stealthily in the past few weeks rather than publicizing them immediately?
With their document completed and duly dispatched, the AEI strategists continued to ponder these questions. Recalling Harold Mertz's column last month on the four major publications that were assigning full-time reporters to the rich guys' rebellion, they decided to have Tom Topfield get together with the reporters individually to share information. It was high time to get to the bottom of this surging upheaval.
Over four consecutive days, Topfield met with each reporter for a dutch lunch in a private dining room at the Jefferson Hotel. These were meetings of convenience, with the two parties serving as informal sources for one another. There were things that one side could do but not the other. The veteran reporter for the New York Times, Basil Brubaker, hinted at sources indicating that the rich guys communicated regularly over a secure closed-circuit TV system. Alas, the Times was prohibited by its ethical standards from retaining a firm that might attempt to crack the system. With equal subtlety, Topfield told Brubaker about the wave of petitions and bewailed his probable lack of access to the petitioners, who would no doubt refuse to answer his questions about what they were doing and who put them up to it, because they saw the AEI as too close to business. Happily, such a taint did not apply to an enterprising newspaperman, he observed as Brubaker jotted a note on his pad. And so it went, back and forth, with no real breakthroughs on either side. Brubaker returned to the office and wrote a short piece on the AEI's exhaustive analysis of the petitions and its intense interest in the business rebels. His article prodded the other corporate think tanks to take a closer look at who was behind these recent "assaults on the free enterprise system," as they characterized the burgeoning challenge.
Topfield's lunches with the other three investigative reporters were of small consequence. None of them had any solid leads except what the Meliorists were already going public with day after day, which served as an effective cover because of the scope and pace of the projects. Not only that, but there was no money trail because of the way the Meliorists had set up the funding. What the press saw was what it got -- a unique form of camouflage.
***
In the higher echelons of the business world, frustration was building. The Meliorists were dominating the news daily. A CEO would hold a press conference to announce a merger that would be "a perfect fit," or to tout a new product; or to express support for a tax cut or a proposed trade treaty, and all the reporters wanted to talk about was "the retired rich guys' revolt." Enough already! A group of eleven powerful CEOs put a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal inviting applications for a strong leader who would mobilize the business community to blunt, block, and finally defeat "this nefarious attack on the business of America." The ad stipulated the necessary qualifications -- knowledge, experience, a proven track record, stamina, a clean background -- and offered a salary of $10 million a year plus a ladder of bonuses pegged to successes. "Urgent! Time Sensitive!" read the headline. The ad stated at the bottom that applications had to be received within five days.
So stringent were the qualifications for this pressure-cooker position, whose occupant would have to report to these undoubtedly imperious CEOs, that many self-starters decided to take a pass. Only fourteen serious resumes came in. The CEOs met in the penthouse boardroom of the Leviathan Corporation to select the winner.
Their choice was unanimous: Lancelot Lobo, forty-eight years old, of Anglo-Saxon descent, graduate of Yale Law School and Harvard Business School, winner of his class prize for the best thesis in philosophy, and widely known as a beyond-the-pale corporate raider in the mold of Carl Icahn. In the background briefing materials was a story about Lobo's father that caught the eye of Jasper Cumbersome III, Leviathan's CEO. Vinegar Joe Stillwell of the Burma-China front during World War II was Lobo pere's hero. He wanted his son to grow up, join the army, and rise to the top tough as nails. He named Lancelot after the legendary Camelot knight and expected him to achieve great exploits with the strength and stealth of a timber wolf -- a lobo. One problem. Lancelot had other ideas. He wanted to be a tough hombre, all right, but he wanted to do it by taking stock positions in corporations and forcing them to restructure, spin off divisions, whatever was necessary to raise the price of their stock. One advantage to hiring Lobo was that the nation's leading pain in the ass of corporate management would be otherwise occupied. Some of the CEOs in the room had been stung, bullied, or foiled by his hardball tactics, his lawsuits, and his posturing in the press. All had to recognize that Lobo in charge of the counterattack and backed by ample resources was the ideal weapon of mass destruction. They almost began to feel sorry for the retired billionaires.
A call to Lobo to tell him of his selection and invite him to a meeting the following week elicited a loud response on speakerphone. "A week? Are you kidding? I'll be right over. I'm only twenty minutes away by limo." How could the CEOs say no to such haughty enthusiasm? They waited.
Jasper Cumbersome's secretary buzzed the boardroom. "Mr. Lobo is here to see you," she said. "Show him in," Cumbersome replied. The door opened and Lobo appeared. The CEOs gasped. In his muscular arms he held a young pit bull whose lunging was barely restrained.
Cumbersome recovered himself. "Kindly leave your friend leashed in the outer vestibule, Mr. Lobo. This is serious business."
Lobo grinned. "First impressions are everything." He pivoted, parked the pit bull as requested, and returned to take a seat at the large conference table. Without waiting for an introduction, he brashly asked his first and most important question. "Okay, you're the bosses, so exactly what is it that you do not want me to do in the process of destroying this growing cancer in our midst? I don't need you to tell me what to do. That's why you hired me. What do you not want me to do, I repeat?"
"We do not want you to seduce these rich old guys with young maidens, because no one would believe you," said Hubert Bump sarcastically. "What the hell kind of question is that to lead off with? Are you trying to convey that there's nothing you don't know? This is a far tougher job than shaking down a corporation, Lobo."
"It is clear to me, at least, Mr. Lobo, that you must be joking," said Samuel Slick, who was known as the group's diplomat. "Do you mind if we get down to business? There are many details and directions to go over, as I'm sure you'll agree."
"Just a moment," interrupted Wardman Wise, whose reputation was true to his surname. "Mr. Lobo, I trust you understand that you cannot turn the tide against this spreading force, whatever it is, with intimidation. These retired executives are not unknown quantities. They are very experienced, very well-connected, and very strong-willed, witness their entrepreneurial success against the odds. They've all been through the rough-and-tumble of business. If you do not understand this critical point, you will be less than useless to us; you will be making a bad situation worse by playing right into their hands. We admire your relentless energy, but I'm going to recommend that you return to your office, cool off, and come back next week, same time, with a coherent proposal for fulfilling the mission we selected you for today. Otherwise we will regretfully have to unselect you."
The other CEOs exchanged approving looks. It was just the right suggestion, made in just the right tone, they felt.
With a slightly chastened "As you wish," Lobo loped out the door, picked up his pit bull, and disappeared into the elevator.
Back in the boardroom, a heated discussion broke out among the CEOs. "Do we really want such a loose cannon?" asked Sal Belligerante rhetorically. "It's not like these rich oldsters are a gang of terrorists, you know." Most of the others added similar observations. The pit bull caper had truly turned them off.
Again, Wardman Wise brought them together. "We are here not because we're old friends but because we sense something powerful coming on fast, something we do not relish. In that respect we are ahead of our peers. Nor do we believe that the established trade associations, think tanks, corporate advocacy groups, and corporate law firms are up to this new and altogether unprecedented confrontation. All these groups have their routines. They can be expected to put out some criticism in print and television ads, file some opposition regulatory responses, and urge their friends in Congress to stay the course, but that will be the extent of it. The only exception that comes to mind is Brovar Dortwist, whom we've all heard so much about from our lobbyists. It was his thinking, you will recall, that led us to look for someone bold and imaginative, someone who breaks the paradigms.
"Many in the corporate world secretly admire Lancelot Lobo's brass, strategic and tactical creativity, and sheer energy in going after what he believes to be undervalued companies run by stale management. He has brought about many a merger, many a breakup, and many, many a resignation in executive suites. He has made hundreds of millions of dollars, so he is not angling for our paltry ten-million-dollar compensation package. He apparently believes, as we do, that the forces gathering against us must be exposed and stopped. Just why, I don't know, and that does make me a little suspicious. After all, Warren Buffett's drive for investor control isn't all that alien to Lobo's life work, though I doubt he's lost any sleep over the powerlessness of small investors. So let's see what he comes up with next week. Meanwhile, I'll make sure that a more thorough investigation of his motivations is conducted promptly.
"Lest we panic, let's remember that the courts are still largely our courts. Our president and his executive branch are definitely ours. And so far Congress is just fidgety, though a close continuing scrutiny, member by member, is warranted. All things considered, we're in tight at the top, regardless of the stirrings of the masses. As for the Clean Elections Party, it has chosen the dullest, most abstruse issue imaginable. It will go nowhere, other than to excite some left-wing magazines and a few reform-minded professors and good-government types."
"Words to the wise, gentlemen, from the Wise." Hubert Bump chuckled at his clever wordplay. "It is now the eighteenth of May. Soon Congress will break for the Memorial Day weekend. People will be preoccupied with school graduations and vacation preparations. We can afford to err on the side of caution in selecting a fighting first responder who will not boomerang on us. And by the way, why don't we try to set up some informal meetings with the retired old guys, one on one." He paused and chuckled again. "For the sake of convenience, let's call them the SROs, for Super-Rich Oldsters," he said, thinking of seedy Single Room Occupancy hotels. No one stopped to consider that the acronym also stood for Standing Room Only.
"Good suggestion, Hubert," said Wardman Wise. "We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by talking to the SROs personally in a relaxed setting."
The eleven CEOs vowed to do just that in the coming fortnight.
***
Throughout May, the Meliorists kept each other informed through their daily closed-circuit conferences and the information streaming on the secure website. Toward the end of the month, in preparation for Maui Six, Patrick Drummond posted a memo on the website summarizing the more salient developments as follows.
> The PCC has started establishing state chapters. Luke Skyhi is consulting with Dee Hock about structuring the organization chaordically so that the chapters adhere to core values and message, and at the same time have maximum freedom to operate creatively and adapt to local conditions. Luke is also soliciting ideas on how to sharpen the fighting spirit of the PCC's natural allies in the sustainable arena for the mission of displacing the ecocidal multinational economy. He complains that they behave "like people in the cooperative movement -- nice, but without the edge that makes the difference."
> Bill C. and Paul request that the dead money/live money discussion resume at Maui Six. They are grappling with the transformation of assets on such a large scale, but believe they are making some progress. Analysis is assisting.
> Bernard's Egalitarian Clubs have hit the final exams/summer vacation hiatus. There are several clubs underway, and many promising prospects for the fall. He's been working on the Daily Bugle project with Ray Ramirez and Nicole Joyner, who have now enlisted almost three hundred youngsters to distribute the paper. He reports that the kids are giving him some great ideas about what the clubs should do and how to increase their appeal.
> Ted has hired two experienced writers to put out an instant book titled Billionaires on Bullshit. He thinks it will be a raging success, taking off on the recent bestseller On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt, emeritus professor of philosophy at Princeton. Ted also reports that one of his billionaires wants to endow a foundation foundation -- that is, one that will encourage the super-wealthy to start family foundations along systematic justice lines and will show them exactly how to do it. Ted says he was impressed by this billionaire's sophistication in recognizing the need to sow seeds for basic shifts of power to the citizenry. He referred the gentleman to Bernard, and the two immediately fell into impassioned conversation about injustice. They're now working out the nuts and bolts of getting the new foundation off the ground.
> Yoko has completed and sent to her publisher a beautifully rendered art book dealing with "questions your children and grandchildren are likely to ask you." She has tentatively titled it No Pox on Posterity, but wonders if a shorter, catchier title is needed. She invites suggestions.
> Bill G. and Joe report that their project's monograph, "The State of Justice in America: Supply and Demand," published in early May, has prompted the attorneys general of New York and California to announce that they will issue their own State of Justice reports by Labor Day. Bill and Joe think that other state AGs are bound to follow suit, because of all the publicity about the monograph, and because the essay contests on the most and least just states are attracting so much attention to longstanding inequities and problems.
> Leonard is sending each of you a copy of Economic Apartheid in America, just updated and out in paperback. He asks you to read it closely in preparation for Maui Six. He particularly directs your attention to page 67, where the authors describe the power shift since the 1970s: "On the Rise have been big campaign contributors, corporate lobbyists, corporations, big asset owners, CEOs, and Wall Street. In Decline have been their opposites -- popular political movements, voters, labor unions, wage earners, employees and Main Street." Leonard points out that this is an oversimplification of the sixties and prior decades. Power was concentrated then too, but at least there were battles pitting the people against the corporate bosses. Washington awoke once in a while to recognize why it was there. On some important policies, the Democrats and Republicans actually fought each other. Big Business was well entrenched in the Washington scene, but at crucial junctures it was on the defensive or simply busy holding on to its power. In the mid-seventies the dam broke, and a dazzling corporate offensive on all fronts began to lay the foundations of the present almighty corporate state. The book is a clear-eyed, graphic "primer on economic inequality and insecurity," as the subtitle has it. Leonard thinks it will be invaluable in formulating the action plan for the First-Stage Improvements. He has also cut a deal with the publisher to buy millions of copies at a little above cost and distribute them at the lunchtime rallies.
> Peter reports that the number of members of Congress who have placed their voting records on their websites or credibly committed to do so ASAP has now reached 187. Critical mass has been achieved. How much longer will the other members be able to resist such an obvious service to voters without paying a political price? For those who do resist, the Congress Watchdogs will make sure they regret it through the Getting to Know You exposes. The 187 legislators all put out press releases that were favorably received back home by both their constituents and the media. One editorial said of the online records, "Now it's up to the voters to use them."
> Warren reports that a team of analysts from Electoral Reform and the Congress Project are putting the finishing touches on a compendium of materials about the careers and affiliations of all the members of Congress. The compendium establishes four categories of senators and representatives: the already convinced, the persuadables, the chronic corporatists, and the rigid ideologues. For each category, it lays out a calibrated series of steps to win them over or to neutralize their opposition by shining the spotlight on them in various forums -- in their respective committees, floor debates, and through the media at all applicable levels, back home in their congressional offices, at their citizen meetings during recesses, among their campaign finance patrons and circles of friends, and through feedback from the voters themselves. According to Warren, who has seen the penultimate draft, the analysts have drawn on the finest work of practitioners and scholars of Congress, and have condensed the insights, the history, the customs and sensibilities of that institution into a menu of action for legislating the First-Stage Improvements. "It's as if they were designing an outlet for an electrical plug and achieved a perfect fit," he says. The document will be sent to you shortly. He asks that you digest it before Maui Six so you can add your observations at the meeting.
> As General Motors stock continues to fall, feelers about Jerome Kohlberg's takeover proposal are tapping into greater interest. It's no longer pie in the sky, though the company's large unfunded liabilities remain the obvious sticking point.
> Progress continues on the Credibility Project, but it is inherently amorphous. Goodwill efforts tend to be just that, Ross says, but they pay dividends in the most unexpected ways. He predicts that the benefits will emerge when conflicts sharpen. The project also meshes well with the continuing expansion and maturation of the epicenters around the core members.
> Bill Joy requests to be told immediately of any security breaches or any surveillance of the Redirection projects and of course the core members. He is preparing for all contingencies, including attempts to penetrate the closed-circuit briefings and the website. He urges the core members to continue their high media visibility on their various public initiatives. The more publicity there is now, the bigger the news if any snooping is discovered later.
> Wal-Mart's poll of consumers is out, showing high favorables to carefully choreographed questions. Questions that would have produced unfavorables were not used. Publicity was national but light -- six- inch-squib level.
> Plans for the mass media branding of the Meliorists, due in late April, require more time and have been rescheduled for mid-June. Suggested release date: the Fourth of July. It will be hard to keep the Meliorists as a group under wraps beyond then, nor is it tactically advisable to do so, says Barry. Warren suggests that the Seventh-Generation Eye be adopted as the Meliorist symbol.
> Last week George delivered another major address, this time before the annual convention of the American Conservative Union. His theme was that when big business exercises great political power in a society, it seriously distorts and diminishes the efficiency of the market writ large. Too often big firms use their political power to insulate themselves from marketplace discipline, to the detriment of the public good, their politically weaker competitors, and basic conservative doctrines. He said that political power can be an irresistible narcotic for corporatists masquerading as conservatives, but not for genuine conservatives. He peppered his speech with telling illustrations, from bailouts to the stifling of innovation by political forces indentured to stagnant big business. He got a five-minute standing ovation. Those in attendance fully understood his distinction between corporatists and conservatives. Their frustration with Wall Street and with the Republican Party, which steadily expands big government whenever it is in power, was evident in their response to George's trenchant remarks.
> The lead team that will be acquiring firms in multiple lines of industry and commerce for the Sub- economy Redirection has been certified by Recruitment and is on the job, Jeno reports. Their budget will reflect a detailed acquisition plan for using leveraged buyouts, drawing on credit instead of cash, and making cash purchases as a last resort. The plan will be completed and on the agenda for review at Maui Six. Barry has designated five of his top people at Promotions to focus exclusively on insuring maximum public and trade understanding of these comprehensive moves. The sub-economy that is emerging out of Luke Skyhi's sustainability shows and other Redirectional initiatives, bolstered by the acquisition of a regular sub-economy, will make for wondrous dynamics and transitions, Jeno predicts, not to mention convulsions of the business status quo. The acquisitions team is talented, experienced, and motivated. They make no effort to hide their excitement.