Re: ONLY THE SUPER-RICH CAN SAVE US!, by Ralph Nader
Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2013 11:13 pm
PART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER 17
At the mountaintop hotel, high above the Alenuihaha Channel, the Meliorists greeted each other with smiles, handshakes, and hugs. They were thrilled to be back at their old haunt, with its breathtaking views and celestial cuisine. The hotel staff, who by now knew who their generous monthly guests were and what they were up to, were more than their usual gracious, beaming selves. Warren led the core group, as they still liked to call themselves in private, to the familiar conference table of silences and conspiracies, where they sat down to commence Maui Ten, but not before helping themselves to some luscious Hawaiian fruit grown on the island's organic farms.
"Welcome to the contemplation of the fruits of our labors since January," Warren said. "It's all so spectacular that it's sobering. With victory come many new opportunities and challenges, and the first order of business is to make sure that all across the country all hands remain on deck and on full alert, and that our institutions continue to build, digging deeper roots and growing stronger branches. The moment the oligarchs sense any slacking off, any sign of reformist fatigue, they'll recover from their intransigence fatigue and go on the counterattack. Besides, there are elections to win. Our mantra remains 'Take absolutely nothing for granted.'
"At our earlier meetings, we've spoken often of serendipity, and it just keeps coming and coming. I'm pleased to relate that Andre Engaget, who passed away last month in Santa Fe at the age of eighty-eight, has made me the trustee of a bequest of $2.8 billion for what he calls 'a Meliorist Project in Perpetuity.' The funds are to be utilized 'for the widespread and deep advancement of civic skills and civic practice, both in the nation's public and private elementary and secondary schools, and through a network of franchised adult education storefronts in all communities whose population exceeds three thousand. I realize how easily such a bequest can be frittered away on soft civics. That is not my testamentary intent,' Mr. Engaget writes in his will, and goes on to spell out clearly that he intends his grant to be used 'to foment a high-energy democracy.' He wants classroom learning connected to experiential learning in the community. He does not want rote courses in civics. He cites reports by citizen action groups as models for classroom materials. He provides prize money for students who perform best in various categories. He provides special funds for summer classes that will train teachers to teach these courses. He establishes auditing groups to keep standards high. He endows studies of outcomes, real societal improvements flowing from a civically skilled citizenry. He declares that if the schools reject his curriculum grant for whatever reasons, the money will still be available for extracurricular programs after class. There you are, B."
"I should say so," Bernard replied with deep emotion.
"There are many more specifics, including a fundraising corps to amplify his bequest so as to cover more and more schools, but for now I'll just say that a billion dollars of the bequest goes to an endowment, and the remainder to establishing infrastructure and operations. As a delicious irony, Mr. Engaget's fortune is much larger than this bequest, but he wryly notes that the $2.8 billion came from his early investments in various IPOs that skyrocketed in value. 'Wall Street and the stock exchanges will be funding this civic resurgence,' he writes with evident satisfaction."
"My kind of guy," Ted exclaimed with delight.
"And now," said Warren, "our Secretariat director par excellence has a few points for your consideration. Patrick?"
"Thank you, Warren. As you all know, after passing the Seven Pillars and the overdue appropriations bills for education, defense, health, and so forth, Congress suddenly adjourned yesterday. The Bulls ran out of patience with all the repeal amendments, figuratively threw down their gavels, and went home. Most members welcomed the adjournment because they wanted time to campaign.
"Now that the Agenda has passed and the focus is on the November elections, some of you have inquired as to whether it might be advisable for you to undertake direct campaigning on behalf of the Clean Elections candidates. As you'll recall, on the advice of Theresa Tieknots and our other experts in federal elections and campaign finance laws, we decided early on that the Meliorists would maintain a scrupulous distance from the Clean Elections Party. As a matter of policy, the Secretariat recommends a continuing avoidance of any electioneering. What we propose instead is what we're calling 'the Plunge' -- a ten-day tour of the deprived, ignored 'Other America,' in Michael Harrington's phrase. You would meet the people behind the statistics. You would see poverty, pollution, waste, price gouging, public facilities in disrepair, over- crowded prisons and juvenile institutions, concrete manifestations of greed and injustice -- the conditions that authentic politics should be confronting. With your high media profiles, you can generate a coast-to-coast atmosphere of concern for those of our fellow Americans who are suffering the most. Otherwise, the media this fall will be nothing but nonstop attack ads from opposing candidates -- utterly the wrong tone for this great year of change."
The Meliorists looked at each other around the table, as if wondering why they hadn't thought of this before. For a moment no one spoke. Then Phil raised his glass of mango juice.
"That's one hell of an idea, Patrick. There's a great deal to be said for coming to grips with the grim reality from time to time. As sensitive and empathetic as we try to be, there's no substitute for seeing crack babies in inner-city hospitals, or undernourished, asthmatic children playing near waste dumps."
"Or the destruction of streams and hollows from the coal barons' mountaintop blasting," Peter said.
"Or a hundred other outrages we could name," said Sol. "We should never forget the constructive uses of anger."
"Boy, do I ever have some destinations to propose!" Leonard said.
"Are you envisioning us all going out together?" Ross asked Patrick.
"I think you can cover more ground if you split up in twos and threes, maybe fours."
"What shall we call our tour? I'm not sure 'Plunge' conveys the right impression. How about 'Faces of Injustice'?" Yoko suggested.
"Or we could take a leaf from Chris Rock and call it the 'That Ain't Right' Journey," Bill Cosby said.
Jeno was nodding enthusiastically. "I like that a lot. It's not hackneyed, not pompous, not abstract. It has just the right vernacular touch."
"So we say that the Meliorists are going to tour conditions in America that would make most people cry out, 'That ain't right!' Does that work for a press release?" Patrick asked.
"I'm afraid it may carry a whiff of condescension," Bill Gates said. "What about 'Faces and Places of Injustice' as an official name, with 'That ain't right!' as a colloquial slogan that emerges in the course of the tour?"
"Sounds good to me," Max said.
"Any objections?" Warren asked, scanning the faces of his colleagues. "All right, Patrick, set the tour up for the last two weeks of October. And now Barry has an update for us on the Beatty campaign."
"It's more like a rout," Barry said. "Arnold is twenty-seven points behind in the polls. Like a bloodied prizefighter, he's clinching with Warren by adopting one plank after another of his platform at choreographed news conferences around the state. Nobody's buying it. In fact, it's boomeranged. Following the lead of a radio talk show host in Fresno, everyone is now calling the governor 'Beatty's dittohead,' and the surge behind Warren has indirectly helped the Clean Elections Party take the lead against the four Bulls from the Golden State. All in all, everything's coming up roses. Warren couldn't be happier, especially because the campaign money is coming in nicely, so he doesn't have to spend any of his own. Besides, with so much free publicity, he doesn't need much TV advertising."
"Is he running with the Agenda in substance if not in name?" Joe asked.
"He sure is, adapting the various proposals to state requirements and adding some of his own, though he doesn't mention us or the Common Good Agenda. He wants to be his own man, which is the right thing for him to do politically. It's good for us too, since we never wanted anyone to see us as a central directorate pulling the strings."
"On that encouraging note, let's break for dinner," Warren said. "Then we'll reconvene for an hour or so to discuss the exciting developments in the sub-economy."
Over dinner, the talk was almost all about the passage of the Seven Pillars and the president's performance at Mount Rushmore. The Meliorist victory, as the press called it, was so overwhelming, and the debates in the House and the Senate so quick and anticlimactic, that legal observers bewailed the lack of a legislative history to guide judges in any future cases. The heart of the exchanges between the Maui diners was how the lopsided vote would affect the upcoming elections. Had they succeeded too well and given incumbents who belatedly supported the Agenda an opportunity to win, or would the voters react like the Californians who saw through their governor's leap onto the bandwagon? The first state polls after passage of the Pillars should give a glimpse of any trends in either direction.
Back around the conference table after dinner, Warren asked Jeno to report on the sub-economy.
"With pleasure, Warren. My friends, this is a movement that could well grow to be as revolutionary in its way as the political movement we've launched. You're already well aware of the useful information Luke Skyhi has received from the sub-economy businesses that bored deep inside the Washington-based trade groups and proved invaluable to the PCC. What I want to convey this evening is a sense of what these Trojan horses are accomplishing to usher in a new age for business.
"First, and most pertinent to current events, they are galloping at breakneck speed to neutralize the knee-jerk injustices perpetrated by the trade groups cadres. Amazing what can be done from the inside by energetic business leaders possessed of a public philosophy for the marketplace. Amazing to me, at least. These sub-economy leaders -- I'll call them SELs for short -- are outworking the other members of the state and national boards, mobilizing their own epicenters to challenge their trade association bureaucracies, and demanding a reorientation of efforts away from scaring higher and higher dues out of the members and toward what they call foresight programs. For example, instead of obstructing seriously injured workers and consumers from suing over toxic industrial conditions or unsafe products, they want to go all out in the direction of enhancing safety and health to prevent such lawsuits in the first place. Pretty elementary, as Peter demonstrated in the spring, but sluggishness, obstinacy, and inertia require a push toward rational business policies directly from the inside. Since most business people active in trade association politics want to rise in the hierarchy, they curry favor with their superiors, but our SELs could care less about such 'standstill escalator promotions,' as they call them. They're getting their way more and more through hustle, argument, networking, and good press relations with the trade journals. Locally, they're filling the volunteer gap.
"Now project these currents of progressive business attitudes and actions through a steadily enlarging sub-economy over the next few years, and you can get really excited. The SELs are showing that honesty is the best policy in business and challenging the 'mum's the word' stance of the trade groups on members who engage in corporate crimes and abuses. They're redefining innovation not as the intricate trivia that make up much of what is called competition software modifications, advertising, minute but expensive product differentiations -- but rather as fundamental marketplace services that meet real needs and enhance consumer well-being.
"And how are these SELs doing in the marketplace, apart from their trade association maneuvering? Well, they're practicing what they preach. Live operators answer the phones. The workers are happy, the products and services honest, and the contracts readable, with no fine print about binding arbitration and no boldface caveats about the vendor reserving the unilateral right to change the provisions. These big-print, clear-language contracts have already become the talk of business sectors from insurance, banking, and brokerage to hospitals, car dealerships, and mortgage companies -- you name it. Uproar and outrage galore. All this comes to the attention of more and more customers, who learn just which vendors are on their side and reward them accordingly.
"The SELs are in close touch with one another and with the PCC, and are moving toward a rapid adoption of each other's best practices. Compared to the businesses as they operated before the SELs purchased them, sales, profits, worker satisfaction, and community support are on a steady upswing. The business pages are starting to do features. The business schools are initiating case studies and inviting the SELs to lecture to their students, which the SELs are only too happy to do. They're recruiting more and more graduates of these schools and sending them to a kind of reeducational halfway house where they unlearn much of what they've been taught and prepare themselves for maverick business entrepreneurship.
"The speedy results we're seeing are in no small part due to the fact that the SELs took over existing businesses rather than starting new ones. Many of these were Main Street retailers, and we know a lot about their performance because their operations don't require long lead times. Soon we'll start hearing from the wholesalers, the shippers, the agriculturalists, and the manufacturers. I'm particularly intrigued to see how honest middlemen, brokers, and procurement firms are faring.
"A word about financing. You'll recall that the preferred method was credit, using the acquired business as collateral. Then there was the loan pool you established. The growth in the demand for credit has been so rapid that capacity is oversubscribed. Predictably, the new SELs are being received with hostility by the finance industry, which increasingly does not want to deal with them. My project staff recommends that we consider both an enlargement of the credit pool with a revolving fund feature and a regional banking structure that would place this source of capital formation and business growth on a more permanent footing. Cooperative ownership of these banks by the SELs is another possibility.
"As for the numbers, the projection for next year is that collectively the SELs will account for one tenth of one percent of GOP, which means that only a fraction of the economy is now facing SEL competition. So, as they say, the growth opportunities are immense. I welcome your comments."
"Fascinating, Jeno," George said. "Obviously you can only scratch the surface of what's happening, but is it too early to tell whether there's any organized retaliation underway from the business establishment? For every action there will be a reaction, and not just in physics."
"So far, just bewilderment, consternation, some sporadic rebuttals. By and large, the establishment was caught off guard, and then surprised by the tumult in the conventional world of the trade associations. That's what big money on our side can do -- lightning moves on a breakthrough scale. It helps that the SELs are levelheaded and polite and work silently wherever they can. They don't come on like gangbusters. Again, a great tribute to Recruitment. No doubt the time will come when half the Wall Street Journal is devoted to the interactions and frictions between these two ecospheres and the changes that are bursting out all over. No doubt the counterattack will come too, and we can't discount the possibility that the big boys, especially the chains, will go to the government for help. As we know, there's ample precedent for that in our country's history. Look at how the banks have tried to hamstring credit union cooperatives through legislative action. Let us hope, should they try this avenue, that they'll find a different kind of government awaiting them."
"What preliminary indications are there for minority ownership, employment, and service to minority markets within the budding SEL world?" Bill Cosby asked.
"I'll take that one," Sol said. "I've had some involvement with these kinds of initiatives in San Diego, and it's a wide-open field for venturesome SELs. For instance, one of our acquisitions in Detroit was of a predatory lending operation that was immediately fumigated by the new owner, who replaced its avaricious routines with microlending for small business formation in the ravaged inner sectors of Motor City. Three hundred loans have been made, mostly to women, and there is every expectation, from the history of microlending abroad, of high rates of business success and repayment. Minority markets are beset by predators, often bankrolled by Wall Street money that doesn't want to get its hands dirty directly. These street-level predators control the neighborhoods while their bought political allies and police look the other way, so the SELs have to expect trouble. Already, one microlending storefront in Cleveland was torched during the wee hours of the night. It will take thought, planning, and coordination to anticipate and forestall similar sabotage. We have to make it clear to the people in the communities themselves why there are so few developmental credit unions serving them when thousands are needed. And minority employment goes hand in hand with these inner-city SELs, Bill, but I know from experience that training programs have to be set up first to create a pool of qualified entry-level applicants.
"I should add that it's not just credit that begs for an influx of SELs, it's health, affordable insurance, consumer products like furniture and appliances, home repairs, food outlets, and on and on. We're dealing with massively devastated neighborhoods, streets owned by drug dealers and pimps, millions of children, women, and men in dire need -- just what we're going to see on our tour. It's true that the Pillars will be making their beneficial impact felt in a major way soon, but meanwhile we should try to expand the sub-economy in the communities most in need of help."
"Before closing on this invigorating subject," Jeno said, "I want to leave you with one further example to illustrate just how revolutionary the SEL model can be. One of our SELs in Kansas City, Missouri, took over a healthcare billing design firm whose clients range far and wide, including hospital chains and large medical practices. The billing design industry is part of one of the largest overbilling frauds in American history. Malcolm Sparrow, a professor of applied mathematics at Harvard, is an authority in this arcane field. He estimates that anywhere from two hundred billion dollars to four hundred billion dollars a year in healthcare billings goes down the drain due significantly to the overbilling that's built into these computerized coded designs. So here comes our SEL into this snake pit, and soon he uncovers enough to say whoa to the entire operation. He revamps the firm, hires new employees, and is now using his unique insider vantage point to track down who's perpetrating what in his industry all over the country. He tells us that within five months he'll have enough on the tentacles of this institutionalized fraud, which Sparrow calls 'a license to steal,' that it will take 60 Minutes a hundred and eighty minutes to do the story. As we made clear in the Agenda, honest, accurate billing in the healthcare industry will save enough money to cover almost every uninsured American."
"Behold what we have unleashed," Warren said with a big smile. "We're reversing Gresham's Law. Honest money is driving out dishonest money, and good business is driving out bad. Now, it's getting late, so just two more matters on a lighter note before we call it a night. First, as some of you have mentioned to me, it's not too early to plan a mass celebration after the election, no matter its outcome. Millions of people have worked their hearts out on the Agenda and all our other projects -- the staff, the organizers, the lecturers, the CUBs and PCC chapters and Congress Watchdogs, and countless others. Do I have your approval to retain a trusted events firm in Omaha to give us a plan on how best to convey our everlasting thanks in a multidimensional and multilocational manner?"
The proposal was adopted by acclamation, with Yoko offering to advise on aesthetics.
"Fine," Warren said. "Next is something that's been on all our minds. What can we do for Maui? This beautiful island has provided a hospitable refuge for our deliberations in a setting of unsurpassed natural splendor. May I suggest that we spend Sunday morning touring some of the island and thinking about how to show our gratitude for the benefit of the local residents? We can drive up the coast, stopping at towns and hamlets on our way to the airport."
On a further note of acclamation, Warren adjourned the meeting, and the Meliorists retired to their rooms under a full moon that shone down upon the little hotel and gardens like a giant spotlight. Bill Joy strolled along with his colleagues, having completed his customary sweep of the premises -- as if it really mattered anymore. His task now was more to insure privacy than security, since there was nothing much left to be revealed.
On Saturday, the group breakfasted on the patio under a dew-smitten canopy of leaves and got underway in the conference room at nine sharp. The task at hand was a review of precisely prepared written reports from the managers of each project and initiative. The core group had let it be known from the outset that they had no use for power-point presentations. First up was Donald Ross's report on the Congress Watchdogs, which they had read before but were now paging through to refresh their memories.
"Perhaps the best way to proceed," Warren said when everyone had finished reviewing Ross's report, "is to have free- flowing responses around the table, followed by a more rigorous discussion of whether we wish to make an additional year's sendoff grant to each of our projects and continue the infrastructure support from Promotions, Recruitment, and so on. Naturally, some of our conclusions will be tentative, pending the outcome of the elections next month and the subsequent response of the American people."
And so it went with each of the reports that morning and through a working lunch. Toward the end of the day, Warren gave the budget report. "We have total expenditures to date of about eight billion dollars. Monies in hand since we started in January have reached sixteen billion, with five billion in serious pledges plus the $2.8 billion Engaget bequest. And who knows how much more is in the pipeline or will be in the pipeline after the election? This is a most pleasant fix to find ourselves in. It will require careful thought in the coming weeks to allocate thirteen billion dollars along sustainable, institution-building lines. There are certain fiduciary restraints, since some of the money was solicited with the Seven Pillars in mind, but that obviously includes implementation."
"You and the Secretariat run one tight ship, Warren," Max said. "If they didn't call us the Meliorists, they'd have to call us the Frugalists."
"You know, it's interesting," said Bill Gates, "that with all we've set in motion and all we've spent, my son's foundation has already spent more -- fourteen billion in the past six years."
"That's very reassuring, Bill," Peter said. "I take it as a comment on our comparative paternal efficiencies."
Bill smiled. "You can take it that way, though the two money flows are really apples and oranges. It's a matter of different absorptive capacities and different opportunities for systemic initiatives. Third World diseases like AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are a different universe altogether. Anyway we're digressing, sorry."
"Let's digress to dinner," Warren said. "Ailani has prepared a feast of special Maui recipes tonight, and I'm having some old Hawaiian music piped in to set a relaxing mood."
When the Meliorists had reassembled in the conference room after their culinary and audio massage, Warren suggested that they skip the usual hour of silence. "We've really had a long day, and we have to get an early start tomorrow if we want to visit a number of towns and talk with the residents, so let's wrap up with whatever's on our minds and then turn in."
"At dinner, Sol and Bernard and I were exchanging concerns about whether we've peaked too soon as far as the elections go," Phil said. "After the great victories in Congress, there may be a public lull or a voter letdown -- just think about athletic teams that beat their big competitor and then lose to a mediocre team the next week. With the CEOs putting up a billion dollars to fund an aggressive counterattack over the next month, the Lobo/Dortwist crowd may try to take advantage of a public attitude of 'Well, we got what we wanted in the Pillars, and this election isn't that important.' If there is such a mood, it could certainly be encouraged through clever political advertising, especially with the Bulls claiming credit for passage of the Agenda. So ponder this. When we were engaged in rapid response to Lobo's propaganda machine, we had a free hand because we were outside any electoral context. It was just plain, robust, old-fashioned free speech. Now the CEOs will presumably be using a good chunk of their billions to support the reelection of their congressional friends under the FEC rubric of 'independent expenditures.' When we reply with our own media blasts, are we under the FEC rubric or outside in the land of free speech?"
"Important question," said Bill Gates. "It's my understanding that we're still free and clear. The Lobo operation will be supporting or opposing various candidates by name in the local and national media markets. We don't want to do this, even under independent expenditure rules, because we want to preserve our separation from the Clean Elections Party and its candidates, as Patrick advised yesterday. Our approach should be to urge people to get out and vote for a society that is advancing through the Seven Pillars, and for a Congress that will brook no delay in their efficient and expeditious implementation, without mentioning specific candidates or specific parties. That will keep us out of the clutches of the FEC regulations, while also allowing Bill Hillsman to give full play to his imagination."
"Won't that put us at a disadvantage in terms of what the voters are being exposed to on television?" Sol asked. "Generalities from us, specifics and local interest from the opposition?"
"That depends almost entirely on how astutely the ads playoff the CEOs' ads and rebut them," Bill Gates said. "That's why Hillsman is critical here. He'll know how to handle the situation."
"Well, we already know from experience that one Hillsman ad can have the impact of five or ten of the opposition's," George said. "I think we can count on him to head off the CEOs, but let's go on the offensive too. What about another wave of parades all over the country just before Election Day? Parades are great visible reminders of popular power. They'll energize the citizenry to get out the vote. Our parade teams from the Fourth and Labor Day are still in place and have even more experience now. Where I grew up, in Eastern Europe, the Soviets banned parades, except military ones, for fear of inciting the repressed masses to protest or riot or revolt. The Soviets knew the power of parades."
Bernard was nodding thoughtfully. "Papa always wondered why parades in his adopted country didn't look toward the future instead of just memorializing the past. I'd love to see us put together a nuts-and- bolts pamphlet titled 'How Local Parades Spark Change,' drawing on historical examples and our experience this year. What about it, Patrick?"
"I'll put Analysis on it tomorrow. They're already compiling reports on all the immense activity since January with an eye to what more can be done. This will fit right in."
"Okay," Warren said, "we have ads and parades on the table to counter a possible letdown. Any other suggestions?"
"What about personalizing the CEOs hiding behind the billion-dollar ad campaign?" Joe suggested. "You know, their pictures, their annual compensation, the average wage in their companies, the stands they've taken against social justice. Not all of them, since there were a few voices of conscience, just the hardliners, the greed-hounds. Is it worth suggesting this to Hillsman? Nothing like letting the people get to know some of their rulers, especially those with such dedication to their own anonymity."
Ted guffawed. "I wouldn't mind Jasper Cumbersome's mug becoming a household pinup."
"Well, let's let Hillsman decide," Warren said. "We certainly trust his taste, and we'll ask to see his drafts. We don't want to get into micromanaging here."
"We certainly don't," Sol said, suppressing a yawn.
Phil pushed back his chair. "I think our day is petering out. In the course of my sixty-five hundred TV shows, I developed a sense for when the audience was flagging. It's nine thirty, and we've been going hard since nine this morning. Let's hit the sack."
The next morning at 7:30 a.m., five town cars arrived for the east coast tour of Maui. The Meliorists split up into threes and fours, and each group went its own merry way, stopping in as many different towns as possible to talk with harvesters, strollers, people tending their gardens or sitting at outdoor cafes or on their way to church. At each stop they sought out old-timers and native Hawaiians to get a sense of what they felt they had lost or were losing and what they wanted as a community. Mauians were so used to tourists and visitors that they struck up conversations readily. The Meliorists rendezvoused for breakfast at Waianapanapa State Park, went on separately to Wailua, Keanae Point, Kailua, Pauwela, and a dozen other destinations, then met again for a late lunch at Hookipa Beach Park. All along the way, they gratefully took in the smells and sounds, the spectacular bird life, the ridges, valleys, and beaches, the play of sunlight on slopes, rivers, and trees. It was easy to believe the ancient Hawaiian myth that it was the demigod Maui who created the entire chain of the Hawaiian Islands from the deep sea.
Arriving at Kahului airport, the Meliorists exchanged notes on their day's journey while they waited to board their business jets. All told, they had spoken to hundreds of Maui residents and heard over and over again of their desire for local community centers. These congenial, gregarious people had no decent, attractive gathering places and made do with the outdoors or some school auditorium. They and their children would make good cultural, civic, recreational, and educational use of blended facilities that were both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Accordingly, as their gift to Maui, the Meliorists decided to fund six community centers and retain a green building firm in Honolulu to work with the local residents so that the siting and architecture flowed straight from their traditions, preferences, and needs.
When the planes were ready, the group said their farewells and climbed aboard to head for the mainland and the momentous stretch drive to the November elections. Halfway across the ocean, Warren turned to Patrick Drummond and said quietly, "You know, Pat, we've accomplished all this since January with an equivalent of a sixth of just my personal fortune. I'll be a long time wondering what took me so long. What in the world took me so long?"
***
In a converted high-ceilinged barn by a pretty canal in Minneapolis, Bill Hillsman sat deep in thought, turning his estimable media imagination to the task of making a national splash with the $150 million budget the Secretariat had assigned him to go up against the CEOs' billion-dollar ad campaign. Patrick Drummond had briefed him and told him there was another $100 million to add to his budget if the Meliorists liked what he came up with.
This was serious money for Hillsman. He wasn't one of the big boys in the advertising game, though he'd received more prizes for his news-making political ads than any single person in the country, as all the plaques and statuettes in his office attested. Still, each new challenge started with a blank page and a blank mind. He'd just come back from visiting his many sisters and brothers in Chicago, where he'd grown up. He often got ideas from thrashing things out in bull sessions with his siblings, but he'd come up empty this time. He liked to tell his associates how easy it was to think up great ads: "All you have to do is sit in front of your computer until beads of blood start dripping from your brow."
Today he was really straining. His desk was strewn with press clippings and profiles and pictures of the CEOs, but nothing leapt out. Sipping hot coffee, he started reading a wire service story that had just been filed and almost dropped his cup: "Attempted Kidnapping of Patriotic Polly Foiled." The copy went on to describe a break-in at the veterinary school in Delhi, New York, where Polly's trainer, Clifton Chirp, cared for her. At 1:00 a.m., two men in ski masks had crawled through an unlocked window, walked past a sleeping guard, and put a hood over Polly's cage, but not before the valiant bird cried out, "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" Apparently her trainer had anticipated that her guards might be prone to snoozing. The guard woke up, drew his weapon, and ordered the retreating men to put up their hands. The men unceremoniously dropped the cage and fled. After making sure that Polly was unhurt, the guard phoned the police and campus security to give chase to the intruders. A dragnet was underway around a large tract of woods where the kidnappers were believed to be hiding. There was no indication as to the motive behind their attempted seizure of the most famous bird in the world, "a parrot beloved by millions of Americans for her services to humanity and to justice for all."
"That's it!" Hillsman exclaimed.
That evening the network television news led with the Polly story. The anchors played tape and sound bites of the parrot's past exploits as the trumpeter of truth and the exposer of deceptive political ads. "Detectives on the case believe the botched kidnaping was a ransom attempt and was not politically driven. Although the suspects have not yet been caught, political operatives would have planned a smoother getaway," Tatie Youric surmised, evidently forgetting about the Watergate burglars. Bill Hillsman watched all the coverage in his wraparound television studio and knew that he had the star he needed for his constellation of ads. He put in a call to Clifton Chirp.
Lobo released the first wave of his media barrage a few days later. Hillsman replied immediately with one-minute spots that all began with Patriotic Polly crying, "Get up! Don't let the Agenda down!" He had easily anticipated what Lobo's themes would be -- the same old alarmist claptrap decked out as sober concern for the country's future -- and had crafted the body of each ad to rebut the claims factually and expose them as self-serving ploys to distract the populace and derail the Common Good.
With her reprise of a variation on the refrain that had first brought her to national attention, Patriotic Polly demolished the credibility of Lobo's billion-dollar extravaganza of falsehood and deception. Within seventy-two hours, his ads went the way of Harry and Louise.
***
The world of the Washington lobbyists had shut down. They'd lost big, and the object of their affections -- the Congress -- was in adjournment, so they headed back to their resorts and villas for another long vacation.
Brovar Dortwist had one last dinner with the Solvents, who were discouraged, disgruntled, and disgusted by the dismissive treatment they'd received at the hands of the media and the Congress. Always looking to the future, Brovar tried to turn their indignation into a resource for next year's counterattack. He shored up their morale, told them their job had been impossible before they even arrived on the scene, assured them that they had nothing to be ashamed of since they'd given it their best.
"If only we'd been unified from Wall Street to Washington," Delbert Decisioner muttered into his martini.
"We were divided, so those old farts conquered," said Sally Savvy, downing her white wine spritzer.
Brovar refrained from saying that there were far more elements at work than a divided business community and raised his glass for a toast. "To the corporate future and our victory over the radicals and the rabble."
"Hear, hear," mumbled his guests lugubriously.
As Brovar took leave of them, knowing that the Solvents had effectively dissolved themselves, Lobo was in his condo in Manhattan drowning his sorrows in scotch and his pit bull. With a few squawks, Patriotic Polly had obliterated his last- ditch ad campaign, and there was nothing left for him to do. His thoughts turned back to Yoko. He found himself dreaming about her every night -- exotic, erotic dreams that sometimes left him waking up on the rug by his bed with the puzzled pit bull sniffing him and licking his face. What did he want from Yoko? Why did she provoke these intense feelings in him when she knew nothing about him except that he was the CEOs' lead man? No drug, no psychiatry, no hypnosis could give him the answer. It was existential. He just had to be close to her, that was all, and it had to be soon.
***
The Faces and Places of Injustice Tour began the third week of October. The Meliorists broke up into five teams and covered twelve sites each. Promotions worked hard to publicize the tour and provide buses for all the reporters clamoring to be on board. Community residents were informed of the visits by the Daily Bugle kids, who were thrilled at the prospect of meeting their heroes in person. "Read all about it!" they cried. "The Meliorists are coming to town!"
As the teams soon discovered, "That ain't right!" was an understatement. With video streaming on their website every step of the way, they visited decrepit housing projects where children played on toxic brownfields, drug dealers brazenly plied their trade, and both streets and streetlights were in ruins. They went to a California prison and a juvenile detention camp, pointing out sharply that such institutions cost California taxpayers more than the state's entire higher education system, with over half of the inmates incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. They surveyed the terrible damage inflicted by the petrochemical companies on the ecosystem of the Louisiana Delta and its inhabitants. They walked through dilapidated inner-city schools in Cleveland and Baltimore -- broken desks, filthy restrooms, pathetic libraries, junk food, and unruliness everywhere. They sampled the bumper-to-bumper daily highway congestion in Los Angeles and Dallas to get the feel of the commuting grind, compliments of GM's and the highway lobby's crushing of mass transit decades ago. They were shocked by the plight of migrant farm-workers exposed to a deadly stew of agricultural chemicals, and of their counterparts on the factory farms tending crammed chickens and pigs fed on grain doused with daily antibiotics.
In the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, reverberating around the clock with the screaming of gas compressors and the rumbling of water pumps, they saw what the coal-bed methane companies were doing to thousands of helpless ranch families whose underground mineral assets had been leased to those companies by the federal government. In the coal country of Kentucky and West Virginia, they viewed strip-mined moonscapes and ravaged mountains, and met with the besieged inhabitants of the hollows who received no help from a government that had long ago surrendered this rich land to the rapacious coal barons. Outside Atlanta, they got a taste of ugly suburban and exurban sprawl, wasteful of time, fuel, land, and water, starved for efficient transportation, bereft of community.
Wherever possible, the teams highlighted contrasts, showing the faces of poverty -- so much of it child poverty -- in slums within sight of the gleaming tax-abated skyscrapers where the affluent made money from money and went home to mansions cleaned by the poor. Millions logging onto the Meliorists' website saw them standing before stadiums, arenas, and upscale gallerias built largely with taxpayer dollars, and then stopping in at run-down clinics, crumbling library branches with depleted collections, check-cashing stores, so-called food stores selling sugar, salt, and fat. The few derelict playgrounds in the slums just didn't have the lobbyists that the billionaire owners of sports franchises could retain, Leonard observed scathingly.
CHAPTER 17
At the mountaintop hotel, high above the Alenuihaha Channel, the Meliorists greeted each other with smiles, handshakes, and hugs. They were thrilled to be back at their old haunt, with its breathtaking views and celestial cuisine. The hotel staff, who by now knew who their generous monthly guests were and what they were up to, were more than their usual gracious, beaming selves. Warren led the core group, as they still liked to call themselves in private, to the familiar conference table of silences and conspiracies, where they sat down to commence Maui Ten, but not before helping themselves to some luscious Hawaiian fruit grown on the island's organic farms.
"Welcome to the contemplation of the fruits of our labors since January," Warren said. "It's all so spectacular that it's sobering. With victory come many new opportunities and challenges, and the first order of business is to make sure that all across the country all hands remain on deck and on full alert, and that our institutions continue to build, digging deeper roots and growing stronger branches. The moment the oligarchs sense any slacking off, any sign of reformist fatigue, they'll recover from their intransigence fatigue and go on the counterattack. Besides, there are elections to win. Our mantra remains 'Take absolutely nothing for granted.'
"At our earlier meetings, we've spoken often of serendipity, and it just keeps coming and coming. I'm pleased to relate that Andre Engaget, who passed away last month in Santa Fe at the age of eighty-eight, has made me the trustee of a bequest of $2.8 billion for what he calls 'a Meliorist Project in Perpetuity.' The funds are to be utilized 'for the widespread and deep advancement of civic skills and civic practice, both in the nation's public and private elementary and secondary schools, and through a network of franchised adult education storefronts in all communities whose population exceeds three thousand. I realize how easily such a bequest can be frittered away on soft civics. That is not my testamentary intent,' Mr. Engaget writes in his will, and goes on to spell out clearly that he intends his grant to be used 'to foment a high-energy democracy.' He wants classroom learning connected to experiential learning in the community. He does not want rote courses in civics. He cites reports by citizen action groups as models for classroom materials. He provides prize money for students who perform best in various categories. He provides special funds for summer classes that will train teachers to teach these courses. He establishes auditing groups to keep standards high. He endows studies of outcomes, real societal improvements flowing from a civically skilled citizenry. He declares that if the schools reject his curriculum grant for whatever reasons, the money will still be available for extracurricular programs after class. There you are, B."
"I should say so," Bernard replied with deep emotion.
"There are many more specifics, including a fundraising corps to amplify his bequest so as to cover more and more schools, but for now I'll just say that a billion dollars of the bequest goes to an endowment, and the remainder to establishing infrastructure and operations. As a delicious irony, Mr. Engaget's fortune is much larger than this bequest, but he wryly notes that the $2.8 billion came from his early investments in various IPOs that skyrocketed in value. 'Wall Street and the stock exchanges will be funding this civic resurgence,' he writes with evident satisfaction."
"My kind of guy," Ted exclaimed with delight.
"And now," said Warren, "our Secretariat director par excellence has a few points for your consideration. Patrick?"
"Thank you, Warren. As you all know, after passing the Seven Pillars and the overdue appropriations bills for education, defense, health, and so forth, Congress suddenly adjourned yesterday. The Bulls ran out of patience with all the repeal amendments, figuratively threw down their gavels, and went home. Most members welcomed the adjournment because they wanted time to campaign.
"Now that the Agenda has passed and the focus is on the November elections, some of you have inquired as to whether it might be advisable for you to undertake direct campaigning on behalf of the Clean Elections candidates. As you'll recall, on the advice of Theresa Tieknots and our other experts in federal elections and campaign finance laws, we decided early on that the Meliorists would maintain a scrupulous distance from the Clean Elections Party. As a matter of policy, the Secretariat recommends a continuing avoidance of any electioneering. What we propose instead is what we're calling 'the Plunge' -- a ten-day tour of the deprived, ignored 'Other America,' in Michael Harrington's phrase. You would meet the people behind the statistics. You would see poverty, pollution, waste, price gouging, public facilities in disrepair, over- crowded prisons and juvenile institutions, concrete manifestations of greed and injustice -- the conditions that authentic politics should be confronting. With your high media profiles, you can generate a coast-to-coast atmosphere of concern for those of our fellow Americans who are suffering the most. Otherwise, the media this fall will be nothing but nonstop attack ads from opposing candidates -- utterly the wrong tone for this great year of change."
The Meliorists looked at each other around the table, as if wondering why they hadn't thought of this before. For a moment no one spoke. Then Phil raised his glass of mango juice.
"That's one hell of an idea, Patrick. There's a great deal to be said for coming to grips with the grim reality from time to time. As sensitive and empathetic as we try to be, there's no substitute for seeing crack babies in inner-city hospitals, or undernourished, asthmatic children playing near waste dumps."
"Or the destruction of streams and hollows from the coal barons' mountaintop blasting," Peter said.
"Or a hundred other outrages we could name," said Sol. "We should never forget the constructive uses of anger."
"Boy, do I ever have some destinations to propose!" Leonard said.
"Are you envisioning us all going out together?" Ross asked Patrick.
"I think you can cover more ground if you split up in twos and threes, maybe fours."
"What shall we call our tour? I'm not sure 'Plunge' conveys the right impression. How about 'Faces of Injustice'?" Yoko suggested.
"Or we could take a leaf from Chris Rock and call it the 'That Ain't Right' Journey," Bill Cosby said.
Jeno was nodding enthusiastically. "I like that a lot. It's not hackneyed, not pompous, not abstract. It has just the right vernacular touch."
"So we say that the Meliorists are going to tour conditions in America that would make most people cry out, 'That ain't right!' Does that work for a press release?" Patrick asked.
"I'm afraid it may carry a whiff of condescension," Bill Gates said. "What about 'Faces and Places of Injustice' as an official name, with 'That ain't right!' as a colloquial slogan that emerges in the course of the tour?"
"Sounds good to me," Max said.
"Any objections?" Warren asked, scanning the faces of his colleagues. "All right, Patrick, set the tour up for the last two weeks of October. And now Barry has an update for us on the Beatty campaign."
"It's more like a rout," Barry said. "Arnold is twenty-seven points behind in the polls. Like a bloodied prizefighter, he's clinching with Warren by adopting one plank after another of his platform at choreographed news conferences around the state. Nobody's buying it. In fact, it's boomeranged. Following the lead of a radio talk show host in Fresno, everyone is now calling the governor 'Beatty's dittohead,' and the surge behind Warren has indirectly helped the Clean Elections Party take the lead against the four Bulls from the Golden State. All in all, everything's coming up roses. Warren couldn't be happier, especially because the campaign money is coming in nicely, so he doesn't have to spend any of his own. Besides, with so much free publicity, he doesn't need much TV advertising."
"Is he running with the Agenda in substance if not in name?" Joe asked.
"He sure is, adapting the various proposals to state requirements and adding some of his own, though he doesn't mention us or the Common Good Agenda. He wants to be his own man, which is the right thing for him to do politically. It's good for us too, since we never wanted anyone to see us as a central directorate pulling the strings."
"On that encouraging note, let's break for dinner," Warren said. "Then we'll reconvene for an hour or so to discuss the exciting developments in the sub-economy."
Over dinner, the talk was almost all about the passage of the Seven Pillars and the president's performance at Mount Rushmore. The Meliorist victory, as the press called it, was so overwhelming, and the debates in the House and the Senate so quick and anticlimactic, that legal observers bewailed the lack of a legislative history to guide judges in any future cases. The heart of the exchanges between the Maui diners was how the lopsided vote would affect the upcoming elections. Had they succeeded too well and given incumbents who belatedly supported the Agenda an opportunity to win, or would the voters react like the Californians who saw through their governor's leap onto the bandwagon? The first state polls after passage of the Pillars should give a glimpse of any trends in either direction.
Back around the conference table after dinner, Warren asked Jeno to report on the sub-economy.
"With pleasure, Warren. My friends, this is a movement that could well grow to be as revolutionary in its way as the political movement we've launched. You're already well aware of the useful information Luke Skyhi has received from the sub-economy businesses that bored deep inside the Washington-based trade groups and proved invaluable to the PCC. What I want to convey this evening is a sense of what these Trojan horses are accomplishing to usher in a new age for business.
"First, and most pertinent to current events, they are galloping at breakneck speed to neutralize the knee-jerk injustices perpetrated by the trade groups cadres. Amazing what can be done from the inside by energetic business leaders possessed of a public philosophy for the marketplace. Amazing to me, at least. These sub-economy leaders -- I'll call them SELs for short -- are outworking the other members of the state and national boards, mobilizing their own epicenters to challenge their trade association bureaucracies, and demanding a reorientation of efforts away from scaring higher and higher dues out of the members and toward what they call foresight programs. For example, instead of obstructing seriously injured workers and consumers from suing over toxic industrial conditions or unsafe products, they want to go all out in the direction of enhancing safety and health to prevent such lawsuits in the first place. Pretty elementary, as Peter demonstrated in the spring, but sluggishness, obstinacy, and inertia require a push toward rational business policies directly from the inside. Since most business people active in trade association politics want to rise in the hierarchy, they curry favor with their superiors, but our SELs could care less about such 'standstill escalator promotions,' as they call them. They're getting their way more and more through hustle, argument, networking, and good press relations with the trade journals. Locally, they're filling the volunteer gap.
"Now project these currents of progressive business attitudes and actions through a steadily enlarging sub-economy over the next few years, and you can get really excited. The SELs are showing that honesty is the best policy in business and challenging the 'mum's the word' stance of the trade groups on members who engage in corporate crimes and abuses. They're redefining innovation not as the intricate trivia that make up much of what is called competition software modifications, advertising, minute but expensive product differentiations -- but rather as fundamental marketplace services that meet real needs and enhance consumer well-being.
"And how are these SELs doing in the marketplace, apart from their trade association maneuvering? Well, they're practicing what they preach. Live operators answer the phones. The workers are happy, the products and services honest, and the contracts readable, with no fine print about binding arbitration and no boldface caveats about the vendor reserving the unilateral right to change the provisions. These big-print, clear-language contracts have already become the talk of business sectors from insurance, banking, and brokerage to hospitals, car dealerships, and mortgage companies -- you name it. Uproar and outrage galore. All this comes to the attention of more and more customers, who learn just which vendors are on their side and reward them accordingly.
"The SELs are in close touch with one another and with the PCC, and are moving toward a rapid adoption of each other's best practices. Compared to the businesses as they operated before the SELs purchased them, sales, profits, worker satisfaction, and community support are on a steady upswing. The business pages are starting to do features. The business schools are initiating case studies and inviting the SELs to lecture to their students, which the SELs are only too happy to do. They're recruiting more and more graduates of these schools and sending them to a kind of reeducational halfway house where they unlearn much of what they've been taught and prepare themselves for maverick business entrepreneurship.
"The speedy results we're seeing are in no small part due to the fact that the SELs took over existing businesses rather than starting new ones. Many of these were Main Street retailers, and we know a lot about their performance because their operations don't require long lead times. Soon we'll start hearing from the wholesalers, the shippers, the agriculturalists, and the manufacturers. I'm particularly intrigued to see how honest middlemen, brokers, and procurement firms are faring.
"A word about financing. You'll recall that the preferred method was credit, using the acquired business as collateral. Then there was the loan pool you established. The growth in the demand for credit has been so rapid that capacity is oversubscribed. Predictably, the new SELs are being received with hostility by the finance industry, which increasingly does not want to deal with them. My project staff recommends that we consider both an enlargement of the credit pool with a revolving fund feature and a regional banking structure that would place this source of capital formation and business growth on a more permanent footing. Cooperative ownership of these banks by the SELs is another possibility.
"As for the numbers, the projection for next year is that collectively the SELs will account for one tenth of one percent of GOP, which means that only a fraction of the economy is now facing SEL competition. So, as they say, the growth opportunities are immense. I welcome your comments."
"Fascinating, Jeno," George said. "Obviously you can only scratch the surface of what's happening, but is it too early to tell whether there's any organized retaliation underway from the business establishment? For every action there will be a reaction, and not just in physics."
"So far, just bewilderment, consternation, some sporadic rebuttals. By and large, the establishment was caught off guard, and then surprised by the tumult in the conventional world of the trade associations. That's what big money on our side can do -- lightning moves on a breakthrough scale. It helps that the SELs are levelheaded and polite and work silently wherever they can. They don't come on like gangbusters. Again, a great tribute to Recruitment. No doubt the time will come when half the Wall Street Journal is devoted to the interactions and frictions between these two ecospheres and the changes that are bursting out all over. No doubt the counterattack will come too, and we can't discount the possibility that the big boys, especially the chains, will go to the government for help. As we know, there's ample precedent for that in our country's history. Look at how the banks have tried to hamstring credit union cooperatives through legislative action. Let us hope, should they try this avenue, that they'll find a different kind of government awaiting them."
"What preliminary indications are there for minority ownership, employment, and service to minority markets within the budding SEL world?" Bill Cosby asked.
"I'll take that one," Sol said. "I've had some involvement with these kinds of initiatives in San Diego, and it's a wide-open field for venturesome SELs. For instance, one of our acquisitions in Detroit was of a predatory lending operation that was immediately fumigated by the new owner, who replaced its avaricious routines with microlending for small business formation in the ravaged inner sectors of Motor City. Three hundred loans have been made, mostly to women, and there is every expectation, from the history of microlending abroad, of high rates of business success and repayment. Minority markets are beset by predators, often bankrolled by Wall Street money that doesn't want to get its hands dirty directly. These street-level predators control the neighborhoods while their bought political allies and police look the other way, so the SELs have to expect trouble. Already, one microlending storefront in Cleveland was torched during the wee hours of the night. It will take thought, planning, and coordination to anticipate and forestall similar sabotage. We have to make it clear to the people in the communities themselves why there are so few developmental credit unions serving them when thousands are needed. And minority employment goes hand in hand with these inner-city SELs, Bill, but I know from experience that training programs have to be set up first to create a pool of qualified entry-level applicants.
"I should add that it's not just credit that begs for an influx of SELs, it's health, affordable insurance, consumer products like furniture and appliances, home repairs, food outlets, and on and on. We're dealing with massively devastated neighborhoods, streets owned by drug dealers and pimps, millions of children, women, and men in dire need -- just what we're going to see on our tour. It's true that the Pillars will be making their beneficial impact felt in a major way soon, but meanwhile we should try to expand the sub-economy in the communities most in need of help."
"Before closing on this invigorating subject," Jeno said, "I want to leave you with one further example to illustrate just how revolutionary the SEL model can be. One of our SELs in Kansas City, Missouri, took over a healthcare billing design firm whose clients range far and wide, including hospital chains and large medical practices. The billing design industry is part of one of the largest overbilling frauds in American history. Malcolm Sparrow, a professor of applied mathematics at Harvard, is an authority in this arcane field. He estimates that anywhere from two hundred billion dollars to four hundred billion dollars a year in healthcare billings goes down the drain due significantly to the overbilling that's built into these computerized coded designs. So here comes our SEL into this snake pit, and soon he uncovers enough to say whoa to the entire operation. He revamps the firm, hires new employees, and is now using his unique insider vantage point to track down who's perpetrating what in his industry all over the country. He tells us that within five months he'll have enough on the tentacles of this institutionalized fraud, which Sparrow calls 'a license to steal,' that it will take 60 Minutes a hundred and eighty minutes to do the story. As we made clear in the Agenda, honest, accurate billing in the healthcare industry will save enough money to cover almost every uninsured American."
"Behold what we have unleashed," Warren said with a big smile. "We're reversing Gresham's Law. Honest money is driving out dishonest money, and good business is driving out bad. Now, it's getting late, so just two more matters on a lighter note before we call it a night. First, as some of you have mentioned to me, it's not too early to plan a mass celebration after the election, no matter its outcome. Millions of people have worked their hearts out on the Agenda and all our other projects -- the staff, the organizers, the lecturers, the CUBs and PCC chapters and Congress Watchdogs, and countless others. Do I have your approval to retain a trusted events firm in Omaha to give us a plan on how best to convey our everlasting thanks in a multidimensional and multilocational manner?"
The proposal was adopted by acclamation, with Yoko offering to advise on aesthetics.
"Fine," Warren said. "Next is something that's been on all our minds. What can we do for Maui? This beautiful island has provided a hospitable refuge for our deliberations in a setting of unsurpassed natural splendor. May I suggest that we spend Sunday morning touring some of the island and thinking about how to show our gratitude for the benefit of the local residents? We can drive up the coast, stopping at towns and hamlets on our way to the airport."
On a further note of acclamation, Warren adjourned the meeting, and the Meliorists retired to their rooms under a full moon that shone down upon the little hotel and gardens like a giant spotlight. Bill Joy strolled along with his colleagues, having completed his customary sweep of the premises -- as if it really mattered anymore. His task now was more to insure privacy than security, since there was nothing much left to be revealed.
On Saturday, the group breakfasted on the patio under a dew-smitten canopy of leaves and got underway in the conference room at nine sharp. The task at hand was a review of precisely prepared written reports from the managers of each project and initiative. The core group had let it be known from the outset that they had no use for power-point presentations. First up was Donald Ross's report on the Congress Watchdogs, which they had read before but were now paging through to refresh their memories.
1. CWs are operating in 60 percent of the congressional districts. All but thirty of them have at least one fulltime staff member and a rented office. These thirty are new and will soon have office space and staff too.
2. CWs have been helped greatly by the activities of the lecturers and the continuing efforts of the organizers. The CUBs mesh well on certain advocacy policies as well. (There are now 7.8 million dues- paying members in seventeen sectoral CUBs -- banking, insurance, etc. -- and all have growing state chapters.)
3. CWs have focused almost entirely on passage of the Seven Pillars, but along the way have begun to develop a youth auxiliary, regular cable programs, and a post-Agenda agenda. The young people are being trained in door-to-door canvassing, community events, and congressional advocacy skills.
4. CWs are still within the budgets you allocated to them, but there is an ongoing drive for self-sufficiency of staff, facilities, and funds. Progress here is variable, depending on the location. Going very well in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and California (where there are four offices). More difficult in the South and Southwest. Membership dues provide a solid minimal base, however.
5. CWs are learning from one another about what works and what doesn't work. Unified agendas are crucial. Otherwise efforts can dissolve into hundreds of legislative requests and everybody's pet reform or design. With the Pillars, unity has been easy. Afterward, it's anyone's guess, unless the CWs continue with an exclusive commitment to the implementation of the Pillars.
6. CW meetings are wonderfully rambunctious. The excitement reigns when the various means of influencing members of Congress are discussed. Here personal approaches and best practices from all the CWs are pivotal. Training sessions and concise manuals are proving their worth. The goal is to have the lawmakers view the CWs with a mix of respect, fear, and wonder. They have to believe the CWs are uncooptable, have deep reserve capabilities, and can continue to widen their base and diversify their tactics in surprising ways.
7. Remarkably, recruitment procedures for the CW core two thousand have produced a membership in which no social, economic, educational, or ethnic category predominates. The only trait they share is their commitment to no-nonsense work and a continuing education in the ways and means of the Congress so as to make it represent the best interests of the people.
8. One problem. When assignments are focused in their neighborhoods, there are few frictions among the members, but when they gather in larger groups, the traditional human frailties and personality differences emerge, even if there's no disagreement on substance or tactics. Some of them go after each other as if there weren't bigger adversaries out there. I don't want to make too much of this: I only mention it because democratic processes and solid consensus-building rarely take account of these personality conflicts, which can be trouble if not dealt with promptly.
9. Over the longer term, there are imponderables. It's difficult to predict how the CWs will do on their own, without the media saturation, the Agenda excitement, the upcoming elections, and the immense backup infrastructure and foreground assistance from the lecturers and organizers. But there's been a fast CW learning curve, and the future looks bright even if there's no Meliorist encore. This year, the CWs played a role in many turnarounds for the Seven Pillars, not a crucial role, but an important one. Up against the Bulls, they were bull terriers -- "Here, there, everywhere," as their motto went -- at every possible public occasion. Two thousand motivated people per district can make quite a difference.
"Perhaps the best way to proceed," Warren said when everyone had finished reviewing Ross's report, "is to have free- flowing responses around the table, followed by a more rigorous discussion of whether we wish to make an additional year's sendoff grant to each of our projects and continue the infrastructure support from Promotions, Recruitment, and so on. Naturally, some of our conclusions will be tentative, pending the outcome of the elections next month and the subsequent response of the American people."
And so it went with each of the reports that morning and through a working lunch. Toward the end of the day, Warren gave the budget report. "We have total expenditures to date of about eight billion dollars. Monies in hand since we started in January have reached sixteen billion, with five billion in serious pledges plus the $2.8 billion Engaget bequest. And who knows how much more is in the pipeline or will be in the pipeline after the election? This is a most pleasant fix to find ourselves in. It will require careful thought in the coming weeks to allocate thirteen billion dollars along sustainable, institution-building lines. There are certain fiduciary restraints, since some of the money was solicited with the Seven Pillars in mind, but that obviously includes implementation."
"You and the Secretariat run one tight ship, Warren," Max said. "If they didn't call us the Meliorists, they'd have to call us the Frugalists."
"You know, it's interesting," said Bill Gates, "that with all we've set in motion and all we've spent, my son's foundation has already spent more -- fourteen billion in the past six years."
"That's very reassuring, Bill," Peter said. "I take it as a comment on our comparative paternal efficiencies."
Bill smiled. "You can take it that way, though the two money flows are really apples and oranges. It's a matter of different absorptive capacities and different opportunities for systemic initiatives. Third World diseases like AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis are a different universe altogether. Anyway we're digressing, sorry."
"Let's digress to dinner," Warren said. "Ailani has prepared a feast of special Maui recipes tonight, and I'm having some old Hawaiian music piped in to set a relaxing mood."
When the Meliorists had reassembled in the conference room after their culinary and audio massage, Warren suggested that they skip the usual hour of silence. "We've really had a long day, and we have to get an early start tomorrow if we want to visit a number of towns and talk with the residents, so let's wrap up with whatever's on our minds and then turn in."
"At dinner, Sol and Bernard and I were exchanging concerns about whether we've peaked too soon as far as the elections go," Phil said. "After the great victories in Congress, there may be a public lull or a voter letdown -- just think about athletic teams that beat their big competitor and then lose to a mediocre team the next week. With the CEOs putting up a billion dollars to fund an aggressive counterattack over the next month, the Lobo/Dortwist crowd may try to take advantage of a public attitude of 'Well, we got what we wanted in the Pillars, and this election isn't that important.' If there is such a mood, it could certainly be encouraged through clever political advertising, especially with the Bulls claiming credit for passage of the Agenda. So ponder this. When we were engaged in rapid response to Lobo's propaganda machine, we had a free hand because we were outside any electoral context. It was just plain, robust, old-fashioned free speech. Now the CEOs will presumably be using a good chunk of their billions to support the reelection of their congressional friends under the FEC rubric of 'independent expenditures.' When we reply with our own media blasts, are we under the FEC rubric or outside in the land of free speech?"
"Important question," said Bill Gates. "It's my understanding that we're still free and clear. The Lobo operation will be supporting or opposing various candidates by name in the local and national media markets. We don't want to do this, even under independent expenditure rules, because we want to preserve our separation from the Clean Elections Party and its candidates, as Patrick advised yesterday. Our approach should be to urge people to get out and vote for a society that is advancing through the Seven Pillars, and for a Congress that will brook no delay in their efficient and expeditious implementation, without mentioning specific candidates or specific parties. That will keep us out of the clutches of the FEC regulations, while also allowing Bill Hillsman to give full play to his imagination."
"Won't that put us at a disadvantage in terms of what the voters are being exposed to on television?" Sol asked. "Generalities from us, specifics and local interest from the opposition?"
"That depends almost entirely on how astutely the ads playoff the CEOs' ads and rebut them," Bill Gates said. "That's why Hillsman is critical here. He'll know how to handle the situation."
"Well, we already know from experience that one Hillsman ad can have the impact of five or ten of the opposition's," George said. "I think we can count on him to head off the CEOs, but let's go on the offensive too. What about another wave of parades all over the country just before Election Day? Parades are great visible reminders of popular power. They'll energize the citizenry to get out the vote. Our parade teams from the Fourth and Labor Day are still in place and have even more experience now. Where I grew up, in Eastern Europe, the Soviets banned parades, except military ones, for fear of inciting the repressed masses to protest or riot or revolt. The Soviets knew the power of parades."
Bernard was nodding thoughtfully. "Papa always wondered why parades in his adopted country didn't look toward the future instead of just memorializing the past. I'd love to see us put together a nuts-and- bolts pamphlet titled 'How Local Parades Spark Change,' drawing on historical examples and our experience this year. What about it, Patrick?"
"I'll put Analysis on it tomorrow. They're already compiling reports on all the immense activity since January with an eye to what more can be done. This will fit right in."
"Okay," Warren said, "we have ads and parades on the table to counter a possible letdown. Any other suggestions?"
"What about personalizing the CEOs hiding behind the billion-dollar ad campaign?" Joe suggested. "You know, their pictures, their annual compensation, the average wage in their companies, the stands they've taken against social justice. Not all of them, since there were a few voices of conscience, just the hardliners, the greed-hounds. Is it worth suggesting this to Hillsman? Nothing like letting the people get to know some of their rulers, especially those with such dedication to their own anonymity."
Ted guffawed. "I wouldn't mind Jasper Cumbersome's mug becoming a household pinup."
"Well, let's let Hillsman decide," Warren said. "We certainly trust his taste, and we'll ask to see his drafts. We don't want to get into micromanaging here."
"We certainly don't," Sol said, suppressing a yawn.
Phil pushed back his chair. "I think our day is petering out. In the course of my sixty-five hundred TV shows, I developed a sense for when the audience was flagging. It's nine thirty, and we've been going hard since nine this morning. Let's hit the sack."
The next morning at 7:30 a.m., five town cars arrived for the east coast tour of Maui. The Meliorists split up into threes and fours, and each group went its own merry way, stopping in as many different towns as possible to talk with harvesters, strollers, people tending their gardens or sitting at outdoor cafes or on their way to church. At each stop they sought out old-timers and native Hawaiians to get a sense of what they felt they had lost or were losing and what they wanted as a community. Mauians were so used to tourists and visitors that they struck up conversations readily. The Meliorists rendezvoused for breakfast at Waianapanapa State Park, went on separately to Wailua, Keanae Point, Kailua, Pauwela, and a dozen other destinations, then met again for a late lunch at Hookipa Beach Park. All along the way, they gratefully took in the smells and sounds, the spectacular bird life, the ridges, valleys, and beaches, the play of sunlight on slopes, rivers, and trees. It was easy to believe the ancient Hawaiian myth that it was the demigod Maui who created the entire chain of the Hawaiian Islands from the deep sea.
Arriving at Kahului airport, the Meliorists exchanged notes on their day's journey while they waited to board their business jets. All told, they had spoken to hundreds of Maui residents and heard over and over again of their desire for local community centers. These congenial, gregarious people had no decent, attractive gathering places and made do with the outdoors or some school auditorium. They and their children would make good cultural, civic, recreational, and educational use of blended facilities that were both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Accordingly, as their gift to Maui, the Meliorists decided to fund six community centers and retain a green building firm in Honolulu to work with the local residents so that the siting and architecture flowed straight from their traditions, preferences, and needs.
When the planes were ready, the group said their farewells and climbed aboard to head for the mainland and the momentous stretch drive to the November elections. Halfway across the ocean, Warren turned to Patrick Drummond and said quietly, "You know, Pat, we've accomplished all this since January with an equivalent of a sixth of just my personal fortune. I'll be a long time wondering what took me so long. What in the world took me so long?"
***
In a converted high-ceilinged barn by a pretty canal in Minneapolis, Bill Hillsman sat deep in thought, turning his estimable media imagination to the task of making a national splash with the $150 million budget the Secretariat had assigned him to go up against the CEOs' billion-dollar ad campaign. Patrick Drummond had briefed him and told him there was another $100 million to add to his budget if the Meliorists liked what he came up with.
This was serious money for Hillsman. He wasn't one of the big boys in the advertising game, though he'd received more prizes for his news-making political ads than any single person in the country, as all the plaques and statuettes in his office attested. Still, each new challenge started with a blank page and a blank mind. He'd just come back from visiting his many sisters and brothers in Chicago, where he'd grown up. He often got ideas from thrashing things out in bull sessions with his siblings, but he'd come up empty this time. He liked to tell his associates how easy it was to think up great ads: "All you have to do is sit in front of your computer until beads of blood start dripping from your brow."
Today he was really straining. His desk was strewn with press clippings and profiles and pictures of the CEOs, but nothing leapt out. Sipping hot coffee, he started reading a wire service story that had just been filed and almost dropped his cup: "Attempted Kidnapping of Patriotic Polly Foiled." The copy went on to describe a break-in at the veterinary school in Delhi, New York, where Polly's trainer, Clifton Chirp, cared for her. At 1:00 a.m., two men in ski masks had crawled through an unlocked window, walked past a sleeping guard, and put a hood over Polly's cage, but not before the valiant bird cried out, "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" Apparently her trainer had anticipated that her guards might be prone to snoozing. The guard woke up, drew his weapon, and ordered the retreating men to put up their hands. The men unceremoniously dropped the cage and fled. After making sure that Polly was unhurt, the guard phoned the police and campus security to give chase to the intruders. A dragnet was underway around a large tract of woods where the kidnappers were believed to be hiding. There was no indication as to the motive behind their attempted seizure of the most famous bird in the world, "a parrot beloved by millions of Americans for her services to humanity and to justice for all."
"That's it!" Hillsman exclaimed.
That evening the network television news led with the Polly story. The anchors played tape and sound bites of the parrot's past exploits as the trumpeter of truth and the exposer of deceptive political ads. "Detectives on the case believe the botched kidnaping was a ransom attempt and was not politically driven. Although the suspects have not yet been caught, political operatives would have planned a smoother getaway," Tatie Youric surmised, evidently forgetting about the Watergate burglars. Bill Hillsman watched all the coverage in his wraparound television studio and knew that he had the star he needed for his constellation of ads. He put in a call to Clifton Chirp.
Lobo released the first wave of his media barrage a few days later. Hillsman replied immediately with one-minute spots that all began with Patriotic Polly crying, "Get up! Don't let the Agenda down!" He had easily anticipated what Lobo's themes would be -- the same old alarmist claptrap decked out as sober concern for the country's future -- and had crafted the body of each ad to rebut the claims factually and expose them as self-serving ploys to distract the populace and derail the Common Good.
With her reprise of a variation on the refrain that had first brought her to national attention, Patriotic Polly demolished the credibility of Lobo's billion-dollar extravaganza of falsehood and deception. Within seventy-two hours, his ads went the way of Harry and Louise.
***
The world of the Washington lobbyists had shut down. They'd lost big, and the object of their affections -- the Congress -- was in adjournment, so they headed back to their resorts and villas for another long vacation.
Brovar Dortwist had one last dinner with the Solvents, who were discouraged, disgruntled, and disgusted by the dismissive treatment they'd received at the hands of the media and the Congress. Always looking to the future, Brovar tried to turn their indignation into a resource for next year's counterattack. He shored up their morale, told them their job had been impossible before they even arrived on the scene, assured them that they had nothing to be ashamed of since they'd given it their best.
"If only we'd been unified from Wall Street to Washington," Delbert Decisioner muttered into his martini.
"We were divided, so those old farts conquered," said Sally Savvy, downing her white wine spritzer.
Brovar refrained from saying that there were far more elements at work than a divided business community and raised his glass for a toast. "To the corporate future and our victory over the radicals and the rabble."
"Hear, hear," mumbled his guests lugubriously.
As Brovar took leave of them, knowing that the Solvents had effectively dissolved themselves, Lobo was in his condo in Manhattan drowning his sorrows in scotch and his pit bull. With a few squawks, Patriotic Polly had obliterated his last- ditch ad campaign, and there was nothing left for him to do. His thoughts turned back to Yoko. He found himself dreaming about her every night -- exotic, erotic dreams that sometimes left him waking up on the rug by his bed with the puzzled pit bull sniffing him and licking his face. What did he want from Yoko? Why did she provoke these intense feelings in him when she knew nothing about him except that he was the CEOs' lead man? No drug, no psychiatry, no hypnosis could give him the answer. It was existential. He just had to be close to her, that was all, and it had to be soon.
***
The Faces and Places of Injustice Tour began the third week of October. The Meliorists broke up into five teams and covered twelve sites each. Promotions worked hard to publicize the tour and provide buses for all the reporters clamoring to be on board. Community residents were informed of the visits by the Daily Bugle kids, who were thrilled at the prospect of meeting their heroes in person. "Read all about it!" they cried. "The Meliorists are coming to town!"
As the teams soon discovered, "That ain't right!" was an understatement. With video streaming on their website every step of the way, they visited decrepit housing projects where children played on toxic brownfields, drug dealers brazenly plied their trade, and both streets and streetlights were in ruins. They went to a California prison and a juvenile detention camp, pointing out sharply that such institutions cost California taxpayers more than the state's entire higher education system, with over half of the inmates incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. They surveyed the terrible damage inflicted by the petrochemical companies on the ecosystem of the Louisiana Delta and its inhabitants. They walked through dilapidated inner-city schools in Cleveland and Baltimore -- broken desks, filthy restrooms, pathetic libraries, junk food, and unruliness everywhere. They sampled the bumper-to-bumper daily highway congestion in Los Angeles and Dallas to get the feel of the commuting grind, compliments of GM's and the highway lobby's crushing of mass transit decades ago. They were shocked by the plight of migrant farm-workers exposed to a deadly stew of agricultural chemicals, and of their counterparts on the factory farms tending crammed chickens and pigs fed on grain doused with daily antibiotics.
In the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, reverberating around the clock with the screaming of gas compressors and the rumbling of water pumps, they saw what the coal-bed methane companies were doing to thousands of helpless ranch families whose underground mineral assets had been leased to those companies by the federal government. In the coal country of Kentucky and West Virginia, they viewed strip-mined moonscapes and ravaged mountains, and met with the besieged inhabitants of the hollows who received no help from a government that had long ago surrendered this rich land to the rapacious coal barons. Outside Atlanta, they got a taste of ugly suburban and exurban sprawl, wasteful of time, fuel, land, and water, starved for efficient transportation, bereft of community.
Wherever possible, the teams highlighted contrasts, showing the faces of poverty -- so much of it child poverty -- in slums within sight of the gleaming tax-abated skyscrapers where the affluent made money from money and went home to mansions cleaned by the poor. Millions logging onto the Meliorists' website saw them standing before stadiums, arenas, and upscale gallerias built largely with taxpayer dollars, and then stopping in at run-down clinics, crumbling library branches with depleted collections, check-cashing stores, so-called food stores selling sugar, salt, and fat. The few derelict playgrounds in the slums just didn't have the lobbyists that the billionaire owners of sports franchises could retain, Leonard observed scathingly.