It’s easy enough to recount what went wrong in 2007.
But it wasn’t all bad. Not only did grassroots movements and citizen campaigns — and sometimes governments responsive to public demands — defeat and resist countless corporate power grabs, they won some vitally important, affirmative victories.
Like every new year, 2008 offers renewed hope, and the chance for new beginnings. There really were some important gains in 2007 that suggest countervailing forces to concentrated corporate power are on the rise.
The following list of 10 victories from 2007 doesn’t claim to be all-inclusive. And almost all of the victories are partial and inchoate. Whether they blossom into fuller achievements will depend on what happens in 2008 and beyond. Have ideas for victories that should be added to this list? Send me a note (rob@essential.org) or post a comment on the blog.
1. Cultural Change on Global Warming
There were numerous small steps forward to meet the greatest challenge of our day, including in the biggest carbon polluting country, the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a respectable energy bill; the ultimately adopted energy bill will modestly improve energy efficiency in the United States. Many U.S. states are doing much more, most importantly requiring electric utilities to source an increasing amount of their energy from renewable supplies. The Sierra Club and grassroots groups have combined to defeat dozens of coal-fired power plant proposals. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Bali in December ended with a fizzle, thanks largely to U.S. intransigence, but even at Bali, there was agreement that climate change is a real threat.
This last point is probably the main achievement of 2007. There is now no serious argument about the reality of climate change and the need for action. Going forward, the challenge is to generate the political will for meaningful carbon emission cuts, immediately and for the long-term.
2. Bank of the South
Latin American countries joined together to launch the Bank of the South, an effort to create an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Latin American countries — not just Venezuela — are making contributions to the new institution, which will then make project loans, especially for initiatives to facilitate regional integration.
Says Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “Politically, the new bank is another Declaration of Independence for South America, which as a result of epoch-making changes in the last few years is now more independent of the United States than Europe is.”
3. Treatment for People with HIV/AIDS
Somewhere between 2.5 million and 3 million people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries are now receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment. This was only possible because of campaigns by people with HIV/AIDS in developing countries and their allies in rich countries. First, activist campaigns and speeded-up generic competition brought down the price for life-saving drugs from more than $10,000 a year per person to, in some cases, less than $100 per person. Then, campaigners successfully demanded aid money be made available to save lives.
Treatment coverage is only around a quarter to a third of need, and global need will grow dramatically in coming years. More international and developing country funding will be needed, and there will be ongoing disputes over patent and pharmaceutical issues. But significant progress is underway.
4. Thailand and Brazil Face Down Big Pharma
In January, Thailand issued compulsory licenses — an authorization for generic competition for products that remain on patent — for two medicines. This followed a prior compulsory license in December 2006. The resulting lowered prices on the medicines enabled Thailand to expand treatment significantly in its public health system — the cost of a heart disease drug fell by 98 percent, and just the initial price drop on an AIDS drug enabled the country to provide the medicine to an additional 20,000 people.
Brazil followed Thailand’s example in May, issuing its own compulsory license on an important AIDS medicine.
The compulsory licenses led drug companies to lower prices on key AIDS drugs around the world. Abbott Laboratories lowered its middle-income country price on a vital AIDS drug by 55 percent.
5. The Billionaire’s Tax Loophole Comes Under Scrutiny
2007 saw new attention focused on the incomes of super-rich private equity and hedge fund managers in the United States — and the stunning fact that they exploit a tax loophole to lower their tax rates to less than that of their secretaries.
The “carried interest” loophole lets private equity and hedge fund managers characterize a big portion of their management fees — their cut of the very high profits they make for investors — as capital gains income, instead of ordinary income. That means they can pay federal taxes at a 15 percent rate, instead of 35 percent.
The House of Representatives passed legislation to eliminate the loophole, but it failed in the Senate.
The issue won’t be going away, however. Says Damon Silvers of the AFL-CIO, “It’s finally dawned on people that the richest Americans aren’t paying any taxes.”
6. The U.S. Minimum Wage Goes Up
It’s still a long way from where it should be, but popular support for raising the minimum wage forced Senate Republicans to accede in May to a minimum wage rate hike.
The lowest paid workers in the United States (not counting farm workers and others exempted) will earn $7.25 in 2009. Roughly 13 million workers are expected to see their wages rise as a result.
7. McDonald’s Agrees to Pay Tomato Pickers More
McDonald’s in April agreed to pay a penny a pound more for the tomatoes it uses, with the extra money going directly to Florida farmworkers.
McDonald’s agreed to the arrangement in response to a farmworker campaign coordinated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The coalition had earlier won a similar victory against Taco Bell.
Farmworkers earn about $10,000 a year. If the entire industry went along with the penny-a-pound arrangement, farmworker wages would rise by about 75 percent.
Unfortunately, an intransigent Florida Tomato Growers Exchange is refusing to implement the McDonald’s accord, fatuously claiming that it would violate unnamed federal and state rules. McDonald’s is placing its extra payments in escrow.
Meanwhile, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers is now focusing on Burger King, which is largely owned by Goldman Sachs and other private equity operations. They continue to reject the penny-a-pound demand — which would cost Burger King as estimated $250,000 a year.
8. School Fees Phased Out
For decades, the World Bank and other international agencies instructed developing countries to impose educational and health user fees — charges to go to school, or get access to care. The result: poor children (especially girls) were locked out of school, and sick people from poor families were denied healthcare.
Healthcare fees remain widespread, but primary school fees are finally being phased out throughout many of the world’s poorest countries, in part due to 2000 U.S. legislation requiring the United States to oppose World Bank loans that include user fees.
Primary school enrollment increased by 36 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and 22 percent in South and West Asia between 1999 and 2005, according to UNESCO. “Much of this is due to the abolishment of primary school tuition fees in 14 countries,” says Global Action for Children. “This ground-breaking measure has leveled the playing field, allowing many of the world’s poorest children access to the school house door.”
9. White-Collar Drug Pushers Punished
In May, the maker of Oxycontin, a highly addictive painkiller, pled guilty to charges of misbranding its drug. Purdue Pharma will pay more than $600 million in connection with the guilty plea.
Oxycontin offers major benefits to cancer patients and others with chronic pain, but is prone to abuse. It is especially popular in Appalachia, where it is known as hillbilly heroin.
U.S. Attorney John Brownlee says that scores of people have died as a result of Oxycontin abuse. The federal case against Purdue charged its sales reps misled health providers — including non-specialists in pain management — about the addictive properties of Oxycontin.
Purdue, a privately held Connecticut-based company, launched a major effort to avoid prosecution, including employing Rudy Giuliani to meet with prosecutors and argue against filing of charges.
But Brownlee refused to back down, though he did make some concessions. He did agree not to charge company executives with felonies (three pled guilty to misdemeanors), and he agreed to accept a guilty plea from a Purdue subsidiary, leaving the parent free to continue selling the drug to Medicare and other federal programs. The government could have come down harder on “white-collar drug pushers,” says Dr. Sidney Wolfe of Public Citizen’s health Research Group.
10. The Bush Countdown Begins
Only 385 more days of the Bush regime.
Happy New Year!
Robert Weissman is co-director of Essential Action, a corporate accountability group based in Washington, D.C. that focuses especially on international issues and has been very involved in the access to medicines campaign. He is also editor of Multinational Monitor magazine. With Russell Mokhiber, he is editor of a weekly column, Focus on the Corporation, archived at http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus.
Oh boy, the whiners will soon be lining up here to offer their dim (witted) opinions of more good news.
It’s easy to lose site of the advances and conclude that the world is regressing faster than we thought possible, but there are good things… As they say - we have to work at manifesting the changes we wish to see. For countless millions including myself, the world is pregnant with hope!
Everyone is hereby strongly encouraged to spend 2 or 3 mins watching hearing:
Paul Hawken’s speech at the bioneers conference where he comments on “the worlds largest unnamed movement”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiubmOqH4
Happy new year to everyone
Peace on Earth
GoodWill to ALL!
Interesting stuff. Thanks.
11.) Crumbling rocks fell out from under the capitalist machine teetering on the edge of the cliff.
12.) People everywhere understood further that 90% of the capitalist’s activity is waste and destruction, having nothing to do with the wants, needs or interests of people.
This article is like saying we did good, we ran the first ten yards of the hundred yard dash before we quit.
What an accomplishment; the minimum wage will be increased to $7.25 by 2009. Rather silly isn’t it that such a big deal is made of something so miniscule. $ 290 a week, but note that each year there is an increase in the years one has to wait until they can collect Social Security. In actuality, when everything is considered, the miniscule increase is even less than it is. A real accomplishment would be if the increase was to immediately go to $8.00 an hour and then to $10.00 an hour at the end of 2008. And after that, it should be indexed to inflation plus a real increase.
analysis2008 is correct. Besides, this article is PURE BULLSHIT after taking into consideration the GLARING facts that the Democrats caved in to Bush on just about everything and in most states much of the same seems to be going on when it comes to Democrats caving in to the GOP especially in TX, CA, and FL. This article reminds me of the US LOSING Vietnam and Iraq and then calling them “victories”. Pigs may have flown in 2007 but there ain’t no progressive victories in that year !
As hungry as we are for improvement and moving toward a better, more survivable, more sustainable world, we must be careful about declaring victories that are, in fact Pyhrric:
5) “Looking” at only one of many regressive economic factors (redistributing wealth and income from everybody else to the rich and super-rich)in the tax code is no substitute for offering a progressive tax code based on real incomes, wealth and the ability to pay. The vast majority of people in the US don’t even know what progressive taxation means, not to mention ways how to get there.
Progressives need to describe both the idea of progressive taxation and means to achieve it in plain language (and fight for true progressive taxation on the national, state and local levels). Otherwise, we will continue to have hundreds of new billionaires to piss and puke on while they laugh as they steal every bit of moveable wealth and income from the rest of us.
6) analysis2008 hits this one on the head: $7.25 by 2009 is not only a pitiful wage, but the new minimum wage law locks the less-than-living wage into law for two more years. Large employers like MacDonalds, Burger King and Walmart often already pay higher than the minimum (and brag about it). But the fact is, until the minimum wage becomes a living wage, it is largely irrelevant and maintains and increases poverty and inequality. (Especially because of regressive payroll taxes and the hidden tax of the cost of living, this non-indexed minimum is not even what it claims).
We should remember that the only reason this minimum was passed at all was because it was tied to a military bill that increased US spending for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, making it literally a bloody “victory.”
Also, we should note that most labor unions only gave lip service to increasing the minimum wage. This is because many, especially the SEIU, settle contracts that are near, or at, the minimum — which is both damning and embarrassing. Secondly, with the exceptions of local prevailing wages and government contractors, most labor unions are unwilling or unable to pick up the real fight for a national living wage as a cenetrpiece of an organized labor program.
Defining and winning a living wage for all workers is what we should be about if we call ourselves progressives. Accepting less only further disguises a horrible status quo.
7) It is good that MacDonalds’ tomato pickers make more, but they continue to work at slave wages under slave conditions. The problem, that Weissman alludes to, is that nearly all farm workers are exempt from the most basic wage and labor laws, as weak as they already are.
Farm work, like all worthwhile work, is hard. Field work is especially hard on woirkers and their families. We don’t need to retell the “Grapes of Wrath” every generation to know that.
Every worker must be fully compensated and work under decent conditions, period. Every human being should get decent affordable health care, period. Every child has the right to a public quality education, period. Every worker has the right to sufficient time off (vacations, health leave, family leave)and social security, period.
Until we confront these basic realities in a substantive way, as Weissman usually does in his incisive analyses of corporate crime, corruption and the corporate structure, we are lost. There is no time left to nibble and quibble.
I too want to look back on victories and glasses half full and roses in the desert. We all instinctively want to do better — or at least stop the pain. But we can’t if we don’t look clearly into the fog and speak what we see.
6. The U.S. Minimum Wage Goes Up
…but not much. Also, the same bill that gave us this raise in the minimum wage also gave a large tax credit for all businesses to offset the raise. The bill included business tax credits, deductions and other tax advantages worth $8.3 billion over 10 years that are designed to relieve small business of the burden of higher wages. In other words the Republicans wanted to guarantee no loss of profit.