Weekend Economists Revelations and Reviews April 26-28, 2013

[Demeter]

21. 4 Recent Victories for the Common Good

http://www.alternet.org/environment/4-recent-victories-common-good?akid=10356.227380.G_T6Sd&rd=1&src=newsletter828929&t=22&paging=off



1. February 22: Public Access to Publicly-Funded Research

After a major public outcry, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed federal agencies to make published results freely available to the public. Director John Holdren declared, “Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support.”

The announcement by the Obama Administration came after 65,000 people petitioned the White House to make publicly-supported research available to the public. The decision came 6 weeks after the suicide of Aaron Swartz who was facing up to 35 years in prison for freely distributing nearly 5 million scholarly articles from a privately owned digital archive. The death of Swartz—whose 2008 manifesto declared that sharing information is a “moral imperative” and that the “privatization of knowledge” is a curse—became a rallying cry for those who wanted to honor his legacy by changing a federal bias toward the privatization of public information that goes back to the Reagan Administration.

2. March 3: Swiss Vote to Put Fat Cats on Diet

By more than 2 to 1, Swiss voters approved the “fat cat initiative”, a Constitutional amendment that bans big payouts to new and departing managers, gives shareholders the right to veto executive compensation and makes prison the penalty for executives who defy the new rules. All 26 Swiss cantons approved the amendment. A few weeks before the vote the nation was both outraged and energized by the $78 million payoff offered to the outgoing Chairman of Novartis even as the firm was cutting jobs. The vote reflected a deep-seated public sense “that company managers have been ransacking the coffers at the expense of society”, noted one Zurich newspaper.

3. March 21: Right to Water Advocates Gain Ground in Europe

The European Right to Water Initiative announced it had gathered 1.3 million signatures on a petition to demand the European Commission stop mandating or encouraging the privatization of water utilities. To be formally recognized by the European Union, the petition needs not only a million signatures but also a sufficient number from 7 EU member states. Currently 5 states have exceeded that level; several more are close.

4. April 10: Saturday Mail Saved

The US Postal Service reversed its February 6th decision to end Saturday mail delivery as of this August. The Postal Service blamed Congress for requiring six-day delivery in a continuing budget resolution in March, but the reason really was the groundswell of public opposition to its decision. Indeed, the leading advocate of privatizing the Post Office, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee declared, “Despite some assertions, it’s quite clear that special interest lobbying and intense political pressure played a much greater role in the Postal Service’s change of heart than any real or perceived barrier to implementing what had been announced.”