Memo to the lobbyists and environmental lawyer class... by gimleteye

A chance encounter with a member of the lobbying class over the weekend set me thinking. This friend jokingly referred to himself as one of the "oppressors". We both laughed as though we each knew what he meant. I'm not sure that is the case.

On the one hand, the comment was made in a self-deprecating way acknowledging that in a democracy we can all be friends, even after skirmishes in court or in the blogsphere (nothing to worry for him, there, from the mainstream media).

Implicit in the jest were some other meanings; for instance, that my friend understood the points citizen activists make quite well-- on issues like holding the line on the Urban Development Boundary and stopping development creeping to the Everglades--, but that making a comfortable living means taking clients who can afford to pay $750 an hour to have their interests represented.

In other words, it's dirty work but someone has to do it. I often feel that way, on this side of the divide. There was another nuance: the point that my friend is really not an oppressor, which is what lobbyists do who push beyond the limits, beyond the edges of laws crafted to protect individual and corporate rights and liberty. There are enough of those to go around in Miami, paid on success fees that are concealed from public view though they involved public decisions.

At any rate, the thought here is that we both are involved in delineating the edges; me, to illuminate the blurry edges of the public interest, and he, to illuminate corporate rights. In other words, in joking about "oppressors", he was not one of them.

In Miami, there is a further nuance: the word "oppressor" isn't made lightly. Whenever it is exercised It is redolent of the objections of Cuban Americans against Castro-- the Great Oppressor. In its own way, the phrase implicitly acknowledges the conversation that opens our own politics to comparison.

None of us have forgotten--though the mainstream media scarcely reported it-- that the 2007 collection of petition signatures in the Cuban American political fortress, Hialeah, to recall the de facto chair of the county commission, Natacha Seijas, involved the use of city police to threaten, intimidate and falsely imprison petition gatherers; or how the local supervisor of election offices in Miami-Dade and elsewhere in the state suppressed the timely collection of signatures for the citizen's movement, Florida Hometown Democracy. It wasn't reported in the press as "oppression", but that is exactly what those instances demonstrate: oppression is a fact in our democracy and it can go on without prosecution.

The biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression is making the perpetrators of the housing asset bubble nervous and edgy. It is not just the cratering of personal net worth. As the economy unravels-- and we are up for one hell of a couple of years-- there are going to be more instances of putting under the microscope the forces that lead to the financial crisis in the first place. New leaders will emerge like New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who will ask for justice: if not their heads, then for a return of the multi-million dollar severance packages of executives in public corporations that no longer exist except as taxpayer liabilities.

Here in Miami-Dade, an appropriate response would incorporate two actions that "the oppressors" should join in embracing; first, to enact the recommendations of the Miami Dade Charter Review Commission through a citizens' referendum since the unreformable majority of the county commission will not.

Second, for Miami Dade County to do what the local county supervisors did in Loudon County, Virginia: recognize that the outsized influence of campaign contributions of those seeking zoning changes and construction permits played a role that heavily contributed to the current economic crisis. Ban campaign contributions from individuals and corporations and related parties to local municipal and county elections, if they have been involved in zoning or permitting applications within five years of an election.

These are hardly "revolutionary" measures, but when the "oppressors" in the downtown law firms, the lobbyists and environmental lawyers, embrace these recommendations, they will not only be acknowledging severe mistakes in public policy they contributed to, but they will cushion the inevitable backlash that is coming as taxpayers and voters begin to recognize just how thoroughly they have been fleeced, if not oppressed.




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