| How did Sierra come about endorsing a man who chaired the DEP "Permit Efficiency Review Taskforce"? see: http://www.state.nj.us/dep/per...
The answer is found in an old fashioned story of co-optation and inside baseball. This dynamic necessarily leads to ignoring organizing and an impaired ability to develop any kind of public movement to provide political support for policy goals.
Ironically, Sierra Club's early cheerleading for Corzine and their too close relationship with DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson basically created a very unhealthy dynamic.
Sierra greatly inflated and unconditionally supported Corzine's accomplishments (e.g. the Meadowlands signing statement of the Global Warming Response Act). Because Sierra had so highly praised Corzine for passage of the GWRA, it made it very hard to tell the truth about flaws in the Act itself and to focus on DEP's total failure to implement the Act. It also created all sorts of political momentum for polluters and special interests to hijack the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap and trade program bill. (for a critique of the GWRA, see: Star-Ledger Op-Ed: "No Teeth in 'tough" pollution law" - )
http://www.peer.org/docs/nj/07...
Sierra also either outright supported or looked the other way as Corzine continued to slash DEP budgets. Corzine watered down, ignored, or even rolled back every one of the policy commitments of his Gubernatorial electoral environmental platform (mandatory chemical plant safety, et al). Yet, there was no criticism for any of these compromises and sellouts - which sent a huge signal that Corzine could get a pass for promoting economic development over environmental and public health concerns.
At the same time, Sierra pulled punches by exaggerating the significance and/or withholding public criticism of the policies of their "friend", DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson. This dynamic included playing co-opting inside games in Jackson's hand picked "stakeholder processes".
For example, Jackson created the "Site Remediation Taskforce" that provided political cover to further dismantle and privatize the DEP toxic site cleanup program. When enviro's agreed to particiapte "in the room", their public campaign to expaose flaws in the DEP program fell flat and ran out of media an political energy required to lobby for real change.
Similarly, Jackson established the "Permit Efficiency Review Taskforce" in response to political pressure by the NJ Builders Association and business community. The business community manufactured another bogus attack on DEP's alleged role in the housing market and economic collapse. Jackson caved to that gross lie. Yet, instead of criticism of this Taskforce's anti-environmental agenda, Jackson was given a pass. And now we are seeing the political consequences of that mistake, because now Chirs Daggett will get a pass for Chairing that effort. How many people know that DEP Commissioner Jackson abolished the Division of Science and research, based on this Taskforce report. Yet we have heard very little from enviro's about that. Had Christie Whitman done anything remotely similar to that attack on DEP adn science, Sierra would be holding multiple press conferences on the State House steps.
On the Legislative front, Sierra never pushed either for legislative oversight or to strengthen environmental laws. They basically gave a pass to friendly democrats who chaired the environmental committees, Assemblyman John McKeon and Senator Bob Smith. Neither had any appetite in holding fellow Democrats Corzine or Lisa Jackson of DEP accountable. Just look at how the Inspector General Cooper's Encap Report was handled - softball questions and a pass by enviro's.
Sierra's multiple failures misled the public, provided green cover, and thereby enabled some really bad stuff at DEP on the regulatory front and in the Legislature (privatized LSP, Permit Extension Act, RGGI, et al)
Of course, things got so bad that even Sierra was forced to criticize Corzine to maintain their credibility.
We would not have gone down this road if Sierra and other enviro's told the truth and held Corzine accountable to his campaign promises (which he failed uniformly to deliver on) from the outset.
The political lessons to be learned here? - play it straight with the press and use media strategically. Don't get co-opted by the inside game. The Democrats are not necessarily your friends. Organize. |
