Elite Charade In Spades: Failed Coastal And Planning Groups Dodge Accountability For Their Collaboration With Gov. Christie’s “Rebuild Madness”

The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. ~~~ Audre Lorde

[Update below]

Today, NJ Spotlight reports that Despite Superstorm Sandy, Building in Risky Flood Zones Continues Unabated:

Superstorm Sandy wiped out thousands of homes at the Jersey Shore, but the increasing threat of devastating coastal storms like it has hardly deterred building in areas most at risk of chronic flooding as sea levels rise from climate change, according to a new analysis.

Confirming exactly the troubling Foundation driven news sourcing I wrote about just yesterday, Spotlight quotes sources from Foundation funded groups American Littoral Society and NJ Future:

“Overall, we only are half-paying attention to the lessons of Sandy,’’ said Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society, a coastal advocacy group. “For the most part, the decision was to stay put and live with the risk. We simply don’t want to face up to the actual degree of risk of building along the Shore.’’ …

“We haven’t gotten the message,’’ said David Kutner, planning manager for New Jersey Future, a smart-growth organization. “We have this cultural and unchangeable connection to the Jersey Shore. The threats to properties are enormous. It is going take some time to get to the point where we can’t keep building at the same intensity at the Shore.’’

Notice how Dillingham of ALS and Kutner of NJF both deploy the word “we”. We my ass!

Note how Dillingham uses the passive voice, as if there were no decisionmaker and government policy had no role in those irresponsible decisions: “the decision was to stay put and live with the risk“. Whose decisions?

That kind of evasive disingenuous rhetoric is no accident.

It is designed to obscure their own failed involvement in the problem and to dodge tough political accountability that might threaten their organization’s funding.

Specifically, both ALS and NJF not only failed to hold the Christie administration accountable for the policies that denied climate change and led to even more development in risky flood prone areas, both groups also received funding from the Christie administration to promote ineffective voluntary local “coastal resilience’ projects. (A Sham Charade identical in design to DEP’s outsourced, voluntary, private, grant fueled “Sustainable NJ” program)

(ALS’ most recent financial statement shows they received over $1.2 million in government grants, more than 20 TIMES the revenue they got from members. That is NOT an indicator of a democratic organization. No wonder ALS never bites the government hand that feeds them. ALS ED Dillingham was paid almost $117,000, which likely puts him in second place in the career compensation money game behind NJ Audubon CEO Eric Stiles, who brought down $126,000 in salary alone. The private sector corporate careerist greed is manifest in the Foundation world too. )

Those local, voluntary and politically safe “resilience” projects have failed miserably, as the Spotlight story and Report document.

In exchange for that Christie administration funding, ALS and NJ Future distracted the press and the public from Christie’s policy failures (e.g. provided political cover) and undermined more effective DEP Statewide regulatory solutions and new legislation to create a regional Coastal Commission.

I don’t know who Dillingham and Kutner are referring to as “we”. Not me. We called out Christie “rebuild madness” from day 1. (see:

• Christie Abdication: DEP Commissioner Martin Waives Rules for Rebuilding Wiped Out Infrastructure
• Rutgers Sea Level Rise Maps Being Ignored by DEP
• Legislators Go All in With Gov. Christie On Sandy Rebuild Madness
• “Strategic Adjustment” – Or Rebuild Madness?
• The Deafness Before the Storm

Also compare how we speak about these issues in prior Spotlight stories:

• NJ Spotlight: “State Agency Waiver Environmental Rules to Speed Rebuilding After Storm – Environmentalists argue that rebuilding without planning invites further disasters
  

“Restoring basic public infrastructure will be a critical first step toward the recovery of our cities and towns,’’ [DEP Commissioner] Martin said. “For emergency repairs, we cannot let bureaucracy get in the way. Red tape should not and will not hold up this vital work.’’ […]

“The [Martin] order amounts to a total abdication of DEP’s responsibility to supervise responsible planning and environmentally sound permitting of critical public infrastructure,’’ said Bill Wolfe, director of the New Jersey chapter of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a public watchdog group

ALS & NJF Provide A Classic Example of The “Elite Charade”

Writer Anand Giridharadas’ groundbreaking investigative book “Winners Take All – The Elite Charade of Changing the World” documents how elite philanthropists and private foundations have hijacked real social change and engaged in a corrupt enterprise.

I wrote a post back in August, based only on a radio interview, see: “The Elite Charade” – Philanthropic Foundation Fail. I’ve since read the book.

Elites engage in this charade by avoiding conflict or taking personal or career risks, and not calling for sacrifices like increased taxes, lower corporate profits, or more regulation. Elites evade politics and efforts to hold corporations accountable.

Instead, they push fake self serving private market based “win-win” solutions to public policy problems. The fake solutions not only fail, but at the same time they undermine democracy, constrain and replace government’s role, and perpetuate their elite advantage by locking in the status quo. Welcome to “MarketWorld”.

He writes:

when elites assume leadership of social change, they are able to reshape what social change is — above all, to present it as something that should never threaten winners.

Ironically and hypocritically, the same elites that create social problems by hoarding wealth, increasing inequality, and attacking government regulatory intervention and redistribution policies, feel that they are best suited to solve the very problems they create:

when elites put themselves in the vanguard of social change, it not only fails to make things better, but also serves to keep things as they are. [That] takes the edge off some of the public’s anger at being excluded from [economic] progress. It improves the image of the winners. With its private and voluntary half measures, it crowds out public solutions that would solve problems for everyone…. We should recall Oscar Wilde’s words about such elite helpfulness being “not a solution” but “an aggravation of the difficulty…. Just as the worst slave owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realized by those who suffered from it, so in the present state of things ..the people who do the most harm are the people who try to do most good.”

The late emminent Princeton University political theorist Sheldon Wolin predicted all this is his classic early 1980’s essay written just after the Reagan administration assumed power: “The New Public Philosophy”: