How Political Cover Works
Fake”Reforms” Legitimized By Naive Or Corrupt Non-Profits And Sold To The Public
Anti-fracking protest, Philadelphia, 9/10/12)
[Update below]
I’m just now reading a fascinating piece on how police body cams were never intended to promote police accountability and transparency, but rather exactly the opposite: to repress and arrest private citizens and protesters, while increasing police budgets, police political power, and the profits of technology firms, see:
The public was duped into believing that the body cameras were a victory for police accountability.
How could something so egregious happen?
The story of the process that sold body cams to the public as “reform” is not limited to cameras, but is a widely abused process, particularly in environmental policy debates.
This paragraph explains not only the body cam sham, but many, many, many other things I’ve written about for years with respect to the environmental community providing cover for politicians and bad pro-industry policies:
“If it’s just the police and the companies that make billions of dollars off body cameras saying, ‘Hey, these things are really great, and they’re going to make the police more accountable and better,’ the public might not really believe that,” said Karakatsanis. “But if you’ve got civil liberties and civil rights nonprofits and fancy professors who run supposedly police accountability nonprofits who are validating this stuff, then now, all of a sudden, you’ve got a really effective propaganda operation.”
Boom!
The same thing happens all the time in the environmental policy debates, where naive or incompetent environmental “leaders” provide validation and political cover for all sorts of bullshit:
(L-R) Ed Potosnak, NJ LCV, Anjui Ramos, NJ Sierra Club, DEP Commissioner LaTourette
Gov. Murphy provided cover by NJ LCV
The Stakeholder process and all sorts on inside collaborations work every time!
And this is the corrupt corporate model, shamelessly promoted by Mike Catania, part of the old growth forest of NJ green scams:
[Update – I’ve just gotten properly taken to the woodshed by a longtime NJ activist who lambasted me with this rant, with which I completely agree:
Its not incompetence its total corruption- they sell whether its foundation money , state money or corporate money – this group of enviros come from the elite- Pringle legacy at Princeton,O’Malley Greenwich Connecticut and Harvard, they are there to protect the ruling class Candy Tim Michelle all the same – Posterdicks father was a devoloper (sic) – Anjuli an elitist
They were never activist they didn’t come from the grassroots
And so it goes. ~~~ end update]