Our first clues as to where we are going lay in the past, with the origin of the term “Triple Bottom Line.” For that we can credit John Elkington (his personal website and blog is here), who introduced the public to the term for the first time in his 1997 publication Cannibals With Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. Elkington is a longtime advocate for corporate environmental and social awareness, having cofounded the business development consulting firm SustainAbility in 1987. In fact, we may consider him a “founder” of corporate sustainability, having been called a “dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades” by BusinessWeek.  Elkington currently serves as the Executive Chairman of the sustainability think tank Volans, which he helped found in 2008. His work with Volans is what provides a real glimpse into the end game of 3BL, in a concept termed “The Phoenix Economy.”

The Phoenix Economy is a concept professing that the failure of an existing economic system will leave a void and an opportunity for a new system to take its place.  (The term “phoenix” refers to the bird of that name which, in ancient mythology, dies in a self-created fire and is then reincarnated from the ashes.)  Old paradigms and established principles are replaced by a new way of approaching economics — and indeed the culture. Elkington recognizes this as an opportunity to establish a new paradigm based on 3BL philosophy. Global sustainability is the principle by which the economic and social culture will be driven. The Volans website provides a concise explanation of the Phoenix Economy.

According to Volans:

From the ashes of the downturn, a new economy is self-assembling—focused on providing social and environmental solutions, where markets and governments have failed.

If the pioneers of the Phoenix Economy are to succeed, they will still need substantial assistance from governments, foundations, investors and businesses, and we identify urgent opportunities for facilitation, collaboration and support.

The description goes on to say that the “single bottom line” system of the 20th century will be superimposed by the longer term Dragon (Chinese model) and Phoenix Economies in a transitional 21st century:

Twentieth century capitalism was driven by alternating ‘Bull’ and ‘Bear’ markets, and the twenty-first century’s first decade (2000-2009) has seen the collapse of the greatest Bull market in history. By contrast, a very different oscillation is now emerging as a driver of political, economic and business priorities. We expect the coming decades to see growing competition between ‘Dragon’ and ‘Phoenix’ models of wealth creation, superimposed upon—not replacing—traditional Bull and Bear dynamics.

The Bull and Bear fight it out in a single bottom line world. Both tend to be short term in focus. By contrast, Dragon and Phoenix mindsets tend to be longer term in orientation. Dragon markets, particularly China’s (until-recently-booming) economy, are often based on longish term planning, but are powered by business models and value chains that largely follow the path of Western industrialization, and—as a result—are likely to be increasingly taxed by environmental and natural resource constraints.

To date, Dragon economies have focused, at best, on a double bottom line of economic growth and the maintenance of sufficient social cohesion to keep the national locomotive on the rails. The Phoenix Economy, by contrast, blurs across national borders and works to integrate the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental value added into its DNA—as a triple helix of change and new growth.

You may read Volans’ full report, “The Phoenix Economy: 50 Pioneers in the Business of Social Innovation, <<<<HERE>>>>.

To be sure, Elkington’s vision is not fanciful and should be taken seriously. Remember again that this is the “dean” of the corporate sustainability movement and the person who coined the Triple Bottom Line term that has become so ubiquitous in today’s society. Given the seriousness with which we should approach his ideas, let’s listen to him as he explains his vision in a discussion of Volans’s “Phoenix 50″ project:

Before we cast aside the idea that the Phoenix Economy is just a fanciful utopian vision, we would do well to observe how the premises of this vision parallel current events, and how the means of accomplishing it are being echoed in the words of our leaders and their mentors. The prevailing theme in all of this, of course, is the transition to a new economic and social order. Is it mere coincidence that our President (himself a member of the Phoenix 50) campaigned on a theme of “change”?

As a sidenote, it is interesting to note that Green for All, founded by Van Jones (a Shorebank account holder, former special advisor for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and now senior fellow at the Center for American Progress), was also listed as one of the Phoenix 50 – as was  Grameen Group (established by Muhammad Yunnus with the help of Shorebank, as the Central Illinois 9/12 Project wrote about previously).

Also, this transition parallels Rupert Murdoch’s chilling memo last year claiming, “We are in the midst of a phase of history in which nations will be redefined and their futures fundamentally altered.” At the time, we were frustrated that Obama did not explain the “change” he was promising, and Murdoch did not provide specifics to his claims, either. Could the new 3BL-based economic order of the Phoenix Economy be that change?

Not only does the current economic climate parallel the context behind the Phoenix Economy, but Elkington’s explanations of how it’s achieved also mirror the words and actions of our current ruling class. According to Volans, the first stage of Volans’ Phoenix 50 plan for realizing the new order states, “Opportunity is revealed via the growing dysfunction of the existing order.” Does this theme, which Elkington calls “creative destruction,” sound familiar? It should.  Remember Rahm Emmanuel’s confession that you “never want to let a serious crisis go to waste”?

We can even see the means towards achieving the Phoenix economy reflected in the Saul Alinsky organizing model, which Obama learned when he was a community organizer in Chicago. These methods promised a transformation of society’s institutions in response to the collapse of the status quo. Indeed, the notion of the disintegration of the current order being a means towards establishing a new order is hardly novel with our current leadership.

It does seem that the pursuit of a Phoenix Economy based on Triple Bottom Line philosophy is congruent to the philosophy and actions of our current leadership. That alone bears attention. However, as we have mentioned, this vision does not start or end with government. It is already prevalent throughout our economy and culture. Elkington correctly observed that implementing the Phoenix Economy requires assistance from governments, foundations, investors and businesses. Well, it appears the assistance is bountiful: mainstream corporations as influential as McDonalds,  Walmart, and GE are adopting 3BL principles; in fact, even your church may be preaching the sustainability gospel.

The sustainability agenda, with its 3BL commitment to “People, Planet, and Profit” is steadily establishing itself as the new paradigm of our economy and culture, and it demands our attention. Because society at large is buying into the sustainability agenda, we cannot easily blame a tyrannical government for standing in the way of our free choices. Therefore, it is paramount that we become educated about the options presented to our society before we make the choices that will affect it. It is our hope that this series on the Triple Bottom Line, its history, and its future can and will be used as a stepping stone for doing so.

But, it appears that they just don’t care!

These two union bosses who stand to gain the most power under ObamaCare are spending hundreds of millions of forced union dues promoting ObamaCare. A government run health insurance program is an SEIU and AFSCME “membership net” designed to eventually complete the capture of 21.1 million forced-dues paying government workers.

It is clear that Big Labor is banking on the probability that all healthcare workers eventually become federal, state, and municipal healthcare employees.

According to SEIU’s numbers submitted to the Obama transition organization (The National Heath Care Workforce Enhancement Initiative, 12/3/2008), public sector labor bosses like Stern and AFSCME’s Gerald McEntee have 21.1 million reasons to support ObamaCare. After the November election, Stern’s SEIU submitted the following health occupation numbers to Rahm Emmanuel et al. at Obama, Inc.:

…there are currently 17.6 million jobs in health care settings or in health occupations nationally, accounting for almost 12% of the workforce. In addition to nursing and direct care workers, the United States faces looming personnel shortages in many health professions such as physicians and pharmacists.

Overall, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that we will need 3.5 million more workers to meet the [current] increasing demand of health care services.

That’s 21.1 million workers that SEIU and AFSCME expect will eventually become federal or state employees; employees that Stern and McEntee could force into their unions by the stroke of a Presidential pen.

If the average dues were just $75 a month, 100% participation would translate into $19 billion per year in forced union dues for SEIU and AFSCME. That’s a big piece of pie!

Stern’s and McEntee’s hyperventilation over passage of a government-run health insurance program will likely lead to the elimination of existing generous health plans for state and local government employees as out of control municipal and state budgets force the easy choice to switch state and county employees over to the new “national” healthcare plan.

Numerous examples of Big Labor’s propaganda highlight the sunny-side of the healthcare debate, but almost all fail to highlight the damage that will be done to current working members. ObamaCare will likely cost teachers, state employees, county employees, and other government employees their current Obama classified Cadillac-health plans. If a special collectively bargained health insurance carve out appears in the current plan, it will be quickly eliminated when the first poll reveals overwhelming electorate anger at government employees getting plans that most Americans are denied under ObamaCare. Politicians will appear overnight promising to eliminate the special plans and “fix” the problem.

This healthcare bill on top of the other gargantuan spending by the Obama Administration will cost jobs. It will cost union jobs. And, Big Labor Bosses must know it. They likely have already made the calculations figuring in large losses of current members. But, ObamaCare is not about current members. Union officials have 21.1 million other reasons to support it.

The art of obfuscation is central to California-style politics.  Think back on Speaker Pelosi’s byzantine explanation of why she called career CIA employees liars.  Incomprehensible, deliberately vague misdirection characterizes the California-style of politics.  Never be precise; never say what you mean, and certainly, never let facts interfere with the spin.

Cumbersome, incoherent  legislation is another example of obfuscation, California-style: thousands of pages of  gobble-de-gook, the Stimulus, at 1000 pages, the Energy bill at 1100 pages and the Healthcare bill version #1 at 1300 pages and the latest House healthcare bill at a whopping 1990 pages.

Pelosi seems to have assembled these monstrosities so that few in Congress can read the legislation in its entirety before she calls the vote.   Deceptive executive summaries, with left wing talking points, attached to these gargantuan documents are yet another form of obfuscation.

Stimulus funding is especially ripe with obfuscation.  For example, Speaker Pelosi is on record stating that she has not been involved in funding special interest projects out of San Francisco with the Stimulus.  One project, the San Francisco Marsh Rat, figured frequently in news stories. In fact, Pelosi’s public relations folks  claimed  these accusations are a “total fabrication” .

Despite what seems to be her decade-long involvement in the project, Pelosi, did not, technically, endorse earmarks for the Marsh rat since the creature in question is not a rat, but a mouse, the San Francisco Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.  Second, the Departments of Interior and Commerce  allocated the funding;  Pelosi only ensured the funding stayed in the legislation. Third, the funding cascades through multiple entities, so finding Nancy Pelosi’s fingerprints requires part bloodhound,  part Sherlock Holmes, and a willingness to wade through a maze of primary sources that obscure the facts.

Stimulus legislation, Amendment #98, Page 69, appropriates $50 million for Department of Interior to fund the “California Bay-Delta Restoration Act”  for  “coastal habitat restoration”.  The Department of Commerce is also funded in the Stimulus, and Recovery.gov,  reports that Commerce, via NOAA,  has allocated $167 Million in grants to various States for coastal  ”restoration” and research projects considered to be of importance or value.  The “San Francisco South Salt Pond Restoration ” received $7.5 million in funding, the “American Canyon Salt Pond Restoration in San Francisco” received $8.5 million, and yet another, the Elkhorn Slough Restoration received $3.9M.  These projects support habitation for the Harvest Mouse.

If you keep following the breadcrumbs, the San Francisco South Salt Pond Restoration Project has a division, the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project that  supports the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse habitation project.  The final clue to the connection with Stimulus funding, comes from the Milpitas Post, a  non-profit newsletter from March 2009 that gleefully reports their good fortune in receiving a Stimulus grant.

So, thanks to California-style politics, and despite Speaker Pelosi’s obfuscations, millions of dollars of taxpayer money did fund pork projects such as the habitation of the San Francisco Harvest Marsh Mouse.

Another Californian, and close, Pelosi confidant, Henry Waxman, practices California-style politics of obfuscation and intimidation, whether conducting his witch-hunt hearings or whether promulgating faulty energy legislation that will do little to address the energy problems in this country.  Waxman’s strategy is to affirm a  statement loudly enough and often enough in the press, so eventually the misstatement is perceived as fact.

Waxman’s truth-through-repetition technique has been enormously successful.   For example, Waxman cultivates the perception that he is eager for oversight.  The reality seems more that Waxman is eager for others to have oversight, but when it comes to his own district in L.A., Waxman is the original Mr. NIMBY(Not In My Back Yard).

For example, a few years ago, the FBI wanted to expand their offices at 11000 Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.  The General Services Administration supported this decision to expand and improve the GSA-owned building on Wilshire Blvd.  Problem was, Waxman didn’t want the FBI to expand their facilities in the middle of his district. Congressman Waxman’s  campaign and fundraising headquarters for his  PAC are also located on Wilshire Blvd. Probably, the idea of a bunch of FBI agents located in the vicinity of his harvesters of campaign donations was, to Mr. Waxman, totally unacceptable.

Mr. Waxman went into overdrive to kill the idea of so many FBI agents located so near his fundraising efforts.   When negotiations didn’t yield the desired results, Waxman  applied pressure on the GSA .  Mr. Waxman epitomizes the California-style of obfuscation and intimidation.  At the very time he is applying pressure to move the FBI out of his district, he is simultaneously posturing himself as a great crusader, supportive of oversight!

Waxman’s technique was successful.  Ultimately, the FBI decided to locate its new, expanded facility elsewhere in L.A., out of Waxman’s district, even though the move  quadruples the cost to the American taxpayer.

California-style politics relies on deception, on truth-by-repetition, on overwhelming the time and thought processes of opponents with volumes of incomprehensible data and labyrinthine legislation, which successfully hides the details of  the bill’s real intent.

America has produced exceptional leaders: Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents who inspired with clear, logical prose and speeches.  Those days seem long are gone.  The California-style politics obfuscates real intentions to mask unwholesome and despicable acts—and, sadly, its practitioners  get away with it.

In response to the tumult over what appears to be a small feature of the effort, more than one critic has wondered aloud why Democrats don’t just give up on the public option – which is opposed by every Republican – in order to reach a more bipartisan outcome. What exactly is so important about the public option anyway? And why do Democrats in particular seem so wedded to the idea?

There is a simple answer to these questions, but it’s an answer you’ve likely not heard from any institution in the mainstream media. The truth is that the public plan is a carefully devised scheme, a sneaky strategy, to deceive American voters. It’s a political marketing ploy designed to move the nation to a single-payer system – like the one in Canada – over the next decade. The public option is the Trojan horse. On the outside it’s all about “choice and competition”, but once it has been dragged within the walls of American medicine it’s true nature will become evident. By that time, it’ll be too late.

You want proof? We’ve got plenty.

Starting in April on our blog at VerumSerum.com, we have uncovered many prominent advocates of health reform revealing the hidden agenda behind the public option. Most prominently Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), but also Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Even Rahm Emanuel got into the act.

More damning still, we uncovered video of the original architect of the public option, Yale professor Jacob Hacker, describing how it was designed to not “frighten people into thinking they are going to lose their private insurance” even though that is the inevitable result. In another clip he denies the plan is a Trojan horse saying, on the contrary, “it’s right there”. In other words, it’s not even a secret. Most relevant of all, Hacker admits in another clip that the real advantage of his plan is that “at least you can make the claim that there is competition between the public and private sectors”. In other words, this is all a marketing strategy designed to get around public resistance to government-run health care.

For his part, President Obama has been an extremely disciplined salesman. The mantra of “choice and competition” has been repeated to the point that it is little more than political background noise. To this day, neither the President nor any of his spokespeople have been challenged by the media about these claims, despite the fact that there is video evidence which directly contradicts what he is saying. So confident is the President that the media will toe his line that, in a speech in front of the American Medical Association, the President explicitly denied that the public option was a “Trojan horse” for a single payer system. On this, and numerous other occasions, he has said that opponents of reform who claim this are not telling the truth. Outside talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, and a couple editorials in the Wall Street Journal, no one has been willing to suggest that the opposite is the case.

With so many proponents of reform caught on tape directly contradicting the President, it almost seems as if the mainstream media has intentionally avoided covering this story. And as anyone who has been paying attention knows, that’s something they’ve been guilty of more than once since Obama took office. NY Times public editor Clark Hoyt admitted in a bombshell statement that the paper had risked appearing biased for its failure to cover the Van Jones and ACORN stories as they broke. The Washington Post was similarly chastened.

And as it turns out, both papers may have an additional reason to avoid touching this story. Because politicians are not the only ones we have exposed admitting the truth about the public option. Back in June, we posted a video of Ezra Klein from the Washington Post revealing how the public option was designed as a “sneaky strategy” to move towards single payer. And we have posted videos of Paul Krugman from the NY Times admitting much the same.

But nothing we have uncovered previously is as comprehensive and breathtakingly direct as a new audio clip of Paul Krugman we discovered this week. Krugman is speaking on health care reform at Hunter College on July 16, 2008. It’s a long clip at ~5:00 (unedited), but if you want to know why liberals are continuing to fight tooth and nail for the public option, here it is in astonishing detail (click below to listen):

Paul Krugman – Single Payer and the Public Option

TRANSCRIPT HERE.

FULL AUDIO PODCAST HERE.

Just a couple of quick points on this. Since I already knew about this hidden agenda, what I found most striking was Krugman’s admission that even without a public option the system would largely look like a single payer system. Based on the subsidies for lower wage earners, and the fact that everyone else is paying for these with taxes on top of their insurance premiums. (And with the bills being discussed in Congress, subsidies are provided up to 300-400% of the federal poverty level).

Also, I should point out that a “Rube Goldberg device”, which Krugman used as a metaphor, is a term for an over-engineered solution to a simple problem. In this case, designed to obscure the solution they are actually looking for, i.e. single payer.

However, the critical point in all of this is the sheer scope of this deception on the part of the Administration – and the media. Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein have been two of the most prominent media advocates for healthcare reform throughout the debate this year. With numerous appearances on television and their blogs at the New York Times and the Washington Post, respectively. And while they are both unabashedly partisan, this should not excuse them from direct and honest reporting. But of course they have not been fully candid, as they were last year, because in doing so they would reveal the dishonesty on the part of the President and his Administration. (Klein has recently added a whole new layer of deceit.)

It’s long past time for an honest broker in the news media to report on the Administration’s ongoing and deceptive strategy with regards to the public option. The President has made claims which directly contradict statements made by numerous of his supporters – people intimately involved with the health reform process. How can we trust our government to reform one-sixth of our economy when a central element of their plan is based on a deception? And how we can trust the accuracy of information reported by the media when by and large they have been complicit in covering this up? It’s time for these questions to be answered. It’s time to let America know they’ve been getting a hard sell, not an honest diagnosis.