Corporate executives lobby Washington every day.
Not many come to plead for higher taxes and stronger regulation.
This week, though, a group called the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) convened in our nation’s capital to issue "A Business Call for a New Economy" that's built around “triple bottom line” principles, shared prosperity and environmental stewardship. The event was unofficially closed to the media, but ASBC invited GreenBiz.com as a media observer.
The ASBC members -- about 125 showed up for a couple of days of meetings -- are supporting, among other things, higher taxes on big companies, closing overseas tax havens, tax credits for renewable energy, EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and stricter regulation of chemicals.
In the Business Call for a New Economy [PDF, download], the group says it wants to preserve the efficiency and dynamism of markets, while curbing what it calls capitalism’s “destructive tendencies” toward “overuse of resources” and “extremes of wealth and poverty.”.
“When too few have too much and too many have too little, society cannot be sustained,” said Roger Smith, CEO of American Income Life, a fast-growing insurance company that provides life insurance to working families. “On the public policy side, the key word is investing. We are not going to cut our way to shared prosperity.”
“I am a big, big believer in unions, and a big, big believer in the collective bargaining process,” Smith said. Unions help build a strong middle class which is good for business, he said.
The ASBC was started in 2009 by Jeffrey Hollender, the former CEO of Seventh Generation, and David Levine, an entrepreneur, in part as a counterweight to conservative corporate lobbies like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Its members were welcomed to the White House (actually, the Executive Office Building) today by officials from the Obama administration; tomorrow they’ll visit Congress. The ASBC, a coalition of state and local business networks, says it represents 150,000 business and social enterprises, many of them small businesses that don’t have the time or resources to lobby. Among the better-known companies on hand in D.C. were Stonyfield Farms, Eileen Fisher, New Belgium Brewery and BetterWord Telecom.
Next page: Turning platitudes into policy
I was very happy to read
I was very happy to read about "A Business Call for a New Economy." What I am wondering about though is whether there is an equal or even stronger call for a "New Economics." In my view, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to create a long-term sustainable, triple-bottom line type of New Economy unless we also create a "New Economics" that goes way beyond today's trivialized, separative, and very limiting neoclassical economics, i.e. a New Economics that I, for a lack of a better term, call "socioecolonomics." Whatever the term might be, I think it is important to cognitively frame it in a way that goes beyond today's mainstream term "economics" and how it is usually perceived.
At The Refinishing Touch, we
At The Refinishing Touch, we are excited to see such efforts in environmental stewardship reach the White House. While we agree with the ASBC’s views, we also commend The White House for the environmental efforts they have already taken, the ones that go on behind-the-scenes. As a company that specializes in large-scale sustainable refinishing projects and furniture asset management, The Refinishing Touch has provided several federal government agencies, including the White House, with eco-friendly services. We’ve refinished and reupholstered over 60 pieces of furniture from various offices throughout the White House during the building’s 200th anniversary, reducing the environmental waste caused by government facilities. And while we agree that environmental efforts aren’t perfect in any industry just yet, The Refinishing Touch applauds the government for making internal attempts, and for hearing the cries of the people who just wish for greater overall sustainability.
At The Refinishing Touch, we
At The Refinishing Touch, we are excited to see such efforts in environmental stewardship reach the White House. While we agree with the ASBC’s views, we also commend The White House for the environmental efforts they have already taken, the ones that go on behind-the-scenes. As a company that specializes in large-scale sustainable refinishing projects and furniture asset management, The Refinishing Touch has provided several federal government agencies, including the White House, with eco-friendly services. We’ve refinished and reupholstered over 60 pieces of furniture from various offices throughout the White House during the building’s 200th anniversary, reducing the environmental waste caused by government facilities. And while we agree that environmental efforts aren’t perfect in any industry just yet, The Refinishing Touch applauds the government for making internal attempts, and for hearing the cries of the people who just wish for greater overall sustainability.
Yep, it's been the normal
Yep, it's been the normal business model for decades now. Just look at the practices of U.S. Chamber members. You must not have read the article.
What a joke of a "conference"
What a joke of a "conference" - the (widely quoted in this article) American Income Life is a life insurance arm of the unions. Look at the web site link included in the article.
yet another group to suck the
yet another group to suck the teat of the government and bleed the taxpayers - maybe that's the normal business model these days