Roy Ho’s Blog

The latest toll from CNN is more than 20k deaths, 160k injured, 15k still missing, 5 mil homeless, 4400 aftershocks, and unspecified number of dams are in danger, what can we learn from this natural disaster?  China has successfully minimized, thus far, the domestic political fall out of this natural disaster, can China turn this natural disaster into a contribution to the rest of us?  Will China use this event to let the Tibetan issues drop off the radar?  This could be one event that China can score some points before the Olympics starts.  

First of all, China finally learnt to take the initiative to release information themselves.  On the contrary, Myanmar is reluctant to release any information.  Although the freedom of the press is still very limited, by taking the initiative to release the news, even the bad news, China has now become a reliable source of information.  The threat of rumor (of disease, of higher death toll, of dam damage, of corruption in the local areas, inefficiency of government led relief effort) has been starved off.  This leads to a government of higher mandate, rubbing the next round of unrest off to appreciate the governance of the Beijing government.  

Secondly, accepting foreign experts to help eases the diplomatic tensions with Japan and leads a more peaceful atmosphere with Taiwan.  It also shows the confidence of Beijing government. 

Thirdly, China used different military units to assist the relief effort.  This earned a lot of credit among the overseas Chinese for the Chinese military due to Tiananmen Massacre back in 1989.

The west will see if China will use this event to divert all international media attention away from Tibet and quietly cancel all the Tibetan talks that have been in progress.  Is China using this as a pretext to their advantage?  If China can honor the promise of another round of talk with Dalai Lama’s representatives, then China can show some positive outcome in this issue, China may be able to weaken the international pressure on this front.  

A painful lesson China may have to learn is big infrastructure project are not only costly to build and maintain, but also risky to sustain over a long period of time.  Man is infinitely small before any kind of natural disaster.  Although no nuclear energy facility has been damaged, the stati of different nuclear related production facilities remain unknown to the outside world.  Many dams in the region are still under threat.  Now millions of residents are now under threat.  If China can share the lessons with the rest of world, China can now truly make a tragic disaster into a lesson for all to benefit.  

What kind of dam designs is more stable?  What kind of fault line makes an ideal dam location unsustainable?  Once we factor in the risks involved, are these dams still as financial viable as the electricity they generate?  Even though Japan may have the best expertise in earthquake, Japan never has that kind of experience in dams.  Netherland probably is the expert in dams, but they never experience with dams on fault lines.  Can China overcome this event and share the experience?  This will convince the hawks in the west that China is truly a peaceful stakeholder.  

The earthquake in China will certainly have a death toll of over 10,000.  This quake can be felt as far as Taiwan and Thailand.  UN aid relief agencies have very limited roles in China.  Most charities still rely on Hong Kong to work with Chinese goverments.  Of all agencies, UNICEF has the best working relationships with China. 

Is this a man made disaster?

The epic center is 600 km away from the Three Gorges Dam, the largest in the world.  It holds 9.5 cubic miles of water (Denver is a mile high).  That amount of water is approximately equal to 40 million metric ton.  With that much weight sitting on a quake zone, it is very likely to alter the movements of the plates.  And if the weight is acting against the geological movements, it can induce more earthquakes than normal. 

There is precedence: Koyna Dam in India, earthquake in 1967.

The area is not a major economic centre, not a hot tourism spot, not a major manufacturing site.  The immediate economic damage is well contained.  Shanghai index may get affected.  However, Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong is more reliable to measure the magnitude of the problem.

The reaction will be a much greater challenge to the government.  It will measure the maturity of emergency response team in China.  How is China’s FEMA doing?  How will the local financial system, at the county level, sustain the resources exchange?  How does China recover the transportation system?  It now seems the snow storms earlier this year were more like a preparation exercise for all the troubles China is now facing. 

Will China use this opportunity to divert more resources to Tibetan areas and score more points?  Will Dalai Lama be able to make a stronger case for his involvement / return to heal the wounds?

In the states, capitalism is blamed for the environmental crisis.  The opposite, i.e. communism, could be worse.  

Although McCain may not be as much of a moderate as you think he is, McCain is out of line from his Republican party than Obama can be from his Democrat party.  Although McCain’s platform may not be as environmentally friendly as Obama’s platform, McCain is trying harder to sell his environmental policies than Obama, see CNN.  It all means McCain is trying to define the stage the environment better: to choose his battle field to his advantage.  

Environmental crisis is more than oil.  Climate change is also driving the food cost.  The ethanol market is now driving food prices world wide.  It is also driving the agricultural land prices up as well.  Consequently, we are now having a farm bill that is trying to cut down on the farm subsidy.

This is the first time that a Republican President is saying the cut in farm subsidy is not enough.  And this insufficient in farm subsidy cut is the cited reason for veto.  

On the contrary, a Democrat constituency group would want to support a farm bill and may even want to decrease the cuts in order to lower food prices. 

McCain may not have been explicit about his position in farm subsidy.  However, a thorough environmental policy will eventually lead to that point: cut farm subsidy.  

Environmental crisis is eventually down to this point: efficiency on resources, i.e. economics.  Traditional tree huggers, the ones from 60’s, cannot tolerate the word “economics”.  However, this is what it will go down to.  And McCain will feel very comfortable if he will be able to define this issue.  

If McCain is able to define environmental crisis well, McCain will be able not only to fight Obama better than any Republican can, but also expand Republican base to a new territory and grab the traditionally Democrat constituency group over: intellectuals, and some religious left (both Christians and otherwise).  More importantly, McCain can do something other countries have not been successful: take the green voters to the right wing rather than letting left wing to hog them.  Better yet, eliminate the possibility of growth for the Green Party.  

Green parties are getting strong footholds everywhere around the world.  Germany had Green Party to be part of the ruling coalition.  Green parties in Canada are getting 10% of the world both federally and provincially.  The way to starve off your competitor is to offer products the buyers have been looking for.   

1)       the other two parties seldom address;

2)       draws an equal amount of voters from both sides.

Environmental crisis is such an issue.  The biggest loser from McCain’s aggressive environmentalism is to starve off the Greens and continue a 2 party system.  If McCain is successful, then he can make the game even by 2012.

The most difficult asset, in politics, to obtain is not policies or platforms.  In politics, policies and platforms are commodities.  Message is produced.  Brand is a product of time and money.  This difficult-to-obtain asset is the salesmen: politicians.  Obama is a great weapon for Democrats’ long term growth.  Can Obama contribute to this environmental debate? 

Boycotting the Beijing Olympics has become fashionable in Hollywood.  They want to make statement and be righteous.  How much difference does it make?  Can advocates have a greater influence on the outcome?  

A boycott should always be used as a last resort because once you boycott, you are no longer engaged to the issue.  You therefore lose all influence in the outcome.  If one has no influence in the first place, then a celebrity’s boycott probably is the best move since it makes to the media and the issue gets highlighted for 30 seconds in the TV box.

However, since the said celebrity has influence in the outcome in the first place, such a boycott is not a loss to Beijing anyway.  That makes the boycott more a media stunt than anything else.  

If one wishes to have positive outcome, one should start with engagement.  If a celebrity brings humanitarian aid to a specific cause, say literacy in some remote area, this celebrity now has greater influence in the education in this geographic area.  The same positive influence on the issue cannot be achieved if the said celebrity starts with a boycott.  

If engagement is not available, boycott is still a worse off alternative to bring results.  A better option is to offer an alternative to others.  Instead of boycotting a company, provide a list of companies that are competitive to the target.  Boycotting without providing alternative is useless.  Be a solution provider. 

The same can be applied to any social movement.  Upset with Wal-Mart?  Instead of boycotting, invigorate downtown business areas.  Upset with urban sprawl?  Remove the economic incentives of the urban sprawling builders by changing the property tax structure (see my blog’s article on 2008.04.28).  

However, boycott is very cost effective for the promoter: no cost and yet 30 seconds of TV advertisement.  Boycott is the last resort not only because it is the least productive method to the issue but also narcissistic.

Dalai Lama representatives are meeting with Chinese counterparts.  This article serves as supplementary information for all those who care about this issue.

Location is Shenzhen.  This is good news.  Shenzhen is next to Hong Kong, far away from Beijing.  Meetings held in Shenzhen usually result in a more liberal atmosphere because the Chinese counterparts will receive less interference from ideologues.  

Chinese counterparts are the head and deputy of United Front Works Department.  The head (Zhu Weiqun) is from Sichuan department.  The deputy is Sita, a Tibetan.  This indicates Communist Party has placed Tibet as the top priority of domestic politics.  This is a good sign, at least it means Tibet gets the attention it requires, rather shuffled to the bottom of the deck.  

Zhu is from Sichuan, an area not in Tibet but has a sizable amount of Tibetan in its jurisdiction.  Enforcements of various rules tend to be more uniform and rigid in Tibet since everyone gets to be applied for the same rules, thus making officers from Tibet less negotiable.  Officers from neightbouring provinces where they have a sizable Tibetan resident make the officers more flexible and keener to listen to different ideas.  Sichuan is especially so since they also have other minorities in the rural areas of that province. 

Sita (born 1953) will continue to rise in China’s hierarchy.  And he will become more and more critical to whatever effort China will have to achieve a more diverse society.  Even an inconsequential talk will not stop his rise.  Sita is a Tibetan.  His lack of last name indicates his ancestors are of Tibetan serf.  He represents what or how common Tibetan has benefited from China: free from serfdom.  He is probably one who did not only get benefited from education, only became available after the 50’s, but also see that education is important to free Tibet from serfdom days that they were prior 1950’s.  Sita has also served Foreign Ministry, stationed in Switzerland.  He has been primed to deal with everything related to Tibet.  Sita may be sympathetic to all Tibetans in terms of human rights.  Given the family’s suffering from serfdom, Sita probably sees the institution of monastery representing serfdom.  

Both sides of negotiators are of the same age group.  However, what Tibet was like is too far and remote to them.  There is no doubt China will have more youthful negotiators in the future.  What about the Tibetan side?  There is no younger aide at the side.  Where is their succession planning for the next round?  The Tibetan side is composed of 2 Dalai Lama loyalists.  However, Dalai Lama’s influence among overseas Tibetan is fading.  This generation gap will not make the movement coherent and sustainable.  Why isn’t the new generation of leaders being involved?  Is this difference purely ideological or an indication of power struggle?

Some environmentalists are embracing the more expensive gas as the way to push for a greener America.  And we are now getting close to USD$120/barrel, after CNN reports a strike in UK’s North Sea. 

We all know that there is very little difference between Obama and Clinton in terms of green policies.  We also know that McCain has risked a lot more of his political capital against his Republican Party than Obama and Clinton have risked against their Democratic Party.  Ever since Bush announced his own plan, the differences among green policies in the country is getting narrower.  However, has anyone actually explained anything other than recycling and driving less?

Climate change is becoming an inevitable issue in the United States as it takes more and more media space as well as more and more votes from opinion polls.  Some government intervention will eventually occur.  How will these actions affect our life styles?  And it is more than gas prices or recycling.  How will it affect our consumption? Land prices? Zoning? And one may ask: “how are they related in the first place?”

Cost of transportation from your house to your job may not be that much.  However, the cost of transportation factors into everything in your household.  All this cost essentially is dependent on the distance between your residence to a national major transportation node.  Now, we are looking at a fraction of all your after tax income as transportation cost.  At the aggregate level, companies move ever closer to national transportation nodes.  This in turn encourages higher density, nationally. 

People are demanding more and more “walkable communities”. People are demanding more green space to produce more oxygen production, more farm land and everything else natural.  Governments and voters will eventually find out that the most effective way to conduct business is to revitalize downtowns everywhere.  That is equivalent to increase density. 

Instead of creating layers and layers of enforcement agency, chaotic laws that benefit no one but compliance lawyers auditing firms, governments may eventually consider turning to some economic or organic ways to increase density in order to minimize the eradication of green space and farm land.  If fiscal policy is to achieve this goal, then it will turn to some modification of property tax. 

Most of the property tax in North America is calculated based on two parts: the value of the property and the value of the land.  Very often, more than 2/3 of your property tax is derived from the value of property rather than the land.  This taxing philosophy prevents the most innovative use of the most expensive resources (land) in a city.  As a result, no land developer sees the value in having more retail space, having more office space, more residential space on the same piece of land. 

Values of properties in downtowns have little to do with the properties themselves but more to do with the land, i.e. location.  A tax philosophy that encourages efficiency of resources would place tax more on the value of land.  In such a scheme, the most profit would be extracted based on the value of the land rather than the property.  This encourages having the best property on a given piece of land rather than having the least cost to have a property on a valuable land.  Two storeys buildings in a downtown of a metropolitan of a 1 million would then become uneconomical.  It would only encourage a speculator or a developer to develop a high rise to make use of this most valuable land. 

Therefore, if your house happens to be in a big metropolitan, green politics will eventually make your wallet to realize the value of your house’s location.  Saving on your property tax bill may encourage you to sell your house.  Comparing house value based versus a land value based property tax scheme, one may argue that suburban residents and country residents have been subsidizing downtown residents through property tax.

How so?

Land prices in country vary not as much as cities.  Lands in cities vary the most in downtown area.  A 100 by 100 feet parcel of land in a downtown can easily fetch the same value of an acre in the country although the properties on top of the land are the same. 

The high expense of gasoline is effective in making people aware of their consumption choices.  However, letting the location of a residence to be swayed by gasoline price is difficult to be justified for a lot of families.  And since downtown land owners will prefer their continual land squatting for the next perfect sale opportunity, such a property tax modification may speed up the progress.

Therefore, having a property tax based on land value actually would serve country voters much more favourably than the suburbs’ and more for the suburbs’ than the urban areas’.  At the end, having such a green fiscal policy actually brings more benefit to the Republican voter base then Democrat voter base.  You would think voters make rational choices.

However, the conventional wisdom

In fact, a property tax scheme that is completely focused on the value of land or just the sale price of the property and land will eventually make land speculation more expensive, land development more expensive, building them require more engineering sophistication. 

Therefore, no one would want to squat on a piece of downtown land for decades without either developing it himself or selling it to a developer since the tax would serve as a good indicator to the owner how much value the land could possibly worth. 

Such a scenario will moderate urban sprawling depending on the proportion of land value in the property tax.  Downtown land owners will be the most immediate beneficiaries.  The land owners in the fringes of the city also see benefit.  The grumpiest of all the land owners will be the ones who have been expecting urban development in the future 10 years on their land but now an unforeseeable eternity. 

Land development is a hair splitting business.  A few basis points in the business loan will make or break the deal.  In this green scenario, since land becomes even more expensive and a higher density is very much needed to become profitable,

Downtowns in the states have been in decades of decline.  This is only partly due to the white flight.  A big portion of incentive has been due to the government unintentionally induced incentives for land squatting.  In other words:  a big portion of disincentive for innovative and cost effective use of land has been unintentionally created by governments all over the country. 

Being green is about having the least “economical footprint”.  In the words of economics, it is about being “cost effective”, “consuming” the least resources.  Currently, not all the costs are being factored into the environmentally wasteful products and therefore we are consuming at a cost that is far below the recovery cost of our consumption causing to the environment.  Fixing the environment requires money, just like anything else. 

Suppose the government finances the fix from levying a tax on gasoline.  Gas consumption goes down while demand for public transportation goes up.  Automobile manufacturers will have to create more energy efficient cars for the market.  But that is not the end of it.  This change of transportation habit is only a facet of the high expense of natural resources. 

There are many social injustices that require rectification.  Climate change is only one of them.  The difference is urgency, or priority.  If there is money to be made, there is a way for many willing change agent who will work on the cause.  For instance, Walmart is taking a serious effort into greening itself. 

If that is not possible, there are charities.  However, no one can fund a non-profitable cause with as much resources as a government can since government takes taxes off everyone to finance the actions. 

China wants to meet Dalai Lama’s representatives.  Why is it announcement now?  What can this meeting accomplish? 

Beijing made the announcement today because EU trade delegation arrived Beijing.  Currency exchange rate is a big topic, trade barrier is of course another.  Some of it is very logistics, such as business visa issuance.  In any event, having a nice announcement today can delay and defuse some tensions.

CNN reports the story here.  Similar to other media outlets, CNN has already put sandbags on this meeting: don’t expect much because this meeting could be a PR ploy to defuse all the possible upcoming Tibetan activists may stage.  And even if Dalai Lama is fully convinced that this meeting is unproductive, Dalai Lama will still send his representatives to meet China.

Why will Dalai Lama still want to meet China for an unproductive meeting?

If he does not, he will be blamed as spoiler.  However, China probably wants this meet bad enough that they must have relaxed the conditions of meeting.  After all, Dalai Lama already said both sides have been in contact since early April.  So they are already in talks for weeks to set up a talk.  The announcement from the Beijing is an indication that at least Dalai Lama is comfortable with the agenda, even if that agenda may have unproductive outcome.  

There are a few things we can observe.  If we see a series of talks stretching out, then please do not celebrate that as an indication of progress.  That only means to stall the protests word wide and divert political pressure of the foreign governments from their domestic constituency asking for do-something. 

The place is likely to be within Mainland China, to symbolize that it is an internal affairs.  If it were in a third party, China would be afraid that the meeting has evolved into a nation-to-nation meeting.  However, the question remains: where will it take place, in China?  The location would be an indication how serious Beijing takes this meeting.  

Will this be a publicized or secretive meeting?  The press of course would not get invited during the talk.  But will there be photo op announced to the press in advance? Will there be joint announcement?  If there will be joint announcement, then this will be a meeting of substance.  

Even if Beijing is not intent to just stage another stall tactics and meant well to accomplish something, it is still practically difficult.  Positions of both sides are clear since they already spent a few decades to sort out the differences.  Beijing hates to be seen as to giving concessions to separatists.  Beijing waited for 8 years for President Chen of Taiwan to retire from office and waited a few decades on the issue of Dalai Lama.  Holding off another 5 or 10 years does not bear additional political costs, both domestically and internationally.  

Beijing simply is stretched at this moment to have a serious talk.  All resources are diverted to Olympics.  And Beijing sees that it is much easier to accomplish something from the Taiwan problem.  Therefore, for whatever remaining energy and resources from the top leadership will be dedicated to Taiwan.  For Dalai Lama, the meeting has to be measured against the level of civil servants Taiwan enjoys.  

In any given year, I would see the following news story by CNN as a human rights issue.  Not this year.  In a year where we have a long and arduous primary on the left side, the Thai shrimp story is a good way for a non-profit to get the attention to the topic it cares the most: free trade.  Here is the link to the story: 

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/23/shrimp.workers.report/index.html

Who sponsored the study? According to CNN, it is an “international nonprofit allied organization of the AFL-CIO”.  Even if AFL-CIO did not intend to project this issue on the stage of primary race, the media is doing the job.   

What is the interests of this story?  This story is to drive the readers to import products are morally tainted.  To prevent that is to establish a higher labour rights overseas among our free-trade trading partners.  That will increase the costs of production overseas and thus make the domestic products more competitive, at least domestically.  And even though US may not import shrimps from Thailand, the image that “imports are morally tainted” is implanted in the minds of the voters.

This is the same tactic (or effect) that the Tibet protests / Olympic torch protests achieve.  If the timing of these stories are timed and are in a sequence, then they can build up a very effective momentum to force the issue from an individual story into a campaign issue where all candidates cannot afford to ignore. 

Of course, the organization has to have some sort of ground level organization to make it work effectively, such as “concerned citizens” asking the right question in town hall meetings when the candidates attend.  And such schedule is easy to obtain.  Better yet, find out which media outlet and the name of the reporter were attending.  (planting)

And when third party campaign work (i.e. soft money) in conjunction with these releases, they become powerful.  While the media attention is on the issue, fundraising can get a much better lift of response rate.  The metric of one time donor amount will see a spike.  This is also a wonderful time for donor acquisition.  Elections are exciting, even for shrimping!

This 2008 election proves to be a textbook material for advocacy, fundraising and electioneering, even better than 2000 election.  Clinton’s victory will certainly encourage her to continue her race.  What Clinton shows this time in Pennsylvania is similar to what Obama showed when he was the underdog: money does not buy election victory all the time.  Clinton won by 10%, CNN reports.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/23/us.primary.intl/index.html?iref=hpmostpop

An indecisive Obama Super Tuesday victory brought this “lengthening, torturous” race because, as always, an indecisive result invites the loser for a re-match.  And Clinton gladly took on the challenge of a re-match.

Obama out spent Clinton by 2 to 1.  Obama enjoyed the positive media attention.  And he had the momentum, the most important thing of all.  And he yet he was behind by 10%.  A lot of people may expect him to win and would not be surprised by a loss.  But 10% probably is the threshold for “failure”. 

The real loss of this race so far is Ralph Nader.  He and/or his party have not improved their platform, i.e. the product, much since 2000.  Neither did they improve their election techniques.  Ralph Nader does not have the charm Obama has.  However, the electioneering could have been improved when in fact Obama took the great leap.

Clinton won by canvassing, the most important virtue of a politician.  Politics is a service industry.  Responsiveness to voters, not leadership, is the virtue promoted by democracy.  She canvassed hard in every county, in every city hall.  And she mobilized her daughter and husband in the state.  The air war of TV and Radio ads rained down by Obama did not bring him a victory just like money did not the Iowa victory for Clinton.  Obama won Iowa by the activists.  Clinton won by her hard work and her organization’s (or Governor Ed Rendall’s organization) hard work.  

This race broadened the voter base of Democrats in Pennsylvania.  And this is what advocacy / non-profit groups want.  The organization itself need not lend its name in the campaign in order to reap the benefit of it.  It’s the board members responsibility to participate in individual campaigns in order to gain the political access to the politicians, even though they may be the city council politicians.  It is this type of occasion that the cause focused groups can cultivate the next group of volunteers, big ticket donors, board members, fundraisers.  A broadening base means a longer list of “concerned citizens”.

When an election gets voters excited, voters are more willing to increase their level of civic participation, be it scrutineer, dropping flyer for an advocacy group, phone bank caller for a fundraising campaign of MADD, or even better attendance for the local recycling organization.  Although this race is dragging on, this serves as an opportunity for all non-profit groups to enlarge their voice and base.  

Leadership is wanted when voters are unable to specify their needs.  When change is wanted without a laundry list is change for the sake of change.  A victory by promoting leadership shows people want to be led, people expect someone who knows better than they do.  

Bush announced his goals on climate change.  Sierra Club already says Bush’s plan will require a miracle to save our planet.  Even McCain’s ideas are more agressive than Bush’s.  Very little is said about climate change in yesterday’s Pennsylvania presidential debate between Clinton and Obama.  Why is Bush anouncing something so useless and so late?   Is it part of his last minute legacy plan?  How does it relate to my non-profit organization when it is not an advocate of climate change?

This is his stall tactics. 

Getting a bill passed requires a process in the congress and senate.  It goes through committee, agenda arrangement, scope definition, text proof reading among members and aides, negotiation among members, parties and administration.  By providing something (anything), it takes off some of this momentum to his goals. 

Bush realizes that something will get passed in the next administration.  But providing something so vague, he can drag the bargain wide open for the next round of lobbying and thus provide a possibility of pushing a resolution less aggressive than it otherwise would be. 

In other words, he is not aiming for any kind of success.  He is aiming for a pay back to his constituence.  He is not even aiming for a legacy.

However, one point is worth noting: if Bush recognizes the need to address this issue, it will be difficult for anyone in the future to deny climate change.  The remaining question will be what and how: what should be done and how to get it done.

A lot of attention will be focused on what the emission will be.  However, the how question will affect more people in a wider range than media will be able to focus on.  Advocacy groups/nonprofit organizations representing interests not directly affected by the emission will have to pay attention on the how question.  Unfortunately, since media do not focus on the how part, advocacy groups and nonprofit usually lose their sight of it. Here are two examples to achieve the same goal with different implementations and their corresponding effects outside of pollution.

Example: emission legislation requires enforcement.  This will increase the government budget, i.e taxes.  Who gets the worst of it? Small business since cost of compliance always takes up a higher proportion of cost than a big business.  Emission can also be achieved by placing a higher gas tax and increasing personal income tax exemption at the same time without affecting the federal government’s revenue as well as its budgeting.  And the effect will be significantly different in aspects outside of the pollution. 

The former will increase government participation in the overall economy.  The latter will not.  The latter will at the same time help elevate the tax burden on the lowest income bracket tax payers, same the $10k/year income group.  Now, the poverty group suddenly have an interest in how the goals are achieved. 

When attention is so focused on emission, attention on other pressing issues are forgotten.  That is why climate change can be percevied, as an elitest cause, as a competing interest against other interest groups, say proverty groups.  It needs not be.  In fact, groups of different causes can exploit opportunities of any issue to further its own goal without sacrificing the issue of the moment. 

And exactly because advocacy groups and nonprofit organizations may not be able to follow these legislation details as well as being not able to provide these suggestions to complement the legislation to achieve its goals (piggy bag), politicians now can service the interests of the lobbyists’ paying customers without much scrutiny.   Therefore, if the issue of the moment is to discourage a certain behaviour (pollution), then your organization can always advocate to tax that behaviour and cut taxes (or spend that same tax revenue) for your constituence (seniors, students, low income, domestic abuse victim).

Fiscal policy is boring.  However, that is the most effectively way to modify the aggregate behaviour to achieve a goal.  Aggregately, people adjust their behaviour to the most use of their budget.  Even people who do not subscribe to that specific ideology now gets taxed and contributed to the cause.  An issue completely unrelated to your organization’s goal can help you when the implementation can be compromised to your favour.  In fact, you can suddenly become an ally of any issue of the moment, if you can demonstrate you can mobilize votes to support a legislation.