Green Earth. Kim Stanley Robinson
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he might have been quoting something tapped in cuneiform on the tablets of Ur. Money is power; politics is the fight for power; politicians need money to stay in office; and so they all congeal together. Influence is the sour milk of politics.
Spending money on political campaigns is legal as part of the First Amendment’s right to free speech, or so it has been asserted, most notably by the Roberts Supreme Court. So rich people are very loud speakers. This was something Phil Chase noticed every time he attended a fund-raiser, which happened on average twice a day. Some days his staff gave him a pass or failed to find suitable events, but other days were packed with half a dozen events, sequenced meticulously and carried out like commando operations. Cutting cash out of the heart of capital. Phil called it charm piracy, but only in conversation with his most trusted staffers. They laughed and told him to do his job.
Phil was one of the least wealthy senators, and had famously funded one of his earliest campaigns by asking supporters to send him all the change on their dressers and elsewhere in the house. “You’ll be glad to get rid of it,” he said. “Just be sure to pay the shipping costs too, or else I’ll pay more in mail costs than I take in.” Which was true; but mostly people paid for the postage, and he took in many tons of cash. Photos of him standing chest-deep in coins were popular.
Now it wasn’t like that anymore. Breakfasts, lunches, dinners, cocktail parties, mixers, seminars, meetings, soirées: each was important to the people there, so Phil had to gear up and perform, be there, be on. Luckily he enjoyed it. This was what made him good; he liked talking to people, he liked to perform. He thought if you gave him a chance, he could persuade you. Most people get over that, after experience teaches them otherwise, but Phil had the pigheadedness of his convictions.
Teachers’ union, Chamber of Commerce, environmental NGO, liberal think tank, a pod of whales (he was friends with many big donors); this was just one day. The science of any given Wednesday. “So look,” he would say, looking the donors in the eye, “anything you give the campaign will get well spent. You know my beliefs, and I’ll never deviate from pursuing those beliefs, that’s my promise.” He thought it helped that he himself made the ask. His development people (i.e., his fund-raisers) weren’t so sure, but he was the boss. And money kept coming in. Two fund-raisers a day, every day; thus seven hundred a year; thus 4,200 events in each term as senator. Money is speech; people like to talk; and loud people have things to say. Getting rich gave them lots of opinions. Phil was happy to let them speak through him.
Although sometimes, late at night, being driven back through the great dark capital, he would lean back in his seat and murmur, “Campaign finance reform. Roy, look into that again, will you?”
“Sure thing boss.”
“What have we got tomorrow?”
“Breakfast with the Finance Reform Investment Group.”
“Really? Breakfast?”
“Phil, you’ll eat those guys for breakfast.”
“True. But I hate the taste they leave in my mouth. Campaign finance reform, Roy. Write me up a bill about that. Pull out the file.”
“Sure thing boss.”
“Then who’s for lunch?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Anna flew through the blur of a midweek day. Up and off, Metro to the office; pound the keys, the spreadsheet work eating up hours like minutes. Stop to pump, then to eat at her desk (it felt a little too weird to eat and pump at the same time), all the while data wrangling. Then a look at an e-mail from Drepung and Sucandra about their grant proposals.
Anna had helped them to write several proposals, and that had been fine, as they did all the real work, while she just added her expertise in grant writing, honed through some tens of thousands of grant evaluations. She definitely knew how to sequence the information, what to emphasize, what language to use, what supporting documents, what arguments. Every word and punctuation mark of a grant proposal she had a feel for, one way or the other. It had been a pleasure to apply that expertise to help the Khembalis.
Now she was pleased again to find that they had heard back from three of them, two positively. NSF had awarded them a starter grant in the “Tropical Oceans, Global Atmosphere” effort; and the INDOEX countries had agreed to include a big new monitoring facility on Khembalung. Altogether it meant funding streams for several years to come, tens of millions of dollars all told, with infrastructure built, and relationships with neighboring countries established.
“Very nice,” Anna said, and cc’d the news to Charlie, sent congratulations to Drepung, and then got back to work on her spreadsheet.
After a while she remembered about some sheets she had printed up, and went around the corner to the Department of Unfortunate Statistics. She found Frank inside, shaking his head over the latest.
“Have you seen this one?” he said, gesturing with his nose at a taped-up printout of yet another spreadsheet.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s the latest Gini figures, do you know those?”
“No?”
“They’re a measurement of income distribution in a population, so an index of the gap between rich and poor. Most industrialized democracies rate at between 25 and 35, that’s where we were in the 1950s, see, but our numbers started to shoot up in the 1980s, and now we’re worse than the worst third-world countries. Forty or greater is considered to be very inequitable, and we’re at 52 and rising.”
Anna looked briefly at the graph, interested in the statistical method. A Lorenz curve, plotting the distance away from perfect equality’s straight line, which would tilt at forty-five degrees.
“Interesting … So this is for annual incomes?”
“That’s right.”
“So if it were for capital assets—”
“It would be worse.” Frank shook his head, disgusted. He had come back from San Diego in a foul mood. No doubt anxious to finish and go home.
“Well,” Anna said, “the Khembalis have gotten a couple of grants.”
“Very nice, did you do it?”
“I just pointed them at things. They’re turning out to be good at following through. And I helped Drepung rewrite their grant proposals. You know how it is, after doing this for a few years, you do know how to write a grant proposal.”
“No lie. Nice job. Good to see someone doing something.”
Anna returned to her desk, glancing after him. He was definitely edgy these days. He had always been that way, of course. Dissatisfied, cynical, sharp-tongued; it was hard not to contrast him to the Khembalis. Here he was, about to go home to one of the best departments in one of the best universities in one of the nicest cities in the world’s richest country, and he was unhappy. Meanwhile the Khembalis were essentially multigenerational exiles, occupying a tidal sandbar in near poverty, and they were happy.
Or at least cheerful. She did not mean to downplay their situation, but these days she never saw that unhappy look that had so struck her the first time she had seen Drepung. No, they were cheerful, which was different than happy; a policy, rather than a feeling. But that only made it more admirable.
Well, everyone was different. She got back to the tedious grind of wrangling data. Then Drepung called, and they shared the pleasure of the good news about the grant proposals. They discussed the details, and then Drepung said, “We have you to thank for this, Anna. So thank you.”
“You’re welcome, but it wasn’t really me, it’s NSF.”
“But you piloted us through the maze. We owe you big-time.”
Anna laughed despite herself.
“What?”
“Nothing, it’s just that you sound like Charlie. You