What's Wrong With America: Not So Special Interests

If you want to know why many Americans are fed up with politics, exhibit A is the Wind Farm battle off the coast of Massachusetts. A perfectly good idea for alternative clean energy took nine years to clear federal government hurdles, despite widespread support. And the fight is not over. Special interest groups are vowing to continue to wage war in an effort to scuttle the project.

What's at stake is a $1 billion plan to build 130 wind turbines that would supply three-fourths of the power for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island. The 440-foot tall turbines would stand five miles off Cape Cod. When the project was announced, environmentalists lined up on both sides of the issue in a classic political tug-of-war between competing interests. Everyone refused to budge. Somehow the greater good got lost in all the rancor, as so often does in today's political arena.

The line-up of special interests seemed almost never ending. The American Bird Conservancy said the huge turbines posed a threat to birds. The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound didn't like the prospect of ugly windmills stuck in the middle of their ocean playground. Area American Indian Tribes said the project would disturb ancient burial sites on the ocean floor.

Allied against these interests were groups such as Greenpeace, which called the project a solution to global warming. The Interior Department backed the project, citing the "green energy" potential. The wind industry chimed in with claims of the project's potential for lowering dependence on oil.

Throw into this stew of politics state and federal elected officials and you have a prescription for a costly stalemate. The many voices on both sides of this issue drowned out the public will. Most people in Massachusetts think wind farms are a good idea. That is a microcosm for what's wrong in America today.

Often tiny slivers of special interests can obscure the public good. Armed with lawyers, practically anyone can bring a public project to a grinding halt. No one ever questions whether the special interests really represent anyone. Most have thin but highly vocal and motivated support. Their membership lists, if anyone bothered to ask, probably represent less than 1 percent of the public. Yet they can thwart the will of the majority.

Every group, no matter how small, has a right to have its voice heard and its opinion considered. However, the country is allowing small minorities to use the courts and due process to rule as if they represented the majority. In a free society, some will argue that it is the price the country must pay.
But it doesn't have to be that way.

Whenever a group files a lawsuit, for example, it should be required to provide its membership list to certify it is not a special interest organization in name only. In addition, the organization must verify what percentage of the public at large its membership represents. Special interest groups that represent five percent or less of the public should not have the same standing as those that represent say, 30 percent.

I know there are some smart lawyers who will argue otherwise. But if the country doesn't do something soon, special interests will put a strangle hold on progress of any kind, while forcing the majority to live with the consequences of its own narrow self interests. That is not democracy, where the majority rules. It's anarchy of the minority.