Policy reform is important, but it must be matched with direct, decentralized reparations that support high-risk children and strengthen local communities. Combining strong laws with community-based reparations helps ensure vulnerable children receive the practical support they need to survive and thrive.
Across the United States, millions of dollars are spent every year on litigation, lobbying, and policy advocacy. Lawyers, advocacy organizations, and philanthropists work tirelessly to influence laws on issues such as animal welfare, child protection, reproductive rights, and family planning. These efforts have contributed to important legal and policy reforms of the reparations.
Yet an important question remains:
Who is investing directly in the children who face the highest risks today?
Policy change is essential, but laws alone do not feed a hungry child, provide clean water, improve access to healthcare, or create economic opportunities for struggling families. For children living in extreme poverty, conflict, or climate-related crises, change must also happen within their communities
The Missing Piece: Decentralized Support
Many interventions remain centralized, with funding concentrated in national institutions, legal campaigns, or large international organizations. While these efforts can influence systems, they often leave local communities with limited resources to respond to the daily needs of vulnerable children.
Decentralized community initiatives can help bridge this gap by:
Supporting families before children fall into crisis.
Empowering local women’s groups and community leaders.
Strengthening household food security and livelihoods.
Expanding access to basic health services and education.
Building community resilience to climate and economic shocks.
Local organizations are often the first to identify children at greatest risk, yet they frequently receive only a small share of global funding.
Policy Should Be Matched with Practice
Legal advocacy and policy reform should not compete with direct community Reparations they should reinforce one another. A child benefits most when strong laws are accompanied by practical support that reaches families where they live. This means investing in local organizations, communities, women’s groups, and grassroots initiatives that understand local realities and can respond quickly.
A More Balanced Approach
The goal should not be to reduce investment in policy advocacy. Rather, it should be to create a better balance between changing systems and strengthening communities.
Protecting children requires both:
Effective laws that uphold children’s rights.
Sustainable reparations that enable families and communities to protect children every day.
Without local implementation, even the strongest policies risk leaving the most vulnerable children behind.
Summary – While some people enjoy abundant opportunities, security, and freedom, millions of children in Uganda and sub sub saharan Africa and other vulnerable communities continue to face preventable poverty, disease, and limited opportunities due to enduring structural inequalities and decision-making systems that undervalue future lives, underscoring the need for policies that recognize the equal worth, dignity, and freedom of every human being regardless of where or when they are born. Freedom for Some, Hardship for Others.
A family in a wealthy part of the United States may enjoy reliable access to food, clean water, healthcare, education, economic opportunity, and the freedom to travel the world, attend major sporting events, and pursue their aspirations with confidence. At the same time, many children in Uganda continue to face hunger, water scarcity, preventable diseases such as Ebola, and limited access to essential services.
This contrast is not simply the result of individual choices. It reflects global economic and political systems that have historically concentrated wealth, power, and opportunity in some regions while leaving many communities in the Global South with fewer resources, less self-determination, and greater exposure to preventable risks.
As Samuel has requested, we must confront the deeper question of freedom. Freedom is not merely the absence of constraints for those who are already privileged. Genuine freedom requires that every person has a meaningful opportunity to live, develop, and pursue their future. When children lack access to healthcare, clean water, education, and protection from preventable disease, their freedom is restricted long before they have the chance to exercise it.
This concern extends beyond Uganda. Vulnerable communities in Uganda and elsewhere also experience disproportionate exposure to poverty, environmental hazards, inadequate healthcare, and economic insecurity. Policies and models that systematically place lower value on the lives and futures of disadvantaged populations contribute to these inequalities, regardless of where they occur.
One important example is the practice of discounting future lives and future harms in economic and policy analysis. When future human lives are valued less simply because they occur later in time, decisions may systematically underinvest in preventing long-term suffering, disease outbreaks, climate impacts, and structural poverty. In practice, such approaches can disproportionately harm those who are already most vulnerable, including children in Uganda and marginalized communities in Uganda.
Truth Alliance “It is difficult to think about these issues only in terms of the future, because the consequences are already with us today. The children and future generations of Uganda and other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are paying the cost of decisions that were not addressed 40 or 50 years ago. Many racial justice advocates, policymakers, and institutions recognized inequality, yet the underlying structures that perpetuate unequal opportunities and unequal protection from harm were never fully corrected. The result is that today’s generation continues to bear the burden of preventable poverty, disease outbreaks, climate vulnerability, and limited opportunities for self-determination. Political leaders, including President Trump and others before and after him, operate within systems whose costs often fall disproportionately on the world’s most vulnerable communities. We should not continue passing these burdens from one generation to the next. Every generation has a responsibility to confront injustice rather than defer it. That is why we seek change today to ensure that future generations inherit greater equality, greater freedom, and a world where no child’s life is valued less than another because of where they were born.”
Peter and Erica have the opportunity to lead by example. By revisiting and reforming modeling approaches that rely on discounting future lives, they can help advance a framework that recognizes the equal worth and dignity of every human being, regardless of where they live or when they are born. Such a shift would strengthen efforts to protect both present and future generations from preventable harms.
This is not a call for charity alone. It is a call for fairness, consistency, and equal concern for all people. If every child has equal worth, then justice requires more than addressing symptoms. It requires confronting the structural inequalities and decision-making frameworks that allow some populations to flourish while others continue to face preventable poverty, disease, hunger, and insecurity.
There is already an example of this kind of consideration. Bobak Bakhtiari has committed to reconsidering and changing his modeling approach in recognition of these concerns. Peter and Erica could help lead the way as well by adopting models that better reflect the equal value of all human lives and the importance of protecting the freedoms and opportunities of future generations.
A world in which some enjoy extraordinary freedom while others face preventable suffering is neither inevitable nor just. The challenge before us is to build systems that recognize that no child and no human being is worth less than another, and that every person deserves an equal opportunity to survive, thrive, and determine their own future.
Summary “In the end, equity is not only about the results we aim for, it is about how we define, measure, and prove those results. And if people are left out of that process, then even the idea of progress can become unfair”
In development, growth, and social change, stories of progress often sound very convincing. Reports show improving numbers, charts trend upward, and programs are presented as success stories. But behind these polished narratives, there is an important question we don’t always ask: what is missing from the picture?
One of the biggest gaps is the failure to account for the real drivers of harm, especially unequal or unfair growth. When growth benefits only certain groups while others are left behind, it can still look like progress on paper. But in reality, inequality may be getting worse. This kind of selective storytelling can easily create a misleading sense of success
The problem becomes even more serious when the experiences of the most affected communities are not fully included in how progress is measured. This doesn’t just create incomplete data, it creates a distorted sense of accountability. The very people who are experiencing exclusion, hardship, or disadvantage are often the ones least reflected in official reports.
There is growing concern that, in some cases, this can amount to what might be described as illegal baselining or equity fraud especially when the starting point of measurement is designed in a way that leaves out the realities of those most affected. When the baseline itself is incomplete or selective, any conclusions drawn from it become unreliable.
Because of this, any claim about “public benefit” or “improved outcomes” needs to be examined carefully and early. It should not be enough for claims to be made; they must be supported. Those making the claims should be able to clearly explain their baseline, their assumptions, and how they are measuring change. Without this, it is impossible to know whether progress is real or just reported.
A proper baseline is not just a technical requirement, it is a safeguard. It ensures that measurement starts from honesty, includes all relevant groups, and reflects real conditions on the ground. It helps make sure that progress is not defined by what is convenient to measure, but by what is actually happening in people’s lives.
At its core, this is about legitimacy. Authority in development and social change should not come from simply making claims. It should come from inclusion, especially the inclusion of the people whose lives are being measured and affected.
When communities are left out of defining baselines, assessing outcomes, or interpreting results, decision-making becomes disconnected from reality. But when they are included in a meaningful way, measurement becomes more than reporting—it becomes accountability grounded in real experience.
Real progress cannot just be announced from above. It needs to be demonstrated openly, with transparent baselines, honest evaluation, and genuine engagement with those most affected. Without this, even well-intentioned work risks turning into storytelling rather than truth-telling.
In the end, equity is not only about the results we aim for, it is about how we define, measure, and prove those results. And if people are left out of that process, then even the idea of progress can become unfair
Summary “No child is less important than another. True equity starts when we recognize that every child has the same value, deserves the same respect, and should be treated with the same dignity.”
In development work and advocacy, we often hear the phrase “public benefit.” It sounds reassuring that projects promise better livelihoods, improved outcomes, and positive impact. But there’s a simple question we don’t ask often enough: better than what?
That’s where a clear and honest baseline comes in. In spaces that value accountability like Truth Alliance this isn’t just a technical detail. It’s a matter of integrity.
A baseline is simply the starting point. It helps us understand what things looked like before any intervention began. Without it, it becomes very hard to tell whether real change has happened. When we say lives are improving, we should be able to explain: what was the situation before, what has changed, and how we know that change is real.
This isn’t just about data, it’s about trust.
Communities deserve honesty about the impact of the work being done in their lives. Donors deserve transparency about how resources are being used. And organizations have a responsibility to make sure the progress they report reflects reality, not just intention.
Without a clear baseline, even well-meaning efforts can lose credibility.
Too often, impact is shared through success stories that highlight the positive while leaving out the full picture of where things started. This can unintentionally exaggerate progress or hide ongoing challenges. It can also silence the real experiences of the people these programs are meant to serve.
Introducing a baseline helps shift this. It moves the conversation from claims to evidence, from promises to proof. It encourages organizations to be more thoughtful in how they design their work, more consistent in how they track progress, and more accountable in what they report.
And importantly, it doesn’t take away from good work—it actually strengthens it.
When progress is measured honestly, real impact becomes clearer. Success feels more genuine. Lessons become more useful. And trust, which is often fragile in this space, has a chance to grow.
At the heart of this approach is fairness. It ensures that communities are not simply used as examples of success without seeing real, measurable benefits. It helps make sure resources go where they are truly needed. And it makes accountability part of the process, not an afterthought.
In a world where it’s easy to make bold claims, Truth Alliance reminds us of something simple but important: it’s not enough to say impact is happening, we need to show it.
Because real change isn’t just about what we hope is true. It’s about what we can clearly demonstrate, with honesty and evidence.
There is a moment that should mean nothing and yet ends up meaning everything: the moment a child is born. At that point, no child has done anything to deserve more or less than another. No one has earned privilege. No one has earned hardship. And still, from that very first breath, the world begins to sort children into different paths, some filled with opportunity, others with struggle.
This quiet sorting is one of the deepest injustices we live with. And it is exactly why the Truth Alliance exists.
At its heart is a simple but powerful belief: no child is worth more than another. Not in theory, not in policy, not in practice. This isn’t just something to agree with, it’s something that must reshape how we build our systems from the ground up.
The Silence That Shapes Inequality
The children most affected by inequality rarely get the chance to speak about it.
They are born into situations shaped by poverty, location, conflict, or neglect things completely outside their control. They don’t choose these conditions, yet they live with the consequences every day. Their silence is not acceptance. It is exclusion.
The Truth Alliance exists to bring these realities into the light not by speaking for people, but by making sure their experiences are seen, understood, and taken seriously. It challenges the idea that unequal beginnings are normal, and insists that every child deserves equal recognition from the very start.
Birth Equity: Where Fairness Truly Begins
Birth equity is a simple idea with powerful implications: every child should start life from the same level of worth.
But that’s not how things work today.
Instead, access determines value:
Some children are born into healthcare systems that protect them; others are not
Some have enough food and safe environments; others face daily risk
Some step into education easily; others struggle just to get there
These differences don’t stay small; they grow over time, shaping health, income, confidence, and life chances.
The Truth Alliance pushes for a different approach: don’t wait to fix inequality later—stop it from starting at birth.
A Movement Built by Many Voices
The Truth Alliance isn’t one organization speaking from above. It is a shared movement, built by people in different communities who understand these realities firsthand.
Its strength comes from being decentralized because real change doesn’t only come from top leaders. It comes from people on the ground who see what’s happening every day.
By supporting communities to:
Recognize the inequalities around them
Document real-life impacts
Speak up and push for change
The Alliance creates a movement that is both deeply local and widely connected.
This way, solutions aren’t imposed, they grow from real experiences.
Making the Invisible Visible
Some of the most harmful inequalities are the ones we don’t easily see.
They are built into systems, policies, and long-standing patterns. They show up in:
Differences in child survival
Gaps in early development
Unequal access to basic services
Long-term effects of growing up disadvantaged
The Truth Alliance focuses on measuring these hidden harms because once something is visible, it becomes harder to ignore. Data becomes a tool for truth. And truth becomes a tool for change.
The Need for Political Courage
Real change requires more than awareness; it requires decisions.
The Truth Alliance calls on leaders to take responsibility by:
Rethinking systems that create unequal starts
Prioritizing young children in policies and budgets
Distributing resources based on need
Being transparent and accountable
This is not about helping a few, it’s about correcting a system.
Because fairness cannot exist if children begin life so far apart.
Imagining a Fairer Start
The vision is simple, but powerful.
A world where:
Where a child is born does not define their future
Every life is valued equally from day one
Systems protect all children, not just some
Communities have the power to shape better outcomes
In that world, fairness isn’t something we hope for, it’s something we build into the foundation.
From Truth to Action
The Truth Alliance begins with a truth that feels obvious, yet is rarely practiced: no child is worth more than another.
But it doesn’t stop at saying it.
It works to make that truth real by lifting unheard voices, sharing power across communities, exposing hidden inequalities, and pushing for meaningful change. Because every child deserves more than just getting by.They deserve a fair start in life. And that begins with recognizing their equal worth before anything else tries to decide it for them.
Summary “From the very beginning, a child’s chances are often shaped by circumstances beyond their control—and The Truth Alliance is calling you to change that early, so every child has a real and fair chance to grow and thrive”
There is a quiet injustice that begins long before a child speaks their first word or takes their first step. It starts at birth sometimes even before and it quietly shapes who gets a chance to thrive and who is left struggling to survive. The Truth Alliance brings this reality into the open with a simple but powerful truth: no child is worth more than another. And yet, the world we live in does not reflect this.
The Hidden Weight of Birth Inequality
From the very beginning, children are placed into different worlds. Some are born into safety and opportunity, while others arrive into hardship and uncertainty.
Where a child is born, who they are born to, and how society labels them can determine their access to education, healthcare, and even basic dignity. These invisible labels quietly decide how far a child can go before they even have a chance to try.
For many children, it’s not about lacking potential, it’s about being denied a fair chance to realize it.
Illegitimacy and the Denial of Dignity
In too many communities, children are still judged based on circumstances they had no control over. Being labeled “illegitimate” can mean exclusion from family support, from education, and from a sense of belonging.
This is more than unfair. It is deeply unjust. No child chooses the conditions of their birth. Yet some are made to carry that burden for life. Over time, these labels shape not just how others see them, but how systems treat them and how they come to see themselves.
Wealth, Borders, and Unequal Chances
The gap between the privileged and the vulnerable continues to grow, and children feel it most.
Access to food, healthcare, and education often depends on the wealth of a family or the country a child is born into. A border line on a map can mean the difference between life and death, between opportunity and struggle.
These differences are not inevitable; they are the result of human choices, policies, and priorities. And they can be changed.
The Cost of an Unfair Start
Every day, children lose their lives not because we lack solutions, but because those solutions do not reach them. A lack of basic needs, nutritious food, clean water, healthcare, and protection continues to claim lives that could have been saved. This is the cost of an unfair start. No child’s survival should depend on chance or circumstance.
Rethinking Family Planning: More than Numbers
Family planning is too often reduced to a conversation about controlling population growth. But at its heart, it should be about something much deeper ensuring that every child is born into conditions where they can grow, thrive, and be supported. It is not just about preventing births; it is about preparing for them. When families are supported and systems are strengthened, children are given a better start. But when this issue is sidelined or misunderstood, the cycle of inequality continues.
An Unjust Starting Point
What we are seeing is a system that begins from an unfair starting point that can be called an “illegal baseline.” When some children are born with access to everything they need, while others are born without even the basics, the system itself is broken from the start. And no amount of effort later in life can fully erase that gap.
Why Preemption Matters
If we truly believe that every child matters equally, then fairness must begin at the very start. This means acting early before inequality takes hold. It means investing in mothers, supporting families, and removing harmful labels and barriers. It means ensuring that every child has access to the essentials from day one. Preemption is not just a strategy, it is a commitment to justice.
A Call to Reset
The Truth Alliance is calling for a shift in how we see and value children. A shift away from systems that quietly rank human worth, and toward a world where every child is given the same foundation to stand on. This is not an unrealistic dream. It is a necessary step toward a more just and humane future. Because if we do not address inequality at the beginning, we will always be trying to fix it too late. The question is no longer whether change is possible. It is whether we are willing to make it happen.
NY JBS “Net Zero” Settlement Risk: FairStartMovement.org and TruthAlliance.global Ask New York Attorney General to Require Baseline Disclosures So Enforcement Does Not Become Implied Climate-Claim Certification
The request asks New York to close a disclosure gap that can survive enforcement itself: absent plain-language baseline disclosure, settlement messaging in a greenwashing matter can operate as an implied credibility signal for the very class of “net” climate representations whose ambiguity gave rise to the enforcement action.
We simple ask: relative to what was any of the progress made?
Fact: Inequitable growth that enriched mostly wealthy, white children at deadly cost to countless children of color did exponentially more harm to climate than the state or JBS ever did good. Use of an inaccurate valuation and reporting model hides liability for the deaths of tens of millions as the climate crisis intensifies, and reflects the academic and public interest practice that ensured the polycrisis: Constantly moving goalposts away from the absolute infant-health-as-enfranchisement standard necessary for political legitimacy in order to falsely claim truth, or victories, and to thus raise funds.
The fundamental unit of moral currency is the influence one has over the outcomes of their political system, or what is loosely understood as political equality / equity though common conceptions are incomplete. Other currencies, like welfare, cannot exist outside of systems of political and legal obligation or “oughtness” and the primacy of how people are positioned relative to others and Earth’s ecologies at birth.
This equity is consistent with an objective “one person, one equal and influential vote” (equal offsets of influence relative to zero) standard, empowering persons to limit the influence others have – including ecologically and socially – over them. This is also consistent with more collective systems of family planning in which no child is treated as worth more than another, an outcome ensured through a threshold or level of empowering birth and development conditions and relations outside of which no child should be born.
This physically disembedded persons from any effective role in their political systems. It also allowed those in power, both with political authority and entitlements to wealth defended by that authority, to avoid having to legitimate their power by actually, and measurably empowering those subject to it. Rather than seeing the creation of actual (relative to the legal baseline) empowering relations as the source of political authority, nations treated symbolic or representative instruments like treaties and constitutions as themselves authoritative.
While civil rights movements made headway in areas like housing, employment, and education, the notion of autonomy without equity amounted to the privatization of the creation of power relations, and the totally arbitrary basis for the concentration of extreme levels of generational white wealth – over the span of decades – that drives many of the outcomes we see today. That wealth never had to pay the costs of legitimacy – and the full impacts are now being revealed.
Within less than a few generations the regime caused unsustainable growth, vast political, social, and ecological inequity, the destruction of world ecologies, and the decline of democracy. This inequitable and disenfranchising growth breached political, ecological and social thresholds for objective values we all share like comfortable temperatures, equality of opportunity,
Public interest work and outcomes during these decades and into today have generally oriented from arbitrary, ever-changing and illegal (both because they disenfranchise and otherwise harm children, relative to a host of accepted legal standards usually only applied to existing rather than future children) baselines that violate the “one person, one equal and influential vote” standard. High levels of climate emissions championed by “environmental” organizations that enrich some at deadly cost to others, still permitted and defended by coercive authority of nations, are an example.
Use of these baselines represents an undemocratic, diluted and commercial form of freedom, rather than values consistent with political freedom, that is more akin to “free market” choice” of a shopping mall more than the political influence of a functional town hall.
Public interest interventions to challenge greenwashing and humanewashing have failed because they themselves did not account for the massively countervailing impacts of growth on the interventions themselves – growth that for instance has created more climate emissions than the interventions removed, while bringing children into the world without the resources or political influence to deal with them.
And yet accounting for growth by itself would not account for the inequity of the relations formed by that growth.cIt would not account for how some benefit at deadly cost to others based simply on their birth and developmental positionality, with benefits defended by nations on the false premise that all are empowered equally at birth. One of the false assumptions at work was that some children were magically born poor and others rich, instead of the reality of a policy choice to elevate family autonomy (and not in the sense of being free of the climate crisis, but free in a “free market” sense) over family equity and political legitimacy.
Today women “liberated” by this reproductive rights regime, as well as their children, are dying in growth-based heat waves, living in poverty, with no way to use their political influence to save themselves or their children. They are subject to top-down abstract rules, not rules derived from the inclusive creation of power relations by those subject to them.
Worse yet, wealthy funders benefiting from that inequitable growth – like Tim Midura – have helped conceal this with the downstream charade interventions discussed above, and low standards for defining terms like “green,” “humane,” and “equitable” designed to enrich their own children at deadly cost to others.
For example, Fair Start activists were funded by such funders in their work with prior organizations, and prominent activists turned business owners today benefit from having used assessment and reporting models that each year allowed them to claim progress for vulnerable entities – like animals – that was easily being undone on exponential levels by birth-inequity based growth. The hallmark of equity fraud involves the fraudster omitting from evaluation and reporting the largest driver of the relevant outcome – the birth-based creation of power relations – in order to exploit that process.
The solution?
The FalseClaimsChecker.org accounts for this minimum necessary condition of political equity by replacing those assumptions – and the illegal baselining – with a base assumption that political authority and the entitlement to wealth it can generate must be derived from a “one person, one equal and influential vote” / “no child is worth more than another standard,” thus situating those making the value assessments and impact reporting themselves as part of, or outside of, a discourse legitimacy moving towards a just future. This accounts, at a most fundamental level – at a constitutional or basic system of obligation level, for the driver of the polycrisis.
These claims situate them in their political system, and allow us to assess how they arbitrarily benefit from, or suffer the costs, of the “separate but equal” standard.
When someone makes a value assessment and impact claim, we should ask: Relative to what?
You will find rampant use of shifting baseline – moving goalposts – that allow claimants to appear to create value and beneficial impact with no functional protections for the most vulnerable, infants and animals, as the climate crisis, autocracy, and massive inequity worsens. That means the impact is being undone relative to the minimum legally required threshold, or an illegal baseline – illegal because it does not account for legitimacy, or the need to measurably empower those subject to the legal system, including ensuring minimum levels of health-as-enfranchisement for all infants.
This is called growthwashing, or more accurately equitywashing. Why the latter? Because to treat humans quantitatively as numbers is less accurate than to see them as living in complex qualitative relations, and because past certain ecological, social, and political thresholds, growth has devastating nonlinear impacts – with climate emissions triggering things like ecological feedback loops.
We can use these claims to demonstrate the problem, that the values and impact they claimed would have been undone relative to the legal / preemptive as opposed to arbitrary baselines, and encourage reforms towards the legal baseline and their becoming part of an empowering system of truly self–determining persons by realigning fundamental authority and entitlements around a system of fair birth positionality, consistent with the values that they are signaling in their claims This is a state of autonomy through political equity by rearranging constitutional entitlements, sufficient to ensure Dasgupta’s optimality, but in the qualitative sense of empowering relations.
Given that few if any use the legal “one person, one equal and influential vote” standard, this exercise generally entails their having to admit benefiting from arbitrary birth and developmental positionality (national, racial, intergenerational, etc.) at deadly cost to others, and having disparate influence over others defended by unlegitimated authority, and threat of coercion, of the state.
We admit: Being part of a system of birth inequity that treats children of color as deserving fewer resources and influence, including omitting this as a countervailing factor in our value assessments and impact reporting, by overshooting ecological, political and social thresholds does more harm to our values than we do to further them.
This “Tell the Truth” discourse creates an opportunity for permanent resistance to oppression because it protects, through the use of an intergenerational justice threshold, the most vulnerable, Infants and animals and identifies those who reject that protection, and systems of mutual self-determination with it.
See the fallacious claims by prominent food entrepreneur Paul Shapiro, who ironically started his work as an animal rights activist climbing to a level of national influence on a false advertising campaign against egg producers for humane washing, His claims to have saved animals while explicitly refusing to back equity reforms or qualify his claims, make them inaccurate and out of context because he omits how he chose underlying policies that did vastly more harm to animals than he did good. His omission enables him to exploit financial systems – as lead at a profitable food company with military contracts – that in turn growth exploit animals and elevate his voice above those pursuing on-balance reforms.
Initial attempts, in other scenarios, by Fair Start Movement and Truth Alliance advocates to implement this preemption were met with sabotage by public interest entities hiding liability for decades of inaccurate claims, usually for micro interventions undone – relative to a true system of empowerment – by macro forces that enriched those involved, and their funders, at deadly cost to others.
As a practical matter one can challenge illegal baselining, or political equity and impact fraud, using inexpensive and widely available consumer protection and unfair competition laws to enjoin public and private business valuation, and impact reporting, that don’t comply with the minimum baseline of inclusive legitimacy.
Given that political authority, including to entitle wealth, derives from having to empower those subject to the authority, these cases get to the ultimate question of political freedom: Are we obligated to a political system that does not empower us? And what are the limits of self-defense against such a system?
After 1948 and the inception of universal human rights that limited national authority, nations were obligated to derive their authority and any entitlements protected under it from the equitable empowerment of their subjects. This requirement is widely reflected in the Bill of Human Rights instruments and their references to the right to self-determination – and one person, one equal and influential vote. This requirement should have created an interpretation of the collective pronoun that premises those documents, like the reference to “we the people,” treating a level of influence in one’s political system (“oughtness” or an “influl” that precedes a “util”) as a fundamental currency that precedes utility and welfare.
The textual basis for this interpretive rule is clear – these pronouns are the linguistic premise of the language that follows. Such a currency and universal linguistic rule of interpretation would have entailed a harsh principle: Each person in a system of law and obligation would be owed the level of public protection, or oughtness, they would account to the most vulnerable: Infants, and the animals whom the infants would impact. The value of self, versus other, determination would require it. Again, a racist system of self-determination blocked this change.
Regardless, the principle creates a textual basis to interpret law as requiring the inclusion and empowerment of those subject to it, consistent with standards for intergenerational justice, and ensuring equal offsets of influence relative to a zero baseline and the idea that no child is worth more than another. At a policy level this would have required a fundable, minimum threshold of empowerment beneath which no child should be born, with future children holding entitlements sufficient to create collective family planning systems based on readiness, delay, and the equitable distribution of levels of influence among children. The threshold ensures equal offsets relative to zero, or the preemptive costs of having to measurably empower all children equitably as they enter the world – and at a standard where those children could protect themselves from things like a climate crisis, autocracy, deadly inequity, etc.
Put simply:
If it’s illegal to use a business model that prohibits hiring or housing persons of color, it’s illegal to structure cost/benefit business models to enrich some children at deadly cost to children of color. Use of that model hides liability for the deaths of tens of millions as the climate crisis intensifies, and reflects the academic and public interest practice that ensured the polycrisis: Constantly moving goalposts away from the infant-health-as-enfranchisement standard necessary for political legitimacy in order to falsely claim truth, or victories, and to thus raise funds.
Unless a person or company claiming to add value to the world can show they were evaluating and reporting by accounting for the preemptive costs of having to measurably empower all children equitably as they enter the world – and at a standard where those children could protect themselves from the climate crisis, autocracy deadly inequity, etc. – the person or company making the claims has been using an illegal baseline, a Ponzi/equity-fraud standard that benefits them at deadly cost to others, and mostly children of color.
Those willing to pay the costs of a legitimate political system that avoids arbitrary benefits of birth positionality and conditions authority on empowerment could never compete against those willing to exploit others, and they need not given that any authority to govern or assign wealth derives from first empowering those subject to these things. The other solution to inequity-gained wealth backed by state violence – as the oppression it is – is to treat that violence as illegitimate and triggering the right to self-determinative self-defense against “trolley targets” who benefit themselves at deadly cost to others.
It’s this truthful and obligation-creating discourse, a Tell the Truth campaign, that is most preemptive and legally authoritative over all conflicting obligations, including treaties and constitutions.
Those claiming to prevent such threats – especially lawyers – used a deceptive system of moving goalposts to constantly assess progress and raise funding. But relative to the fixed standard – child/political equity – that was necessary to actually prevent the threats, the progress was being undone daily by inequitable growth – growth that benefited those lawyers and the funders backing them. In the case of those tasked with and claiming to protect animals, their work is the most easily falsifiable – dealing with the most vulnerable class of entities and the legitimacy of the system they use.
A close examination shows a cadre of lawyers creating the illusion of legitimacy for their own benefit at deadly cost to the animals they claimed to benefit, and many vulnerable humans as well.
Those like Trump did not simply win. The progressive systems meant to block him were corrupted.
Fair Start Movement confronts the #illegalbaselining and false claims wealthy funders make about their public interest impacts, claims that hide liability for the climate crisis, decline of democracy, vast inequity, and other horrors facing us today. These claims skew the standard for climate policy and life-saving reparations, enriching white children at deadly cost to children of color.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were left by Brooks McCormick for the protection of animals.
Instead of using the funds to actually protect animals, the lead Tim Midura hired his own daughters and used an anthropocentric growth standard for assessing and reporting value – an illegal baseline that moves the goalposts to allow Midura to claim beneficial impact for animals easily undone by inequitable growth – that did more to benefit himself and those he funded than animals.
What Midura does is not animal law, or obligatory systems determining the actual lives and experiences of animals. It’s human law that refers to animals, a conception that does more to benefit Midura than animals.
Midura and the Institute talk about animals in the current anthrocentric legal system – they do not reform that system to on-balance protect animals, which was the intent of Brooks McCormick. Midura’s omissions, and his misconception of animal law, were deadly. They are the fundamental reason we have billionaire kids like Barron Trump on one hand, and infants dying of dehydration in wealth-driven heat waves on the other.
Midura, instead of dealing with animal rights in the context of the subject-level relations of reproductive rights, chose to silo the issue away from birth equity in order to triple-dip: 1) benefit from his arbitrary but vey privileged national/racial/class birth positionality, 2) benefit from growth-based wealth unimpeded by the rights of future children, and 3) pretend to be an animal savior while living a lavish life at cost to animals.
Why is that so bad? If we are to be free we have to be measurably self-determining, rather than determining of others – through things like wealth-based ecocide killing infants in the Sahel. And that first gets determined in reproductive rights policies that determine who we should be.
Who knew that benefits in a political system should be geared to paying the costs of others being empowered to participate in that system!? This is nutty stuff for those like Midura.
One can easily see this by assessing his quotes on impact in the context of growth, growth that is based on the anthropocentric and “separate but equal” reproductive rights system / baseline that creates commercialized and disenfranchising relations, rather than the legitimate fundamental baseline of “no child is worth more than another / one person, one equal and influential vote” that underlies legitimacy.
More specifically, Midura used the funds to further cement the nonsensical concept of anthropocentric animal law: Animal law as the current legal system’s reference to animals, with no need to fundamentally change how we form human/animal relations to actually / on balance protect animals. But you cannot help animals on balance without accounting for their relations with humans. Helping them requires the same fundamental change children of color need – reforming fundamental illegitimacy – but that’s the last thing those who made their wealth on illegitimacy want to deal with.
Why? Inverting preemptive power from documents like constitutions to collective family planning discourses – to account for the actual creation of power relations and the lives animals will experience – nullifies all of the assumed and unlegitimated authorities and entitlements Midura’s family relies on to live well while others suffer.
This shows a horrible thing: In the middle of the polycrisis, wealth could buy and further false ideologies at top schools – like the idea that freedom is about “free markets” that harm animals rather than measurable political empowerment for humans which helps animals, or the idea that performative public interest work – in which the performer quietly chooses policies that undo the work on balance, and benefit them – are acceptable.
Seeing this does not require inside knowledge – just ask Midura to report impacts in the context of inequitable growth or run the zer-baseline tests with AI described above. The problem is hidden in plain sight. He won’t see the problem because he assumes it’s acceptable that some children benefit at deadly cost to others through inequitable birth positionality, capital growth unimpeded by the rights of future children, and omissive reporting.
The fix? Anyone can challenge illegal baselining – through things like complaints to states attorneys generals under consumer protection law – because it hurts everyone.
Unless a person or company claiming to add value to the world can show they were evaluating and reporting by accounting for the preemptive costs of having to measurably empower all children equitably as they enter the world – and at a standard where those children could protect themselves from the climate crisis, autocracy, inequity, etc. – he person or company making the claims was using an illegal baseline.
Governments are obligated to block illegal baselining, and equity fraud, because their authority derives from having to measurably empower those subject to it.
Take Action: Contact Midura – https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothy-midura-4845a214/ – and ask him to join the Tell the Truth campaign and admit a simple truth and act on it. Inequitable growth and illegal baselining did more to harm animals than he did to protect them, and that he is obligated to change standards.
Background:
What is Fair Start? Legitimate Public Interest Work Can’t Compete Against Illegitimate Charade–Level Work. And It Does Not Have To.
Unless a person or company claiming to add value to the world can show they were evaluating and reporting by accounting for the preemptive costs of having to measurably empower all children equitably as they enter the world—and at a standard where those children could protect themselves from the climate crisis—the person or company making the claims was using an illegal Ponzi/equity-fraud standard and benefiting at deadly cost to others, mostly children of color.
Those willing to account for those costs, to legitimate political systems and engage in the most just and effective reforms possible, cannot compete with those who do not – but they don’t have to. Those benefiting from particular values must pay the costs, and limit their fundamental entitlements, if we are to ensure governance by the people.
In the middle of the Twentieth Century world leaders used the prevailing “separate but equal” standard to treat the act of having children as a matter of parental bodily autonomy, rather than political equity for all. Governments, in the wake of WW2, were supposed to use objective standards to protect the vulnerable. They did the opposite. This blocked the measurable empowerment of each child – the measurable political equity that is a necessary condition of being free – and ensured a privatized, commercialized version of freedom, and unsustainable and inequitable growth that created extreme concentrations of wealth, disenfranchised citizens, and irreparable harm to the environment. It allowed those with authority, wealth and other entitlements to assume them, rather than legitimate them though protective limits on the birth-creation of power relations.
Today women “liberated” by this reproductive rights regime, as well as their children, are dying in growth-based heat waves, with no way to use their political influence to save themselves or their children. Worse yet, wealthy funders benefiting from that inequitable growth masked it for decades with the downstream charade interventions discussed above, and moving goalposts / low standards for defining terms like “green,” “humane,” and “equitable” designed to enrich their own children at deadly cost to others.
Law and justice were meant to eliminate arbitrary measures and outcomes – and yet with equity fraud, these systems start with a random “parental bodily autonomy” birth lottery ensuring inequitable and unsustainable growth that overshot ecological, political, and social thresholds.
Those using the Ponzi/equity-fraud standard are subject to legal and other action to block the use of the standard because all political authority derives from government having to empower those subject to its authority. Documents like constitutions don’t constitute free nations – communications that form empowering relations, including all birth and development, do. Our value assessments and impact reporting constitute such communications and situate us into a system of protective obligation, or they do not.
Illegal baselining assumes children deserve what they are born with, even as growth degrades their prospects, rather than what rights and political legitimacy require. There’s a false assumption behind most public interest work: That our political obligations are constituted by documents like constitutions instead of being constituted, or not, as children come into the world. Public interest work is performative if it is based on this assumption.
And if it’s illegal not to hire persons of color, it’s illegal to systematically enrich white children at deadly and disenfranchising costs to children of color. The largest driver of suffering in the world is the discounting of future life, enabled by a lack of a protective threshold/relations beneath which no child should be born, achieved through “legitimations” – funded collective family planning, entitlements to ensure equal opportunity, and parenting delay and assured readiness.
Will courts go along? Given that their authority derives from the empowerment obligation, they should.
There is a huge class of professionals – lawyers, academics, fundraisers, politicians, reporters/editors, etc. – funded by the wealth created through birth inequity. That wealth, more than the objective values that underlie public interest work, determine outcomes.
They benefit from this high-stakes birth-lottery system, free-ride triple-dipping on birth positionality and omitting the impacts of inequitable growth from the fantasy world of value and impact they create.
The triple-dipping involves the:
– privileges of birth (nationality, race, generational, etc.),
– growth income unimpeded for decades by equity and empowerment-based reproductive rights, and
– charade public-interest heroism that omits countervailing impacts of growth.
Out them with one question: Your value and impact is relative to what? The answer will not be relative to illegitimacy: one person, one equal and influential vote:
Those maintaining and benefitting from the illegitimacy – the lack of a protective check on the birth-creation of power relations. Their lives are worth no more than the infants dying in climate-crisis heat waves caused by the wealth bubble they helped create. They accept a growth arc based on entitlements that contradict their own values, assuming as permissible high levels of harm in a list of variables (this claimant takes credit for “saving animals” for decades), rather than zeroing out the harm – an assumption that quintuple or more discounts the harm caused by birth inequity.
In the context of animal liberation, the macro framework is disfavored by funders because while food law and even criminal law reforms can ensure good media that support existing entitlements and investments, the family law and other reforms that the macro entails pose potential preemptive liability for value assessments and impact reporting around micro, downstream-level interventions undone by macro, upstream-level forces that illegally enriched some at deadly cost to others.
Under our lead counsel, Esther Afolaranmi, the TruthAlliance.org and Fair Start Movement will run a Tell the Truth and Commit (TTTC) campaign backed by legal, grassroots and corporate certification efforts that divides binarily between those who admit use of the standard and commit to changing it, and scammers who do not and instead engage in hypocritical babble and value-signaling devoid of legitimating obligations—many of whom have used the standard for decades. The focus is not on the claims, but the numbers behind the claims.
We admit: We were part of a system of unsustainable birth inequity that did more harm to our own values than we did to further them, and we owe the victims compensation. We admit we omitted key facts, and back universally applicable injunctions against doing so as a matter of ensuring political legitimacy.
The TTTC campaign leverages the costs of tens of millions of deaths from equity fraud to enjoin the use of the standard as unfair competition inside key public and private institutions in the U.S. and Europe. These institutions are using it to assume entitlements rather than legitimate them, and to pursue growth that slowly dilutes and commercializes the average level of political influence. Some of the institutions actually participated in the creation of the standard and constantly framed their public interest work as charity or investment, rather than the obligation of deriving entitlements from the measurable empowerment of others.
The injunction would limit entitlements and other benefits by the true or objective costs to others, based on things we all value—like safe temperatures, equality of opportunity, and limits on who has control over what we experience. TTTC is a truth and reconciliation process involving universal admission of our having benefited deadly costs to others based on equity fraud.
What is Fair Start? Legitimate Public Interest Work Can’t Compete Against Illegitimate Charade–Level Work. And It Does Not Have To.
Unless a person or company claiming to add value to the world can show they were evaluating and reporting by accounting for the preemptive costs of having to measurably empower all children equitably as they enter the world—and at a standard where those children could protect themselves from the climate crisis—the person or company making the claims was using an illegal Ponzi/equity-fraud standard and benefiting at deadly cost to others, mostly children of color.
Those willing to account for those costs, to legitimate political systems and engage in the most just and effective reforms possible, cannot compete with those who do not – but they don’t have to. Those benefiting from particular values must pay the costs, and limit their fundamental entitlements, if we are to ensure governance by the people.
In the middle of the Twentieth Century world leaders used the prevailing “separate but equal” standard to treat the act of having children as a matter of parental bodily autonomy, rather than political equity for all. Governments, in the wake of WW2, were supposed to use objective standards to protect the vulnerable. They did the opposite. This blocked the measurable empowerment of each child – the measurable political equity that is a necessary condition of being free – and ensured a privatized, commercialized version of freedom, and unsustainable and inequitable growth that created extreme concentrations of wealth, disenfranchised citizens, and irreparable harm to the environment. It allowed those with authority, wealth and other entitlements to assume them, rather than legitimate them though protective limits on the birth-creation of power relations.
Today women “liberated” by this reproductive rights regime, as well as their children, are dying in growth-based heat waves, with no way to use their political influence to save themselves or their children. Worse yet, wealthy funders benefiting from that inequitable growth masked it for decades with the downstream charade interventions discussed above, and moving goalposts / low standards for defining terms like “green,” “humane,” and “equitable” designed to enrich their own children at deadly cost to others.
Law and justice were meant to eliminate arbitrary measures and outcomes – and yet with equity fraud, these systems start with a random “parental bodily autonomy” birth lottery ensuring inequitable and unsustainable growth that overshot ecological, political, and social thresholds.
Those using the Ponzi/equity-fraud standard are subject to legal and other action to block the use of the standard because all political authority derives from government having to empower those subject to its authority. Documents like constitutions don’t constitute free nations – communications that form empowering relations, including all birth and development, do. Our value assessments and impact reporting constitute such communications and situate us into a system of protective obligation, or they do not.
Illegal baselining assumes children deserve what they are born with, even as growth degrades their prospects, rather than what rights and political legitimacy require. There’s a false assumption behind most public interest work: That our political obligations are constituted by documents like constitutions instead of being constituted, or not, as children come into the world. Public interest work is performative if it is based on this assumption.
And if it’s illegal not to hire persons of color, it’s illegal to systematically enrich white children at deadly and disenfranchising costs to children of color. The largest driver of suffering in the world is the discounting of future life, enabled by a lack of a protective threshold/relations beneath which no child should be born, achieved through “legitimations” – funded collective family planning, entitlements to ensure equal opportunity, and parenting delay and assured readiness.
Will courts go along? Given that their authority derives from the empowerment obligation, they should.
There is a huge class of professionals – lawyers, academics, fundraisers, politicians, reporters/editors, etc. – funded by the wealth created through birth inequity. That wealth, more than the objective values that underlie public interest work, determine outcomes.
They benefit from this high-stakes birth-lottery system, free-ride triple-dipping on birth positionality and omitting the impacts of inequitable growth from the fantasy world of value and impact they create.
The triple-dipping involves the:
– privileges of birth (nationality, race, generational, etc.),
– growth income unimpeded for decades by equity and empowerment-based reproductive rights, and
– charade public-interest heroism that omits countervailing impacts of growth.
Out them with one question: Your value and impact is relative to what? The answer will not be relative to illegitimacy: one person, one equal and influential vote:
Those maintaining and benefitting from the illegitimacy – the lack of a protective check on the birth-creation of power relations. Their lives are worth no more than the infants dying in climate-crisis heat waves caused by the wealth bubble they helped create. They accept a growth arc based on entitlements that contradict their own values, assuming as permissible high levels of harm in a list of variables (this claimant takes credit for “saving animals” for decades), rather than zeroing out the harm – an assumption that quintuple or more discounts the harm caused by birth inequity.
In the context of animal liberation, the macro framework is disfavored by funders because while food law and even criminal law reforms can ensure good media that support existing entitlements and investments, the family law and other reforms that the macro entails pose potential preemptive liability for value assessments and impact reporting around micro, downstream-level interventions undone by macro, upstream-level forces that illegally enriched some at deadly cost to others.
Under our lead counsel, Esther Afolaranmi, the TruthAlliance.org and Fair Start Movement will run a Tell the Truth and Commit (TTTC) campaign backed by legal, grassroots and corporate certification efforts that divides binarily between those who admit use of the standard and commit to changing it, and scammers who do not and instead engage in hypocritical babble and value-signaling devoid of legitimating obligations—many of whom have used the standard for decades. The focus is not on the claims, but the numbers behind the claims.
We admit: We were part of a system of unsustainable birth inequity that did more harm to our own values than we did to further them, and we owe the victims compensation. We admit we omitted key facts, and back universally applicable injunctions against doing so as a matter of political legitimacy
The TTTC campaign leverages the costs of tens of millions of deaths from equity fraud to enjoin the use of the standard as unfair competition inside key public and private institutions in the U.S. and Europe. These institutions are using it to assume entitlements rather than legitimate them, and to pursue growth that slowly dilutes and commercializes the average level of political influence. Some of the institutions actually participated in the creation of the standard and constantly framed their public interest work as charity or investment, rather than the obligation of deriving entitlements from the measurable empowerment of others.
The injunction would limit entitlements and other benefits by the true or objective costs to others, based on things we all value—like safe temperatures, equality of opportunity, and limits on who has control over what we experience. TTTC is a truth and reconciliation process involving universal admission of our having benefited deadly costs to others based on equity fraud.
