People Before Profit blog

Lessons from Cockyboo the Clown

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:32:00 +0000

Opinion

History repeats, said Marx, and the second time it’s comedy. The Bush administration is trying for a repeat of 1950s McCarthyism. I’m not laughing yet – maybe later.

George Santayana said, if we don’t learn from history we’re doomed to repeat it, so let’s look into a document of the McCarthy witch-hunts of 50 years ago, and see what it teaches us.

On my office shelf is a battered copy of such a document: False Witness, by Harvey Matusow (N.Y.: Cameron and Kahn, 1955). This remarkable book has lessons for our times.

Harvey Matusow (1926-2002) was, by his own admission, a scoundrel, a rat, a stool pigeon for Joe McCarthy and big business. And then he recanted, and told all, helping to end McCarthyism.

He joined the Communist Party in the 1940s, more out of a desire for social life and excitement than political principle. He felt he did not get what he was looking for, resented the party for it, and soon became an informer for the FBI.

The FBI used his weaknesses to make him their tool. A small-time actor, Matusow was able to spin pleasing yarns for them, and later for Joe McCarthy and various right-wing political and business interests, that they surely must have known to be false.

Matusow started out wrecking the lives of his former Communist friends, and then branched out into branding as “Communists” anybody whom his wealthy and powerful benefactors wanted to attack. He attacked the Boy Scouts, future senator Mike Mansfield of Montana, and especially the left-wing labor unions.

Much of what he said to the media and in trials and hearings was patently absurd. Even when columnists Joseph and Stewart Alsop caught Matusow in a wild lie – he claimed that there were 126 Communist Party members working for the Sunday section of the New York Times, and the Alsops revealed that there were only 87 employees of any kind working there – his career as an “expert” on “Communist subversion” flourished. Then his conscience awoke, he said, and he spoiled the game by writing False Witness. The FBI tried, but failed, to prevent its publication.

Matusow served five years in prison for perjury, and then became a magician and clown (stage name “Cockyboo”), donating many hours to charitable causes until he died last year.

What can we learn from this strange tale for the present situation, in which fear of terrorists substitutes for fear of Communists?

• The FBI and other organs of state security cannot be trusted. The FBI’s own information must surely have contradicted Matusow’s lies (and that of a stable of similar informers) on many points, but they never hauled him in. So when Ashcroft tells us that we can give up constitutional protections because we can trust him not to abuse his powers, watch out!

• Beware the cottage industry of “subversion experts,” “security consultants” and their ilk. Those were rife in the Joe McCarthy days, and they made good money, for example “clearing” people to appear on TV or radio.

We have already begun to see the emergence of similar “terrorism” experts and consultants. These people are motivated by the lure of fame and fortune, which causes them to spin ever wilder fables. They must be exposed as the frauds they are.

• Study their tricks. These include taking things out of context (mentioning that so-and-so had “Marxist” books in his library, but failing to mention that he had a hundred other kinds of books also); guilt by association (Tom Dewey attacked gangsters in the unions, Communists also attacked gangsters in the unions, therefore Matusow suggested that Dewey was working hand in glove with the Communists); and out and out lies (inventing stories of Communist leaders pushing violence, which Matusow admits they never did).

• Look who is behind it all. Harvey Matusow and his colleagues could do what they did because major and minor capitalists supported them, used them and egged them on. A supermarket chain owner from Syracuse, N.Y., used Matusow to promote his vendetta against real and imaginary Communists in the media. The hotel industry in Texas paid Matusow’s bills while he smeared unionists in that state, and mining interests in Nevada and Utah were behind his campaign of lies against the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers’ Union (featured in the movie, Salt of the Earth). Matusow documented all this in his book, but don’t expect such honesty from others of his ilk.

Forewarned is forearmed. These lessons from history can prepare us to expose the dangerous game that Ashcroft is playing, making him fall flat on his rump. That will be comedy. Then we can laugh.

Emile Schepers is an activist in Chicago. He can be reached at pww@pww.org

The big picture about local politics

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:29:00 +0000

Opinion

Eyes glaze over. The mention of local government produces a change in subject, a sudden urge to clean out cupboards or the desire to run to the nearest dentist.

Yet, it is at the county and city or municipal level where all human services are delivered.

Despite creeping back-door privatization, where non-profits provide senior care, child care, education and training, community celebrations, housing, etc., the truth is police, fire, emergency medical services, building safety, parks and playgrounds – to name a few – fall within the domain of local government. Even the trees that line a block, or whether or not there will be trees on a street, are all local government turf.

The truth is that local government provides more service with dramatically less money than any major corporation. Local politicians are closer to the people than members of the state government or federal government. When was the last time you saw your congressional representative in church, temple or mosque or shopping for groceries?

Headline-making decisions like war and peace are federal. Health care and education are primarily state jobs. But the meaning of war or peace, health care and education are all local, very local.

The Bush administration’s Iraq war, massive corporate tax cuts and the so-called “jobless recovery” hit the streets in cities, towns, rural communities and suburbs like a hurricane. The impact is personal, felt in your home or next door.

This November, at the local level, voters will have an opportunity to speak their mind on the course of the country as well as their neighborhood. Here’s an example. Whether or not schools stay open depends on state and federal subsidies. Victories for candidates who support quality public education, rejecting the Republican three-legged stool of voucher, privatization and charter, sends a message that the people demand quality public schools and the money that it takes to run them.

All local government costs, from police to school crossing guards to picking up the trash, take huge bites out of a local budget. The Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have slashed the flow of taxpayers’ dollars back to their communities to keep the street lights on and the garbage picked up.

Bush & Co. are too concerned with making billionaires out of millionaires to worry about whether or not there are school crossing guards on four-lane highways or police on the beat. So we have the reality of tax shifting, where the burden ends up on local property taxes. It is not only not fair but dumb for employees of Mellon Bank to pay more taxes than the owners of Mellon Bank or Alcoa Aluminum.

Improving our quality of life requires voting in local elections and seeking local office, neighborhood by neighborhood. Focusing the people’s anger to raise the standard of living begins in local government.

This November, vote as if Bush were on the ballot. Vote as if returning loved ones home safe from Iraq were on the ballot. Vote as if neighborhood blight were on the ballot. Vote as if schools were on the ballot. Vote as if decent jobs were on the ballot. Vote as if culture and recreation were on the ballot, and vote as if a healthy natural environment were on the ballot. Because they are.

Denise Winebrenner Edwards is a member of the Wilkinsburg, Penn., Borough Council, and a member of the Editorial Board of the People’s Weekly World.

She can be reached at DWinebr696@aol.com

New world order?

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:24:00 +0000

Opinion

When India was asked to send troops to help beef up security in Iraq, it declined. The message was clear to the U.S. – “We are not going to budge without the world/UN’s consent.”

Before the mess in Iraq, people were scared of the world becoming unipolar; with the lone giant acting the way it was, chances of developing more “rogue states” were plenty. People caught in the middle and at the bottom could suffer. And when it came to institutions like the WTO, World Bank and IMF, whoever was in the weaker trade bloc could suffer. Poor people were squished between the hard place and the rock.

After Iraq, the “Empire” was quickly loosing face, and allies. Then came yet another setback – Cancun.

On the table at the WTO meeting two weeks ago in Cancun were two vague yet very important items. First: the “Doha agreement,” which was drafted in 2001 without the real consent of the developing countries. It was a way for the rich countries to get their way. The bait for the developing countries was promises to deal with access to medicines and development of the less developed countries.

Second: the new “Singapore Issues,” which seek to extend WTO involvement into trade/investment policy, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation. The developing countries did not want to negotiate on these. They walked out largely due to the inclusion of these issues.

A coalition of the world’s developing countries took a stand. They fought fire with fire, used the same ammunition the “big boys” traditionally used, and emerged as local heroes to their respective countries. But what does that mean for the rest of us?

It signaled a new and much-needed change: that developing countries and poor people can stand up and hold their ground.

The developing countries circulated their own draft proposal, a counter-draft to the U.S.-EU-led proposals. The rich countries refused to give way, the poor countries refused to give concessions. What was known as the G15 – Group of 15 – of the developing countries quickly became the G21. When they could not negotiate, they walked out. Thus Cancun fell apart. The message to the big boys: “We will ‘liberalize’ up to a certain level but don’t expect us to give concessions to everything so you can do as you please.”

Do the tactics sound familiar? This is how the U.S. has always operated in the international arena. It first lobbies for support of national leaders for whatever agenda it has in private, coerces them into deals. Afterwards it circulates a lot of drafts and papers at conferences of the WTO or the UN. When it comes time to make decisions, the U.S., backed by the world leaders it had “talked” to before, gets its agenda across. This is how the U.S. has gotten its way.

Now one thing is clear – it is time for theorists, foreign policy analysts/experts and academics of international relations to come up with new models and paradigms. The people of the world are not cowed by trade blocs, doomsday fears, or a unipolar world. They are fired up, and they ain’t gonna take it no more.

On the one hand the developed countries wanted to brush through and have things their way. They’ve been trying this since 2001. On the other hand, they are being met by resistance from the developing nations. This resistance against the dominance of the rich countries started in Seattle, incidentally. Representatives walked out of the WTO meeting then as well. Ever since Seattle, protesters have been outside the meetings, supporting the resisters inside. Some of us want to abolish the WTO and some of us want to reform it. But before we do anything we must identify our true allies inside and support them outside. And we must keep an eye on new twists and turns with the WTO, because in the end the policies will affect us.

Cancun by no means is the end. Additional talks on the Central America Free Trade Area were set for Sept. 22-26 in Managua, Nicaragua, Oct. 20-24 in Houston, and later in Washington, D.C. The Bush administration hopes to wrap up talks on this agreement before the end of 2003.

The Free Trade Area of the Americas ministerial meeting is scheduled for Nov. 19-21 in Miami. Of the 34 countries that meet with the U.S. on FTAA, 12 are members of the G21, so the Cancun events will loom large at the Miami meeting. Let’s show them the world cannot be bullied, by showing our support wherever they meet. In the process, if we can create a better world order, then so be it.

Shelly Delos, former managing editor of Dynamic, the magazine of the Young Communist League, has been involved in the anti-globalization movement through the Independent Media Centers. She can be reached at pww@pww.org

A new $87 billion tune to an old song

Fri, 26 Sep 2003 04:20:00 +0000

Opinion

It’s a blast from the past, an old folk hit brought back, newly relevant.

The Pete Seeger song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” – the one he sang on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour that got them cancelled in 1968, is once again echoing in the conscience of our nation.

The song is a parable about a small group of soldiers ordered to ford a raging river by an ignorant commander. They keep getting deeper and deeper in the swirling river, but “the big fool says to push on.”

Now Boy George wants an additional $87 billion to pay for his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ones he claimed to have already won. The quagmire is sucking us in, the cost keeps rising, the lies keep piling up, more Iraqi and U.S. youth keep dying daily, and the big fool says to push on.

Last year, long before U.S. troops invaded Iraq, many warned about the unending trouble that would face the ocupying soldiers. Even the CIA and the British intelligence services warned that an invasion was much more likely to trigger terrorism than to stop it. Many in the U.S. military warned that the force being sent to Iraq was not large enough, well-funded enough, or prepared enough for the job they were ordered to do. Those objections were brushed aside, just as the protests of tens of millions of people were ignored.

Almost two years ago, after the quick invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the right wing, full of self-righteous triumphalism, bragged about how quickly “we won.” Now, U.S. troops are still dying in the daily fighting going on in that country. But that news is buried in little articles way back in the newspapers.

Months ago, Bush announced that “we” had achieved “victory” in Iraq. His hollow boasts provide no comfort to the families of the several hundred soldiers who have died since. Bush’s “support for the troops” includes cutting veterans’ benefits and cutting military pay increases, in order to pay for the exponentially escalating costs of his overseas follies, and this on top of asking them to die for his poll ratings.

Now, he wants us to keep paying and paying, and to put future generations in hock for the rest of the century. And what we’re paying for is making us less safe. It’s a program of national insecurity, to pave the way for Bush to scare his way back into the White House.

We can predict some of what is coming, based on what happened during the war in Vietnam and Reagan’s “Irangate” scandal. Some months before the election, Bush will announce a “secret plan” to bring peace. He will claim to be unable to publicly discuss the details due to delicate negotiations. That fictitious plan is as likely to work as his “road map to peace” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Then Bush will order a stepped-up U.S. military campaign. At the same time, he will try to “Iraqi-ize” the conflict, paying mercenaries to fight as U.S. surrogates. His minions will descend into the White House basement and try to figure out creative ways to steal from the pay envelopes of troops, steal from the already meager benefits for children in the U.S., steal from the paychecks of workers, all to hide the true costs of Bush’s wars and to hide from the growing anger of the people of the U.S.

This is history repeating itself as both farce and tragedy. We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool keeps saying, “Push on.”

Marc Brodine is chair of the Washington State Communist Party. He can be reached at marcbrodine@comcast.net

More on the socialist market economy

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:56:00 +0000

We print another reply to Prof. Erwin Marquit’s People Before Profits columns on the “socialist market economy,” published in the PWW earlier this summer. The discussion will continue in subsequent issues.

Socialism and commodity exchange

Writings on the Soviet economy in the post-WWII period reveal an extensive discussion of the role of commodities in a socialist economy. The economic problems in the 1970s discussed in the Marquit article in part resulted from changes that occurred in the Soviet Union concerning the control of commodity sales. By the early 1950s, the only commodity production was by the collective farms. All other goods and services originated from state-owned enterprises and were therefore not commodities and not subject to the laws of commodity exchange. The other tight control on commodities was the Soviet import-export monopoly, which regulated all exchange of foreign commodities.

By the early 1970s both these controls had been loosened considerably. Collective farms had not been developed into state farms, so commodity production remained. Private plots were introduced, expanding the market. Soviet monopoly on imports and exports was loosened step by step, until in the 1980s every firm was allowed to trade on the international market. Foreign commodities increased substantially.

Technological development began to slow because investment in the 1960s and 70s had been redirected away from production of the means of production and into production of the means of consumption. In 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik and was known to be a decade ahead of the United States technologically. By the 1970s they fell behind. Further, the military, in the name of national security, hampered the dissemination of technology throughout the economy, further restricting its development.

However, we should not underestimate the level of technological development that existed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. In fact, an interesting aspect of the economic problems in the 1970s was the effects of the early application of electronics to the production process. The Soviets were unable to deal with the drastic changes in the nature of work that utilized electronics, the reduction of workers needed where electronics began to be applied, and the beginning of the disruption of “economic laws” as electronics dramatically increased labor productivity. Under these new conditions of production, the need for the productive relations to evolve was blocked and resisted by the privileged bureaucracy.

Bruce Parry and Lenny Brody Chicago IL

Triumph of the media mill

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:23:00 +0000

Opinion

Without a hint of intended irony, the “NewsHour” on PBS concluded its Sept. 9 program with a warm interview of Henry Kissinger and then a segment about a renowned propagandist for the Nazi war machine. Kissinger talked about his latest book. Then a professor of German history talked about Leni Riefenstahl, the path-breaking documentary filmmaker who just died at age 101.

The conversation was cozy with Kissinger, the man who served as the preeminent architect of U.S. policy during the last half-dozen years of the Vietnam War. Tossed his way by host Jim Lehrer, the questions ranged from softball to beach ball. And when the obsequious session ended, Lehrer went beyond politeness: “Dr. Kissinger, good to see you. Thank you for being with us. Good luck on your book.”

After focusing on Kissinger’s efforts during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the “NewsHour” interview discussed his role in the April 1975 final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Previously, Kissinger had been the Nixon administration’s main foreign-policy man while more than 25,000 American soldiers and upwards of 500,000 Vietnamese people – most of them civilians – were killed.

The Nixon-Kissinger policies in Southeast Asia also included illegal and deadly bombing of Cambodia, where the Pentagon flew 3,630 raids over a period of 14 months in 1969 and 1970. (Cambodia’s neutrality in the Cold War and the Vietnam War had infuriated Washington.) Military records were falsified to hide the bombing from Congress. Massive carnage among civilians also resulted from U.S. air strikes on Laos.

But in September 2003, the man who largely oversaw those activities sat under bright TV lights and basked in yet more media deference. This is routinely the case for Kissinger. But not always.

Once in a great while, a mainstream news outlet summons the gumption necessary to explore grim truth about those in our midst who have exercised bloody power. That’s what happened in February 2001, when “NewsHour” correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth interviewed Kissinger about his direct contact with Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator who came to power in a coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Kissinger was President Nixon’s national security advisor at the time of the coup.

Nearly three years after that military coup – which overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende – Kissinger huddled with Gen. Pinochet in Chile. By then, Kissinger was in his third year as secretary of state; by then, thousands of political prisoners had died, and many more had been tortured, at the hands of the Pinochet regime. At the 1976 meeting, a declassified memo says, Kissinger told Pinochet: “We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here.”

Farnsworth confronted Kissinger about the memo’s contents during the 2001 interview. She asked him point-blank about the discussion with Pinochet: “Why did you not say to him, ‘You’re violating human rights. You’re killing people. Stop it.’?”

Kissinger replied: “First of all, human rights were not an international issue at the time, the way they have become since. That was not what diplomats and secretaries of state and presidents were saying generally to anybody in those days.” He added that at the June 1976 meeting with Pinochet, “I spent half my time telling him that he should improve his human rights performance in any number of ways.”

But the American envoy’s concern was tactical. As Farnsworth noted in her reporting: “Kissinger did bring up human rights violations, saying they were making it difficult for him to get aid for Chile from Congress.”

During the past quarter of a century, Kissinger has become a multimillionaire as a wheeler-dealer international consultant and member of numerous boards at huge corporations, including media firms. Along the way, he has accumulated many friends in high media places. When Washington Post Co. owner Katharine Graham wrote her autobiography, she praised Kissinger as a dear friend and all-around wonderful person.

As it happened, the latest “NewsHour” interview with Kissinger came just two days before the 30th anniversary of the coup in Chile. Although declassified documents show that Kissinger was deeply involved in making that coup possible, Lehrer’s hospitality was such that the anchor did not mention it.

Minutes later, during another “NewsHour” interview, historian Claudia Koonz was aptly pointing out that Riefenstahl “saw herself as a documentary maker, not as a propagandist. But what she understood so much before anyone else is that the best propaganda is invisible. It looks like a documentary. Then you realize all you’re seeing is glory, beauty and triumph, and you don’t see the darker side.”

The millions of people who have mourned the victims of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia might feel that such words describe the standard U.S. media coverage of Henry Kissinger.

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (www.ipa.org) and writes a syndicated column on media and politics.

Vouchers and the hidden agenda

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 06:02:00 +0000

Opinion

Republican leaders in Congress are once again trying to foist a voucher experiment on the District of Columbia, despite opposition from D.C. delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, school superintendent Paul Vance, a majority of city council members and city residents. As a result, pro-voucher groups from around the country have descended on the District with carefully crafted public messages centering on extending “opportunity” to inner-city children and “choice” to parents. While some people have been drawn to vouchers by hopes that they will help disadvantaged students or encourage reforms that strengthen public schools, these are not the goals of many of the movement’s backers. For these individuals and organizations, vouchers are part of a broader strategy to privatize, not improve, public schools.

A completely privatized education system would be disastrous for the disadvantaged children many voucher advocates claim to be most concerned with. A U.S. Department of Education survey of private schools in large inner cities found that between 70 and 85 percent of schools would “definitely or probably” not be willing to participate in a voucher program if they were required to accept “students with special needs such as learning disabilities, limited English proficiency or low achievement.” Among religious schools, 86 percent expressed this same unwillingness to participate. Eliminating public schools would mean abandoning millions of children.

Because most Americans are committed to strengthening rather than dismantling public education, many pro-voucher, pro-privatization groups offer two messages: one for committed followers and another for the broader public.

For example, the web site of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), a high-visibility voucher advocacy organization, says that the group is “not anti-public school.” While BAEO says it supports vouchers only for low-income families, it has been bankrolled by a small number of far-right foundations better known for supporting affirmative action rollbacks and education privatization through universal voucher systems.

The Florida-based James Madison Institute says “parents should have the freedom to make decisions in the best interests of their children.” But they leave unmentioned that the institute’s education policy director has signed a proclamation calling for scrapping the public education system.

Joseph Bast, president of the Heartland Institute, an influential Illinois-based think tank, wrote that “most people active in this movement are motivated by compassion for the poor, the need to improve government schools, and outrage over waste and mismanagement in government schools. ‘Privatization’ is not part of their vocabulary.”

Elsewhere though, Bast has revealed himself to be an ardent supporter of complete privatization. Although he has acknowledged that objective is “politically impossible for the time being,” he says vouchers “would put us on the path to further privatization.”

In a column several years ago, Joel Belz, publisher of World – a Religious Right magazine – wrote that supporting vouchers as a “temporary compromise” would help “bring down the statist system.”

There are a number of studies, including those conducted by the U.S. Government Accounting Office, that make clear that voucher schemes have not delivered gains in student achievement, but that evidence has not deterred advocates from seeking to eliminate public education. “We don’t even know what event will trigger the collapse of support for government schools,” declares the Alliance for the Separation of School and State’s web site. “What we do know is we are further along than most people think.”

To these and other radical voices, vouchers serve as a convenient means to further their broader anti-government agenda. The long-term goal is to make all schooling an activity supplied by private sources: for-profit management companies, religious organizations and home schools.

Doing away with a commitment to offering public education for all students would be bad for our children and bad for our country. As we debate how to best strengthen public schools in America, it’s important to know the major backers of the voucher movement are pursuing a very different long-term goal.

More on the effort to privatize public education can be found in the People For the American Way Foundation report, “The Voucher Veneer: The Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education.”

Nancy Keenan, a former classroom teacher and state superintendent of public education, is currently education policy director at People For the American Way Foundation (www.pfaw.org). This article originally appeared on www.TomPaine.com

Guns vs. butter

Fri, 19 Sep 2003 05:55:00 +0000

Opinion

President Bush’s announcement that he wants another $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan ignited a storm that is expected to rage in Congress for months. It signals the intersection of the war and the economy in a crisis that could determine the outcome of the 2004 elections.

The $87 billion is just for next year. Cheney and Rumsfeld say there’s no telling how much more will be needed, for a war with no end in sight. And it’s on top of the $450 federal budget deficit projected for this coming year. The Congressional Budget Office and mainstream economists are talking about deficits in the trillions over the next several years.

Republicans as well as Democrats are raising questions. Members of Congress have just returned from their August break back home, where they heard the unease among their constituents. Folks are worried about their job security, about their future.

Government figures show we’re in a “jobless recovery” – meaning production is up, the stock market is up, but jobs are vanishing, especially in the relatively well-paying manufacturing sector. More than 3 million jobs have been lost in the last two years.

Meanwhile, just a few days before Bush’s speech, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. a D+ on the state of our infrastructure – the school buildings, bridges, roads, rail lines, electric grids, water pipes and reservoirs that make our country work. These are also things that provide good paying jobs.

Democrats and Republicans alike are assailing the administration for “poor planning” in its conduct of the war. Poor planning, certainly. But there is more to it.

The architects of this war were never interested in democracy in Iraq, or the well being of the Iraqi people. As U.S. occupation chief Paul Bremer has said several times, this administration’s priority is privatizing Iraq’s largely publicly owned economy, especially its oil. Just as Bush wants to privatize everything from schools to wildlife areas in the U.S., so in Iraq his main interest is grabbing control of the country’s resources. In both cases, it’s for the benefit of Bush’s corporate backers. But beyond that, Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz see Iraq as a base for military/corporate control over the region stretching from East Africa through Central Asia. They don’t want an “exit strategy,” because they don’t want to get out.

American soldiers, our sons, daughters, husbands, wives, are the cannon fodder in this crusade. They are paying with their lives. Now America’s working families are being asked to pay the bill, by sacrificing health care, education, retirement security, clean air and water, even soldiers’ and veterans’ benefits, while the wealthy are given tax breaks. And the threat of terrorism has grown greater because of the policies of this ultra-right administration.

It appears that many Democrats and Republicans will not object to the military portion of the $87 billion – the bulk of the funds – but will put up a fight over money for reconstructing Iraq. Some are saying, “We need to support our troops, but why should we pay for rebuilding Iraq when we don’t have enough money to pay for our own needs here at home?”

But the U.S. has an obligation to the Iraqi people. As the country that attacked and is now the occupying power, the U.S. is responsible for paying the costs of rebuilding Iraq. Who should pay? The American people did not start the war. This administration lied to us to take us to war. Its corporate cronies are profiting from the war and occupation with multi-billion-dollar no-bid contracts. These cozy contracts should be terminated. Reconstruction of Iraq should be paid for out of the ill-gotten war profits of Halliburton et al. Money can also come from the Pentagon budget, and from raising, not cutting, taxes on the super-rich. Obviously, that won’t happen without a fight.

Fundamentally, this administration cannot be trusted to bring peace, democracy and economic reconstruction to Iraq. Authority for beginning that process should be handed over to the United Nations.

And this administration cannot be trusted with the security and well being of our troops. The way to support our troops is to bring them home to their families and to thriving communities with well-paid jobs.

That’s the heart of the battle over the $87 billion. It has the power to bring this reckless administration down in November 2004. Bush’s Iraq war could well become Bush’s Achilles’ heel.

Susan Webb is a member of the Editorial Board of the People’s Weekly World. She can be reached at suewebb@pww.org

A fox to guard the birds?

Fri, 12 Sep 2003 06:03:00 +0000

Opinion

President Bush has nominated Utah Gov. Michael Leavitt to replace Christine Whitman as EPA director.

Whitman, a “moderate” Republican, came into office having demonstrated a concern for the environment. She was often at odds with the White House over environmental policy, starting with Bush’s abrupt decision to unilaterally declare the Kyoto Protocol to prevent global warming “dead.” The Bush administration, prone to making shady deals at the expense of a safe and healthy environment, routinely undermined Whitman.

She was never given the power to do the job of cracking down on polluters and protecting our families and communities, and resigned out of frustration in May of this year.

Like his predecessor, Leavitt is in the “moderate” wing of the GOP. The governor’s website gives the impression that his heart is in the right place – the site is soggy with platitudes about the need for balance and stewardship of our land, air, and water. Unfortunately, his head seems to be lost in Market Solutions La-La Land. Leavitt, like many in the GOP, would like you to believe that the “invisible hand” of the market will solve most of our problems if government just keeps its hands off.

Given Leavitt’s pro-market bias, it’s no surprise that environmental enforcement in Utah is weak under his administration.One of Leavitt’s recurring themes is that we need to shift power from the federal government down to state, county, and municipal governments — and ease the regulatory burden on “the people” (read “business”).

Indeed, government should be accessible to the people. The trouble is, many corporations have become more powerful than the government entities designed to regulate them. How can a county or municipal government hope to stand up to a transnational corporation that is ready to bring the full force of the WTO and NAFTA against it?

“Market-based solutions” are what got us into trouble with the environment to begin with. That’s why fisheries are collapsing and whales are on the edge of extinction. The free market makes profit the top priority and our environment a free pollution dump. Environmental costs aren’t factored in. Natural resources are looted at the expense of the common good. That’s why government has to step in. The free market is a lousy regulator. It allows a few people to get rich, at the cost of long-term damage.

Incidentally, the market approach is a dog that can come back and bite you, as Leavitt found in Utah. Twice a year, companies that sell hiking, camping, and other equipment to outdoor enthusiasts and retailers gather at Salt Lake City’s Salt Palace for a huge bazaar called the Outdoor Retailer Show. Each show attracts 15,000 to 18,000 people and at least $24 million in “direct visitor spending” to the city. But the Outdoor Industry Association threatens to find another location for its gathering unless Leavitt backs away from his plan to weaken wilderness protection.

On Leavitt’s website, you’ll see some unsubstantiated boogey-man stories about the evils of environmental enforcement. One example: he belittles the Endangered Species Act with a hypothetical situation of an unnamed small town that needs to improve its water system and is “forced to pay an additional $10 million because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service thinks that a small fish species is endangered.” What Leavitt doesn’t explain is how free market approaches would save a species from going extinct. Extinction is pretty serious business: we’re talking about gone forever.

Philip Clapp, head of the National Environmental Trust, said, “I can’t think of too many governors more hostile to government regulations than Mike Leavitt.”

The Sierra Club opposes Leavitt’s nomination, saying his environmental track record “includes working behind closed doors with Interior Secretary Gale Norton to open up millions of acres of Utah’s wildlands to development and polluting industries.”

Lawson Legate, the Sierra Club’s southwest regional director, who lives in Salt Lake City, says Leavitt has pushed construction of the “Legacy Highway” which would run through the Great Salt Lake wetlands — a significant shore bird reserve – and would destroy some of the state’s best remaining farmland. “We don’t need this freeway,” he told Pacifica Radio’s Amy Goodman.

If Leavitt is confirmed as EPA director, the question becomes: How long will he last if he sticks up for the environment? If he’s a reactionary disguised as a moderate, then he will fit in comfortably with the Bush league in his tenure at the EPA. This will be another test case for an administration that, so far, is failing on both the environmental and labor fronts.

David Zink is a trade unionist and environmental activist in Washington state. He can be reached at pww@pww.org.

NYC job crisis worst in nation

Fri, 05 Sep 2003 03:02:00 +0000

With hundreds of thousands of jobs lost between December 2000 and June 2003, New York City has been hit by recession worse than the rest of the United States, according to a new report published by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

“Working America is facing a crisis,” AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a Labor Day speech. “It’s a jobs crisis and it’s the number one issue facing Americans. Despite our so-called recovery, far too many people are out of work, and many have been out of work for a long time.”

The crisis that Sweeney mentions is three times worse for New York City – the city’s job loss rate was 6.4 percent, compared to a national rate of 2 percent, says the report, entitled “The State of Working New York 2003.”

The state of New York lost 265,000 jobs since the recession began. New York City, whose workers make up about 43 percent of the state’s workforce, accounted for 76 percent – about 200,000 – of the jobs lost.

While many of the job losses have been in the “dot.com”-fueled industries – advertising, computers, real estate, consulting – the city’s manufacturing industries, especially apparel, have been hard hit as well. “Through June of 2003,” the report says, “the city’s manufacturing sector had lost 41,000 jobs since the recession’s onset. This represents a 24 percent decline.”

The report does not address the disparities in unemployment by race, although other studies have pointed to consistently higher unemployment rates among African Americans and Latinos. The same undoubtedly holds for New York City.

The effect of the recent recession on New York City is shown by other indicators as well. The report says, “Since January of 2002, the number of homeless men, women, and children sleeping in New York City shelters has increased dramatically. In fact, the year over year increase from January 2001 to January 2002 – from 31,604 to 38,463 people per night – represented the largest one-year increase since the Great Depression.”

The number of people receiving food stamps has jumped by 40,000, or 4.9 percent. Real wages have fallen as well. During 2002, real wages fell by 8.6 percent. This is “the greatest yearly decline in the quarter century for which data is available,” the report notes.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, intensified a recession that had already begun, the report says. “While the economic damage inflicted by the attack was fundamentally different from what we normally associate with recession, it intensified the economic slowdown that had already been under way at the time of the attack.”

As things stand now, the report says, any sort of strong economic recovery does not look likely. “The outlook for job growth in New York City over the short-term is not particularly bright. A return to the high-flying days of the 1990s … is widely acknowledged to be unlikely.”

In contrast to the insistence by Republican Gov. Pataki and President Bush that tax cuts will help create jobs and stimulate the economy, the current crisis has led many labor leaders to call for public works job creation programs.

Sweeney said, “For the same money that Bush spent on millionaire tax breaks, he could have stimulated the economy and created jobs by building roads and schools.”

A full version of the report in pdf form is available at www.fiscalpolicy.org

The author can be reached at