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Minnesota who was assasinated before the 2002
election by the conservative white trash that rules
this country so they could take control of the
senate and ram their agenda down the throats of
the american people
Missouri who was assasinated right
before the 2000 election on behalf of
criminal conservatives who have taken
over our government in order to pass
legislation on behalf of criminals in the
energy and healthcare industries and
force their ideology on the world. Their
agenda is to have an income distribution
like Latin America. Watch the movie
Seven Days in May.
defrauded the government billions of dollars via
Tenet Healthcare. I meant to say HCA
Healthcare. See article below. After pulling off
such a successful scam the senate criminals
decided he was worthy to be their fearless leader.
agent that might represent me please contact me.
The Bad Doctor
Bill Frist’s long record of corporate vices
by Doug Ireland
While TV gushed last week over the Republicans’ new Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, intervening in a
traffic accident, portraying the former heart surgeon as a "Good Samaritan," in truth the GOP has simply
replaced a racist with a corporate crook.
Frist was born rich, and got richer — thanks to massive criminal fraud by the family business. The basis of
the Frist family fortune is HCA Inc. (Hospital Corporation of America), the largest for-profit hospital chain
in the country, which was founded by Frist’s father and brother. And, just as Karl Rove was engineering the
scuttling of Trent Lott and the elevation of Frist, the Bush Justice Department suddenly ended a near-
decadelong federal investigation into how HCA for years had defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare (the
federal program that covers the military and their families), giving the greedy health-care behemoth’s
executives a sweetheart settlement that kept them out of the can.
The government’s case was that HCA kept two sets of books and fraudulently overbilled the government. The
deal meant that HCA agreed to pay the government $631 million for its lucrative scams — which, on top of
previous fines, brought the total government penalties against the health-care conglomerate to a whopping
$1.7 billion, the largest fraud settlement in history, breaking the old record set by Drexel Burnham.
The deal also meant that HCA can continue to participate in Medicare. And, as part of the Bushies’ deal
shutting down what Deputy Assistant FBI Director Thomas Kubic called "one of the FBI’s highest-priority
white-collar crime investigations," no criminal charges were brought against the top HCA execs who presided
over the illegal bilking of federal programs designed to aid the poor — and that includes Senator Frist’s
brother, Thomas, HCA’s former CEO (and current director), who’s been described by Forbes magazine as
"one of the richest men in America," with a personal fortune estimated at close to $2 billion.
What did HCA do? It inflated its expenses and billed the government for the overrun; it billed the
government for services ineligible for reimbursement (like advertising and marketing costs). HCA violated
both law and medical ethics when, as Forbes put it, "the company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating
the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals
as a kickback for the doctors’ referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors ‘loans’ that were never
expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture — and free drugs from hospital pharmacies."
This is the ethical climate that reigned in the Frist family’s money machine. In an unguarded moment,
Senator Frist told the Boston Globe that conversations with his doctor father about the family calling were
like "benign versions of the Godfather and Michael Corleone." Apparently the senator considers defrauding
the government "benign." So too does the Bush White House, which dictated the Justice Department deal
with HCA that let the crooks escape jail just as Frist was being anointed the Senate’s majority leader. A
pure coincidence in timing, of course.
The senator has always claimed no current connection to HCA because the $26 million he and his wife hold in
the company’s stock is in a so-called "blind trust." But it was the family’s dirty money that bought Frist a
place in the Senate. In 1994, Frist — who’d never bothered to vote before first running for the Senate
that year — spent some $3.4 million of his personal fortune to buy the seat from Tennessee (HCA’s
headquarters) that he now occupies. Moreover, "In the Senate, Frist has used his influence to further HCA’s
cause by stopping a strong patients’ bill of rights, gridlocking a mandatory Medicare prescription-drug
benefit, and promoting caps on damages for victims who sue negligent hospitals like HCA’s," points out Jamie
Court, executive director of the Santa Monica–based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, who
adds, "The Senate should not replace a racist with a principal backer of one of the largest corporate
swindles ever perpetrated against the American public. If Frist was a patriot first, he would have sold his
HCA stock long ago."
But Frist’s pandering to the lobbyists of the voracious health-care industry knows no bounds. "Frist isn’t the
senator from Tennessee — he’s the senator from the state of Health Care Industry Influence — he’s gotten
more than $2 million from the health-care sector, giving him the dubious distinction of raising more cash
from health-care interests than 98 percent of his colleagues," says Nick Nyhart, executive director of
Public Campaign.
Consider the special servicing he gave to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. In another example of his
"patriotism," Frist engineered the insertion into the Homeland Security bill of a provision that would protect
Eli Lilly from lawsuits over Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in its vaccines. Thousands of
lawsuits have been filed against Lilly by parents who believe Thimerosal caused autism and other neurological
maladies in their kids. The Frist-authored rider shields Lilly by forcing those lawsuits into a special "vaccine
court," where they can be easily scuttled, potentially saving Lilly hundreds of millions. The pharmaceutical
industry was the largest single contributor to the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee that
Frist chaired, ladling out some $4 million — and Lilly was the single biggest contributor to the GOP from that
industry, having given $1.6 million in the last election cycle, 79 percent of it to Republicans.
The good Dr. Frist voted against patients’ rights to sue their HMOs for failure to provide adequate
treatment, and voted to give tax subsidies to HMOs and insurance companies to offer prescription drugs to
seniors, rather than providing them through Medicare. Frist has, of course, personally raked it in from the
interested industries, gobbling up $123,750 in campaign cash from the HMOs and $265,023 from the
pharmaceutical industry. Frist also took $130,204 from the food-processing industry — and then helped kill
a bill putting teeth into the USDA’s authority to crack down on processing plants that violate federal
standards for bacterial and viral infection of meat and poultry.
There’s a lot more, like this — so much that it leads to an inescapable conclusion: In the Senate, "Good
Samaritan" Frist has almost daily violated the injunction of the physicians’ Hippocratic oath: "First, do no
harm."
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Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?
By Michael I. Niman, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2002.
Paul Wellstone Dies in Tragic Plane Crash
The death of the Minnesota senator, the conscience of the Senate, will have a major impact on American
politics.
Paul Wellstone was the only progressive in the U.S. Senate. Mother Jones magazine once described him as,
"The first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. senate." He was also the last. Since defeating incumbent
Republican Rudy Boschowitz 12 years ago in a grassroots upset, Wellstone emerged as the strongest, most
persistent, most articulate and most vocal Senate opponent of the Bush administration.
In a senate that is one heartbeat away from Republican control, Wellstone was more than just another
Democrat. He was often the lone voice standing firm against the status-quo policies of both the Democrats
and the Republicans. As such, he earned the special ire of the Bush administration and the Republican Party,
who made Wellstone's defeat that party's number one priority this year.
Various White House figures made numerous recent campaign stops in Minnesota to stump for the ailing
campaign of Wellstone's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman. Despite being outspent and outgunned, however,
polls show that Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing
George Bush to wage war in Iraq. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and moving toward a victory that would
both be an embarrassment to the Bush administration and to Democratic Quislings such as Hillary Clinton who
voted to support "the president."
Then he died.
Wellstone now joins the ranks of other American politicians who died in small plane crashes. Another recent
victim was Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks
before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first
dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft,
despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators
determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."
Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first was Democratic
Representative Jerry Litton, whose plane crashed the night he won the Democratic nomination for senate in
1976. His Republican opponent ultimately captured the seat from his successor in November.
While an article in the New York Times on Saturday pointed out the danger politicians face due to their
heavy air travel schedules, the death of a senator or member of Congress is still relatively rare, with only
one other sitting U.S. Senator, liberal Republican John Heinz, dying in a plane crash since World War II.
Heinz, who entered office as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War, later emerged as a strong
proponent of health care, social services, public transportation and the environment. He also urged
reconciliation with Cuba. He died when the landing gear on his small plane failed to function, and a helicopter
dispatched to survey the problem crashed into his plane.
One former senator, John Tower, also died in a small plane crash. Tower was best known as the chair of the
Tower Commission, which investigated the Reagan/Bush era Iran/Contra scandal.
Another member of a prominent government commission who died in a small plane crash was former
Democratic representative and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs. Boggs was best known as one of the seven
members of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The
commission found that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone when he killed the president. Boggs, it turns out,
had "strong doubts" that Oswald acted alone, but went along with the commission findings. Later, in 1971
and 1972, he went public with his doubts. He was presumed dead after the small plane carrying him and
Democratic Representative Nicholas Begich disappeared in 1972.
Texas Democratic Representative Mickey Leland also died in a plane crash. In his case, the six-term
member of Congress and outspoken advocate of sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa,
died while traveling in Ethiopia. Another American politician to die overseas in a plane crash was the Clinton
administration's Commerce Secretary, Ronald Brown, whose plane went down in the Balkans.
Anyone familiar with my work knows that I'm certainly not a conspiracy theorist. But to be honest, I know I
wasn't alone in my initial reaction at this week's horrible and tragic news: that being my surprise that
Wellstone had lived this long. Perhaps it's just my anger and frustration at losing one of the few reputable
politicians in Washington, but I also felt shame. Shame for not writing in my column, months ago, that I felt
that Paul Wellstone's life, more so than any other politician in Washington, was in danger. I felt that such
speculation was unprofessional and would ultimately undermine my credibility. In the end, my own self-
interest triumphed, and I never put my concerns into print. Neither did any other mainstream journalist,
though I know of many who shared my concern.
When I heard Wellstone's plane went down, I immediately thought of Panamanian General Omar Torrijos,
who in 1981 thumbed his nose at the Reagan/Bush administration and threatened to destroy the Panama
Canal in the event of a U.S. invasion. Torrijos died shortly thereafter when the instruments in his plane
failed to function upon takeoff. Panamanians speculated that the U.S. was involved in the death of the
popular dictator, who was replaced by a U.S. intelligence operative, Manuel Noreiga, who previously worked
with George Bush Senior.
There is no indication today that Wellstone's death was the result of foul play. What we do know, however,
is that Wellstone emerged as the most visible obstacle standing in the way of a draconian political agenda by
an unelected government. And now he is conveniently gone. For our government to maintain its credibility at
this time, we need an open and accountable independent investigation involving international participation into
the death of Paul Wellstone. Hopefully we will find out, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was indeed
an untimely accident. For the sake of our country, we need to know this.
Dr. Michael I. Niman teaches journalism and media studies at Buffalo State College
When I was in Europe last time the CIA assasinated Pim Fortuyn, the candidate that was just about to win
the presidency in the Netherlands. In Germany Schroder was first elected because he promised the
policies of his Finance minister, Oskar LaFontaine. After Schroders victory the CIA told Lofontaine they
would try to kill him again if he didn't step down and this time they would make sure he didn't recover like
he did after they tried to kill him the first time. I was in Germany in the late 80's when the CIA blew up
the armored plated Mercedes of the head of the German Federal reserve because they didn't like his
monetary policy. The CIA assasinated the Swedish finance minister. Anyone interested in real democracy in
Europe can research these assasinations and Lofontaines history in Schroders government. Thats what these
sick fuckers from Texas call democracy.
Former Prime Minister of Saarland & Federal Minister of Finance a.D.
Oskar Lafontaine, born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Bonn and Saarbrücken, joined the SPD
(Social Democratic Party) in 1966. From 1970 to 1975 he was member of the SPD in Saarland. From 1974
to 1985 he became mayor of the town Saarbrücken and from 1977 to 1996 he was Chairman of the SPD in
Saarland. Since 1979 he has been a member of the Federal Board of the SPD.
In March 1985 he was first elected Prime Minister of Saarland and then re-elected in 1990 and 1994.
In June 1987 he was elected Deputy Chairman of the SPD and led the Commission "Fortschritt ‘90", which
developed the party programme for the elections in 1990. During this election Oskar Lafontaine stood as the
main candidate for his party.
On 25 April 1990 he was critically injured during an assassination attempt.
From 1991 to 1994 he was the Representative for cultural issues for the Bundesrepublik Germany within the
frame of the Treaty for German and French co-operation. From November 1992 until 31 October 1993 he
was President of the Federal Council (Upper House). From May 1995 until January 1996 Oskar Lafontaine
became Chairman of the Mediation Committee of the Federal Council (Upper House) and the ‘Bundestag’
(Lower House).
In November 1995 he became chairman for the SPD and was re-elected in December 1997.
In September 1998 he was elected as member of the German Bundestag.
After winning the elections, Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, appointed him Minister of Finance on
28 October 1998. On the 18 March 1999 Oskar Lafontaine stood down from this position.
Why did GM pull a successful electric car off the market in California a few months ago. A few months ago
the following article was in the Financial Times. It describes how Volkswagon was working on a car that would
258 miles per gallon and they just decided to stop development of the car. They justified their decision
saying nobody wants to pay $25,800 for a car that get 258 miles per gallon.
VW cancels its 'one-litre car project
Volkswagen, Europe's biggest car maker, has cancelled one of its most high-profile projects, Bernd
Pischetsrieder, the group's chief executive, announced yesterday.
The car, which would have needed only one litre of fuel to travel 100 km, would cost too much to produce,
according to Mr Pischetsrieder.
The model, which would have cost at least €20,OOO
($25,800) to buy, would have been too expensive for most customers, according to the group. The
disappointing sales of the Audi A2 3L and Lupo, which need three
litres of fuel for 1oo km, have not justified the cost of developing the cars and the
group hopes to avoid a similar scenario with the one.litre car. In spite of the high petrol
"prices and environment tax, customers are reluctant to pay €15,000 for the Lupo or €19,OOO for the A2..
"Everyone thinks it is good that the three-litre engine cars are available but no one drives one," a
spokesperson for VW said.
Guido Reinking, Hamburg'
05.17.2005 Charlie Cray
Questions for Halliburton CEO David Lesar
Halliburton, king of corporate war profiteers, conducts its annual shareholders' meeting Wednesday in
Houston.
There will certainly be a lot to discuss. Bribery in Nigeria and Iraq, accounting fraud, contract fraud in the
Balkans and Iraq, dealing with former CEO Cheney's "Axis of Evil" (Iran), etc.
It's hard to keep track. That's why CorpWatch and Halliburton Watch have produced an annual report for
shareholders who want the truth: Houston We Still Have a Problem. (For PDF version, go here.)
Shareholders who read the report will want to ask Halliburton CEO David Lesar some interesting questions,
like:
1. Just how many Justice Department criminal investigation cases involving the company and/or current and
former employees are currently pending?
2. Exactly how much of this year's dividends are coming out of the "Iraqi people's" oil revenues?
3. Halliburton disclosed it may have criminally rigged bids on foreign contracts and the Department of Justice
has opened an investigation into the matter. Which foreign countries are involved and what you have done to
prevent this activity in the future?
4. A senior Army contracting employee has indicated that one month before the invasion of Iraq began, KBR
executives were in attendance at some of the meetings of Pentagon officials who were deciding whether to
award contracts to KBR or its competitors. Who were those KBR employees and do they still work for the
company?
5. Isn't it true that the company still under investigation for conducting business in Iran?
6. Pentagon auditors recently announced that KBR had overcharged U.S.
taxpayers by $174 million for importing gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq. Why has the Kuwaiti government
complained about KBR’s “lack of cooperation” in its investigation?
7. Did any company executives attend meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney or his staff in 2001 to
discuss U.S. energy policy? If so, can you inform the shareholders what was discussed?
8. Is it true that the company has used employees driving trucks as "decoys" in Iraq, resulting in
unnecessary death?
Also, there are reports that employees who come back from Iraq are not eligible for workmen's compensation
because they are technically employed by a Cayman Islands subsidiary called Service Employees
International. Why is the company using an offshore haven subsidiary to hire U.S. employees for its work in
Iraq?
9. The Department of Justice has reportedly indicted a Halliburton manager for an taking kickbacks under
the LOGCAP troop support contract. Have you answered Rep. Waxman, who asked the company why it told
the House Committee on Government Reform that the individuals involved were not managers but
“administrative people”?
10. Has the company investigated the alleged gang-beating of KBR employee Ronald Chavez by a group of
fellow employees, known as the "Red Neck Mafia," at the Baghdad airport where he worked as a security
coordinator for KBR? Were those employees fired?
11. The company admitted last year that it may have made illegal payments to the Nigerian government to
win the Bonny Island
contract. The French government says the payments totaled $132 million and were paid during your
employment as Halliburton’s chief financial officer and chief executive. Did you have any knowledge of these
payments when they were being made? If not, how could you, the company’s chief accountant, fail to notice
such a large sums of money being paid in Nigeria?
a) Have you personally provided testimony under oath to any government regarding the payments to Nigeria?
If so, to whom was the testimony given?
b) Has the company discovered any potentially illegal payments to
government officials in countries other than Nigeria?
c) It's been reported that the company hired James Doty of the Baker Botts law firm to conduct an internal
investigation of the Nigeria case. Is Mr. Doty's investigation finished? Are the documents already discovered
in his preliminary investigation available for shareholders to scrutinize?
They wouldn’t be doing the following unless they were being forced to do this and once enough property is
purchased to implement monopoly pricing all this funds will join together to drive up housing prices and rental
rates. Even the US doesn't sell the land the White House or Capital is built on. This is the handiwork of the
conservative crackpots.
Soros Unit May Invest `Billions' of Euros in German Real Estate
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire financier George Soros plans to step up investment in German residential
real estate as public and private landlords seek to raise money by selling as many as 4 million homes worth
200 billion euros ($259 billion).
Apellas Property Management GmbH, a company in which Soros has a 95 percent stake through the Grove
Capital fund, is ``very keen'' to add to the 5,000 homes it owns in Berlin, said Ulrich Weber, the unit's
managing director, in an interview.
Grove Capital plans to spend ``billions'' of euros on housing after losing out in a bid for 65,000 homes last
year, said Weber in an interview. Depressed housing prices ``and sturdy confidence in a resurgent economy''
are behind Berlin-based Apellas's interest in German real estate, Weber said.
Prices for municipal housing in Germany are being driven higher by foreign-based funds counting on a rebound
in the real- estate market. Apellas faces competitors such as New-York Fortress Investment LLC, which
this year increased its European fund.
The German government's plan to introduce U.S.-style real- estate investment trusts may add to
competition for housing lots. Slow revenue growth and near-record unemployment are raising pressure on the
public sector to speed up asset sales. The country's six leading economic institutes this week halved their
forecast for growth this year to 0.7 percent.
Fortress and U.K. financier Guy Hands's Terra Firma Partners Ltd. are this year vying to become
Germany's biggest private residential landlords, bidding as much as 6 billion euros for 150,000 homes owned
by E.ON AG. Once government-owned, the Essen- based utility is selling homes held in Viterra AG to focus
on its main business.
Home Ownership
Apellas's plan to increase investment is partly based on a bet that Germans will turn to bricks and mortar as
a financial cushion for their old age amid a perceived weak performance by alternative investments, Weber
said. At just 40 percent of all housing, the level of home ownership in Germany is among the lowest in Europe.
Foreign-based funds are bullish on the outlook for Germany, Europe's largest economy, to recover from the
cost of unification in 1990, as well as the growing expense of compulsory pension and health programs, said
Weber, who owned a Berlin-based construction company before merging it with Soros's unit in 2003.
Last year's 2 billion-euro sale of 80,000 homes owned by Gagfah Gemeinnutzige AG to Fortress helped close
a gap in the country's compulsory pension fund. Fortress said this month it may sell shares in Gagfah to the
public to finance expansion.
Berlin Homes
Apellas last year lost out in a contest to acquire GSW GmbH, the owner of 65,000 homes in the German
capital. The winners of the bid, Cerberus Capital Management LP, a U.S.-based fund, and Goldman, Sachs &
Co.'s Whitehall fund, paid 405 million euros.
The senior official in charge of finance in the Berlin city government, Thilo Sarrazin, said in an interview last
year he has ``no objections'' to foreign funds buying the capital's municipal housing.
Sarrazin, a member of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party, needs to sell assets to help
the city of 3.4 million ease a debt crisis as its economy grew last year for the first time since 1990. The
city government owns 300,000 homes managed by six companies.
Foreign-based funds are also betting that Germany will sell its municipal housing more quickly than neighboring
countries, said Michael Schroeder, an executive at Vivacon AG, a Cologne- based property company that buys
and develops housing from funds before reselling it.
The U.K., a pioneer of public housing sales in Europe, took 25 years to 2003 to halve its publicly owned stock
to 3.1 million units, or 12.5 percent of all homes, according to York University's U.K. Housing Review, an
annual survey of ownership.
Bank Loans
Apellas is looking across Germany to spend most of Soros's money, said Weber. Funds are using bank loans on
top of their capital to fund as much as two thirds of purchases, before selling on again within five years, he
said.
Foreign funds take a different view of risk in the German real-estate market to German-based funds, said
Matthias von Debschitz, spokesman for Wiesbaden-based DID GmbH, a company that monitors real-estate
prices.
German funds, typically holding no more than 10 percent of their portfolios in housing, are ``wary of fickle
politics'' that may tighten protection for tenants, he said. ``So far, the foreign funds' robust disregard of
risk is paying off.''
The DID German residential property index showed a 5.2 percent return on investment in 2003, after 3.1
percent a year earlier, and ``is clearly marked for further gains,'' said Debschitz in an interview. DID
German property-market data for 2004 will be released May 25.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Brian Parkin in Berlin at bparkin@bloomberg.net;
Thomas Bauer in Berlin at tbauer@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: April 29, 2005 04:55 EDT
Financial Times May 19th
German State to Study E800m Property Sale
The German state of Hessen has appointed advisers to explore the sale of more than €800m ($lbn) in
publicly owned office property, a move likely to prompt a fresh scramble for assets by foreign private eguity
groups. _The disposals, which are likely to take the form of sale and leasebacks, will support a state which
is expected to run a budget deficit of €30bn this year. Hessen, home of Frank,furt', Germanys financial
capital', has appointed , CB Richard ,Ellis, PwC Corporate Finance and Clifford Chance to assist in the
property sales. It is understood that talks with suitors will begin next month: and the sell-off could be
completed by the autumn. The buildings include the' state's finance ministry and I its police headquarters.
The Buildings are likely to be on leases of 30 years. Compared with a national average of about five years.
It is understood that the state of 'Baden Wirttenberg, home "to Stuttgart, is also considering a similar-
sized sale of office property. The ,move istlre latest property sale to US and: UK private equity groups
by the German pubic sector and companies keen 'to reduce debt. 'The,largest deals are in the residential
sector,Deutche Bank forecasts deals involving about' a million more flats in the next couple of years.
Commiercial property is in the throes of an investment boom across most of-Europe. German, by contrast is
still stuck in a property recession, partly because of very'high vacancy levels in many cities.Yet international
property groups and opportunity funds are taking a closer look at. German property assets as it becomes
more difficult to place money in other markets.The most active firms have been Terra Firms, Cerberus
Capilat Management;Fortress Investment Group,Corpus, Blackstone. and\George Soros Apellas Property
Management.Last year an ,estimated €lObn of German flats were sold,' including the €3.5,bn purchase of
the Gagfah portfolio by Fortress., 'The pace of the sell-offs is showing no signs of slowing given that
Germany has oneof the lowest levels of private property ownership in t Europe at about 43 per cent. ,1,
NoraLB, the Landesbank has said that 42'groups explessed an interest in Nileg, a 30000 strong portfolio of
homes valued at €lbn. m_, Industry observers expect some of the portfolios to be floated in a year or two
per- haps as German 'real estate investment trusts. The structure is expected to be approved for launch
in 2006.
OK I'll put my two cents in on the days events. It was criminals backed by Alan Greenspan that pushed for
the deregulation of the S&Ls. Now the sham Labor government in Great or not so Great Britain want to
deregulate on behalf of the business community. I think most legit business people like rules and regulations
so I have to suppose that Gordon Brown proposes to deregulate on behalf of CIA officials who get their kicks
forcing countries to impliment the ideology of the Chicago School of Economics. Maybe Brown can give England
their own S&L crisis or do for England what Jeffery Sacks shock therapy did for the former Soviet Union.
There must be a few middle class people left in England after Margeret Thatcher which can be driven into
poverty.
Now, as I said before, I had an econ course at the local community college so I'm uniquelly qualified to
advise the EU regarding their new treaty to be voted on May 29 in France by the crazy French. As the
Begians say, the only thing wrong with France is the French people. But I don't agree on that point. Bush
had proved the US now has the monopoly on crazy people. As Colin Power described Bush and Rumsfeld,
"they're fuckin crazies" and appointments like Negraponte and Bolton lets the world know that the US only
allows fuckin crazies in positions of power. As far as I'm concerned the EU is a creation of the US. It's
purpose is to make it easier for the conservative crackpots in the US to impose trickle down economics on
the world. The new treaty will make it easier for them to dictate monetry policy for the EU, to destroy
organized labor and social welfare, to control all media outlets for the benefit of their ideology, to impliment
structural adjustment which redistribute wealth upward and destroy the middle class. This will inevitably
lead to depression like it did in the 1920s. Berlosconies conservative goverment is half way there already.
During the 1930's FDR solution was for each country to put its own house in order using monetary/ fiscal
policies, industrial strategies, wage supports, labor laws, National Recovery Acts, Fascism, Communism,
whatever. And it worked. EU policies will prevent countries from putting their own house in order. The best
performing economy in Europe is the Swedish economy and they don't have to abide by EU economic policies.
A new treaty could lead Europe toward the Swedish model but instead I think, if the US has anything to say
about it, it will inevitably lead toward the Latin American model. I think the CIA had Pinochet's Chilie
impliment the ideal of the Chicago School of Econ.
In the post war period socialist germany had no unemployment problem, high wages, high growth but then
came Ronald Reagan, Thatcher, monetarism, free trade and trickle down and the end of democracy. It's
inevitable that history repeats itself.
Ownership and Government
President Bush’s proposed ownership society invites a history lesson: The great American middle class is the
fruit of social investment.
By Robert Kuttner
Issue Date: 05.06.05
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“Ownership,” President Bush told the Republican national convention last August, “brings security, and dignity,
and independence.” It is an assertion few Americans would dispute -- and one that we should welcome. For it
turns out that Bush’s proposed policies would frustrate his stated goal.
Bush’s version of an ownership society is both ideological and tactical. His political strategists believe that a
society of self-consciously individual owners can wean Americans from their political support for social
outlays. If people see their financial well-being as reflecting mainly their own nest eggs, they will think like
investors. Political support will evaporate for Social Security, redistributive taxation, public education, and
other collective enterprises that require us to think like citizens. If people “own their own health plans,” as
the president also proposed, there will be less need for inclusive social mechanisms such as Medicare.
Bush’s pollsters are convinced that as shareholders, people are more likely to vote Republican. His former
chief economist, Gregory Mankiw, recently wrote, “After workers develop an equity stake in corporate
America, they will start watching CNBC and the Nightly Business Report. Their view of how they relate to
the economy will fundamentally change. Bush understands this, and it is one reason he talks about an
‘ownership society.’”
But in reality, America’s long tradition as a society of owners has been substantially the result of activist
government -- making social investments, taking regulatory initiatives, and shielding individuals from economic
risks beyond their personal control. Today’s conservative program for an ownership society, by contrast,
transfers hazards back to individuals at a time when people are already bearing increased risks. Bush has
done us a favor by putting this idea in play. It invites us to devise a program for a true ownership society,
built on broadened social investment. Reclaiming a proud tradition, we could broaden America’s middle class by
once again expanding education and homeownership, resuming the march toward secure retirement income and
health care, and raising the real incomes on which a middle class depends.
* * *
In the early American republic, ownership was mainly agrarian. Government activism on behalf of broad
ownership began with Thomas Jefferson, who crafted land-tenure laws to favor freeholders rather than
absentee speculators. The United States, unlike Europe, could have a radically egalitarian land-distribution
policy without overthrowing a feudal class because the land, conveniently appropriated from the natives, was
“free.”
Nineteenth-century ownership initiatives included the Homestead acts and land-grant college legislation, both
under President Lincoln, and the abortive efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau to give emancipated slaves their
“40 acres and a mule.” As an agrarian society gave way to an industrial one, government stepped forward
with a diverse variety of measures to broaden what today’s economists would call “human capital”:
agricultural extension, public kindergartens and high schools, “Americanization” programs for (mostly poor)
immigrants, and taxpayer subsidies of state colleges and universities. All these contributed to wealth
broadening; all were redistributive, because in their absence most of their beneficiaries would have gone
without.
The paradox is that every one of these investments used public outlays to foster what felt like self-
reliance. Far from reflecting a “nanny state,” they promoted a sense that people were making it on their
own. Yet without these early social investments, America would be far less of an ownership society today.
With the New Deal, government dramatically expanded interventions to broaden ownership and pool risks.
Homeownership is the most explicit badge of membership in the middle class. The U.S. government invented
the long-term, self-amortizing mortgage by agreeing to insure and purchase such mortgages; it created a
secondary mortgage-market, subsidized mortgages for new homeowners, and protected Depression-ravaged
farm owners from foreclosure. With the postwar GI Bill and low-interest Federal Housing Authority loans,
homeownership rates exploded.
After broadly democratic landholding and promotion of homeownership, the third phase of broadened
ownership involved retirement and pensions. Again, it was government that made possible the modern custom
of retirement for wage and salary earners, first with Social Security, then with tax-favored and
government-guaranteed private pension plans. Once more, this was all experienced as self-reliance, but it
reflected substantial social design and public outlay.
Regulation helped assure ordinary people that their assets would not be looted by corrupt or incompetent
financial institutions. Government was further implicated in the rising real wages that make it possible for
ordinary people to aspire to ownership. The mechanisms included minimum-wage laws, unemployment
compensation, the Wagner Act, and government’s macroeconomic commitment to keep the economy close to
full employment. Postwar college-aid grants and loans helped more Americans expand their human capital.
* * *
Since the 1980s, many of these government mechanisms, and the associated social compact, have been
reversed. Government has all but ceased subsidizing housing, except for the deductibility of home mortgages.
For most Americans buying their first home, rising real-estate prices are outstripping incomes. Pensions have
become less secure, as 401(k) and similar plans that leave the individual carrying financial risk have replaced
employer-provided and government-guaranteed pensions with defined benefits. The employment relationship
itself is far less secure, as is reliable employer-provided health insurance. As regulations have weakened,
the individual investor, home buyer, and pensioner need to be more on guard against financial predators.
Social transfers are under assault.
It is in this context that President Bush proposed to expand ownership by, oddly, shifting even more risks to
individuals and reducing social investments and regulations. As this magazine and others have documented,
Social Security privatization would leave people with lower assured pensions and greater risk of
impoverishment in old age. Under his plan to have people “own” their health insurance, Bush proposes to
combine tax-favored savings accounts with high-deductible individual insurance policies. These plans, once
known as “catastrophic” policies, would begin providing coverage only after, say, $3,000 or $4,000 in annual
out-of-pocket costs. Supposedly, people would become more astute medical shoppers as they draw on the
savings accounts to pay premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
But this kind of system would be both less efficient and less equitable. Individual policies are much more
costly to administer than large group policies; more of every dollar spent goes to bureaucracy, less to health
care. Under a high-deductible plan, people with chronic illnesses and families with small children would quickly
exhaust their savings accounts and face far greater expenses than under conventional insurance, while the
healthy would be able to roll over their savings to the next year. In effect, this system would redistribute
money from the sick to the well. Less affluent Americans would also lack the financial means to use the tax-
favored savings accounts, and those who did use them would find that the tax benefits were worth less to
them than to the rich.
Health insurance is the last place to want “ownership.” Mainly, Bush’s approach would make people owners of
more risk. Health insurance, by definition, involves cross-subsidy. The premiums of the (temporarily) well
subsidize the sick. The young subsidize the old. And, to some extent, the rich subsidize the poor, who would
otherwise have to forgo medical care. The Bush approach undercuts all of this, favoring the rich, the young,
and the well. Far from expanding ownership, it would increase medical bankruptcies. The older term,
“catastrophic,” is an apt name for the whole scheme.
* * *
Bush’s proposed ownership society is an opportunity for liberals. First, the president offers a benchmark of
his own design against which we may measure proposals, such as health savings accounts and Social Security
privatization, that don’t broaden ownership but merely transfer risk.
Second, Bush’s emphasis on ownership ought to prompt us to remind Americans how government has actually
promoted ownership of farms, homes, businesses, and pensions that helped people achieve economic security
throughout American history. If we want a secure society of broader ownership, it will take the kind of
initiatives that have helped build the American middle class for more than two centuries.
The big, bold programs that achieved real progress -- from the Homestead Act to Social Security to the GI
Bill -- spent serious money. The right, far from proposing substantial public resources on behalf of
ownership, today wants to constrict social investment, transfer risk to individuals, and hold “asset
development” outlays to token levels. The goal of secure ownership also offers a chance to reclaim the
important role of regulation. The right has consented to regulation, whether the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act or
the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, only when episodes like the JP Morgan scandals of the 1920s and the Enron
affair put its back to the political wall.
What of Bush’s premise that a society of investors is a political community of rugged conservatives? As John
B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira have demonstrated in these pages, the professional class, with its 401(k)s and its
TIAA-Cref investments, is becoming both larger and more liberal. Most of America’s middle class appreciates
that secure retirement is built on both private savings and social insurance, as demonstrated by Bush’s
notable failure to move privatization. Investors also value the financial regulation that keeps them safe from
future Enrons. So let’s create more financial stakeholding, whether through add-on private accounts,
universal portable pensions, or “baby bonds.” Let’s challenge the right to promote ownership neither on the
cheap nor at the expense of social insurance. And let’s remember how government helped America become a
middle-class society.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.
@P Government’s dwindling appetite for regulating capitalism is not an inevitable product of today’s global
economy. It’s a handy alibi.
By Robert B. Reich
Issue Date: 05.06.05
More permeable borders seem to make it more difficult for a nation to maintain a mixed economy, regulate
capital in the public interest, provide decent wages, and foster a political coalition to defend all of the
above. Indeed, there is an extensive conservative literature contending that the global market renders the
role of the state moot, and good riddance. Yet it remains entirely possible to maintain a domestic social
contract while developing a robust internationalism with rules that benefit everyone, not just the elite, and
to build a wealthy and competitive nation that boasts the most productive citizens on the planet.
Global commerce in goods and services does make it easier for a dominant elite in Washington to pursue its
preferred brand of laissez-faire and seek to remake America into a low-tax, low-regulation, low-wage
nation. All of it seems to be happening by chance -- but, of course, specific policy choices are driving it. …
Bigger and Better
T@P When it comes to providing broad-based social-insurance programs, it’s the government that’s rational
and the market that’s dumb.
By Jacob S. Hacker
Issue Date: 05.06.05
Remember those bumper stickers during the early-1990s fight over the Clinton health plan? “National Health
Care? The Compassion of the IRS! The Efficiency of the Post Office! All at Pentagon Prices!” In American
policy debates, it’s a fixed article of faith that the federal government is woefully bumbling and expensive in
comparison with the well-oiled efficiency of the private sector. Former Congressman Dick Armey even
elevated this skepticism into a pithy maxim: “The market is rational; government is dumb.”
But when it comes to providing broad-based insurance -- health care, retirement pensions, disability
coverage -- Armey’s maxim has it pretty much backward. The federal government isn’t less efficient than
the private sector. In fact, in these critical areas, it’s almost certainly much more efficient. …
Blocked Out
T@P A lifeline to cities, the Community Development Block Grant program faces elimination. It will probably
be saved -- but it also needs fixing.
By Alyssa Katz
Issue Date: 05.06.05
Here’s one way to sound the alarm about the impending death of a federal program that tens of millions
benefit from and almost no one has heard of: Accuse President Bush of copycatting al-Qaeda. At a February
meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National League of Cities, and National Association of Counties,
Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley invoked the September 11 attacks on “our metropolitan cores,” then went
on to say: “Years later, we are given a budget proposal by our commander in chief, the president of the
United States, and with a budget axe, he is attacking America’s cities. He is attacking our metropolitan
core.”
O’Malley’s incendiary words got the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which provides
nearly $5 billion yearly in aid to cities and counties, what was no doubt its first segment on Paula Zahn Now.
O’Malley waxed apocalyptic for a reason: The Bush administration’s budget proposes to eliminate the CDBG
and related programs run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), creating in their
place a much smaller operation under the Department of Commerce. (For that matter, all grants to state
and local governments are slated to decline by $10.7 billion next year alone, according to the Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities.) The change would effectively kill infrastructure funding that cities have relied
on ever since Richard Nixon and Congress created the CDBG in 1974. …
T@P At the same time Republicans try to cut Social Security benefits, they're increasing them for the
wealthiest recipients.
By Robert S. McIntyre
Issue Date: 05.06.05
Late in the evening of St. Patrick’s Day, while much of America was out carousing, our hardworking U.S.
senators stayed in session. It was time for the Senate to take its first stab at addressing Social Security’s
long-term financial health since President Bush began his push to restructure the program. The result wasn’t
pretty.
Did our devoted lawmakers vote to give the program a new infusion of revenues to meet its needs? To reduce
future benefits to bring them in line with expected receipts? Or to finally take some steps to solve Social
Security’s most daunting problem, the government’s ballooning debt? No, no, and heavens no. Instead, our
fearless leaders voted to increase Social Security benefits, in a way carefully targeted mainly to benefit the
best-off retirees. …
T@P Before you write off the UN, consider this.
By The American Prospect Staff
Issue Date: 05.06.05
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) shipped 5,612,257 student kits, 201,416 cartons of chalk,
and 5,106,885 school bags for primary and intermediate-level schoolchildren in Iraq from the start of the
Iraq War in 2003 through November 2004 … Through UNICEF’s “Immunization plus” program, the distribution
of high-dose vitamin A capsules has averted at least 1 million child deaths since 1998 … Since the UN–
sponsored Global Polio Eradication Initiative began in 1988, worldwide cases of polio have plummeted from
350,000 in 1988 to 1,263 in 2004 … UNICEF aims to eradicate polio from the globe by 2008 … The Office
of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has won two Nobel Peace Prizes in the past half-century
… Since 2002, the UNHCR has helped build 100,000 shelters in Afghanistan, providing homes for up to half
a million Afghans …
Pat Roberts was just kidding; enemies of "activist judges" most definitely are not.
By The American Prospect Staff
Issue Date: 05.06.05
The release on March 31 of a report by the presidentially appointed Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction brought forth the non-news that
America’s intelligence community was mistaken in its assessment of Saddam Hussein’s programs. Yet, the
media missed perhaps the single most important sentence in the report, page 8’s observation that “we were
not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received from the
Intelligence Community.” The commission, in other words, accomplished precisely what the president, who
handpicked its members and defined its scope, had wanted it to do: cast the blame for the debacle on
intelligence professionals while exonerating by omission the administration’s leading policy-makers. …
Spring is in the air, and the right has caught judge-bashing fever like never before. The Terri Schiavo
brouhaha featured death threats against the judges involved. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay swore that
they would “answer for their behavior.” John Cornyn speculated on the Senate floor that maybe there was a
reason for the recent spate of violence against judges. …
As the Bush administration tells it, America is shining freedom’s light into the darkest corners of Middle
Eastern autocracies. But if the conduct of public affairs here and there is beginning to converge, that’s also
because our government has become as indifferent to the rule of law as some of theirs. …
The following article
By Noam Chomsky
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The elections of November 2004 have received a great deal of discussion, with exultation in some quarters,
despair in others, and general lamentation about a “divided nation.” They are likely to have policy
consequences, particularly harmful to the public in the domestic arena, and to the world with regard to the
“transformation of the military,” which has led some prominent strategic analysts to warn of “ultimate doom”
and to hope that U.S. militarism and aggressiveness will be countered by a coalition of peace-loving states,
led by—China (John Steinbruner and Nancy Gallagher, Daedalus). We have come to a pretty pass when such
words are expressed in the most respectable and sober journals. It is also worth noting how deep is the
despair of the authors over the state of U.S. democracy. Whether or not the assessment is merited is for
activists to determine.
Though significant in their consequences, the elections tell us very little about the state of the country, or
the popular mood. There are, however, other sources from which we can learn a great deal that carries
important lessons. Public opinion in the U.S. is intensively monitored and, while caution and care in
interpretation are always necessary, these studies are valuable resources. We can also see why the results,
though public, are kept under wraps by the doctrinal institutions. That is true of major and highly
informative studies of public opinion released right before the election, notably by the Chicago Council on
Foreign Relations (CCFR) and the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland
(PIPA), to which I will return.
One conclusion is that the elections conferred no mandate for anything, in fact, barely took place, in any
serious sense of the term “election.” That is by no means a novel conclusion. Reagan’s victory in 1980
reflected “the decay of organized party structures, and the vast mobilization of God and cash in the
successful candidacy of a figure once marginal to the ‘vital center’ of American political life,” representing
“the continued disintegration of those political coalitions and economic structures that have given party
politics some stability and definition during the past generation” (Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Hidden
Election, 1981). In the same valuable collection of essays, Walter Dean Burnham described the election as
further evidence of a “crucial comparative peculiarity of the American political system: the total absence of
a socialist or laborite mass party as an organized competitor in the electoral market,” accounting for much of
the “class-skewed abstention rates” and the minimal significance of issues. Thus of the 28 percent of the
electorate who voted for Reagan, 11 percent gave as their primary reason “he’s a real conservative.” In
Reagan’s “landslide victory” of 1984, with just under 30 percent of the electorate, the percentage dropped
to 4 percent and a majority of voters hoped that his legislative program would not be enacted.
What these prominent political scientists describe is part of the powerful backlash against the terrifying
“crisis of democracy” of the 1960s, which threatened to democratize the society, and, despite enormous
efforts to crush this threat to order and discipline, has had far-reaching effects on consciousness and social
practices. The post-1960s era has been marked by substantial growth of popular movements dedicated to
greater justice and freedom and unwillingness to tolerate the brutal aggression and violence that had
previously been granted free rein. The Vietnam War is a dramatic illustration, naturally suppressed because
of the lessons it teaches about the civilizing impact of popular mobilization. The war against South Vietnam
launched by JFK in 1962, after years of U.S.-backed state terror that had killed tens of thousands of
people, was brutal and barbaric from the outset: bombing, chemical warfare to destroy food crops so as to
starve out the civilian support for the indigenous resistance, programs to drive millions of people to virtual
concentration camps or urban slums to eliminate its popular base. By the time protests reached a substantial
scale, the highly respected and quite hawkish Vietnam specialist and military historian Bernard Fall wondered
whether “Viet-Nam as a cultural and historic entity” would escape “extinction” as “the countryside literally
dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size”—particularly
South Vietnam, always the main target of the U.S. assault. When protest did finally develop, many years
too late, it was mostly directed against the peripheral crimes: the extension of the war against the South to
the rest of Indochina—terrible crimes, but secondary ones.
State managers are well aware that they no longer have that freedom. Wars against “much weaker enemies”
—the only acceptable targets—must be won “decisively and rapidly,” Bush I’s intelligence services advised.
Delay might “undercut political support,” recognized to be thin, a great change since the Kennedy-Johnson
period when the attack on Indochina, while never popular, aroused little reaction for many years. Those
conclusions hold despite the hideous war crimes in Falluja, replicating the Russian destruction of Grozny ten
years earlier, including crimes displayed on the front pages for which the civilian leadership is subject to the
death penalty under the War Crimes Act passed by the Republican Congress in 1996—and also one of the
more disgraceful episodes in the annals of U.S. journalism.
The world is pretty awful today, but it is far better than yesterday, not only with regard to unwillingness to
tolerate aggression, but also in many other ways, which we now tend to take for granted. There are very
important lessons here, which should always be uppermost in our minds—for the same reason they are
suppressed in the elite culture.
Returning to the elections, in 2004 Bush received the votes of just over 30 percent of the electorate, Kerry
a bit less. Voting patterns resembled 2000, with virtually the same pattern of “red” and “blue” states
(whatever significance that may have). A small change in voter preference would have put Kerry in the White
House, also telling us very little about the country and public concerns.
As usual, the electoral campaigns were run by the PR industry, which in its regular vocation sells toothpaste,
life-style drugs, automobiles, and other commodities. Its guiding principle is deceit. Its task is to undermine
the “free markets” we are taught to revere: mythical entities in which informed consumers make rational
choices.In such scarcely imaginable systems, businesses would provide information about their products:
cheap, easy, simple. But it is hardly a secret that they do nothing of the sort. Rather, they seek to delude
consumers to choose their product over some virtually identical one. GM does not simply make public the
characteristics of next year’s models. Rather, it devotes huge sums to creating images to deceive consumers,
featuring sports stars, sexy models, cars climbing sheer cliffs to a heavenly future, and so on. The business
world does not spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year to provide information. The famed “entrepreneurial
initiative” and “free trade” are about as realistic as informed consumer choice. The last thing those who
dominate the society want is the fanciful market of doctrine and economic theory. All of this should be too
familiar to merit much discussion.
Sometimes the commitment to deceit is quite overt. The recent U.S.-Australia negotiations on a “free trade
agreement” were held up by Washington’s concern over Australia’s health care system, perhaps the most
efficient in the world. In particular, drug prices are a fraction of those in the U.S.: the same drugs,
produced by the same companies, earning substantial profits in Australia though nothing like those they are
granted in the U.S.—often on the pretext that they are needed for R&D, another exercise in deceit. Part of
the reason for the efficiency of the Australian system is that, like other countries, Australia relies on the
practices that the Pentagon employs when it buys paper clips: government purchasing power is used to
negotiate prices, illegal in the U.S. Another reason is that Australia has kept to “evidence-based”
procedures for marketing pharmaceuticals. U.S. negotiators denounced these as market interference:
pharmaceutical corporations are deprived of their legitimate rights if they are required to produce evidence
when they claim that their latest product is better than some cheaper alternative or run TV ads in which
some sports hero or model tells the audience to ask their doctor whether this drug is “right for you (it’s
right for me),” sometimes not even revealing what it is supposed to be for. The right of deceit must be
guaranteed to the immensely powerful and pathological immortal persons created by radical judicial activism
to run the society.
When assigned the task of selling candidates, the PR industry naturally resorts to the same fundamental
techniques, so as to ensure that politics remains “the shadow cast by big business over society,” as America’s
leading social philosopher, John Dewey, described the results of “industrial feudalism” long ago. Deceit is
employed to undermine democracy, just as it is the natural device to undermine markets. Voters appear to
be aware of it.
On the eve of the 2000 elections, about 75 percent of the electorate regarded it as a game played by rich
contributors, party managers, and the PR industry, which trains candidates to project images and produce
meaningless phrases that might win some votes. Very likely, that is why the population paid little attention
to the “stolen election” that greatly exercised educated sectors. And it is why they are likely to pay little
attention to campaigns about alleged fraud in 2004. If one is flipping a coin to pick the King, it is of no great
concern if the coin is biased.
In 2000, “issue awareness”—knowledge of the stands of the candidate-producing organizations on issues—
reached an all-time low. Currently available evidence suggests it may have been even lower in 2004. About
10 percent of voters said their choice would be based on the candidate’s “agendas/ideas/platforms/goals”: 6
percent for Bush voters, 13 percent for Kerry voters (Gallup). The rest would vote for what the industry
calls “qualities” or “values,” which are the political counterpart to toothpaste ads. The most careful studies
(PIPA) found that voters had little idea of the stand of the candidates on matters that concerned them.
Bush voters tended to believe that he shared their beliefs, even though the Republican Party rejected them,
often explicitly. Investigating the sources used in the studies, we find that the same was largely true of
Kerry voters, unless we give highly sympathetic interpretations to vague statements that most voters had
probably never heard.
Exit polls found that Bush won large majorities of those concerned with the threat of terror and “moral
values” and Kerry won majorities among those concerned with the economy, health care, and other such
issues. Those results tell us very little.
It is easy to demonstrate that for Bush planners, the threat of terror is a low priority. The invasion of
Iraq is only one of many illustrations. Even their own intelligence agencies agreed with the consensus among
other agencies, and independent specialists, that the invasion was likely to increase the threat of terror, as
it did; probably nuclear proliferation as well, as also predicted. Such threats are simply not high priorities as
compared with the opportunity to establish the first secure military bases in a dependent client state at the
heart of the world’s major energy reserves, a region understood since World War II to be the “most
strategically important area of the world,” “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest
material prizes in world history.” Apart from what one historian of the industry calls “profits beyond the
dreams of avarice,” which must flow in the right direction, control over two-thirds of the world’s estimated
hydrocarbon reserves—uniquely cheap and easy to exploit—provides what Zbigniew Brzezinski recently called
“critical leverage” over European and Asian rivals, what George Kennan many years earlier had called “veto
power” over them. These have been crucial policy concerns throughout the post-World War II period, even
more so in today’s evolving tripolar world, with its threat that Europe and Asia might move towards greater
independence, and worse, might be united: China and the EU became each other’s major trading partners in
2004, joined by the world’s second largest economy (Japan), and those tendencies are likely to increase. A
firm hand on the spigot reduces these dangers.
Note that the critical issue is control, not access. U.S. policies towards the Middle East were the same
when it was a net exporter of oil, and remain the same today when U.S. intelligence projects that the U.S.
will rely on more stable Atlantic Basin resources. Policies would be likely to be about the same if the U.S.
were to switch to renewable energy. The need to control the “stupendous source of strategic power” and to
gain “profits beyond the dreams of avarice” would remain. Jockeying over Central Asia and pipeline routes
reflects similar concerns.
There are many other illustrations of the same lack of concern of planners about terror. Bush voters,
whether they knew it or not, were voting for a likely increase in the threat of terror, which could be
awesome: it was understood well before 9/11 that sooner or later the Jihadists organized by the CIA and
its associates in the 1980s are likely to gain access to WMDs, with horrendous consequences. Even these
frightening prospects are being consciously extended by the transformation of the military, which, apart from
increasing the threat of “ultimate doom” by accidental nuclear war, is compelling Russia to move nuclear
missiles over its huge and mostly unprotected territory to counter U.S. military threats—including the threat
of instant annihilation that is a core part of the “ownership of space” for offensive military purposes
announced by the Bush administration along with its National Security Strategy in late 2002, significantly
extending Clinton programs that were more than hazardous enough, and had already immobilized the UN
Disarmament Committee.
As for “moral values,” we learn what we need to know about them from the business press the day after the
election, reporting the “euphoria” in board rooms—not because CEOs oppose gay marriage. And from the
unconcealed efforts to transfer to future generations the costs of the dedicated service of Bush planners to
privilege and wealth: fiscal and environmental costs, among others, not to speak of the threat of “ultimate
doom.” That aside, it means little to say that people vote on the basis of “moral values.” The question is
what they mean by the phrase. The limited indications are of some interest. In some polls, “when the
voters were asked to choose the most urgent moral crisis facing the country, 33 percent cited ‘greed and
materialism,’ 31 percent selected ‘poverty and economic justice,’ 16 percent named abortion, and 12 percent
selected gay marriage” (Pax Christi). In others, “when surveyed voters were asked to list the moral issue
that most affected their vote, the Iraq war placed first at 42 percent, while 13 percent named abortion
and 9 percent named gay marriage” (Zogby). Whatever voters meant, it could hardly have been the operative
moral values of the Administration, celebrated by the business press.
I won’t go through the details here, but a careful look indicates that much the same appears to be true for
Kerry voters who thought they were calling for serious attention to the economy, health, and their other
concerns. As in the fake markets constructed by the PR industry, so also in the fake democracy they run,
the public is hardly more than an irrelevant onlooker, apart from the appeal of carefully constructed images
that have only the vaguest resemblance to reality.
Let’s turn to more serious evidence about public opinion: the studies I mentioned earlier that were released
shortly before the elections by some of the most respected and reliable institutions that regularly monitor
public opinion. Here are a few of the results (Chicago Council of Foreign Relations):
A large majority of the public believe that the U.S. should accept the jurisdiction of the International
Criminal Court and the World Court, sign the Kyoto protocols, allow the UN to take the lead in international
crises, and rely on diplomatic and economic measures more than military ones in the “war on terror.” Similar
majorities believe the U.S. should resort to force only if there is “strong evidence that the country is in
imminent danger of being attacked,” thus rejecting the bipartisan consensus on “pre-emptive war” and
adopting a rather conventional interpretation of the UN Charter. A majority even favor giving up the
Security Council veto, hence following the UN lead even if it is not the preference of U.S. state managers.
When official Administration moderate Colin Powell is quoted in the press as saying that Bush “has won a
mandate from the American people to continue pursuing his ‘aggressive’ foreign policy,” he is relying on the
conventional assumption that popular opinion is irrelevant to policy choices by those in charge.
It is instructive to look more closely into popular attitudes on the war in Iraq, in the light of the general
opposition to the “pre-emptive war” doctrines of the bipartisan consensus. On the eve of the 2004 elections,
“three quarters of Americans say that the U.S. should not have gone to war if Iraq did not have WMD or
was not providing support to al Qaeda, while nearly half still say the war was the right decision” (Stephen
Kull, reporting the PIPA study he directs). But this is not a contradiction, Kull points out. Despite the quasi-
official Kay and Duelfer reports undermining the claims, the decision to go to war “is sustained by persisting
beliefs among half of Americans that Iraq provided substantial support to al Qaeda, and had WMD, or at
least a major WMD program,” and thus see the invasion as defense against an imminent severe threat. Much
earlier PIPA studies had shown that a large majority believe that the UN, not the U.S., should take the
lead in matters of security, reconstruction, and political transition in Iraq. Last March, Spanish voters were
bitterly condemned for appeasing terror when they voted out of office the government that had gone to war
over the objections of about 90 percent of the population, taking its orders from Crawford Texas, and
winning plaudits for its leadership in the “New Europe” that is the hope of democracy. Few if any
commentators noted that Spanish voters last March were taking about the same position as the large
majority of Americans: voting for removing Spanish troops unless they were under UN direction. The major
differences between the two countries are that in Spain, public opinion was known, while here it takes an
individual research project to discover it; and in Spain the issue came to a vote, almost unimaginable in the
deteriorating formal democracy here.
These results indicate that activists have not done their job effectively.
Turning to other areas, overwhelming majorities of the public favor expansion of domestic programs: primarily
health care (80 percent), but also aid to education and Social Security. Similar results have long been found
in these studies (CCFR). Other mainstream polls report that 80 percent favor guaranteed health care even if
it would raise taxes—in reality, a national health care system would probably reduce expenses considerably,
avoiding the heavy costs of bureaucracy, supervision, paperwork, and so on, some of the factors that render
the U.S. privatized system the most inefficient in the industrial world. Public opinion has been similar for a
long time, with numbers varying depending on how questions are asked. The facts are sometimes discussed in
the press, with public preferences noted, but dismissed as “politically impossible.” That happened again on the
eve of the 2004 elections. A few days before (October 31), the New York Times reported that “there is so
little political support for government intervention in the health care market in the United States that
Senator John Kerry took pains in a recent presidential debate to say that his plan for expanding access to
health insurance would not create a new government program”—what the majority want, so it appears. But it
is “politically impossible” and has “[too] little political support,” meaning that the insurance companies, HMOs,
pharmaceutical industries, Wall Street, etc., are opposed.
It is notable that such views are held by people in virtual isolation. They rarely hear them and it is not
unlikely that respondents regard their own views as idiosyncratic. Their preferences do not enter into the
political campaigns and only marginally receive some reinforcement in articulate opinion in media and journals.
The same extends to other domains.
What would the results of the election have been if the parties, either of them, had been willing to
articulate people’s concerns on the issues they regard as vitally important? Or if these issues could enter
into public discussion within the mainstream? We can only speculate about that, but we do know that it does
not happen and that the facts are scarcely even reported. It does not seem difficult to imagine what the
reasons might be.
In brief, we learn very little of any significance from the elections, but we can learn a lot from the studies
of public attitudes that are kept in the shadows. Though it is natural for doctrinal systems to try to induce
pessimism, hopelessness, and despair, the real lessons are quite different. They are encouraging and hopeful.
They show that there are substantial opportunities for education and organizing, including the development of
potential electoral alternatives. As in the past, rights will not be granted by benevolent authorities, or won
by intermittent actions—a few large demonstrations after which one goes home, or pushing a lever in the
personalized quadrennial extravaganzas that are depicted as “democratic politics.” As always in the past, the
tasks require day-to-day engagement to create—in part re-create—the basis for a functioning democratic
culture in which the public plays some role in determining policies, not only in the political arena from which it
is largely excluded, but also in the crucial economic arena, from which it is excluded in principle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Noam Chomsky is a linguist, social critic, and author of numerous articles and books, including Hegemony or
Survival (Owl/Metropolitan Books, 2003) and Pirates and Emperors, Old and New (South End Press, 2002).
Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?
By Michael I. Niman, AlterNet. Posted October 28, 2002.
Paul Wellstone Dies in Tragic Plane Crash
The death of the Minnesota senator, the conscience of the Senate, will have a major impact on American
politics.
Paul Wellstone was the only progressive in the U.S. Senate. Mother Jones magazine once described him as,
"The first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. senate." He was also the last. Since defeating incumbent
Republican Rudy Boschowitz 12 years ago in a grassroots upset, Wellstone emerged as the strongest, most
persistent, most articulate and most vocal Senate opponent of the Bush administration.
In a senate that is one heartbeat away from Republican control, Wellstone was more than just another
Democrat. He was often the lone voice standing firm against the status-quo policies of both the Democrats
and the Republicans. As such, he earned the special ire of the Bush administration and the Republican Party,
who made Wellstone's defeat that party's number one priority this year.
Various White House figures made numerous recent campaign stops in Minnesota to stump for the ailing
campaign of Wellstone's Republican opponent, Norm Coleman. Despite being outspent and outgunned, however,
polls show that Wellstone's popularity surged after he voted to oppose the Senate resolution authorizing
George Bush to wage war in Iraq. He was pulling ahead of Coleman and moving toward a victory that would
both be an embarrassment to the Bush administration and to Democratic Quislings such as Hillary Clinton who
voted to support "the president."
Then he died.
Wellstone now joins the ranks of other American politicians who died in small plane crashes. Another recent
victim was Missouri's former Democratic governor, Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks
before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first
dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft,
despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush. Investigators
determined that Carnahan's plane went down due to "poor visibility."
Carnahan was the second Missouri politician to die in a small plane crash. The first wa