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Today's
Stories
January 19, 2004
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
January
19, 2004
The G.O.P, Inc.
How
a Theology of "Free Markets" Destroyed the Party and
Brought Calamity the the Nation
By RICHARD W. BEHAN
The G.O.P. was once a respectable political party,
giving voice to cautious citizens who saw much to protect in
the affairs of the nation. The Democratic Party offered a forum
for less sanguine citizens to disagree and seek reform, and in
the healthy conflict between the two a robust democracy served
the nation well.
Neither party was rigidly ideological,
driven passionately to impose a set of beliefs, as the Taliban,
say, imposed Islam in prewar Afghanistan. Both parties respected
democracy.
Except in their Orwellian rhetoric, the
Republicans no longer do, and the G.O.P. has withdrawn from serving
the nation at large. About 25 years ago it became the political
arm of "Movement Conservatism," and today it promotes
not the general welfare but the commercial interests of corporate
enterprise.
Movement Conservatism is a self-serving
and socially malevolent cabal of mega-corporations, right-wing
think tanks in Washington, their archconservative foundation
benefactors, and an intricate nationwide network of linkages
in the communications media, religion, higher education, and
law. It has been called the "conservative labyrinth,"
and common to all its elements is a theology of "free markets,"
an ideology coming to full bloom in the Administration of George
W. Bush. Today, the G.O.P. seeks to impose it at every turn.
In the abstract, and historically, "free
markets" are hugely appealing.
In the primitive markets of The Wealth
of Nations, Adam Smith's seminal book of 200 years ago, there
was absolute parity in bargaining power between autonomous consumers
and subservient, proprietary producers. There were enough of
both, competing among and between each other, that no one on
either side could fix the market price. Prices were set only
by the aggregated bargaining of the market as a whole, and hence
were powerful signals of social preferences.
Smith detailed how such "free markets"
assured the socially optimum allocation of raw materials, capital,
labor, goods, services, and incomes, "as if by an invisible
hand."
"Free markets" so conceived
still enchant the simplistic and determined thinking of Movement
Conservatives, especially as they perceive and attack "government
intervention" in the markets. They choose to ignore, however,
200 years of subsequent economic history.
"Free markets" today are a
fantasy, because contemporary markets are wholly dominated by
corporate, not proprietary enterprise, and characterized by its
features: among others, by administered prices, branded goods
and services, transnationalization, vertical integration, wholesale
externalization of costs, consolidation by mergers and acquisitions,
the instantaneous and international mobility of capital, and
the subjugation, by ubiquitous advertising, of consumer sovereignty.
Corporate domination of "free markets" has destroyed
the ability of markets to make socially optimum allocations,
but none of this seems to penetrate the minds of Movement Conservatives.
Nor do they see that trumpeting "free markets" gives
free reign to corporate license. (A cynic might suspect otherwise.)
There is nothing socially optimum about
the calamitous conditions in the nation today.
A dangerous, unjust, and growing gap
between rich and poor festers ominously. Public education is
collapsing. Homelessness is rampant. Health care is denied 16%
of our citizens. Real wages are stagnant or declining. The nation's
physical infrastructure is crumbling. According to the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, eleven percent of American families are not adequately
fed,[1] while an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and other "lifestyle
diseases" ravishes the rest of society. State and municipal
governments retrench in fiscal panic, and federal deficits transcend
anything ever known. Our economy survives only by exporting high-paying
jobs and importing daily a billion dollars of foreign capital_to
finance not investment, but consumption. For the first time ever
we have invaded a sovereign nation without provocation, sundering
the world community and enraging much of it. In approximately
25 years, this is what Movement Conservatism has delivered, while
trumpeting "free markets."
Public policy is malfunctioning. It is
no longer fashioned to promote the welfare of the nation at large,
but to create, enhance, or protect the profit opportunities of
American corporations.
Two things occurred in sequence to enable
corporations first to intervene and then to dominate politics,
just as they have come to dominate markets.
Political campaigning switched, in the
1960's, from party-centered rallies and print media to candidate-centered
television_which was vastly more expensive. Then, in the 1970's
the campaign finance laws were rewritten, political action committees
were authorized, and corporate PAC money soon flowed in floods.
Today, about * of all campaign financing comes from corporate
sources, and it is not contributed as a public service.[2]
Often the payoffs are effected with infuriating
arrogance.
Noncompetitive contracts come to mind,
for the Halliburton and Bechtel Corporations to rebuild Iraq.
The purchase of energy policy by the Enron Corporation is another
example. Yet another is the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization
Act, signed by President Bush on December 8, 2003.
This law so heavily subsidizes the pharmaceutical
and health insurance industries nearly 700 lobbyists were deployed
to see it enacted.[3] At the photo-op signing ceremony, President
Bush was joined by five Senators and five Representatives. Together,
these eleven public servants accepted more than $14 million in
campaign contributions from the health and drug companies.[4]
(Roughly half went to Mr. Bush.) Among other provisions, the
law makes it illegal for Medicare, using its market clout, to
bargain down the cost of drugs, and effectively prohibits senior
citizens from buying their prescriptions at far lower prices
in Canada. Public policy to serve corporate well being? What,
conceivably, else? Free markets at work?
Public policy is now a commodity, to
be exchanged for value received.
The fantasy of "free markets"
is politically expedient for Republicans and economically rewarding
for their corporate clients. It suggests that parity still exists
between producers and consumers, making palatable any policy
said to increase the freedom of the market. (Deregulating markets
for electricity comes to mind. Think Enron.) Such policies tend
to increase only the freedom of corporate producers, typically
at great expense to consumers. (Ask any Californian.) Only a
malcontent would accuse Republicans of seeking this result intentionally.
How did the "free market" fantasy
destroy the Republican party? First it had to be institutionalized
as a coherent, secular theology, and that was done with skill,
dispatch, money, and patience as Movement Conservatism took shape.
In the writings of Friedrich von Hayek
(The Road to Serfdom, 1944), and his student Milton Friedman
(Capitalism and Freedom, 1962) the ideology was at hand. Free
markets, not governments, should regulate the affairs of society:
that is the extent of the argument. "Government is not the
solution," a devotee proclaimed, "government is the
problem." And that is the extent of the vision.
Nuanced thinking is not a trademark of
Movement Conservatism, however, and the need to apply the ideology
was seen to be acute in the 1960's and '70's. The nation's campuses
were percolating with protest, the result of anti-business, "liberal"
faculties encouraging their impressionable students. On the national
stage Nader's Raiders were mounting successful attacks on what
they alleged were excesses of corporate capitalism.
A seminal critique of the nation's leftward
drift was written in 1971 by Lewis F. Powell, Jr., a corporate
attorney, a former president of the American Bar Association,
a member of 11 corporate boards, and eventually a Supreme Court
Justice. The "Powell Manifesto" saw the future of the
free market at stake, and advocated a confrontational counterattack.
It would become a long term, comprehensive, nationwide campaign
to implant the "free market" paradigm, focusing on
four primary arenas: higher education, the mass media, politics,
and the court system. The "Manifesto" was widely circulated
and it would achieve stunning success.
First Adolph Coors was persuaded. Beginning
with a quarter-million dollar gift in the early 1970's he transformed
the obscure Analysis and Research Association into the Heritage
Foundation. It has prospered with Coors funding ever since, channeled
through his Castle Rock Foundation.
Endowed with corporate profits from the
past, other archconservative foundations also established right-wing
think tanks in Washington in the '70's and '80's or strengthened
existing ones. In addition to Castle Rock, twelve other foundations
form the financial core of Movement Conservatism. They are the
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Carthage Foundation,
the Earhart Foundation, The Charles G. Koch, David H. Koch, and
Claude R. Lambe foundations, the Phillip M. McKenna Foundation,
the JM Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Henry Salvatori
Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and the Smith Richardson
Foundation.[5]
The Heritage Foundation is the largest
and best financed beneficiary, but many others are familiar.
The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Manhattan
Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, the National Association
of Scholars, Accuracy in Academe, the Media Research Center,
and Accuracy in Media are prominent on the national level. Less
well known are hundreds of "free market" cells scattered
nationwide, all funded by these few foundations. (One such is
F.R.E.E._the Foundation for Research in Economics and the Environment.
It provides week-long indoctrinations into "free market"
ideology, at luxury resorts near its home in Bozeman, Montana..
The invited participants, with all expenses paid by F.R.E.E.,
are federal judges.)
The top 20 conservative think tanks spend
about $150 million a year, but not on short-term projects. Coordinated
by an umbrella group, the Philanthropy Roundtable, they concentrate
on a long-term ideological program: sustaining and expanding
the free-market paradigm, and enshrining it in public thought,
action, and policy.
Taking shape in the late '70's, Movement
Conservatism became a sort of economic Taliban, absolutist in
conviction, righteous, and anxious to impose its ideology on
the American people. It found its vehicle in the presidential
candidacy and election of Ronald Reagan, and over the next eight
years Movement Conservatism and the Republican Party came to
be coterminous.
There was little resistance. Since the
Republican Party traditionally has been the party of commerce
and finance, Movement Conservatism had only to sell an appealing
ideology to a receptive constituency. As the pursuit of "free
markets" came to mean "corporate well being,"
the transaction was consummated. The Republican Party took on
the ideology, and also assumed a commercial function: marketing
public policy as a product. It became the G.O.P., Inc., and forfeited
its role as a party of the people.
President Reagan's agenda came almost
whole-cloth from the Heritage Foundation. His massive tax cut
slashed current revenues, but Reagan shoveled trillions of dollars
to corporations in the defense industries anyway. In so doing
he added twice as much to the national debt as all his predecessors
combined, from George Washington to Jimmy Carter.
This was the first shot from the most
vicious and despicable weapon in the arsenal of Movement Conservatism:
pile more and more indebtedness onto future generations so that
debt service increasingly forecloses public expenditures for
anything else. The stupendous deficits of George W. Bush preordain
a starving public sector for decades to come.
In 1988 the Democrats learned how effectively
corporate financing can facilitate television-based campaigns.
A lot of money can make Willy Horton a household name. And so
by 1992, dominated by the Democratic Leadership Council, the
Democrats veered sharply toward the center, seeking corporate
financing for the Clinton campaign. Clinton delivered, enthusiastically
embracing "free trade," a global version of the free
market fantasy. The Democrats were flirting with their own transformation
to corporate status, and they continued in 2000, running free-trader
Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, once chairman of the DLC.
Ralph Nader's Greens couldn't see much
distinction between the G.O.P., Inc., and its Democratic emulators,
and they high-centered the election. The Supreme Court, sporting
a couple of Movement Conservatives on the bench, did the rest.
Some Democrats today are openly critical
of a centrist, corporate-friendly stance for the party. Others
still cling to it: the threat remains.
This is how the GOP, Inc., sells public
policy as a commodity today.
45 million Americans have no health care
coverage, as President Bush, on Heritage Foundation cue, undertakes
the privatizing of Medicare. The greater his success, the more
the Hospital Corporation of America will benefit. HCA operates
the country's largest chain of for-profit hospitals, but can't
make enough money honestly when Medicare is public. The company
has paid $1.7 billion in fines for overcharging Medicare and
Medicaid, the largest fraud settlement ever. HCA was formed by
a Mr. Thomas Frist. One of his sons, Thomas Jr., earned $160
million a year as CEO. Another son, William, has a $26 million
interest in HCA, and he is the Majority Leader of the United
States Senate. Health care corporations and PAC's have contributed
over $2 million to William Frist's campaigns.[6] Mr. Frist engineered
a provision in the Homeland Security Bill shielding the Eli Lilly
drug company from liability lawsuits. Lilly contributed $1.6
million to Senate election campaigns in the 2000 election cycle,
79% to the G.O.P., Inc. And now Mr. Frist has steered through
the Senate the Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act.
Drug sales are expected to increase, under the law, by $13 billion
a year.[7]
The American Enterprise Institute, the
Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation have crafted or influenced
virtually the entire programs of both domestic and foreign policy
for the George W. Bush Administration. They display the intricate
personal networks_mutually beneficial and self-serving_that characterize
Movement Conservatism.
Mr. Jeb Bush, the President's brother,
served as a Trustee of the Heritage Foundation. Virginia Lamp
Thomas is the Director of Executive Branch Relations there. Jeb
Bush's father appointed Ms. Thomas' husband to the Supreme Court,
which decided the 2000 election in favor of Jeb Bushs' brother.
Privatizing Medicare and public education are two of the targets
at Heritage.
Mr. Rupert Murdoch served on the Board
of The Cato Institute. He owns Fox Television News and the Weekly
Standard, virtual house organs of the Bush Administration. Mr.
Murdoch's application to acquire Direct TV was finally approved
by the Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Colin Powell's
son Michael. The approval was delayed because Mr. Murdoch's communications
empire exceeds the national media ownership cap of 35%. The Republican
House raised the cap with a rider on the Omnibus spending bill
to 39%--precisely the number Mr. Murdoch needs.
Charles Koch is a founder of the Cato
Institute. His brother David is a Director. The Cato Institute
wants to privatize both Social Security and the federal public
lands. Charles and David own Koch Industries, a $35 billion oil
company indicted in 1999 for cheating on its federal-land oil
leases. It faced charges of $214 million. The Kochs and their
employees contributed generously to George Bush's several campaigns.
David Koch and his wife gave $487,500 exclusively to Republican
candidates in the 2000 election cycle. In that cycle Koch Industries
contributed over a million dollars, 90% to the G.O.P., Inc.[8]
The Clinton Administration charged Koch
Industries with $352 million in pollution and hazardous waste
violations. The Bush Administration dropped the charges when
Koch Industries agreed to settle for $332 million less. Shortly
after that, the Bush Justice Department settled the lease-cheating
case for $20 million, saving Koch Industries another $194 million.[9]
The Kochs have given handsomely to the
Mercatus Center at George Mason University. So did Enron CEO
Kenneth Lay. Wendy Gramm, Senator Phillip Gramm's wife, was an
ardent deregulator at Mercatus, and sat on Enron's Board of Directors.[10]
Mr. Lay in turn was a Trustee of the
American Enterprise Institute. He no longer is, but more than
half the current trustees are CEO's of American corporations,
including Dow Chemical, State Farm Insurance, Mead Westvaco Corporation,
American Express, Merck & Co., Motorola, and Exxon/Mobil.
Vice President Richard Cheney has been
a Trustee of the American Enterprise Institute. His wife, Dr.
Lynn Cheney, is currently a senior staffer there. So is Richard
Perle, a chief architect of the National Security Strategy that
drove the invasion of Iraq. So is Michael A. Ledeen who, grateful
for Perle's work, reveled in the success of the Iraqi war. "Every
ten years or so," Ledeen said recently, "the United
States needs to pick up some crappy little country and throw
it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."[11]
The Annual Dinner of the American Enterprise
Institute was held last February 26th, in Washington. The featured
speaker was President Bush, who "...delivered a historic
address on the need for a new government in Iraq and the role
it could play in spreading democracy in the Middle East."
[12] Soon thereafter, justified by a threat we now realize he
fabricated, Mr. Bush picked up Iraq and threw it against the
wall.
[1] "Household Food Security in
the United States, 2001." U.S. Department of Agriculture,
ERS Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Report No. FANRR29,
October, 2002.
[2] See opensecrets.org website, at http://www.opensecrets.org/
[3] See Public Citizen Congress Watch,
June 2003
[4] See Center for American Progress,
"The Progress Report, December 9, 2003."
[5] See "How Conservative Philanthropies
and Think Tanks Transform US Policy," by Sally Covington,
in Covert Action Quarterly #63, Winter, 1998.
[6] See "The Bad Doctor; Bill Frist's
long record of corporate vice," by Doug Ireland, in the
L.A. Weekly, January 10-16, 2003.
[7] See "Understanding the New Medicare
Prescription Drug Benefit," published by Families, USA,
Nov. 25, 2003
[8] As reported in "Oil & Gas:
Top Contributors," at http://www.opensecrets.org/
[9] As reported in "Koch Industries
and the Pollution of the Bush Whitehouse," at www.mediawhoresonline.com/
[10] See "Bull Market," by
Garance Franke-Ruta, cover story in the Washington City Paper,
March 8-14, 2002
[11] As quoted in "The Demonstration
Effect," by Lewis H. Lapham, Harper's Magazine, June, 2003,
p. 11
[12] Described on the American Enterprise
Institute website, at http://www.aei.org/about/c
Richard W. Behan's latest book is Plundered Promise: Capitalism,
Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001).
For information about the book go to http://www.rockisland.com/~rwbehan/.
Behan is currently working on a more broadly rendered critique,
Citizens, Arise! A Patriotic Call to Retrieve Our Democracy.
This essay is deliberately not copyrighted,
so permission to reproduce it is unnecessary.
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