SURRENDERING TO THE TERRORISTS
Minutemanmedia.org– by Jim Hightower
Good grief. With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans?
Last week, 19 Democratic senators surrendered to bullying and fear mongering, extending the executive autocracy of the Bush-Cheney regime. By joining every Republican senator to okay Bush's blanket program of mass wiretapping that he had secretly launched, these 19 defectors from fundamental democratic ideals are surrendering your and my Constitutional rights.
In the name of "protecting" us, they voted to invade us. This law extends unprecedented and unconstitutional power to the White House, letting a president decide on his own whim to have the government listen in on hundreds of millions of our phone and internet messages. No courts, no warrants, no oversight.
Yes, terrorists are a threat, and, yes, we must be vigilant as a nation - but that doesn't mean being stupid. Bush likes to say that terrorists "hate us for our freedoms". If so, how pathetic for him and Congress to be so cowed that they react by removing our freedoms. Liberty is America's greatest treasure, our defining ideal - why are today's craven leaders surrendering something so essential to terrorists? The founders understood that you don't gain security by locking down liberty, and subsequent generations fought, bled, and died to secure that wisdom. Are we so weak today that we can't stand up both to the terrorists and to those who would shred our Constitutional principles?
Most of the media coverage of this legislation has focused on whether AT&T and other telecom giants should get retroactive immunity for having illegally helped the President spy on us. I think they should not, but let's not lose sight of the bigger issue. By massively expanding the executive branch's spy powers, it's our own elected representatives who are surrendering our civil liberties and betraying some 230 years of the rule of law.
SUBSIDIZING MANURE LAGOONS
Minutemanmedia.org– by Jim Hightower
Old MacDonald Incorporated, has a farm, and e-i-e-i-o, it stinks and it pollutes!
Washington is about to pass a humongous farm bill, and there has been wide coverage of the fact that the bulk of crop subsidies provided by the bill go to very large agribusiness operations -with 60 percent of family farmers getting not a dime in crop payments. However, there's another agribusiness subsidy stuck in this whopper of a bill that gets little media coverage. Under the guise of environmental improvement, it provides about $180 million to huge corporate entities that run industrialized hog and cattle operations. These factory farms keep the animals confined, feeding and medicating them in an assembly line process.
Having hundreds of animals crammed into these factory facilities, however, creates a special problem for industrial agriculture: waste. Hogs and cattle defecate and urinate. A lot. What to do with all this excrement? They channel it into lined ponds, called manure lagoons.
In 2002, as these massive-scale livestock operations were spreading across rural America, corporate lobbyists quietly changed a farm conservation program to make them outfits eligible for funding – and to declare that manure lagoons could be paid for as a "conservation measure."
How ironic, since these lagoons are notorious for leaking into groundwater, overflowing into nearby streams, and fouling the air for everyone downwind. The factory operations also are squeezing small, sustainable farmers out of business -- so it's doubly ironic that your and my tax dollars are being used to subsidize them.
Our nation's environmental laws were based for years on the ethical precept that the polluter must pay. Now that's been perverted to the unethical notion that we must subsidize the polluter.
THE OLYMPICS: LET THE SPYING BEGIN
Minutemanmedia.org– by Jim Hightower
It's another Olympic year -- that quadrennial spectacular of athletic prowess, international goodwill. and government spying on all who attend.
The government, this time around is the authoritarian regime of China. As in all host countries, the Chinese leaders are eager to put their best foot forward by building world-class sports facilities, removing poor people and beggars from sight, and generally putting polish on everything.
But -- pssssst -- look around. Isn't that a surveillance camera up there, over there, and back behind you, too? Indeed, the host city, Beijing, will have almost as many cameras as visitors -- and there has been a gold rush of U.S. corporations vying to get the multimillion-dollar contracts to set up the high-tech surveillance state before the summer games.
Honeywell is working with state police to install elaborate computer monitoring systems to analyze feeds from cameras throughout one of the main Olympic areas. GE has sold its powerful VisioWave system that allows authorities to control thousands of video cameras simultaneously, automatically alerting them to "suspicious" behavior. IBM has provided a computer system to analyze and catalogue people's movements.
Officials claim that this surge in techno-spying is necessary to protect visitors from terrorists. But the system's targets seem more designed to protect the regime from democracy activists and dissidents -- cameras are to be installed, for example, in Internet cafes, places of religious worship, and even in the Olympics media center. And when the games and visitors leave, the see-all spying apparatus will remain in place.
In the interest of quick profits, Honeywell, IBM, GE, and the rest are putting an American imprimatur on Chinese authoritarianism, providing the regime with the most advanced tools of repression. Not exactly the Olympic spirit, is it?
Add Comment
DON’T BLAME CHINA FOR TAXES – BLAME US
Minutemanmedia.org– by Jim Hightower
"Made in China" has become a warning label. Look out – toxics in toothpaste, arsenic in shrimp, lead in toys!
Politicians are pointing their fingers at China's lackadaisical approach to product safety. But wait a minute – where, oh where, are our own regulatory watchdogs?
The big shock is not that Chinese-made toys are laden with lead, but that America's Consumer Product Safety Commission is a toothless watchdog that employs exactly one inspector to oversee the safety of all toys sold in the United States. Likewise, the Food and Drug Administration has licensed 714 Chinese plants to manufacture the key ingredients for a growing percentage of the antibiotics, painkillers, and other drugs we buy, but provides practically no oversight of these plants. In 2007, for example, FDA inspected only 13 of them.
An even bigger shock is that our consumer protection laws are so riddled with loopholes that unsafe products can legally come into our country. Take phthalate, a chemical additive in plastics that is suspected by scientists here and in Europe of inhibiting testosterone production in infant boys. Yet, Mark Shapiro, author of “Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products,” reports that while the European Union has banned the use of phthalates in products aimed at children under three years of age, our government has refused to act.
Thus, China has factories that manufacture two lines of toys -- one without phthalates for shipment to European countries, and one with phthalates for export to our children.
The problem is not with the Chinese, but with our own corporate chieftains who have moved their manufacturing to China specifically to get these kinds of low-cost shortcuts in production while simultaneously demanding that Washington cut back on regulations that protect us consumers. We must put our own house in order.
BILLIONAIRES UP, AMERICA DOWN
Minutemanmedia.org– by Holly Sklar
When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great.
Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the “Forbes” list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the “Forbes 400” went billionaires only. This year, you’d need a “Forbes 482” to fit in all the billionaires. A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add another $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she’d need another $300 million to reach the “Forbes 400” minimum of $1.3 billion. The average “Forbes 400” member has $3.8 billion.
When the “Forbes 400” began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says “Forbes,” “Wall Street is king.” Nearly half the 45 new members, says “Forbes,” “made their fortune in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer.”
The 25th anniversary of the “Forbes 400” isn’t party time for America. We have a record 482 billionaires –- and record foreclosures. We have a record 482 billionaires –- and a record 47 million people without any health insurance. Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires –-and 5 million more people living below the poverty line.
The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won’t get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the “Forbes” Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525). Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer.
Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top one percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent. In 2004, 1 out of every 6 households had zero or negative net worth. Nearly 1 out of 3 households had less than $10,000 in net worth, including home equity. That’s before the mortgage crisis hit.
In 1982, when the “Forbes 400” had just 13 billionaires, the highest-paid CEO made $108 million and the average full-time worker made $34,199, adjusted for inflation. Last year, the highest-paid hedge fund manager hauled in $1.7 billion, the highest-paid CEO made $647 million, and the average worker made $34,861, with vanishing health and pension coverage. The “Forbes 400” is even more of a rich men’s club than when it began. The number of women has dropped from 75 in 1982 to 35 today. The 400 richest Americans have a conservatively estimated $1.54 trillion in combined wealth. That amount is more than 11 percent of our $13.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP) –- the total annual value of goods and services produced by our nation of 303 million people. In 1982, “Forbes 400” wealth measured less than 3 percent of U.S. GDP.
And the rich, notes “Fortune” magazine, “give away a smaller share of their income than the rest of us.”
Thanks to mega-tax cuts, the rich can afford more mega-yachts, accessorized with helicopters and mini-submarines. Meanwhile, the infrastructure of bridges, levees, mass transit, parks and other public assets inherited from earlier generations of taxpayers crumble from neglect, and the holes in the safety net are growing. The top one percent of households – average income $1.5 million – will save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax Justice. That’s more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department, Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Tax cuts will save the top one percent a projected $715 billion between 2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus interest. The children and grandchildren of today’s underpaid workers will pay for the partying of today’s plutocrats and their retinue of lobbyists.
It’s time for Congress to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and close the loophole letting billionaire hedge fund speculators pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It’s bad for our nation now.
THE COST OF LIVING EXTREMELY WELL
Minutemanmedia.org– by Jim Hightower
Time for another peek into the "Lifestyles of the Rich and Cranky."
The vast majority of Americans - those making $50,000 a year or less - are stretching to make ends meet these days, but I'll bet they never pause to think about how hard life is for their fellow citizens who're immensely rich. Luckily, we have “Forbes”' magazine's "Cost of Living Extremely Well Index" to inform us about this suffering.
Yes, the über-rich are getting ever more über, but what you probably don't know is that the cost of their lavish lifestyles is increasing astronomically. Were you aware, for example, that the price of a catered dinner for 40 of your closest friends jumped 31 percent in the past year? You used to entertain them for $7,500 - but now it's nearly $10,000. It's enough to drive you to McDonalds!
Also, while some families worry about the increase in the price of home heating, few ever think about the fact that the price of a Russian sable fur coat is up 18 percent, now topping $225,000. But if you want to run with the big dogs of wealth, you really have no choice but to pay the freight. Being super-rich, after all, is about saving face with your peers. Speaking of which, did you know that a facelift that cost some $14,000 last year now will set you back $17,000?
Sometimes, you just want to get away from it all, which is why so many of the swells are moving into double-wides. Not house trailers, darling - double-wide private jets! They only cost $150 million each, and they're said to be as comfy as mobile mansions.
The good news is you can still get a 45-minute session with a New York Upper East Side psychiatrist for $300. Now that's a bargain that every stressed-out rich person should jump at.
Add Comment
Loading....