COMMENT
Comment Tyranny of the Market 'The rising tide is now lifting the yachts, but swamping the rawboats.' —Gary Burt/ess, economist at the Brookings Institution, and Timothy Smeeding, professor of...
...If we can't have socialism today, we should insist on a higher minimum wage, stronger unions, and a steeper income tax...
...Most receive research money from the oil and coal industries...
...Shahar...
...There's a booming business here...
...The cost of this counterattack was just a drop in his bucket, but his friends at The Wall Street Journal think he made a mistake by responding to what it called "a group of postadolescent protesters...
...a New Orleans-based company that runs the world's biggest gold mine in the rain forests of Indonesia...
...she sard, adding that she was impressed b\ "the exliemclv respectful uav in which thev talked about Fran and me and our ceremony...
...But an astonishingly diluted analysis is also being sold to us by corporations that fund much of the research we hear about...
...So what has the response been by the elite...
...Otherwise, 80 percent of Americans will remain hostage to the AT&Ts and the GMs—and their cheering stockholders who bid the price up when the pink slips are distributed...
...Thai's what they're taught to do at Harvard Business School...
...This is the same attorney general who went to the Supreme ( ourl to defend Georgia's anti-sodomy laws, the ones that outlaw all acts except the missionary one...
...Upon graduation from law school, the attorney general offered her a job...
...intelligence cable on FRAPH, -jted by Allan Nairn :n The Nation...
...Prison Hunt You've probably heard of the chain gangs that have returned with so much lanlare in the South...
...He also took out a two-page ad in The New York Times, alleging a "smear campaign" by unnamed "foreign interests" funded by the U.S...
...No one...
...No kidding...
...Between 1983 and 1989...
...Page 24), prison guards have the second most powerful lobbying group in the state...
...That's why it's important now to press for rigorous government regulation of industry pollution, the national distribution of zero-emission automobiles, and the development of solar power as a universal, daily energy source...
...Inaction on mv part," he said '"would constitute tacit approval of this purported marriage and jeopardize the proper function of this office...
...Outside Agitators Pitv the giant multinational, having to defend little things like human-rights abuses...
...When you look at wealth instead of income, the figures are even more staggering...
...The inmates were not given blaze-orange garb to prevent an accident...
...Much hand-wringing, so compulsively performed at The Washington Post that a rash broke out among its editorial writers...
...Remember the study suppressed by the Reagan Administration during the 1980s that found babies benefited significantly from the WIC program...
...Fven as the Christian Coalition...
...officials intervened to fiee FRAPH leaders from jail after thev were arrested cither by Haitian authorities or I '.S...
...But stale investigators seemed less concerned about the safelv of the prisoners than about the risk thai thev might get away...
...The reason is that no one has been able to come up with plausible and practical ideas for dealing with them...
...In 1975...
...A recent New York Times article quoted the head of this lobby proudly describing the state's prisons as a "growth industry...
...Allen's total compensation is $5,489,000 a year...
...But Allen and AT&T were doing just what good little capitalists arc supposed to do: juggling and junking workers to help the bottom line...
...It did...
...No...
...But it didn't run counter to the wishes of Washington, which set up FRAPH in the first place...
...Not counting benefits, between March 1994 and March 1995...
...After these latest layoffs, AT&T boasts huns of" steel...
...shipments in July 1993...
...Even in the area of the Freeport mine, the Indonesian government has been accused of murdering and torturing separatists...
...Special Forces teams told FRAPH members that as long as they kept their guns out of view...
...for her part, was ecst.inc...
...AT&T wasn't even losing money...
...But he withdrew that offer when he heard of ShahaCs nuptials, which took place in a synagogue with a rabbi presiding...
...His nostalgia is not borne out by a look back at the textile mills, coal mines, and slaughterhouses of a bygone era, and even Reich concedes that few CEOs will respond to pleas that they behave better...
...Indeed, employees of the California prison system lobbied hard for the "three-strikes" bill, which has tunneled nonviolent drug offenders away from community-based treatment programs and into prison...
...To get an idea of how skewed the income distribution is in this country, consider this: in 1990, the richest 1 percent of Americans accounted for as much income as the bottom 40 percent...
...Nairn reports, and fanned across ihe Haitian countryside to recruit agents, among them FRAPH leaders, Nairn also notes that senior U.S...
...But I bet you haven't heard about a new kind of prison activity that we've come up with here in Wisconsin—and that's to use prisoners as hunting dogs...
...In 1965, it wiped out hundreds of thousands of political opponents...
...But more likely they were llicie to see thai U.S...
...troops The arrests of FRAPH memheis by U.S...
...Within a few years, the Republicans, and even the corporate skeptics, will have all the evidence of forthcoming disaster they can stand—a diseased populace, a desiccated planet, and a biological simmer...
...with the approval of Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford, it invaded East Timor, resulting in the deaths of 200.000 Timorese one third of I lie population or' that fledgling nation...
...This is nonsense, and anyway, bribing corporations to behave better won't work, and it'll cost the Treasury money...
...It goes right along with "downsizing," "rightsizing," and other euphemisms for mass layoffs...
...In California, which leads the country—and every other country in the world—in its per-capita rate of incarceration (see "Crackdown on Kids...
...Jim Bob didn't take too kindly to that...
...I he government of Indonesia is a 10 percent partner in the mine, and thai government has perhaps the worst human-rights record of any government in the world...
...The median household income has been tailing for many years now...
...Right-to-Work State Score one for lesbian and gay rights—those rights thai Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition arc so hoi and bothered about...
...From 1979 to 1993...
...continuing their secret work with the repressive paramihtarv organisation known as FRAPH...
...Inmates were unsupervised by staff lor extended periods of time, and this created an unnecessary and totally avoidable risk ol escape...
...The real reason politicians like institutions so much is that they appear to be a clean, simple solution to social problems...
...Putting poor children in orphanages, elderly and disabled people in nursing homes, and more and more criminals behind bars are all themes of the Republican Revolution...
...Allowing FRAPH members to keep then' weapons ran precisely counter to the wishes ol Aiislide and the Haitian people, who understood that these weapons would be used against them mother day...
...Republicans in power have proven themselves extremely adept at pretending that information they don't like doesn't exist...
...intelligence operations are still running smoothly...
...however, go on record as saying that "the use of inmates for driving deer is not an appropriate inmate work activity or an appropriate use of state resources...
...forces, which received a lot of press coverage, were just "for publicity," Fmnian u el Constant, t he leader of FRAPH...
...You can bet he hasn't pulled out of Indonesia...
...Poor Jim Bob...
...But we need to go beyond these quaint New Deal notions and start campaigning for a guaranteed decent-paying job for everyone, or better yet, a guaranteed livable income...
...And they have "provided the base for the recent round of budget cuts to those government science programs designed to monitor the health of the planet...
...But cuts in social programs already mean more and more people face confinement in institutions...
...AT&T announces it is slashing 40,000 jobs, and its stock rises by $2,625...
...They say they saw Jejr hunters in the woods, and one said that a hunter pointed a gun at his chest and face...
...The possibilities aie endless, and if done right, state coffers would fill—along with a lew coffins...
...Discover magazine's Paul Hoffman demurred during The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer...
...Male workers without college degrees have been especially hard hit...
...In the big picture, prisons, nursing homes, and other live-in institutions cost significantly more than community-based programs...
...which is Hebrew for "being in search of God...
...Whv not charge hunters lees to participate in these slale-sponsoied festivities'' It could be a national craze: prisoners in South Dakota could help with flushing pheasants: prisoners in Montana could roust some elk...
...Wages and benefits for workers rose only 2.7 percent in 1995, the lowest since 1981...
...Allen gave the typical corporate rationale for the layoffs...
...The victory occurred in Atlanta in December, when an appeals court ruled that a lesbian could not be tired simply because she was about to marrv a woman...
...discovers that 1.1.S...
...To the extent wc can get in trim, well produce better margins, mure flexibility, and more cashflow to invest in other opportunities...
...This does not prove that global warming is taking place . . . this is one more piece of evidence that global warming is taking place...
...the\ could keep them...
...instead thev were dressed in street clothes or prison green...
...ln\estigative reporter Allan Nairn, in the January S' 15 issue of The Xmioti...
...occupation, a CIA contingent arrived trom Washington...
...the report said...
...Institutions offer to put away all those misfits—lock them up out of sight...
...Anyone ever heard of raising the minimum wage, strengthening unions, or making the income tax more progressive, for starters...
...a Post editorialist penned the following fatuous comment about the decline in wages and the inequality of incomes: "Everyone in politics is well aware of these two unwelcome trends, but so far the public discussion of them has been muted," said the scribe...
...Now if we don't hear from Jim Bob again, we'll know why...
...This is not one of my favorite days," said AT&T chairman Robert Allen, "but then I'm not one who is in so much pain as some of our workers...
...Nairn traces these weapons back to U.S...
...Occupied Haiti Defense Seeretar\ WiIlium Perr> and Joint Chic Is head John Shalikashv ili went to Haiti ostensibly lo inspect the peaceful transition ol power from President Jean-Bertrand Anstide to President Rene Prcval...
...he announced...
...Take the case of Freepoit-McMoian...
...So Reich's big proposal is to wipe out corporate income taxes for companies that treat their workers well In the process, he accepts the legitimacy of their hoary arguments against corporate income taxes, claiming that it amounts to "double taxation"—first on corporations, then on investors...
...It was a terrible, terrible, experience...
...The Journal advised...
...Reich's proposal only serves as ammunition for the Fortune 500, which has always wanted to abolish corporate income taxes...
...Is this veiled self-criticism...
...Imagine yourself at home—your kids, your neighbors...
...Indonesia has continued its craek'People are attracted to the new power element in town and want to be part of it.' Part of a 1993 US...
...During the first week of the U.S...
...But the reaction to this sizzling data has been almost uniformly tepid...
...Not the Post, evidently, which concluded by urging deficit reduction, even though cutting government spending will make income distribution even more lopsided...
...Profits reached record heights in 1995, as did the stock market...
...Ihe far right, and any Republicans m ( ongiess attempt lo cenv lights to gays and lesbians, the courls are more and more ire qucntlv recognizing Ihat Ihese ntihls are basic lo our constitutional freedoms...
...But there has been no tricklc-down effect, as the apologists for the rich once promised...
...Love that corporate speak, "get in trim...
...An employer should evaluate an employee based on work experience...
...Environmental and human-rights activists have been protesting Freeport's Indonesian connections, even holding a demonstration outside CEO Jim Bob Moffett's house...
...The confusion [about global warming] is intentional, expensively gift-wrapped by the energy industries.' Ross Gelbspan, Harper's downs both in East Timor and in Indonesia...
...In mid-November, at the Oakhill Correctional Institution just south of Madison, a prison guard ordered move than a do/en prisoners on two occasions to flush deer out of the woods so that the guard, his boss, and some friends could bag a few—deer, that is...
...Better to have said nothing, and gone on with business as usual...
...On July 29...
...We have courageous people like Robin Joy Shahar to thank for that...
...Unfortunately, they've been largely successful: "Through their frequent pronouncements in the press and on radio and television, thev have helped to create the illusion that the question is hopelessly mired in unknowns," Gelbspan writes...
...he's just hired better P.R...
...These scientists have repeatedly downplayed the findings of the larger scientific community in order, in Gelbspan's words, "to drain the issue of all sense of crisis...
...That's the credo of the savvy multinational...
...The tentative quality of these revelations stems in part from a tendency among scientists to avoid a language of absolutes...
...Reich took to The New York Times op-ed page after the AT&T announcement to pine for the day when corporate executives had a more enlightened, paternalistic approach to their workers...
...The Wall Street Journal reported...
...Next they'll refer to firings as "body sculpting...
...Ross Gelbspan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, identified a list of corporate-funded scientists in a recent issue of Harper's...
...when such composite data began to be gathered...
...But the Court of Appeals ruled that Shahar has a fundamental right of intimate association under the First Amendment, and that the wedding, was "inextricably entwined with Shahar's exercise of hei ieligious belief.'1 The couple took the fast name Shahar...
...Newt Gingrich's dream of Boys Towns to house the children of AFDC recipients has yet to be realized...
...Kissineet is now on the board of directors of Frccpor: I In recent years...
...that can't be...
...They create the illusion of order and control...
...All in a Simmer Now that we have lived through the warmest year and the warmest half-decade on record, a number of formerly hesitant scientists have begun to admit that global warming is not a hoax, and that human behavior seems to be drastically altering the ozone...
...the richest 1 percent grabbed 62 percent of the newly created wealth, and the richest 20 percent grabbed 99 percent, as Alexander Cockburn has noted...
...By then it will be too late...
...Both financially and morally, it will bankrupt us...
...Agency for International Development...
...I'm OK, You Belong in an Institution Along with lower taxes and smaller government, institutionalizing people has captured the Republican imagination...
...told Nairn...
...Institutions are also all the rage in Wisconsin, where the state legislature is yanking away Medicaid funding that allows disabled people to live in their own homes, and pressing them to go into nursing homes...
...one of his senior vice presidents said...
...And the mine itself is causing environmental damage...
...Something much more fundamental needs to be done to dethrone the tyranny of the marketplace...
...The court sent the case back Lo a lower court to see whether the stale could demonstrate a "compelling" government interest to override Shahar's rights This is the most difficult standard that the court could ha\c imposed...
...The appeal of institutionalization has nothing to do with saving money...
...The trend is a symptom of American cynicism about the prospect for a free, heterogeneous, civil society...
...miliiary intelligence and the CIA are still, to this day...
...as their real incomes have tumbled 30 percent between 1973 and 1993...
...in the first nine months of 1995, it earned almost 53 billion...
...Just keep quiet, hope the protesters go away, and keep those profits coming...
...Comment Tyranny of the Market 'The rising tide is now lifting the yachts, but swamping the rawboats.' —Gary Burt/ess, economist at the Brookings Institution, and Timothy Smeeding, professor of public policy at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, writing in The Washington Post Ain't capitalism grand...
...And, most ominously, they appeal to the bigotry of the wealthy, the able-bodied, and those free of the grasp of the criminal-justice system...
...1995...
...it fell 3 percent in real terms while the economy grew 35 percent...
...A United Nations panel of scientists hedged with the comment that these climate changes are "unlikely to be entirely natural in origin...
...Robin Joy Shahar worked as a law clerk in the Georgia attorney general's office in 1991...
...wages and salaries fell by more than 2 percent, adjusting for inflation...
...He responded by making a half-hour infomercial defending the company's record in Indonesia, and he bought time on local stations to broadcast it...
...And the bottom line has never luoked better for corporate America...
...This has caused a wave of fear among the seriously disabled...
...Robert Reich, Clinton's Secietary of Labor, is not much more helpful...
Vol. 60 • February 1996 • No. 2
