The evidence of US culpability in the destruction of democracy in Chile could not be more clear and undeniable. The disclosure of memos from the CIA, National Security Agency and other official sources points incontrovertibly --despite the lengthy catalogue of blatant denials by Henry Kissinger and many others--toward the US's central role in the coup. The documents speaking coldly of an "accretion of arsenic" has established without a doubt that the US decisionmakers had determined that a coup must take place, set the coup in motion, recruited leading actors, and bribed the media.

By Roger Bybee

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet now lies dead in his coffin at 91, disgraced by ever-expanding revelations about the $28 million or more he stashed away in secret accounts drawn from “public service” and his record of death and torture following “the first 9/11”: the US-supported coup against democratic socialist Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.

Architects of the campaign against Allende, such as Henry Kissinger, were afraid that the Chilean model of broad, solid left-wing unity and a peaceful transition to socialism would spread not only across Latin America but also especially to Italy, long a source of worry to US policymakers because of its immensely-powerful but intensely-divided Left. Thus, crushing the Chilean experiment in democratic socialism was viewed as imperative by the elite officials whose pro-corporate views largely shape US foreign policy.

The pattern of US activity visible in Chile has been repeated numerous times before and since:
 Concoct military “threats” to the “US interests” through endless official warnings about the dire dangers to America posed by tiny nations with miniscule militaries;
 Issue a steady stream of cynical US concerns about the threats to “democracy” posed by the target regime;
 Meanwhile, unleash a parallel, subterranean campaign to undermine democracy through bought-off local media serving up US-written propaganda, funding for lockouts and “strikes,” and ultimately a US-coordinated and financed military action.
 Finally, once the US goal is achieved and democratic sparks are fully extinguished, the US fervently proclaims its innocence of any involvement.

The manipulation of US media and world opinion was particularly blatant following the military coup in Chile. The coup resulted in the deaths of some 3,100 people and the imprisonment of 130,000, with some 28,000 subjected to indescribable tortures, generating unfavorable publicity for the US over its friendly relationship with the Chilean military and quick expressions of support for Pinochet’s new regime. In response, US officials were vociferous in fervently, absolutely, categorically denying any US role in the coup itself.

In case anyone still attaches any credence to the statements of top US government officials after the campaign of lies used justify the US occupation of Iraq, here’s a brief sampling of the lengthy catalogue of outright, unambiguous denials that were used in the case of Chile:
:

 President Gerald Ford, Sept. 1974: “There’s no doubt in my mind, our government had no involvement in any way whatsoever with the coup itself.”

 Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, June 1974:”Let me take this opportunity at the outset to restate that the United States government, the Central Intelligence Agency, had no role in the overthrow of the regime in Chile.”

 Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State-designate, Sept. 1973: “The CIA had nothing to do with the coup, to the best of my knowledge and belief.”

However, the US role was comprehensive and clearly calculated at destroying Chilean democracy. For example, Peter Kornbluh, editor of the “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier of Atrocity and Accountability,” encountered an astonishingly frank cable sent by CIA officials in Langley to their operatives in Santiago Chile on Sept. 27, 1970.

The extraordinary cable freely professed that the CIA officials sought to promote “the acceptance of the failure of the political solution and the need for a military one.” The authors envisioned creating an opportunity “to persuade the military that it their constitutional duty to prevent Allende from seizing power…” The memo continued,

“We conclude that it is our task to create a climate climaxing with a solid pretext that will force the military and the president to take some action in the desired direction.”
While the immediate public mood was not ready for anti-democratic action, the CIA officials were confident that they could set the stage for the coup with the proper application of US resources. In much the same way that US policy-makers were later to wholly manufacture the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980’s (handpicking leaders, writing their manifesto, arming them, providing global PR, and furnishing overall direction, as exposed by a Wall St. Journal news story), the CIA saw itself both constructing and directing a new Chilean oppositional forced aimed inexorably at a military coup.

To put the opposition on this trajectory, the CIA leadership envisioned multiple dimensions of “warfare” against Allende. The CIA was particularly concerned about the difficulty of persuading the world that Allende was a secret threat to democracy if there were no significant, visible internal dissent. Allende’s most infuriating move, in the eyes of the US, was the historic nationalization of Chile’s copper mines, long in the hands of US-owned firms such as Anaconda and Kennecott. However, the nationalization passed unanimously as even right-wing opponents of Allende dared not oppose the highly popular move.

Nonetheless, the solution remained obvious for US decisionmakers: if there is no mass, indigenous grass-roots opposition, then artificial “astro-turf” opposition must simply be implanted:

“We cannot endeavor to ignite the world if Chile itself is a placid lake. The fuel for the fire must come from within Chile. Therefore, the station should employ every stratagem, every ploy, however bizarre, to create this internal resistance. “

It was in the arena of “psychological warfare” where the CIA officials were most blunt about their need to “Discredit parliamentary solution as unworkable” and “Surface ineluctable conclusion that military coup is the only answer. This is to be carried forward until it takes place. “

Above all, the CIA called for a resolute commitment to thoroughly poisoning democracy in Chile. The cable’s authors chillingly warned:

“However, we must hold firmly to the outlines or our production will be diffused, denatured, and ineffective, not leaving the indelible residue in the mind that an accumulation of arsenic does.”

Nearly three decades later, some of this “indelible residue” of poison remains. Pinochet is dead and a moderate Socialist (and former torture victim) Michele Bachelet is now the president. But thanks to Pinochet’s economic policies, crafted by the recently-departed Milton Friedman and his “Chicago Boys” disciples, Chile ranks as one of the most inegalitarian nations in the world, featuring a handful of billionaires and huge armies of the desperately poor. Pinochet-era restrictions against union bargaining rights have remained in place.

Still, the New York Times editorially declared that “Chile is a heartening example of how a policy of economic liberalization can lift a people’s standard of living.” (April 20, 2001) and more recently claimed that “ won grudging international praise for some of the free-market policies he instituted, transforming a bankrupt economy into the most prosperous in Latin America.” (Dec. 11, 2006). Clumsily betraying the Times’ unmistakable ambivalence about its unswerving faith in the universal value of "free market" policies and the vicious repression required to impose them in Chile, Times’ reporter Jonathan Kandell added, “That repression gave the free-market policies time to take hold. Since the mid-1980s, Chile’s gross domestic product has grown an average of more than 6 percent a year, the most impressive performance in Latin America.”

However, that achievement looks much less “impressive” from the massive slums surrounding the skyscrapers of Santiago and elsewhere in Chile. A far more meaningful comment on Pinochet’s enduring legacy comes from the World Bank ranking of Chile as the 7th least equal of 65 nations studied in terms of wealth and income, as former Allende aide Marc Cooper reported in his book Pinochet and Me.

‘Last socialist mayor’ in US?
Frank Zeidler’s remarkable legacy
By Roger Bybee

The recent death of Milwaukee’s former mayor Frank Zeidler, 93, an ardent Socialist, ignites memories of a truly remarkable man who combined a lifelong commitment to justice, an unquenchable burning curiosity about every facet of life, and a legendary humility.

I first met Frank Zeidler at a protest rally back in 1973, just days after the September 11 coup in Chile where the CIA has sponsored the overthrow of democratic socialist Salvador Allende.

In the wake of Allende’s death and the instantaneous, scrupulously-coordinated crushing of the mass movements backing the Popular Unity Government, the mood that gray Saturday was somber outside the old Gothic-style Milwaukee Federal Building. The polite protest drew an incongruous blend of scruffy New Leftists like me and older democratic socialists like Frank, clad in a neat suit and fedora.

In introducing Frank to the throng, I made the somewhat macabre joke that the CIA had relentlessly targeted Allende but had somehow overlooked Zeidler and his efforts at “public enterprise” during his 12 years as mayor of Milwaukee.

Ironically, neither the local corporate class nor some elements on the Left fully understood Zeidler’s approach to running the city. Some ultra-Leftists disparaged Milwaukee’s tradition as mere “sewer socialism”—meaning clean government and a robust program of public works—and imagined that Milwaukee’s socialist mayors could have quietly snatched a few local means of production without the corporate elite noticing or sounding an all-out national alarm.

Unfazed by these fantasies, Frank Zeidler recognized the limits of his power, but stretched them to build a city meant to serve working people and the poor, not only the owners of major corporations. Zeidler championed an aggressive people-first direction that few big-city mayors except Chicago’s late Harold Washington have dared to attempt during recent decades.

"Socialism as we attempted to practice it here believes that people working together for a common good can produce a greater benefit both for society and for the individual than can a society in which everyone is shrewdly seeking their own self-interest," he once explained.

As a three-term mayor 1948-1960 and throughout the rest of his life, Zeidler was an outspoken advocate of what he called “public enterprise.” In contrast to the current “privatization” trend that now cloaks crony capitalism-- the transfer of public assets and contracts to favored corporations--Zeidler championed the notion that genuinely democratic local government could be a humane and efficient provider of public services so that working people and the poor could be full citizens.

During his regime, Milwaukee doubled the size of its library system, built new housing for veterans and low-income people, public swimming pools, maintained and expanded an incomparable park system that he inherited from the city’s previous socialist mayors Emil Seidel and Daniel Hoan, and constructed a variety of major projects like the Milwaukee Arena. Zeidler also launched an aggressive annexation program that doubled the city’s area and thus helped to contain white flight and make municipal services infinitely more cost-effective.

Moreover, he was also an unflinching advocate of racial justice in housing. His racist critics attacked Zeidler with rumors that he had posted billboards in the South urging African-Americans to flock to Milwaukee.
It is hard to look back at the Zeidler years without seeing them through a haze of nostalgia and feeling the immense setbacks afflicting workers and the poor. Milwaukee, long known as an industrial powerhouse, has lost some 75,000 manufacturing jobs since 1979, with some of its best-know firms like Johnson Controls and Master Lock now employing more workers in low-wage Mexico than Milwaukee. The incomes of city families, once supported by unionized industrial and public-sector jobs, are now less than half of the surrounding suburbs. The privatization trend has even reached Milwaukee’s water system, now run by the French firm Suez.
The beautiful park system, once Milwaukee’s “green necklace” has disintegrated under budgets strained by ever-expanding jail populations and fast-shrinking corporate taxes. Milwaukee now bears the distinction of being one of the most “hyper-segregated” cities in the nation, and an all-white jury acquitted white off-duty cops of beating a black man nearly to death despite plenty of witnesses. Instead of programs aimed at helping working people and the poor to become full participants in society, the city subsidizes huge corporations.
For instance, the city recently provided $25 million to Manpower (the temporary help agency) for a parking structure, even though Manpower enjoyed $14.9 billion global revenues and provided its CEO with $4.7 million in total compensation including stock option grants in 2004, not including $1.9 million in stock options from previous years.
During the last mayoral campaign, neither of the two leading candidates—solid liberals Congressman Tom Barrett (the eventual winner) and former AFSMCE local president and Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt—dared offer a peep of criticism when Tower Automotive announced that it was moving its 500 remaining jobs (out of a peak of 7,000) to Mexico. (Meanwhile, then-presidential candidate John Edwards met with the Tower workers about to be displaced.)
Under the constant threat of more corporate relocations, Milwaukee’s experiments in public enterprise in Milwaukee have seemingly been suspended indefinitely. Policy initiative now resides decisively in the hands of private real-estate developers and the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, the largest right-wing foundation in the US. The Bradley Foundation has been the most important funding source for ideological products (spending nearly $1 million on the overtly racist “Bell Curve”) and divisive social programs like school vouchers on the domestic front, while simultaneously promoting the neo-conservative game-plan for Iraq by bankrolling the Project for a New American Century.

The Bradley Foundation, with its blame-the-victim and tough-love philosophy being echoed constantly by its well-paid “scholars,” played a crucial role in popularizing welfare “reform.” The AFDC program, embedded in the Social Security Act to aid jobless parents caring for small children, was successfully transformed, in elite opinion, from an integral economic-aid program to a wasteful subsidy for moral degeneracy. As a result, enrollees in the new W-2 program find themselves stuck on a treadmill of low-wage jobs, inadequate childcare, and a future without exits.

But while the intellectual fashions in Milwaukee and the nation shifted to the Right with the financial momentum provided by Bradley and others, Frank Zeidler remained dedicated to the poor and working people on the domestic front and to multilateral justice on the international scene. Zeidler, to nearly the very end, kept alive the rich social and labor history of Milwaukee through painstaking research, incessant lectures to rapt audiences, and walking tours of the city.

Zeidler was also the driving force behind the United Nations Association and numerous other efforts to establish a framework for international peace and a just redistribution of resources, in sharp contrast to the prevailing doctrines of “preventive war” and “full spectrum dominance” from outer space to the ocean depths by US military might.

The New York Times, perhaps reflecting some neo-liberal wishful thinking that democratic socialism has been relegated to the dustbin of history, titled the obituary: “Frank P. Zeidler, 93, last socialist mayor, dies.”

Yes, former Frank Zeidler is gone, but he leaves behind a profoundly inspirational legacy of commitment to social justice both in his city and internationally.

And given smoldering public resentment against soaring economic inequalities and the deterioration of the public “commons” in Milwaukee and across America, it is far from certain that Zeidler will indeed be the last socialist to run a major US city.

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee writer and activist. He can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

Peace activists have traditionally longed for the day when the Pentagon would need to hold bake sales to fund their activities while human needs in the US were adequately funded.

Yet this prospect has never been more remote as the current Administration and Congress would like to shrink every other aspect of government except the military, Homeland Security, and new public subsidies for large “free-market” corporations.

While billions are squandered on the war in Iraq, people of conscience are rightfully preoccupied with ending the death and destruction. At times, we may note the waste of resources compared to the needs of New Orleans, still largely mired in slime 10 months after Hurricane Katrina came and went, and other pressing domestic priorities.

But with federal dollars flooding into Iraq, it is easy to lose sight of the day-to-day waste and routine fraud back at the Pentagon. Two decades ago, the discovery of the Pentagon paying $435 for claw hammers, $640 for toilet seats, and $7,600 for coffee makers triggered massive media coverage and incited ongoing public outrage. But in 2006, however, even worse can happen on a regular basis with barely any notice and even less outcry.

The New York Times reported July 11 that overruns and delays on weapons are running at epidemic levels at the Pentagon where projects are slated for tens and hundreds of billions of dollars. This, of course, doesn’t take into account the lack of open discussion on the need for these weapons in the first place.

Current US military doctrine---barely questioned by anyone who matters in government or major media-- calls for a boundlessly grandiose “Full Spectrum Dominance” by the US, ranging from outer space to under the oceans. Defense Department military spending is now at $441 billion (excluding about $120 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan). This outlay dwarfs the defense spending of all other nations. Moreover, the US military operates at least 700 bases in about 130 nations.

In the current environment of unchallenged rationales for even the most questionable military programs, one of the more egregious examples has been an information-gathering satellite program called the Space-Based Infrared System. The unit cost on this item has grown from $4.1 billion to $10.2 billion, an increase of 315%. The cost of another item, the F-22A Raptor, exploded from an estimated $125.15 billion to $361.33 billion for many fewer planes than the contract originally called for. Meanwhile, the F-16 plane now labeled obsolete is considered by many experts as more than adequate and definitely more economical.

At a moment when the advocates for defense spending are opposing a rise in the minimum wage (at its lowest value in 51 years) and imposing iron-clad restraints on all social spending, this bonanza for defense contractors is particularly obscene.

Yet, any question of the need for increased and barely-monitored defense spending is labeled as “unpatriotic,” and goes unchallenged by most leading Democrats. Barely considered in the debate over the enormous US military budget is the fact that the most devastating damage to Americans was enabled by simple box-cutters on 9/11 and low-budget “improvised explosive devices” on a daily basis in Iraq, cobbled together from cell- phone, garage-opener, and TV- remote parts.

While there are potential (although probably greatly exaggerated) nuclear threats represented by North Korea and Iran, any diplomatic effort towards achieving non-proliferation is regarded with great distaste by the Bush Administration. Why bother to negotiate when you can spend billions on missile shields that may or may not work, thereby rewarding contractors who happen to be big campaign contributors? One may also ask why the doctrine of “non-proliferation” doesn’t apply to the U.S. and other so-called legitimate nuclear powers.

The whole scenario is all too reminiscent of the Emperor who wore no clothes and got away with it. Who is establishing and enforcing objective standards for military projects after decades of watching military contractors, including many of the largest U.S. corporations, rip off the public to reward defense interests that may be political contributors? How does the nation really decide how many F-16’s or F-22A’s we need? The whole enterprise seems to represent the largest pseudo-scientific hoax in American life.

A recent report issued by Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities bluntly called the Pentagon’s financial-management practices “an embarrassment that wouldn’t pass muster in the private sector.” The nonpartisan group, composed of more than 600 current and retired business executive from U.S. companies, advocates shifting federal spending priorities to domestic needs instead of weapons systems as the true path to national security. The author of the report, Kwai Chan, pointed out that defense spending has increased about 48% since 2001 and will reach its highest level this year since the Korean War,

Nearly all of the BSP report was drawn came from government documents, including a disclosure by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget that 20 out of 23 defense programs examined by the OMB auditor lacked strong financial-management standards.

In reports to Congress in recent years, the Government Accountability Office found $1.2 billion in Army supplies shipped to Iraq that couldn’t be accounted for. In addition, they identified $35 billion worth of excess supplies and equipment and $100 million in airline tickets that were never used. They also found that 94% of Army National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers experienced problems with their paychecks in 2004. As for the entire Defense Department, its own Office of the Inspector General pronounced the department hopelessly “un-auditable.”

Highlighting the cozy relationship between defense contractors and the government, the GAO found $100 million that could be collected annually from these contractors who underpaid federal taxes. The federal government has collected less than 1% of that— under $700,000.

The present situation adds up to a distressing merger of a permanent warfare state, operating globally, with a corporate welfare system. The rationale for this enterprise goes largely undefended because its existence is rarely discussed, hence, no need to justify it. With so much focus on Iraq and the murderous uses of our weapons, it is easy to overlook how the Pentagon, Inc. bleeds the domestic budget, adding billions to the deficit and depriving health, education, and other human needs of necessary funds.

This starvation of human needs may, in fact, constitute a very welcome side effect for the hawks who have devised this monumental sink hole for American tax dollars.


Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter are Milwaukee, Wis.-based writers and activists. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

Strong Stance on Iraq is Imperative for Democratic Victory

By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

How do the Democrats fantasize that they can make serious advances in the coming mid-term elections without a clear position on the Iraq War, the elephant in the room?

Yet the Democratic leadership seems deaf and blind to both public opinion and the necessary elements for successful Congressional campaigns. We need a Democratic alternative to Administration policy in Iraq that goes beyond the timeline for leaving and includes clear opposition to pre-emptive war as a foreign policy option.

Polls conducted in mid-June by Pew Research, NBC/Wall St. Journal, and CNN all show between 52% and 57% favoring either a timetable for US withdrawal or an immediate reduction in troop levels. Even 72% of US troops in Iraq want the US out by the end of 2006. While no leading political figure finds the sentiment of Iraqi citizens worth mention, repeated polling shows that an overwhelming 90% of Iraqis want a US pullout.

At this critical juncture for the future of our country, it is essential that the Democrats, the purported opposition party, present an alternative to the current policies endangering our troops, innocent Iraqi families, and our national resources. Further, the Democrats need to offer another path for dealing with the world community. The Administration and Republican- controlled Congress have squandered U.S. moral leadership in the world by using military force and expanding its ring of military bases among mostly authoritarian allies in the former USSR and elsewhere.

In this context, it becomes more and more difficult to respond to crises posed by Iran and North Korea which demand more refined tools than the blunt instruments favored by Bush. With the Bush Administration fixated on Iraq as the imaginary key front in the Global War Against Terror, we are so over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan that we have few resources available for coping with other, genuine issues of international concern.

With regard to Iraq, the Democrats should emphasize the Administration’s bristling contempt for both domestic and international public opinion. Despite the clear-cut consensus against the US war, the Bush Administration is ramping up for a permanent US occupation of Iraq. The foundations for this ongoing presence are currently being sunk in 14 permanent military bases and the colossal new embassy under construction (a monstrosity costing at least $592 million, located on 104 acres, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York). Meanwhile, the US has asserted effective control over Iraqi oil resources in order to assure a steady supply of petroleum and high prices for Big Oil. The Democrats must offer another vision for the future that includes returning Iraq and its oil to the Iraqi public.

Given the lies that have paved the way to war and the sustained occupation, it is totally clear that the American public wants to be able to trust public officials and feel good about our role in the world. Perhaps nothing is as critical to Democratic victory this fall as establishing trust with the electorate and the re-establishment of an truly multilateral approach to world crises.

In the face of this clear message from the electorate, the Democrats wind up seeming even less trustworthy than the Republicans, because the Republicans at least have positions to which they cling tenaciously and echo continuously. The Republicans manage to display the qualities of resoluteness and consistency in their public statements. The Democrats need to oppose the falsehoods about the war through some straight talk of their own about an exit strategy, not just carping on past Administration lies.

The current debate over “timelines” illustrates how the Democrats clumsily try to generate a position without really taking a firm, coherent stance. After a week of meaningless debate and taking heat about “cutting and running,” General Casey proposed a plan that is fairly similar to the Democratic plans for phased withdrawal. However, the Democratic plans for addressing Iraq don’t seriously deal with the US purpose in being there at the current time. The critical questions of “Why are we in Iraq?” and “What are we trying to accomplish now?” must frame any Democratic alternative.

As it becomes more and more obvious that this is no longer merely a war between two sides as depicted by Bush and Co., our role becomes more and more dubious. Who are we supposed to be protecting? Who are we fighting, the Sunnis or the Shiite militias (backed at least tacitly by Iran) or Al-Quaeda?

If our mission is to protect civilian lives, why are US military operations so oblivious to the toll of human life (estimated at 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths by the British medical journal Lancet)? If we are siding with the Shiites over the Sunnis, how does this fit in with our opposition to Iran? What about the relationship of the Iraqi Shiites in now in power with the rulers of Iran, especially since so many lived in exile there during Saddam’s rule. Amidst this constantly-shifting environment, who is truly our ally and who is our enemy?

These are critical questions as the U.S. occupation daily consumes more civilian lives in our pursuit of the war (even US-backed Prime Minister al-Maliki has forcefully taken the US to task), causes death and injury to our own troops, and spends enough daily to add to our national debt while forcing the slashing of domestic programs. (Rep Jack Murtha recently noted that the US war effort in Iraq has cost $450 billion, while the entire Persian Gulf War cost the US $5 billion.)

The Democratic alternative must put civilian lives, our troops’ lives, and reconstruction of Iraq at the heart of its policy. The Democrats must begin with a forceful, explicit repudiation of the Bush plan for a permanent occupation of Iraq. The Bush occupation not only incites nationalist resistance as it would in any sovereign nation, but provides a massive recruiting service for Islamic terrorism of the Al Qaeda variety. The US must also withdraw its military forces to defensive positions to both protect our troops and allow Iraqis to reclaim their country.
Only a declaration for total and permanent US military withdrawal can hope to dampen the various insurgencies and convince Iraqis that they truly have self-determination and democracy. Only such a plan can induce the international community to step forward with vital assistance and credibility after enduring one expression of contempt after another from the Bush Administration.

With this approach, Democrats can say that strength in support of Bush’s hallucinatory objectives actually weakens the US’s proclaimed goal of “democracy promotion” in the world. Having goals that reflect the deeply-felt sentiment and needs of the vast majority of American and Iraqis is not weakness but wisdom.

But up until now, Democrats have been so defensive that they haven’t re-framed or seriously questioned the “strength” issue. Most American want to unsnarl the Iranian and North Korean threats with an international approach, but are stymied while the US is preoccupied with Iraq. Is American foreign policy based on the red-neck concept of being the meanest dude on the block, or on the Declaration of Independence’s notion of “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind”?

The Democrats must question the whole structure of our commitment to Iraq if they want to provide a meaningful alternative to the current policy. With Iraqis overwhelming wanting America out, where do Democrats think prolonging the current approach will go? If Democrats don’t oppose a brutal and devastating occupation of the country, they will share in the immorality and no one will care that they wanted a 10% less cruel approach than Bush.

While we admire the domestic politics of John Edwards and others committed to uplifting working families and the poor (who are currently entirely shut out from the growing prosperity of the richest 1%), there is no Democratic vision that will be meaningful in the November elections without putting the war front and center.

Everything is connected to the war as it shamefully wastes our youth and U.S. resources on a daily basis, while earning the enmity of almost the entire world. We can’t build a bright future for this country without our government playing a global role that embodies the democratic ideals and compassion of the American people and also saves sufficient resources for urgent domestic needs.

Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter are Milwaukee-based writers and progressive activists. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

GOP seeks to revive estate-tax repeal
With timber tax cut strategy in the Senate

By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

Just when progressives were complimenting themselves on last week’s victory of stopping the estate tax repeal, House Republicans are once again frantically rushing to the rescue of the heirs of multi-millionaires. On Thursday, the House passed yet another effort to nearly eliminate the estate tax.

This new proposal stops just short of full repeal and allows the Senate another chance to take up the issue. This latest attempt would eliminate the tax for all estates worth less that $5 million – up to $10 million for couples. Edmund L. Andrews reports in the June 21 New York Times that this would exempt more than 99.5 percent of estates according to congressional estimates. As if this weren’t enough, the new bill reduces most of the remaining tax rates to the level of capital gains taxes or approximately 16%. The total effect is to dramatically reduce estate tax revenues by about 80%, or roughly $800 billion over a decade.

The GOP’s method to resurrect estate-tax repeal from the ashes involves a tax sweetener for timber companies, aimed at influencing Democratic representatives from the Northwest. This maneuver is like adding sugar and cream to the richest dessert in town. To win passage of the near-total repeal of estate taxes, the Republican ploy is to gain additional votes needed in the Senate by offering even more tax giveaways, hopefully entrapping Northwestern Democrats in a politically difficult situation.


The proposed provision for big timber companies would reduce the corporate capital gains tax, which is assessed on sales of timber, to about 14 percent from 35 percent. . By hauling out their chainsaws to slash taxes on timber companies to the tune of $940 million over two years, the GOP leadership hopes to win over Democrats from timber-producing states.

However, these new tax cuts overlook the fact that major timber giants like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific have often avoided paying any federal corporate taxes at all and collected tax rebates, as pointed out by Citizens for Tax Justice. But this reality appears to be utterly irrelevant to the debate in Congress.

Strategically, two of the timber industry’s strongest advocates are the Democratic senators from Washington, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. They both voted with other Democrats against blocking a filibuster on the estate tax. In addition, Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana were co-sponsors of a similar timber tax cut last year.

Will we now witness a downward spiral in Congress where narrow regional self-interests ensnare Congress into undermining the broad national good? pit the entire Congress against the well-being of the government and the public? The more the Democrats cave into the Republicans’ most extreme version of trickle-down economics with cowardly “compromises,” the less exertion is required by the Republicans to placate their corporate donors.Where will it end?

Given the Republican penchant for expensive wars like the apparently endless Global War on Terror, one can only wonder how they imagine funding even the most minimal public services if taxes on the wealthy are slashed even further. Are Republican leaders assuming that their big contributors are so wealthy they don’t need roads, only air strips for their private jets? Private security forces for their gated communities, not public police or fire services?

If the GOP leaders’ dreams come true and government spending is shaped exclusively by the whims and desires of the wealthiest 1%, how do they envision keeping this from inevitably igniting a powerful reaction from the public?

The media has given the Republicans an easy time in their efforts to misrepresent the benefits of these tax breaks to the overwhelming majority of working people. A frank economic analysis by the major media of who stands to gain and lose would be viewed as an unacceptable departure from “objectivity,” since the figures so strongly reinforce progressives’ arguments. However, even the cowed media will eventually be forced to acknowledge streets filled with hungry and homeless people, roads that are falling apart, t shuttered libraries, closed public swimming pools, litter-strewn and crime-ridden public parks, and the continuing decline of our health and education systems.

This “starve the beast” approach to government, articulated by GOP strategist Grover Norquist and his many followers, involves shrinking funds for government services via tax cuts to the rich . Another key element: filling the top positions with “Heck-of-a-job, Brownie”-style cronies so that these services are totally lamentable.

This, they hope, will feed a public outcry for privatization of virtually all public services: schools, jails, Social Security, and everything else in sight. But the American public’s experience with private contractors like Enron (a leading force for utility de-regulation) and Halliburton has surely soured many citizens on this version of crony capitalism.

Still, the Republicans are making headway on the tax cuts for the super-wealthy. Much of the public imagines that they will somehow benefit from the proposed estate tax cut that would actually affect a mere fraction of the richest 1%, specifically couples with combined fortunes of $4 million or more. The polling on this issue reflects the major media’s systemic failure to help the public decipher a sustained and deceptive propaganda attack on what the Right calls the “death tax,” a term often uncritically repeated in the mainstream press.

Along with the negligent “neutrality” of the major media, the current debate over estate-tax repeal illuminates the enormous power of big-money contributors in Congress today.

The bond between those who make legal payoffs (campaign contributions, of which 80% come from less than 1% of Americans) and those who make policy payoffs (ie.., Bush and Congress) seems tighter than ever before, with the interests of estate-less ordinary Americans entirely shut out of that loop.


Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter are Milwaukee-based writers and activists. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net

I, too, was appalled by many of the arguments in George McGovern's recent piece on how labor must stop expecting "more" in the LA Times and Milwaukee Journal. So appalled, in fact, that I sent him a personal message detailing how the most pressing economic problem is hardly working people expecting too much, but rather the wealth and power of the richest 1%.

However, I think it is only fair to look at McGovern's career-long record of support for labor and the poor and with his writings like The Essential America (a 2004 book where he forcefully denounces the war in Iraq and NAFTA-style "free trade", a major break from the standard pro-corporate babble emanating from leading Democrats).

This current commentary is entirely out of character with his basic philosophy and record. While McGovern's incorrect arguments need to be publicly refuted with letters to the editor and in the blogosphere, he remains progressive leader of deep integrity who was seemingly led astray. In my view, when our progressive leaders get off-track--as happens with Paul Wellstone, Jesse Jackson, and anyone else you care to name--the most appropriate response is one of dialog rather than denunciation.Roger Bybee, Milwaukee, Wis.

Glad you found the review useful.
Indeed, the only content to the book was conventional wisdom of the most banal variety, and that was provided with a pro-Republican twist. In a sense, Eilperin is like an attorney conceding that her clients engaged in a nasty barroom brawl (with the Democrats being equally pugnacious and blameworthy, in her fantasy world) while pointedly neglecting to mention that they are on trial for robbing the US Treasury.

In the case of the Gingrich-DeLay generation of House Republicans, the trampling of democracy within the House--downplayed by Eilperin as mere partisan scuffling--has been purposeful, to enact policies advancing the interests of the richest 1% while neglecting the victims of Katrina, those without healthcare, or those who lost their jobs to "free trade" outsourcing.

'Fight Club Politics' is an appallingly bad book whose most revealing moment is the elevation of Billy Tauzin--who sold out America's senior citizens to inflate drug industry profits-- and then took at $2 million job with PhRMA--to heroic status for his emphasis on "civility."

One of the many critical points Eilperin conveniently overlooks is the way that they
two parties are not diverging ideologically but actually converging on so many vital issues like
the promotion of outsourcing via trade deals like CAFTA and health care. This convergence is the result of Democrats largely having to drink campaign contributions from the same trough as the Republicans, from America's rubiest 1%. Another central factor in this convergence is the incessant, omni-present right-wing media machine that skillfully creates an "echo chamber" informing us of the glories of the "free market" (to be selectively applied to the poor, di placed workers, and other victims of corporate power, preventive war, and America's historically benevolent foreign policy (never mind the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, Chile, Iran, Central America, or Iraq; after all, we contribute the Peace Copras and a pittance in foreign aid.)

Still, there are Democrats who represent a significant break from Republican policies--Russ Feingold, John Conyers, Barbara Lee, and Marcy Kaptur, to name a few. We need to make sure that progressive voices like these have a powerful media megaphone, so that the public does not hear only from out-right sellouts like Joe Lierberman and Hillary Clinton or equivocating disappointments like Barack Obama.

BOOK REVIEW/’Fight Club Politics’ pulls punches against GOP House dictatorship

Juliet Eilperin, Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives (NY: Rowman and Littlefield in cooperation with Hoover Institution, 2006) 168 pages, $19.95

By Roger Bybee

Despite its promise to hammer Washington, DC’s appallingly nasty politics, Juliet Eilperin’s Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship is Poisoning the House of Representatives turns out to be a badly-overrated featherweight relying on a sneaky right hook.

From Eilperin’s appearance on Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air” program, many NPR listeners may have mistakenly conclude that Fight Club Politics was an insightful expose of the under-handed House Republicans’ tactics and both parties’ overly-partisan rhetoric. The state of democracy has become so weak, she warns that “the current rates of House turnover may equal historic rates of turnover in the Politburo,” thanks to re-districting designed to protect existing House members.

These “bullet-proof” incumbents are detached from the real responsibilities of running the nation and unwilling to cooperate across party lines, reflecting a near-total loss of civility. “Both parties acknowledge that politics in the House is more about strategy than governing,” she informs us.

But apart from a few informed observations, Fight Club Politics actually amounts to a flimsy whitewash of the Republicans’ strong-arm tactics in devastating democracy in the House. Where Eilperin could easily be revealing how the GOP’s dictatorial reign has served big donors like the drug industry and firms that charter themselves in Bermuda to avoid US taxes, she offers up only safe conventional wisdom about the equal sins of each “extremist” political party.

Notably absent from Eilperin’s book is any account of the Republicans’ infamous “K Street Project,” spawned by then-Whip Tom DeLay, strategist Grover Norquist, and now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The K Street Project involved harnessing corporate interest groups, their lobbyists and law firms ever more tightly to the Republican Party. In this way, the Republicans could more efficiently convert (mostly) legal payoffs by big campaign contributors into rapid policy paybacks from DeLay and Co. This kind of efficient loop between payoffs and paybacks has demanded an unprecedented bending of House rules and more fundamentally a distortion of democracy by the Gingrich-DeLay generation of Republicans.

The Republicans’ dictatorial regime in the House has included numerous spectacular episodes: the pharmaceutical-friendly Medicare drug bill that required outlandish violations of House rules (including a vote held open nearly three hours instead of the requisite 15 minutes); the extreme top-down centralization of leadership under Tom DeLay, Denny Hastert and their crew, with severe punishments for dissenters; the corporate-funded gerrymandering of Texas that produced seven additional Republican House seats although opposed by Justice Dept. lawyers as a violation of minority voting rights (for Eilperin, the entire matter is reduced to the Democrats being merely “out-maneuvered”); extra-heavy GOP stacking of committees, the exclusion of Democrats from discussions on bill-writing, and the fact that 85% of House bills in 2004 prohibited any amendments that could potentially embarrass the Republicans.

Some of Fight Club’s most glaring distortions arise from Eilperin’s separation of the obviously partisan styles of combat prevalent in the House of Representatives from the momentous stakes involved. Thus, she detaches the House Republicans’ all-out trampling of traditional House rules and procedural democracy from the slavishly pro-corporate agenda they have been tenaciously fighting to enact.

The essence of the Republican strategy has been explicitly to neuter the Democratic minority, cutting off the traditional capacity of the minority to participate in discussions, debate and offer amendments. Grover Norquist, a central figure in shaping Republican strategy from his perch at Americans for Tax Reform, once smirked, “Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant. But when they've been 'fixed,' then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful." (Predictably, the quote does not appear in Fight Club Politics).

Despite the enormity of fundamental Republican infringements on democracy within the House, Eilperin nonetheless concludes, “Democrats have been waging a daily war in Washington, against the GOP as unrelenting and nearly as virulent as that of their counterparts on the other side of the aisle.” Feeble evidence is marshaled to back up this claim, or her patently false assertion that the Democrats are equally “extreme” and “ideological” as their Republican counterparts.

Eilperin’s comfortable brand of conventional wisdom—both parties are extreme and uncivil and do bad things, so we need a less partisan approach and more competitive districts—simply ignores the reality of the past 12 years since Newt Gingrich and Co. regained a Republican majority. As documented in superb work like the 2004 Boston Globe series by Susan Milligan and Robert Kuttner’s “America As a One-Party State” article in American Prospect (Feb. 1, 2004), the Republicans have engaged in a no-holds-barred holy war in the interests of major corporations and the wealthy. The GOP jihad has been fueled by unprecedented amounts of strategic campaign contributions from America’s richest 1% including corporate CEOs, an issue neglected entirely by Eilperin. While fixated on redistricting as a force insulating incumbents from their constituents, she ignores the role of campaign contributions (less than 1% of Americans provide 80% of campaign donations) in consolidating incumbents’ power.

Eilperin continually appears oblivious to the clear linkage between the Republicans’ undemocratic tactics and their dedication to provide government favors to narrow corporate interests funding their campaigns. Eilperin even promotes the heroic stature of Rep. Billy Tauzin, former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Tauzin’s main claim to fame is crafting the Medicare drug bill to the specifications of the drug industry (including a ban on drug imports from lower-priced Canada and explicitly prohibiting the federal government from negotiating drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries) before taking a job as president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association, at a reported $2 million per year. When Tauzin’s appointment was announced, opponents of the drug bill exploded. “A chief architect of he Medicare prescription drug legislation is now going to represent the chief beneficiary of the bill,” fumed Rep. Henry Waxman.

Seemingly untroubled by this blatant payoff to Tauzin for placing the profits of Big Pharma ahead of the needs of desperate senior citizens, Eilperin portrays the ever “civil” Tauzin as unfairly accused of corruption by the Democrats because the written record suggests that the representative negotiated the post after the bill was passed. But for Eilperin, the Democrats were unfairly harsh based on the written record of PHRMA’s overtures to Tauzin, utterly neglecting the virtual certainty that Tauzin’s courting by the industry’s sophisticated lobby would conducted to avoid leaving a paper trail. Bizarrely, Eilperin details the gentlemanly Tauzin’s plan to restore “civility” to the House.

Ulitmately, when it comes to analyzing Washington politics, Fight Club Politics is punch-drunk after too many hits of much conventional wisdom and, in the memorable words of Marlon Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront,” is destined for “a one-way ticket to Palookaville.”


Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee, Wis. Writer and activist. He can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

Repulsive Repeal of the Estate Tax
Reveals Real Bush Agenda, Media Bias

By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

The proposed repeal of the estate tax by the Bush Administration and its allies, especially at a time of record deficits and massive roll-backs in taxes already granted to wealthy citizens and large corporations, poses a major threat to American democracy.

Ridding the US of the estate tax will open the door for the consolidation of an American aristocracy based on inherited wealth, easily able to steer government policy away from the needs and interests of the vast majority.

Ironically, one of the offspring of one of America’s wealthiest families, Richard Rockefeller, has passionately warned us about the impact of this cynical move. As he points out June 1 in The Portland, “The timing of this vote couldn’t be more bizarre. Our nation is at war and faces a multi-trillion-dollar national debt for decades to come. We are rebuilding our Gulf Coast after one of the worst national disasters in modern memory. At the same time, our country is experiencing unprecedented levels of wealth inequality.”

The vote on this will come before the Senate in June. The House has already approved a permanent repeal. But the repeal is encountering resistance from Mr. Rockefeller and other unlikely allies such as Bill Gates, Sr., Warren Buffett, and Paul Volcker. They all believe that as America’s wealthiest people, it is their duty to speak out against repeal and the resulting leap in the nation’s inequity and even greater deficits. They all agree that the estate tax encourages dispersion of wealth, rather than a build-up of concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few. They see repealing this democratizing influence as particularly threatening at a time of mega-salaries that are far in excess of those only 25 years ago.

The repeal of the estate tax has been part of a tightly woven attack on tax policy as a progressive instrument to promote social justice, instead substituting a policy of reinforcing and enlarging the wealth held by the nation’s richest families. In effect, repeal will lay the groundwork for establishing an American royalty. Along with the utter lack of evidence to make the case for repeal, it is shocking that these radical tax policies can be seriously considered when the polls show the public favoring policies to strengthen public services, health (e.g., a Business Week poll show 67% support for a single-payer health plan), and education.


Bush policies work in the opposite direction, to shrink the possibility of effective government services that earn public support. When government is under-funded, the resulting services are limited or tragically incompetent (eg. Hurricane Katrina) and earn contempt or cynicism about the government’s capacity to assist ordinary citizens.

In this particular case, the proponents of repeal have spent millions of dollars to create myths, not the least of which is the misnomer “the death tax”. They have tried to make it appear that the estate tax is an attack on the family farmer and the small-business owner. This highly effective and carefully developed multi-million dollar campaign against the estate tax has been driven by 18 of America’s wealthiest families including the owners of Wal-Mart, Gall wines, Campbell’s soup, and Mars candy bars (combined net worth: $185.5 billion). Elimination of the estate tax will save these 18 families alone about $71.6 billion.

The 18 families and their Republican allies have tried to portray the estate tax as an unfair attack on the family farmer. Yet even the right-leaning American Farm Bureau and the Bush White House have been able to produce a single case to back of their claims, as elaborated by David Cay Johnston in his valuable book Perfectly Legal.

The threat is much greater than repeal of this one tax. The sustained Republican PR campaign—waged through their wide-ranging “echo chamber” of FOX News, rightist dailies, and talk-radio shows-- and their domination of Congress has allowed them to proceed with a tax agenda that continually favors a tiny percentage of wealthy Americans to the detriment of the average citizen. Just this May, Congress extended a tax cut on unearned income that will provide a whopping $3 to families earning under $50,000, $78 to those making $50,000 to $75,000 and $60,000 to the fortunate few hauling in more that $1 million (5/18/06 Citizens for Tax Justice release.) Thus, moderate-income families will gain enough for another Big Mac and fries or maybe even a couple of tanks of gas, while millionaires and billionaires will be able to purchase another new Lexus each year.

This regressive move in tax policy has been assisted by the lack of vision on the part of most Democrats. Even at the beginning of this struggle, Democrats acquiesced to proposals that were only slightly less regressive than those posed by the Republicans. The Democrats in Congress have continually accepted the basic assumptions of much of the tax-cutting agenda. For example, they have not forcefully challenged the capital-gains cuts. How is it fair or sensible to tax unearned income at a lower rate than earned income? It is staggering that a democratic country chooses to reward wealthy people who sit around making trades, even selling stock short, over those who toil for a living.

At the same time, the major media have shamefully failed us on clarifying issues of tax policy, especially on the estate tax. This is clearly one area where the increasingly corporatized media have a deep conflict of interest in their news coverage. Policies that are favorable to media CEOs and their biggest stockholders clash directly with the interests of their reading public. The tax-justice issue probably generates more visible conflicts of interest by major media than most other arenas of public policy.

Without truly objective and probing coverage, tax policy becomes the victim of the spin aggressively marketed through the right-wing media machine. In reality, the estate tax affects a microscopic ¼ of 1% of all taxpayers, but it will add approximately $1 trillion to the federal treasury over 10 years. Clearly, stakes are momentous at a time of increasing deficits and debt for the country.

But without comprehensible reporting by the major media and a consistent, coherent message from the Democrats, the public loses its ability to focus on how the estate tax’s repeal will be ruinous both for our fiscal health and the foundations of democracy.

Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter are Milwaukee-based writers and activists. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

By Roger Bybee

“Failed state” has become an insult very selectively used by US officials and pundits, hurled at backward nations whose out-of-touch rulers fail cynically to meet the needs of their own people, while operating as out-of-control states refusing to abide by international norms.

In his latest book, “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy,” internationally-renowned scholar Noam Chomsky suggests that US citizens take a good look in the mirror. “If we do allow ourselves to do so, we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of ‘failed states’ right at home.” The pathetic government response to Hurricane Katrina provided the most haunting images of the Bush Administration’s disinterest in the plight of those who fall outside the circle of the truly wealthy.

A wide array of policies—on taxes, health, Social Security, and job-outsourcing agreements like NAFTA—illustrate a “democracy deficit” resulting in government neglect of the vast majority of Americans. There is a growing yet little-noticed gulf between the policies favored by most Americans and those championed by both the Bush administration and leading Democrats like Hillary Clinton.

For example, “67% of all Americans think it’s a good idea to guarantee healthcare for all US citizens, as Canada and Britain do, with just 27% dissenting,” reports Chomsky. But the leadership of both parties (and their leading contributors) are simply unwilling to contemplate such an approach (despite the immense benefits it would confer to most US firms’ economic competitiveness), and guaranteed healthcare is therefore disqualified as “lacking political support.” As in other failed states, says Chomsky, “The will of the people is banned from the political arena.”

But despite the corrosion of American democracy itself, many leading scholars and commentators have admired the “idealism” behind George W. Bush’s efforts to export “democracy” overseas, beginning in Iraq. As Chomsky points out, the notion of “democracy promotion” was a late arrival among Bush’s pretexts for US invasion and occupation of Iraq after weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s links to international terror proved non-existent. Moreover, the US finally gave in to elections in Iraq only after turning aside Iraqis’ demands for the vote three times and expelling the troublesome Al Jazeera TV network (whose facilities the US had bombed in Afghanistan and Baghdad).

Given the consistent history of US support for brutal tyrannies (Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Chile, etc.) plus current alliances with dictatorships in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan, the notion of “democracy promotion” by the US thus has all the credibility of Enron’s Kenneth Lay offering lessons in “business ethics.”

In Chomsky’s view, US foreign policy has been closely and consistently aligned with the interests of transnational corporations, especially the oil industry. Some 70 years ago, strategic planners called the Mideast’s oil “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the great material prizes in world history,” and US policy has been based on that view. With those immense stakes in sight, George W. Bush and his team launched the invasion and occupation of Iraq using the doctrine of “anticipatory self-defense” in the guise of “fighting terrorism.”

Shamelessly ignoring international law, US officials like Condoleeza Rice have put forth another doctrine to shore up the first: what Chomsky calls “the doctrine of self-exemption.” In Rice’s words, “each state is entitled to interpret itself.”

This doctrine of “self-exemption” from universal standards has paved the way for the horrors of US crimes at Falluja General Hospital, Abu Ghraib, “rendition,” and the killing of some 100,000 Iraqi civilians (according to the British medical journal Lancet.) The notion of “self-exemption” has been further extended by the Bush Administration to nuclear proliferation, global warming, and chemical and biological weapon controls.

Chomsky’s Failed States illuminates the chilling implications of these policies, yet continually reminds the reader with a note of hope, “Not only does the US government stand apart from the rest of the world on many crucial issues, but even from its own population.”


Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee-based writer and activist.

When it comes to rock music, the Right clearly has a tin ear, as revealed by the Top 50 choices of conservative rock songs.

1) There's a basic truth about popular music that they utterly fail to comprehend. The message and music transcend the lyrics to convey a much more powerful message. "I Fought the Law (and the Law Won) is not about conceding to the power of authority; it's about defiance against the odds. That's why the revoluntary band The Clash did a re-make.

Similarly, "Street Fighting Man" complains about "sleepy London town" and the passivity
of the English in confronting authority, but the furious tone of the lyrics and
pulsing music made it a revolutionary anthem (friends of mine used to listen to
that song before going out to engage in hard-core physical combat with the cops.)

2) The choices also reveal the primitive racism of the Right (the glorification of the
the infantile "Sweet Home Alabama," answered in a hard-hitting song by the late, great
Warren Zevon about the blunted consciousness of white Southerners trapped in a sick culuture being shafted) and its nostalgic affection for the good old days --never to return--when women stayed in their place. Notably, the author chose to ignore Lynyrd Skynyrd's far better "Saturday Night Special" which has a truly kick-ass sound and a powerful message about the foolish gun-toting culture of America.

The Top 50 list is both reminder of the culture that the American Taliban would impose and the Right's
inability to understand anything about popular culture.

Roger Bybee, Milwaukee.

The Parallel Universe of Bush Legality

By Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter

Just as the bloodthirsty bandit leader in the film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” proclaimed, “We don’t need no stinking badges,” the Bush Administration similarly didn’t see any need to bother with a warrant or permission from the Foreign Intelligence Security Administration.

It just plowed ahead and compiled the largest database in history, based on millions of phone records surrendered by AT&T and other tele-communications firms (despite unconvincing denials).

This unwarranted and illegal intrusion into the private lives of Americans is more evidence that the Bush administration has created its own parallel universe in which it unilaterally defines the extent of its own powers, while blithely ignoring Bush’s 29% approval rating.

Bush and his supporters believe that their endless and aimless “war against terror” has placed them utterly above the law. Even the Republican-stacked Congress and courts have been downgraded from equal branches of government to trivial twigs. Whether it be imperiously tossing aside Congressional intent in legislation with 750 “signing statements” that contradict the bills Bush has just signed or illegally gathering up millions of phone records, the Bush team sees itself entitled to trample over laws and vilify individuals (e.g., Gen. Eric Shinseki and CIA officials Valerie Plame and Mary McCarthy) considered to be standing in the way of their agenda.

“President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statue passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution,” as Charlie Savage reported in the April 30 Boston Globe. Among the laws that Bush asserted his right to reinterpret are: military rules and regulations, affirmative action provisions, “whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Perhaps the most interesting of these new self-appointed powers has been his bypass of the “torture ban” and his unwillingness to report to congress before diverting funds for secret operation such as the “black sites” where terrorists have secretly been imprisoned. In addition, he has claimed that he can order military operations in Colombia, even though Congress has banned such action.

In line with the Administration’s assumption of unprecedented powers, news stories describe the CIA in shambles due to the undisguised manipulation of the staff by the White House. The political pressures and disregard for the insights of senior staff have resulted, according to Rep. Jane Harman, in the recent departure of CIA staff with 300 years of relevant experience. The current remolding of the CIA to be an extension of the President’s foreign policy has far exceeded even the worst days of the CIA. Revelations in the 1970’s of secret interventions in countries such as Chile, Cuba, and Angola forced Congress to enact the current, now-ignored restrictions on CIA activities.

Meanwhile, another devastating report by a Senate committee characterized post- Katrina FEMA as an agency broken beyond repair. Under the Clinton Administration, FEMA was re-built into a model of effectiveness, reversing the crony ridden FEMA under Bush Sr. However, W. chose to undo the bi-partisan support for the Clinton-era improvements by appointing a set of directors hopelessly unqualified to take the lead. Absorbing the agency into Homeland Security and the pathetic leadership managed to drive away legions of true professionals, the agency quietly fell apart, much like CIA. The horror of FEMA’s Hurricane Katrina performance starkly revealed what had been going on throughout the Bush Administration.

While some agencies have received more notoriety recently than others, it now seems clear that virtually all agencies (e.g., the Food and Drug Administration, EPA, Mine Safety Administration, and the FCC) are suffering under the dual yoke of incompetence and loyalty to policies that serve corporations rather than people. The Bush solution to this growing perception is to obscure the remaking of the agencies to serve his cronies’ interests by simply reshuffling the bureaucracy under new teams of loyal and inept leadership, as is now being proposed for FEMA and the CIA. However, this ploy isn’t going to re-focus the agencies on the public interest without a dramatic shift in the policies that guide these agencies, which is most unlikely under Bush-Cheney management.

The decay of major federal agencies has largely occurred off the public’s radar screen due to the lack of attention by the media (with exceptions like the NY Times’ exposure of the lax collection of fines for serious mine-safety violations) Media outlets have largely bought into the prevailing framework presented by the Administration and echoed by congressional Republicans and a multitude of pundits: government agencies must carefully heed the concerns of big business or the US will be rendered “uncompetitive” in the global economy. Sadly, the Democrats echo the fundamental assumptions of Republican policy even while they quibble at the edges. The Republicans have managed to radically reframe the purposes of government to such an overwhelming extent that even critics accept this business-first view of public policy.

For example, the Environmental Protection Agency explicitly has the mission “to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment—air, water, and land—upon which life depends.” The EPA is supposed to focus on assuring clean air, clean and healthy water, land preservation and restoration, healthy communities, and monitoring global climate change. Nothing in EPA’s mission statement lists minimizing business costs, but that has clearly become the overriding concern for the agency.

To the extent that the Republicans have succeeded in gaining any public support for such a policy direction, it is because they have aggressively re-defined the debate about the role of government. For the past 30-plus years, a wide network comprising what David Brock labeled the Republican Noise Machine” has systematically and incessantly depicted government as an alien, obstructive, and oppressive force in ordinary people’s lives. We are told ceaselessly that while the entrepreneurial energies of the private sector are creating jobs and a dazzling array of new products, government regulations and taxes are sapping this vitality by undermining our property rights, (Episodes like the Katrina debacle may drive down Bush’s poll numbers, but they are also cleverly used to “demonstrate” the inherent incompetence of government, rather than the obvious consequence of appointing the hapless former Arabian Show Horse Association director to manage the fates of millions facing a huge natural disaster.)

In this parallel universe, it is necessary to ward off government tyranny and economic sclerosis. The need for “small government” is invoked again and again without irony, despite Bush’s remarkable record of deficit creation and corporate welfare. Prominent Right strategist (and close Jack Abramoff pal) Grover Norquist has proclaimed, “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." But in reality, before government is completely drowned, Norquist and his allies in the corporate world are intent on thoroughly soaking the taxpayer for huge subsidies, tax breaks, low-cost mineral and oil rights, and a host of other government-provided goodies.

This full-scale capture of public institutions for private profit includes Bush colonizing the agencies meant to regulate corporate abuses of workers, the environment, and consumers, and using government agencies to infringe on fundamental rights.

However, Bush may begin to encounter fierce public resistance based on Americans’ deeply-held beliefs in lawful government and government as their protector. The Republicans’ propaganda about “small government” and “free markets” is colliding with core values of positive government, equality of opportunity, and respect for the law.

But the potential for a full-scale public revolt at the polls in November will not be activated if the Democrats continue their pattern of failing to demonstrate a commitment to the public interest. Nowhere is there less political risk in being forceful than by demanding the government and its agencies to “do their job” and protect all of us. Further, it is perceived as weakness when Democrats are unwilling to seriously challenge wrongdoing out of fear of losing votes

The Democrats’ current complacency, exemplified by the widely-held notion that Bush and the Republicans should simply be allowed to self-destruct, is bound to leave the public feeling that the Democrats offer neither any genuine dedication to their needs or commitment to a government that rules for the public good, not merely a desperation to get elected.

Roger Bybee and Carolyn Winter are Milwaukee-based writers and activists. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net .

Dear SoonerShankle:
1) My point was not to express my personal like or dislike about Begala and Carville , but to confront the structural problems facing those of us who want to transform the Democratic Party into a fighting force for economic justice at home and a human-rights-based foreign policy.

If you don't think we face some serious problems, just consider Hillary Clinton's fundraiser with the ultra-odious Rupert Murdoch.

2) As you outline Carville & Begala's 6-point strategy on the media, it is obvious that this section is one of the book's best features. But while the book has some valuable components, it still leaves a major vacuum on the big ideas needed to weld together the party into a cohesive, powerful force to take on the corporate/Christian coalition.

Best, Roger Bybee