Thursday, May 01, 2003

An Interesting Article in the Nation   “Rolling Back the 20th Century” by William Greider   His contention in a nutshell is that Bush Co. and the other neoconservatives have as their goal to return America to the era of McKinley.  I am still thinking over all the implications of his article.   To be honest some of my thoughts about the need to reduce the influence of the Feds in all aspects of our daily lives have resonance.  However, the full scope on the America that I have come to know would not be something that I would want for my grandson.  Repression of everyone but the privileged classes is one of the hallmarks of America that McKinley represented.   I have been working at putting up into my blog the diary of my Grandfather.  He was born just after the civil war just as I was born after WWII.  I have to admit that I have been forever changed by reading his daily account of the problems that he had to overcome to have a family in those hard times where he was often separated from his wife and children for months.   Bush Co.’s nostalgia for this past history fails to account for the differences between the turn of the 21st century and the 20th.  During the turn of the last century we still had much of the West left to open up for expansion and resource extraction.  We no longer have that.  What we do have is the rest of the world.  Perhaps that explains the imperialist approach as exemplified in the documents prepared by the Project for the New American Century.   Another difference is that I do not believe that the American people will stand still for drastic income re-distribution.  While many of the programs of the New Deal did not live up to their promise, they did provide a good standard of living for the majority of Americans.  That standard of living is under threat by these Draconian measures that are being full court pressed by our current administration.  It will be interesting to see what comes from the battle over the tax cuts.  If Bush does not win his full measure of cuts I am sure that he will make that a campaign issue especially if the economy is even marginally starting to improve.   What is more troubling to me is that the issues are not open to debate.  Effective discussion in this country is deadlocked by ideological language differences.  If it does not end in some kind of violent revolution I will be surprised. 8:39:56 PM    Talk back! []

Globalization and Privatization   There is more in this article about proposals for world trade bidding on US jobs.  The proposal for privatizing the USPS is talked about as well as service sectors (including writing rules that allow for indentured servitude workers to come to the US on special Visas).    A quote from the article: Water, sanitation, environmental services The Bush administration and the Europeans have also both listed “environmental” services – a broad category that includes many areas that many people would not immediately think of as environmental – as targets for privatization under GATS. Topping the list for both is water. The European proposal targets water collection, purification and distribution, and waste-water treatment – functions now mainly operated by municipal water districts, and staffed mainly by union workers. The proposal to require privatization of such services dovetails neatly with the current corporate push to get control of water into corporate hands. Rebecca Mark, for example, former CEO of Enron’s water division, Azurix, said she would not rest until she had “fully privatized the global water market.” The World Bank estimates a fully-privatized global water market to be worth $800 billion. Enron, by the way, worked closely with the Bush administration to define the U.S. goals for the GATS negotiations. 10:39:14 AM    Talk back! []

First Step to Privatization of USPS?   This one is interesting.  Perhaps there is less justification for keeping the Postal Service a public institution than others but I am not sure what the justification is in not going public with it.    For years the package services have proven to give the USPS competition.   In a way, I would like to see them drop the prohibition for packagers to send stamped mail.  Then we would have a true competition between the public sector and the private sector.   If the USPS goes the way of the dodo bird, will postal rates go rocketing even more than they have been already?   I would sure like to see some debate over this issue.  If anyone has a good link to someone who is debating the merits, please let me know. 8:18:18 AM    Talk back! []

© Copyright 2003 Marie Foster.