[Peace-discuss] CounterPunch on the Democrats

[C. G. Estabrook]

I think he wants a truly progressive Democrat candidate -- not the false
progressivism of Clinton/Gore/Kerry.  All made nods to the "left" -- but
then follow the agenda of their pro-business, pro-war, anti-worker,
anti-environment party.  Cockburn actually gets rather specific in this
piece -- not perhaps with much hope -- when he proposes a Tobin tax in the
last graf.

I hope you'll come and talk with Jeff St. Clair. --CGE


On Fri, 16 Apr 2004, Morton K.Brussel wrote:

> It seems to me that there is an effort by Cockburn and others to heap 
> scorn on Kerry.
> 
> Fine, he (and most Democrats) deserve it, but to what end?
> 
> Is it Cockburn's intention to dissuade folks from truly participating 
> in the next election our of disgust? What is his recommendation for the 
> coming election? Bush et al? "An enemy we know?" Nader? He seems  to 
> have contempt for Nader as well. Not voting? Encouraging others to not 
> vote?
> 
> The trouble with Cockburn is that he doesn't show an effective path to 
> anywhere. It seems that he yearns for catastrophe and the revolution it 
> could conceivably provoke. Is this being too harsh on him?
> 
> I like his iconoclasm, but think he's often counterproductive.
> 
> MKB
> 
> 
> On Apr 16, 2004, at 11:27 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
> > [Amusing, disturbing, and I think largely correct. Come hear Cockburn's
> > CounterPunch colleague at my place on Saturday afternoon at 3pm -- 
> > Jeffrey
> > St. Clair will talk about "Dime's Worth of Difference: Beyond the 
> > Politics
> > of Lesser Evils."  --CGE]
> >
> > 	The Capitulation of the Left is Almost Unprecedented
> > 	Bush, Kerry and Empire
> > 	By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
> >
> > As one who regards Gerry Ford as our greatest president (least time
> > served, least damage done, husband of Betty, plus Stevens as his
> > contribution to the Supreme Court) I䴜d always imagined the man from
> > Grand Rapids would never be surpassed in sheer slowness of thought. 
> > When a
> > reporter asked Ford a question it was like watching that great 
> > sequence in
> > Rossellini䴜s film about Louis XIV, when a shouted command is relayed 
> > at
> > a stately pace through a dozen intermediaries from the kitchen to the
> > royal ear. In Ford䴜s case, to watch a message negotiate the neural 
> > path
> > from ear to cortex was to see a hippo wade through glue.
> >
> > But I think Bush has Ford beat. Had he ever made a mistake, the 
> > reporter
> > asked at that White House press conference last Tuesday. The 
> > president䴜s
> > face remained composed, masking the turmoil and terror raging within, 
> > as
> > his cerebellum went into gridlock. It should have been easy for him. 
> > Broad
> > avenues of homely humility beckoned him on. ‰¥þJohn, no man can stand
> > before his Creator as I do each day and say he is without error‰¥Ï‰¥ÿ
> > Reagan would have hit the ball out of the park. But the President 
> > froze.
> > He said he䴜d have to think it over.
> >
> > Indeed, accounts of Bush䴜s comportment by former associates such as 
> > Paul
> > O䴜Neill suggest a Ford-like core to the man, of tranquil inertness,
> > penetrated in Ford䴜s case by the evil counsels of Kissinger, and in
> > Bush䴜s by the advisories of all his malign viziers. Why bother
> > impeaching Bush, as Nader is now wasting our time urging? Leave Bush
> > alone. Impeach Scalia and indict Cheney, two realistic and useful
> > political objectives.
> >
> > Behind the liberal hysteria over Bush, as a demon of monstrous, 
> > Hitlerian
> > proportions, I get the sense of a certain embarrassment, that the man 
> > is
> > bringing the imperial office into embarrassment and disrepute. Hence 
> > all
> > the plaintive invocations of the distress of ‰¥þAmerica‰¥ús allies‰¥ÿ,
> > hopefully to be cured by a competent rationalizer of the empire䴜s
> > affairs, like John Kerry. But should not all opponents of the American
> > Empire䴜s global reach rejoice that but would not the world be a safer
> > and conceivably a better place if the allies saw separate paths as the
> > sounder option? Gabriel Kolko, that great historian of American empire,
> > has been arguing powerfully (most recently in our CounterPunch 
> > newsletter)
> > to this effect and I agree with him.
> >
> > With leadership of barely conceivable arrogance and incompetence 
> > (Bremer
> > alone is a case study in the decline in quality of such American 
> > leaders
> > in the past 50 years) the US has managed the amazing feat of uniting
> > Iraqis in detestation of their presence, and of leaving itself with 
> > zero
> > palatable options. Amid this bloody disaster, with popular distaste for
> > the occupation of Iraq swelling up in the polls Kerry, with McCain at 
> > his
> > elbow, has been goading Bush into sending more troops. As a prospective
> > supervisor of empire, Kerry sends forth the word that the Democrats are
> > the Second Party of War.
> >
> > Given Nader䴜s aversion to a strident stance on a straight anti-war
> > platform, it looks as though the only decent option is Harry Browne of 
> > the
> > Libertarians. Kucinich? As he himself recently put it, he䴜s a
> > ‰¥þtugboat‰¥ÿ hauling castaways back into Democratic port in time for 
> > the
> > fall regatta. I heard him on NPR the other day, first saying that he 
> > was
> > staying in the race to show There Is Another Democratic Path, then
> > refusing the interviewer䴜s invitation to criticize Kerry.
> >
> > With hardly a backward glance --or forward look --the bulk of the
> > surviving American left has blithely joined the Democratic Party 
> > center,
> > without the will to inflict debate, the influence to inform policy or 
> > the
> > leverage to share power. The capitulation of the left --a necessarily
> > catch-all word --is almost without precedent. By accepting the premises
> > and practices of party unity the left has negated the reasons for its 
> > own
> > existence.
> >
> > Let me produce a rabbit from its hat. I wrote that preceding paragraph,
> > the one beginning ‰¥þwith barely a backward glance‰¥ÿ, 20 years ago 
> > with
> > Andrew Kopkind in a piece we did for The Nation in the summer 1984 
> > about
> > Mondale䴜s candicacy, where we noted the Democratic Party䴜s 
> > commitment
> > to ‰¥þthe essential elements of Reaganism: continued military 
> > expansion‰¥Ï
> > further degradation of the welfare system, denials of black demands for
> > equity; and unqualified submission to the imperatives of the corporate
> > system.‰¥ÿ
> >
> > Any words you think should be changed?
> >
> > And talking of the imperatives of the corporate system, Kerry 
> > announced on
> > April 7 that his primary economic policy initiative would be deficit
> > reduction. Welcome back, Robert Rubin, the man who ran Clinton䴜s
> > economic policy on behalf of Wall Street. Kerry䴜s economic advisers,
> > Altman and Sperling, acknowledge they consult with Rubin all the time. 
> > If
> > you still foolishly believe that the economy in Clinton-time was 
> > properly
> > guided for the long-term benefit of the many, as opposed to short-term
> > bonanzas for the wealthy few, I strongly urge you to read Robert
> > Pollin䴜s Contours of Descent, which I hailed here last November. In 
> > line
> > with that analysis, and after some useful exchanges with Pollin, let me
> > note major problems with the Kerry program.
> >
> > Deficit reduction will do nothing to directly promote the growth of 
> > jobs,
> > the lack of which is now the fundamental problem in the economy. As 
> > Pollin
> > remarks, ‰¥þIt is also a political disaster for the Democrats to again
> > latch onto deficit reduction rather than jobs as their major economic
> > theme. The false premise of Rubinomics is that deficit reduction itself
> > promotes economic growth, and thereby jobs, by lowering long-term 
> > interest
> > rates. This is what Rubin and company think happened in the 1990s. But
> > they are wrong. What actually happened in the 1990s is that we had an
> > unprecedented stock market bubble. Because of the bubble, rich people 
> > and
> > corporations engaged in a huge wave of borrowing and spending that 
> > drove
> > the economy upward, only to crash back down when the bubble 
> > collapsed.‰¥ÿ
> >
> > Even if Rubin were right about deficit reduction stimulating growth of
> > GDP, what is clear in the current "recovery" is that GDP growth alone 
> > does
> > not promote job growth. That is exactly what we mean by the "jobless
> > recovery". The Democrats should instead be talking about a major jobs
> > program, through refinancing state and local government spending in
> > education, health, and social welfare. Aside from the social benefits 
> > from
> > these programs, they also provide the biggest expansion of jobs for a
> > given dollar amount of spending. A million dollars spent on education,
> > Pollin calculates, would produce roughly twice the number of jobs as 
> > the
> > same amount spent on the military.
> >
> > But Kerry䴜s other shoe, war on the deficit as well as war in Iraq, 
> > has a
> > more sinister import. Deficits aren䴜t intrinsically bad, and the 
> > current
> > one is scarcely unparalleled in recent US economic history. But 
> > Bush䴜s
> > deficits, amassed in the cause of tax breaks for the very rich and war
> > abroad, provide the premise of a fiscal crisis to starve social 
> > spending.
> > It䴜s the Greenspan Two Step: endorse the tax cuts, then say, as the 
> > Fed
> > chairman did in February, that the consequent deficits require an
> > onslaught on social security. Remember, Bill Clinton was all set to 
> > start
> > privatizing social security, until the allurements of the diviner 
> > Monica
> > postponed the onslaught.
> >
> > There are progressive ways to close the deficit. For example, Pollin
> > reckons that if we imposed a very small tax on all financial
> > transactions-i.e. all stock, bond, and derivative trades, starting 
> > with a
> > 0.5 percent tax on stocks and scaling the other appropriately - we 
> > could
> > raise roughly $100 billion right there, or roughly 20 percent of next
> > year's projected deficit, even if we also assume financial market 
> > trading
> > fell by an implausibly large 50 percent as a result of the tax.
> >
> > A tax on financial transactions? Now you䴜re talking, but not about
> > anything you might expect from the Democratic Party or John Kerry.
> >
> > 	***
> >
> >
> >
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