[Peace-discuss] The Clinton/Bush generation

[John W.]

At 05:13 PM 9/19/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>Professorially, I'd recommend that David Harvey's A BRIEF HISTORY OF
>NEOLIBERALISM become your bedside reading -- followed by the
>soon-to-be-published THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: THE RISE OF DISASTER
>CAPITALISM, by Naomi Klein. --CGE


Thanks for the recommendations.  I'm always looking for good, 
thought-provoking bedside reading that will help me sleep.  Will these 
books staunch my cynicism and replace it with a staunch optimism?

John



>John W. wrote:
>
>>... Carl, what was your professorial reaction to this sentence:
>>"NAFTA would also, we were told, staunch Mexican immigration into the
>>United States. . ." ?
>>JW
>>
>>
>>>CHRIS HEDGES, ALTERNET - The misery sweeping across the American 
>>>landscape may have begun with Ronald Reagan, but it was accelerated and 
>>>codified by Bill Clinton. He sold out the poor and the working
>>>class. And Clinton did it deliberately to feed the pathological
>>>hunger he and his wife have for political power. It was the
>>>Clintons who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering
>>>trough.
>>>The Clintons argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer 
>>>a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers
>>>would vote Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better,
>>>the Clintons argued, to take corporate money and use government to
>>>service the needs of the corporations. By the 1990s, the Democratic
>>>Party, under Clinton's leadership, had virtual fund-raising parity
>>>with the Republicans. In political terms, it was a success. In
>>>moral terms, it was a betrayal.
>>>The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to the country by
>>>the Clinton White House as an opportunity to raise the incomes and
>>>prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Canada and
>>>Mexico. Goods would be cheaper. Workers would be wealthier.
>>>Everyone would be happier. I am not sure how these contradictory
>>>things were supposed to happen, but in a sound-bite society,
>>>reality no longer matters. NAFTA would also, we were told, staunch
>>>Mexican immigration into the United States. . .
>>>Clinton's welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, 
>>>obliterated the nation's social safety net. It threw 6 million
>>>people, many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls
>>>within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child
>>>care, rent subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage. Families were
>>>plunged into crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that
>>>paid $6 or $7 an hour, or less than $15,000 a year.
>>>But these were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those
>>>dropped from the welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton slashed
>>>Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25
>>>billion in Medicaid funding. The booming and overcrowded prison
>>>system handled the influx of the poor, as well as our abandoned
>>>mentally ill.
>>>The growing desperation provided a pool of broken people willing to
>>>work for low wages and without unions or benefits. And while
>>>Clinton was busy selling out the poor, he lowered the capital gains
>>>tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, a reduction that permitted the
>>>wealthiest 1 percent of the population to derive 80 percent of the
>>>tax savings. Clinton, like George W. Bush, also provided lavish
>>>government funding for his corporate backers, including in 1998 a
>>>$200-billion highway and transportation package for the big
>>>construction companies and a $17-billion increase in the military
>>>budget.
>>>This was the largest increase in military spending since the end of
>>>the Cold War. Corporations, flush with government aid, saw their
>>>taxes dwindle. Amway, for example, had its taxes cut during the
>>>Clinton years by an estimated $280 million. The Clinton and Bush 
>>>administrations, through tax breaks and corporate bailouts, have 
>>>squandered billions of our tax dollars on corporate welfare.
>>>###