[Peace-discuss] The Clinton/Bush generation

[C. G. Estabrook]

Maybe they'll suggest that the problem is not yours, but something broader.

John W. wrote:
> 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.
>>>> ###
> 
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