[Peace] Moyers and Chomsky

Tue Feb 5 14:50:56 CST 2002

Yes, thanks for the reminder.  The program  David refers to is called
"Trading Democracy" with host Bill Moyers and it starts at 9pm tonight on
WILL-TV (channel 13 if you live in C-U and have cable, otherwise it's
channel 12 without cable).

Kimberlie

> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Green [mailto:davegreen48 at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 2:24 PM
> To: peace at lists.groogroo.com
> Subject: [Peace] Moyers and Chomsky
> 
> 
> Tonight PBS is broadcasting a Bill Moyers examination
> of the effects of NAFTA. Below is an excerpt of an
> article by Noam Chomsky from 1994, "The Clinton
> Vision, Part 2." The rest of the article can be found
> online at zmag.org under the Chomsky Archives
> 
> 1. Clinton's Bottom Line
> November 17 was a grand day in the career of Bill
> Clinton, the day when he proved that he is a man of
> firm principle, and that his "vision" -- the term has
> become a journalistic reflex -- has real substance.
> "President Emerges As a Tough Fighter," the New York
> Times announced on the front page the next day.
> Washington correspondent R.W. Apple wrote that Clinton
> had now silenced his detractors, who had scorned him
> for his apparent willingness to back down on
> everything he claimed to stand for: 
> 
> "Mr. Clinton retreated early on Bosnia, on Haiti, on
> homosexuals in the military, on important elements of
> his economic plan [namely, the minuscule stimulative
> package]; he seemed ready to compromise on all but the
> most basic elements of his health-care reforms.
> Critics asked whether he had a bottom line on
> anything. 
> 
> On NAFTA, he did, and that question won't be asked
> much for a while."1 
> 
> In short, on unimportant matters, involving nothing
> more than millions of lives, Clinton is a
> "pragmatist," ready to retreat. But when it comes to
> responding to the calls of the big money, our hero
> showed that he has backbone after all. 
> 
> The importance that the corporate world saw in the
> NAFTA issue was revealed with some clarity in the
> final stages. Usually, both the President and the
> media try to keep their class loyalties somewhat in
> the background. This time, all bars were down.
> Particularly striking was the bitter attack on labor
> for daring to interfere in the political process,
> understood to be the domain of business power in a
> well-ordered democracy. 
> 
> The logic is familiar. When ordinary people enter the
> political arena, we have a "crisis of democracy";
> things are OK, however, when the President is able to
> "govern the country with the cooperation of a
> relatively small number of Wall Street lawyers and
> bankers," as the Eaton Professor of the Science of
> Government at Harvard (Samuel Huntington) has
> explained, articulating the vision of democracy
> propounded by elite opinion for hundreds of years. 
> 
> Accordingly, corporate lobbying was considered
> unworthy of mention -- a reasonable decision; one also
> doesn't report the air we breathe. 
> 
> President Clinton denounced the "naked pressure" and
> "real roughshod, muscle-bound tactics" of organized
> labor, "the raw muscle, the sort of naked pressure
> that the labor forces have put on." They even resorted
> to "pleading...based on friendship" and
> "threatening...based on money and work in the
> campaign" when they approached their elected
> representatives. Never would a corporate lobbyist sink
> that low; those who believe otherwise merely reveal
> themselves to be "Marxists" or "conspiracy theorists,"
> terms that are the cultivated equivalent of
> four-letter words or a punch in the nose, a last
> resort when you can't think of an argument. Front-page
> stories featured the President's call to Congress "to
> resist the hardball politics" of the "powerful labor
> interests." Business was reeling from the onslaught,
> unable to face the terror of the mob. At the outer
> limits of dissent, Anthony Lewis berated the
> "backward, unenlightened" labor movement for the
> "crude threatening tactics" it employed to influence
> Congress, motivated by "fear of change and fear of
> foreigners." 
> 
> In a lead editorial the day before the vote, the Times
> courageously confronted the "raw muscle," denouncing
> local Democrats who oppose NAFTA in fear of "the wrath
> of organized labor" with its powerful political action
> committees that "contribute handsomely to their
> election campaigns." A box within the editorial headed
> "Labor's Money" records labor contributions to NAFTA
> opponents in the New York City area -- "an unsettling
> pattern," the editors observe ominously.2 
> 
> As some aggrieved representatives and others noted,
> the Times did not run a box listing corporate
> contributions. Nor did it list Times advertisers and
> owners who support NAFTA, raising ominous questions
> about their editorial support for the bill, perhaps an
> instance of an "unsettling pattern." Such reactions
> are not to the point, however, for several reasons.
> First, information about corporate lobbyists, owners
> and advertisers would be irrelevant, since conformity
> of government and editorial policy to their views is
> the natural order. And if the hysteria about the
> improprieties of working people was a bit crass, it is
> after all understandable in a moment of panic, when
> the mob is practically at the gates. Furthermore,
> after endless wailing about the terrifying power of
> labor and the unfair uses to which it was put, the
> Times did run a front-page story revealing the truth:
> Michael Wines, "Off Stage, Trade Pact Lobby Had a
> Star's Dressing Room." 
> 
> The corporate lobbyists, Wines reported, were "Chamber
> of Commerce types, accountants, trade consultants,"
> who "occupied a stately conference room on the first
> floor of the Capitol, barely an elevator ride away
> from the action in the House chamber," with TV sets,
> cellular telephones, and other appurtenances in
> abundance, and celebrities everywhere. The picture was
> enough to convince a former Carter official, now a
> lobbyist, that "It's going to be a blowout." A look at
> labor's "raw muscle" only reinforced the conclusion:
> "The boiler room for the forces opposed to the pact,
> by contrast, was more of, well, a boiler room," a
> "barren hearing room" far from the House debate, with
> only one telephone, "basic black." "The dress was
> union-label, inexpensive suits and nylon jackets
> inscribed with numbers and insignias of various
> locals." Wines even spoke the usually forbidden words
> "class lines," referring to the "nastier and more
> divisive battle" over NAFTA, unlike the "previous two
> battles," which left no scars: the battle over the $19
> billion stimulus (quickly lost) and the tax and
> spending cuts.3 
> 
> True, the story that finally set things right was
> published the day after the vote. But the newsroom is
> a busy place, media savants explain, and sometimes
> things fall through the cracks -- in an oddly
> systematic way. 
> 
> Before the vote, it wasn't only labor, with its
> awesome power, that was pummelling Congress while the
> business world looked on in helpless dismay. The
> morning of the vote, a front-page story in the Wall
> Street Journal denounced "the muscle-flexing by the
> broad antitrade coalition," which extends beyond labor
> bureaucrats to "upscale environmentalists, suburban
> Perot supporters and thousands of local activists
> nationwide." These extremists believe that NAFTA is
> designed "for the benefit of multinational
> corporations. Their rhetoric is pure
> down-with-the-rich populism," laced with
> "conspiratorial, antielitist arguments." A pretty
> scary crowd.4 
> 
> The news columns of the Journal usually try to keep a
> dispassionate tone, leaving Maoist-style ranting to
> the editorial and opinion pages. But in this case, the
> pain was too much to bear. 
> 
> 
> 
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