This Week:

Quote of the Week

Website(s) of the Week

Local Action on Energy, Indian Rights

Privatization Strikes Again: Garbage
Where Tax Cuts Come From

Greetings,

I have mentioned, a couple of times, the illness of my friend Charlie Smith, the editor of Access Press newspaper. I forgot to mention that while he is ill yours truly will be acting as the editor of that fine monthly newspaper. Contact us at the paper if you want to subscribe; it is THE paper to read if you want to know what is going on in the community of people with disabilities. And, believe me, there is a LOT going on. Call 651-644-2133, or email us at access@mninter.net

The "Quote" of the Week this week concerns the U.S. response to the inauguration of President Aristide in Haiti. An official statement from the U.S. State Department protested the November election of Aristide, saying that "The United States did not send official observers to Haiti or provide electoral assistance" to that country because they said there had been election "irregularities" in an earlier election there. This statement was issued by the United States government in November. November, 2000. Get the joke?

Welcome to the new subscribers this week. I should point out that this issue of Nygaard Notes is not a typical issue. That's because there are no typical issues. Every one is a collector's item.

In solidarity,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

The New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of February 8th, commenting on the opposition within Haiti to the November landslide election of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on November 26th:

"The opposition boycotted November's presidential election, where voter turnout was low, and considers the [Aristide] government illegitimate."

The "low" turnout cited by the Times, echoing the official U.S. characterization of that election, was 61.5 percent, or 10.5 percent higher than the national elections held in the United States earlier that same month.

Websites of the Week

Since the talk of budget surpluses and tax cuts is so rampant this week, I want to recommend two websites that will really give you the facts you need to have in order to talk intelligently about what is really going on with the spending cuts and the "downsizing" of government at all levels.

You do want to talk intelligently about this stuff, do you not?

The first website is run by an excellent group called OMB Watch, which was founded in 1983 "to lift the veil of secrecy shrouding the White House Office of Management and Budget, or OMB." (Any of you readers remember a guy named David Stockman?) OMB Watch now watches more than the OMB, now being an excellent activist and research group that focuses on the large issues of where government dollars come from and what effects their spending (or lack of spending) have on the well-being of all of us. Great reports, great newsletter, and they have a few different E-mail lists that readers might find useful and interesting. Visit them at http://ombwatch.org/.

Another group, the National Priorities Project, is really the best source for easy-to-understand state-by-state data on a wide variety of subjects. Just in the last two months they have published state-by-state numbers on loss of wetlands, costs of nuclear missile defense by state, child poverty rates, numbers of children served by Head Start, estimates of new housing vouchers, occupational health and safety expenditures, and education spending. This is great stuff.

Their annual "State of The States" report, which was the source of much of the data in this week's Nygaard Notes, is particularly worth a look. Find their site at: http://www.natprior.org. I can't recommend this site highly enough to those who want to understand the dollars and cents of the federal government.

Local Action on Energy, Indian Rights

There's been lots of news lately about energy in California. For all you Minnesotans concerned about this issue, there's a great chance coming up to take some action right here in our own back yard on the issue of energy, the environment, and justice for indigenous people. Next Wednesday, February 14th, shareholders in our local electricity monopoly, Xcel Energy, and their supporters, will be gathering at Xcel's Corporate Headquarters at 800 Nicollet Mall from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm to protest an ongoing crime being committed by that utility.

Here's the crime, in brief: Minnesota is dependent for its energy in part on a Canadian utility known as Manitoba Hydro. Manitoba Hydro sells energy to Xcel that it gets from a huge hydroelectric project that has wrought and continues to wreak havoc on the Pimicikamak Cree Nation and other indigenous peoples in Manitoba. This has been going on for years, and now Xcel wants to buy even more of this disgusting energy from Man Hydro. The good news is that the local resistance to this scheme is growing, and the Nicollet Mall protest is a part of it.

The Wednesday protesters are working in support of a shareholder resolution that will be offered at the upcoming Xcel annual meeting. That resolution states, in part, that "The shareholders of Xcel Energy recommend to the board of directors that it develop and implement policies and practices requiring that our company obtain power supplies from increased efficiencies and renewable resources that do not have undue adverse environmental, socioeconomic and human rights impacts upon Pimicikamak Cree Nation and other indigenous peoples."

The protesters hope to be down there at Xcel headquarters every Wednesday from now until the annual meeting in April. I hope some Nygaard Notes readers will go down there, as well. Utilities in Minnesota have not yet been totally "deregulated," so citizens still have some sort of realistic chance to have an impact on this particular utility's complicity in this particular human rights disaster.

For more information on the protest, call 651-777-3629. There's lots of other ways to get involved, as well. To find out about them, visit the website of the resistance group, "Unplug Manitoba Hydro," at www.unplugmanitobahydro.org.

Privatization Strikes Again: Garbage

We are seeing a lot more litter on the streets in Minneapolis lately, as a result of the City's fiscally conservative "Adopt a Litter Container" program. Columnist Doug Grow of the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) described the plan in the January 24th edition as follows:

"...in 1997, with the garbage enterprise fund running in the red, the city council decided that it was no longer fair for residents to have to pay about $200,000 a year to maintain receptacles along streets in commercial areas and next to bus stops [Editor's Note: That comes to about $1.80 per citizen per year]. The council also decided not to take money from the general fund to deal with public-littering issues, instead deciding to make that a problem for business owners to deal with. The adoption program was phased in. The phasing out of the city's 2,000 containers was to be completed by the end of 2000."

All in the name of holding down taxes, of course.

Where Tax Cuts Come From

In Minnesota we have a governor who is obsessed with cutting taxes and reducing the size of government. In Washington we have, not coincidentally, a "president" who is preoccupied with the same things. The fact that large budget surpluses are projected is undisputed. But why this should be so is not well understood.

Our current and projected government budget surpluses are explained in part by the fact that incomes are up, so taxes are up, so there is extra money. But perhaps the bigger reason why we are projecting surpluses is stated clearly by the excellent watchdog group OMB Watch in a recent report: "The on-budget surplus over the next few years will be made possible because of severe cuts in discretionary spending." These severe cuts were written into federal law in1990, in what has become known as the Balanced Budget Act, and were renewed in 1997. The effects of this belt-tightening are most obvious in relation to the various health care cutbacks that have been in the news lately, but extend far beyond that, although this is rarely noted in the press.

Less "Discretionary Spending"

Since we're required by law to have less of it, it might be worth knowing exactly what "discretionary spending" is. Discretionary spending is all of the spending that is not earmarked for special purposes, and thus "off limits" in the annual budget discussions. Social Security, for example, which has benefit levels set by law, is not "discretionary." (Although, as our new "president" will likely soon show, that law can be changed.) Neither are interest payments on the national debt discretionary. But lots of federal spending is discretionary, including spending on such things as the military, international programs, NASA, environmental programs, national parks, community economic development, job training, Head Start, public health programs, housing, law enforcement, rural programs, general government operations, highways, and certain research activities.

About 50% of all federal discretionary dollars are consumed directly by the military, by far the largest share; indirect military costs make the real number far higher. Bush supports increasing direct military spending even further, as did Gore, which, given the constraints of the Balanced Budget Act, logically means that they support further reductions in other discretionary spending. This is a key area of agreement between the two major parties, and is worth knowing.

When one considers that many federal programs have already undergone serious reductions in their funding levels over the past 20 years, a good argument could be made not only that further cuts are a bad idea, but even that we should be increasing funding levels to bring them back to what were seen in the pre-Reagan era. I am aware that such an idea, in the current political context, sounds like the raving of a madman. But it should be noted that the total federal commitment to key social programs, such as education, welfare, urban development, environmental protection, and others, was $26.7 billion less in 1998 than it was in 1980, in real dollars.

Specific Needs, Specific Cuts

Just for the record, here are some specific federal programs, the amounts their budgets have been reduced over the past couple of decades, and just a hint of the problems that have resulted:

• The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration budget was cut 35% between 1980 and 1999. This is the agency that might, with adequate funding, have prevented some of the hundreds of deaths and injuries caused by the infamous Firestone Tires in the 1990s.
• Federal Community Development Block Grants were cut 69% between 1980 and 1999. CDBG grants are federal grants to states and cities that are used to "revitalize neighborhoods, expand affordable housing and economic opportunities, and/or improve community facilities and services, principally to benefit low- and moderate-income persons." More than four out of ten renters in the United States are now unable to afford Fair Market Rents.
• Federal (EPA) funding to address U.S. drinking water needs has also been cut 69% over the same period. More than 8 million Americans today drink water from watersheds in violation of the (less-than-strict) EPA pollution standards.
• In the past 19 years, the federal share of money spent by the nation on education has declined from 9.2% to 6.6%. Today the per-child spending gap between the poorest and richest schools in the nation stands at $4,041 per year, and 18% of American adults are illiterate.
• In the past 20 years the federal government has provided its citizens with 72% less money for job training. Lack of such training partly explains why "typical adults leaving welfare earn about $10,000 per year – well below the poverty line," as reported in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) this week.
• The Wall Street Journal of this past August 23rd reported that the budgets for the federal government's Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau's economic and statistical analysis branch have been cut so deeply that economists and business people are complaining that the reliability of basic economic statistics – such as gross domestic product, and the trade balance – is in question.

I happened to see House Speaker Dennis Hastert this week on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and he solemnly proclaimed that "we all agree" on the need for huge tax cuts, and thus need only quibble about the details. No one challenged this assertion, nor bothered to bring up the nature or magnitude of the spending cuts that make these tax cuts (sort of) possible. Needless to say, no one remarked on the remarkable "reverse-Robin Hood" ideology that the Speaker's comments reflect: Take from the poor, who rely on and benefit from the federal programs that are on the chopping block, and give to the rich, who stand to benefit the most from the reductions in taxes made possible by the reductions in spending.

Many conservatives love to point out that "there is no such thing as a free lunch." True enough. There is also no such thing as a free tax reduction; the current ones are a result of cutting programs that serve the majority of Americans. Conservatives, such as Minnesota's governor and our nation's "president," do not love to point this out.