| Number 187 | January 10, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, I realized, looking at last week’s review of Nygaard Notes 2002, that I did a lot of longer pieces that ended up as 3-part series’. That’s a bit taxing, I suppose, so this month I’ll try to stick to “one-part” pieces, like Strolls through the news, and little, tiny case studies of some of the more revealing machinations of TWOS (“The World’s Only Superpower”). In last week’s Year In Review, I said that the key word search function on the Nygaard Notes website wasn’t working properly, and it wasn’t. But it is working now, thanks to the ministrations and skills of excellent Nygaard Notes webmaster Walker. Much appreciated, Walker! (There will be some improvements and changes soon to the website, but it’s a little too early to announce them yet. Stay tuned...) I’ll be teaching my media class again this month and next, and on the 23rd of January will be leading a discussion of the need for new political terminology. Details will be in next week’s Notes. In solidarity, Nygaard Until next week, Nygaard |
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| How Long Has It Been...?
Difficult as it may be for Nygaard Notes readers to believe, it has been almost four months since the last “Stroll Through the News With Nygaard.” Since the last edition on September 27th, I have conscientiously kept a stack of newspaper clippings upon which I had hoped to comment. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to actually LOOK at them and—lo and behold—I had accumulated an impossible stack of dozens and dozens of articles over the four months, from several different newspapers. An average of more than 2 articles every day. Don’t I have anything better to do, you ask, than to sit around with a yellow highlighter every day, quietly cackling to myself as I ferret out the revealing, the little-noticed, the misplaced, and the bizarre offerings from the corporate press? Apparently not. The good news is, they really are revealing, and entertaining as well, and now you get to benefit from my rather obsessive habits as we embark on yet another “stroll.” So, off we go (and, don’t worry, I won’t try to cover all the articles in the pile!). Women’s Rights, Late Score: Fetuses 1, Women 0 A couple of articles that appeared recently in the New York Times indicate the various ways that the IC (Individualist and Competitive, a.k.a. “right-wing”) crowd are attempting to limit the freedom of women to control their own bodies. The first one appeared in the September 28th Times, headlined “Bush Rule Makes Fetuses Eligible for Health Benefits.” The article led off saying, “The Bush administration issued final rules today allowing states to define a fetus as a child eligible for government-subsidized health care under the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).” Few papers noted this development, though the Bush folks announced their intentions back in January. The new Bush regulation says, “‘Child’ means an individual under the age of 19, including the period from conception to birth.” In its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the U.S. Supreme court explicitly stated that the word “person,” as used in the 14th Amendment, “does not include the unborn.” The White House, naturally, “said it saw no contradiction” between the Supremes’ ruling and its new regulation. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson even stated for the record that “This, to me, is not an abortion issue,” adding that “This is compassionate conservatism at its best.” That’s what we’re afraid of, Tommy. The second article,” on November 2nd, was headlined “U.S. May Abandon Support of U.N. Population Accord” and concerned the Bush administration’s indication that it plans to withdraw its support for “a landmark international family-planning agreement” unless references to “reproductive health services” and “reproductive rights” are removed. The landmark agreement is the so-called Cairo Agreement, aimed at improving women’s health and helping slow population growth that was adopted by 179 countries—including the U.S.—at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. The Bush folks “contend” that the Cairo agreement “promotes abortion,” which it does not. In fact, the Cairo agreement does not address whether or not abortion should be legal, but does declare that where abortion is legal, it should be safe. The context in which this decision is being considered was not mentioned by the Times, which is the fact that each year 78,000 women—99 percent of whom live in poor countries—die from complications resulting from unsafe abortion. The Right To Pollute The Bush administration went to court on October 9th to stop California from requiring that automakers sell less-polluting cars. “White House Joins Fight Against Electric Cars,” read the headline. It seems that California wants to increase the number of “zero-emission vehicles,” which means electric ones, as of now. The big car companies don’t like to be told what to do, so they sued the state, saying that California’s attempt to regulate fuel economy standards is something “over which the federal government holds exclusive jurisdiction.” That’s the argument the Bush folks went to court to support. California is important in the environmental realm because it is so big and so polluted that the efforts it makes to clean up its air impact the whole country. As the Times put it, referring to the case at hand, “...the state has set emission requirements that have forced car companies to invent new technologies for pollution control.” The administration’s going to court is entirely predictable, since Bush politics dictates a double standard in which states that attempt to exceed federal environmental regulations will be seen to be “usurping” federal power, while states that want to have weaker rules will be exercising their ever-sacred “states’ rights” as they attempt to “free” themselves from “federal tyranny.” Bush can be predicted to oppose the former, and support the latter, as in this case. The Times article does illustrate one aspect of the administration’s anti-environmental allegiance to the auto industry, pointing out that Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card used to be the chief lobbyist for General Motors. What the Times doesn’t point out is that this action gives the lie to the popular perception that this administration favors “states’ rights” and “small government.” As we see, if the “rights” in danger are the rights of huge corporations, Bush-style Big Government is ready and willing to assert its power. No Money for Homelessness? Let’s Cut Taxes! According to the New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) in a story of December 18th headlined “Mayors Report Requests for Food and Shelter Are Up,” the National Conference of Mayors issued a report saying that the year 2002 “had brought the largest increase in demand for emergency shelter in a decade.” Nonetheless, “The mayors,” according to the Times, “said they received less money [in 2002] to care for the poor and disadvantaged, a reflection of the federal budget, a drop in private charitable contributions and a shift in attention to the threat of terrorism.” That’s one way to put it. Another way might be to say that the failure of the wealthiest country in the world to guarantee food and shelter to its most vulnerable citizens is a “reflection” of some seriously misplaced priorities, and cause for mass outrage. But the Times article (relegated to page 18) doesn’t leave that impression at all. What the article reports is that “An administration official said in an interview today that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would provide $1.12 billion for programs for the homeless next year, a $28 million increase over this year.” $28 million sounds like a lot of money, I suppose, but my calculator tells me what the article didn’t, which is that this amounts to an increase in funding of 2.5 percent. How does that 2.5 percent increase in funding relate to the increase in homelessness? The Times doesn’t say. Since this seemed like a rather important point, I ambled over to the website of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (you could, too; it’s at http://www.usmayors.org/USCM/home.asp) and found the actual report, called “A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America’s Cities 2002.” There I learned that “During the past year requests for emergency shelter increased in the survey cities by an average of 19 percent...” So, those with a calculator, much time, and the ability to hunt down the website could figure out that the Bush administration plans to increase funding for homelessness at about one-seventh the growth in demand. That’s not likely to address the fact that, “An average of 30 percent of the requests for emergency shelter by homeless people overall and 38 percent of the requests by homeless families alone are estimated to have gone unmet during the last year,” as the governors’ report states. Nevertheless, the article did find the room to report that “President Bush vowed this year to end chronic homelessness within ten years.” By magic, apparently. The problem here, as in many cases, is that systemic injustice—that is, injustice caused by impersonal economic and social factors instead of some “evil” individuals—is difficult to photograph and impossible to address with military might. These factors dictate that our greatest social problems are, for the most part, “Unfit To Print” for the Times and the rest of the commercial media. At least the Times found something about the report “Fit To Print.” The news was completely unreported in Minnesota’s newspaper of record, the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) Biting the Corporate Hand? Sometimes the inadvertent placement of articles can be quite revealing, as it was in the Star Tribune (Newspaper of the Twin Cities!) a couple of months ago. In the business section of the Star Trib of November 9th was a locally-produced article about our phenomenally corrupt and mis-managed “local” phone company, the notorious Qwest. Besides being accused of shady accounting practices, seeing their stock value fall by more than 90 percent, and having their former CEO abscond with millions while laying off workers, Qwest has also been found to have been “illegally entering into secret agreements with its competitors.” The article—“Penalty Proposals For Qwest Far Apart”—reported on the conflict between state regulators, who suggested that Qwest was beyond hope and should be broken up, and the desperate leadership of the notorious telephone utility, who made a multi-part “proposal” as an alternative to the corporate death sentence. Although Deputy Commerce Commissioner Tony Mendoza dismissed parts of the Qwest proposal as “mostly...public relations,” he did “applaud” one part, which was the part where Qwest “would hire an independent firm to monitor future agreements with competing local telephone companies so that there would be no other secret pacts.” Before you applaud, let me suggest the possibility that Company A, when being paid by Company B, might be a little less than “independent” in their investigation of Company B. Although dogs do occasionally bite the hand that feeds them, it’s not common. Now, consider another story that appeared on the same page of the Star Trib business section on the same day as the Qwest story—literally four-and-one-half inches away—that wasn’t intended to be related, but sure seemed to be. That story, written by the Associated Press, had to do with the Chairman of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, Harvey Pitt, who had just “resigned under pressure.” The pressure came from the fact that he covered up his knowledge of the history of William Webster, a man who had just been appointed to head a new accounting oversight board at the S.E.C. It seems that Webster (former FBI and CIA chief, now a honcho businessman) had “told Pitt that he [Webster] had headed the audit committee at a company now facing fraud accusations,” as the Associated Press delicately put it. The company, U.S. Technologies, had hired an “independent” accounting firm—just as independent as the one that Qwest hired, I’m guessing—that apparently uncovered something in their audit that U.S. Technologies’ audit committee didn’t like. So, Webster, in his capacity as head of the audit committee, fired the firm. Webster—hailed as “a man of unquestionable integrity” upon his appointment—has since resigned from the S.E.C., as has the S.E.C.’s chief accountant. So, in one case, an auditing firm is prevented from doing its job when the subject of its audit exercises its right as employer to dismiss the firm. This behavior eventually results in the employer’s representative being judged by many to be unfit for public office. Meanwhile, in Minnesota, a proposal to set up a very similar conflict of interest is “applauded” by the responsible regulatory official. Go figure. |